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AGNOSTICISM
AND
CHRISTIAN THEISM
I
Which is the More Reasonable ?
«
By CHARLES WATTS.
CONTENTS:
(1) What is Agnosticism? (2) Its Relation to the Universe and
Christian Theism ; (3) Is it sufficient to satisfy man’s intellectual
requirements?
The Natural and the Supernatural.
Price
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�AGNOSTICISM & CHRISTIAN THEISM :
WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE ?
I.
WHAT IS AGNOSTICISM ?
This is pre-eminently a critical age, when the right to examine teach
ings submitted for our acceptance is more than ever recognized. In
the light of modern thought, no subject is too sacred for honest criti
cism, and no opinion too ancient for reasonable investigation. Rea-on
is now rapidly taking the place of blind belief, and serfdom to authority
issyielding to the influence of mental freedom.
Christian Theism as taught by the Churches has been so long regarded
by its adherents as being the embodiment of absolute truth, that to in any
way question its pretensions has been condemned as almost an unpar
donable sin. Every new philosophy that has challenged the positive
claims of Theism has been avoided and misrepresented apart from its
-pertinency and value. This has been the case particularly with the
philosophy of Agnosticism. It will, therefore, be interesting to in
quire, What is this Agnostic phase of thought ? In answering this
question, the reply will be classified under three divisions—(1) What
is Agnosticism ? (2) Its relation to the Universe and Christian
Theism; and (3) Is it sufficient' to satisfy man’s intellectual require
ments 1
What is Agnosticism ? The word is one that has become tolerably
familiar to a large section of society in sound, if not in its strictest
philosophical signification. It has come into use within the last few
years, and has achieved a great popularity. Friends arid foes alike
employ it—the former to approve it and the latter to condemn it, and
both to describe a certain phase of thought which is recognised as being
very extensive. Like most technical phrases, the term is derived from
the Greek, and signifies “ not knowing.” An Agnostic, therefore, is
one who confesses that he has no knowledge upon those subjects to
which his Agnosticism is applicable.
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AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM :
Although the word Agnostic is comparatively new, that which it
represents is as old as humanity. Men are not now for the first time
discovering that there are questions which lie altogether beyond their
gnosis or knowledge. That discovery was made at the dawn of human
thought. A knowledge of his own ignorance was one of the qualities
which Socrates boasted that he possessed, and which distinguished him.
in such a marked manner from his wily antagonists, the Sophists ; and
at Athens, two thousand years ago, St. Paul is said to have found an
altar, the remaining one of many, dedicated to an “ Unknown God.”'
The limits of human knowledge have been recognized by the foremost,
men of the race in all lands and in every age. Before the mighty
mysteries of the universe the greatest thinkers have stood awe-stricken,,
aghast and dumb. The intellect has again and again been paralyzed
in its ineffectual attempts to read the riddles of existence, before which
those of the Sphinx are lost in their insignificance ; and no GEdipus hasyet been found competent to the task of furnishing the solution. “ Alli
things,” said the schoolmen, “ run into the inscrutable,”—a thought
equivalent to one to be found in Professor Tyndall’s “ Belfast Address.”'
Therein that eminent scientist says : “ All we see around and all wefeel within us....... have their unsearchable roots in a cosmical life.......
an infinitesimal span of which is offered to the investigation of man.”'
Thus it will be seen that Agnosticism is an old friend with a new name,,
and perhaps a few additional qualities. We meet with it under certain,
forms in the pages of the history of every age. The profoundest intel
lects have been familiar with its character, and have not felt themselves
ashamed to confess to the attitude of mind which it represents.
It should be distinctly understood that Agnosticism is not to be in
any way confounded with ignorance as that phrase is used in every-day
life. Herein consists ©ne of the errors into which our orthodox op
ponents are continually falling. They use the words Agnosticism and
general ignorance as if they were synonymous, which is misleading, to say
^the least of it—that is, unless the latter term be employed as the direct
/antithesis of omniscience. No one pretends to know everything, and
the knowledge of many persons is considerably less than they in their
own opinion imagine. It is stated that an admirer of Dr. Johnson
began on one occasion to praise him for the great extent of his know
ledge. “Pooh,” said Johnson, “you would say I had great knowledge
even though you did not think so.” “ And,” rejoined the admirer,
“ you would think so even though I did not say it.” The fault of
�WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE ?
5
'Over-estimating our own knowledge is very common, and frequently
begets an egotism of a very dangerous nature. Invariably, the less a
man knows the more dogmatic he becomes, and the weaker the evidence
upon which his convictions are based the more positively will he assert
them to be true. It should require no extensive self-examination to
convince the careful thinker that, even if he knew all that can be
known upon every subject within the range of human gnosis, still
then the domain into which his knowledge does not extend would be
infinitely large compared with that small sphere which his information
has covered. In that larger province he is an Agnostic, and it would
be very unfair to designate him an ignorant person on that account.
Therefore, although Agnosticism means “ not knowing,” it is in no way
the equivalent of general ignorance.
The word Agnostic, however, in its philosophical sense, has a still
broader meaning. An Agnostic is not simply a person who is profossedly
ignorant concerning many subjects upon which other persons pretend to
have an extensive knowledge ; but he maintains that there are problems
the solution of which by man is impossible at the present stage of
his mental development. Further, an Agnostic is one who limits the
human mind by the measure of its capacity. That the finite can never
become infinite is probably a matter about which there can be no
difference of opinion, inasmuch as such a statement is a self-evident
truth, or as axiomatic as a proposition of Euclid. On the other hand,
a mind which is less than infinite cannot possess all knowledge. The
■consequence is, that there must always remain a wide field beyond the
range of the human faculties. In relation to that field every man must
be Agnostic, for the simple reason that his knowledge cannot penetrate
therein. Even the most orthodox believer proclaims his Agnosticism,
in a sense—that is, he admits that there are subjects which he not only
does not know, but which, from their very nature, he can never know,
since they relate to that which lies outside the sphere of thought. As
Herbert Spencer observes : “ At the utmost reach of discovery there
arises, and must ever arise, the question, What lies beyond ? ” (“First
Principles.”) And that beyond does not diminish, but rather widens,
•as knowledge increases ; for, the more we know, the more we discover
we have to learn. “ The power which the universe manifests to us,”
remarks the same writer, “ is utterly inscrutable.” Why should there
be any hesitation in admitting this truth ? No one looks upon it as
derogatory to human nature to admit that his power is limited, and
�6
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM :
that there are things which he cannot do. Why, therefore, should it beconsidered humiliating to confess that man’s knowledge, is limited, and
that there are topics which he does not and cannot know ? Not simply
that he has not advanced sufficiently in intellectual research to grapple
with them, but that they lie completely outside his sphere of thought.
In nature we can never know more than phenomena; and yet thesevery phenomena involve the necessity of the existence of something
which is their ground and support—that something being to us un
knowable. The unknown is postulated in the very terms we are com
pelled to use when speaking of the unknown. “ The senses,” as Lewes
observes, “perceive only phenomena; never noumena” (“History of
Philosophy ”). This opinion is not of modern origin, since Anaxagoras
maintained it, and Plato gave it his support. Thus it will be seen that
Agnosticism is not only not synonymous with what is generally termed
ignorance, but that it is compatible with the very highest and most
profound knowledge of which the human mind is capable.
Agnosticism being a philosophical, or certainly a quasi-philosophical,
question, must be judged of in the same manner as any other subject
of philosophy. Dogmatism is out of place in regard to it, and those
who accept its teachings must be content to practise humility and to
lay aside all arrogant assumptions of their great superiority to other
men whose views may not be identical with their own. As the ancient
philosopher observed : “We are never more in danger of being sub
dued than when we think ourselves invincible.” The object of the
whole Agnostic system is to learn, as far as possible, the limits of the
human mind in reference to the acquisition of knowledge, and, having,
done this, to use every effort to effect improvement wherever it is
possible, and to leave the useless and impracticable labour of sowing
the wind to those who seek to know the unknowable and to perform
the impossible. Wesley, in one of his hymns referring to the death of
Christ, says : “ Impassive he suffers, immortal he dies ”■—that is, in
capable of suffering, he did suffer; incapable of dying, he did die.
Now, is not this the very height of absurdity ? And yet, in reality, it
is not a whit more absurd than much that is put forth by those who
claim a knowledge of matters which lie beyond the sphere of human
reason. Agnostics, refusing to profess a knowledge they cannot com
mand, aim to differentiate the knowable from the unknowable, and
then devote their time and energies to widening the sphere of that
within human gnosis. Whatever else is possible, it is certain that we
�WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE?
7
can never extend the domain of the known into the unknown by in
dulging in wild flights of the imagination respecting the unknowable,
A® Socrates wisely observes : “ Having searched into all kinds of
science, we discover the folly of neglecting those which concern human
life and involving ourselves in difficulties about questions which are
but mere notions. We should confine ourselves to nature and reason.
Fancies beyond the reach of understanding, and which have yet been
made the objects of belief—these have been the source of all the dis
putes, errors and superstitions which have prevailed in the world. Such
notional mysteries cannot be made subservient to the right use of
humanity.”
“ Fear not to scan
The deep obscure or radiant light.
Heed not the man
Who draws old creeds to keep thee tight.
Examine all creeds, old and new :
Test all with reason through and through.”
II.
THE RELATION OF AGNOSTICISM TO THE UNIVERSE AND TO THEISM.
Agnosticism maintains that the teachings of theology relative to the
origin and nature of the universe, the existence of God, and immor
tality are simply questions of speculation, and that reason, science
and general knowledge do not support their dogmatic claims. Tne
theologian, on the other hand, contends that sufficient is known upon
these teachings to entitle them to our credence. In the face of these
two contentions, it will be profitable to ascertain as far as possible
which is the correct one. When the truth upon the matter is made
manifest, the wisdom of confining ourselves to the known and knowable
of existence yill probably be more readily recognized. What, then, are
those subjects which are dogmatized upon by the theologian, and to
which our attitude is purely Agnostic ?
THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE.
This is a question which, to us, is involved in absolute mystery. Not
only can it not be fathomed by the human mind, but no approach can
be made towards the solution of the'problem by the mightiest efforts of
the human intellect. We may go back millions of years in imagination,
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AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM :
but even then we are no nearer to a beginning than we were before.
Indeed, the possibility of such a beginning at all cannot be thought—
in other words, is not thinkable. As Mr. Mansel observes, “ Creation
is, to the human mind, inconceivable.” Precisely the same with the
other alternative, of an external existence, whether of matter or
spirit. It presents no idea that we can deal with intellectually, because
it ^sembles nothing of which we have had, or can have, the smallest
possible experience. Something must have existed from all eternity ;
that is a necessary truth, from which there is no escape. And yet the
how of that eternal existence lies utterly beyond the sphere of human
thought. To waste time in trying to comprehend it, to say nothing of
making it the subject of discussion, much less of dogmatism, is the
supremest folly. Nor can we have the slightest idea as to what was,
or is, the eternal existence. The dogmatic Theist ascribes it to God,
and the positive Atheist declares it to be matter • but what in reality
either the one or the other means, in the strictest sense, by the terms
used, neither of them knows. For what is God, and what is matter <
Are they the same, or are they two different existences ? The Mate
rialist, of course, denies the existence of spirit, and hence by matter he
means something other than spiritj-but what ? Matter is simply a name
given to that which originates in us sensations. But all that is known
of this is phenomenal, and phenomena, as before pointed out, cannot
exist by themselves, but must be supported by something which underlies
them. What that something is, however, no one knows, since it lies
completely outside the sphere of sensation. Besides, modern science
has clearly shown that the existence of which alone we can be said to
have any knowledge is not matter, but force. But, then, force can only
make itself manifest by motion, and where there is motion something
must be moved. Say that this moving body is matter, as it probably
is, and then comes the question, Which was the eternal existence, force
or matter, or both ? If force, how could it exist as motion when there
was nothing to be moved ? And, if matter, how could theje be motion
—and we have no conception of matter without motion—in the ab
sence of force, which is the cause of motion ? If it be contended that
both—matter and force—were eternal, then have we not two absolute
and infinite existences, which is a contradiction ? The Theist postulates
spirit; but that only adds a fresh difficulty, as will be seen presently.
Here Agnosticism at once declares the whole subject to be outside of
our gnosis, and, therefore, one which does not concern us, and of which
�WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE?
nothing is known, or can be known. Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks
that, on the origin of the universe, three hypotheses only are possible:
—1. That it is self-existent (Atheism). 2. That it is self-created (Pan
theism). 3. That it is created by an external agency (Theism). Mr.
Spencer has, at very considerable length, examined each of these
theories, and shown them all to be unthinkable. His position is, that
a self-existent universe, which is a universe existing without a begin
ning, is inconceivable. We cannot even think clearly of “ existence
without beginning.” And, if we could, it would afford no kind of
explanation of the universe itself. The first theory, therefore, is un
tenable. But no less so is the second—that of a created universe. To
hold this, it is necessary, in Mr. Herbert Spencer’s words, to “ conceive
potential existence passing into actual existence.” Is it possible, how
ever, to form a conception of potential existence except as something
which is, in fact, actual existence—the very thing which it is not I It
cannot be supposed as “nothing,” for that involves two absurdities—
(1) That nothing can be represented in thought; (2) That some one
nothing is so far separated from other nothings as to be capable of
passing into something, Again, existence passing from one state to
another without some external agency implies a “ change without a
cause—a thing of which no one idea is possible.” A self-created uni
verse is, consequently, inconceivable. There is still left the third theory
—that the universe was created by some external agency. But here a
difficulty arises in the attempt to think of “ the production of matter
out of nothing.” Moreover, there is still greater difficulty if we suppose
the creation of space. If space were created, then there was a time
when it was non-existent, which is also utterly inconceivable. But
suppose all these difficulties overcome, there is yet another, the greatest
of all. What is the external agency referred to ? And how came it
into being ? These are questions to which no satisfactory answers have
been or can be given. Thus the origin of the universe belongs to a regior
into which no human mind can enter, and therefore Agnosticism is the
only possible attitude of thought we can consistently take with regard
to the matter.
THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE.
In connection with this question we encounter speculations in
abundance ; but demonstrative facts are nowhere to be discovered.
Herbert Spencer has shown that every sensation we experience com
pels us, whether wo will or not, to infer a cause, and this-
�10
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM :
idea of causation drives us irresistibly to a First Cause. And
yet the moment we have reached it we are landed in all kinds of
contradictions and absurdities. For instance, is this First Cause
infinite or finite ? If infinite, it is beyond our comprehension,
outside the sphere of our knowledge; and if finite, then there
must be something beyond its bounds, and it is no longer the First
Cause. The Duke of Argyle, in his “ Reign of Law,” observes :—
“We cannot reach final causes any more than final purposes ; for
every cause which we can detect there is another cause which lies be
hind ; and for every purpose which we can see, there are other purposes
which lie beyond.” By holding that the Universe is infinite, to use
the words of Spencer himself, “ we tacitly abandon the hypothesis of
causation altogether.” The First Cause must also be either independent
or dependent. But if independent, we can have no idea of it at all,
because everything we know and think of is dependent. If, however,
the First Cause be dependent, then it must, being dependent, depend
on something else, and that something else becomes the First Cause, to
which the same argument will apply. In a similar manner, this cause
must be absolute, and yet, as Mansel has shown, “ A cause cannot, as
such, be absolute ; the absolute, as such, cannot be a cause.” The
reason of this is very obvious; the cause, as a cause, exists only in
relation to the effect. But the absolute must be out of all relation, or
it would cease to be absolute. But, in truth, we cannot conceive of the
absolute at all. It lies beyond the reach of finite faculties to grapple
with; hence, we are compelled to relegate the entire matter to the
domain of the unknowable. The power which manifests itself in the
universe is utterly inscrutable, and therefore we are driven to Agnos
ticism to find in it a solid resting-place in reference to the origin and
nature of the universe.
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
This is another question which, as already demonstrated, lies beyond z
the reach of finite powers. Let us glance at some of the various
methods that have been pursued—indeed, are still resorted to—to prove
the existence of God. The object in doing this, be it observed, is not
to attempt the foolish impossibility of proving the non-existence of
God. That would not be Agnosticism ; but the desire here is to
indicate that the question of the existence of God is a subject upon
which man, to be logical, must, from the very nature of the case
be Agnostic. Demonstration of the existence of God will hardly
�WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE ?
II
be contended for, except perhaps by the advocates of the a priori
method, and that need not be noticed here, since few representative
Theists resort to it, and fewer still have any idea what it really means.
The kinds of proof that are conceivable to be relied upon in this mat
ter are as follows :—
(a) The Senses.—These, however, can never furnish an argument to
prove the existence of God, inasmuch as our organs of sense have no
power to perceive anything that does not belong to the mere pheno
menal part of matter, and, hence, can never show us the noumenon
underlying appearances, much less an existence which is said to be in
no 5^ay material. If God has given a revelation, such revelation may
be seen or heard; but this, of itself, can only prove the revelation, not
God. Suppose we heard a voice, in tones of thunder which shook the
earth and reached every human ear, declare “ There is a God,” it
would prove nothing but the voice—not the God proclaimed. The
senses would perceive a sound, to which a very definite meaning might
be attached ; but the sound would not be God. It will not be denied
by any intelligent Theist that God can never become an object of
sense, and, therefore, that method of proof may be dismissed as totally
unavailing in the case.
(b) Scientific Research.—“ Canst thou by searching find out God 1” is
a question that was asked some thousands of years ago, and only one
answer has ever been, or probably ever can be, given, and that is a
negative one. Science, mighty and potent as it is for good, much as
it has done to ameliorate the condition of mankind, and great as its
triumphs are likely to be in the future, can never transcend sense
knowledge. All its processes are of a material character ; its instru
ments, together with the subjects which they explore, are material, the
phenomena with which it deals are material, and all its discoveries are
reported to the bodily organs of sense. Beyond the physical domain
of appearances no scientific investigations can ever go ; no telescope or
microscope can show us a trace of spirit; nor, in fact, of that, whatever
it may be, which underlies phenomena. Scientific facts may lead up to
philosophical generalizations ; but such generalizations are reached
by ratiocination (process of reasoning), and are no longer exclusively
scientific—in fact, are in a sense altogether independent of science. A
scientific fact and the interpretation of the fact are totally different
things. We may use science as a means for reading the riddles
of nature ; the reading, however, is not science, but philosophy; and
�19
v.
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM :
science has but helped us to the facts which
process that is not
scientific has to explain. The Theist tells us, with Newton, that
science leads up to God ; but it will be seen that the upward road has
ceased to be withm the domain of science long before its termination
is reached.
Logveal Reasoning.—Here, of course, it will be argued by the
heist that we start on firm and solid ground. A moment’s reflection,
however, will show that this is by no means the case. Our starting
point and the conclusion at which we seek to arrive lie so far apart that
by no process of logic can we pass from one to the other. There is, in
truth, a great gulf between them, and we do not and cannot possess
the means of bridging it over. Xu all mathematical reasoning we start
from some axiom or necessary truth, which we find in our minds, and
which, by a law of our mentation, cannot be got rid of. This we make
the basis of all our reasoning and the foundation of the entire super
structure that we desire to erect. In geometry, in arithmetic, and in
logic this is equally the case. Now, all these starting points, whether
they be axioms relating to space, notions regarding quantity, or
mental conceptions, lie in our own minds, and are only known to us
by the fact that we find them there. From these we may reason, form
ing a long chain of logical links, until, at the end, we reach some truth
of a marvellous and startling character, which is as easy of demonstra.
tion as the concept or axiom with which we started. In this way
Theists endeavour to reason up to God. But it requires no very
profound thought to show that the process must break down before it
reaches that point. For instance, there is the fact that the conclusion
must be of the same quality as the starting point. If the primary
truth with which we commenced be internal to our minds, so must the
conclusion be at which we arrive. Beginning with ourselves, we must
continue and end with ourselves, and by no possibility can we reach
anything that is exterior to us. If, therefore, we reason up to a concept
to which the name of God is given, we shall be as far as ever from a
demonstration of his actual being. We. shall still be dealing with an
idea which exists simply in our own minds, and may or may not__for
here demonstration ceases and the logical argument breaks down_ be
a measure of some real existence. But there is another reason why
this logical process must fail. The attributes ascribed to God are of
that character about which we cannot reason. However exalted the
conception at which we arrive, it must be finite, relative, and condi-
�\
WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE?
13
tioned, while God is said to be infinite, absolute, and unconditioned.
It is, therefore, impossible that God can be the last term of a
logical induction. Of course, this does not furnish conclusive proof
that the absolute and unconditioned has no existence; it does, how■ever, prove that we cannot know everything of it, since it transcends
all our powers and faculties. It belongs to a sphere to which we have
no access. Hence, in all our research, investigation, and thought, we
bait when we approach the domain of the unknowable, bow our heads
and unfurl the banner of Agnosticism.
For a person to assert positively that he knows that a God exists,
who is an infinite personal being, is, in the face of the present limita
tion of human knowledge, to betray an utter disregard of accuracy of
expression. With the majority of orthodox believers, the term God
is a phrase used to cover a lack of information.
Persons behold certain phenomena ; the why and wherefore they
cannot explain • and because to them such events are mysterious, they
pause at the threshold of inquiry, and to avoid what appear to be
inscrutable difficulties, allege that such phenomena are caused by God.
Dr. Young, the Christian Theist, in his “Provinceof Reason,” says :—
“ That concerning which I have no idea at all, is to me nothing, in
-every sense nothing.............To believe in that respecting which I can
form no notion is to believe in nothing; it is not to believe at all.’r This
represents t-he position of Christian Theism. Although a person may
picture an object in his mind from an analogous subject, it has yet to
be shown how an idea can be formed of that upon which no knowledge
exists, either analogous or otherwise. All notions that have been
entertained of Gods have been but reflexes of human weaknesses,
human desires, and human passions, and therefore do not represent an
infinite personal Being. Xenophanes is reported to have said, that
“ If horses and lions had hands, and should make their deities, they
would respectively make a horse and a lion.” Luther, too, remarked :
“ God is a blank sheet, upon which nothing is found but what you
yourselves have written.” Schiller also stated : “ Man depicts himself
in his Gods.” The history of the alleged God-ideas justifies the truth
of those statements ; hence, we find that in different nations, at various
times, the most opposite objects have been adored as deities. The sun,
-moon, and stars, wood, and stone, and rivers, cows, cats, hawks, bats,
/monkeys, and rattlesnakes, all have had their worshippers. Even now
the professed ideas of God in Christendom are most discrepant. The
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AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM :
God acknowledged by “ Advanced Theists ” is not the same Being in
many respects as the one depicted by Talmage and his school. Neither
does the object worshipped by the Deist correspond with the “Supreme
Power of the Pantheist. Then, if we go to the Bible, we discover
very different notions of God therein recorded. He is there described
as material, and then as immaterial j first as all-wise, and then again as
betraying a lack of wisdom j in one place as being all-powerful, and in
another as being exceedingly weak ; at one time as being loving, merci
ful, and unchangeable, at another as being revengeful, cruel and fickle
in the extreme. Surely, to rely on such absurd and contradictory
descriptions of a Being as these is more unreasonable than to frankly
admit that, if God exist, he is and must be unknown to us. This is
not a denial, but an honest confession that mentally no more than
physically can we perform the impossible.
It is alleged that the “God idea” is firmly rooted in the human mind.
What folly ! What is meant in this instance by an idea ? A mental
picture of something external to the individual. But where is that“ something ” corresponding with the many and varied representations
of a God ? The truth is, this supposed “ idea ” is no reality whatever,
but simply a vague “ idea ” of an “ idea,” of which, in fact, no idea
exists.
Besides, the term “ Infinite Personal Being ” is a contradiction.
Personality is that which constitutes an individual a distinct being.
This definition implies three requisites : First, that the person shall be
a personage ; second, that he shall be distinct from other things • and
thirdly, that he shall be bounded, that is, limited. But a bounded,
limited being is a finite being, and, therefore, cannot be an infinite
personal being. Is the assumed personality of God differentm fro
mine 1 If so, where is the difference ? Furthermore, is my personality
a part of God’s personality ? If it is, my personality is “ divine ; ” if
it is not, then there are two personalities, neither of which can possibly
be infinite, for where there are two each must be finite. Furthermore,.
personality is only known to us as a part of a material organization.
If, therefore, God is material, he is part of the universe. If he be a
part, he cannot be infinite, inasmuch as the part cannot be equal to the
whole. Personality involves intelligence, and intelligence implies ; 1.
Acquirement of knowledge, which indicates that the time was when,
the person who gained additional information lacked certain wisdom.
2. Memory, which is the power of recalling past events ; but with the •
�WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE 1
15
"infinite there can be no past. 3. Hope, which is based on limited per
ception, and which shows the uncertain condition of the mind wherein
the aspiration is found. Now, if God possesses these imperfect, faculties
he is finite; while, on the other hand, if they do not belong to him, he
is not an intelligent being.
Neither does the Theistic definition of God, as being infinite, har
monize with our reasoning faculties. Reason is based upon experience,
but an Infinite Being must be outside the domain of experience , reason
implies reflection, but we cannot reflect upon infinity, because it is
unthinkable ; reason implies comparison, but the Infinite Being cannot
be compared, for there is nothing with which to compare him; reason
implies judgment, but the finite is totally incompetent to judge of the
infinite ; reason is bounded by the capacity of the mind in which it
resides, but the mind to conceive the infinite must be unbounded;
reason follows perception, but we have no faculties for perceiving or
recognizing the infinite. Therefore, is not the Agnostic position of
silence as to the unknown the more reasonable ? If it be urged that
it is no part of Agnostic philosophy to consider these Theistic assump
tions, the answer is, that if such notions are well founded on demon
strated facts, there is no reason for the Agnostic attitude towards
them. It is the proving that Theistic allegations are unsupported by
observed truths which renders Agnosticism logical and justifiable.
Let it be distinctly understood that it is not against the existence and
nature of a God, per se, that exception is here taken—of that we know
nothing, but against the positive claims urged in reference to these
subjects. To these our indictment is directed.
The Orthodox notion of the “ innate consciousness of God’s exist
ence ” does not strengthen the position of the Christian Theist, for the
reason that it is groundless in fact. No doubt the error upon this point
has arisen with many persons through their regarding consciousness as
a separate faculty of the mind, whereas James Mill, Locke, Brown
and Buckle have shown it to be a condition of the mind produced by
■early training and surrounding associations. George Grote, in his
Review of J. S. Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Phi
losophy,” aptly remarks : “ Each new-born child finds its religious
creed ready prepared for him. In his earliest days of unconscious in
fancy, the stamp of the national, gentle, phratric God, or Gods, is
imprinted upon him by his elders.” Thus it happens that what are too
frequently but the consequences of youthful impressions and subsequent
�AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM :
tuition are regarded as veritable realities. If this “ God idea” were
innate, is it not reasonable to suppose that all persons would have it ?
But there are thousands of persons who are ready to acknowledge that
ey have it not; and those who profess to have it are unable to ex
plain what it is. Probably, if a child never heard of God in the morn
ing of life, it would have no fancies concerning him in its mature age.
t is to be feared that these Theistic pretensions arise from an inade
quate acquaintance with the now admitted natural forces. There is
however, this hope, that as knowledge still more advances, dogmatism
will proportionately disappear, priestcraft will yield to mental freedom,
and work in controlling Nature and reliance on her prolific resources
will more than ever take the place of supplicating for, and dependence
on, alleged supernatural help.
The once favourite argument drawn from design in the Universe
affords no justification for the positive allegations of Theism. As Pro
fessor Taylor Lewis admits :—
“ Nature alone cannot prove the existence of a Deity possessed of
moral attributes.” Has it ever occurred to Theists that at the very
most the God of the design argument can only be a finite being, for
nowhere amongst what are supposed to be the marks of design in
Nature is an infinite designer indicated ? Now, a God that is finite isneither omniscient, omnipotent, nor eternal. The design argument,
moreover, points to no unity in God. According to natural theology,
there may be one God or hundreds of Gods. The Rev. S. Faber fairly
observes : “ The Deist never did, and he never can, prove without
the aid of Revelation that the Universe was designed by a single
designer,” Paley’s well-known comparison of the eye and the telescopeproves the very opposite of that for which it was used. It should beremembered that, but for the imperfection of the eye, the telescope
had not been required. Plainly, the argument may be stated thus :_
Designer of the telescope, man; designer of the eye, God ; telescope
imperfect, hence its designer w^s imperfect; the eye more imperfect,
since the telescope was invented to improve its power • ergo, God, the
designer of eyes, was still less perfect than man, the designer of
telescopes.
Dr. Vaughan, in his work “The Age and Christianity,” declares :
“ No attempt of any philosopher to harmonize our ideal notions as to
the sort of world which it became a Being of infinite perfection to
create, with the world existing around us, can ever be pronounced sue-
�WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE?
17
-cessful. The facts of the moral and physical world seem to justify
inferences of an opposite de-cription from the benevolent.” The Rev.
George Gilfillan, in his “Grand Discovery of the Fatherhood,” noticing
the horrors and the evils that exist around us, asks : “ Is this the spot
chosen by the Father for the education of his children, or is it a den of
banisment or torture for his foes ? Is it a nursery, or is it a hell ?
there is nb discovery of the Father in man, in his science, philosophy,
history, art, or in any of his relations.”
If nothing else rebuked the dogmatic assumption of the Christian
Theist, the existence of so much misery, evil, and inequality in the
world, should do so. What man or woman having the power, would
hesitate to use it to alleviate the affliction, to cure the wrong, and to
destroy the injustice which cast such a gloom over so large a portion
of society ? Let the many records of the world’s benevolence, devotion,
and kindness give the reply. To lessen the pain of the afflicted, to
assist the needy, to help the oppressed, are characteristics of human
nature which its noblest sons and daughters have ever felt proud to
manifest in their deeds of heroic self-denial. Contemplating the suc
cess of crime, the triumph of despotism, the prevalence of want, the
struggles on the part of many to obtain the mere means of existence,
the appalling sights of physical deformity—beholding all these wrongs
this sadness and despair, who shall dogmatically exclaim, “ All Nature
proclaims a Fatherhood of of ^df?The question of immortality scarcely belongs to the same class of
subjects as the others which have here been discussed; nevertheless,
even upon this subject, the Agnostic position appears to me to be the
correct one. Personally, I refuse to dogmatise either one way or the
other; and the question, after all, is but of little consequence. Our
business, for the present at all events, is with this world; and the,
affairs of the next may be left until we land upon its shores, if such
shores there be. To ignore the teachings said to refer to another life
is not necessarily to deny the existence of that life. One thing is cer
tain, and that is our present existence. Furthermore, experience
teaches us that time is too short, duties too imperative, and consequences
too important to justify us in wasting our resources and displaying a
‘disturbing anxiety about, to us, an unknown future.
“ Life’s span forbids us to extend our cares,
And stretch our hopes beyond our years.”
�18
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM :
DOES AGNOSTICISM SATISFY MAN’S INTELLECTUAL REQUIREMENTS 1
There are two objections frequently urged against the Agnostic posi
tion which with some people have considerable force. The first is, that
Agnosticism robs man of the great consolation and incentive imparted
by the belief in the certainty of the existence of a “ Heavenly Father”
and a future life. In the second place, it is contended that Agnosticism
fails to satisfy the demands of the human intellect. Let us exa.m in e
these objections, with a view of ascertaining whether or not they pos
sess any weight bearing upon the present question.
The first objection supposes that without Theism and its teachings
there is no adequate comfort and peace for the human race ; that this
life of itself is but little more than “ a vale of tears,” alike destitute
of the sunshine of joy and the power of imparting happiness in every
day life. Persons who entertain these gloomy ideas regard existence
as being necessarily full of trouble, aud think that mankind are incapable
with mere natural resources of enjoying a high state of felicity, and that
true bliss is only to be secured by believing in God and entertaining
the hope of pleasure in another world. Such morbid notions are born
of a dismal faith, and find no sanction in the real healthy view of life’s
mission. Existence is not a mere blank ; its condition depends largely
upon the use mankind make of it. To some the world may be as a
garden adorned with the choicest of flowers, and to others as a wilder
ness covered with worthless weeds. Life of itself is not destitute of
beauty, glory, solace and love. True, it is sometimes darkened with
clouds, but it is also enlivened with sunshine ; it is degraded by serf
dom, and elevated by freedom ; it is shaded by isolation, and illumin
ated by fellowship ; it is chilled by misery and persecution, and warmed
by kindness and affection ; it is blasted by poverty and want, and in
vigorated by wealth and comfort; it is marred by shams and inequalities,
and glorified by realities and equity ; it is humiliated by unequal and
exce sive toil, and dignified by fair and honest labour; it has its
punishments through wrong and neglect, but it has its rewards in right
and correct action. The lesson of experience teaches us unmistakably
that life is worth having even if Theism and the teachings in reference
to a future existence be nothing more than emotional speculations. In
the language of the Rev. Minot J. Savage, in his work, “ The Morals
of Evolution,” “ I believe there is not a healthy man, woman, or child
�WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE?
19'
on earth who will not join me in saying that life is worth living simply
for its own sake, to-day, whether there ever was a yesterday or there
ever will be a to-morrow. Have you ever stood, as I have, on a moun
tain summit, with the broad ocean spread out at your feet on the one
side, a magnificent lake or bay on the other, the valley dotted with
towns, with growing fields of greenness, or turning brown with har
vest ? Have you ever looked up at the sky at night, thick with its
stars, glorious with the moon walking in her brightness ? Have you
listened to the bird-song some summer morning ? Have you stood by
the sea, and felt the breeze fan your weary brow, and watched the
breakers curling and tumbling in upon the shore ? Have you looked
into the faces of little children, seen the joy and delight they experi
ence simply in breathing and living, beheld the love-light in their eyes,,
heard their daily prattle, their laughter, their shouts of joy and play i
Have you, in fact, ever tasted what life means 1 Have you realized
that, with a healthy body, in the midst of this universe you are an
instrument finely attuned, on which all the million fingers of the uni
verse do play, every nerve a chord to be touched, every sense thrilling
with ecstacy and joy ? No matter where I came from, no matter where
I am going to, I live an eternity in this instant of time. Is it not a
mistake, in the face of facts like these, to say that life is not worth,
living unless it is supplemented by a heaven ? ”
“ Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream.”
As to the second objection, it is said that man is born to inquire ;
his whole nature is bent in the direction of discovery ; curiosity to pry
into the secrets of nature and being forms one of his leading character
istics ; therefore, Agnosticism, which places a barrier to his further
investigation, must be objectionable, because it fixes the limits beyond
which he may not’ go. This allegation, if worth anything, must be
urged, not against Agnosticism, but against the limit of human powers.
To tell man that there are subjects which he can never master, not for
lack of time to look into them, but because they lie in a domain to
which, by the very nature of the case, he can gain no access, should
certainly not be calculated to stop his inquiry with regard to matters
upon which knowledge is to be obtained. The Theist believes that he
can never fully comprehend God; but does that prevent him from
�20
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM.
endeavouring to learn what he can? Agnosticism has not placed
limits to the human mind, but only defined them; it has not erected
the barrier beyond which the human intellect cannot pass, but only
described it j it has not invented the line which has separated the
knowable from the unknowable, but only indicated its position. The
mind of man is, therefore, free to inquire to the utmost extent of its
powers, and the complaint that it cannot do more is foolish in the
extreme.
Agnosticism is sufficient for all the purposes of life, and more than
that cannot surely be needed. There is no human duty that it is not
compatible with, no human feeling that it does not allow full play to,
and no intellectual effort that it would attempt to place restrictions
upon. It leaves man in possession of all his mental force, seeking only
to direct that force into a legitimate channel where it may find full
scope for its use. In a beautiful passage in his Belfast address, Pro
fessor Tyndall remarks :
“ Given the masses of the planets and their distances asunder, and
we can infer the perturbations consequent upon their mutual attrac.
tions. Given the nature of disturbance in water, or ether, or air, and
from the physical properties of the medium we canlinfer how its parti
cles will be affected. The mind runs along the line of thought which
connects the phenomena, and from beginning to end finds no break in
the chain. But when we endeavour to pass, by a similar process, from
the physics of the brain to the phenomena of consciousness, we meet a
problem which transcends any conceivable expansion of the powers we
now possess. We may think over the subject again and again, it eludes
all intellectual presentation.”
These words present a great truth, indicating, as they do, the proper
scope of man’s intellectual activity. The Agnostic does not fail to
carry on his investigations into Nature to the utmost extent of his
ability. He seeks to wring from her secrets hidden through all the
ages of the past; he pushes his inquiries from point to point, and learns
all that can be known of the marvellous processes of life and mind, and
only stops when he confronts the unknowable, beyond whose barrier
he cannot pass. His are the fields, the groves, the woods, the sea, and
all the earth contains ; the starry sky, too, is his domain to explore
All nature, with its majestic varieties, lies before him, presenting sub
jects of the keenest interest. In these he revels with delight; but the
�NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL.
21
incomprehensible he seeks not to comprehend, the unknowable he does
not make the idle attempt to know. In a word, he is a man, and he
aims not at the impossible task of becoming a God. Is not this course
more courageous, more dignified, and more candid than that adopted by
the dogmatic theologian, who, yearning for a knowledge of the absolute,
and yet failing to discover it, lacks the courage to avow his inability
to achieve the impossible ?
“ Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.”
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL.
There have been a large number of books written on this subject,
some of them by men of eminence in their respective departments of
thought. It has been dealt with from very different standpoints, and
therefore exceedingly conflicting arguments have been brought to bear
upon it. Two able American writers, Dr. Bushnell and Dr. McCosh,
have discussed it with considerable learning ; but one has to put down
their works with a great degree of dissatisfaction, since nothing like
clear definition is to be found in their pages. In England the subject has
been made the theme of several large works, of hundreds of magazine
articles, and of thousands of pulpit discourses, an<J yet the whole subject
is enveloped in the densest darkness. There must be some cause for
this, and the cause, I think, is not far to seek. The natural we know f
but the supernatural, what is that ? Of course, as its name implies, it
is something higher than nature—something above nature. But, if
there is a sphere higher than nature, and yet often breaking through
nature, nature itself must be limited by something, and the question
that at once arises is, By what is such limitation fixed, and what is the
boundary line which marks it off and separates it from the supernatural ?
And this is just what no two writers seem to be agreed upon. But, further
supposing such a line to be discovered, and to be well known, so that
no difficulty could arise in pointing it out, a still more difficult problem
presents itself for solution—namely, how man, who is a part of nature,
�-22
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL.
and able only to come into contact with nature, can push his knowledge
into that other sphere which, being non-natural, cannot be at all ac
cessible to a natural being ? If the supernatural region be synonymous
with the unknowable, it cannot clearly concern us, simply because we
have no faculties with which to cognize it, and no powers capable of
penetrating into its profound depths. In this case, as far as we are
concerned, there is practically no supernatural, for none can operate on
that sphere in which man lives and moves and displays his varied and in
some respects very marvellous powers.
According to many writers, the physical is the supernatural, because
dt is not under the control of natural law. But why ? If man be
partly a spiritual being, why should not natural law extend into the
■ sphere of his spiritual nature ? Indeed, an able writer on the Christian
■ side,-whose work has been enthusiastically received by all religious
denominations—Professor Drummond—has maintained this position,
the very title of his book stating the whole case : “ Natural Law in the
Spiritual World.” The great German philosopher, Kant, calls nature
the realm of sensible phenomena, conditioned by space, and speaks of
another sphere as a world above space, depleted of sense, and free from
natural law, and therefore supersensible and supernatural. But this
is to make the supernatural spaceless and timeless—in fact, a mere
negation of everything, and therefore nothing. Now, the only light
in which we can look at this subject, with a view to obtain anything
like clear and correct views, is that of modern science. By her the
boundary of our knowledge has been greatly enlarged, and through her
discoveries we have been enabled to obtain more sound information
regarding the laws of the universe than it was possible for our fathers,
with the limited means at their disposal, to possess.
If there be a sphere where the supernatural plays a part and exer
cises any control, it must clearly be in some remote region, of which
we have, and can have, no positive knowledge; and the forces in
v operation must be other than those with which we are conversant upon
this earth. Science cannot recognize the supernatural, because she has
no instruments which she can bring to bear upon, and no means at her
disposal for, its investigation. She leaves to the theologian all useless
. speculations regarding such a region, contenting herself with reminding
him that he is. in all such discussions, travelling outside the domain of
facts into a province which should be left to poets and dreamers, and
�NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL.
23
which belongs solely to the imagination. All law is and must be natural
law, from a scientific standpoint, because we can have access to nature,
and to nature only. It is impossible to get beyond her domain, even
in imagination.
The supernatural, if it exist, must reveal itself through nature, for
in no other way can it reach us so as to produce any impression upon
the human mind. But, if it come through nature, then how can it be
distinguished from the phenomena of nature ? It will be quite impos.
sible to differentiate between them. We are quite precluded from
saying, Nature could not do this, and is unable to do that. No man
can fix a limit to the possibilities of power in nature. She has already
done a thousand things which our forefathers would have declared im
possible, and she will doubtless in the future, under further discoveries
and advances in science, do much more which would look impossible to
us. Whatever, therefore, comes through nature must be natural, for
the very reason that it comes to us in that way. And the business of
science is to interpret in the light of natural law. Even if she should
prove herself incompetent to the task, it would only show that some
phenomena had been witnessed which had for a time baffled explana
tions, not that anything supernatural had occurred. And the business
of science would be to at once direct itself to the new class of facts,
with a view to finding the key with which to open and disclose the
secret of the power by which they were produced.
But what is nature ? Of course every man knows what is meant by
nature, in part at all events ; and the only difference in opinion or de
finition that can arise will be as to its totality. There are a thousand
facts lying all around us, and a thousand phenomena of which we are
every day eye-witnesses, that all will agree to call nature. The ques
tion, however,, does not concern these, but others, real or imaginary,
which differ somewhat from them, and which are supposed, therefore,
to be incapable of being classed under the same head. Those who de
sire to obtain a clear and accurate idea of nature cannot do better than
read carefully Mr. John Stuart Mill’s excellent essay on the subject,
published after his death. He gives two definitions, or rather two
senses, in which we use the word in ordinary, every-day language. The
first is that in which we mean the totality of all existence, and the
other that in which we use the term as contradistinguished from art—
nature improved by man. But it must be borne in mind that this is
�24
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL.
still . nature. Nature improved by man is only one part of nature
modified by another; for man is as much a portion of nature as the
earth on which he treads, or the stars which glow in the midnight sky
over his head. Nature, therefore, as I understand it, and as Mill de
fines it m his first sense, is everything that exists, or that can possibly
come into existence in the hereafter—that is, all the possibilities of
existence, whether past, present, or future. If I am asked on what
ground I include in my definition that which to-day does not exist, but
may come into existence hereafter, I reply : Because that which will
be must be, potentially at least, even now. No new entity can come
into being; all that can occur is the commencement of some new form
of existence, which has ever had a being potentially anyhow. No new
force can appear, some new form of force may. But, then, that, when
it comes, will be as much a part of nature as the rest—is indeed even
now a part of nature, since it is latent somewhere in the universe.
Man’s beginnings were in nature ; his every act is natural, his
thoughts are natural, and in the end the great universe will fold him
in its embrace, close his eyes in death, and furnish in her own bosom
his last and final resting-place. Beyond her he cannot go. She was
his cradle, and will be his grave ; while between the two she furnishes
the stage on which he plays his every part. And more, she has made
him, the actor, to play the part. Nature is one and indivisible. She
had no beginning, and can have no end. She is the All-in-all. Com
bined in her are the One and the Many which so perplexed the philo
sophers of ancient times.
Charles Watts.
��DATE DUE
Z7 JU L 2012
I
Demco, Inc. 38-293
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Agnosticism and Christian Theism: which is the more reasonable?
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Theism
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Agnosticism
Theism
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Text
ON THE RELATIONS
OF
THEISM TO PANTHEISM,
AND
ON THE GALLA RELIGION.
W. NEWMAN.
Professor F.
PUBLISHED BY
THOMAS
MOUNT PLEASANT,
RAMSGATE.
1872.
Price Sixpence.
SCOTT,
�i—nMM
�ON
THE RELATIONS
OF
THEISM TO PANTHEISM.
-------------- ♦--------------
HANKS be to God, religious thought is not
stagnant. His spirit is in men’s hearts : under
his constant pressure our intellects struggle forward
into .more knowledge, more wisdom. We are ad
vancing. Of this the test is, that the more active
and higher minds in opposite schools tend toward
agreement, though they have not reached unity.
. One condition of advancement is, that we should
discern our own errors, and unlearn them. This, to
a superficial eye, may suggest that our creed is melt
ing away, and that believers in God are becoming
unbelievers; but it is not so. Our notions of God
from age to age have undergone vast enlargement;
hence of necessity we drop from time to time -many
crude opinions concerning him, which opinions were
of old fought for by Theists and opposed by Atheists
or doubters. But simultaneously we attain greater
richness and nobleness of conception, and towards
our brethren who are in opposition a tenderer and
wiser sentiment, in so far as their opposition is from
diversity of intellect, not from perversity of morals.
T
�4
On the Relations of
Without attempting anything so arduous as a history
of opinion on these great subjects, a few broad out
lines shall be essayed which may have interest.
In antiquity the only school of thought known
to us which understood the real magnitude of the
universe was practically atheistic ; that of Democritus
and Epicurus: and with Epicurus this magnitude,
having nothing moral in it, could scarcely be called
grandeur. A universal storm or curdling of atoms
in tens of thousands of worlds, was all that he could
see. With the poets of Greece and the vulgar, the
gods were not the creators of worlds, but themselves
first creations from the mighty power of blind nature ;
a notion which to us may seem to differ little from
atheism. The first gods thus brought into existence
were Titans, . beings of gigantic powers, but pre
valently deficient in intellect. They were conquered
and superseded by Jupiter, who, though in the earliest
poets represented as a selfish despot, yet disapproved
and chastised human wickedness. Hence with the
progress of generations, the notion of Jupiter in the
purest minds of Greece became little different from
that of the chief god with the highest sages of
Palestine or Persia.
Meanwhile, Grecian astronomy arose, and in about
four centuries attained its fullest perfection in
Alexandria. It stopped short in the solar system, of
which the earth was made centre. To accommodate
t e forced geometry thus induced, numerous crystal
orbs were imagined, and the stars were compared to
brass-headed nails fastened into a far vaster solid
vault. This agreed exceedingly well with the old
Hebrew conception of a firmament, or, as the prophets
ca it, a sea of glass or crystal. By excluding the
idea that the stars are suns, the view of God’s universe
w ich midnight opens to us was perverted into a
mere show of fireworks; moreover, men were con
firmed in the puerile error, that this earth is the
�lheism to Pantheism.
5
divine centre, and sole or main object of divine
interest. Learned men among the Hebrews, who
received Alexandrian cultivation, enlarged their notion
of Jehovah as the God of all nations, and easily har
monized with Greek Neo-Platonism.
Where to place Heaven, the special seat of God,
was a difficulty with those who clung to the idea of
some such sacred locality. The Greeks appear to
have solved it in a most unsatisfactory way, by revert
ing to the old poetical idea which identified Heaven
and God, and interpreting Heaven to be the outer
most vault in which the stars are fixed. This, I
believe, was prevalent with the Stoics, and it is put
by Cicero into the mouth of Africanus, when he means
to set forth the most advanced religious notions of his
day. “ By nine circles, or rather spheres, all thingy
are knit together; of which one which comprises aSfl
others, is heavenly and outmost, the Supreme God,
hvn^elf, constraining and containing the rest; in
whonj^are fixed those ever-revolving courses of stars ;
and in lower region the seven [planets].” Nothing
anorded more derision to the Epicureans than this
notion of a visible, round, ever-rolling, and blazing
God; which certainly lowered the Greek Theism of
that age.
The point on which the West and the East were
prevalently divided, was on the relation of God to
Nature or Matter. The authorities esteemed sacred
by the Hebrews were in no apparent collision with
the philosophic Greeks ; for Jehovah was represented
as the ever active force in all nature, not only creat
ing’ originally, but sustaining all action in the ele
ments, in brutes, and in the human mind; in short,
to use the modern epithet, he was immanent in his
own creations. No antagonism was imagined between
God and Matter. Miracles were not regarded as a
suspension of the laws of Nature, because no sharp
idea of Law had been attained; only in a miracle the
�6
On the Relations of
God. who is always at work in matter displayed his
ordinary action with more than usual distinctness,
that is, in such a way as to manifest his moral judg
ment. An obvious and vulgar illustration is, when
some elementary disturbance is interpreted as a divine
interposition. A man is struck dead by lightning, or
a high tower is smitten; it must have been because
the man had offended God by impiety, or the tower
by aspiring to too proud a height. An earthquake
or an inundation must have been elicited by the pecu
liar wickedness of the nation whom it afflicted. A
God, who thus dispensed elementary inflictions as
moral punishments, was not suspending his own laws,
but administering them, if he sent down fire from
heaven at the prayer of a prophet, or otherwise
wrought through some favoured servant what is
called a religious miracle. There is harmony in such
a view.. But a breach of harmony began, when it
was taught that the men on whom the tower of
Siloam fell were not therefore to be judged guiltier
than others; that we must not interpret external
calamity as a mark of God’s anger ; that whom the
Lord loveth, he chasteneth; that it is folly to run
hither and thither, and look about with the natural
eye for marks of God’s moral judgments, or expect
signs from heaven; but that the kingdom of God is
within us. The results of this doctrine were really
antagonistic to miracle; but that, for long ages,
Hebrew and Christian, was not discerned. God was
regarded as not only immanent in Nature, but as
obeyed systematically by Nature; who displayed,
alike in her broad laws and in her apparently excep
tional operations, the moral judgments of her supreme
animater. The religious Greek philosophers, how
ever little apt to believe in miraculous interpositions,
entirely agreed with the Hebrew prophets as to the
harmouy of Nature with God who was the cause of
all movement, all production, all mental action.
�Theism to Pantheism.
7
But the Eastern speculators, in Persia and perhaps
beyond, prevalently accounted for Evil in the world
by the incurable stubbornness of Matter, which could
not be brought into obedience to the divine will.
Hence with them God and Nature were eternal
antagonists; and Matter played the part which Chris
tendom has assigned to Satan, the evil Spirit who is
supposed, really and eternally, to defeat God’s efforts
for the benefit of his creatures. Some say that it was
through Augustine, in his youth a Manichee, that
these notions were established as the fixed creed of
Christians. Be that as it may, we cannot overlook
the similarity of the Mediaeval creed concernin2“ the
cause of Evil to that of the East, which indeecT was
far less offensive to enlightened sentiment.
The higher Greek intellect seldom took a course in
harmony with Hebrew piety;—perhaps scarcely be
yond one very limited school, the Neo-Platonists.
Those who had no sympathy with Epicurus or with
Atheism, vacillated between two systems; that of
Stoicism, which tried to interpret the popular mytho
logy into consonance with sober reason, and the doc
trine which we call Pantheism, to which indeed many
Stoics strongly inclined. The earliest known origin of
this was in India; where it was taught that the eternal
infinite Being creates by self-evolution, whereby he
becomes and is all Existence ; that he alternately
expands and as it were contracts himself, re-absorb
ing into himself the things created. Thus the Uni
verse, Matter and its Laws, are all modes of divine
existence. Each living thing is a part of God, each
soul is a drop out of the divine ocean; and as Virgil
has it, the soul of a bee is “ divinse particula aurse.”
Some Greek speculators, developing this thought
rather coarsely, treated the visible and palpable world
as the material body, of which God was the invisible
soul. I have read of one, who carried out the ana
logy so far between the world and a huge animal, as
�8
'
On the Relations of
to account for the saltness of the sea, by comparing
it to human sweat! To the same class of thought be
longs the conception of 2Eschylus and Virgil, who com
pare the fertilizing showers of spring to a marriage
of Earth and Heaven. However pure and noble this
theory may have been in the highest minds, it almost
instantly, and as it were inevitably, with the vulgar
drew after it a loss of moral character to God. To
combine with this doctrine the cardinal Hebrew idea,
that God is Holy, was eminently hard: for externally,
what see we of holiness ? Indeed such Pantheism
with great ease lapsed into the old Polytheism. Why
not call the ocean Nereus, the sea Neptune, the earth
Ceres, the sun Apollo, if they are diverse manifestations
of the deity ? And if man be himself only God in dis
guise, how can man be sinful ? God in man cannot
resist himself. Man may be responsible to man for his
conduct, but no room seemed left for that antagonism
of man to God, which Hebrews and Christians call
Sin, and regard as a cardinal fact in religion. Prac
tically it has appeared to Christians, that Pantheism
desecrates God and unnerves man; for it relaxes the
sinews of the soul, just as does that belief in Necessity
which denies the human Will, and represents us as
bubbles carried on the wave with no power of self
guidance,—the sport of desire.
The collision of opinion between Pantheism and
Christian thought seems to have attained its maxi
mum, when Protestant Europe re-organized its creed
concerning God and Creation, under the influences
of the Newtonian astronomy. The prevalent belief,
which from Christians passed to those soon after
called Deists, was, that at a definite point of past
time not very distant, God created Matter,—that is,
caused it to exist; before which time (some will
infer) he must have existed from all eternity in soli
tude without a world. Upon Matter he imposed
certain laws and certain initial motions; and then
�Theism to Pantheism.
9
withdrew from further influencing it,—resting, as the
Hebrews said, after six days’ work. So he created
trees, shrubs, and animals endued with definite
powers, and having thus started them in life, left
them to themselves and to the elements. Here a
very sharp separation is made between God and
Nature, though no antagonism is imagined. The
Creator constructs a machine, winds up the spring,
and then leaves the machine to act of itself. He is
wholly external to his own world, not immanent and
active in it. The grand material laws or forces
which we call Gravitation, Affinity, Cohesion, Re
pulsion, Electricity, Heat, and so on, are regarded as
qualities of Matter,—qualities, no doubt, with which
God, at a distant moment of time, endowed Matter;
but these are in no proper sense divine forces. In
this view, a miracle became an exceptional interpo
sition of God, an interference with the laws of
matter, for the sake of a moral purpose. Such a
theory seemed excellently to maintain, as well the
moral character of the Creator, as the moral inde
pendence and responsibility of man. In England of
the eighteenth century, it held almost entire domi
nion over those Christians who studied the new
material sciences, and over Deists who rejected
Christian authority.
A few speculators among us, of whom I believe
Cudworth was the chief, struggled in favour of a
more comprehensive view, which should embrace all
that is noblest in Pantheism, and incorporate it with
the Jewish and Christian conceptions of God’s Holi
ness. To do this wisely seems to me the real problem
still before us, towards which we have already made
very important advances. If to any it seem astonish
ing that thoughtful men could imagine a God living
in solitude for a past eternity, and then suddenly
creating a world, a sufficient reply, and probably the
true reply, is, that Past Eternity (make what we will
�io
On the Relations of
of the words) is an inextricable puzzle to the human
mind. Those who said, that at a certain time God
created Matter and of it formed a world, pretended
no knowledge of what had preceded, and ought not
to have anything at all charged on them concerning
Past Eternity; a topic which speculators of every
school ought to confess to be involved, not in dark
ness only, but in such perplexity that we may well
suspect some fundamental error in our notions. The
Schoolmen who said that God knew nothing of Time,
but that with him Eternity was “ a standing point,”
expressed in their own way their sense that this
mystery is inscrutable.
Eut the progress of science has led men to inquire,
What is Matter ? and some, like Faraday, tell us,
that it is nothing but force. Atoms, he said, were
centres of force,—that is all. Few can be satisfied
with this naked definition, which seems not only to
explode Inertia altogether, but also to be open to
Aristotle s objection against Plato’s Ideas; which
objection (in our phraseology) may run thus : that
we are required to believe in the existence of an
adjective which has no substantive,—in an attribute
which inheres in nothing. Nevertheless, it is clear
that the Forces at work in the Universe have become
more and more prominent in our conception than
mere inert Matter. Geology teaches to the men of
the nineteenth century, that the formation of this
globe was no mere spirt of primitive creation, but
the gradual product of vast ages; and since it is
apparent that in different stages of its development
it was peopled by different species of animals, and
ttiat too, long before man stood on its surface,—it has
become necessary to admit, either that Creation was
continued through long ages, or even that creation
is mere evolution. La Place’s theory of the genera
tion of the solar system has almost taken the place
of established science, and strains the imagination as
�Theism to Pantheism.
ii
to the ages requisite for such evolution. Finally in
the stellar system various celebrated nebulae appear
to show worlds in an initial state, which will be
developed after countless ages in the future. Out of
all this the modern conviction has arisen, that God
creates now, and will always create ; that his creative
action is normal and incessant, and that the notion of
a definite era at which he brought the world into
being, is as puerile and gratuitous as that of a thea
trical “day” of judgment, with God seated on a
throne. Hence, whatever “Matter” may be, it
seems to follow that it is co-eternal with God; and
the thought inevitably presses itself in, that the great
forces of the Universe,—Gravitation, Electricity, and
such like,—are the means by which Creation and
other divine action are carried on. In fact, they
seem to be strictly inseparable from the Divine
existence. And if what we call Nature is for ever
inextricably interwoven with God, we have to make
fundamental changes on the Deistical theory of the
last century.
Thus, in the course of perhaps eighty years, the
pendulum of Theistic thought has oscillated very
decidedly towards Pantheism; and there is good
reason why the Theists of to-day should be unwilling
to accept the name Deist, which confounds their
doctrine with that which prevailed in the eighteenth
century. How then are we to avoid the characteristic
dangers of Pantheism ? As I apprehend, by holding
fast to the very simple axiom, that the truth nearest to
us and first known must ever be our fixed standing place.
The knowledge of man begins from man, and must
not be sacrificed for any after-developments of mate
rial science or any speculations about God, con
cerning whom we have only later and derivative
knowledge. The very first certainty which we
receive, is, that which the Germans call acquaintance
with the Ego and the outer world. The two are
�12
On the Relations of
learned simultaneously. A sense of resistance to his
efforts teaches the infant that there is an outer world,
his consciousness of the effort which is resisted teaches
him that he has a Will of his own. He finds that he
can originate action; in this consists his Will, his
personality. One who duly considers that this primi
tive contrast is the basis of all other knowledge
whatsoever, ought to discern the absurdity of trying
to obliterate this contrast by after-inference. With
ingenious but stupid pertinacity Necessarians try to
convince us, that, inasmuch as regions of the material
universe in which Chance or Will was once supposed
to be dominant, have been found to be subjected to
Necessity, therefore the same ought to be inferred of
the human Will. This reasoning is as vain, as an
attempt to explode the Axioms of geometry by
deduction from its remote theorems. The whole
fabric then falls in a mass. ' As well tell us that all
life is a dream, as that our primary convictions (the
basis of all knowledge) are illusive. Every human
language abounds with words of praise and blame,
words of moral colour, all of which are illusive, if
man moves like a planet in a wholly constrained
orbit. Thus we have the testimony of collective
Mankind to Free Will. It is not pretended by us
that the will, any more than other force, is of infinite
strength; its limit is soon reached: its originating
power acts within bounds : but unless man have some
originating power, all morality is annihilated; to
speak of a wicked or virtuous man becomes as absurd
as to call a planet wicked or virtuous. Thus when
we have learned that the outward universe has its
fixed laws, we must with Pope admit the sharp con
trast,
(God) binding Nature fast in Fate,
Left free the human Will.
As the unshrinking maintenance of this is abso
lutely essential to the foundations of Morality, so too
�Theism to Pantheism.
13
in it lies the reconciliation of Theism and Pantheism.
Unless we have a positive ineradicable belief in the
human Will,—if we allow ourselves for a moment to
admit that this may be illusive,—we lose all reason
able ground for ascribing Will to the Creator, who is
presently confounded with blind Fate. A gentleman,
my contemporary, who has written and preached in
London as an avowed Pantheist, has printed that God
creates, not with any design, but because it is his
impulse! which will come to this,—“because he
cannot help it, and hardly knows what he is doing.”
Such is the proclivity of Pantheism. But if we start
with a belief in the human Will as our first principle,
and in Morality as essential to the nature of Man, in
contrast to the collective brutes, we instantly find it
inevitable to ascribe Will to the superhuman Power in
whose actions we see Design, and to ascribe every
mental perfection to him, from whom our minds and
souls are only derivative. Conscious of the independ
ence of the human will, we cannot believe that we
are absorbed in God, or are mere machines moved by
him ; but we are, in the true and noble sense, children
of God. Finally, while recognising him as not only
a Creator of distant worlds, at a distant time, but as
the present Spirit who every moment maintains our
life and inspires our energies, we glory in sounding
to him the utterance, “ Thou only art Holy.”
Modern Theists have probably a much more abruptaversion to the idea of miracle, than had our early
Deists. This, as I believe, has arisen from the vast
accumulation, in a century and a half, of experience
as to the deceitfulness of the imagined evidence for
miracles: but students of material science whose
Theism is somewhat obscure, often appear to Chris
tians to object to miracles from ground almost
Atheistic. The Christian complaint was powerfully
expressed by Lacordaire in the following words : “ It
is impossible, say the natural philosophers, for God
�■WWWMHII—
14
On the Relations of
to manifest himself by the single act which publicly
and instantaneously announces his presence,—by the
act of sovereignty. Whilst the lowest in the scale of
being has the right to appear in the bosom of nature
by the exercise of its proper force; whilst the grain
of sand, called into the crucible of the chemist,
answers to his interrogations by characteristic signs
which range it in the registers of Science; to Gocl
alone it is. denied to manifest his force in the personal
measure that distinguishes him, and makes him a
separate being. . . . Not only, say they, must
God not have manifested himself, but it must be for
ever impossible for him to manifest himself, in virtue
even of the order of which he is the Creator. Banished
to the profound depths of his silent and obscure eter
nity, if we question him, if we supplicate him, if we
cry to him, he can only say to us (supposing, how
ever, that he is able to answer us), ‘ What would you
have ? I have made laws ! Ask of the sun and the
stars: ask of the sea and the sand upon its shores.
As for me, my condition is fixed : I am nothing but
repose, and the contemplative servant of the works of
my own hands.’ ”
On this it may be remarked, first, that Lacordaire’s
argument is addressed to the Deist of the eighteenth,
not to the Theist of the nineteenth century. We do
not maintain that God is nothing but repose. Few will
dare to say (certainly not I) that God is unable to
manifest himself in forms wholly unlike anything
which we. have seen. But if I admit to an old Greek
01 Egyptian that God is able to take the form of a
bull or a swan, is that a reason for believing, as fact,
somebody s tale that he was actually incarnate in a
bull. Again, without denying that he might be
incarnate a thousand times in the form of man, as
the Hindoos say, or once, as Christians say, surely
this is far enough from admitting the fact. We must
have proof ; and when it is attempted to assign proof,
�Theism to Pantheism.
i 5
the idea itself vanishes as contemptible. We have to
learn outward truths by experience, and among these
is the question, By what means God is pleased to
reveal his action and his mind ? Experience replies,
“ Solely in the laws of the Universe, and in our inner
consciousness.” Our minds are a mirror for appre
hending his mind, and an aid to interpret his action.
What indeed would Lacordaire have ? If his demands
are just, we may claim a God who will talk with us
and teach .us, as a human preceptor.
While I strenuously maintain, that incredulity con
cerning miracles can be based logically only on ex
perience of human credulity, and that the propel’
ground for rejecting the pretended miracles of the
Gospels and Acts is the abundant proof of credulity
in the writers,'with the total absence of evidence that
they saw what they presume to tell so confidently
(nay, the certainty in most cases that they were
repeating mere distant hearsay;) yet, in the present
development of Theism, another grave reason against
belief in miracles seems to me to become prominent;
viz., that if the laws of Nature are inseparable from
Deity, they must be esteemed as a part of the Divine
existence, with which it is unimaginable that he should
tamper. Where we see nothing but immutability,
are we to be scolded as limiting God and denying
power to him, because we glorify that immutability,
as essential to his perfection ? Without miracles he
has given us all things needful to life and godliness.
We will not dictate to him how he shall be pleased to
reveal himself, but are contented to take what we
find.
Finally, there is a thought which I wish to drop,
as a reverential conjecture only, that others may pon
der over it, and give it whatever weight it deserves.
That forces which I recognise as Divine, should act
by fixed laws which display nothing moral, seems to
me at first very paradoxical. I inquire, whether the
�16
The Relations of Theism to Pantheism.
analogy be merely fanciful, or is possibly true, which
compares the divine being and the human in this
further respeot: namely, as Man has in him vegetative
force which is wholly unmoral, besides his mind or
soul which is moral but invisible; so God, whose
moral part is wholly invisible, has, as another part of
his being, the material and unmoral laws of the
Universe, which are in some sense visible and palpable.
But all such analogies admit diversity as well as
likeness in the things compared. Man is unconscious
of his vegetative action, especially when it is most
healthful: I suggest no such unconsciousness in the
case of the Divine action. Indeed, so timidly do I
write, that nothing but the urgent remonstrance has
withheld me from striking out this paragraph.
But I have no timidity as to our duty of borrowing
from hostile schools whatever we can honestly bor
row . I firmly believe, that our only way to exterminate
Pantheism and Atheism, is, by learning all of truth
which Pantheists or Atheists hold, and incorporating
it with our Theism.
�ON
THE GALLA RELIGION.
->
|HE Gallas are a people who live to the south of
a
Abyssinia, in a very low state of civilization.
The facts concerning their religion here adduced are
drawn from the writings of Lorenz Tutschek,—
“ Dictionary and Grammar of the Galla Language,
Munich, 1844-45.” Probably more has been learned
concerning them in these twenty-five years past,
either by new intercourse, or by studying the
numerous MSS. of Karl Tutschek, who died prema
turely. His brother, Lorenz, who has edited the
Grammar and Dictionary, was drawn into African
philology by nothing but the death of Karl; and
professes (in 1844) his inability to use to advan
tage the large materials left in his hands. A sketch
is here given of the very interesting account, in order
to give the reader confidence that the documents here
laid before him, however fragmentary, are authentic.
Duke Maximilian of Bavaria redeemed four young
negroes at an African slave mart, and brought them
to Germany for education, supposing them to be three
Nubians and one Abyssinian. He secured for their
tutor a young jurist, Karl Tutschek, who had been
distinguished in linguistic study, and was acquainted
with Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Arabic. After about
�18
On the Galla Religion.
ten weeks, Tutschek at length discovered that they
were neither Nubian nor Abyssinian ; that three of
them had only been a year away from home, and were
of excellent capacity. The youngest had forgotten
most of his language and of his people, and was
depressed in mind by the circumstance. They
belonged to the four nations, Galla, Umale, Darfur,
and Denka, and communicated with one another, very
imperfectly, in vulgar Arabic. After a while, he
excited in them the desire to impart to him all that
they could tell of their homes and countries, sometimes
in reply to direct questions, sometimes in connected
narrative suggested by him or originated by them
selves. The Tutscheks do not hesitate to ascribe to
some of these compositions, which were wholly oral,
“great solidity and elegance, as to style, contexts,
and arrangement,” notwithstanding the youth of the
narrators. Lorenz accounts for this by reminding us
that the art of relating is cultivated by oriental
people [by illiterate people ?], and that those children
of nature are from earliest childhood eminently
observant of external things, and closely acquainted
with the circumstances of their villages and tribes.
Karl Tutschek directed his chief study first to the
Galla language, spoken by Akafade, which appeared
to be best vocalised and easiest; but Lorenz applies to
the Yumale negro (Jalo Jordan Are) the epithet
highly gifted. Three volumes of his dictations were in
Lorenz’s hands when he wrote. He adds that they
“ deserve the praises that have been bestowed on
their sterling worth as to form and contents, and
bear the impression of mature judgment and critical
truth.” They are divided into such as are the repro
duction of the excellent memory of Jalo, and such as
are his own free compositions. Jalo declared himself
to be nephew of Wofter Mat, hereditary king of the
Yumales. But the Gallas alone here concern us.
On January 2nd, 1841, in a sitting of the philoso
�On the Galla Religion.
T9
phical class at Munich, Karl Tutschek read a report
of his investigations, and laid before it a tolerably
complete dictionary of the Galla Language, a sketch
of the Grammar, and many dictations, prayers, and
songs. He had received from M. Jomard of Paris a
treatise on the Galla language, extracted from the
bulletin of the Geographical Society, August, 1839,
which in many ways confirmed his own results. He
even found in it prayers of the Gallas, nearly agreeing
with those dictated by Akafede. What was better
still, he gained two months’ intercourse with a second
Galla, named Otshu Aga, who had been delivered
from slavery by Mr Pell. By him not only all that
he had learned was confirmed, but materials were
given for comparing two dialects of Galla, and the
number of dictations, prayers, and songs was increased.
Otshu and Akafede presently became warm friends,
and at Tutschek’s suggestion, entered into corre
spondence. Hereby he got fourteen letters, valuable
alike for philology and for exhibiting the mind and
soul of the correspondents. Further, through Otshu,
an African girl by name Bililo was introduced to
Tutschek. She had been supposed Abyssinian, but
was really from the Galla country Guma, and had
taught Otshu Aga many of her songs, which Tutschek
noted down. A fourth native Galla, Aman Gonda,
who had been brought to Europe by Duke Paul of
Wirtemberg,, was visited by Tutschek. He had been
a magistrate under the service of his prince, had been
better educated, and appeared to speak his own lan
guage correctly. For these reasons, Tutschek set
much value on his communications.
The chief occupations of the Gallas are agriculture
and cattle-tending ; but subordinate to these, in their
villages, are weavers, tanners, potters, leather cutters,
and workers in metal, who furnish warlike imple
ments. The form of government is royalty ; but, as
separate tribes have different kings, the king seems
�20
On the Galla Religion.
to be not much above the Arab chieftain. The royalty
is generally hereditary, but is occasionally changed by
election. Their religion is a monotheism, penetrating
deep into all practical life, but obscured (says Lorenz
Tutschek) by many superstitions. This is only to be
expected; but no superstition appears in his speci
mens of their prayers, which with a few verbal
changes of mere English dialect, are the following :
Morning Prayer.
0 God, thou hast brought me through the night in
peace; bring thou me through the day in peace I
Wherever I may go, upon my way which thou madest
peaceable for me, 0 God, lead thou my steps ! When
I have spoken, keep off calumny [falsehood ?] from
me. When I am hungry, keep me from murmuring.
When I am full, keep me from pride. Calling upon
thee I pass the day, 0 Lord who hast no Lord.
Evening Prayer.
0 God, thou hast brought me through the day in
peace ; bring thou me through the night in peace ! O
Lord who hast no Lord, there is no strength but in
thee. Thou only hast no obligation. Under thy
hand I pass the day ; under thy hand I pass the night.
Thou art my Mother; thou my Father.
LITURGY
After the Sufferings of a Bloody Invasion.
Good God of the earth, my Lord! thou art above
me, I am below thee.
When misfortune comes to us; then, as trees keep off
the sun, so mayest thou keep off misfortune.
My Lord ! be thou my screen.
�On the Galla Religion.
21
Calling upon thee I pass the day, calling upon thee 1
pass the night.
When this moon rises, forsake me not. When I rise,
I forsake not thee. Let the danger pass me by.
God my Lord ! thou Sun with thirty rays ! when the
enemy comes, let not thy worm be killed upon
the earth, but keep him off, as we, seeing a worm
upon the earth, crush him, if we like, or spare
him, if we like. As we tread upon and kill a
worm on the earth, so thou, if it please thee,
crushest us on the earth.
God, thou goest, holding the bad and the good in thy
hand. My Lord ! let us not be killed. We, thy
worms, are praying to thee.
A man who knows not evil and good, may not anger
thee. But if once he knew it, and was not
willing to know it, this is wicked. Treat him as
it pleases thee.
If he formerly did not learn, do thou, God my Lord !
teach him. If he hear not the language of men,
yet will he learn thy language.
God ! thou hast made all the animals and men that
live upon the earth. The corn also upon the
earth, on which we are to live, thou hast made.
We have not made it. Thou hast given us
strength. Thou hast given us cattle and corn.
We worked with them and the seed grew up
for us.
With the corn which thou hadst raised for us, men
were satisfied. But the corn in the house hath
been burnt up. Who hath burnt the corn in
the house F Thou knowest.
If I know one or two men, I know them by seeing
them with my eye : but thou, even if thou didst
not see them with the eye, knowest them by thy
heart.
A single bad man has chased away all our people
from their houses. The children and their
�22
On the Galla Religion.
mother hath he scattered, like a flock of turkeys,
hither and thither.
The murderous enemy took the curly-headed child
out of his mother’s hand and killed him. Thou
hast permitted all this to be done. But why so F
Thou knowest.
The corn which thou raisest, thou showest to our
eyes. To it the hungry man looketh and is
comforted. Yet when the corn bloometh, thou
sendest into it butterflies and locusts and doves.
All this comes from thy hand. Thou hast caused
it. But why so F Thou knowest.
My Lord ! spare those who pray to thee. As a thief
stealing another’s corn is bound by the owner of
the corn, not so bind thou us, 0 Lord! But
thou, binding the beloved one, settest him free
by love.
If I am beloved by thee, so set me free, I entreat
thee from my heart. If I do not pray to thee
with my heart, thou hearest me not. But if I
pray to thee with my heart, thou knowest it,
and art gracious unto me.
The inquiry suggests itself, How old is this religion
of the Gallas F It contains no trace of Mohammedan,
nor yet of Christian influence. God is, in their
belief, as Lorenz Tutschek observes, the One Supreme,
almighty, all-knowing, all-wise, and all-good. No
prophet, no angel appears. If the religion were an
independent reform originated in modern times,
Theism superseding Polytheism, one might expect
some prophet’s name to be connected with it. Prima
facie, the probability seems rather to be, that it is con
temporaneous with Hebrew Theism and akin with the
old Abyssinian religion ; perhaps, also, with that of
Sheba, which was the S.E. corner of Arabia.
In a paper read before the Philological Society of
London in 1847, I tried to show the relation of the
Galla Verb and Pronouns to those of other known
�On the Galla Religion.
23
tongues ; and claimed for the language a place in the
class which Prichard has styled Hebrseo-African.
This class, besides the group related closely to Arabic
and Hebrew, comprises the Abyssinian language,
those of Mount Atlas and the Great Western Desert
(of which the Zouave is now the best known), and
perhaps even the ancient Egyptian.
We know that the old Abyssinian language, called
the Gheez, differed little from Hebrew, and that there
was an ancient sympathy between the Hebrews and
Sheba (where Jewish princes ruled, in the time of
the Maccabees), also between Judsea and Abyssinia.
It may be thrown out for further inquiry, whether
possibly a common Theism was maintained, a thou
sand years before the Christian era, in these three
countries, and also in that of the Gallas.
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�
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On the relations of theism to pantheism and on the Galla religion
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Caldecott, Alfred
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Publisher's list on unnumbered back page. The Galla are a people widespread in the modern state of Ethiopia, speaking a language belonging to the Eastern (or Low) Kushitic group which includes Afar-Saho and Somali.
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Thomas Scott
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1872
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G4847
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Theism
Pantheism
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (On the relations of theism to pantheism and on the Galla religion), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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English
Galla Peoples
Morris Tracts
Pantheism
Theism
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Text
THE
Existence
of
God;
OR,
QUESTIONS
FOR
THEISTS.
BY
CHARLES
WATTS
( Vice-President of the National Secular Society).
Price Twopence.
LONDON:
WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT,
FLEET STREET, E.C.
1894.
�1
11
�THE EXISTENCE OF GOD;
OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS.
Theists of marked intellectual ability persistently avoid
any attempt to defend the Christian’s notion of their God
as he is delineated in the Bible. The reason, no doubt, of
this is that the character given to the deity by the
“ inspired writers ” is so contradictory and repulsive that
no amount of reasoning will harmonise it with modern
ideas of justice, purity, and morality. Now is it not
inconsistent upon the part of Christians to preach to
credulous congregations about the virtues of God, while
they dare not endeavor to defend, in public discussion, the
same Being before a critical audience ? Surely orthodox
exponents, to be consistent, should, when they undertake to
prove the “ existence of God,” confine their attention to
the God of the Old and New Testaments. If they feel
that they cannot do this, it is their duty to say so; and
further, to be honest, they should inform their followers
that the character of the “ Heavenly Father,” as depicted
in the Bible, cannot be defended by reason and ethical
science. Is it not a sham and a delusion to profess to
believe in a being whose nature and conduct are in
defensible ?
Feeling their utter inability to argue in favor of the
Christian deity, Theists shelter themselves behind some
metaphysical creation of their own, which they call “ An
Infinite, All-powerful, and Intelligent Being distinct from the
material universe.” Now, supposing there is such a being,
where is the proof of his existence ? Do not the varied and
contradictory conceptions that are alleged to obtain as to
his nature and attributes show that no idea of such a being
really exists ? It occurs to us that, if there be a God who
is all-powerful and infinite in intelligence, he must know
�4
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD;
that the human race have no knowledge of him. More
over, if he wishes us to have this knowledge, he, being allpowerful, could impart it. But he has not imparted it;
therefore are we not justified in believing one of two
things—namely, either that this supposed Being lacks the
knowledge of our ignorance of him, or that he has not the
power to make himself known ? In either case he could
not be a God of infinite power and wisdom.
What is called “Advanced Theism ” is but a metaphysical
abstraction. It has been said that from metaphysics
almost anything can be apparently proved. We are told
that metaphysics treat of the “inner secret, or logic of
thought,” and as persons differ in their thoughts as to what
lies hidden in the “ inner secret,” most of what persons say
upon the matter is but little more than individual specu
lation. . Metaphysics have always appeared to us to cover
a certain amount of intellectual jugglery. Karl Pearson,
in his Grammar of Science, writes : “Now one of the
idiosyncrasies of metaphysicians lies in this : that each
metaphysician has his own system, which, to a large extent,
excludes that of his predecessors and colleagues. Hence,
we must conclude that metaphysics are either built on
air or on quicksands—either they start from no foundation
in fact at all, or the superstructure has been raised before a
basis has been found in the accurate classification of facts.
.... The metaphysician is a poet, often a very great one,
but, unfortunately, he is not known to be a poet, because
he clothes his poetry in the language of apparent reason,
and hence it follows that he is liable to be a dangerous
member of the community.” Avoiding, as much as
possible, this disguised poetry, let us take a practical view
of the difficulties surrounding the allegation : “That there
exists an Infinite, All-powerful and Intelligent Being
distinct from the material universe.” Before this alle
gation is proved certain evidence must be produced, and
important questions must be satisfactorily answered.
Now, there are three kinds of evidence : that which is
derived from the senses; that which is relied upon from
testimony; and that which we obtain from the deductions
of reason. While assumption is sometimes permissible,
bare assumption cannot justify the Theist’s affirmation.
The term, “an intelligent Being,” implies a form of exist
�OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS.
5
ence that manifests the knowing faculty. “A Being,” as
Mill, in his Logic, observes, is one who excites feelings and
possesses attributes. By the “ material universe ” we
understand the totality of existence, with all its attributes,
properties, and forces. All the evidence in reference to
the said intelligent Being and to the universe should
be drawn from one or more of the three kinds of evidence
above mentioned. Further, every formulated thought,
every true cognition, should possess three characteristics—
namely, relation, likeness, and difference. Any analysis of
thought that reveals the absence of any one of these three
characteristics indicates that we have no certain conception
of what may be expressed in words. For instance, the
terms “creation,” “annihilation,” and “the infinite,” as
used by theologians, convey to us no definite and logical
meaning.
Putting aside the theory that divides existence into
spiritual and material, for which we fail to see, as Professor
Huxley does, any justification in nature, what is affirmed
by eminent writers to-day ? We are told of the persistence
of force, the continuity of motion, and the indestructibility
of matter; that law prevails throughout all nature, and
that the materials of which different bodies are composed
can be identified by their similarity. Again, we regard
every thought as being conditioned ; to think, as Hamilton
puts it, is to limit. Therefore, apart from physical causes,
we are unable to think, to lay down a boundary beyond
which we can say nothing is. Every conclusion implies
that there is something beyond. To affirm that there is an
“infinite, intelligent Being apart from the universe” is to
distinguish it from the universe, and to contend for two
existences. Before, however, this can be done successfully
it has to be proved that nature is limited. To ussuw a
limit to the universe is not evidence, because no proof has
been given of its limitations. To postulate an “infinite,
intelligent Being” distinct from the universe vitiates the
law of thought to which we have referred, inasmuch as the
definition does not express likeness, and it negates relation.
Of course, we do not assert there is no such intelligent Being,
but only that we have no evidence of his existence.
Our position is that nature is ; that, so far as we can
ascertain, it is destructible only in its various forms. Is it
�6
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD;
not, therefore, possible that this nature is the “ something ” of
which endless existence may be affirmed ? An endless “intelli
gent Being is that which does not possess a likeness to
any known existence. All intelligent beings, as we know
them, must begin and end, or they cannot be thought of.
The senses or testimony fail to afford us evidence of the
existence of such a being as the Theists contend for.
We are, therefore, unable to see how, from reason, any
evidence can be adduced to prove that of which we can
form no conception. It is clear, that, if there is such
a being, he is limited in the extent of his power, for this
reason—as a “ Being ” his power must be limited, and as
he exists apart from something else, he is not the whole of
existence. _ Everything to be thought of must exist in some
place and in some relation to other existences, and there
fore to speak of one being apart from all else is the
annihilation in thought of that one. Besides, how can a
Being who is distinct from the universe manifest his
power in the universe ? While distinct he is non-related,
and cannot affect it. If he does influence nature, it is only
when he becomes a part thereof, and then he is no longer
distinct from it. If God is infinite, in the sense of being
everywhere, he is in the universe. If he is not in the
universe, his sphere is limited and finite. In that case,
where does his superior power, to that possessed by nature,
commence, and where is it made visible to us ? How are
we to distinguish between natural power and God power ?
Further, if he be distinct from nature, where is he ? And
what exists between his dwelling-place and nature ? That
is, are the two—nature and God’s abode—connected ? If
yes, by what ? If by nothing, what is that ?
Before the Theist can make good his assertion, that
there exists “an infinite, all-powerful, and intelligent Being
distinct from the universe,” he should be able to satis
factorily answer the following questions : (1) Can the
universe be limited by human thought? (2) Can we
conceive of a time when the universe was not ? (3) How
is it possible for God, if he be distinct from nature, to con
trol and regulate it ? (4) Have we any proof that the
power of nature is acquired and limited ? (5) Where is
the evidence that God’s intelligence is different from, and
superior to, that of man ? (6) Supposing God exists, has
�OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS.
7
his intelligence always been used for the benefit of the
human family ? (7) Is the world governed upon the
principles of justice, goodness, and mercy ? It occurs to us
that, before the Theist should positively allege that he
knows a God exists, a reasonable reply should be given to
these queries. If it is admitted that no logical answer can
be given to them, is not that very admission a proof that
Theism is a belief without adequate evidence ?
Remembering the difficulties that these questions sug
gest, it is not surprising that Dr. Knight, in his recent work,
Aspects of Theism, should write thus: “The God of the
logical understanding, whose existence is supposed to be
attested by the necessary laws of mind, is the mere pro
jected shadow of self. It has, therefore, no more than an
ideal significance. The same may be said, with some
abatements, of the Being whose existence is inferred from
the phenomena of design. The ontologist and the teleologist unconsciously draw their own portrait; and, by an
effort of thought, project it outward on the canvas of
infinity.” In reference to design, an able American writer
puts the following pertinent question : “ Did God design
the universe 1 If so, his plans must be eternal—without
beginning, and therefore uncaused. If God’s plans are not
eternal; if from time to time new plans originate in his
mind, there must be an addition to his knowledge ; and, if
his knowledge admits of addition, it must be finite. But if
his plans had no beginning; if, like himself, they are
eternal, they must, like him, be independent of design.
Now, the plan of a thing is as much evidence of design as
the object which embodies the plan. Since the plans of
deity are no proof of design that produced them (for they
are supposed to be eternal), the plan of this universe, of
course, was no evidence of a designing intelligence that
produced it. But since the plan of the universe is as much
evidence of design as the universe itself, and since the
former is no evidence of design, it follows that design
cannot be inferred from the existence of the universe.”
Again, if it be contended that an intelligent power can
and does control matter and force from outside the universe,
it should be shown how this outside power can be separated
in thought from matter and force, and yet, at the same
time, be a perceptible existence. At the most this can only
�THE EXISTENCE OE GOD
be inferred. Matter being infinite (that is, unlimited) in
extension and duration, the “non-matter ” cannot exist
apart from it. Neither can it be ascertained how far (if
there be any relation) the one is independent of the other,
or how the presence of “ non-matter ” can be even inferred,
except by its influence on matter. Is it possible to con
ceive of the universality of both matter and non-matter I
The Theists speak of an “intelligent Being” who rules
the universe and regulates the destiny of man. But
intellect implies a power capable of exercising reason
and judgment. We have no evidence of intellect existing
by itself. Perception is a function of an organism; all
intellect, as we know it, is attended by living organised
matter, and the one is always related to the other, not
apart from it.
We fail to see how the human mind can conceive
an idea of an “ intelligent Being ” apart from, or
independent of, matter, for the same reason that we are
incapable of forming an idea that motion can exist
separately from matter. In order to establish the existence
of a Being distinct from matter, it is necessary to assume
that matter is limited in extent and in time, and that it is
destitute of all the properties that we claim it now
possesses, except that of mere existence. But even then
we should require evidence that any mind could have
produced everything out of nothing, and have endowed it,
under certain forms, with powers to live, feel, and think.
If it is assumed that all physical forces that are manifested
in nature, which exhibit skill, will, intention, and purpose,
are qualities of mind, and not of matter, then the question
arises, By what mode of action does an “ intelligent Being
apart from them” exercise will, intention, and purpose,
through such forces ? If we do not know, why should we
assume that we do 1
But if all unverified assumptions are accepted, or are
assumed, as necessary to explain phenomena, the evidence
of them can be found only in the very nature that they
are supposed to explain. Moreover, the assumption of an
“ intelligent Being ” existing outside of nature can only
be a deduction from manifestations inside of nature, where
it is admitted that he is not present. This is a con
tradiction, for it implies that action is caused by a power
�OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS.
9
that is not there to act. We can only assume nature and
its properties as being capable of partial explanation, or
even cognition ; and, although we cannot fully account for
them, we do but multiply impossibilities of thought by
attempts to explain their ultimate nature, origin, and
purpose. Is it not self-evident that—(1) Every part of
existence, the All, must be related to every other part ?
(2) That the whole of existence can have no relation to anv
other whole ? (3) That only the one whole contains selfknowledge, self-will, and self-intention ?
(4) If the
universe, which to us is the whole, had intelligence
imparted to it from without, when, where, and how was it
imparted ? (5.) How could an intelligent person manifest
intelligence, without the conditions being present which we
know to be necessary for its manifestations ?
Every intelligent being, whatever attributes he may be
endowed, with, must be a person having identity ; he must
also be distinguishable, from every other intelligent being.
The material, world is full of such distinct intelligent
beings, and therefore they must stand in some relation to
any other being who may exist. We repeat, that a being, to
be thought of at all, must be characterised by relation,
likeness,, and difference, which cannot be affirmed of an
abstraction apart from the universe or separate from the
All. Now, it may be fairly alleged that the very thought
of personality is inconsistent with infinity. Experience
teaches us that a being who feels, thinks, and reasons is
limited by an organism that is acted upon, and that
responds to the movements of an external world. From
experience we also learn that no intelligent being can
exercise his intellectual powers without food and air. We
do not mean that thought is the direct product simply of
food and air, any more than are muscular action and
animal heat; but we do mean that we have no know
ledge of living beings in which these three manifestations
ape Jiot dependent upon food and air. Now, the question
tor Theists to endeavor to answer is, If the sources of these
energies are not in the universe, where are they 1 Why
should we attempt to rob nature, of whose power we know
something, of that potency which is displayed on every
hand, and ascribe it to a source of which nothing is
known, whatever is believed upon the subject ?
�10
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD ;
Further, to logically affirm the existence of an “ intelli
gent Being ” apart from the universe, not only must the
universe be deprived of many of its properties, but it
must .be assumed that this supposed “intelligent Being,”
who is said to exist distinct from the universe, could
operate from without, and at the same time be within the
universe. Now, here is a difficulty. How could a person
operate where he was not ? If he is distinct from the
universe, he is not in it; and if he is not there, how could
he control and regulate that with which he is not con
nected ? . If it is said God is infinite, then in that case he is
in the universe, and not apart from it. This may not be
the perplexing metaphysical view of the matter, but we
regard it as being the more reasonable and practical one.
We have had quite enough of mysticism associated
with this question. Hence, Agnosticism upon this subject
appears to us to be the more reasonable position to take.
Agnostics, refusing to profess a knowledge they cannot
command, aim to differentiate the knowable from the
unknowable, and then devote their time and energies to
widening the sphere of that within human gnosis. What
ever else is possible, it is certain that we can never extend
the domain of the known by indulging in wild flights of
the imagination respecting the unknown, and to us the
unknowable. As Socrates observes : “ Fancies beyond the
reach of understanding, and which have yet been made the
objects of belief—these have been the source of all the
disputes, errors, and superstitions which have prevailed in
the world. Such national mysteries cannot be made
subservient to the right use of humanity.”
There is another consideration in reference to this subject,
which appears to us to be important. Upon the hypothesis
that an intelligent Being exists distinct from the universe,
the following queries may be submitted : Did he form the
rocks for the builders ? Animals and plants for breeders
and horticulturists to experiment upon and produce
varieties ? Did he arrange mountains and valleys, seas, and
rivers for geographical and navigating purposes ? The
Theist will doubtless answer that he did produce all these
things, and for the objects named. But, before such a
position is proved, it must be shown that there was a time
when these things were not, which, except in the case
�OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS.
11
of animals, it would be very difficult to do; and, further,
it must be demonstrated that this “Being” really did
produce all that now exists. What, however, does
this assume ? Why this: that there was a place where
there was no place. But then the question would arise,
How could a “ Being ” be nowhere, and produce rocks,
animals, plants, etc., out of nothing ? These things could
not possibly have been an emanation from the Being
himself, inasmuch as he is alleged to be distinct from all of
them. If it were possible to prove this Theistic assumption,
then the discoveries in the various sciences of energies,
causes, and sequences of recognised natural forces would
be nothing more nor less than fictions of the human brain.
“ Thus,” as Dr. Toulmin, in his Eternity of the Universe,
exclaims, “must it most evidently appear that every
step we advance beyond the universe is relinquishing a
sublime, an infinite, and certain existence in search of an
existence removed from the evidences of our senses. . . .
For again let me observe that the uncaused existences
which could produce the universe, itself infinitely splendid,
superb, and intelligent, must—were it possible—be still
more wonderful and superb than the universe or Nature,
which they are said to have produced; and consequently
there is greater difficulty in conceiving them self-existent
than in conceiving the unbounded universe self-existent.”
The Theist’s position further assumes that the universe
and man are incapable of producing that which we know to
exist, and that the present “ order of things ” could not be
the result of certain molecular movements of the elements
in nature. Therefore, it is argued that a belief in a
“powerful and intelligent Being distinct from the material
universe ” is necessary to account for things as they are.
Now, this assumption is based upon a still further
assumption—namely, that we are acquainted with the
extent of nature’s power. But who has been enabled to
fathom such a mystery ? Where is the man who has
either penetrated into the depths of the earth below, or
soared into the regions above, and there sufficiently grasped
the extent of natural force to justify him saying “this or
that event is beyond the power of nature to produce ”?
Before we can, with reason, dogmatise upon what nature
cannot do, we must know all that she can do, and that
�12
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD;
is a knowledge that we have yet to learn that any one
possesses.
No man can fix a limit to the possibilities of the
potency in nature. Why, then, should the power of the
universe be limited by man, when he has never known that
power to be exhausted ? Do diseases or epidemics afflict
and desolate society ? Nature affords the advantages of
science to alleviate the one, and to get rid of the other.
If political wrongs curse a nation, and despotism strives to
crush the freedom of its people, the heroism in man is
at once stimulated, and his love for liberty aroused, so that
he nobly and persistently toils to remedy the former, and
to maintain the latter. If social inequalities keep men in
a false and unfair position in life, the natural yearning
which all men have more or less for the improvement of
their position in the world stimulates them to try to break
down the barriers to social equity and mutual enjoyment.
The inspiration to these useful actions springs from natural
impulses, and not from any imaginary supernatural agency.
Nature has already done a thousand things which our
forefathers would have declared to be impossible, and she
will doubtless, in the future, under further discoveries and
advances in science, do much more which, to us, appears
impossible to be accomplished. Whatever, therefore, comes
through nature must be natural, for the very reason that
it comes to us in that manner. Therefore, upon nature we
rely, believing her to be the fountain from which all that is
has been derived. We have faith in her capabilities, for we
feel assured that “ Nature never did deceive the heart that
loved her.”
But does the Theist, in any way, settle the question by
supposing the existence of an “ intelligent Being distinct
from the universe ”? We think not. Taking things and
events with which we are familiar, we ask, Are they such as
may be ascribed to such a Being ? There are thousands of
creatures born into this world, of whom only few survive,
while others appear under such conditions that they prema
turely perish; there are thousands also of organisms who live
in and upon each other. One half of all animal life consists
of parasites—that is, animals that fasten themselves to the
bodies of other animals, and live by sucking their blood.
Those which prey upon man are mentioned by Herbert
�OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS.
13
Spencer in his work upon The Principles of Biology. These
parasites are adapted to their peculiar mode of life, and are
the cause of great pain and suffering to the organisms
upon which they feed. Besides this, throughout all past
time there has been a constant preying of superior animals
upon inferior ones—a perpetual devouring of the weak by
the strong; and the earth has been a scene of universal
carnage. Now, this supposed intelligent Being either did,
or did not, provide that these things should take place as
they have done. If he did so arrange, his intelligence, to
say the very least, was not put to a good purpose; if, on
the other hand, he did not arrange these things, then, in
that case, there was a power in the universe that acted in
despite of him. If all that is, and all that happens, are not
such as an intelligent man would devise, we cannot
reasonably ascribe such work to any other intelligent
Being, particularly if he be superior to man.
Contemplating the cruelty and the injustice by which we
are surrounded—the success of crime, the triumph of despot
ism, the prevalence of starvation, the struggles for many to
get the means of mere existence, the appalling sights of
deformity in children who are born into the world so diseased,
so decrepit, that the sunshine of happiness seldom, if ever,
gladdens their lives ; remembering the existence of these
evils and woes, we cannot believe that a good God dwells
“ on high,” who could, and yet would not, remedy this most
lamentable state of things. As Dr. Vaughan, in his work,
The Age ancl Christianity, declares: “No attempt of any
philosopher to harmonise our ideal notions as to the sort of
world which it became a Being of infinite perfection to
create, with the world existing around us, can ever be
pronounced successful. The facts of the moral and physical
world seem to justify inferences of an opposite description
from benevolent.”
Again, if this alleged power distinct from nature is
responsible for some events, why is he not responsible for
all ? If he control the universe, then he is responsible for
earthquakes that swallow up entire villages, destroying the
lives of thousands of helpless creatures; for the lightning
that kills people, sometimes even when they are at
prayers; for storms at sea, which cause good and bad to
find a watery grave ; for individual organisms that are im
�14
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD;
perfect and. blighted by monstrosities, and for the existence
of ferocious wild beasts and poisonous plants. What is
the answer of Theists to this grave indictment against their
supposed God of infinite goodness ? We fail to see any
reason for attributing these blots on nature to any
intelligence that is superior to man’s; for if any intelli
gence but that which is associated with natural organisms
exist and cause these evils, it must be inferior to ours,
inasmuch as human intelligence, if it had the power, would
prevent such catastrophes.
Finally, as our knowledge is only of phenomena, the
laws of which can be directly perceived as operating in
nature, we cannot conceive of such phenomena in the
absence of matter and force. It is no answer to say “ we
do not know what matter is.” Rightly or wrongly, we
hold that what are termed matter and law are co-extensive
with knowledge, and that knowledge includes thought,
feeling, and action. We cannot imagine a shadow of a
man without the man, and other causes that contribute to
its appearance. Neither is it possible for us to conceive
intelligence without the causes which we know are
necessary for its production and maintenance. True, we
are confronted with mysteries on every hand; but so long
as they are mysteries we refuse to dogmatise upon them
ourselves, or to accept what others say concerning them as
being more than mere conjecture.
As we regard Secularism as the true philosophy of life,
it is desirable that its attitude towards Theism should not
be misunderstood. Personally, we have always considered
that in the present state of dogmatic theology what is
termed destructive work is a necessary part of Secular advo
cacy. But we never fail to urge the important fact that in
attacking the errors of our opponents we should be digni
fied, and deal only with principles and opinions, not with
men and personal character. Still, we must not submit to
wrong, inasmuch as, unlike Christ, we do not counsel
people to “resist not evil.” On the contrary, we urge that
to quietly submit to wrong of any kind is to offer a
premium to despotism, and to sacrifice the independence of
our nature. We may be compelled to listen, sometimes, to
false arguments and daring assertions ; but bad temper,
vituperation, and imputation of inferiority should always
�OR, QUESTIONS FOR THEISTS.
15
be firmly resented. We must claim equality, and do our
best to vindicate tbe right to hold and to express our
opinions as freely as our opponents do. While paying due
respect to the feelings and views of others, we claim the
same justice and consideration for our own. This should
be the attitude of all Secularists in their intellectual com
bats, whether in defending Secular principles or in attack
ing the assumptions of theology. We ask Theists, and all
orthodox believers, to consider if this is not the correct
course to pursue in this age of freedom of thought and
mental discrimination ?
Perhaps the most marked difference in modern times,
between the exponents of Freethought and the advocates
of theology, is that the former desire open and fair
discussion upon all subjects of public interest, while the
latter frequently condemn the debating of religious
questions. To us, nothing appears more fruitful in
eliciting truth, and better calculated to promote a healthy
state of mind, than the practice of listening to a rational
statement of both sides of a question. It was through
ignoring this serviceable element in public advocacy that
many of our religious predecessors repudiated the claims
of all new truths, and denounced their discovery as
being inimical to the welfare of mankind. On most
subjects the only conclusions deserving of our serious
attention are those arrived at after free and calm
discussion. In fact, it does not appear to us possible to
arrive at a satisfactory conclusion otherwise. It would be
a different matter if all questions that are submitted to us
were as clear as the sun is at noonday; but they are not,
and particularly the perplexed question of the existence of
God; and, therefore, it is an evidence of weakness to
shrink from debate, and to urge that it disturbs the serenity
of the philosophic mind. In most cases we have to rely
upon probable truth, and the best way to learn upon which
side the probability lies is by a thorough examination of
the pros and cons of any given subject. It, therefore, seems
clear to us that Secularists ought to continue to question
the pretensions of theologians, and to expose the errors of
existing faiths, for the reason that many theological claims
delude the unwary and hinder the recognition of truth.
Our desire is that the proper attitude of Secularists
�16
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
towards theology should be perceptible to the general
public, in order that it may be known what our real position
is. Too long have we been misunderstood and misrepre
sented, and consequently denounced, not upon our merits or
demerits, but upon a false presentation of our principles
and methods as set forth by those who never gave them
selves the trouble to ascertain what our objects and aims
really are. For instance, take the subject of what is called
Supernaturalism. Secular philosophy is not concerned
with what lies behind phenomena, and, therefore, it
neither affirms nor denies the existence of God. And the
fact that even those who profess to believe in something
beyond the natural cannot make up their minds as to what
that something is justifies our attitude upon the subject.
Equally undecisive are God believers as to their reasons for
their belief. Revelation, Design, and Intuition are all
advanced by different classes of Theists to prove their
claims ■. but the particular method relied upon by one class
of Theists is entirely repudiated by the others. Surely,
then, when we find that Theists themselves are not agreed’
either as to what their God is or the kind of evidence that
is necessary to justify a belief in his existence, it is more
reasonable and useful to confine our attention to what is
known and knowable, and to devote our energies to what
we are all agreed upon—namely, the mundane improvement
of the human race, than to waste our time in dogmatising
upon what can be only mere speculation.
The attitude of Secularism towards Theism, then, is
this: Refusing to dogmatise about the existence of a
Being of whom we are, and must necessarily remain, quite
ignorant, Secularists confine their attention to the known
and knowable facts of life. They regard all forms of
Theism only as theological conjectures and vain attempts
to solve problems that, with our present limited knowledge,
appear to be incapable of solution. Secularists prefer
endeavoring to make the most of what can be recognised
by our senses, upon which reason can exercise its pre
rogative, and to which experience can lend its valuable
aid. At the same time, Secular teachings do not preclude
Theists from exercising their fullest rights in advocating
their claims. With us, as Secularists, the utmost freedom
of thought is welcomed.
�
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P.A CHEAP REPRINTS.
“w4/V7E »S A CHARTER OF FREEDOM.”
—A. W. BENN.
PHASES OF
FAITH
'•)
Elliott and Ery
FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN
WATTS & Co.,
■ 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
for the rationalist press association, limited]
[issued
No. 30 of this Series is “AN EASY OUTLINE OF EVOLUTION,”
v..
by DENNIS HIRD, M.A.
:^C' -
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�All Liberal Thinkers who have not already Joined
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The RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, Ltd.,
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ARE EARNESTLY INVITED TO DO SO.
The Objects of the R. P. A. are to stimulate the habits of reflection and inquiry,
and the free "exercise of individual intellect; to promote a rational system of secular
education; to assist in publishing the works of capable thinkers, and in popularising
the great discoveries of modern science and scholarship; to re-issue, in cheap form,
notable books of a critical, philosophical, or ethical character; and generally to
assert the supremacy of reason, as the natural and necessary means to all such
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' Membership of the R. P. A. can be secured by payment of an annual
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Charles E. Hooper, 5 & 6, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS RECENTLY PUBLISHED.
Over 400 pp., Library edition, cloth, 6s. net, by post 6s. 4d.
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Cheap edition, 3s. 6d. net,
'
THE CHURCHES AND MODERN THOUGHT: j
AN INQUIRY INTO THE GROUNDS OF UNBELIEF AND AN APPEAL FOR CANDOUR.
By PHILIP VIVIAN.
Extracts from some (of many) Press Notices :
“A vindication of Rationalism, written in a temperate spirit.”—Times.
‘‘A freshly thought-out discussion of the whole subject........ A temperate and well-reasoned study.”—Scotsman.
“The book gives us a well-presented and interesting survey of the Rationalist position.”—Daily Telegraph.
“ There is much in this work that deserves close study."—Daily Mail.
“ It states the case against the doctrines and claims of the Churches with praiseworthy moderation, as well as
with adequate information and unanswerable logic........ It is an excellent book.”—Westminster Review.
“ Mr. Vivian's book is an admirable reply to When it Was Dark."—New Age.
“Comprehensive in scope, judiciously written, and embodying an admirable selection of facts, it may fairly be
termed a Handbook of Rationalism."—Literary Guide.
“Will appeal to the widest possible range of readers.”—New York Herald, Paris.
“ He has put together an indictment against the modern Church which those preachers who rely on obsolete
methods of defence would do well to study.”—Globe, Toronto, Canada.
“His book is a convenient summary of Rationalistic argument, well arranged and well written, and adding
to-day's conclusions to the polemic of the past.”—Bulletin, Sydney, Australia.
“ It is a book for all, but especially for young men—one, mayhap, that will shatter cherished preconceptions,
but will also stimulate to thought in vital and healthy ways."—Otago Witness, Dunedin, New Zealand.
“ The book will no doubt do much good. '—Japan Weekly Mail.
A
London: WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
Obtainable at all Booksellers’, Smith & Son's Bookstalls, Army and Navy Co-operative Stores,
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�KIS14- .
"^halsecuiarsoc^
PHASES OF FAITH
��PHASES OF FAITH
OR
PASSAGES FROM THE HISTORY OF MY CREED
BY
FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN
[issued for the
rationalist press association, limited]
London:
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1907
��CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAP.
I.
II.
My Youthful Creed -
Strivings After
a
-
-
-
!5
-
More Primitive Christianity
-
25
III.
Calvinism Abandoned
-
-
-40
IV.
The Religion of the Letter Renounced
-
-
55
-
-
70
-
93
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
-
-
Faith at Second Hand Found to
History Discovered to
On
the
be no
Moral Perfection
On Bigotry
and
of
Progress -
be
Part
Jesus
-
Vain
of
Religion
-
-
-
102
-
-
-
118
��PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
This is perhaps an egotistical book—egotistical certainly in its form, yet not
in its purport and essence.
Personal reasons the writer cannot wholly disown for desiring to explain
himself to more than a few who, on religious grounds, are unjustly alienated
from him. If by any motive of curiosity or lingering remembrances they
may be led to read his straightforward account, he trusts to be able to show
them that he has had no choice but to adopt the intellectual conclusions which
offend them ; that the difference between them and him turns on questions
of Learning, History, Criticism, and Abstract Thought; and that to make
their results (if, indeed, they have ever deeply and honestly investigated the
matter) the tests of his spiritual state is to employ unjust weights and a false
balance, which are an abomination to the Lord. To defraud one’s neighbour
of any tithe of mint and cummin would seem to them a sin ; is it less to
withhold affection, trust, and free intercourse, and build up unpassable barriers
of coldness and alarm, against one whose sole offence is to differ from them
intellectually ?
But the argument before the writer is something immensely greater than
a personal one. So it happens that to vindicate himself is to establish a
mighty truth—a truth which can in no other way so well enter the heart as
when it comes embodied in an individual case. If he can show that to have
shrunk from his successive convictions would have been “ infidelity ” to God
and Truth and Righteousness, but that he has been “faithful”to the highest
and most urgent duty, it will be made clear that Belief is one thing and Faith
another ; that to believe is intellectual—nay, possibly “ earthly, devilish ”;
and that to set up any fixed creed as a test of spiritual character is a most
unjust, oppressive, and mischievous superstition. The historical form has
been deliberately selected as easier and more interesting to the reader ; but
it must not be imagined that the author has given his mental history in
general, much less an autobiography. The progress of his creed is his sole
subject, and other topics are introduced either to illustrate this or as digres
sions suggested by it.
March 22nd, 1850.
��PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
I HAVE expanded a few passages in the later portions of this book where, by
reason (I suppose) of my too great brevity, I have been greatly misappre
hended. For the same reason I have enlarged a short discussion into an
entire new chapter on the Moral Perfection of Jesus. Disagreeable experience
warns me that hostile reviewers will endeavour, as before, to excite prejudice
against me by picking out my conclusions, and carefully stripping off every
reason which I assign, as also every qualifying and softening addition, pre
paratory to turning on me and charging me with “ inconsistency ” for not
being as one-sided as they have told their readers that I am. I now say, not
only is this careful suppression of my arguments a cowardly trick and a
mark of their conscious weakness, but, as they well know that every word
whispered against the personal perfection of Jesus is intensely offensive, I
charge them (if they have some conscience, as I hope) not to outrage their
readers and pretend it is I who do so. To give my reasons, as well as my
conclusions, may aid to a true and stable result, whether I prove convincing
or unconvincing. To give my conclusions alone, and inadequately, can
proceed from none but a malignant intention.
*
*
*
*
*
*
May, 1833.
��INTRODUCTION TO THE PRESENT REPRINT
The work of which a new edition is now offered to the public first
appeared in 1850. The author, F. W. Newman (1805-1897), younger
brother of the celebrated Tractarian leader, was then nearly forty-five,
and this was not his first contribution to liberal religious thought. In
1844 he had published A Plea for Catholic Union, proposing to build
the Church of the future on a purely ethical basis. It was followed, in
1847, by A History of the Hebrew Monarchy, dealing very freely with
the consecrated traditions of the Old Testament, and by a manual of
constructive Theism, called The Soul, in 1849. These works showed no
doubt that the younger Newman, like his brother, the future Cardinal,
found no satisfactory basis for a working faith in the Evangelical Biblicism
with which both had begun life; only, instead of going back to a religion
of organised authority, he had gone forward to a religion of reason and
personal experience.
So far, however, there had been little of aggressive negation in his
tone; it was not his fault if orthodox critics chose to treat him as
an assailant of their creed. With Phases of Faith the case was widely
different. From beginning to end, it is destructive criticism—an
unflinching exposition of the reasons before which article after article
in the creed of one who began as a believer of the narrowest type had
given way. According to Newman, the Bible, even assuming it to be
infallible, cannot be made to support any of the dogmatic systems—
from Calvinism to Unitarianism—put forward on its authority. And
the Bible is not infallible. Its writers are often mistaken, and sometimes
intentionally misleading. Still more audaciously he declares that modern
civilisation is due not to the Reformation, but to the Renaissance.
It needed no ordinary courage to write these things. Such a
declaration, coming without ambiguity or disguise, under the signature
of an English gentleman and scholar during his lifetime, had never been
known till then. It was, of course, neither unprepared for nor unexpected.
A storm had been gathering for years. Through the ’forties and even
earlier we hear on good contemporary evidence of much floating Scepticism
�12
INTRODUCTION TO THE PRESENT REPRINT
among the higher classes, and the more intelligent artisans were imbibing
Robert Owen s negations along with his constructive social teaching.
Coleridge, the great oracle of the Broad Church, was known to have
entertained the freest views about inspiration; and Hennell’s Inquiry
Concerning the Origin of Christianity inaugurated the modern Unitarian
theory of a Gospel without miracles. In 1840, the elder Newman writes
to Keble that “ Rationalism is the great evil of the day.” But the news
paper Press and the publishers were so dominated by clericalists of all
shades that its systematic literary expression was long prohibited. The
passionate controversies aroused by the Oxford Movement had caused
the dogmas held in common by High and Low Churchmen to be
preached with more uncompromising stubbornness than ever. Keble
and Pusey were as strict Biblical Infallibilists as Henry Rogers and
Isaac Taylor. Dr. Arnold died young. Thirlwall and Hampden were
extinguished by mitres. The Edinburgh Review was captured for
Evangelicalism by Sir James Stephen. A work which for the first time
put forth the arguments for universal evolution in clear and popular
language, the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), had to
be published anonymously, or its author would have been ruined.
No doubt the increasing pressure of scientific truth and the natural
development of thought, aided by the growing familiarity of Englishmen
and Englishwomen with Continental research, were bound, sooner or
later, to let in the light. But someone is also bound to be the first to
open the shutters wide; and in this instance that one was Francis
Newman. Phases of Faith came as a charter of freedom. An illustrious
founder of modern Rationalism, W. R. Greg, tells us, in the preface to
his Creed of Christendom, that “no work contributed more to force upon
me the conviction that little progress can be hoped either for religious
science or for charitable feeling till the question of Biblical authority
shall have been placed upon a sounder footing, and viewed in a very
different light.” And so he himself was induced, “after long hesitation,”
to publish a work embodying much the same conclusions as Newman’s,
which had been lying by him finished for two years. It is merely a
conjecture of my own, but I cannot help thinking that Carlyle’s defiant
rejection of the popular theology, first proclaimed to the world in his
of Sterling (1851), was not unconnected with the great example set
a year before.
Science, too, so long the humble servant of theology, felt the
delivering thrill. One of its greatest representatives, Sir Charles Lyell,
�INTRODUCTION TO THE PRESENT REPRINT
i3
who had long suffered in silence from the prevalent obscurantism, hailed
Phases of Faith as a sign of the times. In a private letter, dated 185T,
he tells a friend that professors are publishing the most unorthodox views,
for entertaining or confessing which they would have been sent to Coventry
ten years before. Newman was, in fact, at that time Professor of Latin
at University College, London; but probably there was no other public
institution in the three kingdoms where he would have been suffered to
remain after such a defiance to the prevalent bigotry. Others quickly
followed where he had led, and Rationalism has since been carried
much further; but perhaps no single step taken by a single man has
won for us so much freedom as that. Personal authority, so often
exercised on the side of superstition, told in this instance on the side of
reason. I have said that Professor Newman was a gentleman and a
scholar. It is, as we know, quite possible to reason excellently well
without being either the one or the other; but those qualities give their
possessor the advantage of a respectful hearing. I may add that his
saintly character left no room for the vulgar insinuation against
unbelievers that they find the restraints of religion too galling to be
endured. There remained only the taunt that he was “ peculiar,” which
certainly has been worked for all that it is worth. It must be confessed
that the author of Phases of Faith was a vegetarian, an anti-vaccinationist, a total abstainer, and a supporter of woman’s suffrage. The
candid reader must therefore take the book and its arguments subject to
the drawbacks entailed by these admissions.
It may be noticed, also, that Newman’s very sincere Theism, by
securing him a wider circle of readers, only increased the malignancy
of his Evangelical opponents, who directed all their efforts towards
proving that he had no logical right to believe in God—with results on
which their successors of the present day can hardly be congratulated.
Thanks very largely to his efforts, much for which Newman con
tended is now conceded by the Evangelicals themselves. But there are
other points, by no means as yet generally admitted, that he presses
home with robust good sense, and that we are apt to lose sight of amid
the larger questions opened by recent advances in physical science and
historical criticism. In every instance, I think, it will be found that his
Rationalism has borne the test of later inquiry.
Apart from all controversial or historical interest, it is hoped that
Phases of Faith will appeal, as in the best sense a human document, to
many whom the same passion for truth may now be leading along other
�'I
INTRODUCTION TO THE PRESENT REPRINT
and divergent lines of thought. With much less logical power, Cardinal
Newman’s Apologia has more variety, picturesqueness, and literary charm.
But there are not many examples in autobiographical literature of such
simple-minded sincerity, clothed in such lucid, impressive, unaffected
language as this record of a brave thinker’s inner life.
Alfred W. Benn.
March 17th, 1907.
�PHASES OF FAITH
Chapter I.
MY YOUTHFUL CREED
I first began to read religious books at
school, and especially the Bible, when I
was eleven years old, and almost imme
diately commenced a habit of secret
prayer. But it was not until I was
fourteen that I gained any definite idea
of a “ scheme of doctrine,” or could have
been called a “converted person” by
one of the Evangelical School. My
religion then certainly exerted a great
general influence over my conduct, for I
soon underwent various persecution from
my schoolfellows on account of it. The
worst kind consisted in their deliberate
attempts to corrupt me. An evangelical
clergyman at the school gained my
affections, and from him I imbibed more
and more distinctly the full creed which
distinguishes that body of men—a body
whose bright side I shall ever appreciate,
in spite of my present perception that
they have a dark side also. I well
remember that one day when I said to
this friend of mine that I could not
understand how the doctrine of election
was reconcilable to God’s justice, but
supposed that I should know this in due
time if I waited and believed His word,
he replied, with emphatic commendation,
that this was the spirit which God always
blessed. Such was the beginning and
foundation of my faith—an unhesitating,
unconditional acceptance of whatever
was found in the Bible. While I am far
from saying that my whole moral conduct
was subjugated by my creed, I must
insist that it was no mere fancy resting
in my intellect; it was really operative
on my temper, tastes, pursuits, and
conduct.
When I was sixteen, in 1821, I was
“ confirmed ” by Dr. Howley, then
Bishop of London, and endeavoured to
take on myself, with greater decision and
more conscientious consistency, the whole
yoke of Christ.
Everything in the
service was solemn to me except the
Bishop; he seemed to me a madent-b
man and a mere pageant. I also
remember that when I was examined by
the clergyman for confirmation it troubled
me much that he only put questions
which tested my memory concerning the
Catechism and other formulas, instead of
trying to find out whether I had any
actual faith in that about which I was to
be called to profess faith : I was not
then aware that his sole duty was to try
my knowledge. But I already felt keenly
the chasm that separated the High from
the Low Church, and that it was
impossible for me to sympathise with
those who imagined that forms could
command the spirit.
Yet so entirely was I enslaved to one
form—that of observing the Sunday, or,
as I had learned falsely to call it, the
Sabbath—that I fell into painful and
injurious conflict with a superior kinsman,
by refusing to obey his orders on the
Sunday. He attempted to deal with me
by mere authority, not by instruction,
and to yield my conscience to authority
would have been to yield up all spiritual
life. I erred, but I was faithful to God.
When I was rather more than seventeen
�i6
MY YOUTHFUL CREED
I subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles at
Oxford in order to be admitted to the
University. Subscription was “ no
bondage,” but pleasure, for I well knew
and loved the Articles, and looked on
them as a great bulwark of the truth ;
a bulwark, however, not by being
imposed, but by the spiritual and
classical beauty which to me shone in
them. But it was certain to me before I
went to Oxford, and manifest in my first
acquaintance with it, that very few
academicians could be said to believe
them. Of the young men, not one in
five seemed to have any religious con
victions at all; the elder residents seldom
or never showed sympathy with the
doctrines that pervade that formula. I
felt from my first day there that the
system of compulsory subscription was
hollow, false, and wholly evil.
Oxford is a pleasant place for making
friends—friends of all sorts that young
men wish. One who is above envy and
scorns servility—who can praise and
delight in all the good qualities of his
equals in age, and does not desire to set
himself above them, or to vie with his
superiors in rank—may have more than
enough of friends, for pleasure and for
profit. So certainly had I; yet no one
of my equals gained any ascendency over
me, nor perhaps could I have looked up
to any for advice. In some the intellect,
in others the religious qualities, were as
yet insufficiently developed ; in part also
I wanted discrimination, and did not
well pick out the profounder minds of
my acquaintance. However, on my very
first residence in college, I received a
useful lesson from another freshman—a
grave and thoughtful person, older, I
imagine, than most yquths in their first
term. Some readers may be amused, as
well as surprised, when I name the
delicate question on which I got into
discussion with my fellow freshman. I
had learned from Evangelical books that
there is a twofold imputation to every
saint—not of the “sufferings” only, but
also of the “ righteousness ” of Christ.
They alleged that, while the sufferings of
Jesus are a compensation for the guilt of
the believer and make him innocent, yet
this suffices not to give him a title to
heavenly glory, for which he must over
and above be invested in active righteous
ness, by all Christ’s good works being
made over to him. My new friend con
tested the latter part of the doctrine.
Admitting fully that guilt is atoned for
by the sufferings of the Saviour, he yet
maintained there was no farther imputa
tion of Christ’s active service as if it had
been our service. After a rather sharp
controversy I was sent back to study the
matter for myself, especially in the third
and fourth chapters of the Epistle to the
Romans, and some weeks after freely
avowed to him that I was convinced.
Such was my first effort at independent
thought against the teaching of my
spiritual fathers, and I suppose it had
much value for me. This friend might
probably have been of service to me,
though he was rather cold and lawyer
like j but he was abruptly withdrawn
from Oxford to be employed in active
life.
I first received a temporary discomfort
about the Thirty-nine Articles from an
irreligious young man who had been my
schoolfellow, who one day attacked the
article which asserts that Christ carried
“ his flesh and bones ” with him into
heaven. I was not moved by the physical
absurdity which this youth mercilessly
derided, and I repelled his objections as
an impiety. But I afterwards remembered
the text, “Flesh and blood shall not
inherit the kingdom of God,” and it
seemed to me as if the compilers had
really gone a little too far. If I had
immediately then been called on to
subscribe, I suppose it would have
somewhat discomposed me; but as time
went on I forgot this small point, which
was swallowed up by others more
important. Yet I believe that hence
forth a greater disposition to criticise the
Articles grew upon me
The first novel opinion of any great
importance that I actually embraced, so
as to give roughness to my course, was
�MY YOUTHFUL CREED
that which many then called the Oriel
heresy about Sunday., Oriel College at
this time contained many active and
several original minds ; and it was
rumoured that one of the Fellows
rejoiced in seeing his parishioners play
at cricket on Sunday : I do not know
whether that was true, but so it was said.
Another of them preached an excellent
sermon before the University, clearly
showing that Sunday had nothing to do
with the Sabbath, nor the Sabbath with
us, and inculcating on its own ground a
wise and devout use of the Sunday
hours. The evidently pious and sincere
tone of this discourse impressed me,
and I felt that I had no right to reject
as profane and undeserving of examina
tion the doctrine which it enforced.
Accordingly I entered into a thorough
searching of the Scripture without bias,
and was amazed to find how baseless was
the tenet for which in fact I had endured
a sort of martyrdom. This, I believe,
had a great effect in showing me how
little right we have at any time to count
on our opinions as final truth, however
necessary they may just then be felt to
our spiritual life. I was also scandalised
to find how little candour or discernment
some Evangelical friends with whom I
communicated displayed in discussing
the subject.
In fact, this opened to me a large
sphere of new thought. In the investiga
tion I had learned, more distinctly than
before, that the preceptive code of the
Law was an essentially imperfect and
temporary system, given “ for the hard
ness of men’s hearts.” I was thus
prepared to enter into the lectures on
prophecy by another Oriel Fellow—
Mr. Davison—in which he traces the
successive improvements and develop
ments of religious doctrine, from the
patriarchal system onward. I in conse
quence enjoyed with new zest the
epistles of St. Paul, which I read as with
fresh eyes, and now understood some
what better his whole doctrine of “the
Spirit,” the coming of which had brought
the Church out of her childish into a
i7
mature condition, and by establishing a
higher law had abolished that of the
letter. Into this view I entered with so
eager an interest that I felt no bondage
of the letter in Paul’s own words; his
wisdom was too much above me to allow
free criticism of his wreak points. At
the same time, the systematic use of the
Old Testament by the Puritans, as if it
were “ the rule of life ” to Christians,
I saw to be a glaring mistake, intensely
opposed to the Pauline doctrine. This
discovery, moreover, soon became
important to me, as furnishing a ready
evasion of objections against the meagre
or puerile views of the Pentateuch; for,
without very minute inquiry how far I
must go to make the defence adequate,
I gave a general reply, that the New
Testament confessed the imperfections
of the older dispensation. I still pre
sumed the Old to have been perfect for
its own objects and in its own place ;
and had not defined to myself how far it
was correct or absurd to imagine
morality to change with time and
circumstances.
Before long, ground was broken in my
mind on a still more critical question by
another Fellow of a college, who main
tained that nothing but unbelief could
arise out of the attempt to under
stand in what way and by what moral
right the blood of Christ atoned for sins.
He said that he bowed before the
doctrine as one of “revelation,” and
accepted it reverentially by an act of
faith, but that he certainly felt unable to
understand why the sacrifice of Christ,
any more than the Mosaic sacrifices,
should compensate for the punishment
of our sins. Could carnal reason discern
that human or divine blood, any more
than that of beasts, had efficacy to make
the sinner, as it were, sinless ? It
appeared to him a necessarily inscrutable
mystery, into which we ought not to
look. The matter being thus forced on
my attention, I certainly saw that to
establish the abstract moral right and
justice of vicarious punishment was not
easy, and that to make out the fact of
�i8
MY YOUTHFUL CREED
any “compensation” (/.<?., that Jesus and if he failed, then who was likely to
really endured on the cross a true succeed? The arguments from Scrip
equivalent for the eternal sufferings due ture had never recommended them
to the whole human race) was harder selves to me. Even allowing that they
still. Nevertheless, I had difficulty in might confirm, they certainly could not
adopting the conclusions of this gentle suggest and establish, the practice. It
man—first, because, in a passage of the now appeared that there was no basis at
Epistle to the Hebrews, the sacred writer, all; indeed, several of the arguments
in arguing “Tw- it is impossible that the struck me as cutting the other way.
blood of bulls and goats can take “ Suffer little children to come unto me ”
away sins,” etc., etc., seems to expect was urged as decisive; but it occurred
his readers to see an inherent impro to me that the disciples would not have
priety in the sacrifices of the Law, and scolded the little children away if they
an inherent moral fitness in the sacrifice had ever been accustomed to baptise
of Christ; secondly, I had always been them. Wall also, if I remember aright,
accustomed to hear that it was by seeing declares that the children of proselytes
the moral fitness of the doctrine of the were baptised by the Jews, and deduces
Atonement that converts to Christianity that, unless the contrary were stated, we
were chiefly made—so said the Mora must assume that also Christ’s disciples
vians among the Greenlanders, so baptised children; but I reflected that
Brainerd among the North American the baptism of fohn was one of “repen
Indians, so English missionaries among tance,” and therefore could not have
the negroes at Sierra Leone—and I been administered to infants ; which (if
could not at all renounce this idea. precedent is to guide us) afforded the
Indeed, I seemed to myself to see this truer presumption concerning Christian
fitness most emphatically; and as for baptism. Prepossessions being thus
the forensic difficulties, I passed them overthrown, when I read the Apostolic
over with a certain conscious reverence. epistles with a view to this special
I was not as yet ripe for deeper inquiry; question, the proof so multiplied against
yet I, about this time, decidedly modified the Church doctrine that I did not see
my boyish creed on the subject, on what was left to be said for it. I talked
which more will be said below.
much and freely of this, as of most other
Of more immediate practical impor topics, with equals in age who took
tance to me was the controversy con interest in religious questions; but the
cerning infant baptism. For several more the matters were discussed, the
years together I had been more or less more decidedly impossible it seemed to
conversant with the arguments adduced maintain that the popular Church views
for the practice; and at this time I read were Apostolic.
Wall’s defence of it, which was the book
Here also, as before, the Evangelical
specially recommended at Oxford. The clergy whom I consulted were found by
perusal brought to a head the doubts me a broken reed. The clerical friend
which had at an earlier period flitted whom I had known at school wrote
over my mind. Wall’s historical attempt kindly to me, but quite declined
to trace infant baptism up to the attempting to solve my doubts ; and in
Apostles seemed to me a clear failure / other quarters I soon saw that no fresh
light was to be got. One person there
1 It was not until many years later that I was at Oxford who might have seemed
became aware that unbiassed ecclesiastical my natural adviser ; his name, character,
historians, as Neander and others, while approv and religious peculiarities have been
ing of the practice of infant baptism, freely
concede that it is not Apostolic. Let this fact
be my defence against critics who snarl at me
for having dared, at that age, to come to any
conclusion on such a subject. But, in fact, the
subscriptions compel young men to it.
�MY YOUTHFUL CREED
so made public property that I need not
shrink to name him—I mean my eider
brother, the Rev. John Henry Newman.
As a warm-hearted and generous brother,
who exercised towards me paternal cares,
I esteemed him and felt a deep grati
tude ; as a man of various culture and
peculiar genius, I admired and was
proud of him ; but my doctrinal religion
impeded my loving him as much as he
deserved, and even justified my feeling
some distrust of him. He never showed
any strong attraction towards those whom
I regarded as spiritual persons ; on the
contrary, I thought him stiff and cold
towards them. Moreover, soon after his
ordination he had startled and distressed
me by adopting the doctrine of bap
tismal regeneration, and in rapid succes
sion worked out views which I regarded
as full-blown “ Popery.” I speak of the
years 1823-26; it is strange to think that
twenty years more had to pass before he
learnt the place to which his doctrines
belonged.
In the earliest period of my Oxford
residence- I fell into uneasy collision
with him concerning episcopal powers.
I had on one occasion dropped some
thing disrespectful against bishops or a
bishop—something which, if it had been
said about a clergyman, would have
passed unnoticed; but my brother
checked and reproved me—as I thought,
very uninstructively—for “wanting rever
ence towards bishops.” I knew not
then, and I know not now, why bishops,
as szich, should be more reverenced than
common clergymen; or clergymen, as
such, more than common men. In the
world I expected pomp and vain show
and formality and counterfeits ; but of
the Church, as Christ’s own kingdom, I
demanded reality, and could not digest
legal fictions. I saw round me what
sort of young men were preparing to be
clergymen; I knew the attractions of
family “ livings ” and fellowships, and of
a respectable position and undefinable
hopes of preferment. I farther knew
that, when youths had become clergymen
through a great variety of mixed motives,
i9
bishops were selected out of these clergy
on avowedly political grounds ; it there
fore amazed me how a man of good
sense should be able to set up a duty of
religious veneration towards bishops. I
was willing to honour a lord bishop as a
peer of Parliament, but his office was to
me no guarantee of spiritual eminence.
To find my brother thus stop my mouth
was a puzzle, and impeded all free
speech towards him. In fact, I very
soon left off the attempt at intimate
religious intercourse with him, or asking
counsel as of one who could sympathise.
We talked, indeed, a great deal on the
surface of religious matters, and on
some questions I was overpowered, and
received a temporary bias from his
superior knowledge ; but as time went
on, and my own intellect ripened, I
distinctly felt that his arguments were
too fine-drawn and subtle, often
elaborately missing the moral points and
the main points, to rest on some eccle
siastical fiction; and his conclusions were
to me so marvellous and painful that I
constantly thought I had mistaken him.
In short, he was my senior by a very few
years; nor was there any elder resident
at Oxford accessible to me who united
all the qualities which I wanted in an
adviser. Nothing was left for me but
to cast myself on Him who is named
the Father of Lights, and resolve to
follow the light which He might give,
however opposed to my own prejudices,
and however I might be condemned by
men. This solemn engagement I made
in early youth, and neither the frowns
nor the grief of my brethren can make
me ashamed of it in my manhood.
Among the religious authors whom I
read familiarly was the Rev. T. Scott, of
Aston Sandford, a rather dull, very
unoriginal, half-educated, but honest,
worthy, sensible, strong-minded man,
whose works were then much in vogue
among the Evangelicals. One day my
attention was arrested by a sentence in
his defence of the doctrine of the
Trinity. He complained that Anti
Trinitarians unjustly charged Trinitarians
�20
MY YOUTHFUL CREED
with self-contradiction. “ If, indeed, we
said ” (argued he) “ that God is three in
the same sense as that in which He is
one, that would be self-refuting; but we
hold Him to be three in one sense, and
one in another." It crossed my mind
very forcibly that, if that was all, the
Athanasian Creed had gratuitously in
vented an enigma. I exchanged thoughts
on this with an undergraduate friend,
and got no fresh light; in fact, I feared
to be profane if I attempted to under
stand the subject. Yet it came dis
tinctly home to me that, whatever the
depth of the mystery, if we lay down
anything about it at all, we ought to
understand our own words; and I pre
sently augured that Tillotson had been
right in “ wishing our Church well rid ”
of the Athanasian Creed, which seemed
a mere offensive blurting out of intel
lectual difficulties. I had, however, no
doubts, even of a passing kind, for years
to come concerning the substantial
truth and certainty of the ecclesiastical
Trinity.
When the period arrived for taking
my Bachelor’s degree, it was requisite
again to sign the Thirty-nine Articles,
and I now found myself embarrassed by
the question of infant baptism. One of
the Articles contains the following words:
“ The baptism of young children is in
any wise to be retained, as most agree
able to the institution of Christ.” I was
unable to conceal from myself that I did
not believe this sentence, and I was on
the point of refusing to take my degree.
I overcame my scruples by considering
(i) that concerning this doctrine I had
no active ffA-belief on which I would
take any practical step, as I felt myself
too young to make any counter-declara
tion ; (2) that it had no possible practi
cal meaning to me, since I could not be
Called on to baptise, nor to give a child
for baptism. Thus I persuaded myself.
Yet I had not an easy conscience, nor
can I now defend my compromise, for I
believe that my repugnance to infant
baptism was really intense, and my
conviction that it is un-Apostolic as
strong then as now. The topic, of my
“ youth ” was irrelevant, for, if I was not
too young to subscribe, I was not too
young to refuse subscription. The argu
ment, that the Article was “ unpractical ”
to me goes to prove that, if I were
ordered by a despot to qualify myself for
a place in the Church by solemnly
renouncing the first book of Euclid as
false, I might do so without any loss of
moral dignity. Altogether, this humi
liating affair showed me what a trap for
the conscience these subscriptions are;
how comfortably they are passed while
the intellect is torpid or immature, or
where the conscience is callous, but
how they undermine truthfulness in the
active thinker, and torture the sensitive
ness of the tender-minded. As long as
they are maintained, in Church or uni
versity, these institutions exert a positive
influence to deprave or eject those who
ought to be their most useful and
honoured members.
It was already breaking upon me that
I could not fulfil the dreams of my boy
hood as a minister in the Church of
England. For, supposing that with
increased knowledge I might arrive at
the conclusion that infant baptism
was a fore-arranged “development,” not
indeed practised in the first generation,
but expedient, justifiable, and intended
for the second, and probably then
sanctioned by one still living apostle—even so, I foresaw the still greater diffi
culty of baptismal regeneration behind.
For anyone to avow that regeneration
took place in baptism seemed to me
little short of a confession that he had
never himself experienced what regenera
tion is. If I could then have been con
vinced that the Apostles taught no other
regeneration, I almost think that even
their authority would have snapped
under the strain ; but this is idle theory,
for it was as clear as daylight to me that
they held a totally different doctrine,
and that the High Church and Popish
fancy is a superstitious perversion, based
upon carnal inability to understand a
strong spiritual metaphor. On the other
�MY YOUTHFUL CREED
hand, my brother’s arguments that the
Baptismal Service of the Church taught
“ spiritual regeneration ” during the ordi
nance were short, simple, and over
whelming. To imagine a twofold
“spiritual regeneration” was evidently
a hypothesis to serve a turn, nor in
any of the Church formulas was such an
idea broached; nor could I hope for
relief by searching through the Homilies
or by drawing deductions from the
Articles, for, if I there elicited a truer
doctrine, it would never show the
Baptismal Service not to teach the
Popish tenet—it would merely prove
the Church system to contain contra
dictions, and not to deserve that abso
lute declaration of its truth which is
demanded of Church ministers. With
little hope of advantage, I yet felt it a
duty to consult many of the Evangelical
clergymen whom 1 knew, and to ask
how they reconciled the Baptismal
Service to their consciences. I found
(if I remember) three separate theories
among them, all evidently mere shifts
invented to avoid the disagreeable
necessity of resigning their functions.
Not one of these good people seemed to
have the most remote idea that it was
their duty to investigate the meaning
of the formulary with the same unbiassed
simplicity as if it belonged to the
Gallican Church. They did not seek to
know what it was written to mean, nor
what sense it must carry to every simpleminded hearer ; but they solely asked
how they could manage to assign to it a
sense not wholly irreconcilable with their
own doctrines and preaching. This was
too obviously hollow. The last gentle
man whom I consulted was the rector of
a parish, who from week to week
baptised children with the prescribed
formula; but, to my amazement, he told
me that he did not like the service, and
did not approve of infant baptism, to
both of which things he submitted solely
because, as an inferior minister of the
Church, it was his duty to obey estab
lished authority! The case was desperate.
But I may here add that this clergy
21
man, within a few years from that time,
redeemed his freedom and his con
science by the painful ordeal of abandon
ing his position and his flock, against
the remonstrances of his wife, to the
annoyance of his friends, and with a
young family about him.
Let no reader accept the preceding
paragraph as my testimony that the
Evangelical clergy are less simple-minded
and less honourable in their subscriptions
than the High Church. I do not say,
and I do not believe, this. All who
subscribe labour under a common diffi
culty in having to give an absolute assent
to formulas that were made by a com
promise, and are not homogeneous in
character. To the High Churchman, the
Articles are a difficulty; to the Low
Churchman, various parts of the Liturgy.
All have to do violence to some portion
of the system ; and, considering at how
early an age they are entrapped into sub
scription, they all deserve our sincere
sympathy and very ample allowance as
long as they are pleading for the rights
of conscience. Only when they become
overbearing, dictatorial, proud of their
chains, and desirous of ejecting others,
does it seem right to press them with the
topic of inconsistency. There is, besides,
in the ministry of the Established Church
a sprinkling of original minds who cannot
be included in either of the two great
divisions; and from these a priori one
might have hoped much good to the
Church. But such persons no sooner
speak out than the two hostile parties
hush their strife in order the more effec
tually to overwhelm with just and unjust
imputations those who dare to utter truth
that has not yet been consecrated by Act
of Parliament or by Church Councils.
Among those who have subscribed, to
attack others is easy, to defend oneself
most arduous. Recrimination is the
only powerful weapon, and noble minds
are ashamed to use this. No hope,
therefore, shows itself of reform from
within. For myself, I feel that nothing
saved me from the infinite distresses
which I should have encountered had I
�22
MY YOUTHFUL CREED
become a minister of the Episcopal
Church, but the very unusual premature
ness of my religious development.
Besides the great subject of baptismal
regeneration, the entire episcopal theory
and practice offended me. How little
favourably I was impressed when a boy
by the lawn sleeves, wig, artificial voice
and manner of the Bishop of London, I
have already said; but in six years more
reading and observation had intensely
confirmed my first auguries. It was
clear beyond denial that for a century
after the death of Edward VI. the bishops
were the tools of Court bigotry, and often
owed their highest promotions to base
subservience. After the Revolution, the
episcopal order (on a rough and general
view) might be described as a body of
supine persons, known to the public only
as a dead weight against all change that
was distasteful to the Government. In
the last century and a half the nation
was often afflicted with sensual royalty,
bloody wars, venal statesmen, corrupt
constituencies, bribery and violence at
elections, flagitious drunkenness pervad
ing all ranks and insinuating itself into
colleges and rectories. The prisons of
the country had been in a most disgrace
ful state ; the fairs and waits were scenes
of rude debauchery, and the theatres
were—still, in this nineteenth century—
whispered to be haunts of the most
debasing immorality. I could not learn
that any bishop had ever taken the lead
in denouncing these iniquities ; nor that,
when any man or class of men rose to
denounce them, the episcopal order
failed to throw itself into the breach to
defend corruption by at least passive
resistance. Neither Howard, Wesley
and Whitfield, nor yet Clarkson, Wilber
force, or Romilly, could boast of the
episcopal bench as an ally against in
human or immoral practices. Our oppres
sions in India, and our sanction to the
most cruel superstitions of the natives,
led to no outcry from the bishops. Under
their patronage the two old societies of
the Church had gone to sleep until
aroused by the Church Missionary and
Bible Societies, which were opposed by
the bishops. Their policy seemed to be
to do nothing until somebody else was
likely to do it; upon which they at last
joined the movement in order to damp
its energy and get some credit from it.
Now what were bishops for but to be
the originators and energetic organs of
all pious and good works? And what
were they in the House of Lords for if
not to set a higher tone of purity, justice,
and truth ? And if they never did this,
but weighed down those who attempted
it, was not that a condemnation—not,
perhaps, of all possible episcopacy, but
of episcopacy as it exists in England ?
If such a thing as a moral argument for
Christianity was admitted as valid, surely
the above was a moral argument against
English prelacy. It was, moreover,
evident at a glance that this system of
ours neither was, nor could have been,
Apostolic ; for, as long as the civil power
was hostile to the Church, a lord bishop
nominated by the civil ruler was an impos
sibility ; and this it is which determines
the moral and spiritual character of the
English institution, not indeed exclu
sively, but pre-eminently,
I still feel amazement at the only
defence which (as far as I know) the
pretended followers of antiquity make for
the nomination of bishops by the Crown.
In the third and fourth centuries it is
well known that every new bishop was
elected by the universal suffrage of the
laity of the Church, and it is to these
centuries that the High Episcopalians
love to appeal, because they can quote
thence out of Cyprian1 and others in
favour of episcopal authority. When I
alleged the dissimilarity in the mode of
election as fatal to this argument in the
1 I remember reading about that time a
sentence in one of his Epistles, in which this
same Cyprian, the earliest mouthpiece of “ proud
prelacy,” claims for the populace supreme right
of deposing an unworthy bishop. I quote the
words from memory, and do not know the
reference. “ Plebs summam habet potestatem
episcopos seu dignos eligendi seu indignos
detrudendi.”
�MY YOUTHFUL CREED
mouth of an English High Churchman,
I was told that “ the Crown now
represents the laity ” ! Such a fiction
may be satisfactory to a pettifogging
lawyer, but as the basis of a spiritual
system is indeed supremely contemptible.
With these considerations on my mind
—while quite aware that some of the
bishops were good and valuable men—I
could not help feeling that it would be a
perfect misery to me to have to address
one of them taken at random as my
“ Right Reverend Father in God,” which
seemed like a foul hypocrisy ; and when
I remembered who had said, “ Call no
man Father on earth, for one is your
Father, who is in heaven ”—words which,
not merely in the letter, but still more
distinctly in the spirit, forbid the state of
feeling which suggested this episcopal
appellation—it did appear to me as if
“Prelacy” had been rightly coupled by
the Scotch Puritans with “Popery” as
anti-Christian.
Connected inseparably with this was
the form of ordination, which, the more
I thought of it, seemed the more
offensively and outrageously Popish, and
quite opposed to the Article on the same
subject. In the Article I read that we
were to regard such to be legitimate
ministers of the word as had been duly
appointed to this work by those who have
public authority for the same. It was
evident to me that this very wide phrase
was adapted and intended to comprehend
the “ public authorities ” of all the
Reformed Churches, and could never
have been selected by one who wished
to narrow the idea of a legitimate
minister to episcopalian orders ; besides
that we know Lutheran and Calvinistic
ministers to have been actually admitted
in the early times of the Reformed
English Church by the force of that very
Article. To this, the only genuine
Protestant view of a church, I gave my
most cordial adherence; but when I
turned to the Ordination Service I found
the bishop there, by his authoritative
voice, absolutely to bestow on the
candidate for priesthood the power to
23
forgive or retain sins !—“ Receive ye the
Holy Ghost! Whose sins ye forgive,
they are forgiven; whose sins ye retain,
they are retained.” If the bishop really
had this power, he of course had it only
as bishop—that is, by his consecration ;
thus it was formally transmitted. To
allow this, vested in all the Romish
bishops a spiritual power of the highest
order, and denied the legitimate priest
hood in nearly all the Continental
Protestant Churches—a doctrine irrecon
cilable with the article just referred to,
and intrinsically to me incredible. That
an unspiritual—and, it may be, a wicked
—man, who can have no pure insight
into devout and penitent hearts, and no
communion with the source of holy
discernment, could never receive by an
outward form the divine power to forgive
or retain sins, or the power of bestowing
this power, was to me then, as now, as
clear and certain as any possible first
axiom. Yet, if the bishop had not this
power, how profane was the pretension !
Thus again I came into rude collision
with English prelacy.
The year after taking my degree I
made myself fully master of Paley’s
acute and original treatise, the Horce
Paulina, and realised the whole life of
Paul as never before. This book greatly
enlarged my mind as to the resources of
historical criticism. Previously my sole
idea of criticism was that of the direct
discernment of style; but I now began
to understand what powerful argument
rose out of combinations, and the very
complete establishment which this work
gives to the narrative concerning Paul in
the latter half of the Acts appeared
to me to reflect critical honour1 on the
whole New Testament. In the epistles
of this great Apostle, notwithstanding
their argumentative difficulties, I found
1 A critic absurdly complains that I do not
account for this. Account for what? I still
hold the authenticity of nearly all the Pauline
epistles, and that the Pauline Acts are compiled
from some valuable source, from chap. xiii.
onward ; but it was gratuitous to infer that this
could accredit the four gospels.
�24
MY YOUTHFUL CREED
a moral reality and a depth of wisdom
perpetually growing upon me with
acquaintance, in contrast to which I was
conscious that I made no progress in
understanding the four gospels. Their
first impression had been their strongest,
and their difficulties remained as fixed
blocks in my way. Was this possibly
because Paul is a reasoner? I asked—
hence, with the cultivation of my under
standing, I have entered more easily into
the heart of his views—while Christ
enunciates divine truth dogmatically;
consequently insight is needed to under
stand him ? On the contrary, however,
it seemed to me that the doctrinal
difficulties of the gospels depend chiefly
either on obscure metaphor or on
apparent incoherence; and I timidly
asked a friend whether the dislocation of
the discourses of Christ by the narrators
may not be one reason why they are
often obscure; for, on comparing Luke
with Matthew, it appears that we cannot
deny occasional dislocation. If at this
period a German divinity professor had
been lecturing at Oxford, or German
books had been accessible to me, it
might have saved me long peregrinations
of body and mind.
About this time I had also begun to
think that the old writers called Fathers
deserved but a small fraction of the
reverence which is awarded to them. I
had been strongly urged to read
Chrysostom’s work on the Priesthood
by one . who regarded it as a suitable
preparation for holy orders, and I did
read it. But I not only thought it
inflated and without moral depth, but,
what was far worse, I encountered in it
an elaborate defence of falsehood in the
cause of the Church, and generally of
deceit in any good cause.1 I rose from
1 He argues from the Bible that a victory
gained by deceit is more to be esteemed than one
obtained by force; and that, provided the end
aimed at be good, we ought not to call it deceit,
but a sort of admirable management. A learned
friend informs me that in his 45th Homily on
Genesis this Father, in his zeal to vindicate
Scriptural characters at any cost, goes further
still in immorally. My friend adds: “It is
the treatise in disgust, and for the first
time sympathised with Gibbon, and
augured that if he had spoken with
moral indignation, instead of pompous
sarcasm, against the frauds of the ancient
“bathers,” his blows would have fallen
far more heavily on Christianity itself.
I also, with much effort and no profit,
read the Apostolic Fathers. Of these
Clement alone seemed to me respectable,
and even he to write only what I could
myself have written, with Paul and Peter
to serve as a model. But for Barnabas
and Hermas I felt a contempt so
profound that I could hardly believe
them genuine. On the whole, this
reading greatly exalted my sense of the
unapproachable greatness1 of the New
Testament. The moral chasm between
it and the very earliest Christian writers
seemed to me so vast as only to be
accounted for by the doctrine in which
all spiritual men (as I thought) unhesita
tingly agreed—that the New Testament
was dictated by the immediate action of
the Holy Spirit. The infatuation of
those who, after this, rested on the
Councils was to me unintelligible. Thus
the Bible in its simplicity became only
the more all-ruling to my judgment,
because I could find no Articles, no
Church Decrees, and no Apostolic
individual, whose rule over my under
standing or conscience I could bear.
Such may be conveniently regarded as
the first period of my Creed.
really frightful to reflect to what guidance the
moral sentiment of mankind was committed for
many ages : Chrysostom is usually considered
one of the best of the Fathers.”
1 I thought that the latter part of this book
would sufficiently show how and why I now need
to modify this sentiment. I now see the doctrine
of the Atonement, especially as expounded in
the Epistle to the Hebrews, to deserve no
honour. I see false interpretations of the Old
Testament to be dogmatically proposed in the
New. I see the moral teaching concerning
Patriotism, Property, Slavery, Marriage, Science,
and indirectly Fine Art, to be essentially defec
tive, and the threats against unbelief to be a
pernicious immorality. See also p. 64. Why
will critics use my frankly-stated juvenile
opinions as a stone to pelt me with ?
�STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
25
Chapter II.
STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
My second period is characterised partly
by the great ascendency exercised over
me by one powerful mind and still more
powerful will, partly by the vehement
effort which throughout its duration
urged me to long after the establishment
of Christian fellowship in a purely
Biblical Church as the first great want
of Christendom and of the world.
I was already uneasy in the sense that
I could not enter the ministry of the
Church of England, and knew not what
course of life to choose. I longed to
become a missionary for Christ among
the heathen—a notion I had often
fostered while reading the lives of
missionaries ; but again I saw not how
that was to be effected. After taking
my degree I became a Fellow of Balliol
College, and the next year I accepted an
invitation to Ireland, and there became
private tutor for fifteen months in the
house of one now deceased, whose name
I would gladly mention for honour and
affection—but I withhold my pen.
While he repaid me munificently for my
services, he behaved towards me as a
father, or indeed as an elder brother,
and instantly made me feel as a member
of his family. His great talents, high
professional standing, nobleness of heart,
and unfeigned piety would have made
him a most valuable counsellor to me ;
but he was too gentle, too unassuming,
too modest ; he looked to be taught by
his juniors, and sat at the feet of one
whom I proceed to describe.
This was a young relative of his—a
most remarkable man—who rapidly
gained an immense sway over me. I
shall henceforth call him “the Irish
clergyman.” His “ bodily presence ”
was indeed “ weak.” A fallen cheek, a
bloodshot eye, crippled limbs resting on
crutches, a seldom shaven beard, a
shabby suit of clothes, and a generally
neglected person, drew at first pity, with
wonder to see such a figure in a drawing
room. It was currently reported that a
person in Limerick offered him a half
penny, mistaking him for a beggar; and
if not true, the story was yet well
invented. This young man had taken
high honours in Dublin University and
had studied for the bar, where, under
the auspices of his eminent kinsman, he
had excellent prospects; but his con
science would not allow him to take a
brief, lest he should be selling his talents
to defeat justice. With keen logical
powers, he had warm sympathies, solid
judgment of character, thoughtful tender
ness, and total self-abandonment. He
before long took holy orders, and
became an indefatigable curate in the
mountains of Wicklow. Every evening
he sallied forth to teach in the cabins,
and, roving far and wide over mountain
and amid bogs, was seldom home before
midnight. By such exertions his strength
was undermined, and he so suffered in
his limbs that not lameness only, but yet
more serious results, were feared. He
did not fast on purpose, but his long walks
through wild country and among indigent
people inflicted on him much severe
deprivation ; moreover, as he ate whatever
food offered itself—food unpalatable and
often indigestible to him—his whole
frame might have vied in emaciation
with a monk of La Trappe.
Such a phenomenon intensely excited
the poor Romanists, who looked on him
as a genuine “ saint ” of the ancient
breed. The stamp of heaven seemed to
them clear in a frame so wasted by
austerity, so superior to worldly pomp,
and so partaking in all their indigence.
�26
ST/?IVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
That a dozen such men would have done man so resolved that no word of it
more to convert all Ireland to Protestant should be a dead letter to him. I once
ism than the whole apparatus of the said : “ But do you really think that no
Church Establishment was ere long my part of the New Testament may have
conviction, though I was at first offended been temporary in its object ? For
by his apparent affectation of a mean instance, what should we have lost if
exterior. But I soon understood that in St Paul had never written the verse,
no other way could he gain equal access ‘The cloak which I have left at Troas
to the lower and lowest orders, and that bring with thee, and the books, but
he was moved not by asceticism, nor by especially the parchments ’ ? ”
He
ostentation, but by a self-abandonment answered with the greatest promptitude :
fruitful of consequences. He had practi “Ashould certainly have lost something,
cally given up all reading except that of for that is exactly the verse which alone
the Bible, and no small part of his saved me from selling my little library.
movement towards me soon took the No ! every word, depend upon it, is from
form of dissuasion from all other the Spirit, and is for eternal service.”
voluntary study.
A political question was just then
In fact, I had myself more and more exceedingly agitating Ireland, in which
concentrated my religious reading on nearly everybody took a great interest—
this one book; still, I could not help it was the propriety of admitting
feeling the value of a cultivated mind. Romanist members of Parliament.
Against this my new eccentric friend, Those who were favourable to the
himself having enjoyed no mean advan measure generally advocated it by trying
tages of cultivation, directed his keenest to undervalue the chasm that separates
attacks. I remember once saying to him, Romish from Protestant doctrine. By
in defence of worldly station : “ To desire such arguments they exceedingly exas
to be rich is unchristian and absurd, but perated the real Protestants, and, in
if I were the father of children I should common with all around me, I totally
wish to be rich enough to secure them a repudiated that ground of comprehension.
good education.’' He replied : “ If I But I could not understand why a
had children, I would as soon see them broader, more generous, and every way
break stones on the road as do anything safer argument was not dwelt on—viz.,
else, if only I could secure to them the the unearthliness of the claims of Chris
Gospel and the grace of God.” I was tianity. When Paul was preaching the
unable to say Amen, but I admired his kingdom of God in the Roman Empire,
unflinching consistency, for now, as if a malicious enemy had declared to a
always, all he said was based on texts Roman proconsul that the Christians
aptly quoted and logically enforced. were conspiring to eject all Pagans out
He more and more made me ashamed of the senate and out of the public
of political economy and moral administration, who can doubt what
philosophy, and all science; all of Paul would have replied ?—The kingdom
which ought to be “counted dross for of God is not of this world ; it is within
the. excellency of the knowledge of the heart, and consists in righteousness,
Christ Jesus our Lord.” For the first peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
time in my life I saw a man earnestly These are our “ honours ” from God ; we
turning into reality the principles which ask not the honours of empire and title.
others confessed with their lips only. Our King is in heaven, and will in time
That the words of the New Testament return to bring to an end these earthly
contained the highest truth accessible to kingdoms ; but until then we claim no
man—truth not to be taken from nor superiority over you on earth. As the
added to—all good men, as I thought, riches of this world, so the powers of
confessed ; never before had I seen a this world belong to another king; we
�STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
dare not try to appropriate them in the
name of our heavenly King ; nay, we
should hold it as great a sin to clutch
empire for our churches as to clutch
wealth ; God forbid that we covet either !
—But what then if the enemy had had
foresight to reply, O proconsul, this Paul
talks finely, and perhaps sincerely; but
if so, yet cheat not yourself to think that
his followers will tie themselves to his
mild equity and disinterestedness. Now
indeed they are weak; now they profess
unworldliness and unambition ; they
wish only to be recognised as peaceable
subjects, as citizens and as equals ; but if
once they grow strong enough they will
discover that their spears and swords are
the symbol of their Lord’s return from
heaven; that He now at length com
missions them to eject you, as vile
infidels, from all seats of power—to slay
you with the sword if you dare to offer
sacrifice to the immortal gods—to degrade
you so that you shall not only not
enter the senate, or the privy council of
the prince, or the judgment seat, but not
even the jury-box, or a municipal corpora
tion, or the pettiest edileship of Italy ;
nay, you shall not be lieutenants of
armies, or tribunes, or anything above
the lowest centurion. You shall become
a plebeian class—cheap bodies to be
exposed in battle or to toil in the field,
and pay rent to the lordly Christian.
Such shall be the fate of you, the
worshippers of Quirinus and of Jupiter
Best and Greatest, if you neglect to
crush and extirpate, during the weakness
of its infancy, this ambitious and unscru
pulous portent of a religion.-—Oh, how
would Paul have groaned in spirit at
accusations such as these, hateful to his
soul, aspersing to his churches, but
impossible to refute 1 Either Paul’s
doctrine was a fond dream, felt I, or
it is certain that he would have protested
with all the force of his heart against the
principle that Christians as such have any
claim to earthly power and place; or
that they could, when they gained a
numerical majority, without sin enact
laws to punish, stigmatise, exclude, or
27
otherwise treat with political inferiority
the Pagan remnant. To uphold such
exclusion is to lay the axe to the root of
the spiritual Church, to stultify the
Apostolic preaching, and at this moment
justify Mohammedans in persecuting
Christians. For the Sultan might fairly
say: “ I give Christians the choice of
exile or death ; I will not allow that sect
to grow up here, for it has fully warned
me that it will proscribe my religion in
my own land as soon as it has power.”
On such grounds I looked with amaze
ment and sorrow at spiritual Christians
who desired to exclude the Romanists
from full equality, and I was happy to
enjoy as to this the passive assent of the
Irish clergyman, who, though “ Orange ”
in his connections, and opposed to
all political action, yet only so much
the more deprecated what he called
“ political Protestantism.”
In spite of the strong revulsion which
I felt against some of the peculiarities of
this remarkable man, I for the first time
in my life found myself under the
dominion of a superior. When I
remember how even those bowed down
before him, who had been to him in
the place of parents—accomplished and
experienced minds—I cease to wonder
in the retrospect that he riveted me in
such a bondage. Henceforth I began
to ask, What will he say to this and that ?
In his reply I always expected to find a
higher portion of God’s Spirit than in
any I could frame for myself. In order
to learn divine truth it became to me a
surer process to consult him than to
search for myself and wait upon God ;
and gradually (as I afterwards discerned)
my religious thought had merged into
the mere process of developing fearlessly
into results all his principles, without any
deeper examining of my foundations.
Indeed, but for a few weaknesses which
warned me that he might err, I could
have accepted him as an apostle com
missioned to reveal the mind of God,
In his after-course (which I may not
indicate) this gentleman has everywhere
displayed a wonderful power of bending
�28
STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
other minds to his own, and even
stamping upon them the tones of his
voice and all sorts of slavish imitation.
Over the general results of his action I
have long deeply mourned, as blunting
his natural tenderness and sacrificing his
wisdom to the letter, dwarfing men’s
understandings, contracting their hearts,
crushing their moral sensibilities, and
setting those at variance who ought to
love. Yet oh ! how specious was it in
the beginning ! He only wanted men “ to
submit their understandings to God"—
that is, to the Bible; that is, to his inter
pretation ! From seeing his action and
influence I have learnt that, if it be
dangerous to a young man (as it
assuredly is) to have no superior mind
to which he may look up with confiding
reverence, it may be even more danger
ous to think that he has found such a
mind; for he who is most logically
consistent, though to a one-sided theory,
and most ready to sacrifice self to that
theory, seems to ardent youth the most
assuredly trustworthy guide. Such was
Ignatius Loyola in his day.
My study of the New Testament at
this time had made it impossible for me
to overlook that the Apostles held it to
be a duty of all disciples to expect a near
and sudden destruction of the earth by
fire, and constantly to be expecting the
return of the Lord from heaven. It was
easy to reply that “experience dis
proved ” this expectation; but to this
an answer was ready provided in Peter’s
Second Epistle, which forewarns us that
we shall be taunted by the unbelieving
with this objection, but bids us, neverthe
less, continue to look out for the speedy
fulfilment of this great event. In short,
the case stood thus :—If it was not too
soon 1800 years ago to stand in daily
expectation of it, it is not too soon now;
to say that it is too late is not merely to
impute error to the Apostles on a matter
which they made of first-rate moral
importance, but is to say that those
whom Peter calls “ ungodly scoffers,
walking after their own lusts,” were
right, and he was wrong, on the very
point for which he thus vituperated
them.
The importance of this doctrine is,
that it totally forbids all working for
earthly objects distant in time ; and here
the Irish clergyman threw into the same
scale the entire weight of his character.
For instance, if a youth had a natural
aptitude for mathematics, and he asked,
Ought he to give himself to the study, in
hope that he might diffuse a serviceable
knowledge of it, or possibly even enlarge
the boundaries of the science ? my
friend would have replied that such a
purpose was very proper, if entertained
by a worldly man. Let the dead bury
their dead, and let the world study the
things of the world ; they know no better,
and they are of use to the Church, who
may borrow and use the jewels of the
Egyptians. But such studies cannot be
eagerly followed by the Christian, except
when he yields to unbelief. In fact,
what would it avail even to become a
second La Place after thirty years’ study
if in five and thirty years the Lord
descended from heaven, snatched up all
his saints to meet him, and burned to
ashes all the works of the earth ? Then
all the mathematician’s work would have
perished, and he would grieve over his
unwisdom, in laying up store which
could not stand the fire of the Lord.
Clearly, if we are bound to act as though
the end of all earthly concerns may
come “at cockcrowing or at midday,”
then to work for distant earthly objects
is the part of a fool or of an unbeliever.
I found a wonderful dulness in many
persons on this important subject.
Wholly careless to ask what was the
true Apostolic doctrine, they insisted
that “ Death is to us practically the
coming of the Lord,” and were amazed
at my seeing so much emphasis in the
other view. This comes of the abomin
able selfishness preached as religion. If
I were to labour at some useful work for
ten years—say at clearing forest-land,
laying out a farm, and building a house
—and were then to die, I should leave
my work to my successors, and it would
�STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
not be lost. Some men work for higher,
some for lower, earthly ends (“ in a great
house there are many vessels,” etc.) ; but
all the results are valuable, if there is a
chance of transmitting them to those
who follow us. But if all is to be very
shortly burnt up, it is then folly to exert
ourselves for such objects. To the dead
man, it is said, the cases are but one.
This is to the purpose, if self absorbs all
our heart; away from the purpose, if
we are to work for unselfish ends.
Nothing can be clearer than that the
New Testament is entirely pervaded by
the doctrine—sometimes explicitly stated,
sometimes unceremoniously assumed—
that earthly things are very speedily to
come to an end, and therefore are not
worthy of our high affections and deep
interest. Hence, when thoroughly imbued
with this persuasion, I looked with mourn
ful pity on a great mind wasting its ener
gies on any distant aim of this earth. For
a statesman to talk about providing for
future generations sounded to me as a
melancholy avowal of unbelief. To
devote good talents to write history or
investigate nature was simple waste ; for
at the Lord’s coming history and science
would no longer be learned by these
feeble appliances of ours.
Thus an
inevitable deduction from the doctrine
of the Apostles was, that “we must work
for speedy results only.” Vita summa
brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam. I
then accepted the doctrine, in profound
obedience to the absolutely infallible
system of precepts. I now see that the
falsity and mischief of the doctrine is
one of the very many disproofs of the
assumed, but unverified, infallibility.
However, the hold which the Apostolic
belief then took of me subjected my
conscience to the exhortations of the
Irish clergyman, whenever he inculcated
that the highest Christian must neces
sarily decline the pursuit of science,
knowledge, art, history—except so far as
any of these things might be made use
ful tools for immediate spiritual results.
Under the stimulus to my imagination
given by this gentleman’s character, the
29
desire, which from a boy I had more or
less nourished, of becoming a teacher of
Christianity to the heathen took stronger
and stronger hold of me. I saw that I
was shut out from the ministry of the
Church of England, and knew not how
to seek connection with Dissenters. I
had met one eminent Quaker, but was
offended by the violent and obviously
false interpretations by which he tried to
get rid of the two sacraments; and I
thought there was affectation involved in
the forms which the doctrine of the
Spirit took with him. Besides, I had
not been prepossessed by those Dis
senters whom I had heard speak at the
Bible Society. I remember that one of
them talked in pompous measured tones
of voice, and with much stereotyped
phraseology, about “the Bible only, the
religion of Protestants
altogether, it
did not seem to me that there was at all
so much of nature and simple truth in
them as in Church clergymen. I also
had a vague, but strong, idea that all
Dissenting Churches assumed some
special, narrow, and sectarian basis.
The question indeed arose, “ Was I at
liberty to preach to the heathen without
ordination?” but I, with extreme ease,
answered in the affirmative. To teach a
Church, of course, needs the sanction
of the Church : no man can assume
pastoral rights without assent from other
parties ; but to speak to those without is
obviously a natural right, with which the
Church can have nothing to do. And
herewith all the precedents of the New
Testament so obviously agreed that I
had not a moment’s disquiet on this
head.
At the same time, when asked by one
to whom I communicated my feelings
“whether I felt that I had a call to
preach to the heathen,” I replied I had
not the least consciousness of it, and
knew not what was meant by such lan
guage. All that I knew was that I was
willing and anxious to do anything in my
power either to teach, or to help others
in teaching, if only I could find out the
wray.
That after eighteen hundred
�3°
STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
years no farther progress should have
been made towards the universal spread
of Christianity appeared a scandalous
reproach on Christendom. Is it not,
perhaps, because those who are in
Church office cannot go, and the mass
of the laity think it no business of theirs ?
If a persecution fell on England, and
thousands were driven into exile, and,
like those who were scattered in Stephen’s
persecution, “went everywhere preach
ing the word ”—might not this be the
conversion of the world, as indeed that
began the conversion of the Gentiles ?
But the laity leave all to the clergy, and
the clergy have more than enough to do.
About this time I heard of another
remarkable man, whose name was already
before the public—Mr. Groves—who had
written a tract called Christian Devoted
ness, on the duty of devoting all worldly
property for the cause of Christ, and
utterly renouncing the attempt to amass
money. In pursuance of this he was
going to Persia as a teacher of Chris
tianity.
I read his tract, and was
inflamed with the greatest admiration;
judging immediately that this was the
man whom I should -rejoice to aid or
serve. For a scheme of this nature
alone appeared to combine with the
views which I had been gradually con
solidating concerning the practical rela
tion of a Christian Church to Christian
Evidences. On this very important sub
ject it is requisite to speak in detail.
The Christian Evidences are an essen
tial part of the course of religious study
prescribed at Oxford, and they had
engaged from an early period a large share
of my attention. Each treatise on the
subject, taken by itself, appeared to me to
have great argumentative force; but when
I tried to grasp them all together in a
higher act of thought I was sensible of a
certain confusion and inability to recon
cile their fundamental assumptions. One
either formally stated, or virtually as
sumed, that the deepest basis of all
religious knowledge was the testimony of
sense to some fact which is ascertained
to be miraculous when examined by the
light of physics or physiology; and that
we must, at least in a great degree,
distrust and abandon our moral convic
tions or auguries at the bidding of
sensible miracle. Another treatise as
sumed that men’s moral feelings and
beliefs are, on the whole, the most trust
worthy thing to be found ; and, starting
from them as from a known and ascer
tained foundation, proceeded to glorify
Christianity because of its expanding,
strengthening, and beautifying all that
we know by conscience to be morally
right. That the former argument, if ever
so valid, was still too learned and
scholastic, not for the vulgar only, but
for every man in his times of moral trial,
I felt instinctively persuaded; yet my
intellect could not wholly dispense with
it, and my belief in the depravity of the
moral understanding of men inclined me
to go some way in defending it. To
endeavour to combine the two arguments
by saying that they were adapted to
different states of mind was plausible ;
yet it conceded that neither of the two
went to the bottom of human thought, or
showed what were the real fixed points
of man’s knowledge; without knowing
which we are in perpetual danger of
mere argumentum ad hominem, or, in
fact, arguing in a circle—as to prove
miracles from doctrine, and doctrine from
miracles. I, however, conceived that
the most logical minds among Christians
would contend that there was another
solution, which, in 1827, I committed to
paper in nearly the following words :—
“ May it not be doubted whether
Leland sees the real circumstance that
makes a revelation necessary ?
“No revelation is needed to inform us
of the invisible power and deity of God ;
that we are bound to worship Him ; that
we are capable of sinning against Him
and liable to His just judgment; nay,
that we have sinned, and that we find in
nature marks of His displeasure against
sin; and yet that He is merciful. St.
Paul and our Lord show us that these
�STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
things are knowable by reason. The
ignorance of the heathens is judicial
blindness, to punish their obstinate rejec
tion of the true God.
“But a revelation A needed to convey
a special message, such as this : That
God has provided an Atonement for our
sins, has deputed His own Son to become
Head of the redeemed human family,
and intends to raise those who believe in
Him to a future and eternal life of bliss.
These are external truths (for ‘ who can
believe, unless one be sent to preach
them ?’), and are not knowable by any
reasonings drawn from nature. They
transcend natural analogies and moral or
spiritual experience. To reveal them a
specific communication must be accorded
to us, and on this the necessity for
miracle turns.”
Thus, in my view, at that time, the
materials of the Bible were in theory
divisible into two portions. Concerning
the one (which I called natural religion)
it not only was not presumptuous, but it
was absolutely essential, to form an inde
pendent judgment; for this was the real
basis of all faith. Concerning the other
(which I called revealed religion), our
business was not to criticise the message,
but to examine the credentials1 of the
messenger; and, after the most unbiassed
possible examination of these, then, if
they proved sound, to receive his com
munication reverently and unquestion
ingly.
Such was the theory with which I
came from Oxford to Ireland; but I was
hindered from working out its legitimate
results by the overpowering influence of
the Irish clergyman ; who, while pressing
the authority of every letter of the Scrip1 Very unintelligent criticism of my words
induces me to add that “the credentials of
revelation, ” as distinguished from ‘ ‘ the contents
of revelation,” are here intended. Whether
such a distinction can be preserved is quite
another question. The view here exhibited is
essentially that of Paley, and was in my day the
prevalent one at Oxford. I do not think that
die present Archbishop of Canterbury will disown
it, any more than Lloyd, and Burton, and Hamp
den—bishops and Regius Professors of Divinity. I
31
ture with an unshrinking vehemence
that I never saw surpassed, yet, with a
common inconsistency, showed more
than indifference towards learned his
torical and critical evidence on the side
of Christianity; and, indeed, unmerci
fully exposed erudition to scorn, both by
caustic reasoning and by irrefragable
quotation of texts. I constantly had
occasion to admire the power with which
he laid hold of the moral side of every
controversy, whether he was reasoning
against Romanism, against the High
Church, against learned religion or philo
sophic scepticism; and in this matter
his practical axiom was that the advocate
of truth had to address himself to the
conscience of the other party, and, if
possible, make him feel that there was
a moral and spiritual superiority against
him. Such doctrine, when joined with
an inculcation of man’s natural blindness
and total depravity, was anything but
clearing to my intellectual perceptions ;
in fact, I believe that for some years I
did not recover from the dimness and
confusion which he spread over them.
But in my entire inability to explain
away the texts which spoke with scorn
of worldly wisdom, philosophy, and
learning, on the one hand, and the
obvious certainty, on the other, that no
historical evidence for miracle was pos
sible except by the aid of learning, I
for the time abandoned this side of
Christian Evidence—not as invalid, but
as too unwieldy a weapon for use—and
looked to direct moral evidence alone.
And now rose the question, How could
such moral evidence become appreciable
to heathens and Mohammedans ?
I felt distinctly enough that mere talk
could bring no conviction, and would be
interpreted by the actions and character
of the speaker. While nations called
Christian are only known to heathens
as great conquerors, powerful avengers,
sharp traders—often lax in morals, and
apparently without religion—the fine
theories of a Christian teacher would be
as vain to convert a Mohammedan or
Hindoo to Christianity as the soundness
�32
STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
of Seneca’s moral treatises to convert
me to Roman Paganism. Christendom
has to earn a new reputation before
Christian precepts will be thought to
stand in any essential or close relation
with the mystical doctrines of Chris
tianity. I could see no other way to
this but by an entire Church being
formed of new elements on a heathen
soil—a Church in which by no means
all should be preachers, but all should
be willing to do for all whatever occasion
required. Such a Church had I read of
among the Moravians in Greenland and
in South Africa. I imagined a little
colony, so animated by primitive faith,
love, and disinterestedness that the
collective moral influence of all might
interpret and enforce the words of the
few who preached. Only in this way
did it appear to me that preaching to
the heathen could be attended with
success. In fact, whatever success had
been attained seemed to come only
after many years, when the natives had
gained experience in the characters of
the Christian family around them.
When I had returned to Oxford I
induced the Irish clergyman to visit the
University, and introduced him to many
of my equals in age and juniors. Most
striking was it to see how instantaneously
he assumed the place of universal father
confessor, as if he had been a known
and long-trusted friend. His insight into
character, and the tenderness pervading
his austerity, so opened young men’s
hearts that day after day there was no
end of secret closetings with him. I
began to see^the prospect of so con
siderable a movement of mind as might
lead many in the same direction as
myself; and if it was by a collective
Church that Mohammedans were to be
taught, the only way was for each
separately to be led to the same place
by the same spiritual influence. As
Groves was a magnet to draw me, so
might I draw others. In no other way
could a pure and efficient Church be
formed. If we waited, as with worldly
policy, to make up a complete colony
before leaving England, we should fail
of getting the right men; we should
pack them together by a mechanical
process, instead of leaving them to be
united by vital affinities. Thus actuated,
and other circumstances conducing, in
September, 1830, with some Irish friends,
I set out to join Mr. Groves at Bagdad.
What I might do there I knew not. I
did not go as a minister of religion, and
I everywhere pointedly disowned the
assumption of this character, even down
to the colour of my dress. But I thought
I knew many ways in which I might be
of service, and I was prepared to act
according to circumstances.
Perhaps the strain of practical life
must in any case, before long, have
broken the chain by which the Irish
clergyman unintentionally held me ; but
all possible influence from him was now
cut off by separation. The dear com
panions of my travels no more aimed to
guide my thoughts than I theirs; neither
ambition nor suspicion found place in
our hearts; and my mind was thus able
again without disturbance to develop its
own tendencies.
I had become distinctly aware that
the modern Churches in general by no
means hold the truth as conceived of by
the Apostles. In the matter of the
Sabbath and of the Mosaic Law, of
infant baptism, of episcopacy, of the
doctrine of the Lord’s return, I had
successively found the prevalent Protes
tantism to be un-Apostolic. Hence arose
in me a conscious and continuous effort
to read the New Testament with fresh
eyes and without bias, and so to take up
the real doctrines of the heavenly and
everlasting Gospel.
In studying the narrative of John I
was strongly impressed by the fact that
the glory and greatness of the Son of
God is constantly ascribed to the will
and pleasure of the Father. I had been
accustomed to hear this explained of his
mediatorial greatness only, but this now
looked to me like a makeshift, and to
�STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
4 - ,'
i want the simplicity of truth—an impresI sion which grew deeper with closer
examination. The emphatic declaration
of Christ, “ My Father is greater than I,”
| especially arrested my attention. Could
I really expound this as meaning, “ My
! Father, the Supreme God, is greater than
I am, if you look solely to my human
nature ” ? Such a truism can scarcely
have deserved such emphasis. Did the
i disciples need to be taught that God
was greater than man ? Surely, on the
contrary, the Saviour must have meant
| to say: “Divine as I am, yet my heavenly
I Father is greater than I, even when you
take cognisance of my divine natureI
did not then know that my comment
was exactly that of the most orthodox
Fathers; I rather thought they were
against me, but for them I did not care
much. I reverenced the doctrine of the
Trinity as something vital to the soul,
but felt that to love the Fathers or the
Athanasian Creed more than the Gospel
of John would be a supremely miserable
superstition. However, that Creed states
; that there is no inequality between the
| Three Persons ; in John it became
increasingly clear to me that the divine
Son is unequal to the Father. To say
that “the Son of God” meant “Jesus
as man ” was a preposterous evasion, for
there is no higher title for the Second
Person of the Trinity than this very one
—Son of God. Now, in the fifth chapter,
when the Jews accused Jesus “ of making
himself equal to God,” by calling himself
Son of God, Jesus even hastens to pro
test against the inference as a misrepre
sentation—beginning with, “ The Son
can do nothing of himself ” — and
proceeds elaborately to ascribe all his
.-ul greatness to the Father’s will. In fact,
I the Son is emphatically “he who is
sent,” and the Father is “he who sent
_ ! him ”; and all would feel the deep
qmr impropriety of trying to exchange these
| phrases. The Son who is sent—sent,
not after he was humbled to become
man, but in order to be so humbled—
■| was NOT EQUAL TO, but LESS THAN, the
I] Father who sent him. To this I found
33
the whole Gospel of John to bear
witness, and with this conviction the
truth and honour of the Athanasian
Creed fell to the ground. One of its
main tenets was proved false, and yet it
dared to utter anathemas on all who
rejected it!
. I afterwards remembered my old
thought, that we must surely understand
our own words, when we venture to speak
at all about divine mysteries. Having
gained boldness to gaze steadily on the
topic, I at length saw that the compiler
of the Athanasian Creed did not under
stand his own words. If anyone speaks
of three men, all that he means is, “three
objects of thought, of whom each
separately may be called Man.” So
also, all that could possibly be meant by
three gods is, “ three objects of thought,
of whom each separately may be called
God.” To avow the last statement, as
the Creed does, and yet repudiate Three
Gods, is to object to the phrase, yet
confess to the only meaning which the
phrase can convey. Thus the Creed
really teaches polytheism, but saves
orthodoxy by forbidding anyone to call
it by its true name. Or to put the
matter otherwise : it teaches three Divine
Persons and denies three Gods, and
leaves us to guess what else is a Divine
Person but a God, or a God but a Divine
Person. Who, then, can deny that this
intolerant Creed is a malignant riddle ?
That there is nothing in the Scripture
about Trinity in Unity and Unity in
Trinity I had long observed, and the
total absence of such phraseology had
left on me a general persuasion that the
Church had systematised too much. But
in my study of John I was now arrested
by a text which showed me how exceed
ingly far from a Tri-unity. was the
Trinity of that Gospel—if trinity it be.
Namely, in his last prayer, Jesus
addresses to his Father the words :
“This is life eternal, that they may
know Thee, the only True God, and
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” I
became amazed as I considered these
words more and more attentively, and
c
2
�34
STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
without prejudice, and I began to under
stand how prejudice, when embalmed
with reverence, blinds the mind. Why
had I never before seen what is here so
plain, that the One God of Jesus was not
a Trinity, but was the First Person of
the ecclesiastical Trinity ?
But, on a fuller search, I found this to
be Paul’s doctrine also; for in i Cor.
viii., when discussing the subject of poly
theism, he says that, “though there be to
the heathen many that are called gods,
yet to us there is but One God, the
Father, of whom are all things ; and One
Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all
things.” Thus he defines monotheism
to consist in holding the person of the
Father to be the One God; although
this, if any, should have been the place
for a “Trinity in Unity.”
But did I proceed to deny the divinity
of the Son ? By no means ; I conceived
of him as in the highest and fullest sense
divine, short of being Father and not
Son. I now believed that by the phrase
“ only begotten Son,” John, and indeed
Christ himself, meant to teach us that
there was an impassable chasm between
him and all creatures, in that he had a
true, though a derived, divine nature ; as,
indeed, the Nicene Creed puts the con
trast, he was “begotten, not made.”
Thus all divine glory dwells in the Son,
but it is because the Father has willed it.
A year or more afterwards, when I had
again the means of access to books, and
consulted that very common Oxford
book, Pearson on the Creed (for which I
had felt so great a distaste that I never
before read it), I found this to" be the
undoubted doctrine of the great Nicene
and post-Nicene Fathers, who laid much
emphasis on two statements, which with
the modern Church are idle and dead—
viz., that “ the Son was begotten of his
Father before all worlds,” and that “the
Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father
and the Son.” In the view of the old
Church, the Father alone was the Foun
tain of Deity (and therefore fitly called
the One God and the Only True God),
while the Deity of the other two Persons
was real, yet derived and subordinate.
Moreover, I found in Gregory Nazianzen
and others that to confess this derivation
of the Son and Spirit and the underivedness of the Father alone was, in their
view, quite essential to save monotheism;
the One God being the underived Father.
Although, in my own mind, all doubt
as to the doctrine of John and Paul on
the main question seemed to be quite
cleared away from the time that I dwelt
on their explanation of monotheism, this
in no respect agitated me, or even
engaged me in any farther search. There
was nothing to force me into controversy,
or make this one point of truth unduly
preponderant. I concealed none of my
thoughts from my companions ; and con
cerning them I will only say that, whether
they did or did not feel acquiescence,
they behaved towards me with all the
affection and all the equality which I
would have wished myself to maintain
had the case been inverted. I was,
however, sometimes uneasy, when the
thought crossed my mind: “ What if
we, like Henry Martyn, were charged
with polytheism by Mohammedans, and
were forced to defend ourselves by
explaining in detail our doctrine of the
Trinity? Perhaps no two of us would
explain it alike, and this would expose
Christian doctrine to contempt.” Then,
farther it came across me: How very
remarkable it is that the Jews, those
strict monotheists, never seem to have
attacked the Apostles for polytheism '
It would have been so plausible an
imputation, one that the instinct of party
would so readily suggest, if there had
been any external form of doctrine to
countenance it. Surely it is transparent
that the Apostles did not teach as Dr.
Waterland. I had always felt a great
repugnance to the argumentations con
cerning the Personality of the Holy
Spirit; no doubt from an inward sense,
however dimly confessed, that they were
all words without meaning. For the
disputant who maintains this dogma tells
us in the very next breath that Person
has not in this connection its common
�STRIVINGS ARTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
signification; so that he is elaborately
enforcing upon us we know not what.
That the Spirit of God meant in the
New Testament God in the heart had
long been to me a sufficient explanation;
and who, by logic or metaphysics, will
carry us beyond this ?
While we were at Aleppo I one day
got into religious discourse with a Moham
medan carpenter, which left on me a
lasting impression. Among other matters,
I was peculiarly desirous of disabusing
him of the current notion of his people,
that our Gospels are spurious narratives
of late date. I found great difficulty of
expression; but the man listened to
me with much attention, and I was
encouraged to exert myself. He waited
patiently till I had done, and then spoke
to the following effect: “I will tell you,
sir, how the case stands. God has given
to you English a great many good gifts.
You make fine ships, and sharp pen
knives, and good cloth and cottons;
and you have rich nobles and brave
soldiers; and you write and print niany
learned books (dictionaries and gram
mars) : all this is of God. But there is
one thing that God has withheld from
you, and has revealed to us, and that is
the knowledge of the true religion by
which one may be saved.” When he
thus ignored my argument (which was
probably quite unintelligible to him),
and delivered his simple protest, I was
silenced, and at the same time amused.
But the more I thought it over, the
more instruction I saw in the case. His
position towards me was exactly that of a
humble Christian towards an unbelieving
philosopher; nay, that of the early
Apostles or Jewish prophets towards
the proud, cultivated, worldly-wise, and
powerful heathen. This not only showed
the vanity of any argument to him,
except one purely addressed to his
moral and spiritual faculties ; but it also
indicated to me that ignorance has its
spiritual self-sufficiency as well as erudi
tion, and that, if there is a pride of
reason, so is there a pride of unreason.
But, though this rested in my memory,
35
it was long before I worked out all the
results of that thought.
Another matter brought me some
disquiet. An Englishman of rather low
tastes, who came to Aleppo at this time,
called upon us, and, as he was civilly
received, repeated his visit more than
once. Being unencumbered with fas
tidiousness, this person before long made
various rude attacks on the truth and
authority of the Christian religion, and
drew me on to defend it. What I had
heard of the moral life of the speaker
made me feel that his was not the mind
to have insight into divine truth; and I
desired to divert the argument from
external topics, and bring it to a point
in which there might be a chance of
touching his conscience. But I found
this to be impossible. He returned
actively to the assault against Chris
tianity, and I could not bear to hear him
vent historical falsehoods and misrepre
sentations damaging to the Christian
cause without contradicting them. He
was a half-educated man, and I easily
confuted him to my own entire satisfac
tion ; but he was not either abashed or
convinced, and at length withdrew as
one victorious. On reflecting over this,
I felt painfully that, if a Moslem had
been present and had understood all
that had been said, he would have
remained in total uncertainty which of
the two disputants was in the right, for
the controversy had turned on points
wholly remote from the sphere of his
knowledge or thought. Yet to have
declined the battle would have seemed
like conscious weakness on my part.
Thus the historical side of my religion,
though essential to it, and though resting
on valid evidence (as I unhesitatingly
believed), exposed me to attacks in
which I might incur virtual defeat or
disgrace, but in which, from the nature
of the case, I could never win an avail
able victory. This was to me very dis
agreeable, yet I saw not my way out of
the entanglement.
Two years after I left England a hope
was conceived that more friends might
�36
STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
be induced to join us, and I returned
home from Bagdad with the commission
to bring this about, if there were suitable
persons disposed for it. On my return,
and while yet in quarantine on the coast
of England, I received an uncomfortable
letter from a most intimate spiritual
friend, to the effect that painful reports
had been everywhere spread abroad
against my soundness in the faith. The
channel by which they had come was
indicated to me; but my friend expressed
a firm hope that when I had explained
myself it would all prove to be nothing.
Now began a time of deep and critical
trial to me and to my creed—a time
hard to speak of to the public; yet
without a pretty full notice of it the
rest of the account would be quite unin
telligible.
The Tractarian movement was just
commencing in 1833. My brother was
taking a position in which he was bound
to show that he could sacrifice private
love to ecclesiastical dogma, and upon
learning that I had spoken at some
small meetings of religious people
(which he interpreted, I believe, to
be an assuming of the priest’s office)
he separated himself entirely from my
private friendship and acquaintance. To
the public this may have some interest,
as indicating the disturbing excitement
which animated that cause; but my
reason for naming the fact here is solely
to exhibit the practical positions into
which I myself was thrown. In my
brother’s conduct there was not a shade
of unkindness, and I have not a thought
of complaining of it. My distress was
naturally great, until I had fully ascer
tained from him that I had given no
personal offence. But the mischief of
it went deeper. It practically cut me
off from other members of my family,
who were living in his house, and whose
state of feeling towards me, through
separation and my own agitations of
mind, I for some time totally mistook.
I had, however, myself slighted rela
tionship in comparison with Christian
brotherhood — sectarian
brotherhood,
some may call it. I perhaps had none
but myself to blame; but in the far
more painful occurrences which were to
succeed one another for many months
together I was blameless. Each suc
cessive friend who asked explanations of
my alleged heresy was satisfied—or, at
least, left me with that impression—after
hearing me; not one who met me face
to face had a word to reply to the plain
Scriptures which I quoted. Yet, when I
was gone away, one after another was
turned against me by somebody else
whom I had not yet met or did not know;
for in every theological conclave which
deliberates on joint action the most
bigoted seems always to prevail.
I will trust my pen to only one
specimen of details. The Irish clergy
man was not able to meet me. He
wrote a very desultory letter of grave
alarm and inquiry, stating that he had
heard that I was endeavouring to sound
the divine nature by the miserable
plummet of human philosophy, with
much beside that I felt to be mere
commonplace which everybody might
address to everybody who differed from
him. I, however, replied in the frankest,
most cordial and trusting tone, assuring
him that I was infinitely far from
imagining that I could “by searching
understand God ”; on the contrary,
concerning his higher mysteries I felt I
knew absolutely nothing but what he
revealed to me in his word; but in
studying this word I found John and
Paul to declare the Father, and not the
Trinity, to be the One God. Referring
him to John xvii. 3, 1 Cor. viii. 5, 6,
I fondly believed that one so “ subject
to the word,” and so resolutely
renouncing man’s authority in order
that he might serve God, would
immediately see as I saw. But I
assured him, in all the depth of affec
tion, that I felt how much fuller insight
he had than I into all divine truth ; and
not he only, but others to whom I
alluded; and that, if I was in error, I
only desired to be taught more truly,
and either with him, or at his feet, to
�STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
learn of God. He replied, to my amaze
ment and distress, in a letter of much
tenderness, but which was to the effect
that, if I allowed the Spirit of God to be
with him rather than with me, it was
wonderful that I set my single judgment
against the mind of the Spirit and of the
whole Church of God; and that, as for
admitting into Christian communion
one who held my doctrine, it has this
absurdity, that while I was in such a
state of belief it was my duty to
anathematise them as idolaters. Severe as
was the shock given me by this letter, I
wrote again most lovingly, humbly, and
imploringly, for I still adored him, and
could have given him my right hand or
my right eye—anything but my con
science. I showed him that if it was a
matter of action I would submit, for I
unfeignedly believed that he had more
of the Spirit of God than I, but over my
secret convictions I had no power. I
was shut up to obey and believe God
rather than man, and from the nature of
the case, the profoundest respect for my
brother’s judgment could not in itself
alter mine. As to the whole Church
being against me, I did not know what
that meant; I was willing to accept the
Nicene Creed, and this I thought ought
to be a sufficient defensive argument
against the Church. His answer was
decisive—he was exceedingly surprised
at my recurring to mere ecclesiastical
creeds, as though they could have the
slightest weight, and he must insist on
my acknowledging that in the two texts
quoted the word Father meant the
Trinity, if I desired to be in any way
recognised as holding the truth.
The Father meant the Trinity ! ! For
the first time I perceived that so
vehement a champion of the sufficiency
of the Scripture, so staunch an opposer
of Creeds and Churches, was wedded to
an extra-Scriptural creed of his own, by
which he tested the spiritual state of his
brethren. I was in despair, and like a
man thunderstruck. I had nothing more
to say. Two more letters from the same
hand I saw, the latter of which was to
yj
threaten some new acquaintances who
were kind to me (persons wholly
unknown to him) that if they did not
desist from sheltering me and break off
intercourse they should, as far as his
influence went, themselves everywhere
be cut off from Christian communion
and recognition. This will suffice to
indicate the sort of social persecution
through which, after a succession of
struggles, I found myself separated from
persons whom I had trustingly admired,
and on whom I had most counted for
union—with whom I fondly believed
myself bound up for eternity—of whom
some were my previously intimate
friends, while for others, even on slight
acquaintance, I would have performed
menial offices and thought myself
honoured; whom I still looked upon
as the blessed and excellent of the
earth and the special favourites of
heaven; whose company (though often
times they were considerably my
inferiors either in rank or in knowledge
and cultivation) I would have chosen in
preference to that of nobles ; whom I
loved solely because I thought them to
love God, and of whom I asked nothing,
but that they would admit me as the
meanest and most frail of disciples. My
heart was ready to break; I wished for
a woman’s soul that I might weep in
floods. Oh, dogma ! dogma ! how dost
thou trample under foot love, truth, con
science, justice! Was ever a Moloch
worse than thou? Burn me at the
stake; then Christ will receive me, and
saints beyond the grave will love me,
though the saints here know me not.
But now I am alone in the world: I can
trust no one. The new acquaintances who
barely tolerate me, and old friends whom
reports have not reached (if such there
be), may turn against me with animosity
to-morrow, as those have done from
whom I could least have imagined it.
Where is union ? Where is the Church
which was to convert the heathen ?
This was not my only reason, yet it
was soon a sufficient and at last an over
whelming reason, against returning to the
�STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
East. The pertinacity of the attacks
made on me, and on all who dared to
hold by me in a certain connection,
showed that I could no longer be any
thing but a thorn in the side of my
friends abroad; nay, I was unable to
predict how they themselves might
change towards me. The idea of a
Christian Church propagating Chris
tianity while divided against itself was
ridiculous. Never, indeed, had I had
the most remote idea that my dear
friends there had been united to me by
agreement in intellectual propositions;
nor could I yet believe it. I remem
bered a saying of the noble-hearted
Groves: “Talk of loving me while I
agree with them! Give me men that
will love me when I differ from them
and contradict them; those will be the
men to build up a true Church.” I
asked myself, was I then possibly
different from all ? With me, and, as I
had thought, with all my spiritual friends,
intellectual dogma was not the test of
spirituality. A hundred times over had
I heard the Irish clergyman emphatically
enunciate the contrary. Nothing was
clearer in his preaching, talking, and
writing than that salvation was a present,
real, experienced fact; a saving of the
soul from the dominion of baser desires,
and an inward union of it in love and
homage to Christ, who, as the centre of
all perfection, glory, and beauty, was the
, revelation of God to the heart. He
who was thus saved could not help
knowing that he was reconciled, par
doned, beloved; and therefore he re
joiced in God his Saviour ; indeed, to
imagine joy without this personal assur
ance and direct knowledge was quite
preposterous. But, on the other hand,
the soul thus spiritually minded has a
keen sense of like qualities in others. It
cannot but discern when another is
tender in conscience, disinterested, for
bearing, scornful of untruth and base
ness, and esteeming nothing so much as
the fruits of the Spirit; accordingly, John
did not hesitate to say : “ We know that
we have passed from death unto life,
because we love the brethren.” Our doc
trine certainly had been that the Church
was the assembly of the saved, gathered
by the vital attractions of God’s Spirit;
that in it no one was lord or teacher, but
one was our teacher, even Christ; that
as long as we had no earthly bribes to
tempt men to join us there was not much
cause to fear false brethren; for if we
were heavenly minded, and these were
earthly, they would soon dislike and shun
us. Why should we need to sit in judg
ment and excommunicate them except
in the case of publicly scandalous
conduct ?
It is true that I fully believed certain
intellectual convictions to be essential to
genuine spirituality; for instance, if I
had heard that a person unknown to me
did not believe in the Atonement of
Christ, I should have inferred that he
had no spiritual life. But if the person
had come under my direct knowledge,
my theory was on no account to reject
him on a question of creed, but in any
case to receive all those whom Christ
had received, all on whom the Spirit of
God had come down, just as the Church
_at Jerusalem did in regard to admitting
the Gentiles (Acts xi. 18). Nevertheless,
was not this perhaps a theory pleasant to
talk of, but too good for practice? I
could not tell; for it had never been so
severely tried. I remembered, however,
that when I had thought it right to be
baptised as an adult (regarding my
baptism as an infant to have been a
mischievous fraud), the sole confession
of faith which I made, or would endure,
at a time when my “ orthodoxy ” was
unimpeached, was:1 “I believe that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God ”; to deny
which and claim to be acknowledged as
within the pale of the Christian Church
seemed to be an absurdity. On the
whole, therefore, it did not appear to
me that this Church theory had been
hollow-hearted with me nor unscriptural,
nor in any way unpractical; but that
others were still infected with the leaven
1 Borrowed from Acts viii. 37-
�STRIVINGS AFTER A MORE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
39
of the love of saints, it is in order that
we may find a truer heaven in God’s
love.
The question about this time much
vexed me, what to do about receiving
the Holy Supper of the Lord, the great
emblem of brotherhood, communion,
and Church connection. At one time I
argued with myself that it became an
unmeaning form when not partaken of
in mutual love; that I could never
again have free intercourse of heart
with anyone—why, then, use the rite of
communion where there is no com
munion? But, on the other hand, I
thought it a mode of confessing Christ,
and that permanently to disuse it was an
unfaithfulness. In the Church of Eng
land I could have been easy as far as the
communion formulary was concerned;
but to the entire system I had contracted
an incurable repugnance, as worldly,
hypocritical, and an evil counterfeit. I
desired, therefore, to creep into some
obscure congregation, and there wait till
my mind had ripened as to the right path
in circumstances so perplexing. I will
only briefly say that I at last settled
among some who had previously been
total strangers to me. To their good
will and simple kindness I feel myself
indebted: peace be to them ! Thus I
gained time and repose of mind, which
I greatly needed.
From the day that I had mentally
decided on total inaction as to all eccle
siastical questions, I count the termina
tion of my Second Period. My ideal of
a spiritual Church had blown up in the
most sudden and heartbreaking way;
overpowering me with shame, when the
violence of sorrow was past. There was
no change whatever in my own judgment,
yet a total change of action was inevit
able ; that I was on the eve of a great
transition of mind I did not at all suspect.
Hitherto my reverence for the authority
of the whole and indivisible Bible was
overruling and complete. I never really
1 Virgil (Asn&id vi.) gives the Stoical side of had dared to criticise it; I did not even
the same thought: Tu ne cede malis, sed contra exact from it self-consistency. If two
audentior ito.
passages appeared to be opposed, and I
of creeds and formal tests, with which
they reproached the old Church.
Were there, then, no other hearts
than mine aching under miserable bigotry
and refreshed only when they tasted in
others the true fruits of the Spirit—
“ love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle
ness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self
control”? To imagine this was to suppose
myself a man supematurally favoured,
an angel upon earth. I knew there
must be thousands in this very point
more true-hearted than I; nay, such still
might some be whose names I went over
with myself; but I had no heart for
more experiments. When such a man
as he, the only mortal to whom I had
looked up as to an apostle, had unhesi
tatingly, unrelentingly, and without one
mark that his conscience was not on his
side, flung away all his own precepts, his
own theories, his own magnificent
rebukes of formalism and human autho
rity, and had made ^zw.rez/’the slave and
me the victim of these old and ever
living tyrants, whom henceforth could I
trust ? The resolution then rose in me
to love all good men from a distance, but
never again to count on permanent
friendship with anyone who was not
himself cast out as a heretic.
Nor, in fact, did the storm of distress
which these events inflicted on me sub
side until I willingly received the task of
withstanding it, as God’s trial whether I
was faithful. As soon as I gained
strength to say: “O my Lord, I will
bear not this only, but more also,1 for thy
sake, for conscience, and for truth ”—my
sorrows vanished until the next blow and
the next inevitable pang. At last my
heart had died within me ; the bitterness
of death was past; I was satisfied to be
hated by the saints, and to reckon that
those who had not yet turned against me
would not bear me much longer. Then
I conceived the belief that, if we may not
make a heaven on earth for ourselves out
�4°
CALVINISM ABANDONED
could not evade the difficulty by the
doctrine of development and progress,
I inferred that there was some mode of
conciliation unknown to me; and that
perhaps the depth of truth in divine
things could ill be stated in our imperfect
language. But from the man who dared
to interpose a human comment on the
Scripture I most rigidly demanded a clear,
single, self-consistent sense. If he did
not know what he meant, why did he
not hold his peace? If he did know,
why did he so speak as to puzzle us? It
was for this uniform refusal to allow of
self-contradiction that it was more than
once sadly predicted of me at Oxford
that I should become “ a Socinian yet
I did not apply this logical measure to
any compositions but those which were
avowedly “uninspired” and human.
As to moral criticism, my mind was
practically prostrate before the Bible.
By the end of this period I had per
suaded myself that morality so changes
with the commands of God that we can
scarcely attach any idea of immutability
to it. I am, moreover, ashamed to tell
anyone how I spoke and acted against
my own common sense under this influ
ence, and when I was thought a fool,
prayed that I might think it an honour
to become a fool for Christ’s sake.
Against no doctrine did I dare to bring
moral objections, except that of “Repro
bation.” To Election, to Preventing
Grace, to the Fall and Original Sin of
man, to the Atonement, to Eternal
Punishment. I reverently submitted my
understanding, though, as to the last,
new inquiries had just at this crisis been
opening on me. Reprobation, indeed, I
always repudiated with great vigour, of
which I shall presently speak. That was
the full amount of my original thought,
and in it I preserved entire reverence for
the sacred writers.
As to miracles, scarcely anything
staggered me. I received the strangest
and the meanest prodigies of Scripture
with the same unhesitating faith as if I
had never understood a proposition of
physical philosophy, nor a chapter of
Hume and Gibbon.
Chapter III.
CALVINISM ABANDONED
After the excitement was past I learned
many things from the events which have
been named.
First, I had found that the class of
Christians with whom I had been joined
had exploded the old creeds in favour
of another of their own, which was never
given me upon authority, and yet was
constantly slipping out in the words,
Jesus is Jehovah. It appeared to me
certain that this would have been
denounced as the Sabellian heresy by
Athanasius and his contemporaries. I
did not wish to run down Sabellians,
much less to excommunicate them, if
they would give me equality; but I felt it
intensely unjust, when my adherence to
the Nicene Creed was my real offence,
that I should be treated as setting up
some novel wickedness against all
Christendom, and slandered by vague
imputations which reached far and far
beyond my power of answering or explain
ing. Mysterious aspersions were made
�CALVINISM ABANDONED
even against my moral1 character, and
were alleged to me as additional reasons
for refusing communion with me; and
when I demanded a tribunal, and that
my accuser would meet me face to face,
all inquiry was refused, on the plea that
it was needless and undesirable. I had
much reason to believe that a very small
number of persons had constituted them
selves my judges and used against me all
the airs of the Universal Church, the
many lending themselves easily to swell
the cry of heresy, when they have little
personal acquaintance with the party
attacked. Moreover, when I was being
condemned as in error, I in vain asked
to be told what was the truth. “ I
accept the Scripture : that is not enough.
I accept the Nicene Creed: that is not
enough. Give me then your formula—
where, what is it ? ” But no ' those who
thought it their duty to condemn me
disclaimed the pretensions of “ making a
creed ” when I asked for one. They
reprobated my interpretation of Scripture
as against that of the whole Church, but
would not undertake to expound that of
the Church. I felt convinced that they
could not have agreed themselves as to
what was right; all that they could agree
upon was that I was wrong. Could I
have borne to recriminate, I believed
that I could have forced one of them to
condemn another; but, oh ! was divine
truth sent us for discord and for con
demnation ? I sickened at the idea of a
Church tribunal, where none has any
authority to judge, and yet to my extreme
embarrassment I saw that no Church can
safely dispense with judicial forms and
other worldly apparatus for defending the
reputation of individuals. At least none
of the national and less spiritual institu
tions would have been so very unequitable
towards me.
1 I afterwards learned that some of those
gentlemen esteemed boldness of thought “ a lust
of the mind,” and, as such, an immorality. This
enables them to persuade themselves that they
do not reject a “ heretic ” for a matter of opinion,
but for that which they have a right to call
immoral. What immorality was imputed to me
I was not distinctly informed.
41
This idea enlarged itself into another,
that spirituality is no adequate security
for sound moral discernment. These
alienated friends did not know they were
acting unjustly, cruelly, crookedly, or
they would have hated themselves for
it; they thought they were doing God
service. The fervour of their love
towards him was probably greater than
mine, yet this did not make them
superior to prejudice or sharpen their
logical faculties to see that they were
idolising words to which they attached
no ideas. On several occasions I had
distinctly perceived how serious alarm I
gave by resolutely refusing to admit any
shiftings and shufflings of language. I
felt convinced that if I would but have
contradicted myself two or three times,
and then have added, “ That is the
mystery of it,” I could have passed as
orthodox with many. I had been
charged with a proud and vain deter
mination to pry into divine mysteries,
barely because I would not confess to
propositions the meaning of which was
to me doubtful, or say and unsay in con
secutive breaths. It was too clear that
a doctrine which muddles the under
standing perverts also the power of
moral discernment. If I had committed
some flagrant sin, they would have given
me a fair and honourable trial; but
where they could not give me a public
hearing, nor yet leave me unimpeached
without danger of (what they called) my
infecting the Church, there was nothing
left but to hunt me out unscrupulously.
Unscrupulously! Did not this one
word characterise all religious persecu
tion? And then my mind wandered
back over the whole melancholy tale of
what is called Christian history. When
Archbishop Cranmer overpowered the
reluctance of young Edward VI. to burn
to death the pious and innocent Joan of
Kent, who, moreover, was as mystical
and illogical as heart could wish, was
Cranmer not actuated by deep religious
convictions? None question his piety,
yet it was an awfully wicked deed.
What shall I say of Calvin, who
�42
CALVINISM ABANDONED
burned Servetus ? Why have I been so
slow to learn that religion is an impulse
which animates us to execute our moral
judgments, but an impulse which may be
half blind? These brethren believe that
I may cause the eternal ruin of others;
how hard, then, is it for them to abide
faithfully by the laws of morality and
respect my rights ! My rights ! They
are, of course, trampled down for the
public good, just as a house is blown up
to stop a conflagration. Such is evi
dently the theory of all persecution,
which is essentially founded on hatred.
As Aristotle says, “ He who is angry
desires to punish somebody; but he who
hates desires the hated person not even
to exist.” Hence they cannot endure to
see me face to face. That I may not
infect the rest, they desire my non
existence—by fair means, if fair will
succeed; if not, then by foul. And
whence comes this monstrosity into such
bosoms? Weakness of common sense,
dread of the common understanding, an
insufficient faith in common morality,
are surely the disease; and evidently
nothing so exasperates this disease as
consecrating religious tenets which forbid
the exercise of common sense.
I now began to understand why it was
peculiarly for unintelligible doctrines
like Transubstantiation and the Tri
unity that Christians had committed
such execrable wickednesses. Now,
also, for the first time I understood what
had seemed not frightful only, but
preternatural—the sensualities and
cruelties enacted as a part of religion
in many of the old paganisms. Religion
and fanaticism are in the embryo but
one and the same ; to purify and elevate
them we want a cultivation of the
understanding, without which our moral
code may be indefinitely depraved.
Natural kindness and strong sense are
aids and guides which the most spiritual
man cannot afford to despise.
I became conscious that I had despised
‘‘ mere moral men,” as they were called
in the phraseology of my school. They
were merged, in the vague appellation of
“the world,” with sinners of every class ;
and it was habitually assumed, if not
asserted, that they were necessarily
Pharisaic, because they had not been
born again. For some time after I had
misgivings as to my fairness of judgment
towards them I could not disentangle
myself from great bewilderment con
cerning their state in the sight of God,
for it. was an essential part of my Calvinistic creed that (as one of the Thirtynine Articles states it) the very good
works of the unregenerate “undoubtedly
have the nature of sin,” as, indeed, the
very nature with which they were born
“deserveth God’s wrath and damnation.”
I began to mourn over the unlovely
conduct into which I had been betrayed
by this creed long before I could
thoroughly get rid of the creed that
justified it, and a considerable time had
to elapse ere my new perceptions shaped
themselves distinctly into the proposi
tions : “ Morality is the end, spirituality
is the means ; religion is the handmaid to
morals ; we must be spiritual in order
that we may be in the highest and truest
sense moral.” Then at last I saw that
the deficiency of “mere moral men” is
that their morality is apt to be too
external or merely negative, and there
fore incomplete; that the man who
worships a fiend for a God may be in
some sense spiritual, but his spirituality
will be a devilish fanaticism, having
nothing in it to admire or approve ; that
the moral man deserves approval or love
for all the absolute good that he has
attained, though there be a higher good
to which he aspires not; and that the
truly and rightly spiritual is he who aims
at an indefinitely high moral excellence,
of which God is the embodiment to his
heart and soul. If the absolute excel
lence of morality be denied, there is
nothing for spirituality to aspire after,
and nothing in God to worship. Years
before I saw this as clearly as here
stated, the general train of thought was
very wholesome in giving me increased
kindliness of judgment towards the
common world of men, who do not
�CA L VINISM A BA NDONED
show any religious development. It was
pleasant to me to look on an ordinary
face and see it light up into a smile, and
think with myself: “ There is one heart
that will judge of me by what I am, and
not by a Procrustean dogma.” Nor
only so, but I saw that the saints,
without the world, would make a very
bad world of it, and that as ballast is
wanted to a ship, so the common and
rather low interests, and the homely
principles, rules, and ways of feeling,
keep the Church from foundering by the
intensity of her own gusts.
Some of the above thoughts took a
still more definite shape, as follows. It
is clear that A B and X Y would have
behaved towards me more kindly, more
justly, and more wisely, if they had con
sulted their excellent strong sense and
amiable natures, instead of following
(what they suppose to be) the commands
of the word of God. They have mis
interpreted that word—true ; but this
very thing shows that one may go wrong
by trusting one’s power of interpreting
the book rather than trusting one’s
common sense to judge without the
book. It startled me to find that I had
exactly alighted on the Romish objection
to Protestants, that an infallible book is
useless unless we have an infallible
interpreter. But it was not for some
time, that, after twisting the subject in
all directions to avoid it, I brought out
the conclusion that “ to go against one’s
common sense in obedience to Scripture
is a most hazardous proceeding
for the
“ rule of Scripture ” means to each of us
nothing but his own fallible interpreta
tion, and to sacrifice common sense to
this is to mutilate one side of our mind
at the command of another side. In the
Nicene age the Bible was in people’s
hands, and the Spirit of God surely was
not withheld; yet I had read in one of
the Councils an insane anathema was
passed : “ If anyone call Jesus God-man,
instead of God and man, let him be
accursed.” Surely want of common
sense and dread of natural reason will
be confessed by our highest ortho
43
doxy to have been the distemper of that
day.
In all this I still remained theoretically
convinced that the contents of the Scrip
tures, rightly interpreted, were supreme
and perfect truth; indeed, I had for
several years accustomed myself to speak
and think as if the Bible were our sole
source of all moral knowledge ; never
theless, there were practically limits,
beyond which I did not, and could not,
even attempt to blind my moral senti
ment at the dictation of the Scripture;
and this had peculiarly frightened (as I
afterwards found) the first friend who
welcomed me from abroad. I was
unable to admit the doctrine of “ repro
bation,” as apparently taught in the
9th chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the
Romans—that “ God hardens in wicked
ness whomever he pleases, in order that
he may show his long-suffering ” in
putting off their condemnation to a
future dreadful day; and, especially, that
to all objectors it is a sufficient confuta
tion—“ Nay, but O man, who art thou,
that repliest against God?” I told my
friend that I worshipped in God three
great attributes, all independent—power,
goodness, and wisdom; that in order
to worship him acceptably I must dis
cern these as realities with my inmost
heart, and not merely take them for
granted on authority ; but that the argu
ment which was here pressed upon me
was an effort to supersede the necessity
of my discerning goodness in God ; it
bade me simply to infer goodness from
power—that is to say, establish the
doctrine, “ Might makes right accord
ing to which, I might unawares worship
a devil. Nay, nothing so much dis
tinguished the spiritual truth of Judaism
and Christianity from abominable
heathenism as this very discernment
of God’s purity, justice, mercy, truth,
goodness, while the Pagan worshipped
mere power, and had no discernment of
moral excellence, but laid down the
principle that cruelty, impurity, or caprice
in a god was to be treated reverentially,
�44
CALVINISM ABANDONED
and called by some more decorous
name. Hence, I said, it was under
mining the very foundation of Chris
tianity itself to require belief of the
validity of Rom. ix. 14-24, as my friend
understood it. I acknowledged the
difficulty of the passage, and of the
whole argument. I was not prepared
with an interpretation ; but I revered
St. Paul too much to believe it possible
that he could mean anything so obviously
heathenish as that first-sight meaning.
My friend looked grave and anxious;
but I did not suspect how deeply I had
shocked him until many weeks after.
At this very time, moreover, ground
was broken in my mind on a new subject,
by opening in a gentleman’s library a
presentation-copy of a Unitarian treatise
against the doctrine of eternal punish
ment. It was the first Unitarian book
of which I had even seen the outside,
and I handled it with a timid curiosity,
as if by stealth. I had only time to dip
into it here and there, and I should
have been ashamed to possess the book ;
but I carried off enough to suggest
important inquiry. The writer asserted
that the Greek word atwvios (secular, or
belonging to the ages), which we translate
everlasting and eternal, is distinctly
proved by the Greek translation of the
Old Testament often to mean only
distant time. Thus in Psalm lxxvi. 5,
“ I have considered the years of ancient
times”; Isaiahlxiii. n, “Heremembered
the days of old, Moses and his people”;
in which, and in many similar places,
the LXX. have «wtos. One striking
passage is Exodus xv. 18 (“Jehovah
shall reign for ever and ever ”), where
the Greek has tot atwva Kai or’ aiwa Kai
eri, which would mean “for eternity
and still longer,” if the strict rendering
eternity were enforced. At the same
time a suspicion as to the honesty of
our translation presented itself in Micah
v. 2, a controversial text, often used to
prove the past eternity of the Son of
God, where the translators give us,
“whose goings forth have been from
everlastingthough the Hebrew is the
same as they elsewhere render from days
of old.
After I had at leisure searched through
this new question, I found that it was
impossible to make out any doctrine of a
philosophical eternity in the whole Scrip
tures. The true Greek word for eternal
(dittos) occurs twice only; once in
Rom. i. 20, as applied to the divine
power, and once in Jude 6, of the fire
which has been manifested against Sodom
and Gomorrha. The last instance showed
that allowance must be made for rhetoric;
and that fire is called eternal or unquench
able when it so destroys as to leave no
thing unbumt. But, on the whole, the
very vocabulary of the Greek and Hebrew
denoted that the idea of absolute eternity
was unformed. The hills are called ever
lasting (secular ?) by those who supposed
them to have come into existence two or
three thousand years before. Only in
two passages of the Revelations I could
not get over the belief that the writer’s
energy was misplaced, if absolute eternity
of torment was not intended; yet it
seemed to me unsafe and wrong to found
an important doctrine on a symbolic and
confessedly obscure book of prophecy.
Setting this aside, I found no proof of
any eternal punishment.
As soon as the load of Scriptural
authority was thus taken off from me, I
had a vivid discernment of intolerable
moral difficulties inseparable from the
doctrine. First, that every sin is infinite
in ill-desert and in result, because it is
committed against an infinite Being.
Thus the fretfulness of a child is an
infinite evil! I was aghast that I could
have believed it. Now that it was no
longer laid upon me as a duty to uphold
the infinitude of God’s retaliation on sin, I
saw that it was an immorality to teach that
sin was measured by anything else than
the heart and will of the agent. That a
finite being should deserve infinite punish
ment now was manifestly as incredible as
that he should deserve infinite reward,
which I had never dreamed. Again, I
saw that the current orthodoxy made
Satan eternal conqueror over Christ. In
�CA L VINISM A BA ND ONED
vain does the Son of God come from
heaven and take human flesh and die on
the cross. In spite of him the devil
carries off to hell the vast majority of
mankind, in whom not misery only, but
sin, is triumphant for ever. Thus Christ
not only does not succeed in destroying
the works of the devil, but even aggra
vates them. Again, what sort of gospel
or glad tidings had I been holding ?
Without this revelation no future state at
all, I presumed, could be known. How
much better no futurity for any than that
a few should be eternally in bliss and the
great majority1 kept alive for eternal sin
as well as eternal misery ! My gospel
then was bad tidings—nay, the worst of
tidings I In a farther progress of thought,
I asked, would it not have been better
that the whole race of man had never
come into existence ? Clearly I And
thus God was made out to be unwise in
creating them. No use in the punish
ment was imaginable without setting up
fear, instead of love, as the ruling prin
ciple in the blessed. And what was the
moral tendency of the doctrine ? I had
never borne to dwell upon it; but I
before long suspected that it promoted
malignity and selfishness, and was the
real clue to the cruelties perpetrated
under the name of religion. For he who
does dwell on it must comfort himself
under the prospect of his brethren’s
eternal misery by the selfish expectation
of personal blessedness. When I asked
whether I had been guilty of this selfish
ness, I remembered that I had often
mourned how small a part in my prac
tical religion the future had ever borne.
My heaven and my hell had been in the
present, where my God was near me to
smile or to frown. It had seemed to
me a great weakness in my faith that I
never had any vivid imaginations or
1 I really thought it needless to quote proof
that but few will be saved (Matt. vii. 14). I
know there is a class of Christians who believe
in universal salvation, and there are others who
disbelieve eternal torment. They must not be
angry with me for refuting the doctrine of other
Christians which they hold to be false.
45
strong desires of heavenly glory; yet
now I was glad to observe that it had at
least saved me from getting so much
harm from the wrong side of the doctrine
of a future life.
Before I had worked out the objec
tions so fully as here stated, I freely
disclosed my thoughts to the friend last
named, and to his wife, towards whom
he encouraged me to exercise the fullest
frankness. I confess I said nothing
about the Unitarian book, for something
told me that I had violated Evangelical
decorum in opening it, and that I could
not calculate how it would affect my
friend. Certainly no Romish hierarchy
can so successfully exclude heretical
books, as social enactment excludes
those of Unitarians from our orthodox
circles. The bookseller dares not to
exhibit their books on his counter; all
presume them to be pestilential; no one
knows their contents or dares to inform
himself. But to return. My friend’s
wife entered warmly into my new views ;
I have now no doubt that this exceed
ingly distressed him, and at length
perverted his moral judgment; he him
self examined the texts of the Old
Testament and attempted no answer to
them. After I had left his neighbour
hood I wrote to him three affectionate
letters, and at last got a reply—of
vehement accusation. It can now con
cern no one to know how many and
deep wounds he planted in me. I
forgave, but all was too instructive to
forget.
For some years I rested in the belief
that the epithet “secular punishment”
either solely denoted punishment in a
future age, or else only of long duration.
This evades the horrible idea of eternal
and triumphant sin, and of infinite
retaliation for finite offences. But still
I found my new creed uneasy, now that
I had established a practice (if not a right)
of considering the moral propriety of
punishment. I could not so pare away
the vehement words of the Scripture as
really to enable me to say that I thought
transgressors deserved the fiery infliction,
�46
CA L VINISM A BA NDONED
This had been easy while I measured
their guilt by God’s greatness; but, when
that idea was renounced, how was I to
think that a good-humoured voluptuary
deserved to be raised from the dead in
order to be tormented in fire for a
hundred years ? And what shorter time
could be called secular ? Or if he was
to be destroyed instantaneously, and
“ secular” meant only “in a future age,”
was he worth the effort of a divine
miracle to bring him to life and again
annihilate him? I was not willing to
refuse belief to the Scripture on such
grounds ; yet I felt disquietude that my
moral sentiment and the Scripture were
no longer in full harmony.
In this period I first discerned the
extreme difficulty that there must essen
tially be in applying to the Christian
Evidences a principle which, many years
before, I had abstractedly received as
sound, though it had been a dead letter
with me in practice. The Bible, it
seemed, contained two sorts of truth.
Concerning one sort, man is bound to
judge; the other sort is necessarily
beyond his ken, and is received only by
information from without. The first
part of the statement cannot be denied.
It would be monstrous to say that we
know nothing of geography, history, or
morals, except by learning them from the
Bible. Geography, history, and other
worldly sciences lie beyond question.
As to morals, I had been exceedingly
inconsistent and wavering in my theory
and in its application ; but it now glared
upon me that, if man had no independent
power of judging, it would have been
venial to think Barabbas more virtuous
than Jesus. The hearers of Christ or
Paul could not draw their knowledge of
right and wrong from the New Testa
ment. They had (or needed to have) an
inherent power of discerning that his
conduct was holy and his doctrine good.
To talk about the infirmity or depravity
of the human conscience is here quite
irrelevant. The conscience of Christ’s
hearers may have been dim or twisted,
but it was their best guide and only
guide as to the question whether to
regard him as a holy prophet; so, like
wise, as to ourselves, it is evident that
we have no guide at all whether to
accept or reject the Bible, if we distrust
that inward power of judging (whether
called common sense, conscience, or the
Spirit of God) which is independent of
our belief in the Bible. To disparage
the internally vouchsafed power of
discerning truth without the Bible or
other authoritative system is to endeavour
to set up a universal moral scepticism.
He who may not criticise cannot approve.
Well 1 Let it be admitted that we
discern moral truth by a something
within us, and that then, admiring the
truth so glorious in the Scriptures, we
are farther led to receive them as the
word of God, and therefore to believe
them absolutely in respect to the matters
which are beyond our ken.
But two difficulties could no longer be
dissembled : i. How are we to draw the
line of separation ? For instance, would
the doctrines of reprobation and of last
ing fiery torture, with no benefit to the
sufferers, belong to the moral part, which
we freely criticise; or to the extra moral
part, as to which we passively believe ?
2. What is to be done if in the parts
which indisputably lie open to criticism
we meet with apparent error ?
The
second question soon became a practical
one with me; but for the reader’s con
venience I defer it until my Fourth
Period, to which it more naturally
belongs; for in this Third Period I was
principally exercised with controversies
that do not vitally touch the authority
of the Scripture. Of these the most
important were matters contested be’
tween Unitarians and Calvinists,
When I found how exactly the Nicene
Creed summed up all that I myself
gathered from John and Paul concerning
the divine nature of Christ, I naturally
referred to this Creed, as expressing my
�CA L VINTSM A BA NDONED
convictions, when any unpleasant in
quiry arose. I had recently gained the
acquaintance of the late excellent Dr.
Olinthus Gregory, a man of unimpeached
orthodoxy, who met me by the frank
avowal that the Nicene Creed was “ a
great mistake.” He said that the Arian
and the Athanasian difference was not
very vital, and that the Scriptural truth
lay beyond the Nicene doctrine, which
fell short on the same side as Arianism
had done. On the contrary, I had
learned of an intermediate tenet, called
Semi-Arianism, which appeared to me
more Scriptural than the views of either
Athanasius or Arius. Let me bespeak
my reader’s patience for a little. Arius
was judged by Athanasius (I was
informed) to be erroneous in two points :
(i) in teaching that the Son of God was
a creature—i.e., that “begotten” and
“ made ” were two words for the same
idea; (2) in teaching that he had an
origin of existence in time, so that there
was a distant period at which he was not.
Of these two Arian tenets, the Nicene
Creed condemned the former only—
namely, in the words, “begotten, not
made; being of one substance with the
Father.” But on the latter question the
Creed is silent. Those who accepted
the Creed, and hereby condemned the
great error of Arius that the Son was of
different substance from the Father, but
nevertheless agreed with Arius in thinking
that the Son had a beginning of exist
ence, were called Semi-Arians, and were
received into communion by Athanasius,
in spite of this disagreement. To me it
seemed to be a most unworthy shuffling
with words to say that the Son was
begotten, but was never begotten. The
very form of our past participle is invented
to indicate an event in past time. If the
Athanasians alleged that the phrase does
not allude to “ a coming forth ” com
pleted at a definite time, but indicates a
process at no time begun and at no time
complete, their doctrine could not be
expressed by our past-perfect tense
begotten.
When they compared the
derivation of the Son of God from the
47
Father to the rays of light which ever
flow from the natural sun, and argued
that if that sun had been eternal its
emanations would be co-eternal, they
showed that their true doctrine required
the formula—“always being begotten,
and as instantly perishing, in order to be
rebegotten perpetually.” They showed
a real disbelief in our English statement,
“ begotten, not made.” I overruled the
objection that in the Greek it was not a
participle, but a verbal adjective; for it
was manifest to me that a religion which
could not be proclaimed in English
could not be true ; and the very idea of
a creed announcing that Christ was “ not
begotten, yet begettive,” roused in me an
unspeakable loathing. Yet surely this
would have been Athanasius’s most
legitimate form of denying Semi-Arian
ism. In short, the Scriptural phrase
Son of God conveyed to us either a
literal fact or a metaphor. If literal, the
Semi-Arians were clearly right in saying
that sonship implied a beginning of
existence. If it was a metaphor, the
Athanasians forfeited all right to press
the literal sense in proof that the Son
must be “ of the same substance ” as the
Father. Seeing that the Athanasians, in
zeal to magnify the Son, had so con
founded their good sense, I was cer
tainly startled to find a man of Dr.
Olinthus Gregory’s moral wisdom treat
the Nicenists as in obvious error for not
having magnified Christ enough. On so
many other sides, however, I met with
the new and short creed, “Jesus is
Jehovah,” that I began to discern Sabellianism to be the prevalent view.
A little later I fell in with a book of
an American professor, Moses Stuart
of Andover, on the subject of the
Trinity.
Professor Stuart is a very
learned man, and thinks for himself. It
was a great novelty to me to find him
not only deny the orthodoxy of all the
Fathers (which was little more than Dr.
Olinthus Gregory had done), but avow
that from the change in speculative philo
sophy it was simply impossible for any
modern to hold the views prevalent in the
�4§
CAL VINISM ABANDONED
third and fourth centuries. Nothing (said
he) was clearer than that with us the essen
tial point in Deity is to be unoriginated,
underived; hence, with us, a derived God
is a self-contradiction, and the very sound
of the phrase profane. On the other
hand, it is certain that the doctrine of
Athanasius, equally as of Arius, was that
the Father is the underived or self-exis
tent God, but the Son is the derived,
subordinate God. This (argued Stuart)
turned upon their belief in the doctrine
of emanations ; but, as we hold no such
philosophical doctrine, the religious
theory founded on it is necessarily
inadmissible.
Professor Stuart then
developes his own creed, which appeared
to me simple and undeniable Sabellianism.
That Stuart correctly represented the
Fathers was clear enough to me, but I
nevertheless thought that in this respect
the Fathers had honestly made out the
doctrine of the Scripture, and I did
not at all approve of setting up a
battery of modern speculative philo
sophy against Scriptural doctrine. “How
are we to know that the doctrine
of emanations is false ? (asked I). If it
is legitimately elicited from Scripture, it
is true.” I refused to yield up my creed
at this summons. Nevertheless, he left
a wound upon me, for I now could not
help seeing that we moderns use the
word God in a more limited sense than
any ancient nations did. Hebrews and
Greeks alike said Gods to mean any
superhuman beings ; hence derived God
did not sound to them absurd; but I
could not deny that in good English it
is absurd. This was a very disagreeable
discovery, for now, if anyone were to
ask me whether I believed in the
divinity of Christ, I saw it would be
dishonest to say simply Yes, for the
interrogator means to ask whether I hold
Christ to be the eternal and underived
Source of life; yet if I said No he
would care nothing for my professing to
hold the Nicene Creed.
Might not then, after all, Sabellianism
be the truth ? No; I discerned too
plainly what Gibbon states, that the
Sabellian, if consistent, is only a con
cealed Ebionite, or, as we now say, a
Unitarian, Socinian. As we cannot
admit that the Father was slain on the
Cross, or prayed to himself in the garden,
he who will not allow the Father and
the Son to be separate persons, but only
two names for one person, must divide
the Son of God and Jesus into two
persons, and so fall back on the very
heresy of Socinus which he is struggling
to escape.
On the whole, I saw that, however
people might call themselves Trini
tarians, yet if, like Stuart and all the
Evangelicals in Church and Dissent,
they turn into a dead letter the genera
tion of the Son of God and the proces
sion of the Spirit, nothing is possible but
Sabellianism or Tritheism, or, indeed,
Ditheism, if the Spirit’s separate per
sonality is not held. The modern creed
is alternately the one or the other, as
occasion requires. Sabellians would find
themselves out to be mere Unitarians if
they always remained Sabellians; but, in
fact, they are half their lives Ditheists.
They do not aim at consistency—would
an upholder of the pseudo-Athanasian
Creed desire it ? Why, that Creed
teaches that the height of orthodoxy is
to contradict oneself and protest that
one does not. Now, however, rose on
me the question : Why do I not take
the Irish clergyman at his word, and
attack him and others as idolaters and
worshippers of three Gods ? It was
unseemly and absurd in him to try to
force me into what he must have judged
uncharitableness ; but it was not the less
incumbent on me to find a reply.
I remembered that in past years I had
expressly disowned, as obviously unScriptural and absurd, prayers to the
Holy Spirit, on the ground that the
Spirit is evidently God in the hearts of
the faithful, and nothing else; and it
did not appear to me that any but a few
extreme and rather fanatical persons
could be charged with making the Spirit
a third God or object of distinct worship.
�CA L VINISM A BA ND ONED
On the other hand, I could not deny
that the Son and the Father were thus
distinguished to the mind. So, indeed,
John expressly avowed: “Truly our
fellowship is with the Father, and with
his Son Jesus Christ.” I myself also
had prayed sometimes to God and
sometimes to Christ, alternately and
confusedly. Now, indeed, I was better
taught; now I was more logical and
consistent! I had found a triumphant
answer to the charge of Ditheism, in
that I believed the Son to be derived
from the Father, and not to be the
Unoriginated. No doubt! Yet, after
all, could I seriously think that morally
and spiritually I was either better or
worse for this discovery? I could not
pretend that I was.
This showed me that, if a man of
partially unsound and visionary mind
made the angel Gabriel a fourth person
in the Godhead, it might cause no
difference whatever in the actings of his
spirit. The great question would be
whether he ascribed the same moral
perfection to Gabriel as to the Father.
If so, to worship him would be no
degradation to the soul, even if absolute
omnipotence were not attributed—nay,
nor a past eternal existence. It thus
became clear to me that polytheism, as
such, is not a moral and spiritual, but at
most only an intellectual, error, and that
its practical evil consists in worshipping
beings whom we represent to our imagi
nations as morally imperfect. Conversely,
one who imputes to God sentiments and
conduct which in man he would call
capricious or cruel, such a one, even if
he be as monotheistic as a Mussulman,
admits into his soul the whole virus of
idolatry.
Why, then, did I at all cling to the
doctrine of Christ’s, superior nature, and
not admit it among things indifferent?
In obedience to the Scripture, I did
actually affirm that, as far as creed is
concerned, a man should be admissible
into the Church on the bare confession
that Jesus was the Christ. Still, I
regarded a belief in his superhuman
49
origin as of first-rate importance for
many reasons, and, among others, owing
to its connection with the doctrine of the
Atonement, on which there is much to
be said.
The doctrine which I used to read
as a boy taught that a vast sum of
punishment was due to God for the sins
of men. This vast sum was made up of
all the woes due through eternity to the
whole human race, or, as some said, to
the elect. Christ on the cross bore this
punishment himself, and thereby took it
away; thus God is enabled to forgive
without violating justice. But I early
encountered unanswerable difficulty, on
this theory, as to the question whether
Christ had borne the punishment of all,
or of some only. If of all, is it not
unjust to inflict any of it on any ? If of
the elect only, what Gospel have you to
preach ? for then you cannot tell sinners
that God has provided a Saviour for
them, for you do not know whether
those whom you address are elect.
Finding no way out of this, I abandoned
the fundamental idea of compensation in
quantity as untenable, and rested in the
vaguer notion that God signally showed
his abhorrence of sin by laying tremen
dous misery on the Saviour who was to
bear away sin.
I have already narrated how at Oxford
I was embarrassed as to the forensic
propriety of transferring punishment at
all. This, however, I received as matter
of authority, and rested much on the
wonderful exhibition made of the evil of
sin, when such a being could be sub
jected to preternatural suffering as a
vicarious sin-bearer. To this view a high
sense of the personal dignity of Jesus
was quite essential, and therefore I had
always felt a great repugnance for Mr.
Belsham, Dr. Priestley, and the Uni
tarians of that school, though I had not
read a line of their writings.
A more intimate familiarity with St.
Paul, and an anxious harmonising of my
very words to the Scripture, led me on
into a deviation from the popular creed
�50
CA L VINISM A BA NDONEE)
of the full importance of which I was not
for some time aware. I perceived that
it is not the agonies of mind or body
endured by Christ which in the Scrip
tures are said to take away sin, but his
“ death,” his “ laying down his life,” or
sometimes even his resurrection. I
gradually became convinced that when
his “suffering,” or more especially his
“blood,” is emphatically spoken of,
nothing is meant but his violent death.
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, where
the analogy of sacrifice is so pressed, we
see that the pains which Jesus bore were
in order that he might “ learn obedi
ence
but our redemption is effected
by his dying as a voluntary victim, in
which death by bloodshed, not pain, is
the cardinal point. So, too, the Paschal
lamb (to which, though not properly a
sacrifice, the dying Christ is compared
by Paul) was not roasted alive, or other
wise put to slow torment, but was simply
killed. I therefore saw that the doctrine
of “vicarious agonies” was funda
mentally un-Scriptural.
This being fully discerned, I at last
became bold to criticise the popular
tenet. What should we think of a judge
who, when a boy had deserved a stripe
which would to him have been a sharp
punishment, laid the very same blow on
a strong man, to whom it was a slight
infliction ? Clearly this would evade,
not satisfy, justice. To carry out the
principle, the blow might be laid as well
on a giant, an elephant, or on an inani
mate thing. So, to lay our punishment
on the infinite strength of Christ, who
(they say) bore in six hours what it
would have taken thousands of millions
of men all eternity to bear, would be a
similar evasion. I farther asked, if we
were to fall in with pagans who tortured
their victims to death as an atonement,
what idea of God should we think them
to form, and what should we reply if
they said it gave them a wholesome view
of his hatred of sin ? A second time I
shuddered at the notions which I had
once imbibed as a part of religion, and
then got comfort from the inference how
much better men of this century are than
their creed. Their creed was the product
of ages of cruelty and credulity, and it
sufficiently bears that stamp.
Thus I rested in the Scriptural doc
trine that the death of Christ is our
atonement. To say the same of the
death of Paul was obviously unscriptural.
It was, then, essential to believe the
physical nature of Christ to be different
from that of Paul. If otherwise, death
was due to Jesus as the lot of nature ;
how could such death have anything to
do with our salvation ? On this ground
the Unitarian doctrine was utterly un
tenable. I could see nothing between
my own view and a total renunciation of
the authority of the doctrines promulgated
by Paul and John.
Nevertheless, my own view seemed
more and more unmeaning the more
closely it was interrogated. When I
ascribed death to Christ, what did death
mean? And what or whom did I sup
pose to die ? Was it man that died, or
God ? If man only, how was that
wonderful, or how did it concern us?
Besides, persons die, not natures. A
nature is only a collection of properties.
If Christ was one person, all Christ died.
Did, then, God die, and man remain
alive ? For God to become non-existent
is an unimaginable absurdity. But is
this death a mere change of state, a
renunciation of earthly life ? . Still . it
remains unclear how the parting with
mere human life could be to one who
possesses divine life either an atonement
or a humiliation. Was it not rather an
escape from humiliation, saving only the
mode of death ? So severe was this diffi
culty that at length I unawares dropped
from semi-Arianism into pure Arianism,
by so distinguishing the Son from the
Father as to admit the idea that the Son
of God had actually been non-existent in
the interval between death and resurrec
tion. Nevertheless, I more and more
felt that to he able to define my own
notions on such questions had exceedingly
little to do with my spiritual state. For
me it was important and essential to
�CALVINISM ABANDONED
know that God hated sin, and that God
had forgiven my sin. But to know one
particular manifestation of his hatred of
sin, or the machinery by which he had
enabled himself to forgive, was of very
secondary importance. When he pro
claims to me in his word that he is for
giving to all the penitent, it is not for me
to reply that “ I cannot believe that until
I hear how he manages to reconcile such
conduct with his other attributes.” Yet
I remembered this was Bishop Beve
ridge’s sufficient refutation of Moham
medanism, which teaches no atonement.
At the same time great progress had
been made in my mind towards the
overthrow of the correlative dogma of
the fall of man and his total corruption.
Probably for years I had been unawares
anti-Calvinistic on this topic. Even at
Oxford I had held that human depravity
is a fact which it is absurd to argue
against; a fact attested by Thucydides,
Polybius, Horace, and Tacitus almost as
strongly as by St. Paul. Yet in admit
ting man’s total corruption I interpreted
this of spiritual, not of moral, perver
sion ; for that there were kindly and
amiable qualities even in the unre
generate was quite as clear a fact as any
other. Hence, in result I did not attri
bute to man any great essential depravity
in the popular and moral sense of the
word; and the doctrine amounted only
to this, that “ spiritually man is para
lysed until the grace of God comes
freely upon him.” How to reconcile
this with the condemnation and punish
ment of man for being unspiritual I knew
not. I saw, and did not dissemble, the
difficulty, but received it as a mystery
hereafter to be cleared up.
But it gradually broke upon me that,
when Paul said nothing stronger than
heathen moralists had said about human
wickedness, it was absurd to quote his
words any more than theirs in proof of a
fall—that is, of a permanent degeneracy
induced by the first sin of the first man ;
and when I studied the fifth chapter of
the Romans I found it was death, not
corruption, which Adam was said to have
entailed. In short, I could scarcely find
the modern doctrine of the “ Fall ” any
where in the Bible. I then remembered
that Calvin, in his Institutes, complains
that all the Fathers are heterodox on
this point, the Greek Fathers being
grievously overweening in their estimate
of human power; while of the Latin
Fathers even Augustine is not always up
to Calvin’s mark of orthodoxy. This
confirmed my rising conviction that the
tenet is of rather recent origin. I after
wards heard that both it and the doctrine
of compensatory misery were first syste
matised by Archbishop Anselm in the
reign of our William Rufus; but I never
took the pains to verify this.
For meanwhile I had been forcibly
impressed with the following thought.
Suppose a youth to have been carefully
brought up at home, and every tempta
tion kept out of his way; suppose him
to have been in appearance virtuous,
amiable, religious ; suppose, farther, that
at the age of twenty-one he goes out into
the world and falls into sin by the first
temptation; how will a Calvinistic teacher
moralise over such a youth? Will he
not say : “ Behold a proof of the essen
tial depravity of human nature ! See the
affinity of man for sin ! How fair and
deceptive was this young man’s virtue
while he was sheltered from temptation ;
but oh ! how rotten has it proved itself!”
Undoubtedly, the Calvinist would and
must so moralise. But it struck me that,
if I substituted the name of Adam for
the youth, the argument proved the
primitive corruption of Adam’s nature.
Adam fell by the first temptation; what
greater proof of a fallen nature have I
ever given ? Or what is it possible for
anyone to give ? I thus discerned that
there was a priori impossibility of fixing
on myself the imputation of degeneracy
without fixing the same on Adam. In
short, Adam undeniably proved his
primitive nature to be frail; so do we
all; but as he was nevertheless not
primitively corrupt, why should we call
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CALVINISM ABANDONED
ourselves so?
Frailty, then, is not
corruption, and does not prove degene
racy.
“ Original sin ” (says one of the Thirtynine Articles) “standeth not in the follow
ing of Adam, as the Pelagians do vainly
talk” etc. Alas, then ! was I become a
Pelagian ? Certainly I could no longer
see that Adam’s first sin affected me
more than his second or third, or so
much as the sins of my immediate
parents. A father who, for instance,
indulges in furious passions and exciting
liquors may, I suppose, transmit violent
passions to his son. In this sense I
could not wholly reject the possibility of
transmitted corruption; but it had no
thing to do with the theological doctrine
of the “federal headship” of Adam. Not
that I could wholly give up this last
doctrine, for I still read it in the fifth
chapter of Romans. But it was clear to
me that, whatever that meant, I could not
combine it with the idea of degeneracy ;
nor could I find a proof of it in the fact
of prevalent wickedness. Thus I received
a shadowy doctrine on mere Scriptural
authority; it had no longer any root in
my understanding or heart.
Moreover, it was manifest to me that
the Calvinistic view is based in a vain
attempt to acquit God of having created
a “ sinful ” being, while the broad Scrip
tural fact is that he did create a being as
truly “ liable to sin ” as any of us. If
that needs no exculpation, how more
does our state need it? Does it not
suffice to say that “ every creature,
because he is a creature and not God,
must necessarily be frail”? But Calvin
intensely aggravates whatever there is of
difficulty, for he supposes God to have
created the most precious thing on earth
in unstable equilibrium, so as to tipple
over irrecoverably at the first infinitesimal
touch, and with it wreck for ever the
spiritual hopes of all Adam’s posterity.
Surely all nature proclaims that, if God
planted any spiritual nature at all in man,
it was in stable equilibrium, able to right
itself when deranged.
Lastly, I saw that the Calvinistic doc
trine of human degeneracy teaches that
God disowns my nature (the only nature
I ever had) as not his work, but the
devil’s work. He hereby tells me that
he is not my Creator, and he disclaims
his right over me, as a father who dis
owns a child. To teach this is to teach
that I owe him no obedience, no worship,
no trust; to sever the cords that bind
the creature to the Creator, and to make
all religion gratuitous and vain.
Thus Calvinism was found by me not
only not to be Evangelical, but not to be
logical, in spite of its high logical preten
sions, and to be irreconcilable with
any intelligent theory of religion. Of
“gloomy Calvinism” I had often heard
people speak with an emphasis that
annoyed me as highly unjust; for mine
had not been a gloomy religion—far,
very far, from it. On the side of eternal
punishment its theory, no doubt, had
been gloomy enough ; but human nature
has a notable art of not realising all the
articles of a creed; moreover, this doc
trine is equally held by Arminians. But
I was conscious that in dropping Calvin
ism I had lost nothing Evangelical; on
the contrary, the gospel which I retained
was as spiritual and deep-hearted as
before, only more merciful.
Before this Third Period of my creed
was completed I made my first acquaint
ance with a Unitarian. This gentleman
showed much sweetness of mind, large
ness of charity, and a timid devoutness
which I had not expected in such a
quarter. His mixture of credulity and
incredulity seemed to me capricious and
wholly incoherent. First, as to his in
credulity, or, rather, boldness of thought.
Eternal punishment was a notion which
nothing could make him believe, and for
which it would be useless to quote Scrip
ture to him; for the doctrine, he said,
darkened the moral character of God
and produced malignity in man. That
Christ had any higher nature than we
all have was a tenet essentially inadmis
sible ; first, because • it destroyed all
�CALVINISM ABANDONED
moral benefit from his example and
sympathy, and next because no one has
yet succeeded in even stating the doc
trine of the Incarnation without contra
dicting himself. If Christ was but one
person, one mind, then that one mind
could not be simultaneously finite and
infinite, nor therefore simultaneously
God and man. But when I came to
hear more from this same gentleman, I
found him to avow that no Trinitarian
could have a higher conception than he
of the present power and glory of Christ.
He believed that the man Jesus is at the
head of the whole moral creation of God;
that all power in heaven and earth is
given to him; that he will be Judge of
all men, and is himself raised above all
judgment. This was to me unimaginable
from his point of view. Could he really
think Jesus to be a mere man, and yet
believe him to be sinless ? On what did
that belief rest? Two texts were quoted
in proof, i Pet. ii. 22 and Heb. iv. 15.
Of these, the former did not necessarily
mean anything more than that Jesus was
unjustly- put to death; and the latter
belonged to an Epistle which my new
friend had already rejected as unapostolic
and not of first-rate authority when speak
ing of the Atonement. Indeed, that the
Epistle to the Hebrews is not from the
hand of Paul had very long seemed to
me an obvious certainty—as long as I
had had any delicate feeling of Greek
style.
That a human child, bom with the
nature of other children, and having to
learn wisdom and win virtue through the
same process, should grow up sinless
appeared to me an event so paradoxical
as to need the most amply decisive
proof. Yet what kind of proof was pos
sible? Neither Apollos (if he was the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews)
nor yet Peter had any power of attesting
the sinlessness of Jesus as a fact known
to themselves personally; they could
only learn it by some preternatural com
munication, to which, nevertheless, the
passages before us implied no preten
sion whatever. To me it appeared an
53
axiom1 that, if Jesus was in physical origin
a mere man, he was, like myself, a sinful
man, and therefore certainly not my
Judge, certainly not an omniscient reader
of all hearts, nor on any account to be
bowed down to as Lord. To exercise
hope, faith, trust in him, seemed then an
impiety. I did not mean to impute
impiety to Unitarians; still, I distinctly
believed that English Unitarianism could
never afford me a half-hour’s restingplace.
Nevertheless, from contact with this
excellent person I learned how much
tenderness of spirit a Unitarian may
have; and it pleasantly enlarged my
charity, although I continued to feel
much repugnance for his doctrine, and
was anxious and constrained in the
presence of Unitarians. From the same
collision with him I gained a fresh
insight into a part of my own mind.
I had always regarded the Gospels (at
least, the first three) to be to the Epistles
nearly as Law to Gospel—that is, the
three Gospels dealt chiefly in precept, the
Epistles in motives which act on the
affections. This did not appear to me
dishonourable to the teaching of Christ;
for I supposed it to be a pre-determined
development. But I now discovered
that there was a deeper distaste in me
for the details of the human life of
Christ than I was previously conscious
of—a distaste which I found out by a
reaction from the minute interest felt in
such details by my new friend. For
several years more I did not fully under
stand how and why this was—viz., that
my religion had always been Pauline.
Christ was to me the ideal of glorified
human nature ; but I needed some dim
ness in the portrait to give play to my
imagination—if drawn too sharply his
torical, it sank into something not
superhuman, and caused a revulsion of
feeling. As all paintings of the miracu
lous used to displease and even disgust
me from a boy by the unbelief which
1 In this (second) edition I have added an
entire chapter expressly on the subject.
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CALVINISM ABANDONED
they inspired, so, if anyone dwelt on the
special proofs of tenderness and love
exhibited in certain words or actions of
Jesus, it was apt to call out in me a
sense that from day to day equal kind
ness might often be met. The imbecility
of preachers who would dwell on such
words as “Weep not,” as if nobody else
ever uttered such, had always annoyed
me. I felt it impossible to obtain a
worthy idea of Christ from studying any
of the details reported concerning him.
If I dwelt too much on these, I got a
finite object, but I yearned for an infinite
one; hence my preference for John’s
mysterious Jesus. Thus my Christ was
not the figure accurately painted in the
narrative, but one kindled in my imagi
nation by the allusions and (as it were)
poetry of the New Testament. I did
not wish for vivid historical realisation;
relics I could never have valued;
pilgrimages to Jerusalem had always
excited in me more of scorn than of
sympathy, and I make no doubt such
was fundamentally Paul’s1 feeling. On
the contrary, it began to appear to me
(and I believe not unjustly) that the
Unitarian mind revelled peculiarly in
“ Christ after the flesh,” whom Paul
resolved not to know. Possibly in this
circumstance will be found to lie the
strong and the weak points of the
Unitarian religious character as con
trasted with that of the Evangelical, far
more truly than in the doctrine of the
Atonement. I can testify that the
Atonement may be dropped out of
Pauline religion without affecting its
quality; so may Christ be spiritualised
into God and identified with the Father.
But I suspect that a Pauline faith could
not, without much violence and convul
sion, be changed into devout admiration
of a clearly drawn historical character,
as though any full and unsurpassable
embodiment of God’s moral perfections
could be exhibited with ink and pen.
A reviewer, who has since made his
name known, has pointed to the
preceding remarks as indicative of my
deficiency in imagination and my
tendency to romance. My dear friend
is undoubtedly right in the former point;
I am destitute of (creative) poetical
imagination ; and as to the latter point,
his insight into character is so great that
I readily believe him to know me better
than I know myself. Nevertheless, I
think he has mistaken the nature of the
preceding argument. I am, on the
contrary, almost disposed to say that
those have a tendency to romance who
can look at a picture with men flying
into the air, or on an angel with a brass
trumpet, and dead men rising out of
their graves with good stout muscles,
and not feel that the picture suggests
unbelief. Nor do I confess to romance,
in my desire of something more than
historical and daily human nature in the
character of Jesus; for all Christendom,
between the dates a.d. iooandA.D. 1850,
with the exception of small eccentric
coteries, has held Jesus to be essentially
superhuman. Paul and John so taught
concerning him.
To believe their
doctrine (I agree with my friend) is, in
some sense, a weakness of understanding,
but it is a weakness to which minds of
1 The same may probably be said of all the
Apostles and their whole generation. If they every class have been for ages liable.
had looked on the life of Jesus with the same
tender and human affection as modern Unitarians
and pious Romanists do, the Church would have
swarmed with holy coats and other relics in the
very first age. The mother of Jesus and her
little establishment would at once have swelled
into importance. This certainly was not the
case, which may make it doubtful whether the
other Apostles dwelt at all more on the hitman
personality of Jesus than Paul did. Strikingly
different as James is from Paul, he is in this
respect perfectly agreed with him.
Such had been the progress of my
mind towards the end of what I will call
my Third Period. In it the authority
of the Scriptures as to some details
(which at length became highly impor
tant) had begun to be questioned, of
which I shall proceed to speak; but
hitherto this was quite secondary to the
�THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
momentous revolution which lay Calvin
ism prostrate in my mind, which opened
my heart to Unitarians, and, I may say,
to unbelievers ; which enlarged all my
sympathies, and soon set me to practise
free moral thought, at least as a necessity,
if not as a duty. Yet I held fast an
unabated reverence for the moral and
spiritual teaching of the New Testament,
and had not the most remote conception
that anything could ever shatter my
belief in its great miracles. In fact,
during this period I many times yearned
to proceed to India, whither my friend
Groves had transferred his labours and
his hopes ; but I was thwarted by several
causes, and was again and again damped
by the fear of bigotry from new quarters.
Otherwise, I thought I could succeed in
55
merging as needless many controversies.
In all the workings of my mind about
Tri-unity, Incarnation, Atonement, the
Fall, Resurrection, Immortality, Eternal
Punishment, how little had any of these
to do with the inward exercises of my
soul towards God! He was still the
same, immutably glorious ; not one
feature of his countenance had altered
to my gaze, or could alter. This surely
was the God whom Christ came to
reveal and bring us into fellowship with ;
this is that about which Christians ought
to have no controversy, but which they
should unitedly, concordantly, themselves
enjoy and exhibit to the heathen. But
oh, Christendom ! what dost thou believe
and teach ? The heathen cry out to
thee—Physician, heal thyself.
Chapter IV.
THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
It has been stated that I had already
begun to discern that it was impossible
with perfect honesty to defend every
tittle contained in the Bible. Most of
the points which give moral offence in
the Book of Genesis I had been used to
explain away by the doctrine of Progress,
yet every now and then it became hard
to deny that God is represented as
giving an actual sanction to that which we
now call sinful. Indeed, up and down
the Scriptures very numerous texts are
scattered which are notorious difficulties
with commentators. These I had habitu
ally overruled one by one ; but again of
late, since I had been forced to act and
talk less and think more, they began to
encompass me. But I was for a while
too full of other inquiries to follow up
coherently any of my doubts or percep
tions, until my mind became at length
nailed down to the definite study of one
well-known passage.
This passage may be judged of ex
tremely secondary importance in itself,
yet, by its remoteness from all properly
spiritual and profound questions, it
seemed to afford to me the safest of
arguments. The genealogy with which
the Gospel of Matthew opens I had long
known to be a stumbling-block to
divines, and I had never been satisfied
with their explanations. On reading it
afresh, after long intermission, and com
paring it for myself with the Old Testa
ment, I was struck with observing that
the corruption of the two names Ahaziah
and Uzziah into the same sound (Oziah)
has been the cause of merging four
generations into one, as the similarity of
Jehoiakim to Jehoiachin also led to
blending them both in the name
Jeconiah. In consequence, there ought
to be eighteen generations where
Matthew has given us only fourteen;
yet we cannot call this an error of a
�56
THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
transcriber, for it is distinctly remarked
that the genealogy consists of fourteen,
three times repeated. Thus, there were
but fourteen names inserted by Matthew;
yet it ought to have been eighteen, and
he was under manifest mistake. This
surely belongs to a class of knowledge of
which man has cognisance ; it would not
be piety, but grovelling superstition, to
avow before God that I distrust my
powers of counting, and, in obedience to
the written word, I believe that eighteen
is fourteen and fourteen is eighteen.
Thus it is impossible to deny that there
is cognisable error in the first chapter of
Matthew. Consequently, that Gospel is
not all dictated by the Spirit of God,
and (unless we can get rid of the first
chapter as no part of the Bible)
the doctrine of the verbal infallibility
of the whole Bible, or, indeed, of
the New Testament, is demonstrably
false.
After I had turned the matter over
often, and had become accustomed to
the thought, this single instance at
length had great force to give boldness
to my mind within a very narrow range.
I asked whether, if the chapter were now
proved to be spurious, that would save
the infallibility of the Bible. The reply
was, Not of the Bible as it is, but only
of the Bible when cleared of that and of
all other spurious additions. If, by
independent methods, such as an exami
nation of manuscripts, the spuriousness
of the chapter could now be shown, this
would verify the faculty of criticism
which has already objected to its
contents ; thus it would justly urge us
to apply similar criticism to other
passages.
I farther remembered, and now brought
together under a single point of view,
other undeniable mistakes. The genea
logy of the nominal father of Jesus in
Luke is inconsistent with that in Matthew,
in spite of the flagrant dishonesty with
which divines seek to deny this ; and
neither Evangelist gives the genealogy
of Mary, which alone is wanted. In
Acts vii. 16 the land which Jacob bought
of the children of Hamor1 is confounded
with that which Abraham bought of
Ephron the Hittite. In Acts v. 36, 37,
Gamaliel is made to say that Theudas
was earlier in time than Judas of Galilee.
Yet, in fact, Judas of Galilee preceded
Theudas, and the revolt of Theudas had
not yet taken place when Gamaliel
spoke, so the error is not Gamaliel’s, but
Luke’s. Of both the insurgents we have
a clear and unimpeached historical
account in Josephus. The slaughter of
the infants by Herod, if true, must, I
thought, needs have been recorded by
the same historian. So, again, in regard
to the allusion made by Jesus to Zacha
rias son of Barachias, as last of the
martyrs, it was difficult for me to shake
off the suspicion that a gross error had
been committed, and that the person
intended is the “ Zacharias son of
Baruchus,” who, as we know from
Josephus, was martyred within the courts
of the temple during the siege of Jeru
salem by Titus, about forty years after
the crucifixion. The well-known prophet
Zechariah was indeed son of Berechiah,
but he was not last of the martyrs,2 if,
indeed, he was martyred at all. On the
whole, the persuasion stuck to me that
words had been put into the mouth of
Jesus which he could not possibly have
used. The impossibility of settling the
names of the Twelve Apostles struck me
as a notable fact. I farther remembered
the numerous difficulties of harmonising
the four Gospels; how, when a boy at
school, I had tried to incorporate all
four into one history, and the dismay
with which I had found the insoluble
character of the problem, the endless
discrepancies and perpetual uncer
tainties. These now began to seem to
1 See Gen. xxxiii. 19 and xlix. 29-32, xxiii.
2 Some, say that Zachariah, son of Jehoiada,
named in the Chronicles, is meant, that he is
confounded, with the prophet, the son of
Berechiah, and was supposed to be the last of
the martyrs because the Chronicles are placed
last in the Hebrew Bible. This is a plausible
view, but it saves the Scripture only by imputing
error to Jesus.
�THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
57
me inherent in the materials, and not to doctrine of headship and atonement
be ascribable to our want of intelligence. founded on it? If the world was not
I had also discerned in the opening of made in six days, how could we defend
Genesis things which could not be the Fourth Commandment as true,
literally received. The geography of the though said to have been written in
rivers in Paradise is inexplicable, though stone by the very finger of God? If
it assumes the tone of explanation. The Noah’s Deluge was a legend, we should
curse on the serpent, who is to go on at least have to admit that Peter did not
his belly (how else did he go before?) know this ; what, too, would be said of
and eat dust, is a capricious punishment Christ’s allusion to it ? I was unable to
on a race of brutes, one of whom the admit Dr. Arnold’s views ; but to see a
Devil chose to use as his instrument. vigorous mind, deeply imbued with
That the painfulness of childbirth is Christian devoutness, so convinced, both
caused not by Eve’s sin, but by artificial reassured me that I need not fear moral
habits and a weakened nervous system, mischiefs from free inquiry, and, indeed,
seems to be proved by the twofold fact laid that inquiry upon me as a duty.
Here, however, was a new point
that savage women and wild animals
suffer but little, and tame cattle often started. Does the question of the deri
suffer as much as human females. vation of the human race from two
About this time, also, I had perceived parents belong to things cognisable by
(what I afterwards learned the Germans the human intellect, or to things about
to have more fully investigated) that the which we must learn submissively ?
two different accounts of the Creation Plainly to the former. It would be
are distinguished by the appellations monstrous to deny that such inquiries
given to the Divine Creator. I did not legitimately belong to physiology, or to
see how to resist the inference that the proscribe a free study of this science.
book is made up of heterogeneous docu If so, there was an a priori possibility
ments, and was not put forth by the that what is in the strictest sense called
“ religious doctrine ” might come into
direct dictation of the Spirit to Moses.
A new stimulus was, after this, given direct collision not merely with my illto my mind by two short conversations trained conscience, but with legitimate
with the late excellent Dr. Arnold at science, and that this would call on me
Rugby. I had become aware of the to ask : “Which of the two certainties is
difficulties encountered by physiologists stronger—that the religious parts of the
in believing the whole human race to Scripture are infallible, or that the
have proceeded in about 6,000 years science is trustworthy?” And I then
from a single Adam and Eve, and that first saw that, while science had (within
the longevity (not miraculous, but ordi however limited a range of thought)
nary) attributed to the patriarchs was demonstrations or severe verifications, it
another stumbling-block. The geological was impossible to pretend to anything so
difficulties of the Mosaic cosmogony cogent in favour of the infallibility of
were also at that time exciting attention. any or some part of the Scriptures—a
It was a novelty to me that Arnold doctrine which I was accustomed to
treated these questions as matters of believe, and felt to be a legitimate pre
indifference to religion, and did not sumption, yet one of which it grew
hesitate to say that the account of harder and harder to assign any proof
Noah’s Deluge was evidently mythical, the more closely I analysed it. Never
and the history of Joseph “a beautiful theless, I still held it fast, and resolved
poem.” I was staggered at this. If all not to let it go until I was forced.
A fresh strain fell on the Scriptural
were not descended from Adam, what
became of St. Paul’s parallel between infallibility in contemplating the origin
the first and second Adam, and the of death. Geologists assured us that
�58
THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
death went on in the animal creation
many ages before the existence of man.
The rocks formed of the shells of animals
testify that death is a phenomenon
thousands of thousand years old; to
refer the death of animals to the sin of
Adam and Eve is evidently impossible.
Yet, if not, the analogies of the human
to the brute form make it scarcely
credible that man’s body can ever have
been - intended for immortality. Nay,
when we consider the conditions of birth
and growth to which it is subject, the
wear and tear essential to life, the new
generations intended to succeed and
supplant the old—so soon as the ques
tion is proposed as one of physiology—
the reply is inevitable that death is no
accident introduced by the perverse will
of our first parents, nor any way con
nected with man’s sinfulness, but is
purely a result of the conditions of
animal life. On the contrary, St. Paul
rests most important conclusions on the
fact that one man, Adam, by personal
sin, brought death upon all posterity. If
this was a fundamental error, religious
doctrine also is shaken.
In various attempts at compromise—
such as conceding the Scriptural fallibility
in human science, but maintaining its
spiritual perfection—I always found the
division impracticable. At last it pressed
on me that, if I admitted morals to rest
on an independent basis, it was dishonest
to shut my eyes to any apparent collisions
of morality with the Scriptures. A very
notorious and decisive instance is that of
Jael. Sisera, when beaten in battle, fled
to the tent of his friend Heber, and was
there warmly welcomed by Jael, Heber’s
wife. After she had refreshed him with
food and lulled him to sleep, she killed
him by driving a nail into his temples;
and for this deed, which nowadays would
be called a perfidious murder, the
prophetess Deborah, in an inspired
psalm, pronounces Jael to be “ blessed
above women,” and glorifies her act by
an elaborate description of its atrocity.
As soon as I felt that I was bound to
pass a moral judgment on this I saw
that, as regards the Old Testament, the
battle was already lost. Many other
things, indeed, instantly rose in full
power upon me, especially the command
to Abraham to slay his son. Paul and
James agree in extolling Abraham as the
pattern of faith; James and the author
of the Epistle to the Hebrews specify the
sacrifice of Isaac as a first-rate fruit of
faith; yet, if the voice of morality is
allowed to be heard, Abraham was (in
heart and intention) not less guilty than
those who sacrificed their children to
Molech.
Thus at length it appeared that I must
choose between two courses. I must
either blind my moral sentiment, my
powers of criticism, and my scientific
knowledge (such as they were) in order
to accept the Scripture entire; or I must
encounter the problem, however arduous,
of adjusting the relative claims of human
knowledge and divine revelation. As to
the former method, to name it was to
condemn it, for it would put every
system of Paganism on a par with
Christianity. If one system of religion
may claim that we blind our hearts and
eyes in its favour, so may another ; and
there is precisely the same reason for
becoming a Hindoo in religion as a
Christian. We cannot be both ; therefore
the principle is demonstrably absurd. It
is also, of course, morally horrible, and
opposed to countless passages of the
Scriptures themselves. Nor can the
argument be evaded by talking of
external evidences, for these also are
confessedly moral evidences, to be
judged of by our moral faculties. Nay,
according to all Christian advocates, they
are God’s test of our moral temper. To
allege, therefore, that our moral faculties
are not to judge is to annihilate the
evidences for Christianity. Thus, finally,
I was lodged in three inevitable conclu
sions :—
1. The moral and intellectual powers
of man must be acknowledged as having
a right and duty to criticise the contents
of the Scripture.
2. When so exerted they condemn
�THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
59
times? On the whole, I rather con
cluded that there is in nearly all English
education a positive repressing of a
young person’s truthfulness, for I could
distinctly see that in my own case there
was always need of defying authority and
public opinion—not to speak of more
serious sacrifices-—if I was to follow
truth. All society seemed so to hate
novelties of thought as to prefer the
chances of error in the old. Of course 1
When distinctly conscious, after long Why, how could it be otherwise while
efforts to evade it, that this was and must Test Articles were maintained ?
Yet surely, if God is truth, none
henceforth be my position, I ruminated
on the many auguries which had been sincerely aspire to him who dread to
made concerning me by frightened lose their present opinions in exchange
friends. “ You will become a Socinian,” for others truer. I had not then read a
had been said of me even at Oxford; sentence of Coleridge, which is to this
“You will become an infidel,” has since effect : “If anyone begins by loving
been added. My present results, I was Christianity more than the truth, he will
aware, would seem a sadly triumphant proceed to love his Church more than
confirmation to the clear-sighted instinct Christianity, and will end by loving his
of orthodoxy. But the animus of such own opinions better than either.” A
prophecies had always made me indig dim conception of this was in my mind,
nant, and I could not admit that there and I saw that the genuine love of God
was any merit in such clear-sightedness. was essentially connected with loving
What! (used I to say) will you shrink truth as truth, and not truth as our own
from truth, lest it lead to error? If accustomed thought, truth as our old
following truth must bring us to prejudice; and that the real saint can
Socinianism, let us by all means become never be afraid to let God teach him one
Socinians, or anything else. Surely we lesson more, or unteach him one more
do not love our doctrines more than the error. Then I rejoiced to feel how
truth, but because they are the truth. right and sound had been our principle,
Are we not exhorted to “ prove all that no creed can possibly be used as
things, and hold fast that which is the touchstone of spirituality, for man
good ” ? But, to my discomfort, I morally excels man, as far as creeds are
generally found that this (to me so con concerned, not by assenting to true
vincing) argument for feeling no alarm propositions, but by loving them because
only caused more and more alarm, and they are discerned to be true, and by
gloomier omens concerning me. On possessing a faculty of discernment
considering all this in leisurely retrospect, sharpened by the love of truth. Such
I began painfully to doubt whether, after are God’s true apostles, differing enor
all, there is much love of truth even mously in attainment and elevation, but
among those who have an undeniable all born to ascend. For these to quarrel
strength of religious feeling. I ques between themselves because they do not
tioned with myself whether love of truth agree in opinions is monstrous. Senti
is not a virtue demanding a robust ment, surely, not opinion, is the bond of
mental cultivation, whether mathematical the Spirit; and as the love of God, so
or other abstract studies may not be the love of truth is a high and sacred
practically needed for it. But no ; for sentiment, in comparison to which our
how then could it exist in some feminine creeds are mean.
Well, I had been misjudged, I had
natures ? how in rude and unphilosophical
portions of the Scripture as erroneous
and immoral.
3. The assumed infallibility of the
entire Scripture is a proved falsity, not
merely as to physiology and other
scientific matters, but also as to morals;
and it remains for farther inquiry how to
discriminate the trustworthy from the
untrustworthy within the limits of the
Bible itself.
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THE RELIGION OE THE LETTER RENOUNCED
been absurdly measured by other men’s
creed; but might I not have similarly
misjudged others, since I had from early
youth been under similar influences ?
How many of my seniors at Oxford I
had virtually despised because they were
not evangelical ! Had I had opportunity
of testing their spirituality ? or had I the
faculty of so doing ? Had I not really
condemned them as unspiritual, barely
because of their creed? On trying to
reproduce the past to my imagination, I
could not condemn myself quite as
sweepingly as I wished, but my heart
smote me on account of one. I had a
brother, with whose name all England
was resounding for praise or blame;
from his sympathies, through pure
hatred of Popery, I had long since
turned away. What was this but to
judge him by his creed ? True, his
whole theory was nothing but Romanism
transferred to England ; but what then ?
I had studied with the deepest interest
Mrs. Schimmelpenninck’s account of the
Port-Royalists, and, though I was aware
that she exhibits only the bright side of
her subject, yet the absolute excellences
of her nuns and priests showed that
Romanism, as such, was not fatal to
spirituality. They were persecuted ; this
did them good perhaps, or certainly
exhibited their brightness. So, too, my
brother surely was struggling after truth,
fighting for freedom to his own heart
and mind, against church articles and
stagnancy of thought. For this he
deserved both sympathy and love, but
I, alas ! had not known and seen his
excellence. But now God had taught
me more largeness by bitter sorrow
working the peaceable fruit of righteous
ness ; at last, then, I might admire my
brother. I therefore wrote to him a
letter of contrition. Some change,
either in his mind or in his view of my
position, had taken place, and I was
happy to find him once more able, not
only to feel fraternally, as he had always
done, but to act also fraternally. Never
theless, to this day it is to me a painfully
unsolved mystery how a mind can claim
its freedom in order to establish bond
age.
For the peculiarities of Romanism I
feel nothing, and I can pretend nothing,
but contempt, hatred, disgust, or horror.
But this system of falsehood, fraud,
unscrupulous and unrelenting ambition
will never be destroyed while Protestants
keep up their insane anathemas against
opinion. These are the outworks of the
Romish citadel; until they are razed to
the ground the citadel will defy attack.
If we are to blind our eyes in order to
accept an article of King Edward VI.
or an argument of St. Paul’s, why not
blind them so far as to accept the
Council of Trent ? If we are to
pronounce that a man “ without doubt
shall perish everlastingly ” unless he
believes the self-contradictions of the
pseudo-Athanasian Creed, why should we
shrink from a similar anathema on those
who reject the self-contradictions of Transubstantiation ? If one man is cast out
of God’s favour for eliciting error while
earnestly searching after truth, and
another remains in favour by passively
receiving the word of a Church, of a
Priest, or of an Apostle, then to search
for truth is dangerous ; apathy is safer;
then the soul does not come directly
into contact with God and learn of him,
but has to learn from, and unconvincedly
submit to, some external authority.
This is the germ of Romanism; its
legitimate development makes us Pagans
outright.
______
But in what position was I now towards
the Apostles? Could I admit their
inspiration when I no longer thought
them infallible? Undoubtedly. What
could be clearer, on every hypothesis,
than that they were inspired on and after
the day of Pentecost, and yet remained
ignorant and liable to mistake about the
relation of the Gentiles to the Jews ?
The moderns have introduced into the
idea of inspiration that of infallibility, to
which either omniscience or dictation is
essential. That there was no dictation
(said I) is proved by the variety of style
�THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
in the Scriptural writers ; that they were
not omniscient is manifest. In truth, if
human minds had not been left to them,
how could they have argued persuasively ?
Was not the superior success of their
preaching to that of Christ perhaps due
to their sharing in the prejudices of their
contemporaries ? An orator is most
persuasive when he is lifted above his
hearers on those points only on which he
is to reform their notions. The Apostles
were not omniscient—granted; but it
cannot hence be inferred that they did
not know the message given them by
God. Their knowledge, however perfect,
must yet in a human mind have co-existed
with ignorance ; and nothing (argued I)
but a perpetual miracle could prevent
ignorance from now and then exhibiting
itself in some error. But hence to infer
that they are not inspired, and are not
messengers from God, is quite gratuitous.
Who, indeed, imagines that John or Paul
understood astronomy so well as Sir
William Herschel ? Those who believe
that the Apostles might err in human
science need not the less revere their
moral and spiritual wisdom.
At the same time, it became a matter
of duty to me, if possible, to discriminate
the authoritative from the unauthoritative
in the Scripture, or at any rate avoid to
accept and propagate as true that which
is false, even if it be false only as science
and not as religion. I, unawares—more
perhaps from old habit than from distinct
conviction—started from the assumption
that my fixed point of knowledge was
to be found in the sensible or scientific,
not in the moral. I still retained from
my old Calvinistic doctrine a way *bf
proceeding, as if purely moral judgment
were my weak side, at least in criticising
the Scripture; so that I preferred never
to appeal to direct moral and spiritual
considerations, except in the most
glaringly necessary cases. Thus, while
I could not accept the panegyric on Jael,
and on Abraham’s intended sacrifice of
his son, I did not venture unceremoni
ously to censure the extirpation of the
Canaanites by Joshua, of which I barely
61
| said to myself that it “ certainly needed
very strong proof” of the divine com
mand to justify it. I still went so far in
timidity as to hesitate to reject on
internal evidence the account of heroes
or giants begotten by angels who, enticed
by the love of women, left heaven for
earth. The narrative in Gen. vi. had
long appeared to me undoubtedly to
bear this sense, and to have been so
understood by Jude and Peter (2 Pet.
ii.), as, I believe, it also was by the Jews
and early Fathers. I did at length set it
aside as incredible, not, however, from
moral repugnance to it (for I feared to
trust the soundness of my instinct), but
because I had slid into a new rule of
interpretation—that I must not obtrude
miracles on the Scripture narrative. The
writers tell their story without showing
any consciousness that it involves physio
logical difficulties. To invent a miracle
in order to defend this began to seem to
me unwarrantable.
It had become notorious to the public
that geologists rejected the idea of a
universal deluge as physically impossible.
Whence could the water come to cover
the highest mountains? Two replies
were attempted : 1. The flood of Noah
is not described as universal; 2. The
flood was, indeed, universal, but the
water was added and removed by miracle.
Neither reply, however, seemed to me
valid. First, the language respecting
the universality of the flood is as strong
as any that could be written ; moreover,
it is stated that the tops of the high hills
were all covered, and after the water
subsides the ark settles on the mountains
of Armenia. Now in Armenia, of neces
sity, numerous peaks would be seen,
unless the water covered them, and
especially Ararat. But a flood that
covered Ararat would overspread all the
continents, and leave only a few summits
above. If, then, the account in Genesis
is to be received, the flood was universal.
Secondly, the narrator represents the
surplus water to have come from the
clouds, and perhaps from the sea, and
again to drain back into the sea. Of a
�62
THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
miraculous creation and destruction of
water he evidently does not dream.
Other impossibilities came forward :
the insufficient dimensions of the ark to
take in all the creatures ; the unsuita
bility of the same climate to arctic and
tropical animals for a full year; the
impossibility of feeding them and avoiding
pestilence; and, especially, the total dis
agreement of the modern facts of the
dispersion of animals, with the idea that
they spread anew from Armenia as their
centre. We have no right to call in a
series of miracles to solve difficulties of
which the writer was unconscious. The
ark itself was expressly devised to
economise miracle by making a fresh
creation of animals needless.
Different in kind was the objection
which I felt to the story, which is told
twice concerning Abraham and once
concerning Isaac, of passing off a wife
as a sister. Allowing that such a thing
was barely not impossible, the improba
bility was so intense as to demand the
strictest and most cogent proof; yet
when we asked, Who testifies it ? no
proof appeared that it was Moses; or,
supposing it to be he, what his sources
of knowledge were. And this led to the
far wider remark that nowhere in the
book of Genesis is there a line to indi
cate who is the writer, or a sentence to
imply that the writer believes himself to
write by special information from God.
Indeed, it is well known that there are
numerous small phrases which denote a
later hand than that of Moses. The
kings of Israel are once alluded to his
torically—Gen. xxxvi. 31.
Why, then, was anything improbable
to be believed on the writer’s word—as,
for instance, the story of Babel and
the confusion of tongues ? One reply
only seemed possible—namely, that we
believe the Old Testament in obedience
to the authority of the New; and this
threw me again to consider the references
to the Old Testament in the Christian
Scriptures.
______
But here the difficulties soon became
manifestly more and more formidable.
In opening Matthew we meet with quota
tions from the Old Testament applied in
the most startling way. First is the
prophecy about the child Immanuel,
which in Isaiah no unbiassed interpreter
would have dreamed could apply to
Jesus. Next, the words of Hosea,
“ Out of Egypt have I called my son,”
which do but record the history cf
Israel, are imagined by Matthew to be
prophetic of the return of Jesus from
Egypt. This instance moved me much,
because I thought that, if the text were
“spiritualised,” so as to make Israel
mean Jesus, Egypt also ought to be
spiritualised and mean the world, not
retain its geographical sense, which
seemed to be carnal and absurd in
such a connection; for Egypt is no
more to Messiah than Syria or Greece.
One of the most decisive testimonies to
the Old Testament which the New
contains is in John x. 35, where I
hardly knew how to allow myself to
characterise the reasoning. The case
stands thus. The 82 nd Psalm rebukes
unjust governors, and at length says to
them: “I have said, Ye are gods, and
all of you are children of the Most
High; but ye shall die like men, and
fall like one of the princes.” In other
words : “ Though we are apt to think of
rulers as if they were superhuman, yet
they shall meet the lot of common men.”
Well, how is this applied in John?
Jesus has been accused of blasphemy
for saying that he and his Father are
one, and in reply he quotes the verse:
“ I have said, Ye are gods,” as his suffi
cient justification for calling himself Son
of God; for “ the Scripture cannot be
broken.” I dreaded to precipitate myself
into shocking unbelief if I followed out
the thoughts that this suggested, and (I
know not how) for a long time yet put
it off.
The quotations from the Old Testa
ment in St. Paul had always been a
mystery to me. The more I now
examined them, the clearer it appeared
that they were based on untenable
�THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
Rabbinical principles. Nor are those
in the Acts and in the Gospels any
better. If we take free leave to canvass
them, it may appear that not one quota
tion in ten is sensible and appropriate.
And shall we then accept the decision of
the New Testament writers as final, con
cerning the value and credibility of the
Old Testament, when it is so manifest
that they most imperfectly understood
that book ?
In fact, the appeal to them proved too
much. For Jude quotes the book of
Enoch as an inspired prophecy; and
yet, since Archbishop Laurence has
translated it from the Ethiopian, we
know that book to be a fable undeserv
ing of regard, and undoubtedly not
written by “Enoch, the seventh from
Adam.” Besides, it does not appear
that any peculiar divine revelation taught
them that the Old Testament is perfect
truth. In point of fact, they only repro
duce the ideas on that subject current in
their age. So far as Paul deviates from
the common Jewish view, it is in the
direction of disparaging the Law as essen
tially imperfect. May it not seem that
his remaining attachment to it was still
exaggerated by old sentiment and
patriotism ?
I farther found that not only do the
Evangelists give us no hint that they
thought themselves divinely inspired, or
that they had any other than human
sources of knowledge, but Luke most
explicitly shows the contrary. He opens
by stating to Theophilus that, since many
persons have committed to writing the
things handed down from eye-witnesses,
it seemed good to him also to do the
same, since he had “ accurately attended
to everything from its sources (avw^ev).”
He could not possibly have written thus
if he had been conscious of superhuman
aids. How absurd, then, of us to pretend
that we know more than Luke knew of
his own inspiration !
In truth, the arguments of theologians
to prove the inspiration (?>., infallibility)
of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are some
times almost ludicrous, My lamented
63
friend John Sterling has thus summed
up Dr. Henderson’s arguments about
Mark: “ Mark was probably inspired
because he was an acquaintance of Peter,
and because Dr. Henderson would be
reviled by other Dissenters if he doubted
it.”
About this time the great phenomenon
of these three gospels—the casting out
of devils—pressed forcibly on my atten
tion. I now dared to look full into the
facts, and saw that the disorders described
were perfectly similar to epilepsy, mania,
catalepsy, and other known maladies.
Nay, the deaf, the dumb, the hunch
backed, are spoken of as devil-ridden. I
farther knew that such diseases are still
ascribed to evil genii in Mussulman
countries; even a vicious horse is
believed by the Arabs to be majnun,
possessed by a jin or genie. Devils
also are cast out in Abyssinia to this
day. Having fallen in with Farmer’s
treatise on the Demoniacs, I carefully
studied it, and found it to prove un
answerably that a belief in demoniacal
possession is a superstition not more
respectable than that of witchcraft. But
Farmer did not at all convince me that
the three Evangelists do not share the
vulgar error. Indeed, the instant we
believe that the imagined possessions
were only various forms of disease, we
are forced to draw conclusions of the
utmost moment most damaging to the
credit of the narrators.1
Clearly they are then convicted of
misstating facts under the influence of
superstitious credulity. They represent
demoniacs as having a supernatural
acquaintance with Jesus, which, it now
becomes manifest, they cannot have had.
1 My Eclectic Reviewer says (p. 276) : “Thus,
because the evangelists held an erroneous
medical theory, Mr. Newman suffered a breach
to be made in the credit of the Bible.” No; but,
as the next sentence states, because they are “ con
victed of misstating facts,” under the influence
of this erroneous medical theory. Even this
reviewer—candid for an orthodox critic, and not
over-orthodox either—cannot help garbling me.
�64
THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
The devils cast out of two demoniacs (or
one) are said to have entered into a herd
of swine. This must have been a credu
lous fiction. Indeed, the casting out of
devils is so very prominent a part of the
miraculous agency ascribed to Jesus as
at first sight to impair our faith in his
miracles altogether.
I, however, took refuge in the con
sideration that when Jesus wrought one
great miracle popular credulity would
inevitably magnify it into ten ; hence the
discovery of foolish exaggerations is no
disproof of a real miraculous agency ;
nay, perhaps the contrary. Are they not
a sort of false halo round a disc of glory
—a halo so congenial to human nature
that the absence of it might be even
wielded as an objection? Moreover,
John tells of no demoniacs; does not
this show his freedom from popular
excitement? Observe the great miracles
narrated by John—the blind man, and
Lazarus—how different in kind from
those on demoniacs ! How incapable of
having been mistaken! How convinc
ing ! His statements cannot be explained
away. Their whole tone, moreover, is
peculiar. On the contrary, the first three
gospels contain much that (after we
see the writers to be credulous) must be
judged legendary.
The two first chapters of Matthew
abound in dreams. Dreams 1 Was,
indeed, the “ immaculate conception ”
merely told to Joseph in a dream ?—a
dream which not he only was to believe,
but we also, when reported to us by a
person wholly unknown, who wrote
seventy or eighty years after the fact,
and gives us no clue to his sources of
information! Shall I reply that he
received his information by miracle ?
But why more than Luke ? And Luke
evidently was conscious only of human
information. Besides, inspiration has
not saved Matthew from error about
demons; and why, then, about Joseph’s
dream and its highly important contents ?
In former days I had never dared to
let my thoughts dwell inquisitively on
the star which the wise men saw in the
East, and which accompanied them, and
pointed out the house where the young
child was. I now thought of it only to
see that it was a legend fit for credulous
ages, and that it must be rejected in
common with Herod’s massacre of the
children—an atrocity unknown to Jose
phus. How difficult it was to reconcile
the flight into Egypt with the narrative
of Luke I had known from early days; I
now saw that it was waste of time to try
to reconcile them.
But, perhaps, I might say : “ That the
writers should make errors about the
infancy of Jesus was natural; they were
distant from the time. But that will
not justly impair the credit of events to
which they may possibly have been
contemporaries, or even eye-witnesses.”
How, then, would this apply to the
Temptation, at which certainly none of
them were present ? Is it accident that
the same three who abound in the
demoniacs tell also the scene of the
Devil and Jesus on a pinnacle of the
temple, while the same John who omits
the demoniacs omits also this singular
story ? It being granted that the writers
are elsewhere mistaken, to criticise the
tale was to reject it.
In near connection with this followed
the discovery that many other miracles
of the Bible are wholly deficient in that
moral dignity which is supposed to place
so great a chasm between them and
ecclesiastical writings. Why should I
look with more respect on the napkins
taken from Paul’s body (Acts xix. 12)
than on pocket-handkerchiefs dipped in
the blood of martyrs ? How could I
believe, on this same writer’s hearsay,
that “ the Spirit of the Lord caught away
Philip” (viii. 39), transporting him
through the air, as oriental genii are
supposed to do ? Or what moral dignity
was there in the curse on the barren fig
tree, about which, moreover, we are so
perplexingly told that it was not the time
for figs ? What was to be said of a cure
wrought by touching the hem of Jesus’s
garment, which drew physical virtue from
him without his will ? And how could I
�THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
distinguish the genius of the miracle of
tribute-money in the fish’s mouth from
those of the apocryphal gospels ? What
was I to say of useless miracles like that
of Peter and Jesus walking on the water,
or that of many saints coming out of
the graves to show themselves, or of a
poetical sympathy of the elements, such
as the earthquake and rending of the
temple-veil when Jesus died ? Alto
gether I began to feel that Christian
advocates commit the flagrant sophism
of treating every objection as an isolated
“cavil,” and overrule each as obviously
insufficient with the same confidence as
I if it were the only one. Yet, in fact, the
objections collectively are very powerful,
i and cannot be set aside by supercilious
1 airs and by calling unbelievers “super
ficial,” any more than by harsh denun
ciations.
Pursuing the same thought to the Old
Testament, I discerned there also no
small sprinkling of grotesque or unmoral
miracles. A dead man is raised to life
> when his body by accident touches the
1 bones of Elisha; as though Elisha had
I been a Romish saint, and his bones a
sacred relic. Uzzah, when the ark is in
danger of falling, puts out his hand to
save it, and is struck dead for his impiety!
Was this the judgment of the Father of
mercies and God of all comfort ? What
was I to make of God’s anger with
. Abimelech (Gen. xx.), whose sole offence
was the having believed Abraham’s lie,
(■ for which a miraculous barrenness was
ti sent on all the females of Abimelech’s
I tribe, and was bought off only by splen
ic did presents to the favoured deceiver?
I Or was it at all credible that the lying
. and fraudulent Jacob should have been
I so specially loved by God more than the
r rude animal Esau ? Or could I any
i longer overlook the gross imagination of
I antiquity which made Abraham and
3 Jehovah dine on the same carnal food,
1 Like Tantalus with the gods; which fed
i Elijah by ravens, and set angels to bake
0 cakes for him ? Such is a specimen of
| the flood of difficulties which poured in
I through the great breach which the |
65
demoniacs had made in the credit of
Biblical marvels.
While I was in this stage of progress I
had a second time the advantage of
meeting Dr. Arnold, and had satisfaction
in finding that he rested the main strength
of Christianity on the Gospel of John.
The great similarity of the other three
seemed to him enough to mark that they
flowed from sources very similar, and
that the first Gospel had no pretensions
to be regarded as the actual writing of
Matthew. This, indeed, had been for
some time clear to me, though I now
cared little about the author’s name
when he was proved to be credulous.
Arnold regarded John’s gospel as
abounding with smaller touches which
marked the eye-witness, and, altogether, to
be the vivid and simple picture of a divine
reality, undeformed by credulous legend.
In this view I was gratified to repose, in
spite of a few partial misgivings, and
returned to investigations concerning the
Old Testament.
For some time back I had paid special
attention to the book of Genesis, and I
had got aid in the analysis of it from a
German volume. That it was based on
at least two different documents, techni
cally called the Elohistic and Jehovistic,
soon became clear to me; and an ortho
dox friend who acknowledged the fact
regarded it as a high recommendation of
the book that it was conscientiously made
out of pre-existing materials, and was not
a fancy that came from the brain of
Moses. My good friend’s argument was
not a happy one; no written record
could exist of things and times which
preceded the invention of writing. After
analysing this book with great minute
ness, I now proceeded to Exodus and
Numbers, and was soon assured that
these had not, any more than Genesis,
come forth from one primitive witness of
the facts. In all these books is found
the striking phenomenon of duplicate or
even triplicate narratives. The creation
of man is three times told. The account
of the Flood is made up out of two
discrepant originals, marked by the
D
�66
THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
names Elohim and Jehovah, of which
one makes Noah take into the ark seven
pairs of clean, and single (or double?)
pairs of unclean, beasts ; while the other
gives him two and two of all kinds, with
out distinguishing the clean. The two
documents may indeed in this narrative
be almost re-discovered by mechanical
separation. The triple statement of
Abraham and Isaac passing off a wife
for a sister was next in interest; and
here also the two which concern Abraham
are contrasted as Jehovistic and Elohistic.
A similar- double account is given of the
origin of circumcision, of the names
Isaac, Israel, Bethel, Beersheba. Still
more was I struck by the positive
declaration in Exodus (vi. 3) that God
was not known to Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob by the name Jehovah; while the
book of Genesis abounds with the con
trary fact. This alone convinced me
beyond all dispute that these books did
not come from one and the same hand,
but are conglomerates formed out of
older materials, unartistically and mechani
cally joined.
Indeed, a fuller examination showed
in Exodus and Numbers a twofold
miracle of the quails, of which the latter
is so told as to indicate entire unac
quaintance with the former. There is a
double description of the manna, a need
less second appointment of elders of the
congregation ; water is twice brought out
of the rock by the rod of Moses, whose
faith is perfect the first time and fails the
second time. The name of Meribah is
twice bestowed.
There is a double
promise of a guardian angel, a double
consecration of Aaron and his sons;
indeed, I seemed to find a double or
even threefold1 copy of the Decalogue.
Comprising Deuteronomy within my
view, I met two utterly incompatible
accounts of Aaron’s death; for Deutero
nomy makes him die bejore reaching
Meribah Kadesh, where, according to
Numbers, he sinned and incurred the
1 I have explained
Monarchy.
this
in
my Hebrew
penalty of death (Num. xx. 24, Deut. x.
6; cf. Num. xxxiii. 31, 38).
That there was error on a great scale
in all this was undeniable ; and I began
to see at least one source of the error.
The celebrated miracle of “ the sun
standing still ” has long been felt as too
violent a derangement of the whole
globe to be used by the Most High as a
means of discomfiting an army ; and I
had acquiesced in the idea that the
miracle was ocular only. But in reading
the passage (Josh. x. 12-14) I f°r the
first time observed that the narrative
rests on the authority of a poetical book
which bears the name of Jasher.1 He
who composed—“ Sun, stand thou still
upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the
valley of Ajalon 1” — like other poets
called on the sun and moon to stand
and look on Joshua’s deeds; but he
could not anticipate that his words would
be hardened into fact by a prosaic inter
preter, and appealed to in proof of a stupen
dous miracle. The commentator could
not tell what the moon had to do with it,
yet he has quoted honestly. This pre
sently led me to observe other marks
that the narrative has been made up, at
least in part, out of old poetry. Of these
the most important are in Exodus xv.
and Num. xxi., in the latter of which
three different poetical fragments are
quoted, and one of them is expressly
said to be from “the book of the wars
of Jehovah,” apparently a poem descrip
tive of the conquest of Canaan by the
Israelites. As for Exodus xv., it appeared
to me (in that stage, and after so abun
dant proof of error) almost certain that
Moses’s song is the primitive authority
out of which the prose narrative of the
passage of the Red Sea has been worked
up. Especially since, after the song, the
writer adds, v. 19: “For the horse of
Pharaoh went in with his chariots and
with his horsemen into the sea, and the
1 This poet celebrated also the deeds of David
(2 Sam. i. 18), according to our translation. If so,
he was many centuries later than Joshua. How
ever, the sense of the Hebrew is a little obscure.
�THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
Lord brought again the waters of the sea
upon them: but the children of Israel
went on dry land in the midst of the sea.”
This comment scarcely could have been
added, if the detailed account of ch. xiv.
had been written previously. The song
of Moses implies no miracle at all; it is
merely high poetry. A later prosaic age
took the hyperbolic phrases of v. 8
literally, and so generated the comment
of v. 19, and a still later time expan
ded this into the elaborate fourteenth
chapter.
Other proofs crowded upon me that
cannot here be enlarged upon. . Grant
ing, then (for argument), that the first
four books of the Pentateuch are a
compilation, made long after the event,
I tried for a while to support the very
arbitrary opinion that Deuteronomy (all
but its last chapter), which seemed to be
a more homogeneous composition, was
alone and really the production of Moses.
This, however, needed some definite
proof; for, if tradition was not sufficient
to guarantee the whole Pentateuch, it
could not guarantee to me Deuteronomy
alone. I proceeded to investigate the
external history of the Pentateuch, and
in so doing came to the story how the
Book of the Law was found in the reign of
the young king Josiah, nearly at the end
of the Jewish monarchy. As I considered
the narrative, my eyes were opened. If
the book had previously been the received
sacred law, it could not possibly have been
so lost that its contents were unknown
and the fact of its loss forgotten. It was
therefore evidently then first compiled, or
at least then first produced and made
authoritative to the nation.1 And with
this the general course of the history best
agrees, and all the phenomena of the
books themselves.
Many of the Scriptural facts were old
to me ; to the importance of the history
of Josiah I had perhaps even become
dim-sighted by familiarity. Why had I
not long ago seen that my conclusions
67
ought to have been different from those
of prevalent orthodoxy ? I found that I
had been cajoled by the primitive
assumptions which, though not clearly
stated, are unceremoniously used. Dean
Graves, for instance, always takes for
granted that, until the contrary shall be
demonstrated, it is to be firmly believed
that the Pentateuch is from the pen of
Moses. He proceeds to set aside one by
one, as not demonstrative, the indications
that it is of later origin, and, when other
means fail, he says that the particular
verses remarked on were added by a later
hand ! I considered that if we were
debating the antiquity of an Irish book,
and in one page of it were found an
allusion to the Parliamentary Union with
England, we should at once regard the
whole book, until the contrary should be
proved, as the work of this century ; and
not endure the reasoner who, in order
to uphold a theory that it is five centuries
old, pronounced that sentence “ evidently
to be from a later hand.” Yet in this
arbitrary way Dean Graves and all his
coadjutors set aside, one by one, the
texts which point at the date of the
Pentateuch. I was possessed with indig
nation. Oh, sham science ! Oh, falsenamed theology !
O mihi tam longm maneat pars ultima vitre,
Spiritus et, quantum sat erit tua diccre facta !
Yet I waited some eight years longer,
lest I should on so grave a subject write
anything premature. Especially I felt
that it was necessary to learn more of
what the erudition of Germany had done
on these subjects. Michaelis On the New
Testament had fallen into my hands
several years before, and I had found
the greatest advantage from his learning
and candour. About this time I also
had begun to get more or less aid from
four or five living German divines, but
none produced any strong impression on
me but De Wette. The two grand
lessons which I learned from him were
the greater recency of Deuteronomy and
the very untrustworthy character of the
1 I have fully discussed this in my Hebrew Book of Chronicles, with which discovery
Monarchy.
the true origin of the Pentateuch becomes
�68
THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
still clearer.1
After this I heard of
Hengstenberg as the most learned writer
on the opposite side, and furnished
myself with his work in defence of the
antiquity of the Pentateuch ; but it only
showed me how hopeless a cause he had
undertaken.
In this period I came to a totally new
view of many parts of the Bible, and, not
to be tedious, it will suffice here to sum
up the results.
The first books which I looked at as
doubtful were the Apocalypse and the
Epistle to the Hebrews.
From the
Greek style I felt assured that the former
was not by John,1 nor the latter by Paul.
2
In Michaelis I first learnt the interesting
fact of Luther having vehemently repu
diated the Apocalypse, so that he not
only declared its spuriousness in the
preface of his Bible, but solemnly
charged his successors not to print his
translation of the Apocalypse without
annexing this avowal—a charge which
they presently disobeyed. Such is the
habitual unfairness of ecclesiastical cor
porations. I was afterwards confirmed
by Neander in the belief that the Apoca
lypse is a false prophecy. The only
chapter of it which is interpreted, the
seventeenth, appears to be a political
speculation suggested by the civil war of
Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian, and
erroneously opines that the eighth emperor
of Rome is to be the last, and is to be
one of the preceding emperors restored
-—probably Nero, who was believed to
have escaped to the kings of the East.
As for the Epistle to the Hebrews (which
I was disposed to believe Luther had well
guessed to be the production of Apollos),
I now saw quite a different genius in it
1 The English reader may consult Theodore
Parker’s translation of De Wette’s Introduction
to the Canon of Scripture. I have also amply
exhibited the vanity of the Chronicles in my
Hebrew Monarchy. De Wette has a separate
treatise on the Chronicles.
2 If the date of the Apocalypse is twenty years
earlier than that of the fourth Gospel, I now feel
no such difficulty in their being the composition
of the same writer.
from that of Paul, as more artificial and
savouring of rhetorical culture. As to
this, the learned Germans are probably
unanimous.
Next to these the Song of Solomon
fell away. I had been accustomed to
receive this as a sacred representation of
the loves of Christ and the Church; but,
after I_ was experimentally acquainted
with the playful and extravagant genius of
man’s love for woman, I saw the Song of
Solomon with new eyes, and became
entirely convinced that it consists of
fragments of love-songs, some of them
rather voluptuous.
After this, it followed that the so-called
Canon of the Jews could not guarantee
to us the value of the writings. Conse
quently, such books as Ruth and Esther
(the latter, indeed, not containing one
religious sentiment) stood forth at once
in their natural insignificance. Eccle
siastes also seemed to me a meagre and
shallow production. Chronicles I now
learned to be not credulous only, but
unfair, perhaps so far as to be actually
dishonest. Not one of the historical
books of the Old Testament could
approve itself to me as of any high
antiquity or of any spiritual authority,
and in the New Testament I found the
first three books and the Acts to contain
many doubtful and some untrue accounts,
and many incredible miracles.
Many persons, after reading thus much
concerning me, will be apt to say : “Of
course then you gave up Christianity ? ”
Far from it. I gave up all that was
clearly untenable, and clung the firmer
to all that still appeared sound. I had
found out that the Bible was not to be
my religion, nor its perfection any tenet
of mine ; but what then ? Did Paul go
about preaching the Bible ?—nay, but he
preached Christ. The New Testament
did not as yet exist. To the Jews he
necessarily argued from the Old Testa
ment ; but that “faith in the Book ” was
no part of Paul’s Gospel is manifest from
his giving no list of sacred books to his
Gentile converts. Twice, indeed, in his
Epistles to Timothy, he recommends the
�THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED
Scriptures of the Old Testament, but
even in the more striking passage (on
which such exaggerated stress has been
laid) the spirit of his remark is essentially
apologetic. “Despise not, O Timothy”
(is virtually his exhortation), “ the Scrip
tures that you learned as a child.
Although now you have the Spirit to
teach you, yet that does not make the
older writers useless, for every divinely
inspired writing is also profitable for
instruction,” etc.
In Paul’s religion
respect for the Scriptures was a means,
not an end. The Bible was made for
man, not man for the Bible.
Thus the question with me was : “May
I still receive Christ as a Saviour from
sin, a Teacher and Lord sent from
heaven, and can I find an adequate
account of what he came to do or
teach ? ” And my reply was, Yes. The
Gospel of John alone gave an adequate
account of him; the other three, though
often erroneous, had clear marks of
simplicity, and in so far confirmed the
general belief in the supernatural char
acter and works of Jesus. Then the
conversion of Paul was a powerful
argument. I had Peter’s testimony to
the resurrection and to the transfigura
tion.
Many of the prophecies were
eminently remarkable, and seemed
unaccountable except as miraculous.
The origin of Judaism and spread of
Christianity appeared to be beyond
common experience, and were perhaps
fairly to be called supernatural. Broad
views such as these did not seem to be
affected by the special conclusions at
which I had arrived concerning the books
of the Bible. I conceived myself to be
resting under an Indian figtree, which
is supported by certain grand stems, but
also lets down to the earth many small
branches, which seem to the eye to prop
the tree, but in fact are supported by it.
If they were cut away, the tree would not
be less strong. So neither was the tree
of Christianity weakened by the loss of
its apparent props. I might still enjoy
its shade, and eat of its fruits, and bless
the hand that planted it.
69
In the course of this period I likewise
learnt how inadequate allowance I had
once made for the repulsion produced
by my own dogmatic tendency on the
sympathies of the unevangelical. I now
often met persons of Evangelical opinion,
but could seldom have any interchange
of religious sentiment with them, because
every word they uttered warned me that
I could escape controversy only while I
kept them at a distance ; moreover, if
any little difference of opinion led us
into amicable argument, they uniformly
reasoned by quoting texts. This was
now inadmissible with me, but I could
only have done mischief by going farther
than a dry disclaimer, after which,
indeed, I saw I was generally looked on
as “an infidel.” No doubt the parties
who so came into collision with me
approached me often with an earnest
desire and hope to find some spiritual
good in me, but withdrew disappointed,
finding me either cold and defensive, or
(perhaps they thought) warm and dispu
tatious. Thus, as long as artificial tests
of spirituality are allowed to exist, their
erroneousness is not easily exposed by
the mere wear and tear of life. When
the collision of opinion is very strong
two good men may meet, and only be
confirmed in their prejudices against one
another; for, in order that one may
elicit the spiritual sympathies of the
other, a certain liberality is prerequisite.
Without this each prepares to shield
himself from attack, or even holds out
weapons of offence. Thus “articles of
Communion” are essentially articles of
disunion. On the other hand, if all
tests of opinion in a church were heartily
and truly done away, then the principles
of spiritual affinity and repulsion would
act quite undisturbed. Surely, therefore,
this was the only right method? Never
theless, I saw the necessity of one test,
“Jesus is the Son of God,” and felt
unpleasantly that one article tends
infallibly to draw another after it. But
I had too much just then to think of in
other quarters to care much about
Church systems.
�yo
FAITH A T SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
Chapter V.
FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
I reckon my Fifth Period to begin from
the time when I had totally abandoned
the claims of “the Canon ” of Scripture,
however curtailed, to be received as the
object of faith, as free from error, or as
something raised above moral criticism;
and looked out for some deeper founda
tion for my creed than any sacred letter.
But an entirely new inquiry had begun
to engage me at intervals—viz., the
essential logic of these investigations.
Ought we in any case to receive moral
truth in obedience to an apparent miracle
of sense ? Or, conversely, ought we ever
to believe in sensible miracles because
of their recommending some moral
truth? I perceived that the endless
jangling which goes on in detailed
controversy is inevitable while the
disputants are unawares at variance
with one another, or themselves wavering,
as to these pervading principles of
evidence. I regard my Fifth Period to
come to an end with the decision of this
question. Nevertheless, many other
important lines of inquiry were going
forward simultaneously.
I found in the Bible itself—and even
in the very same book, as in the Gospel
of John—great uncertainty and incon
sistency on this question. In one place
Jesus reproves1 the demand of a miracle,
and blesses those who believe without1
23
miracles; in another, he requires that
they will submit to his doctrine becauses
of his miracles. Now, this is intelligible
if blind external obedience is the end of
religion, and not truth and inward
righteousness.
An ambitious and
unscrupulous Church that desires, by
fair means or foul, to make men bow
down to her may say, “ Only believe,
and all is right. The end being gained
-—obedience to us—we do not care
about your reasons.” But God cannot
speak thus to man, and to a divine
teacher we should peculiarly look for aid
in getting clear views of the grounds of
faith, because it is by a knowledge of
these that we shall both be rooted on
the true basis and saved from the danger
of false beliefs.
It, therefore, peculiarly vexed me to
find so total a deficiency of clear and
sound instruction in the New Testament,
and eminently in the Gospel of John, on
so vital a question. The more I con
sidered it, the more it appeared as if
Jesus were solely anxious to have people
believe in him, without caring on what
grounds they believed, although that is
obviously the main point. When to this
was added the threat of “damnation”
on those who did not believe, the case
became far worse, for I felt that, if such
a threat were allowed to operate, I might
become a Mohammedan or a Roman
Catholic. Could I in any case rationally
assign this as a ground for believing in
Christ—“because I am frightened by
his threats ” ?
Farther thought showed me that a
question of logic, such as I here had
before me, was peculiarly one on which
the propagator of a new religion could
not be allowed to dictate, for, if so, every
false system could establish itself. Let
Hindooism dictate our logic, let us
submit to its tests of a divine revelation
and its mode of applying them, and we
1 Matt. xii. 39, xvi. 4.
may, perhaps, at once find ourselves
2 John xx. 29.
3 John xiv. 11. In x. 37, 38, the same idea necessitated to “ become little children ”
seems to be intended. So xv. 24.
in a Brahminical school. Might not,
�FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
then, this very thing account for the
Bible not enlightening us on the topic—
namely, since logic, like mathematics,
belongs to the common intellect ?
Possibly so ; but still it cannot recon
cile us to vacillations and contradictions
in the Bible on so critical a point.
Gradually I saw that deeper and
deeper difficulties lay at bottom. If
logic cannot be matter of authoritative
revelation so long as the nature of the
human mind is what it is—if it appears,
as a fact, that in the writings and
speeches of the New Testament the
logic is far from lucid—if we are to
compare logic with mathematics and
other sciences which grew up with
civilisation and long time, we cannot
doubt that the Apostles imbibed the
logic, like the astronomy, of their own
day, with all its defects. Indeed, the
same is otherwise plain. Paul’s reason
ings are those of a Gamaliel, and often
are indefensible by our logical notions.
John, also (as I had been recently
learning), has a wonderful similarity to
Philo. This being the case, it becomes
of deep interest to us to know, if we are
to accept results at second hand from
Paul and John, what was the sort of
evidence which convinced them ? The
moment this question is put we see the
essential defect to which we are exposed
in not being able to cross-examine them.
Paul says that “ Christ appeared to him ” ;
elsewhere, that he has “ received of the
Lord ” certain facts concerning the Holy
Supper, and that his Gospel was “ given
to him by revelation.” If any modern
made such statements to us, and on this
ground demanded our credence, it would
be allowable, and indeed obligatory, to
ask many questions of him. What does
he mean by saying that he has had a
“ revelation ” ? Did he see a sight, or
hear a sound, or was it an inward im
pression ? And how does he distinguish
it as divine P1 Until these questions are
fully answered we have no materials at
71
all before us for deciding to accept his
results ; to believe him merely because
he is earnest and persuaded would be
judged to indicate the weakness of
inexperience. How, then, can it be
pretended that we have, or can possibly
get, the means of assuring ourselves
that the Apostles held correct principles
of evidence and applied them justly,
when we are not able to interrogate
them ?
Farther, it appears that our experience
of delusion forces us to enact a very
severe test of supernatural revelation.
No doubt we can conceive that which is
equivalent to a new sense opening to us;
but then it must have verifications
connecting it with the other senses.
Thus, a particularly vivid sort of dream,
recurring with special marks and com
municating at once heavenly and earthly
knowledge, of which the latter was
otherwise verified, would probably be
admitted as a valid sort of evidence ;
but so intense would be the interest and
duty to have all unravelled and probed
to the bottom that we should think it
impossible to verify the new sense too
anxiously, and we should demand the
fullest particulars of the divine trans
action. On the contrary, it is undeniable
that all such severity of research is
rebuked in the Scriptures as unbelief.
The deeply interesting process of receiving
supernatural revelation—a revelation, not
of moral principles, but of outward facts
and events supposed to be communicated
in a mode wholly peculiar and unknown
to common men: this process, which
ought to be laid open and analysed
under the fullest light, if we are to believe
the results at second hand, is always and
avowedly shrouded in impenetrable
darkness. There surely is something
here which denotes that it is dangerous
to resign ourselves to the conclusions of
revelation. It merely says that some answer is
needed to these questions, and none is given.
We can make out (in my opinion) that dreams
and inward impressions were the form of
1 A reviewer erroneously treats this as suggestion trusted to, but we do not learn what
inculcating a denial of the possibility of inward | precautions were used against foolish credulity.
�72
FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
the Apostles, when their logical notions
are so different from ours.
I farther inquired what sort of miracle
I could conceive that would alter my
opinion on a moral question. Hosea
was divinely ordered to go and unite
himself to an impure woman; could I
possibly think that God ordered me to
do so if I heard a voice in the air com
manding it? Should I not rather dis
believe my hearing than disown my
moral perceptions ? If not, where am I
to stop ? I may practise all sorts of
heathenism. A man who, in obedience
to a voice in the air, kills his innocent
wife or child will either be called mad,
and shut up for safety, or will be hanged
as a desperate fanatic. Do I dare to
condemn this modern judgment of him ?
Would any conceivable miracle justify
my slaying my wife ? God forbid ! It
must be morally right to believe moral
rather than sensible perceptions. No
outward impressions on the eye or ear
can be so valid an assurance to me of
God’s will as my inward judgment. How
amazing, then, that a Paul or a James
could look on Abraham’s intention to
slay his son as indicating a praiseworthy
faith ! And yet not amazing. It does
but show that Apostles in former days,
like ourselves, scrutinised antiquity with
different eyes from modern events. If
Paul had been ordered by a super
natural voice to slay Peter, he would
have attributed the voice to the devil,
“ the prince of the power of the air,”
and would have despised it. He praises
the faith of Abraham, but he certainly
would never have imitated his conduct.
Just so the modern divines who laud
Joseph’s piety towards Mary would be
very differently affected if events and
persons were transported to the present
day.
But to return. Let it be granted that
no sensible miracle would authorise me
so to violate my moral perceptions as to
slay (that is, to murder) my innocent
wife. May it, nevertheless, authorise me
to invade a neighbour country, slaughter
the people and possess their cities,
although without such a miracle the
deed would be deeply criminal? It is
impossible to say that here, more than
in the former case, miracles1 can turn
aside the common laws of morality.
Neither, therefore, could they justify
Joshua’s war of extermination on the
Canaanites, nor that of Samuel on the
Amalekites, nor the murder of mis
believers by Elijah and by Josiah. If
we are shocked at the idea of God
releasing Mohammed from the vulgar
law of marriage, we must as little endure
relaxation in the great laws of justice
and mercy. Farther, if only a small
immorality is concerned, shall we then
say that a miracle may justify it? Could
it authorise me to plait a whip of small
cords and flog a preferment-hunter out
of the pulpit, or would it justify me in
publicly calling the Queen and her
ministers “abrood of vipers, who cannot
escape the damnation of hell”?2 Such
questions go very deep into the heart of
the Christian claims.
I had been accustomed to overbear
objections of this sort by replying that
to allow of their being heard would
amount to refusing leave to God to give
commands to his creatures. For, it
seems, if he did command, we, instead
of obeying, should discuss whether the
command was right and reasonable, and
if we thought it otherwise, should con
clude that God never gave it. The
extirpation of the Canaanites is com
pared by divines to the execution of a
criminal, and it is insisted that, if the
voice of society may justify the execu
tioner, much more may the voice of
God. But I now saw the analogy to be
1 If miracles were vouchsafed on the scale of
a new sense, it is, of course, conceivable that
they would reveal new masses of fact, tending to
modify our moral judgments of particular actions ;
but nothing of this can be made out in Judaism
or Christianity.
2 A friendly reviewer derides this passage as a
very feeble objection to the doctrine of the
absolute moral perfections of Jesus. It is here
rather feebly stated, because at that period I had
not fully worked out the thought. He seems to
have forgotten that I am narrating.
�FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
insufficient and unsound. Insufficient,
because no executioner is justified in
slaying those whom his conscience tells
him to be innocent; and it is a barbarous
morality alone which pretends that he
may make himself a passive tool of
slaughter. But next the analogy assumes
(what none of my very dictatorial and
insolent critics make even the faintest
effort to prove to be a fact) that God,
like man, speaks from without; that
what we call reason and conscience is
not his mode of commanding and reveal
ing his will, but that words to strike the
ear, or symbols displayed before the
senses, are emphatically and exclusively
“ revelation.” Besides all this, the com
mand of slaughter to the Jews is not
directed against the seven nations of
Canaan only, as modern theologians
often erroneously assert; it is a universal
permission of avaricious massacre and
subjugation of “the cities which are very
far off from thee, which are not of the
cities of these nations ” (Deut. xx. 15).
The thoughts which here fill but a few
pages occupied me a long while in
working out, because I consciously, with
caution more than with timidity, declined
to follow them rapidly. They came as
dark suspicions or as flashing possi
bilities, and were again laid aside for
reconsideration, lest I should be carried
into antagonism to my old creed. For
it is clear that great error arises in
religion by the undue ardour of converts,
who become bitter against the faith
which they have left, and outrun in zeal
their new associates. So also successive
centuries oscillate too far on the right
and on the left of truth. But so happy
was my position that I needed not to
hurry; no practical duty forced me to
rapid decision, and a suspense of judg
ment was not an unwholesome exercise.
Meanwhile I sometimes thought Chris
tianity to be to me like the great River
Ganges to a Hindoo. Of its value he
has daily experience; he has piously
believed that its sources are in heaven;
but of late the report has come to
him that it only flows from very high
73
mountains of this earth. What is he to
believe ? He knows not exactly; he
cares not much. In any case, the river
is the gift of God to him; its positive
benefits cannot be affected by a theory
concerning its source.
Such a comparison undoubtedly im
plies that he who uses it discerns for
himself a moral excellence in Chris
tianity, and submits to it only so far as
this discernment commands. I had prac
tically reached this point long before I
concluded my theoretical inquiries as to
Christianity itself; but in the course of
this Fifth Period numerous other over
powering considerations crowded upon
me, which I must proceed to state in
outline.
All pious Christians feel, and all the
New Testament proclaims, that faith is a
moral act and a test of the moral and
spiritual that is within us, so that he who
is without faith (faithless, unfaithful,
“infidel ”) is morally wanting, and is cut
off from God. To assent to a religious
proposition solely in obedience to an
outward miracle would be belief, but
would not be faith, any more than is
scientific conviction. Bishop Butler and
all his followers can insist with much
force on this topic when it suits them,
and can quote most aptly from the New
Testament to the same effect. They
deduce that a really overpowering
miraculous proof would have destroyed
the moral character of faith, yet they do
not see that the argument supersedes the
authoritative force of outward miracles
entirely. It had always appeared to me
very strange in these divines to insist on
the stupendous character and convincing
power of the Christian miracles, and
then, in reply to the objection that they
were not quite convincing, to say that
the defect was purposely left “ to try
people’s faith.” Faith in what? Not,
surely, in the confessedly ill-proved
miracle, but in the truth as discernible
by the heart without aid of miracle.
I conceived of two men, Nathaniel
and Demas, encountering a pretender to
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FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
miracles, a Simon Magus of the Scrip
tures. Nathaniel is guileless, sweethearted, and of strong moral sense, but
in worldly matters rather a simpleton.
Demas is a sharp man, who gets on well
in the world, quick of eye and shrewd of
wit, hard-headed, and not to be imposed
upon by his fellows, but destitute of any
high religious aspirations or deep moral
insight. The juggleries of Simon are
readily discerned by Demas, but
thoroughly deceive poor Nathaniel;
what, then, is the latter to do ? To say
that we are to receive true miracles and
reject false ones avails not, unless the
mind is presumed to be capable of dis
criminating the one from the other.
The wonders of Simon are as divine as
the wonders of Jesus to a man who, like
Nathaniel, can account for neither by
natural causes. If we enact the rule
that men are to “ submit their under
standings ” to apparent prodigies, and
that “revelation” is a thing of the
outward senses, we alight on the un
endurable absurdity that Demas has
faculties better fitted than those of
Nathaniel for discriminating religious
truth and error, and that Nathaniel, in
obedience to eye and ear, which he
knows to be very deceivable organs, is to
abandon his moral perceptions.
Nor is the case altered if, instead of
Simon in person, a huge thing called a
Church is presented as a claimant of
authority to Nathaniel. Suppose him to
be a poor Spaniard, surrounded by false
miracles, false erudition, and all the
apparatus of reigning and unopposed
Romanism. He cannot cope with the
priests in cleverness, detect their
juggleries, refute their historical false
hoods, disentangle their web of sophistry;
but, if he is true-hearted, he' may say :
“ You bid me not to keep faith with
heretics; you defend murder, exile,
imprisonment, fines, on men who will
not submit their consciences to your
authority. This I see to be wicked,
though you ever so much pretend that
God has taught it you.” So, also, if he
be accosted by learned clergymen who
undertake to prove that Jesus wrought
stupendous miracles, or by learned
Moolahs who - allege the same of
Mohammed or of Menu ; he is quite
unable to deal with them on the grounds
of physiology, physics, or history. In
short, nothing can be plainer than that
the moral and spiritual sense is the only
religious faculty of the poor man, and that,
as Christianity in its origin was preached
to the poor, so it was to the inward
senses that its first preachers appealed,
as the supreme arbiters in the whole
religious question. Is it not, then,
absurd to say that’ in the act of conver
sion the convert is to trust his moral
perception, and is ever afterwards to dis
trust it?
An incident had some years before
come to my knowledge which now
seemed instructive. An educated, highly
acute, and thoughtful person of very
mature age had become a convert to
the Irving miracles, from an inability to
distinguish them from those of the
Pauline Epistles, or to discern anything
of falsity which would justify his rejecting
them. But after several years he totally
renounced them as a miserable delusion,
because he found that a system of false
doctrine was growing up and was propped
by them. Here was a clear case of a
man with all the advantages of modern
education and science, who yet found
the direct judgment of a professed
miracle, that was acted before his senses,
too arduous for him ! He was led astray
while he trusted his power to judge of
miracle ; he was brought right by trusting
to his moral perceptions.
When we further consider that a
knowledge of natural philosophy and
physiology not only does not belong to
the poor, but comes later in time to
mankind than a knowledge of morals ;
that a miracle can only be judged of by
philosophy; that it is not easy even for
philosophers to define what is a
“miracle”; that to discern “a deviation
from the course of nature ” implies a
previous certain knowledge of what the
course of nature is, and that illiterate
�FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
and early ages certainly have not this
knowledge, and often have hardly even
the idea, it becomes quite a mon
strosity to imagine that sensible and
external miracles constitute the necessary
process and guarantee of divine revela
tion.
Besides, if an angel appeared to my
senses and wrought miracles, how would
that assure me of his moral qualities ?
Such miracles might prove his power
and his knowledge, but whether malig
nant or benign would remain doubtful
until, by purely moral evidence which
no miracles could give, the doubt should
be solved.1 This is the old difficulty
about diabolical wonders. The moderns
cut the knot by denying that any but
God can possibly work real miracles.
But to establish their principle they make
their definition and verification of a.
miracle so strict as would have amazed
the Apostles ; and, after all, the difficulty
recurs that miraculous phenomena will
never prove the goodness and veracity
of God if we do not know these qualities
in him without miracle. There is, then,
a deeper and an earlier revelation of God,
which sensible miracles can never give.
We cannot distinctly learn what was
Paul’s full idea of a divine revelation;
but I can feel no doubt that he conceived
it to be, in great measure, an inward
thing. Dreams and visions were not
excluded from influence, and more or
less affected his moral judgment; but he
did not, consciously and on principle,
beat down his conscience in submission
to outward impressions. To do so is,
indeed, to destroy the moral character of
faith, and lay the axe to the root not of
Christian doctrine only, but of every
possible spiritual system.
1 An ingenious gentleman, well versed in
history, has put forth a volume called The
Restoration of Faith, in which he teaches that I
have no right to a conscience or to a God until I
adopt his historical conclusions. I leave his
co-religionists to confute his portentous heresy ;
but, in fact, it is already done more than enough
in a splendid article of the Westminster Review,
July, 1852.
75
Meanwhile new breaches were made
in those citadels of my creed which had
not yet surrendered.
One branch of the Christian evidences
concerns itself with the history and his
torical effects of the faith, and among
Protestants the efficacy of the Bible to
enlighten and convert has been very
much pressed. The disputant, how
ever, is apt to play “ fast and loose.”
He adduces the theory of Christianity
when the history is unfavourable, and
appeals to the history if the theory is
impugned. In this way just so much is
picked out of the mass of facts as suits his
argument, and the rest is quietly put aside.
I. In the theory of my early creed
(which was that of the New Testament,
however convenient it may be for my
critics to deride it as fanatical and not
Christian) cultivation of mind and erudi
tion were classed with worldly things,
which might be used where they pre
existed (as riches and power may sub
serve higher ends), but which were
quite extraneous and unessential to the
spiritual kingdom of Christ. A know
ledge of the Bible was assumed to need
only an honest heart and God’s Spirit,
while science, history, and philosophy
were regarded as doubtful and dangerous
auxiliaries. But soon after the first reflux
of my mind took place towards the com
mon understanding, as a guide of life
legitimately co-ordinate with Scripture, I
was impressed with the consideration
that free learning had acted on a great
scale for the improvement of spiritual
religion. I had been accustomed to
believe that the Bible'1 brought about
the Protestant Reformation; and until
my twenty-ninth year probably it had not
occurred to me to question this. But I
1 I seem to have been understood now to say
that a knowledge of the Bible was not a pre
requisite of the Protestant Reformation. What
I say is that at this period I learned the study of
the classics to have caused and determined that
it should then take place ; moreover, I say that
a free study of other books than sacred ones is
essential, and always was, to conquer super
stition,
�76
FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
was first struck with the thought that the
Bible did not prevent the absurd iniqui
ties of the Nicene and post-Nicene con
troversy, and that the Church, with the
Bible in her hands, sank down into the
gulf of Popery, How, then, was the
Bible a sufficient explanation of her
recovering out of Popery ?
Even a superficial survey of the history
shows that the first improvement of
spiritual doctrine. in the tenth and
eleventh centuries came from a study of
the moral works of Cicero and Boethius,
a fact notorious in the common his
torians. The Latin moralists effected
what, strange to think, the New Testa
ment alone could not do.
In the fifteenth century, when Con
stantinople was taken by the Turks,
learned Greeks were driven out to Italy
and to other parts of the West, and the
Roman Catholic world began to read
the old Greek literature. All historians
agree that the enlightenment of mind
hence arising was a prime mover of
religious reformation; and learned Pro
testants of Germany have even believed
that the overthrow of Popish error and
establishment of purer truth would have
been brought about more equably and
profoundly if Luther had never lived,
and the passions of the vulgar had never
been stimulated against the externals of
Romanism.
At any rate, it gradually opened upon
me that the free cultivation of the under
standing which Latin and Greek litera
ture had imparted to Europe, and our
freer public life, were chief causes of our
religious superiority to Greek, Armenian,
and Syrian Christians. As the Greeks
in Constantinople under a centralised
despotism retained no free intellect, and
therefore the works of their fathers did
their souls no good; so in Europe, just
in proportion to the freedom of learning
has been the force of the result. In
Spain and Italy the study of miscella
neous science and independent thought
were nearly extinguished ; in France and
Austria they were crippled ; in Protestant
countries they have been freest. And
then we impute all their effects to the
Bible!1
I at length saw how untenable is the
argument drawn from the inward history
of Christianity in favour of its super
human origin. In fact, this religion
cannot pretend to self-sustaining power.
Hardly was it started on its course when
it began to be polluted by the heathenism
and false philosophy around it. With
the decline of national genius and civil
culture it became more and more
debased. So far from being able to
uphold the existing morality of the best
Pagan teachers, it became barbarised
itself, and sank into deep superstition
and manifold moral corruption. From
ferocious men it learnt ferocity. When
civil society began to coalesce into order
Christianity also turned for the better,
and presently learned to use the wisdom
first of Romans, then of Greeks. Such
studies opened men’s eyes to new appre
hensions of the Scripture and of its
doctrine. By gradual and human means,
Europe, like ancient Greece, grew up
towards better political institutions ; and
Christianity improved with them—the
Christianity of the more educated.
Beyond Europe, where there have been
no such institutions, there has been no
Protestant Reformation—that is, in the
Greek,
Armenian, Syrian,
Coptic
churches.
Not unreasonably then do
Franks in Turkey disown the title
Nazarene, as denoting that Christianity
which has not been purified by European
laws and European learning. Christianity
rises and sinks with political and literary
influences; in so far,2 it does not differ
from other religions.
1 I am asked why Italy witnessed no improve
ment of spiritual doctrine. The reply is that she
did. The Evangelical movement there was
quelled only by the Imperial arms and the
Inquisition. I am also asked why Pagan litera
ture did not save the ancient Church from super
stition. I have always understood that the vast
majority of Christian teachers during the decline
were unacquainted with Pagan literature, and
that the Church at an early period forbade it.
2 My friend James Martineau, who insists that
“ a self-sustaining power ” in a religion is a thing
�FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
The same applied to the origin
and advance of Judaism. It began in
polytheistic and idolatrous barbarism ;
it cleared into a hard monotheism with
much superstition adhering to it. This
was farther improved by successive
psalmists and prophets until Judaism
culminated. The Jewish faith was emi
nently grand and pure ; but there is
nothing1 in this history which we can
adduce in proof of preternatural and
miraculous agency.
II. The facts concerning the outward
spread of Christianity have also been
disguised by the party spirit of Christians,
as though there were something essen
tially different in kind as to the mode
in which it began and continued its
conquests from the corresponding history
of other religions. But no such distinc
tion can be made out. It is general to
all religions to begin by moral means,
and proceed farther by more worldly
instruments.
Christianity had a great moral supe
riority over Roman paganism, in its
humane doctrine of universal brother
hood, its unselfishness, its holiness; and
thereby it attracted to itself (among other
and baser materials) all the purest natures
and most enthusiastic temperaments. Its
first conquests were noble and admir
able. But there is nothing superhuman
or unusual in this.
Mohammedism
in the same way conquers those pagan
creeds which are morally inferior to it.
intrinsically inconceivable, need not have censured
me for coming to the conclusion that it does not
exist in Christianity. In fact, I entirely agree
with him ; but at the time of which I here write
I had only taken the first step in his direction,
and I barely drew a negative conclusion to which
he perfectly assents.
To my dear friend’s
capacious and kindling mind all the thoughts
here expounded are prosaic and common, being
to him quite obvious, so far as they are true. He
is right in looking down upon them, and I trust,
by his aid, I have added to my wisdom since the
time of which I write. Yet they were to me
discoveries once, and he must not be displeased
at my making much of them in this connection.
1 It is the fault of my critics that I am forced
to tell the reader this is exhibited in my Hebrew
Monarchy.
77
The Seljuk and the Ottoman Turks were
pagans, but adopted the religion of
Tartars and Persians, whom they subju
gated, because it was superior, and was
blended with a superior civilisation,
exactly as the German conquerors of the
Western Empire of Rome adopted some
form of Christianity.
But, if it is true that the sword of
Mohammed was the influence which
subjected Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Persia
to the religion of Islam, it is no less
true that the Roman Empire was finally
conquered to Christianity by the sword.
Before Constantine, Christians were but
a small fraction of the Empire. In the
preceding century they had gone on
deteriorating in good sense, and most
probably therefore in moral worth, and
had made no such rapid progress in
numbers as to imply that by the mere
process of conversion they would ever
Christianise the Empire. That the con
version of Constantine, such as it was
(for he was baptised only just before
death), was dictated by mere worldly
considerations few modern Christians
will deny.
Yet a great fact is here
implied—viz., that Christianity was
adopted as a State religion because of
the great political power accruing from
the organisation of the Churches and the
devotion of Christians to their eccle
siastical citizenship. Roman statesmen
well k-new that a hundred thousand
Roman citizens, devoted to the interests
of Rome, could keep in subjection a
population of ten millions who were
destitute of any intense patriotism, and
had no central objects of attachment.
The Christian Church had shown its
immense resisting power and its tenacious
union in the persecution by Galerius ;
and Constantine was discerning enough
to see the vast political importance of
winning over such a body, which, though
but a small fraction of the whole Empire,
was the only party which could give
coherence to that Empire, the only one
which had enthusiastic adherents in every
province, the only one on whose resolute
devotion it was possible for a partisan to
�78
FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
rely securely. The bravery and faithful
attachment of Christian regiments was a
lesson not lost upon Constantine, and
we may say, in some sense, that the
Christian soldiers in his armies conquered
the Empire (that is, the imperial appoint
ments) for Christianity. But paganism
subsisted, even in spite of imperial
allurements, until at length the sword of
Theodosius violently suppressed heathen
worship. So, also, it was the spear of
Charlemagne which drove the Saxons to
baptism and decided the extirpation of
paganism from Teutonic Europe. There
is nothing in all this to distinguish the
outward history of Christianity from that
of Mohammedism.
Barbarous tribes
now and then, venerating the superiority
of our knowledge, adopt our religion ; so
have pagan nations in Africa voluntarily
become Mussulmans. But neither we
nor they can appeal to any case where an
old State-religion has yielded without
warlike compulsion to the force of
heavenly truth—“ charm we never so
wisely.”
The whole influence which
Christianity exerts over the world at large
depends on the political history of
modern Europe. The Christianity of
Asia and Abyssinia is perhaps as pure
and as respectable in this nineteenth
century as it was in the fourth and fifth ;
yet no good or great deeds come forth
out of it, of such a kind that Christian
disputants dare to appeal to them with
triumph. The politico-religious and very
peculiar history of European Christendom
has alone elevated the modern world, and,
as Gibbon remarks, this whole history
has directly depended on the fate of the
great Battle of Tours, between the Moors
and the Franks. The defeat of Moham
medism by Christendom certainly has
not been effected by spiritual weapons.
The soldier and the statesman have done
to the full as much as the priest to secure
Europe for Christianity and win a
Christendom of which Christians can be
proud. As for the Christendom of Asia,
the apologists of Christianity simply
ignore it. With these facts, how can it
be pretended that the external history of
Christianity points to an exclusively
divine origin ?
The author of the Eclipse of Faith has
derided me for despatching in two para
graphs what occupied Gibbon’s whole
fifteenth chapter; but this author, here
as always, misrepresents me. Gibbon is
exhibiting and developing the deep-seated
causes of the spread of Christianity
before Constantine, and he by no means
exhausts the subject. I am comparing
the ostensible and notorious facts con
cerning the outward conquest of Chris
tianity with those of other religions. To
account for the early growth of any
religion, Christian, Mussulman, or Mormonite, is always difficult.
III. The moral advantages which we
owe to Christianity have been exag
gerated by the same party spirit, as if
there were in them anything miraculous.
1. We are told that Christianity is
the decisive influence which has raised
womankind. This does not appear to be
true. The old Roman matron was,
relatively to her husband,1 morally as
high as in modern Italy; nor is there
any ground for supposing that modern
women have advantage over the ancient
in Spain and Portugal, where Germanic
have been counteracted by Moorish
influences. The relative position of the
sexes in Homeric Greece exhibits nothing
materially different from the present day.
In Armenia and Syria perhaps Chris
tianity has done the service of extinguish
ing polygamy. This is creditable, though
nowise miraculous. Judaism also unlearnt
polygamy, and made an unbidden im
provement upon Moses. In short, only
in countries where Germanic sentiment
has taken root do we see marks of any
elevation of the female sex superior to
that of Pagan antiquity; and, as this
elevation of the German woman in her
deepest Paganism was already striking to
1 It is not to the purpose to urge the political
minority of the Roman wife. This was a mere
inference from the high power of the head of the
household. The father had right of death over
his son, and (as the lawyers stated the case) the
wife was on the level of one of the children.
�FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
Tacitus and his contemporaries, it is
highly unreasonable to claim it as an
achievement of Christianity.
In point of fact, Christian doctrine, as
propounded by Paul, is not at all so
honourable to woman as that which
German soundness of heart has estab
lished. With Paul1 the sole reason for
marriage is that a man may gratify
instinct without sin. He teaches that
but for this object it would be better not
to marry. He wishes that all were in
this respect as free as himself, and calls
it a special gift of God. He does not
encourage a man to desire a mutual soul
intimately to share griefs and joys; one
in whom the confiding heart can repose,
whose smile shall reward and soften toil,
whose voice shall beguile sorrow. He
does not seem aware that the fascina
tions of woman refine and chasten
society; that virtuous attachment has
in it an element of respect, which abashes
and purifies, and which shields the soul,
even when marriage is deferred; nor yet
that the union of two persons who have
no previous affection can seldom yield
the highest fruits of matrimony, but often
leads to the severest temptations. How
should he have known all this ? Court
ship before marriage did not exist in the
society open to him; hence he treats the
propriety of giving away a maiden as
one in which her conscience, her likes
and dislikes, are not concerned (i. Cor.
vii. 37, 38). If the law leaves the parent
“ power over his own will,” and imposes
no “ necessity ” to give her away, Paul
decidedly advises to keep her un
married.
The author of the Apocalypse, a writer
of the first century, who was received in
the second as John the Apostle, holds up
a yet more degrading view of the matri
monial relation. In one of his visions
he exhibits 144,000 chosen saints, per
petual attendants of “the Lamb,” and
places the cardinal point of their sanctity
in the fact that “ they were not defiled
with women, but were virgins.” Mar
1 I Cor. vii. 2-9.
79
riage, therefore, is defilement! Protestant writers struggle in vain against this
obvious meaning of the passage.
Against all analogy of Scriptural meta
phor, they gratuitously pretend that
women mean idolatrous religions; namely,
because in the Old Testament the Jewish
Church is personified as a virgin
betrothed to God, and an idol is spoken
of as her paramour.
As a result of the Apostolic doctrines,
in the second, third, and following
centuries, very gross views concerning
the relation of the sexes prevailed, and
have been everywhere transmitted where
men’s morality is exclusively1 formed
from the New Testament. The marriage
service of the Church of England, which
incorporates the Pauline doctrine, is felt
by English brides and bridegrooms to
contain what is so offensive and degrad
ing that many clergymen mercifully make
unlawful omissions. Paul had indeed
expressly denounced prohibitions of
marriage. In merely dissuading it, he
gave advice which, from his limited
horizon and under his expectation of the
speedy return of Christ, was sensible and
good; but when this advice, with all its
reasons, was made an oracle of eternal
wisdom, it generated the monkish notions
concerning womanhood. If the desire
of a wife is a weakness, which the Apostle
would gladly have forbidden only that
he feared worse consequences, an enthu
siastic youth cannot but infer that it is a
higher state of perfection not to desire a
wife, and therefore aspires to “the crown
of virginity.” Here at once is full-grown
monkery. Hence that debasement of the
imagination which is directed perpetually
to the lowest, instead of the highest, side of
the female nature. Hence the disgusting
admiration and invocation of Mary’s
perpetual virginity. Hence the trans
cendental doctrine of her immaculate
1 Namely, in the Armenian, Syrian, and
Greek Churches, and in the Romish Church, in
exact proportion as Germanic and poetical
influences have been repressed—that is, in pro
portion as the hereditary Christian doctrine has
been kept pure from modern innovations.
�8o
FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
conception from Anne, the “grandmother
of God.”
In the above my critics have repre
sented me to say that Christianity has
done nothing for women. I have not
said so, but that what it has done has
been exaggerated. I say : If the theory
of Christianity is to take credit from the
history of Christendom, it must also
receive discredit. Taking in the whole
system of nuns and celibates, and the
doctrine which sustains it, the root of
which is Apostolic, I doubt whether any
balance of credit remains over from this
side of Christian history. I am well
aware that the democratic doctrine of
“the equality of souls ” has a tendency to
elevate women—and the poorer orders,
too ; but this is not the whole of actual
Christianity, which is a very hetero
geneous mass.
2. Again, the modern doctrine by aid
of which West Indian slavery has been
exterminated is often put forward as
Christian; but I had always discerned
that it was not Biblical, and that in
respect to this great triumph undue credit
has been claimed for the fixed Biblical
and authoritative doctrine. As I have
been greatly misunderstood in my first
edition, I am induced to expand this
topic.
Sir George Stephen,1 after
describing the long struggle in England
against the West Indian interest and
other obstacles, says that for some time,
“ worst of all, we found the people, not
actually against us, but apathetic, leth
argic, incredulous, indifferent. It was
then, and not till then, that we sounded
the right note, and touched a chord that
never ceased to vibrate.
To uphold
slavery was a crime against God 1 It
was a novel doctrine, but it was a cry
that was heard, for it would be heard.
The national conscience was awakened
to inquiry, and inquiry soon produced
conviction.” Sir George justly calls the
doctrine novel. As developed in the
controversy, it laid down the general
proposition that men and women are not,
and cannot be, chattels; and that all
human enactments which decree this are
morally null and void, as sinning against
the higher law of nature and of God.
And the reason of this lies in the essential
contrast of a moral personality and a
chattel. Criminals may deserve to be
bound and scourged, but they do not
cease to be persons, nor, indeed, do even
the insane. Since every man is a person,
he cannot be a piece of property, nor
has an “owner” any just and moral
claim to his services. Usage, so far
from conferring this claim, increases the
total amount of injustice ; the longer an
innocent man is forcibly kept in slavery,
the greater the reparation to which he is
entitled for the oppressive immorality.
This doctrine I now believe to be
irrefutable truth, but I disbelieved it
while I thought the Scripture authorita
tive, because I found a very different
doctrine there—a doctrine which is the
argumentative stronghold of the American
slaveholder. Paul sent back the fugitive
Onesimus to his master Philemon, with
kind recommendations and apologies
for the slave, and a tender charge to
Philemon that he would receive
Onesimus as a brother in the Lord,
since he had been converted by Paul in
the interval; but this very recommenda
tion, full of affection as it is, virtually
recognises the moral rights of Philemon
to the services of his slave ; and, hinting
that, if Onesimus stole anything, Philemon
should now forgive him, Paul shows
perfect insensibility to the fact that the
master who detains a slave in captivity
against his will is guilty himself of a
continual theft. What says Mrs. Beecher
Stowe’s Cassy to this ? “ Stealing ! They
who steal body and soul need not talk
to us. Every one of these bills is stolen
—stolen from poor, starving, sweating
creatures.” Now Onesimus, in the very
act of taking to flight, showed that he had
been submitting to servitude against his
will, and that the house of his owner had
1 In a tract republished from the Northampton previously been a prison to him. To
Mercury. Longman, 1853.
I suppose that Philemon has a pecuniary
�FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
interest in the return of Onesimus to
work without wages implies that the
master habitually steals the slave’s
earnings; but if he loses nothing by
the flight he has not been wronged by
it. Such is the modem doctrine,
developed out of the fundamental fact
that persons are not chattels ; but it is
to me wonderful that it should be needful
to prove to anyone that this is not the
doctrine of the New Testament. Paul
and Peter deliver excellent charges to
masters in regard to the treatment of
their slaves, but without any hint to
them that there is an injustice in
claiming them as slaves at all. That
slavery, as a system, is essentially
immoral no Christian of those days
seems to have suspected. Yet it existed
in its worst forms under Rome. Whole
gangs of slaves were mere tools of
capitalists, and were numbered like
cattle, with no moral relationship to the
owner; young women of beautiful person
were sold as articles of voluptuousness.
Of course, every such fact was looked
upon by Christians as hateful and
dreadful; yet, I say, it did not lead them
to that moral condemnation of slavery,
as such, which has won the most signal
victory in modern times, and is destined,
I trust, to win one far greater.
A friendly reviewer replies to this, that
the apathy of the early Christians to the
intrinsic iniquity of the slave system rose
out of “ their expectation of an imme
diate close of this world’s affairs. The
only reason why Paul sanctioned content
ment with his condition in the converted
slave was that for so short a time it was
not worth while for any man to change
his state.” I agree to this, but it does
not alter my fact; on the contrary, it
confirms what I say—that the Biblical
morality is not final truth. To account
for an error surely is not to deny it.
Another writer has said on the above :
“ Let me suppose you animated to go as
missionary to the East to preach this
(Mr. Newman’s) spiritual system ; would
you, in addition to all this, publicly
denounce the social and political evils
81
under which the nations groan ? If so,
your spiritual projects would soon be
perfectly understood and summarily dealt
with. It is vain to say that, if commis
sioned by heaven and endowed with power
of working miracles, you would do so, for
you cannot tell under what limitations
your commission would be given; it is
pretty certain that it would leave you to
work a moral and spiritual system by
moral and spiritual means, and not allow
you to turn the world upside down, and
mendaciously tell it that you came only
to preach peace, while every syllable
you uttered would be an incentive to
sedition ” {Eclipse of Faith, p. 419).
This writer supposes that he is
attacking me, when every line is an
attack on Christ and Christianity.
Have I pretended power of working
miracles ? Have I imagined or desired
that miracle would shield me from
persecution? Did Jesus not “publicly
denounce the social and political evils ”
of Judsea ? Was he not “ summarily
dealt with ” ? Did he not know that his
doctrine would send on earth “not
peace, but a sword ” ? And was he
mendacious in saying, “ Peace I leave
unto you ”; or were the angels menda
cious in proclaiming, “ Peace on earth,
goodwill among men ” ? Was not “ every
syllable that Jesus uttered ” in the
discourse of Matt, xxiii. “an incentive
to sedition”? And does this writer judge
it to be mendacity that Jesus opened by
advising to obey the very men whom he
proceeds to vilify at large as immoral,
oppressive, hypocritical, blind, and
destined to the damnation of hell ? Or
have I anywhere blamed the Apostles
because they did not exasperate wicked
men by direct attacks ? It is impossible
to answer such a writer as this ; for he
elaborately misses to touch what I have
said. On the other hand, it is rather
too much to require me to defend Jesus
from his assault.
Christian preachers did not escape the
imputation of turning the world upside
down, and at length, in some sense,
effected what was imputed. It is matter
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FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE FAIN
of conjecture whether any greater con
vulsion would have happened if the
Apostles had done as the Quakers in
America. No Quaker holds slaves ; why
not? Because the Quakers teach their
members that it is an essential immorality.
The slave-holding States are infinitely
more alive and jealous to keep up their
“ peculiar institution ” than was the
Roman government; yet the Quakers
have caused no political convulsion. I
confess to me it seems that if Paul, and
John, and Peter, and James, had done
as these Quakers, the imperial adminis
tration would have looked on it as a
harmless eccentricity of the sect, and
not as an incentive1 to sedition. But
be this as it may, I did not say what
else the Apostles might have succeeded
to enforce ; I merely pointed out what
it was that they actually taught, and
that, as a fact, they did not declare
slavery to be an immorality and the
basest of thefts. If anyone thinks their
course was more wise, he may be right or
wrong, but his opinion is in itself a con
cession of my fact.
As to the historical progress of Chris
tian practice and doctrine on this subject,
it is, as usual, mixed of good and evil.
The'humanity of good pagan emperors
softened the harshness of the laws of
bondage, and manumission had always
been extremely common among the
Romans. Of course, the more humane
religion of Christ acted still more power
fully in the same direction, especially in
inculcating the propriety of freeing
Christian slaves. This was creditable,
but not peculiar, and is not a fact of
such a nature as to add to the exclusive
claims of Christianity. To every pro
selytising religion the sentiment is so
natural that no divine spirit is needed to
-originate and establish it. Moham
medans also have a conscience against
enslaving Mohammedans, and generally
bestow freedom on a slave as soon as he
adopts their religion. But no zeal for
human freedom has ever grown out of the
purely Biblical and ecclesiastical system,
any more than out of the Mohammedan.
In the Middle Ages zeal for the libera
tion of serfs first rose in the breasts of
the clergy after the whole population had
become nominally Christian. It was not
men, but Christians, whom the clergy
desired to make free : it is hard to say
that they thought Pagans to have any
human rights at all, even to life. Nor
is it correct to represent ecclesiastical
influences as the sole agency which over
threw slavery and serfdom. The desire
of the kings to raise up the chartered
cities as a bridle to the barons was that
which chiefly made rustic slavery unten
able in its coarsest form, for a “ villain ”
who escaped into the free cities could
not be recovered. In later times the
first public act against slavery came from
republican France, in the madness of
Atheistic enthusiasm, when she declared
black and white men to be equally free,
and liberated the negroes of St. Domingo.
In Britain the battle of social freedom
has been fought chiefly by that religious
sect which rests least on the letter of
Scripture. The bishops, and the more
learned clergy, have consistently been
apathetic to the duty of overthrowing
the slave system. I was thus led to
see that here also the New Testament
precepts must not be received by me as
any final and authoritative law of morality.
But I meet opposition in a quarter
from which I had least expected it; from
one who admits the imperfection of the
morality actually attained by the Apostles,
but avows that Christianity, as a divine
system, is not to be identified with
Apostolic doctrine, but with the doctrine
ultimately developed in the Christian
Church. Moreover, the ecclesiastical
1 The Romans practised fornication at pleasure, doctrine concerning slavery he alleges
and held it ridiculous to blame them. If Paul to be truer than mine—I mean, truer
had claimed authority to hinder them, they might than that which I have expounded as
have been greatly exasperated ; but they had not
the least objection to his denouncing fornication held by modern abolitionists. He ap
as immoral to Christians. Why not slavery also? proves oi the principle of claiming
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83
freedom not for men, but for Christians. —to deny that pagans have human rights ?
He says : “That Christianity opened its “That Christianity opened its arms at
arms at all to the servile class was all to the servile class was enough?'
enough; for in its embrace was the sure Indeed ! Then either unconverted men
promise of emancipation........ Is it im have no natural right to freedom, or<
puted as a disgrace that Christianity put Christians may withhold a natural right
conversion before manumission, and from them. Under the plea of “ bring
brought them to God, ere it trusted them ing them to God,” Christians are to deny
with themselves t....... It created the simul by law to every slave who refuses to be
taneous obligation to make the Pagan converted the rights of husband and
a convert and the convert free........ If father, rights of person, rights of pro
our author had made his attack from the perty, rights over his own body. Thus
opposite side, and contended that its manumission is a bribe to make hypo
doctrines ‘ proved too much ’ against critical converts, and Christian superiority
servitude, and assumed with too little a plea for depriving men of their dearest
qualification the capacity of each man for rights. Is not freedom older than Chris
self-rule, we should have felt more hesi tianity ? Does the Christian recom mend
his religion to a pagan by stealing his
tation in expressing our dissent.”
I feel unfeigned surprise at these sen manhood and all that belongs to it?
timents from one whom I so highly Truly, if only Christians have a right to
esteem and admire; and, considering personal freedom, what harm is there in
that they were written at first anony hunting and catching pagans to make
mously, and perhaps under pressure of slaves of them ? And this was exactly
time, for a review, I hope it is not pre the “ development” of thought and doc
sumptuous in me to think it possible trine in the Christian Church. The
that they are hasty, and do not wholly same priests who taught that Christians
express a deliberate and final judgment. have moral rights to their sinews and
I must think there is some misunder skin, to their wives and children, and to
standing, for I have made no high claims the fruit of their labour, which pagans
about capacity for self-rule, as if laws have not, consistently developed the
and penalties were to be done away. same fundamental idea of Christian
But the question is, shall human beings, superiority into the lawfulness of making
who (as all of us) are imperfect, be con war upon the heathen and reducing
trolled by public law or by individual them to the state of domestic animals.
caprice? Was not my reviewer intend If Christianity is to have credit from the
ing to advocate some form of serfdom former, it must also take the credit of the
which is compatible with legal rights and latter. If cumulative evidence of its
recognises the serf as a man ; not slavery divine origin is found in the fact that
which pronounces him a chattel ? Serf Christendom has liberated Christian
dom and apprenticeship we may perhaps slaves, must we forget the cumulative
leave to be reasoned down by econo evidence afforded by the assumed right
mists and administrators ; slavery proper of the popes to carve out the countries
is what I attacked as essentially im of the heathen and bestow them with
their inhabitants on Christian powers?
moral.
Returning, then, to the arguments, I Both results flow logically out of the
reason against them as if I did not know same assumption, and were developed
their author. I have distinctly avowed by the same school.
But, I am told, a man must not be
that the effort to liberate Christian slaves
was creditable. I merely add that in freed until we have ascertained his
this respect Christianity is no better than capacity for self-rule ! This is indeed a
Mohammedism. But is it really no tyrannical assumption: vindicice. secun
moral fault—is it not a moral enormity dum servitutem. Men are not to have
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FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
their human rights until we think they
will not abuse them ! Prevention is to
be used against the hitherto innocent and
injured ! The principle involves all that
is arrogant, violent, and intrusive in
military tyranny and civil espionage.
Self-rule ? But abolitionists have no
thought of exempting men from the
penalties of common law if they trans
gress the law; we only desire that all
men shall be equally subjected to the
law and equally protected by it. It is
truly a strange inference that, because a
man is possibly deficient in virtue, there
fore he shall not be subject to public
law, but to private caprice; as if this
were a school of virtue, and not eminently
an occasion of vice. Truer far is Homer’s
morality, who says that a man.loses half
his virtue on the day he is made a slave.
As to the pretence that slaves are not fit
for freedom, those Englishmen who are
old enough to remember the awful pre
dictions which West Indian planters used
to pour forth about the bloodshed and
confusion which would ensue if they
were hindered by law from scourging
black men and violating black women
might, I think, afford to despise the
danger of enacting that men and women
shall be treated as men and women, and
not made tools of vice and victims of
cruelty. If ever sudden emancipation
ought to have produced violences and
wrong from the emancipated, it was in
Jamaica, where the oppression and illwill was so great; yet the freed blacks
have not in fifteen years inflicted on the
whites as much lawless violence as they
suffered themselves in six months of
apprenticeship. It is the masters of
slaves, not the slaves, who are deficient
in self-rule ; and slavery is doubly
detestable because it depraves the
masters.
What degree of “ worldly moderation
and economical forethought” is needed
by a practical statesman in effecting the
liberation of slaves it is no business of
mine to discuss. I, however, feel
assured that no constitutional statesman,
having to contend against the political
votes of numerous and powerful slave
owners, who believe their fortunes to be
at stake, will ever be found to undertake
the task at all against the enormous
resistance of avarice and habit, unless
religious teachers pierce the conscience
of the nation by denouncing slavery as
an essential wickedness. Even the petty
West Indian interests—a mere fraction
of the English Empire—were too power
ful until this doctrine was taught. Mr.
Canning, in Parliament, spoke emphati
cally against slavery, but did not dare to
bring in a Bill against it. When such is
English experience, I cannot but expect
the same will prove true in America.
In replying to objectors I have been
carried beyond my narrative, and have
written from my present point of view ; I
may, therefore, here complete this part
of the argument, though by anticipation.
The New Testament has beautifully
laid down truth and love as the culmi
nating virtues of man, but it has imper
fectly discerned that love is impossible
where justice does not go first. Regard
ing this world as destined to be soon
burnt up, it despaired of improving the
foundations of society, #and laid down
the principle of non-resistance, even to
injurious force, in terms so unlimited as
practically to throw its entire weight into
the scale of tyranny. It recognises indi
viduals who call themselves kings or
magistrates (however tyrannical and
usurping) as powers ordained of God;
it does not recognise nations as com
munities ordained of God, or as having
any power and authority whatsoever as
against pretentious individuals. To obey
a king is strenuously enforced; to resist
a usurping king in a patriotic cause is
not contemplated in the New Testament
as under any circumstances an imagin
able duty. Patriotism has no recognised
existence in the Christian records. I am
well aware of the cause of this : I do not
say that it reflects any dishonour on the
Christian Apostles ; I merely remark on
it as a calamitous fact, and deduce that
their precepts cannot, and must not, be
made the sufficient rule of life, or they
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85
God will visit men with fiery vengeance
for holding an erroneous creed; that
vengeance, indeed, is his, not ours; but
that still the punishment is deserved. It
would appear that, wherever this doctrine
is held, possession of power for two or
three generations inevitably converts men
into persecutors ; and in so far we must
lay the horrible desolations which Europe
has suffered from bigotry at the doors,
not indeed of the Christian Apostles
themselves, but of that Bibliolatry which
has converted their earliest records into
a perfect and eternal law.
IV. “ Prophecy ” is generally regarded
as a leading evidence of the divine origin
of Christianity. But this also had proved
itself to me a more and more mouldering
prop, whether I leant on those which
concerned Messiah, those of the New
Testament, or the miscellaneous predic
tions of the Old Testament.
1. As to the Messianic prophecies, I
began to be pressed with the difficulty of
proving against the Jews that “ Messiah
was to suffer.” The Psalms generally
adduced for this purpose can in no way
be fixed on Messiah. The prophecy in
the ninth chapter of Daniel looks specious
in the authorised English version, but
has evaporated in the Greek translation,
and is not acknowledged in the best
German renderings. I still rested on the
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, as alone
fortifying me against the Rabbis, yet with
an unpleasantly increasing perception that
the system of “double interpretation” in
which Christians indulge is a playing fast
and loose with prophecy and is essentially
dishonest. No one dreams of a “second
sense'" until the primary sense proves falser
all false prophecy may be thus screened.
fear it cannot be denied that the zeal for The three prophecies quoted (Acts xiii.
will still be (as they always have hitherto
been) a mainstay of tyranny. The rights
of men and of nations are wholly ignored1
in the New Testament, but the authority
of slave-owners and of kings is very
distinctly recorded for solemn religious
sanction. If it had been wholly silent,
no one could have appealed to its
decision; but by consecrating mere
force it has promoted injustice, and in
so far has made that love impossible
which it desired to establish.
It is but one part of this great subject
that the Apostles absolutely command a
slave to give obedience to his master in
all things, “as to the Lord.” It is in
vain to deny that the most grasping
of slave-owners asks nothing more of
abolitionists than that they would all adopt
Pauls creed—viz., acknowledge the full
authority of owners of slaves, tell them
that they are responsible to God alone,
and charge them to use their power
righteously and mercifully.
3. Lastly, it is a lamentable fact that
not only do superstitions about witches,
ghosts, devils, and diabolical miracles
derive a strong support from the Bible
(and, in fact, have been exploded by
nothing but the advance of physical
philosophy), but, what is far worse, the
Bible alone has nowhere sufficed to
establish an enlightened religious tolera
tion. This is at first seemingly unintelli
gible, for the Apostles certainly would
have been intensely shocked at the
thought of punishing men in body, purse,
or station for not being Christians or not
being orthodox. Nevertheless, not only
does the Old Testament justify bloody
persecution, but the New teaches1 that
2
1 I
Christianity which began to arise in our upper
classes sixty years ago was largely prompted by
a feeling that its precepts repress all speculations
concerning the rights of man. A similar cause
now influences despots all over Europe. The
Old Testament contains the elements which they
dread, and these gave a political creed to our
Puritans.
2 More than one critic flatly denies the fact.
It is sufficient for me here to say that such is
the obvious interpretation, and such historically
has been the interpretation of various texts—for
instance, 2 Thess. i. 7-8 : “ The Lord Jesus shall
be revealed.......in flaming fire taking vengeance
on them that know not God and that obey not the
Gospel;...... who shall be punished with everlasting
destruction,” etc. Such, again, is the sense
which all popular minds receive, and must
receive, from Heb. x. 25-31. I am willing to
change teaches into has always been understood to
teach, if my critics think anything is gained by it.
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FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
33-35) in proof of the resurrection of
Jesus are simply puerile, and deserve no
reply.
I felt there was something
unsound in all this.
2. The prophecies of the New Testa
ment are not many. First, we have that
of Jesus, in Matt, xxiv., concerning the
destruction of Jerusalem.
It is mar
vellously exact down to the capture of
the city and miserable enslavement of the
population ; but at this point it becomes
clearly and hopelessly false—namely, it
declares that “ immediately after that
tribulation the sun shall be darkened,
etc., etc., and then shall appear the sign
of the Son of Man in heaven, and then
shall all the tribes of the earth mourn,
and they shall see the Son of Man
coming in the clouds of heaven with
power and great glory.
And he shall
send his angels with a great sound of a
trumpet, and they shall gather together
his elect,” etc.
This is a manifest
description of the great Day of Judgment,
and the prophecy goes on to add :
“Verily I say unto you, This generation
shall not pass till all these things be
fulfilled.” When we thus find a predic
tion to break down suddenly in the
middle, we have the well-known mark
of its earlier part being written after the
event ; and it becomes unreasonable to
doubt that the detailed annunciations of
this twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew
were first composed very soon after the
war of Titus, and never came from the
lips of Jesus at all. Next, we have the
prophecies of the Apocalypse. Not one
of these can be interpreted certainly of
any human affairs, except one in the
seventeenth chapter, which the writer
himself has explained to apply to the
emperors of Rome, and that is proved
false by the event. Farther, we have
Paul’s prophecies concerning the apostasy
of the Christian Church. These are very
striking, as they indicate his deep insight
into the moral tendencies of the com
munity in which he moved. They are
high testimonies to the prophetic soul of
Paul, and, as such, I cannot have any
desire to weaken their force. But there
is nothing in them that can establish the
theory of supernaturalism, in the face of
his great mistake as to the speedy return
of Christ from heaven.
3. As for the Old Testament, if all its
prophecies about Babylon and Tyre and
Edom and Ishmael and the four
Monarchies were both true and super
natural, what would this prove ? That
God had been pleased to reveal some
thing of coming history to certain eminent
men of Hebrew antiquity. That is all.
We should receive this conclusion with
an otiose faith. It could not order or
authorise us to submit our souls and
consciences to the obviously defective
morality of the Mosaic system in which
these prophets lived; and with Chris
tianity it has nothing to do.
At the same time I had reached the
conclusion that large deductions must be
made from the credit of these old
prophecies.
First, as to the book of Daniel, the
eleventh chapter is closely historical down
to. Antiochus Epiphanes, after which it
suddenly becomes false, and, according
to different modern expositors, leaps
away to Mark Antony, or to Napoleon
Buonaparte, or to the Papacy. Hence we
have a primd fade presumption that the
book was composed in the reign of that
Antiochus; nor can it be proved to have
existed earlier; nor is there in it one word
of prophecy which can be shown to have
been fulfilled in regard to any later era.
Nay, the seventh chapter also is confuted
by the event; for the great Day of Judg
ment has not followed upon the fourth1
monarchy.
Next, as to the prophecies of the
Pentateuch. They abound, as to the
times which precede the century of
Hezekiah ; higher than which we cannot
trace the Pentateuch.2 No prophecy of
1 The four monarchies in chapters ii. and vii.
are probably the Babylonian, the Median, the
Persian, the Macedonian. Interpreters, how
ever, blend the Medes and Persians into one, and
then pretend that the Roman Empire is still in
existence.
2 The first apparent reference is by Micah
�FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
87
the Pentateuch can be proved to have this phenomenon, I saw it infallibly1 to
been fulfilled which had not been already indicate that John has made both the
Baptist and Jesus speak as John himself
fulfilled before Hezekiah’s day.
Thirdly, as to the prophecies which would have spoken, and that we cannot
concern various nations — some of trust the historical reality of the dis
them are remarkably verified, -as that courses in the Fourth Gospel.
That narrative introduces an entirely
against Babylon; others failed, as those
of Ezekiel concerning Nebuchadnezzar’s new phraseology, with a perpetual dis
wars against Tyre and Egypt. The fate coursing about the Father and the Son,
predicted against Babylon was delayed of which there is barely the germ in
for five centuries, so as to lose all moral Matthew—and herewith a new doctrine
meaning as a divine infliction on the concerning the heaven-descended perso
haughty city. On the whole, it was nality of Jesus. That the divinity of
clear to me that it is a vain attempt to Christ cannot be proved from the first
forge polemical weapons out of these old three Gospels was confessed by the early
prophets for the service of modern Church and is proved by the labouring
arguments of the modern Trinitarians.
creeds.1
V. My study of John’s Gospel had not What, then, can be clearer than that John
enabled me to sustain Dr. Arnold’s view, has put into the mouth of Jesus the
that it was an impregnable fortress of doctrines of half a century later, which
he desired to recommend ?
Christianity.
When this' conclusion pressed itself
In discussing the Apocalypse, I had
long before felt a doubt whether we first on my mind the name of Strauss was
ought not rather to assign that book to only beginning to be known in England,
John the Apostle in preference to the and I did not read his great work until
Gospel and Epistles ; but this remained years after I had come to a final opinion
only as a doubt. The monotony also of on thiswhole subject. The contemptuous
the Gospel had often excited my -wonder. reprobation of Strauss in which it is
But I was for the first time offended, on fashionable for English writers to indulge
considering with a fresh mind an old makes it a duty to express my high
fact—the great similarity of the style and sense of the lucid force with which he
phraseology in the third chapter, in the unanswerably shows that the Fourth
testimony of the Baptist, as well as in Gospel (whoever the author was) is no
Christ’s address to Nicodemus, to that of faithful exhibition of the discourses of
John’s own Epistle. As the first three Jesus. Before I had discerned this so
Gospels have their family likeness, vividly in all its parts, it had become
which enables us on hearing a text to quite certain to me that the secret
know that it comes out of one of the colloquy with Nicodemus, and the
three, though we perhaps know not splendid testimony of the Baptist to the
which; so is it with the Gospel and
Epistles of John. When a verse is read,
1 A critic is pleased to call this a mere
we know that it is either from an Epistle suspicion of my own. In so writing people simply
of John or else from the Jesus of John; evade my argument. I do not ask them to
but often we cannot tell which. On adopt my conviction ; I merely communicate it
and wish
is my
contemplating the marked character of as mine, follow mythem to admit thatItit is with
duty to
own conviction.
(vi. 5), a contemporary of Hezekiah ; which proves
that an account contained in our book of Num
bers was already familiar.
1 I have had occasion to discuss most of the
leading prophecies of the Old Testament in my
Hebrew Monarchy.
me no mere “ suspicion,” but a certainty. When
they cannot possibly give, or pretend, any proof
that the long discourses of the Fourth Gospel
have been accurately reported, they ought to be
less supercilious in their claims of unlimited
belief. If it is right for them to follow their
judgment on a purely literary question, let them
not carp at me for following mine.
�88
FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
Father and the Son, were wholly
modelled out of John’s own imagination.
And no sooner had I felt how severe was
the shock to John’s general veracity than
a new and even graver difficulty rose
upon me.
The stupendous and public event of
Lazarus’s resurrection—the circumstan
tial cross-examination of the man born
blind and healed by Jesus—made those
two miracles, in Dr. Arnold’s view, grand
and unassailable bulwarks of Christianity.
The more I considered them, the
mightier their superiority seemed to
those of the other Gospels. They were
wrought at Jerusalem, under the eyes of
the rulers, who did their utmost to detect
them, and could not; but in frenzied
despair plotted to kill Lazarus. How
different from the frequently vague and
wholesale statements of the other Gospels
concerning events which happened where
no enemy was watching to expose
delusion—many of them in distant and
uncertain localities !
But it became the more needful to
ask, How was it that the other writers
omitted to tell of such decisive exhibi
tions ? Were they so dull in logic as not
to discern the superiority of these ? Can
they possibly have known of such mira
cles, wrought under the eyes of the
Pharisees, and defying all their malice,
and yet have told in preference other
less convincing marvels ? The question
could not be long dwelt on without
eliciting the reply: “ It is necessary to
believe, at least until the contrary shall
be proved, that the first three writers
either had never heard of these two
miracles or disbelieved them.” Thus
the account rests on the unsupported
evidence of John, with a weighty pre
sumption against its truth.
When, where, and in what circum
stances did John write ? It is agreed
that he wrote half a century after the
events, when the other disciples were all
dead, when Jerusalem was destroyed,
her priests and learned men dispersed,
her nationality dissolved, her coherence
annihilated ; he wrote in a tongue foreign
to the Jews of Palestine, and for a foreign
people, in a distant country, and in the
bosom of an admiring and confiding
Church, which was likely to venerate him
the more the greater marvels he asserted
concerning their Master. He told them
miracles of first-rate magnitude which no
one before had recorded. Is it possible
for me to receive them on his word under
circumstances so conducive to delusion,
and without a single check to ensure his
accuracy? Quite impossible, when I
have already seen how little to be trusted
is his report of the discourses and doc
trine of Jesus.
But was it necessary to impute to
John conscious and wilful deception ?
By no means absolutely necessary, as
appeared by the following train1 of
thought. John tells us that Jesus pro
mised the Comforter, to bring to their
memory things that concerned him. Oh
that one could have the satisfaction of
cross-examining John on this subject!
Let me suppose him put into the
witness-box, and I will speak to him
thus : “ O aged Sir, we understand that
you have two memories, a natural and a
miraculous one : with the former you
retain events as other men; with the
latter you recall what had been totally
forgotten. Be pleased to tell us now :
is it from your natural or from your
supernatural memory that you derive
your knowledge of the miracle wrought
on Lazarus and the long discourses
which you narrate?” If to this question
John were frankly to reply, “It is solely
from my supernatural memory—from the
special action of the Comforter on my
mind,” then should I discern that he
was perfectly true-hearted. Yet I should
also see that he was liable to mistake a
reverie, a meditation, a day-dream, for a
resuscitation of his memory by the Spirit.
In short, a writer who believes such a
doctrine, and does not think it requisite
1 I am told that this defence of John is
fanciful. It satisfies me provisionally ; but I do
not hold myself bound to satisfy others, or to
explain John’s delusiveness.
�FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
to warn us how much of his tale comes
from his natural and how much from his
supernatural memory, forfeits all claim
to be received as an historian, witnessing
by the common senses to external fact.
His work may have religious value, but
it is that of a novel or romance, not of a
history. It is therefore superfluous to
name the many other difficulties in detail
which it contains.
Thus was I flung back to the first
three Gospels, as, with all their defects—
their genealogies, dreams, visions, devil
miracles, and prophecies written after the
event—yet, on the whole, more faithful
as a picture of the true Jesus than that
which is exhibited in John.
VI. And now my small root of super
naturalism clung the tighter to Paul,
whose conversion still appeared to me a
guarantee that there was at least some
nucleus of miracle in Christianity,
although it had not pleased God to give
us any very definite and trustworthy
account. Clearly it was an error to
make miracles our foundation; but
might we not hold them as a result?
Doctrine must be our foundation; but
perhaps we might believe the miracles
for the sake of it. And in the Epistles
of Paul I thought I saw various indica
tions that he took this view. The prac
tical soundness of his eminently sober
understanding had appeared to me the
more signal the more I discerned the
atmosphere of erroneousphilosophy which
he necessarily breathed. But he also
proved a broken reed when I tried really
to lean upon him as a main support.
i. The first thing that broke on me
concerning Paul was that his moral
sobriety of mind was no guarantee
against his mistaking extravagances for
miracle. This was manifest to me in
his treatment of the gift of tongues.
So long ago as in 1830, when the
Irving “miracles” commenced in Scot
land, my particular attention had been
turned to this subject, and the Irvingite
exposition of the Pauline phenomena
appeared to me so correct that I was
vehemently predisposed to believe the
S9
miraculous tongues. But my friend “ the
Irish clergyman ” wrote me a full account
of what he heard with his own ears,
which was to the effect that none of the
sounds, vowels or consonants, were
foreign; that the strange words were
moulded after the Latin grammar, ending
in -abus, -obus, -ebat, -avi, etc., so as
to denote poverty of invention rather than
spiritual agency; and that there was no
interpretation. The last point decided
me that any belief which I had in it
must be for the present unpractical.
Soon after, a friend of mine applied by
letter for information as to the facts to a
very acute and pious Scotchman, who had
become a believer in these miracles.
The first reply gave us no facts whatever,
but was a declamatory exhortation to
believe. The second was nothing but a
lamentation over my friend’s unbelief,
because he asked again for the facts. This
showed me that there was excitement
and delusion ; yet the general phenomena
appeared so similar to those of the Church
of Corinth that I supposed the persons
must unawares have copied the exterior
manifestations, if, after all, there was no
reality at bottom.
Three years sufficed to explode these
tongues; and from time to time I had an
uneasy sense how much discredit they
cast on the Corinthian miracles. Neander’s
discussion on the second chapter of the
Acts first opened to me the certainty that
Luke (or the authority whom he followed)
has exaggerated into a gift of languages
what cannot have been essentially dif
ferent from the Corinthian, and in short
from the Irvingite, tongues.
Thus
Luke’s narrative has transformed into a
splendid miracle what in Paul is no
miracle at all. It is true that Paul speaks
of interpretation oftongues as possible, but
without a hint that any verification was
to be used. Besides, why should a Greek
not speak Greek in an assembly of his
own countrymen? Is it credible that
the Spirit should inspire one man to utter
unintelligible sounds, and a second to
interpret these, and then give the
assembly endless trouble to find out
�9°
FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
whether the interpretation was pretence
or reality, when the whole difficulty was
gratuitous? We grant that there may be
good reasons for what is paradoxical;
but we need the stronger proof that it is
a reality. Yet what in fact is there? And
why should the gift of tongues in Corinth,
as described by Paul, be treated with
more respect than in Newman Street,
London ? I could find no other reply
than that Paul was too sober-minded;
yet his own description of the tongues is
that of a barbaric jargon, which makes
the Church appear as if it “were mad,” and
which is only redeemed from contempt
by miraculous interpretation. In the
Acts we see that this phenomenon per
vaded all the Churches ; from the day of
Pentecost onward it was looked on as
the standard mark of “the descent of
the Holy Spirit ”; and in the conver
sion of Cornelius it was the justification
of Peter for admitting uncircumcised
Gentiles ; yet not once is “ interpreta
tion ” alluded to, except in Paul’s Epistle.
Paul could not go against the whole
Church. He held a logic too much in
common with the rest to denounce
the tongues as mere carnal excitement ;
but he does anxiously degrade them as
of lowest spiritual value, and wholly
prohibits them where there is “no inter
preter ” To carry out this rule would
perhaps have suppressed them entirely.
This, however, showed me that I
could not rest on Paul’s practical
wisdom, as securing him against specu
lative hallucinations in the matter of
miracles; for indeed he says, “ I thank
my God that I speak with tongues more
than ye all.”
2. To another broad fact I had been
astonishingly blind, though the truth of
it flashed upon me as soon as I heard it
named—that Paul shows total unconcern
to the human history and earthly
teaching of Jesus, never quoting his
doctrine or any detail of his actions.
The Christ with whom Paul held com
munion was a risen, ascended, exalted
Lord, a heavenly being, who reigned
over archangels, and was about to
appear as judge of the world; but of
Jesus in the flesh Paul seems to know
nothing beyond the bare fact that he
did1 “ humble himself ” to become man,
and “ pleased not himself.” Even in
the very critical controversy about meat
and drink, Paul omits to quote Christ’s
doctrine, “ Not that which goeth into
the mouth defileth the man,” etc. He
surely, therefore, must have been wholly
and contentedly ignorant of the oral
teachings of Jesus.
3. This threw a new light on the
independent position of Paul. That he
anxiously refused to learn from the other
Apostles, and “ conferred not with flesh
and blood ”—not having received his
gospel of man, but by the revelation of
Jesus Christ—had seemed to me quite
suitable to his high pretensions. Any
novelties which might be in his doctrine
I had regarded as mere developments,
growing out of the common stem, and
guaranteed by the same Spirit. But I
now saw that this independence
invalidated his testimony. He may
be to us a supernatural, but he certainly
is not a natural, witness to the truth of
Christ’s miracles and personality. It
avails not to talk of the opportunities
which he had of searching into the truth
of the resurrection of Christ, for we see
that he did not choose to avail himself
of the common methods of investigation.
He learned his gospel by an internal
revelation.2 He even recounts the
1 Phil. ii. 5-8 ; Rom. xv. 3. The last
suggests it was from the Psalms (viz., from Ps.
lxix. 9) that Paul learned the fact that Christ
pleased not himself.
2 Here, again, I have been erroneously
understood to say that there cannot be any
internal revelation of anything. Internal truth
may be internally communicated, though even
so it does not become authoritative, or justify
the receiver in saying to other men, “Believe,
for I guarantee it.” But a man who, on the
strength of an internal revelation, believes an
external event (past, present, or future) is not
a valid witness of it. Not Paley only, nor
Priestley, but James Martineau also, would
disown his pretence to authority ; and the more
so, the more imperious his claim that we believe
on his word.
�FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
appearance of Christ to him, years after
his ascension, as evidence co-ordinate to
his appearance to Peter and to James,
and to 500 brethren at once (1 Cor. xv.).
Again the thought is forced on us—howdifferent was his logic from ours !
To see the full force of the last
remark we ought to conceive how many
questions a Paley would have wished to
ask of Paul; and how many details
Paley himself, if he had had the sight,
would have felt it his duty to impart to
his readers. Had Paul ever seen Jesus
when alive ? How did he recognise the
miraculous apparition to be the person
whom Pilate had crucified ? Did he see
him as a man in a fleshly body, or as a
glorified heavenly form ? Was it in
waking, or sleeping ; and if the latter,
how did he distinguish his divine vision
from a common dream ? Did he see
only, or did he also handle ? If it was a
palpable man of flesh, how did he assure
himself that it was a person risen from
the dead, and not an ordinary living
man ?
Now, as Paul is writing specially1- to
convince the incredulous or to confirm the
wavering, it is certain that he would
have dwelt on these details if he had
thought them of value to the argument.
As he wholly suppresses them, we must
infer that he held them to be immaterial;
and therefore that the evidence with
which he was satisfied, in proof that a
man was risen from the dead, was either
totally different in kind from that which
we should now exact, or exceedingly
inferior in rigour. It appears that he
believed in the resurrection of Christ
first on the ground of prophecy,1
2
1 This appears in v. 2, “by which ye are
saved—unless ye have believed in vain,” etc. So
v. 17-19.
2 1 Cor. xv. “He rose again the third day
•according to the Scriptures.” This must appa
rently be a reference to Hosea vi. 2, to which
the margin of the Bible refers. There is no
other place in the existing Old Testament from
which we can imagine him to have elicited the
rising on the third day. Some refer to the type
of Jonah. Either of the two suggests how
marvellously weak a proof satisfied him.
91
secondly (I feel it is not harsh or bold
to add) on very loose and wholly
unsifted testimony. For since he does
not afford to us the means of sifting and
analysing his testimony, he cannot have
judged it our duty so to do, and there
fore is not likely himself to have sifted
very narrowly the testimony of others.
Conceive farther how a Paley would
have dealt with so astounding a fact, so
crushing an argument, as the appearance
of the risen Jesus to poo brethren at once.
How would he have extravagated and
revelled in proof ! How would he have
worked the topic, that “ this could have
been no dream, no internal impression,
no vain fancy, but a solid, indubitable
fact ” ! How he would have quoted his
authorities, detailed their testimonies,
and given their names and characters !
Yet Paul dispatches the affair in one
line, gives no details and no special
declarations, and seems to see no greater
weight in this decisive appearance than
in the vision to his single self. He
expects us to take his very vague
announcement of the 500 brethren as
enough, and it does not seem to occur
to him that his readers (if they need
to be convinced) are entitled to expect
fuller information. Thus, if Paul does
not intentionally supersede human testi
mony, he reduces it to its minimum of
importance.
How can I believe at second hand,
from the word of one whom I discern to
hold so lax notions of evidence? Yet
who of the Christian teachers was
superior to Paul? He is regarded as
almost the only educated man of the
leaders. Of his activity of mind, his
moral sobriety, his practical talents, his
profound sincerity, his enthusiastic selfdevotion, his spiritual insight, there is no
question ; but when his notions of
evidence are infected with the errors of
his age, what else can we expect of the
eleven, and of the multitude ?
4. Paul’s neglect of the earthly teach
ing of Jesus might in part be imputed
to the non-existence of written docu
ments and the great difficulty of learning
�92
FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN
with certainty what he really had taught. miracles on the authority of words
This agreed perfectly well with what I quoted from a man whom we cannot
already saw of the untrustworthiness of cross-examine ! Thus, once more, John
our Gospels, but it opened a chasm is left alone in his testimony, and how
between the doctrine of Jesus and that insufficient that is has been said.
of Paul, and showed that Paulinism,
The question also arose whether
however good in itself, is not assuredly Peter’s testimony to the transfiguration
to be identified with primitive Chris (2 Pet. i. 18) was an important support.
tianity. Moreover, it became clear why A first objection might be drawn from
James and Paul are so contrasted. the sleep ascribed to the three disciples
James retains with little change the in the Gospels, if the narrative were at
traditionary doctrine of the Jerusalem all trustworthy. But a second and
Christians; Paul has superadded or greater difficulty arises in the doubtful
substituted a gospel of his own. This authenticity of the second Epistle of
was, I believe, pointedly maintained Peter.
twenty-five years ago by the author of
Neander positively decides against that
Not Paul, but Jesus, a book which I Epistle. Among many reasons, the simi
have never read.
larity of its second chapter to the Epistle
VII. I had now to ask : Where are of Jude is a cardinal fact. Jude is sup
the twelve men of whom Paley talks as posed to be original, yet his allusions
testifying to the resurrection of Christ ? show him to be post-Apostolic. If so,
Paul cannot be quoted as a witness, but the second Epistle of Peter is clearly
only as a believer. Of the twelve we do spurious. Whether this was certain I
not even know the names, much less could not make up my mind ; but it was
have we their testimony. Of James and manifest that where such doubts may be
Jude there are two Epistles, but it is honestly entertained no basis exists to
doubtful whether either of these is of found a belief of a great and significant
the Twelve Apostles, and neither of miracle.
On the other hand, both the trans
them declares himself an eye-witness to
Christ’s resurrection. In short, Peter figuration itself and the fiery destruction
and John are the only two. Of these, of heaven and earth prophesied in the
however, Peter does not attest the third chapter of this Epistle are open to
bodily, but only the spiritual, resurrection objections so serious as mythical imagi
of Jesus, for he says that Christ was1 nations that the name of Peter will hardly
“ put to death in flesh, but made alive guarantee them to those with whom the
in spirit” (i Pet. iii. 18), yet if this verse general evidence for the miracles in the
had been lost his opening address (i. 3) Gospels has thoroughly broken down.
On the whole, one thing only was clear
would have seduced me into the belief
that Peter taught the bodily resurrection concerning Peter’s faith—that he, like
of Jesus. So dangerous is it to believe Paul, was satisfied with a kind of
evidence for the resurrection of Jesus
which fell exceedingly short of the
1 Such is the most legitimate translation.
That in the received version is barely a possible demands of modem logic, and that it is
meaning. There is no such distinction of prepo absurd in us to believe barely because
sitions as in and by in this passage.
they believed.
�HlSTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OF RELIGION
93
Chapter VI.
HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OF RELIGION
After renouncing any “Canon of Scrip
ture ” or Sacred Letter at the end of my
Fourth Period, I had been forced to
abandon all “second-hand faith” by the
end of my fifth. If asked why I believed
this or that, I could no longer say,
'‘'‘Because Peter, or Paul, or John
believed, and I may thoroughly trust
that they cannot mistake.” The ques
tion now pressed hard, whether this was
equivalent to renouncing Christianity.
Undoubtedly my positive belief in its
miracles had evaporated, but I had not
arrived at a positive zZAbelief. I still
felt the actual benefits and comparative
excellences of this religion too remark
able a phenomenon to be scorned for
defect of proof. In morals, likewise, it
happens that the ablest practical ex
pounders of truth may make strange
blunders as to the foundations and
ground of belief. Why was this impos
sible as to the Apostles ? Meanwhile it
did begin to appear to myself remark
able that I continued to love and have
pleasure in so much that I certainly dis
believed. I perused a chapter of Paul
or of Luke, or some verses of a hymn,
and, although they appeared to me to
abound with error, I found satisfaction
and profit in them. Why was this ?
Was it all fond prejudice—an absurd
clinging to old associations ?
A little self-examination enabled me
to reply that it was no ill-grounded
feeling or ghost of past opinions, but
that my religion always had been, and
still was, a state of sentiment towards God,
far less dependent on articles of a creed
than once I had unhesitatingly believed.
The Bible is pervaded by a sentiment,1
1 A critic presses me with the question, how I
can doubt that doctrine so holy conies from God.
which is implied everywhere—viz., the
intimate sympathy of the pure and perfect
God with the heart of each faithful wor
shipper. This is that which is wanting
in Greek philosophers, English Deists,
German Pantheists, and all formalists.
This is that which so often edifies me in
Christian writers and speakers, when I
ever so much disbelieve the letter of
their sentences. Accordingly, though I
saw more and more of moral and spiritual
imperfection in the Bible, I by no means
ceased to regard it as a quarry whence I
might dig precious metal, though the
ore needed a refining analysis; and I
regarded this as the truest essence and
most vital point in Christianity—to
sympathise with the great souls from
whom its spiritual eminence has flowed ;
to love, to hope, to rejoice, to trust with
them; and not to form the same inter
pretations of an ancient book and to
take the same views of critical argument.
My historical conception of Jesus had
so gradually melted into dimness that he
had receded out of my practical religion,
I knew not exactly when. I believe
that I must have disused any distinct
prayers to him from a growing opinion
that he ought not to be the object of
worship, but only the way by whom we
approach to the Father; and as, in fact,
we need no such “way ” at all, this was
(in the result) a change from practical
Ditheism to pure Theism. His “media
tion ” was to me always a mere name,
lie professes to review my book on The Soul;
yet, apparently, because he himself <7zjbelieves
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit taught alike in
the Psalms and Prophets, and in the New Testa
ment, he cannot help forgetting that I profess to
believe it. He is not singular in his dulness.
That the sentiment above is necessarily inde
pendent of Biblical authority, see p. 98-
�94
HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OF RELIGION
and, as I believe, would otherwise have
been mischievous.1 Simultaneously a
great uncertainty had grown on me,
how much of the discourses put into the
mouth of Jesus was really uttered by
him; so that I had in no small measure
to form him anew to my imagination.
But if religion is addressed to, and
must be judged by, our moral faculties,
how could I believe in that painful and
gratuitous personality, the devil? He
also had become a waning phantom to
me, perhaps from the time that I saw the
demoniacal miracles to be fictions, and
still more when proofs of manifold mis
takes in the New Testament rose on me.
This, however, took a solid form of
positive YAbelief when I investigated
the history of the doctrine—I forget
exactly in what stage. For it is manifest
that the old Hebrews believed only in
evil spirits sent by God to do his bidding,
and had no idea of a rebellious spirit
that rivalled God. That idea was first
imbibed in the Babylonish captivity,
and apparently, therefore, must have
been adopted from the Persian Ahriman,
or from the “ Melek Taous,” the
“Sheitan,” still honoured by the Yezidi
with mysterious fear. That the serpent
in the early part of Genesis denoted the
same Satan is probable enough ; but this
only goes to show that that narrative is
a legend imported from farther East,
since it is certain that the subsequent
Hebrew literature has no trace of such
an Ahriman. The book of Tobit and
its demon show how wise in these matters
the exiles in Nineveh were beginning to
be. The book of Daniel manifests that
by the time of Antiochus Epiphanes the
Jews had learned each nation to have its
guardian spirit, good or evil, and that
the fates of nations depend on the
invisible conflict of these tutelary powers.
In Paul the same idea is strongly brought
out. Satan is the prince of the power
of the air, with principalities and powers
1 I do not here enlarge on this, as it is discussed
in my treatise on The Soul, second edition, p. 76,
or third edition, p. 52.
beneath him, over all of whom Christ
won the victory on his cross. In the
Apocalypse we read the Oriental doctrine
of the “seven angels who stand before
God.” As the Christian tenet thus rose
among the Jews from their contact with
Eastern superstition, and was propagated
and expanded while prophecy was mute,
it cannot be ascribed to “ divine super
natural revelation ” as the source. The
ground of it is clearly seen in infant
speculations on the cause of moral evil
and of national calamities.
Thus Christ and the devil, the two
poles of Christendom, had faded away
out of my spiritual vision; there were
left the more vividly God and man.
Yet I had not finally renounced the
possibility that Jesus might have had a
divine mission to stimulate all our
spiritual faculties, and to guarantee to
us a future state of existence. The
abstract arguments for the immortality
of the soul had always appeared to me
vain trifling, and I was deeply convinced
that nothing could assure us of a future
state but a divine communication. In
what mode this might be made I could
not say a priori. Might not this really
be the great purport of Messiahship ?
Was not this, if any, a worthy ground for
a divine interference ? On the contrary,
to heal the sick did not seem at all an
adequate motive for a miracle j else why
not the sick of our own day ? Credulity
had exaggerated, and had represented
Jesus to have wrought miracles ; but that
did not wholly r/Aprove the miracle of
resurrection (whether bodily or of what
ever kind) said to have been wrought
by God upon him, and of which so very
intense a belief so remarkably propagated
itself. Paul, indeed, believed it1 from
prophecy; and, as we see this to be a
delusion resting on Rabbinical interpre
tations, we may perhaps account thus for
the belief of the early Church, without
in any way admitting the fact. Here,
however, I found I had the clue to my
1 I Cor. xv. 3. Compare Acts xiii. 33, 34, 35 ;
also Acts ii. 27, 34.
�HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OE RELIGION
only remaining discussion—the primitive
Jewish controversy. Let us step back
to an earlier stage than John’s or Paul’s
or Peter’s doctrine. We cannot doubt
that Jesus claimed to be Messiah. What,
then, was Messiah to be? And did Jesus
(though misrepresented by his disciples)
truly fulfil his own claims ?
The really Messianic prophecies
appeared to me to be far fewer than
is commonly supposed. I found such
in the 9th and nth of Isaiah, the 5th
of Micah, the 9th of Zechariah, in the
72nd Psalm, in the 37th of Ezekiel, and,
as I supposed, in the 50th and 53rd of
Isaiah. To these nothing of moment
could be certainly added, for the passage
in Dan. ix. is ill-translated in the English
version, and I had already concluded
that the book of Daniel is a spurious
fabrication. From Micah and Ezekiel it
appeared that Messiah was to come from
Bethlehem, and either be David himself
or a spiritual David; from Isaiah it is
shown that he is a rod out of the stem
of Jesse. It is true I found no proof
that Jesus did come from Bethlehem or
from the stock of David, for the tales in
Matthew and Luke refute one another,
and have clearly been generated by a
desire to verify the prophecy. But
genealogies for or against Messiahship
seemed to me a mean argument, and
the fact of the prophets demanding a
carnal descent in Messiah struck me as
a worse objection than that Jesus had
not got it—if this could be ever proved.
The Messiah of Micah, however, was not
Jesus ; for he was to deliver Israel from
the Assyrians, and his whole description
is literally warlike. Micah, writing when
the name of Sennacherib was terrible,
conceived of a powerful monarch on the
throne of David who was to subdue
him; but as this prophecy was not
verified, the imaginary object of it was
looked for as “ Messiah ” even after the
disappearance of the formidable Assyrian
power. This undeniable vanity of Micah’s
prophecy extends itself also to that in
the 9th chapter of his contemporary
Isaiah—if, indeed, that splendid passage |
95
did not really point at the child Hezekiah.
Waiving this doubt, it is at any rate clear
that the marvellous child on the throne
of David was to break the yoke of the
oppressive Assyrian, and none of the
circumstantials are at all appropriate to
the historical Jesus.
In the 37th of Ezekiel the (new)
David is to gather Judah and Israel
“from the heathen whither they be
gone,” and to “ make them one nation
in the land, on the mountains of Israel” ;
and Jehovah adds that they “ shall dwell
in the land which I gave unto Jacob my
servant, wherein your fathers dwelt; and
they shall dwell therein, they and their
children and their children’s children
for ever; and my servant David shall
be their prince for ever.” It is trifling
to pretend that the land promised toJacob,
and in which the old Jews dwelt, was a
spiritual, and not the literal Palestine ;
and, therefore, it is impossible to make
out that Jesus has fulfilled any part of
this representation. The description,
however, that follows (Ezekiel xl., etc.)
of the new city and temple, with the
sacrifices offered by “ the priests the
Levites, of the seed of Zadok,” and the
gate of the sanctuary for the prince
(xliv. 3), and his elaborate account of
the borders of the land (xlviii. 13-23),
place the earnestness of Ezekiel’s literal
ism in still clearer light.
The 72nd Psalm, by the splendour of
its predictions concerning the grandeur
of some future king of Judah, earns the
title of Messianic because it was never
fulfilled by any historical king. But it
is equally certain that it has had no
appreciable fulfilment in Jesus.
But what of the nth of Isaiah? Its
portraiture is not so much that of a king
as of a prophet endowed with superhuman
power. “ He shall smite the earth with
the rod of his mouth, and with the
breath of his lips he shall slay the
wicked.” A Paradisiacal state is to
follow. This general description .may
be verified by Jesus hereafter; but we
have no manifestation which enables us
to call the fulfilment a fact. Indeed, the
�96
HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PA'RT OF RELIGION
latter part of the prophecy is out of self to the lowly king here described.
place for a time so late as the reign of Yet such an isolated act is surely a
Augustus, which forcibly denotes that carnal and beggarly fulfilment. To ride
Isaiah was predicting only that which on an ass is no mark of humility in those
was his immediate political aspiration; who must ordinarily go on foot. The
for, in this great day of Messiah, Jehovah prophet clearly means that the righteous
is to gather back his dispersed people king is not to ride on a warhorse and
from Assyria, Egypt, and other parts ; trust in cavalry, as Solomon and the
he is to reconcile Judah and Ephraim Egyptians (see Ps. xx. 7 ; Is. xxxi. 1-3,
(who had been perfectly reconciled xxx. 16), but is to imitate the lowliness
centuries before Jesus was born), and, of David and the old judges, who rode
as a result of this Messianic glory, the on young asses; and is to be a lover of
people of Israel “shall fly upon the peace.
shoulders of the Philistines towards the
Chapters fifty and fifty-three of the
west; they shall spoil them of the east pseudo-Isaiah remained, which contain
together; they shall lay their hand on many phases so aptly descriptive of the
Edom and Moab, and the children of sufferings of Christ, and so closely knit
Ammon shall obey them.” But Philis up with our earliest devotional associa
tines, Moab and Ammon, were distinc tions, that they were the very last link of
tions entirely lost before the Christian my chain that snapped. Still, I could
era. Finally, the Red Sea is to be once not conceal from myself that no exact
more passed miraculously by the Israelites, ness in this prophecy, however singular,
returning (as would seem) to their fathers’ could avail to make out that Jesus was
soil. Take all these particulars together, the Messiah of Hezekiah’s prophets.
and the prophecy is neither fulfilled in There must be some explanation ; and
the past nor possible to be fulfilled in if I did not see it, that must probably
the future.
arise from prejudice and habit. In
The prophecy which we know as order, therefore, to gain freshness, I
Zechariah ix.-xi. is believed to be really resolved to peruse the entire prophecy
from a prophet of uncertain name, con of the pseudo-Isaiah in Lowth’s version,
temporaneous with Isaiah. It was written from ch. xl. onwards, at a single sitting.
while Ephraim was still a people—i.e.,
This prophet writes from Babylon,
before the capture of Samaria by Shal- and has his vision full of the approach
manezer—and xi. 1-3 appears to howl ing restoration of his people by Cyrus,
over the recent devastations of Tiglath- whom he addresses by name. In ch.
pilezer. The prophecy is throughout xliii. he introduces to us an eminent
full of the politics of that day. No part and “chosen servant of God,” whom he
of it has the most remote or imaginable1 invests with all the evangelical virtues,
similarity to the historical life of Jesus, and declares that he is to be a light to
except that he once rode into Jerusalem the Gentiles. In ch. xliv. (v. 1, also
on an ass—a deed which cannot have v. 21) he is named as ‘ Jacob my servant,
been peculiar to him, and which Jesus and Israel whom I have chosen.” The
moreover appears to have planned with appellations recur in xlv. 4; and in a
the express1 purpose of assimilating him- far more striking passage, xlix. 1-12,
2
which is eminently Messianic to the
1 I need not except the potter and the thirty Christian ear, except that in v. 3 the
pieces of silver (Zech. xi. 13), for the potter is a
mere absurd error of text or translation. The
Septuagint has the foundry, De Wette has the
treasury, with whom Ditzig and Ewald agree.
So Winer. (Simoni’s Lexicon.)
2 Some of my critics are very angry with me
for saying this ; but Matthew himself (xxi. 4)
almost says it : “All this was done, that it might
be fulfilled,” etc. Do my critics mean to tell
me that Jesus was not aware of the prophecy?
Or, if Jesus did know of the prophecy, will they
tell me that he was not designing to fulfil it ? I
feel such carping to be little short of hypocrisy.
�HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OF RELIGION
speaker distinctly declares himself to be
not Messiah, but Israel. The same
speaker continues in ch. 1., which is
-equally Messianic in sound. In ch. lii.
the prophet speaks of him (vv. 13-15);
but the subject of the chapter is restora
tion from Babylon, and from this he
runs on into the celebrated ch. liii.
It is essential to understand the same
“ elect servant ” all along. He is many
times called Israel, and is often addressed
in a tone quite inapplicable to Messiah
—viz., as one needing salvation himself;
so in ch. xliii. Yet in ch. xlix. this elect
Israel is distinguished from Jacob and
Israel at large; thus there is an en
tanglement. Who can be called on to
risk his eternal hopes on his skilful un
knotting of it ? It appeared, however,
to me most probable that, as our High
Churchmen distinguish “motherChurch”
from the individuals who compose the
Church, so the “Israel” of this prophecy
is the idealising of the Jewish Church,
which I understood to be a current
Jewish interpretation. The figure per
haps embarrasses us only because of
the male sex attributed to the ideal
servant of God; for, when “Zion” is
spoken of by the same prophet in the
same way, no one finds difficulty, or
imagines that a female person of super
human birth and qualities must be in
tended.
It still remained strange that in Isaiah
liii. and Psalms xxii. and lxix. there
should be coincidences so close with the
sufferings of Jesus; but I reflected that
I had no proof that the narrative had
not been strained by credulity1 to bring
it into artificial agreement with these
imagined predictions of his death. And
herewith my last argument in favour of
views for which I once would have laid
down my life seemed to be spent.
1 Apparently on these words of mine, a
reviewer builds up the inference that I regard
“ the Evangelical narrative as a mythical fancy
piece imitated from David and Isaiah.” I feel
this to be a great caricature. My words are
carefully limited to a few petty details of one
part of the narrative.
97
Nor only so, but I now reflected that the
falsity of the prophecy in Dan. vii. (where •
the coming of “ a Son of Man ” to sit in
universal judgment follows immediately
upon the break-up of the Syrian mon
archy)—to say nothing of the general
proof of the spuriousness of the whole
Book of Daniel—ought perhaps long ago
to have been seen by me as of more
cardinal importance. For, if we believe
anything at all about the discourses of
Christ, we cannot doubt that he selected
“Son of Man” as his favourite title,
which admits no interpretation so satis
factory as that he tacitly refers to the
seventh chapter of Daniel, and virtually
bases his pretensions upon it. On the
whole, it was no longer defect of proof
which presented itself, but positive dis
proof of the primitive and- fundamental
claim.
I could not for a moment allow weight
to the topic that “it is dangerous to disbelieve wrongly,” for I felt, and had
always felt, that it gave a premium to
the most boastful and tyrannising super
stition, as if it were not equally dangerous
to believe wrongly I Nevertheless, I tried
to plead for farther delay, by asking:
Is not the subject too vast for me to
decide upon ? Think how- many wise
and good men have fully examined, and
have come to a contrary conclusion.
What a grasp of knowledge and experi
ence of the human mind it requires I.
Perhaps, too, I have unawares been
carried away by a love of novelty, which
I have mistaken for a love of truth.
But the argument recoiled upon me.
Have I not been twenty-five years a
reader of the Bible? Have I not full
eighteen years been a student of theo
logy? Have I not employed seven of
the best years of my life, with ample
leisure, in this very investigation—with
out any intelligible earthly bribe to carry
me to my present conclusion, against all
my interests, all my prejudices, and all
my education? There are many far
more learned than I—many men of
greater power of mind—but there are
also a hundred times as many who are
E
�a?
HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OF RELIGION
my inferiors; and, if I have been seven
years labouring in vain to solve this vast
literary problem, it is an extreme absur
dity to imagine that the solving of it is
imposed by God on the whole human
race. Let me renounce my little learn
ing ; let me be as the poor and simple:
what then follows ? Why, then, still the
same thing follows, that difficult literary
problems concerning distant history can
not afford any essential part of my reli
gion. _
It is with hundreds or thousands a
favourite idea that “ they have an inward
witness of the truth of (the historical and
outward facts of) Christianity.” Per
haps the statement would bring its own
refutation to them if they would express
it clearly. Suppose a biographer of Sir
Isaac Newton, after narrating his sublime
discoveries and ably stating some of his
most remarkable doctrines, to add that
Sir Isaac was a great magician, and had
been used to raise spirits by his arts, and
finally was himself carried up to heaven
one night while gazing at the moon, and
that this event had been foretold by
Merlin—it would surely be the height
of absurdity to dilate on the truth of the
Newtonian theory as “ the moral evi
dence ” of the truth of the miracles and
prophecy. Yet this is what those do
who adduce the excellence of the pre
cepts and spirituality of the general doc
trine of the New Testament as the “moral
evidence ” of its miracles, and of its
fulfilling the Messianic prophecies. But
for the ambiguity of the word doctrine,
probably such confusion of thought
would have been impossible. “ Doc
trines ” are either spiritual truths or are
statements of external history. Of the
former we may have an inward witness
—that is their proper evidence ; but the
latter must depend upon adequate testi
mony and various kinds of criticism.
truth had been pressed upon me, that
since the religious faculties of the poor
and half-educated cannot investigate
historical and literary questions, there
fore these questions cannot constitute an
essential part of religion ! But perhaps
I could not have gained this result by
any abstract act of thought, from want of
freedom to think ; and there are advan
tages also in expanding slowly under
great pressure, if one can expand and is
not crushed by it.
I felt no convulsion of mind, no
emptiness of soul, no inward, practical
change; but I knew that it would be
said this was only because the force of
the old influence was as yet unspent, and
that a gradual declension in the vitality
of my religion must ensue. More than
eight years have since passed, and I feel I
have now a right to contradict that state
ment. To any “ Evangelical ” I have a
right to say that, while he has a single, I
have a double experience ; and I know
that the spiritual fruits which he values
have no connection whatever with the
complicated and elaborate creed which
his school imagines, and I once imagined,
to be the roots out of which they are
fed. That they depend directly on the
hearts belief in the sympathy of God with
individual man1 I am well assured ; but
that doctrine does not rest upon the
Bible or upon Christianity, for it is a
postulate from which every Christian
advocate is forced to start. If it be
denied, he cannot take a step forward in
his argument. He talks to men about
sin and judgment to come, and the need
of salvation, and so proceeds to the
Saviour. But his very first step—the
idea of sin—assumes that God concerns
himself with our actions, words, thoughts;
assumes, therefore, that sympathy of God
with every man which, it seems, can only
be known by an infallible Bible.
I know that many Evangelicals will
How quickly might I have come to
my conclusion — how much weary
thought and useless labour might I have
spared—if at an earlier time this simple
1 I did not calculate that any assailant would
be so absurd as to lecture me on the topic that
God has no sympathy with our sins and follies.
Of course, what I mean is that he has compla
cency in our moral perfection. See p. 93 above.
�HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OE RELIGION
reply that I never can have had “the
true ” faith, else I could never have lost
it; and as for my not being conscious of
spiritual change, they will accept this as
confirming their assertion. Undoubtedly
I cannot prove that I ever felt as they
now feel; perhaps they love their present
opinions more than truth, and are care
less to examine and verify them : with
that I claim no fellowship. But there are
Christians—and Evangelical Christians
—of another stamp, who love their creed
only because they believe it to be true,
but love truth, as such, and truthfulness,
more than any creed : with these I claim
fellowship. Their love to God and man,
their allegiance to righteousness and true
holiness will not' be in suspense, and
liable to be overturned by new dis
coveries in geology and in ancient inscrip
tions, or by improved criticism of texts
and of history, nor have they any imagin
able interest in thwarting the advance of
scholarship. It is strange, indeed, to
undervalue that faith, which alone is
purely moral and spiritual, alone rests on
a basis that cannot be shaken, alone lifts
the possessor above the conflicts of
erudition, and makes it impossible for
him to fear the increase of knowledge.
I fully expected that reviewers and
opponents from the Evangelical school
would laboriously insinuate or assert that
I never was a Christian, and do not
understand anything about Christianity
spiritually. My expectations have been
more than fulfilled; and the course
which my assailants have taken leads me
to add some topics to the last paragraph.
I say, then, that if I had been slain at
the age of twenty-seven, when I was
chased1 by a mob of infuriated Mussul
mans for selling New Testaments, they
would have trumpeted me as an eminent
saint and martyr. I add that many
circumstances within easy possibility
might have led to my being engaged as
1 This was at Aintab, in the north of Syria.
One of my companions was caught by the mob,
and beaten (as they probably thought) to death.
But he recovered very similarly to Paul, in
Acts xiv. 20, after long lying senseless.
99
an official teacher of a congregation at
the usual age, which would in all proba
bility have arrested my intellectual
development, and have stereotyped my
creed for many a long year; and then
also they would have acknowledged me
as a Christian. A little more stupidity,
a little more worldliness, a little more
mental dishonesty in me, or perhaps a
little more kindness and management in
others, would have kept me in my old
state, which was acknowledged and
would still be acknowledged as Christian.
To try to disown me now is an impotent
superciliousness.
At the same time I confess to several
moral changes as the result of this change
in my creed, the principal of which are
the following:—
i. I have found that my old belief
narrowed my affections.
It taught me to bestow peculiar love
on “the people of God,” and it assigned
an intellectual creed as one essential
mark of this people. That creed may
be made more or less stringent; but
when driven to its minimum it includes
a recognition of the historical proposition
that “ the Jewish teacher Jesus fulfilled
the conditions requisite to constitute
him the Messiah of the ancient Hebrew
prophets.” This proposition has been
rejected by very many thoughtful and
sincere men in England, and by tens of
thousands in France, Germany, Italy,
Spain. To judge rightly about it is
necessarily a problem of literary criticism,
which has both to interpret the Old
Scriptures and to establish how much of
the biography of Jesus in the New is
credible. To judge wrongly about it
may prove one to be a bad critic, but
not a less good and less pious man.
Yet my old creed enacted an affirmative
result of this historical inquiry as a test
of one’s spiritual state, and ordered me
to think harshly of men like Marcus
Aurelius and Lessing, because they did
not adopt the conclusion which the
professedly uncritical have established.
It possessed me with a general gloom
concerning Mohammedans and Pagans,
�IOO
HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OB' RELIGION
and involved the whole course of history
and prospects of futurity in a painful
darkness from which I am relieved.
2. Its theory was one of selfishness.
That is, it inculcated that my first
business must be to save my soul from
future punishment, arid to attain future
happiness, and it bade me to chide
myself when I thought of nothing but
about doing present duty and blessing
God for present enjoyment.
In point of fact, I never did look
much to futurity, nor even in prospect of
death could attain to any vivid anticipa
tions or desires, much less was troubled
with fears. The evil which I suffered
from my theory was not (I believe) that
it really made me selfish—other influences
of it were too powerful—but it taught
me to blame myself for unbelief, because
I was not sufficiently absorbed in the
contemplation of my vast personal
expectations. I certainly here feel
myself delivered from the danger of
factitious sin.
The selfish and self-righteous texts
come principally from the first three
Gospels, and are greatly counteracted by
the deeper spirituality of the Apostolic
Epistles. I therefore by no means
charge this tendency indiscriminately on
the New Testament.
3. It laid down that “ the time is
short; the Lord is at hand: the things
of this world pass away, and deserve not
our affections; the only thing worth
spending one’s energies on is the
forwarding of men’s salvation.” It bade
me “watch perpetually, not knowing
whether my Lord would return at cock
crowing or at midday.”
While I believed this (which, however
disagreeable to modern Christians, is the
clear doctrine of the New Testament) I
acted an eccentric and unprofitable part.
From it I was saved against my will, and
forced into a course in which the
doctrine, having been laid to sleep,
awoke only now and then to reproach
and harass me for my unfaithfulness to
it. This doctrine it is which. makes so
many spiritual persons lend active or
passive aid to uphold abuses and
perpetuate mischief in every depart
ment of human life. Those vho stick
closest to the Scripture do not shrink
from saying that “it is not worth while
trying to mend the world,” and stigmatise
as “ political and worldly ” such as
pursue an opposite course. Undoubtedly,
if we are to expect our Master at cock
crowing, we shall not study the permanent
improvement of this transitory scene.
To teach the certain speedy destruction
of earthly things, as the New Testament
does, is to cut the sinews of all earthly
progress, to declare war against intellect
and imagination, against industrial and
social advancement.
There was a time wh'fen I was distressed
at being unable to avoid exultation in the
worldly greatness of England. My heart
would, in spite of me, swell with some
thing of pride when a Turk or Arab
asked what was my country; I then
used to confess to God this pride as a
sin. I still see that that was a legitimate
deduction from the Scripture. “The
glory of this world passeth away,” and I
had professed to be “ dead with Christ ”
to it. The difference is this. I am now
as “ dead ” as then to all of it which my
conscience discerns to be sinful, but I
have not to torment myself in a (funda
mentally ascetic) struggle against innocent
and healthy impulses. I now, with
deliberate approval, “ love the world and
the things of the world.” I can feel
patriotism, and take the deepest interest
in the future prospects of nations, and
no longer reproach myself. Yet this is
quite consistent with feeling the spiritual
interests of men to be of all incomparably
the highest.
Modern religionists profess to be
disciples of Christ, and talk high of the
perfect morality of the New Testament,
when they certainly do not submit their
understanding to it, and are no more
like to the first disciples than bishops
are like the penniless Apostles. One
critic tells me that I know that the
above is not the true interpretation of
the Apostolic doctrine. Assuredly I am
�HISTORY DISCOVERED TG BE NO PART OF RELIGION
aware that we may rebuke “ the world ”
and “ worldliness,” in a legitimate and
modified sense, as being the system of
selfishness. True, and I have avowed this
in another work ; but it does not follow
that Jesus and the Apostles did not go
farther, and manifestly they did. The
true disciple, who would be perfect as
his Master, was indeed ordered to sell
all, give to the poor and follow him; and
when that severity was relaxed by good
sense it was still taught that things
which lasted to the other side of the
grave alone deserved our affection or
our exertion. If any person thinks me
ignorant of the Scriptures for being of
this judgment, let him so think; but to
deny that I am sincere in my avowal is
a very needless insolence.
4. I am sensible how heavy a clog on
the exercise of my judgment has been
taken off from me since I unlearned that
Bibliolatry, which I am disposed to call
the greatest religious evil of England.
Authority has a place in religious
teaching, as in education, but it is
provisional and transitory. Its chief
use is to guide action, and assist the
formation of habits, before the judgment
is ripe. As applied to mere opinion, its
sole function is to guide inquiry. So
long as an opinion is received on
authority only, it works no inward
process upon us; yet the promulgation
of it by authority is not therefore always
useless, since the prominence thus given
to it may be a most important stimulus
to thought. While the mind is inactive
or weak it will not wish to throw off the
yoke of authority, but as soon as it
begins to discern error in the standard
proposed to it we have the mark of
incipient original thought, which is the
thing so valuable and so difficult to
elicit, and which authority is apt to
crush. An intelligent pupil seldom or
never gives too little weight to the
opinion of his teacher; a wise teacher
will never repress the free action of his
pupils’ minds, even when they begin to
question his results. “ Forbidding to
think ” is a still more fatal tyranny than
IOI
“ forbidding to marry ”—it paralyses all
the moral powers.
In former days, if any moral question
came before me, I was always apt to
turn it into the mere lawyerlike exercise
of searching and interpreting my written
code. Thus, in reading how Henry the
Eighth treated his first queen, I thought
over Scripture texts in order to judge
whether he was right, and if I could so
get a solution I left my own moral
powers unexercised. All Protestants see
how mischievous it is to a Romanist
lady to have a directing priest whom she
every day consults about everything, so
as to lay her own judgment to sleep.
We readily understand that in the
extreme case such women may gradually
lose all perception of right and wrong,
and become a mere machine in the
hands of her director. But the Protestant
principle of accepting the Bible as the
absolute law acts towards the same end,
and only fails of doing the same amount
of mischief because a book can never so
completely answer all the questions
asked of it as a living priest can. The
Protestantism which pities those as
“ without chart and compass ” who
acknowledge no infallible written code
can mean nothing else than that “the
less occasion we have to trust our moral
powers the better —that is, it represents
it as of all things most desirable to be
able to benumb conscience by disuse,
under the guidance of a mind from
without. Those who teach this need
not marvel to see their pupils become
Romanists.
But Bibliolatry not only paralyses the
moral sense, it also corrupts the intellect
and introduces a crooked logic by
setting men to the duty of extracting
absolute harmony out of discordant
materials. All are familiar with the
subtlety of lawyers, whose task it is to
elicit a single sense out of a heap of
contradictory statutes. In their case
such subtlety may indeed excite in us
impatience or contempt, but we forbear
to condemn them when it is pleaded
that practical convenience, not truth, is
�102
ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
their avowed end. In the case of
theological ingenuity, where truth is the
professed and sacred object, a graver
judgment is called for. When the
Biblical interpreter struggles to reconcile
contradictions, or to prove that wrong is
right, merely because he is bound to
maintain the perfection of the Bible ;
when to this end he condescends to
sophistry and pettifogging evasions, it is
difficult to avoid feeling disgust as well
as grief. Some good people are secretly
conscious that the Bible is not an
infallible book, but they dread the
consequences of proclaiming this “to
the vulgar.” Alas! and have they
measured the evils which the fostering
of this lie is producing in the minds, not
of the educated only, but emphatically
of the ministers of religion ?
Many who call themselves Christian
preachers busily undermine moral senti
ment by telling their hearers that if they
do not believe the Bible (or the Church)
they can have no firm religion or
morality, and will have no reason to give
against following brutal appetite. This
doctrine it is that so often makes men
Atheists in Spain, and profligates in
England, as soon as they unlearn the
national creed; and the school which
have done the mischief moralise over
the wickedness of human nature when it
comes to pass, instead of blaming the
falsehood which they have themselves
' inculcated.
Chapter VII.
ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
Let no reader peruse this chapter who
is not willing to enter into a discussion
as free and unshrinking, concerning the
personal excellences and conduct of
Jesus, as that of Mr. Grote concerning
Socrates. I have hitherto met with most
absurd rebuffs for my scrupulosity. One
critic names me as a principal leader in
a school which extols and glorifies the
character of Jesus; after which he
proceeds to reproach me with inconsis
tency, and to insinuate dishonesty.
Another expresses himself as deeply
wounded that, in renouncing the belief
that Jesus is more than man, I suggest
to compare him to a clergyman whom I
mentioned as eminently holy and perfect
in the picture of a partial biographer.
Such a comparison is resented with vivid
indignation, as a blurting out of some
thing “ unspeakably painful.”
Many
have murmured that I do not come
forward to extol the excellences of Jesus,
but appear to prefer Paul. More than
one taunt me with an inability to justify
my insinuations that Jesus, after all, was
not really perfect; one is “ extremely
disappointed ” that I have not attacked
him ; in short, it is manifest that many
would much rather have me say out my
whole heart than withhold anything. I
therefore give fair warning to all not to read
any further, or else to blame themselves
if I inflict on them “ unspeakable pain ”
by differing from their judgment of a
historical or unhistorical character. As
for those who confound my tenderness
with hypocrisy and conscious weakness,
if they trust themselves to read to the
end, I think they will abandon that
fancy.
But how am I brought into this topic?
It is because, after my mind had reached
the stage narrated in the last chapter, I
�ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
103
fell in with a new doctrine among the Jesus ; in particular, he misinterpreted
Unitarians—that the evidence of Chris the Hebrew prophecies. “ He was not
tianity is essentially popular and spiritual, less than the Hebrew Messiah, but more?'
consisting in the life of Christ, who is a No moral charge is established against
perfect man and the absolute moral him until it is shown that in applying
image of God—therefore fitly called “God the old prophecies to himself he was
manifest in the flesh,” and, as such, conscious that they did not fit. His error
moral head of the human race. Since was one of mere fallibility in matters of
this view was held in conjunction with intellectual and literary estimate. On
those at which I had arrived myself con the other hand, Jesus had an infallible
cerning miracles, prophecy, the untrust moral perception, which reveals itself to
worthiness of Scripture as to details, and the true-hearted reader, and is testified
the essential unreasonableness of impos by the common consciousness of Chris
ing dogmatic propositions as a creed, I tendom. It has pleased the Creator to
had to consider why I could not adopt give us one sun in the heavens, and one
such a modification, or (as it appeared to divine soul in history, in order to correct
me) reconstruction, of Christianity ; and the aberrations of our individuality and
I gave reasons in the first edition of this unite all mankind into one family of
book, which, avoiding direct treatment God. Jesus is to be presumed to be
of the character of Jesus, seemed to me perfect until he is shown to be imperfect.
Faith in Jesus is not reception of pro
adequate on the opposite side.
My argument was reviewed by a friend positions, but reverence for a person;
who presently published the review with yet this is not the condition of salvation,
his name, replying to my remarks on this or essential to the divine favour.
Such is the scheme, abridged from the
scheme. I thus find myself in public
and avowed controversy with one who is ample discussion of my eloquent friend.
endowed with talents, accomplishments, In reasoning against it my arguments
and genius to which I have no preten will to a certain extent be those of an
sions. The challenge has certainly come orthodox Trinitarian;1 since we might
from myself. Trusting to the goodness both maintain that the belief in the
of my cause, I have ventured it into an absolute divine morality of Jesus is not
unequal combat; and from a conscious tenable when the belief in every other
ness of my admired friend’s high supe divine and superhuman quality is denied.
riority I do feel a little abashed at being Should I have any “orthodox” reader,
brought face to face against him. But my arguments may shock his feelings
possibly the less said to the public on less if he keeps this in view. In fact,
these personal matters the better.
the same action or word in Jesus may
I have to give reasons why I cannot be consistent or inconsistent with moral
adopt that modified scheme of Chris perfection, according to the previous
tianity which is defended and adorned assumptions concerning his person.
by James Martineau ; according to which
I. My friend has attributed to me a
it is maintained that, though the Gospel “prosaic and embittered view of human
narratives are not to be trusted in detail, nature,” apparently because I have . a
there can yet be no reasonable doubt very intense belief of man’s essential
what Jesus was ; for this is elicited by a
“higher moral criticism,” which (it is
1 I have by accident just taken up the British
remarked) I neglect. In this theory Quarterly, and alighted upon the following sen
Jesus is avowed to be a man born like tence concerning Madame Roland : To say that
'without
say that she
other men—to be liable to error, and (at she was human. fault 'would be toexpresses and
was not
This so entirely
least in some important respects) mis concludes all that I have to say that I feel sur
taken. Perhaps no general proposition prise at my needing at all to write such a chapter
is to be accepted merely on the word of as the present.
�104
ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
imperfection. To me, I confess, it is
almost a first principle of thought that, as
all sorts of perfection co-exist in God, so
is no sort of perfection possible to man.
I do not know how for a moment to
imagine an Omniscient Being who is not
Almighty, or an Almighty who is not
All-Righteous. So neither do I know
how to conceive of perfect holiness any
where but in the Blessed and only
Potentate.
Man is finite and crippled on all sides,
and frailty in one kind causes frailty in
another. Deficient power causes defi
cient knowledge, deficient knowledge
betrays him into false opinion and
entangles him into false positions. It
may be a defect of my imagination, but
I do not feel that it implies any bitter
ness, that even in the case of one who
abides in primitive lowliness, to attain
even negatively an absolutely pure good
ness seems to me impossible; and, much
more, to exhaust all goodness and become
a single model-man, unparalleled, incom
parable, a standard for all other moral
excellence. Especially I cannot con
ceive of any human person rising out of
obscurity and influencing the history of
the world, unless there be in him forces
of great intensity, the harmonising of
which is a vast and painful problem.
Every man has to subdue himself first
before he preaches to his fellows, and he
encounters many a fall and many a
wound in winning his own victory. And
as talents are various, so do moral natures
vary, each having its own weak and
strong side; and that one man should
grasp into his single self the highest
perfection of every moral kind is to me at
least as incredible as that one should pre
occupy and exhaust all intellectual great
ness. I feel the prodigy to be so pecu
liar that I must necessarily wait until it
is overwhelmingly proved before I admit
it. No one can without unreason urge
me to believe on any but the most irre
futable arguments that a man finite in
every other respect is infinite in moral
perfection.
My friend is “ at a loss to conceive in
what way a superhuman physical nature
could tend in the least degree to render
moral perfection more credible.” But I
think he will see that it would entirely
obviate the argument just stated, which,
from the known frailty of human nature
in general, deduced the indubitable im
perfection of an individual. The reply
is then obvious and decisive: “ This
individual is not a mere man ; his origin
is wholly exceptional; therefore his moral
perfection may be exceptional; your
experience of man's weakness goes for
nothing in his case.” If I were already
convinced that this person was a great
Unique, separated from all other men by
an impassable chasm in regard to his
physical origin, I for one should be much
readier to believe that he was unique and
unapproachable in other respects; for
all God’s works have an internal har
mony. It could not be for nothing that
this exceptional personage was sent into
the world. That he was intended as
head of the human race in one or more
senses would be a plausible opinion;
nor should I feel any incredulous repug
nance against believing his morality to
be, if not divinely perfect, yet separated
from that of common men so far that he
might be a God to us, just as every parent
is to a young child.
This view seems to my friend a weak
ness. Be it so. I need not press it.
What I do press is : whatever might or
might not be conceded concerning one
in human form, but of superhuman
origin—at any rate, one who is conceded
to be, out and out, of the same nature
as ourselves, is to be judged of by our
experience of that nature, and is there
fore to be assumed to be variously
imperfect, however eminent and admir
able in some respects. And no one is
to be called an imaginer of deformity
because he takes for granted that one
who is man has imperfections which
were not known to those who compiled
memorials of him. To impute to a
person, without specific evidence, some
definite frailty or fault barely because he
is human would be a want of good
�ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
sense; but not so to have a firm belief
that every human being is finite in moral
as well as in intellectual greatness.
We have a very imperfect history of
the Apostle James, and I do not know
that I could adduce any fact specifically
recorded concerning him in disproof of
his absolute moral perfection if any of
his Jerusalem disciples had chosen to
set up this as a dogma of religion. Yet
no one would blame me as morose or
indisposed to acknowledge genius and
greatness if I insisted on believing James
to be frail and imperfect, while admitting
that I knew almost nothing about him.
And why ? Singly and surely because
we know him to be a man ; that suffices.
To set up James or John or Daniel as
my model and my Lord, to be swallowed
up in him and press him upon others for
a universal standard, would be despised
as a self-degrading idolatry and resented
as an obtrusive favouritism. Now, why
does not the same equally apply if the
name Jesus is substituted for these?
Why, in defect of all other knowledge
than the bare fact of his manhood, are
we not unhesitatingly to take for granted
that he does not exhaust all perfection,
and is at best only one among many
brethren and equals ?
II. My friend, I gather, will reply,
“ because so many thousands of minds
in all Christendom attest the infinite and
unapproachable goodness of Jesus.” It
therefore follows to consider what is the
weight of this attestation. Manifestly, it
depends, first of all, on the indepen
dence of the witnesses ; secondly, on the
grounds of their belief. If all those who
confess the moral perfection of Jesus
confess it as the result of unbiassed
examination of his character, and if, of
those acquainted with the narrative,
none espouse the opposite side, this
would be a striking testimony, not to be
despised. But, in fact, few indeed of
the “ witnesses ” add any weight at all
to the argument. No Trinitarian can
doubt that Jesus is morally perfect,
without doubting fundamentally every
part of his religion. He believes it
105
because the entire system demands it,
and because various texts of Scripture
avow it; and this very fact makes it
morally impossible for him to enter
upon an unbiassed inquiry, whether that
character which is drawn for Jesus in the
four Gospels is or is not one of abso
lute perfection, deserving to be made
an exclusive model for all times and
countries. My friend never was a
Trinitarian, and seems not to know how
this operates; but I can testify that when
I believed in the immaculateness of
Christ’s character it was not from an
unbiassed criticism, but from the
pressure of authority (the authority of
texts'), and from the necessity of the
doctrine to the scheme of redemption.
Not merely strict Trinitarians, but all
who believe in the Atonement, however
modified—all who believe that Jesus
will be the future Judge—must believe in
his absolute perfection; hence the fact
of their belief is no indication whatever
that they believe on the ground which
my friend assumes—viz., an intelligent
and unbiassed study of the character
itself, as exhibited in the four narratives.
I think we may go farther. We have
no reason for thinking that this was the
sort of evidence which convinced the
Apostles themselves, and first teachers
of the Gospel, if, indeed, in the very first
years the doctrine was at all conceived
of. It cannot be shown that anyone
believed in the moral perfection of
Jesus who had not already adopted the
belief that he was Messiah, and therefore
Judge of the human race. My friend
makes the pure immaculateness of Jesus
(discernible by him in the Gospels) his
foundation, and deduces from this the
quasi-Messiahship; but the opposite
order of deduction appears to have been
the only one possible in the first age.
Take Paul as a specimen. He believed
the doctrine in question, but not from
reading the four Gospels, for they did
not exist. Did he then believe it by
hearing Ananias (Acts ix. 17) enter into
details concerning the deeds and words
of Jesus? I cannot imagine that any
�io6
ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
wise or thoughtful person would so
judge, which after all would be a
gratuitous invention. The Acts of the
Apostles give us many speeches which
set forth the grounds of accepting Jesus
as Messiah, but they never press his
absolute moral perfection as a fact, and a
fundamental fact. “He went about
doing good, and healing ail that were
oppressed of the devil,” is the utmost
that is advanced on this side; prophecy
is urged, and his resurrection is asserted,
and the inference is drawn that “Jesus
is the Christ.” Out of this flowed the
farther inferences that he was Supreme
Judge, and, moreover, was Paschal
Lamb and Sacrifice and High Priest
and Mediator; and since every one of
these characters demanded a belief in
his moral perfections, that doctrine also
necessarily followed, and was received
before our present Gospels existed. My
friend, therefore, cannot abash me by
the argumentum ad verecundiam (which
to me seems highly out of place in this
connection), for the opinion which is, as
to this single point, held by him in
common with the first Christians, was
held by them on transcendental reasons,
which he totally discards; and all after
generations have been confirmed in the
doctrine by authority—i.e., by the weight
of texts or Church decisions, both of
which he also discards. If I could
receive the doctrine merely because I
dared not to differ from the whole
Christian world, I might aid to swell
odium against rejectors, but I should not
strengthen the cause at the bar of reason.
I feel, therefore, that my friend must not
claim Catholicity as on his side. Trini
tarians and Arians are alike useless to
his argument; nay, nor can he claim
more than a small fraction of Unitarians,
for as. many of them as believe that
Jesus is to be the Judge of living and
dead (as the late Dr. Lant Carpenter
did) must as necessarily believe his
immaculate perfection as if they were
Trinitarians.
The New Testament does not dis
tinctly explain on what grounds this
doctrine was believed; but we may
observe that in i Peter i. 19 and 2 Cor.
v. 21 it is coupled with the Atonement,
and in 1 Peter ii. 21, Romans xv. 3, it
seems to be inferred from prophecy.
But let us turn to the original eleven,
who were eye and ear witnesses of
Jesus, and consider on what grounds
they can have believed (if we assume
that they did all believe) the absolute
moral perfection of Jesus. It is too
ridiculous to imagine them studying the
writings of Matthew in order to obtain
conviction—if any of that school whom
alone I now address could admit that
written documents were thought of
before the Church outstepped the limits
of Judaea. If the eleven believed the
doctrine for some transcendental reason
—as by a supernatural revelation, or
on account of prophecy, and to complete
the Messiah’s character — then their
attestation is useless to my friend’s
argument. Will it then gain anything if
we suppose that they believed Jesus to be
perfect, because they saw him to be
perfect ? To me this would seem no
attestation worth having, but rather a
piece of impertinent ignorance. If I
attest that a person whom I have known
was an eminently good man, I command
a certain amount of respect to my
opinion, and I do him honour. If I
celebrate his good deeds and report his
wise words, I extend his honour still
farther.
But if I proceed to assure
people, on the evidence of my personal
observation of him, that he was immacu
late and absolutely perfect, was the pure
moral image of God, that he deserves to
be made the exclusive model of imita
tion, and is the standard by which
every other man’s morality is to be
corrected, I make myself ridiculous;
my panegyrics lose all weight, and I
produce far less conviction than when I
praised within human limitations. I do
not know how my friend will look on
this point (for his judgment on the
whole question perplexes me, and the
views which I call sober he names
prosaic), but I cannot resist the conviction
�ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
that universal common sense would have
rejected the teaching of the eleven with
contempt if they had presented, as
the basis of the gospel, their personal
testimony to the godlike and unapproach
able moral absolutism of Jesus. But
even if such a basis was possible to the
eleven, it was impossible to Paul and
Silvanus and Timothy and Barnabas
and Apollos, and the other successful
preachers to the Gentiles. High moral
goodness, within human limitations, was
undoubtedly announced as a fact of the
life of Jesus ; but upon this followed the
supernatural claims and the argument of
prophecy—without which my friend
desires to build up his view. I have
thus developed why I think he has no right
to claim Catholicity for his judgment.
I have risked to be tedious, because I
find that when I speak concisely I am
enormously misapprehended.
I close
this topic by observing that the great
animosity with which my very mild
intimations against the popular view have
been met from numerous quarters shows
me that Christians do not allow this
subject to be calmly debated, and have
not come to their own conclusion as the
result of a calm debate. And this is
amply corroborated by my own conscious
ness of the past. I never dared, nor
could have dared, to criticise coolly and
simply the pretensions of Jesus to be an
absolute model of morality until I had
been delivered from the weight of
authority and miracle oppressing my
critical powers.
III. I have been asserting that he
who believes Jesus to be a mere man
ought at once to believe his moral
excellence finite and comparable to that
of other men, and that our judgment
to this effect cannot be reasonably
overborne by the “ universal consent ” of
Christendom. Thus far we are dealing
a priori, which here fully satisfies me;
in such an argument I need no a poste
riori evidence to arrive at my own con
clusion. Nevertheless, I am met by
taunts and clamour, which are not meant
to be indecent, but which to my feeling
toy
are such. My critics point triumphantly
to the four Gospels, and demand that I
will make a personal attack on a character
which they revere, even when they know
that I cannot do so without giving great
offence. Now, if anyone were to call my
old schoolmaster, or my old parish
priest, a perfect and universal model,
and were to claim that I would entitle
him Lord, and think of him as the
only true revelation of God, should I
not be at liberty to say, without disrespect,
that “ I most emphatically deprecate
such extravagant claims for him ” ?
Would this justify an outcry that I will
publicly avow what I judge to be his
defects of character, and will prove to all
his admirers that he was a sinner like
other men ? Such a demand would be
thought, I believe, highly unbecoming
and extremely unreasonable. May not
my modesty, or my regard for his
memory, or my unwillingness to pain
his family, be accepted as sufficient
reasons for silence? Or would anyone
scoffingly attribute my reluctance to
attack him to my conscious inability to
make good my case against his being
“God manifest in the flesh”? Now,
what if one of his admirers had written
panegyrical memorials of him, and his
character therein described was so
faultless that a stranger to him was not
able to descry any moral defect whatever
in it? Is such a stranger bound to
believe him to be the divine standard of
morals, unless he can put his finger on
certain passages of the book which
imply weaknesses and faults ? And is it
insulting a man to refuse to worship
him ? I utterly protest against every
such pretence. As I have an infinitely
stronger conviction that Shakespeare was
not in intellect divinely and unapproach
ably perfect than that I can certainly
point out in him some definite intellec
tual defect; as, moreover, I am vastly
more sure that Socrates was morally
imperfect than that I am able to censure
him rightly; so, also, a disputant who
concedes to me that Jesus is a mere man
has no right to claim that I will point
�io8
ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
out some moral flaw in him, or else
acknowledge him to be a unique, un
paralleled divine soul. It is true I do
see defects, and very serious ones, in the
character of Jesus as drawn by his
disciples ; but I cannot admit that my
right to disown the pretensions made for
him turns on my ability to define his
frailties. As long as (in common with
my friend) I regard Jesus as a man, so
long I hold with dogmatic and intense
conviction the inference that he was
morally imperfect, and ought not to be
held up as unapproachable in goodness;
but I have, in comparison, only a modest
belief that I am able to show his points
of weakness.
While, therefore, in obedience to this
call, which has risen from many quarters,
I think it right not to refuse the odious
task pressed upon me, I yet protest that
my conclusion does not depend upon it.
I might censure Socrates unjustly, or at
least without convincing my readers, if I
attempted that task; but my failure
would not throw a feather’s weight into
the argument that Socrates was a divine,
unique, and universal model. If I write
now what is painful to readers, I beg
them to remember that I write with
much reluctance, and that it is their own
fault if they read.
In approaching this subject, the first
difficulty is to know how much of the
four Gospels to accept as fact. If we
could believe the whole, it would be
easier to argue ; but my friend Martineau
(with me) rejects belief of many parts.
For instance, he has but a very feeble
conviction that Jesus ever spoke the
discourses attributed to him in John’s
Gospel. If, therefore, I were to found
upon these some imputation of moral
weakness, he would reply that we are
agreed in setting these aside as untrust
worthy. Yet he perseveres in asserting
that it is beyond all reasonable question
what Jesus was; as though proven
inaccuracies in all the narratives did not
make the results uncertain. He says
that even the poor and uneducated are
fully impressed with “ the majesty and
sanctity ” of Christ’s mind; as if this
were what I am fundamentally denying,
and not only so far as would transcend
the known limits of human nature.
Surely “ majesty and sanctity ” are not
inconsistent with many weaknesses. But
our judgment concerning a man’s motives,
his temper, and his full conquest over
self, vanity, and impulsive passion depends
on the accurate knowledge of a vast
variety of minor points; even the curl
of the lip, or the discord of eye and
mouth, may change our moral judgment
of a man; while, alike to my friend and
me, it is certain that much of what is
stated is untrue. Much, moreover, of
what he holds to be untrue does not
seem so to any but to the highly
educated. In spite, therefore, of his able
reply, I abide in my opinion that he is
unreasonably endeavouring to erect what
is essentially a piece of doubtful bio
graphy and difficult literary criticism into
first-rate religious importance.
I shall, however, try to pick up a few
details, which seem as much as any to
deserve credit, concerning the preten
sions, doctrine, and conduct of Jesus.
First, I believe that he habitually
spoke of himself by the title Son of Man
—a fact which pervades all the accounts,
and was likely to rivet itself on his
hearers. Nobody but he himself ever
calls him Son of Man.
Secondly, I believe that in assuming
this title he tacitly alluded to the seventh
chapter of Daniel, and claimed for
himself the throne of judgment over all
mankind. I know no reason to doubt
that he actually delivered (in substance)
the discourse in Matt, xxv.: “When
the Son of Man shall come in his glory,
....... before him shall be gathered all
nations....... and he shall separate them,”
etc.; and I believe that by the Son of
Man and the King he meant himself.
Compare Luke xii. 40, ix. 56.
Thirdly, I believe that he habitually
assumed the authoritative, dogmatic tone
of one who was a universal teacher in
moral and spiritual matters, and enun
ciated as a primary duty of men to learn
�ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
submissively of his wisdom and acknow
ledge his supremacy. This element in
his character, the preaching of himself
is enormously expanded in the Fourth
Gospel, but it distinctly exists in Matthew.
Thus in Matt, xxiii. 8 : “Be not ye
called Rabbi \teacher\, for one is your
teacher, even Christ; and all ye are
brethren.” Matt. x. 32: “Whosoever
shall confess me before men, him will
I confess before my Father which is
in heaven........ He that loveth father
or mother more than me is not worthy of
me,” etc.
Matt. xi. 27: “All things
are delivered unto me of my Father, and
no man knoweth the Son but the Father;
neither knoweth any man the Father,
save the Son ; and he to whomsoever
the Son will reveal him. Come unto
me, all ye that labour....... and I will give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you,” etc.
My friend, I find, rejects Jesus as an
authoritative teacher, distinctly denies
that the acceptance of Jesus in this
character is any condition of salvation
and of the divine favour, and treats of
my “ demand of an oracular Christ ” as
inconsistent with my own principles.
But this is mere misconception of what
I have said. I find Jesus himself to set
up oracular claims. I find an assump
tion of pre-eminence and unapproachable
moral wisdom to pervade every discourse
from end to end of the Gospels. If I
may not believe that Jesus assumed an
oracular manner, I do not know what
moral peculiarity in him I am permitted
to believe. I do not demand (as my
friend seems to think) that he shall be
oracular, but, in common with all Chris
tendom, I open my eyes and see that
he is ; and until I had read my friend’s
review of my book I never understood
(I suppose through my own preposses
sions) that he holds Jesus not to have
assumed the oracular style.
If I cut out from the four Gospels
this peculiarity, I must cut out not only
the claim of Messiahship, which my
friend admits to have been made, but
nearly every moral discourse and every
controversy ; and why, except in order
109
to make good a predetermined belief
that Jesus was morally perfect ? What
reason can be given me for not believing
that Jesus declared : “ If any one deny
me before men, him will I deny before
my Father and his angels,” or any of
the other texts which couple the favour
of God with a submission to such
pretensions of Jesus ? I can find no
reason whatever for doubting that he
preached himself to his disciples, though
in the first three Gospels he is rather
timid of doing this to the Pharisees and
to the nation at large. I find him
uniformly to claim, sometimes in tone,
sometimes in distinct words, that we
will sit at his feet like little children and
learn of him. I find him ready to
answer off-hand all difficult questions,
critical and lawyer-like as well as moral.
True, it is no tenet of mine that intellec
tual and literary attainment is essential in
an individual person to high spiritual
eminence. True, in another book I
have elaborately maintained the con
trary. Yet in that book I have described
men’s spiritual progress as often arrested
at a certain stage by a want of intel
lectual development, which surely would
indicate that I believed even intellectual
blunders and an infinitely perfect, ex
haustive morality to be incompatible.
But our question here (or, at least, my
question) is not whether Jesus might
misinterpret prophecy, and yet be morally
perfect; but whether, after assuming to
be an oracular teacher, he can teach some
fanatical precepts, and advance dog
matically weak and foolish arguments,
without impairing our sense of his abso
lute moral perfection.
I do not think it useless here to repeat
(though not for my friend) concise
reasons which I gave in my first edition
against admitting dictatorial claims for
Jesus. First, it is an unplausible opinion
that God would deviate from his ordinary
course in order to give us anything so
undesirable as an authoritative oracle
would be, which would paralyse our
moral powers, exactly as an infallible
Church does, in the very proportion in
�IIO
ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
which we succeeded in eliciting responses
from it. It is not needful here to repeat
what has been said to that effect in p. i o i.
Secondly, there is no imaginable criterion
by which we can establish that the wisdom
of a teacher is absolute and illimitable.
All that we can possibly discover is the
relative fact that another is wiser than
we ; and even this is liable to be over
turned on special points as soon as differ
ences of judgment arise. Thirdly, while
it is by no means clear what are the new
truths for which we are to lean upon the
decisions of Jesus, it is certain that we
have no genuine and trustworthy account
of his teaching. If God had intended
us to receive the authoritative dicta of
Jesus, he would have furnished us with
an unblemished record of those dicta.
To allow that we have not this, and that
we must disentangle for ourselves (by a
most difficult and uncertain process) the
“true” sayings of Jesus, is surely self
refuting. Fourthly, if I must sit in judg
ment on the claims of Jesus to be the
true Messiah and Son of God, how can
I concentrate all my free thought into
that one act, and thenceforth abandon
free thought ? This appears a moral
suicide, whether Messiah or the Pope is
the object whom we first criticise, in
order to instal him over us, and then for
ever after refuse to criticise. In short,
we cannot build up a system of oracles
on a basis of free criticism. If we are
to submit our judgment to the dictation
of some other, whether a Church or an
individual, we must be first subjected
to that other by some event from with
out, as by birth, and not by a process of
that very judgment which is henceforth
to be sacrificed. But from this I pro
ceed to consider more in detail some
points in the teaching and conduct of
Jesus which do not appear to me con
sistent with absolute perfection.
The argument of Jesus concerning the
tribute to Caesar is so dramatic as to
strike the imagination and rest on the
memory; and I know no reason for
doubting that it has been correctly re
ported. The book of Deuteronomy
(xvii. 15) distinctly forbids Israel to set
over himself as king any who is not a
native Israelite, which appeared to be a
religious condemnation of submission
to Cresar. Accordingly, since Jesus
assumed the tone of unlimited wisdom,
some of Herod’s party asked him whether
it was lawful to pay tribute to Caesar.
Jesus replied : “ Why tempt ye me, hypo
crites ? Show me the tribute money.”
When one of the coins was handed to
him, he asked: “ Whose image and
superscription is this ?” When they re
plied, “ Caesar’s,” he gave his authorita
tive decision : “ Render therefore to
Caesar the things that are Ccesar’s.”
In this reply not only the poor and
uneducated, but many likewise of the
rich and educated, recognise “ majesty
and sanctity yet I find it hard to think
that my strong-minded friend will defend
the justice, wisdom, and honesty of it.
To imagine that, because a coin bears
Caesar’s head, therefore it is Caesar’s pro
perty, and that he may demand to have
as many of such coins as he chooses
paid over to him, is puerile and noto
riously false. The circulation of foreign
coin of every kind was as common in the
Mediterranean then as now; and every
body knew that the coin was the property
of the holder, not of him whose head it
bore. Thus the reply of Jesus, which
pretended to be a moral decision, was
unsound and absurd; yet it is uttered in
a tone of dictatorial wisdom, and ushered
in by a grave rebuke : “ Why tempt ye
me, hypocrites ?” He is generally under
stood to mean, “ Why do you try to
implicate me in a political charge?” and
it is supposed that he prudently evaded
the question. I have, indeed, heard this
interpretation from high Trinitarians,
which indicates to me how dead is their
moral sense in everything which concerns
the conduct of Jesus. No reason appears
why he should not have replied that
Moses forbade Israel voluntarily to place
himself under a foreign king, but did not
inculcate fanatical and useless rebellion
against overwhelming power. But such
a reply, which would have satisfied a
�ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
more commonplace mind, has in it
nothing brilliant and striking. I cannot
but think that Jesus shows a vain conceit
in the cleverness of his answer ; I do not
think it so likely to have been a con
scious evasion. But neither does his
rebuke of the questioners at all commend
itself to me. How can any man assume
to be an authoritative teacher, and then
claim that men shall not put his wisdom
to the proof ? Was it not their duty to
do so ? And when, in result, the trial
has proved the defect of his wisdom, did
they not perform a useful public service ?
In truth, I cannot see the model man
in his rebuke. Let not my friend say
that the error was merely intellectual;
blundering self-sufficiency is a moral
weakness.
I might go into detail concerning
other discourses where error and arro
gance appear to me combined. But,
not to be tedious, in general I must
complain that Jesus purposely adopted
an enigmatical and pretentious style of
teaching, unintelligible to his hearers,
and needing explanation in private.
That this was his systematic procedure
I believe, because, in spite of the great
contrast of the fourth Gospel to the
others, it has this peculiarity in common
with them. Christian divines are used
to tell us that this mode was peculiarly
instructive to the vulgar of Judaea, and
they insist on the great wisdom displayed
in his choice of the lucid parabolical style.
But in Matt. xiii. 10-15 Jesus is made
confidentially to avow precisely the oppo
site reason—viz., that he desires the
vulgar not to understand him, but only
the select few to whom he gives private
explanations. I confess I believe the
Evangelist rather than the modern
divine. I cannot conceive how so
strange a notion could ever have pos
sessed the companions of Jesus if it had
not been true. If really this parabolical
method had been peculiarly intelligible,
what could make them imagine the con
trary ? Unless they found it very obscure
themselves, whence came the idea that
it was obscure to the multitude? As
Ill
a fact, it is very obscure to this day.
There is much that I most imperfectly
understand owing to unexplained meta
phor, as : “Agree with thine adversary
quickly,” etc.; “Whoso calls his brother1
a fool is in danger of hell fire ”; “ Every
one must be salted with fire, and every
sacrifice salted with salt. Have salt in
yourselves, and be at peace with one
another.” Now, every man of original
and singular genius has his own forms of
thought; in so far as they are natural
we must not complain if to us they are
obscure. But the moment affectation
comes in they no longer are reconcil
able with the perfect character; they
indicate vanity and incipient sacerdo
talism. The distinct notice that Jesus
avoided to expound his parables to the
multitude, and made this a boon to the
privileged few, and that without a parable
he spake not to the multitude ; and the
pious explanation that this was a fulfil
ment of prophecy, “ I will open my
mouth in parables, I will utter dark say
ings on the harp,” persuade me that the
impression of the disciples was a deep
reality. And it is in entire keeping with
the general narrative, which shows in
him so much of mystical assumption.
Strip the parables of the imagery, and
you find that sometimes one thought
has been dished up four or five times,
and generally that an idea is dressed
into sacred grandeur. This mystical
method made a little wisdom go a great
way with the multitude, and to such a
mode of economising resources the in
stinct of the uneducated man betakes
itself when he is claiming to act a part
for which he is imperfectly prepared.
It is common with orthodox Christians
to take for granted that unbelief of Jesus
was a sin, and belief a merit, at a time
when no rational grounds of belief were
as yet public. Certainly, whoever asks
questions with a view to prove Jesus is
1 I am acquainted with the interpretation
that the word “ M6re” is not here Greek—i.e.,
fool—but is Hebrew, and means rebel, which is
stronger than “Raca”— silly fellow. This
gives partial, but only partial, relief.
�I 12
ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
spoken of vituperatingly in the Gospels;
and it does appear to me that the pre
valent Christian belief is a true echo of
Jesus’s own feeling. He disliked being
put to the proof. Instead of rejoicing
in it, as a true and upright man ought;
instead of blaming those who accept his
pretensions on too slight grounds ; in
stead of encouraging full inquiry and
giving frank explanations, he resents
doubt, shuns everything that will test
him, is very obscure as to his own pre
tensions (so as to need probing and
positive questions, whether he does or
does not profess to be Messiah), and yet
is delighted at all easy belief. When
asked for miracles, he sighs and groans at
the unreasonableness of it; yet does not
honestly and plainly renounce pretension
to miracle, as Mr. Martineau would, but
leaves room for credit to himself for as
many miracles as the credulous are
willing to impute to him. It is possible
that here the narrative is unjust to his
memory. So far from being the picture
of perfection, it sometimes seems to me
the picture of a conscious and wilful
impostor. His general character is too
high for this, and I therefore make de
ductions from the account. Still, I do
not see how the present narrative could
have grown up if he had been really
simple and straightforward, and not per
verted by his essentially false position.
Enigma and mist seem to be his element;
and, when I find his high satisfaction at
all personal recognition and bowing before
his individuality, I almost doubt whether,
if one wished to draw the character of a
vain and vacillating pretender, it would
be possible to draw anything more to
the purpose than this. His general
rule (before a certain date) is to be
cautious in public, but bold in private
to the favoured few. I cannot think
that such a character, appearing now,
would seem to my friend a perfect model
of a man.
No precept bears on its face clearer
marks of coming from the genuine Jesus
than that of selling all and following him.
This was his original call to his disciples.
It was enunciated authoritatively on
various occasions. It is incorporated
with precepts of perpetual obligation in
such a way that we cannot without the
greatest violence pretend that he did
not intend n as a precept1 to all his
disciples. In Luke xii. 22-40 he
addresses the disciples collectively
against avarice; and a part of the
discourse is: “Fear not, little flock;
for it is your Father’s good pleasure to
give you the kingdom. Sell that ye
have, and give alms : provide yourselves
bags that wax not old ; a treasure in
the heavens that faileth not....... Let
your loins be girded about, and your
lights burning,” etc. To say that he
was not intending to teach a universal
morality2 is to admit that his precepts
are a trap; for they then mix up and
confound mere contingent duties with
universal sacred obligations, enunciating
all in the same breath and with the
same solemnity. I cannot think that
Jesus intended any separation. In fact,
when a rich young man asked of him
what he should do that he might inherit
eternal life, and pleaded that he had
kept the Ten Commandments, but felt
that to be insufficient, Jesus said unto
him: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and
sell that thou hast, and give to the poor,
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven
so that the duty was not contingent upon
1 Indeed, we have in Luke vi. 20-24 a version
of the Beatitudes so much in harmony with this
lower doctrine as to make it an open question
whether the version in Matt. v. is not an improve
ment upon Jesus, introduced by the purer sense
of the collective Church. In Luke he does not
bless the poor in spirit, and those who hunger
after righteousness, but absolutely the “poor”
and the “hungry,” and all who honour him ;
and, in contrast, curses the rich and those who
are full.
2 At the close is the parable about the absent
master of a house; and Peter asks: “Lord!
[Sir !] speakest thou this parable unto us, or
also unto all?'' Who would not have hoped an
ingenuous reply, “ To you only,” or, “To every
body”? Instead of which, so inveterate is his
tendency to muffle up the simplest things in
mystery, he replies, “Who, then, is that faithful
and wise steward?” etc., and entirely evades
reply to the very natural question.
�ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
ri3
even the Church of Rome will admit.
Protestants universally reject it as a
deplorable absurdity—not merely wealthy
bishops, squires, and merchants, but the
poorest curate also. A man could not
preach such a doctrine in a Protestant
pulpit without incurring deep reprobation
and contempt; but, when preached by
Jesus, it is extolled as divine wisdom—
and disobeyed.
Now, I cannot look on this as a pure
intellectual error, consistent with moral
perfection. A deep mistake as to the
nature of such perfection seems to me
inherent in the precept itself—a mistake
which indicates a moral unsoundness.
The conduct of Jesus to the rich young
man appears to me a melancholy exhibi
tion of perverse doctrine, under an
ostentation of superior wisdom. The
young man asked for bread, and Jesus
gave him a stone. Justly he went away
sorrowful at receiving a reply which his
conscience rejected as false and foolish.
But this is not all. Jesus was necessarily
on trial when anyone, however sincere,
came to ask questions so deeply probing
the quality of his wisdom as this : “ How
may I be perfect?” and to be on trial
was always disagreeable to him. He
first gave the reply, “ Keep the com
mandments”; and if the young man
had been satisfied, and had gone away,
it appears that Jesus would have been
glad to be rid of him; for his tone is
magisterial, decisive, and final. This, I
confess, suggests to me that the aim of
Jesus was not so much to enlighten the
young man as to stop his mouth, and
keep up his own ostentation of omni
science. Had he desired to enlighten
him, surely no mere dry dogmatic com
mand was needed, but an intelligent
guidance of a willing and trusting soul.
I do not pretend to certain knowledge
in these matters. Even when we hear
the tones of voice and watch the features,
we often mistake. We have no such
means here of checking the narrative.
But the best general result which I can
' This implied that Judas, as one of the
draw from the imperfect materials is
twelve, had earned the heavenly throne by the
what I have said.
price of earthly goods.
\ the peculiarity of a man possessing
\ apostolic gifts, but was with Jesus the
\ normal path for all who desired perfec
tion. When the young man went away
sorrowing, Jesus moralised on it, saying :
* How hardly shall a rich man enter into
tae kingdom of heaven”; which again
shows that an abrupt renunciation of
wealth was to be the general and ordinary
method of entering the kingdom. Here
upon, when the disciples asked, “ Lo !
we have forsaken all, and followed thee :
what shall we have therefore ?” Jesus,
instead of rebuking their self-righteous
ness, promised them as a reward that
they should sit upon twelve1 thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel. A
precept thus systematically enforced is
illustrated by the practice not only of
the twelve, but apparently of the seventy,
and, what is stronger still, by the practice
of the five thousand disciples after the
celebrated days of the first Pentecost.
There was no longer a Jesus on earth to
itinerate with, yet the disciples, in the
fervour of first love, obeyed his precept;
the rich sold their possessions, and laid
the price at the Apostles’ feet.
The mischiefs inherent in such a
precept rapidly showed themselves, and
good sense corrected the error. But
this very fact proves most emphatically
that the precept was pre-apostolic, and
came from the genuine Jesus ; otherwise
it could never have found its way into
the Gospels. It is undeniable that the
first disciples, by whose tradition alone
we have any record of what Jesus taught,
understood him to deliver this precept
to all who desired to enter into the
kingdom of heaven—all -who desired to
be perfect; why, then, are we to refuse
belief, and remould the precepts of Jesus
till they please our own morality ? This
is not the way to learn historical fact.
That to inculcate religious beggary as
the only form and mode of spiritual per
fection is fanatical and mischievous,
�H4
ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
After the merit of “selling all and
following Jesus,” a second merit not
small was to receive those whom he sent.
In Matt. x. we read that he sends out
his twelve disciples (also seventy in
Luke), men at that time in a very low
state of religious development—men who
did not themselves know what the king
dom of heaven meant—to deliver in
every village and town a mere formula of
words : “ Repent ye : for the kingdom
of heaven is at hand.” They were
ordered to go without money, scrip, or
cloak, but to live on religious alms; and
it is added that if any house or city does
not receive them it shall be more tolerable
for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of
judgment than for it. He adds, v. 40:
“He that receiveth you receiveth me,
and he that receiveth me receiveth Him
that sent me.” I quite admit that in all
probability it was, on the whole, the
more pious part of Israel which was
likely to receive these ignorant mis
sionaries ; but, inasmuch as they had no
claims whatever, intrinsic or extrinsic, to
reverence, it appears to me a very
extravagant and fanatical sentiment thus
emphatically to couple the favour or
wrath of God with their reception or
rejection.
A third yet greater merit in the eyes
of Jesus was to acknowledge him as the
Messiah predicted by the prophets,
which he was not, according to my
friend. According to Matthew (xvi. 13),
Jesus put leading questions to the dis
ciples in order to elicit a confession of
his Messiahship, and emphatically blessed
Simon for making the avowal which he
desired ; but instantly forbade them to
tell the great secret to anyone. Unless
this is to be discarded as fiction, Jesus,
although to his disciples in secret he
confidently assumed Messianic preten
sions, had a just inward misgiving which
accounts both for his elation at Simon’s
avowal and for his prohibition to pub
lish it.
In admitting that Jesus was not the
Messiah of the prophets, my friend says
that, if Jesus were less than Messiah, we
can reverence him no. longer ; but that
he was more than Messiah. This is to
me unintelligible. The Messiah whom
he claimed to be was not only the son of
David celebrated in the prophets, but
emphatically the Son of Man of Daniel
vii., who shall come in the clouds of
heaven to take dominion, glory, and
kingdom, that all people, nations, and
languages shall serve him—an everlasting
kingdom which shall not pass away.
How Jesus himself interprets his supre
macy as Son of Man, in Matt, x., xi.,
xxiii., xxv., and elsewhere, I have already
observed. To claim such a character
seems to me like plunging from a
pinnacle of the temple. If miraculous
power holds him up and makes good
his daring, he is more than man ; but if
otherwise, to have failed will break all
his bones. I can no longer give the
same human reverence as before to one
who has been seduced into vanity so
egregious; and I feel assured a priori
that such presumption must have entan
gled him into evasions and insincerities
which naturally end in crookedness of
conscience and real imposture, however
noble a man’s commencement, and how
ever unshrinking his sacrifices of goods
and ease and life.
The time arrived at last when Jesus
felt that he must publicly assert Messiah
ship ; and this was certain to bring things
to an issue. I suppose him to have
hoped that he was Messiah until hope
and the encouragement given him by
Peter and others grew into a persuasion
strong enough to act upon, but not
always strong enough to still misgivings.
I say I suppose this, but I build nothing
on my supposition. I, however, see that
when he had resolved to claim Messiah
ship publicly one of two results was inevit
able if that claim was ill-founded—viz.,
either he must have become an impostor
in order to screen his weakness, or he
must have retracted his pretensions amid
much humiliation, and have retired into
privacy to learn soberwisdom. From these
alternatives there was escape only by death,
and upon death Jesus purposely rushed.
�ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
\ All Christendom has always believed
\ that the death of Jesus was voluntarily
\incurred, and, unless no man ever
became a wilful martyr, I cannot
conceive why we are to doubt the fact
concerning Jesus. When he resolved to
go up to Jerusalem he was warned by
his disciples of the danger; but so far
was he from being blind to it that he
distinctly announced to them that he
knew he should suffer in Jerusalem the
shameful death of a malefactor. On his
arrival in the suburbs his first act was
ostentatiously to ride into the city on an
ass’s colt in the midst of the acclama
tions of the multitude, in order to
exhibit himself as having a just right to
the throne of David. Thus he gave a
handle to imputations of intended
treason. He next entered the temple
courts, where doves and lambs were sold
for sacrifice, and (I must say it to my
friend’s amusement, and in defiance of
his kind but keen ridicule) committed a
breach of the peace by flogging with a
whip those who trafficked in the area.
By such conduct he undoubtedly made
himself liable to legal punishment, and
probably might have been publicly
scourged for it, had the rulers chosen to
moderate their vengeance. But he
“ meant to be prosecuted for treason,
not for felony,” to use the words of a
modern offender. He therefore com
menced the most exasperating attacks
on all the powerful, calling them
hypocrites and whited sepulchres and
vipers’ brood, and denouncing upon
them the ‘‘-condemnation of hell.” He
was successful. He had both enraged
the rulers up to the point of thirsting
for his life, and given colour to the
charge of political rebellion. He resolved
to die, and he died. Had his enemies
contemptuously let him live, he would
have been forced to act the part of
Jewish Messiah, or renounce Messiahship.
If anyone holds Jesus to be not
amenable to the laws of human morality,
I am not now reasoning with such a one.
But if anyone claims for him a human
i IS
perfection, then I say that his conduct
on this occasion was neither laudable
nor justifiable; far otherwise. There
are cases in which life may be thrown
away for a great cause, as when a leader
in battle rushes upon certain death in
order to animate his own men; but the
case before us has no similarity to that.
If our' accounts are not wholly false,
Jesus knowingly and purposely exaspe
rated the rulers into a great crime—the
crime of taking his life from personal
resentment. His inflammatory addresses
to the multitude have been defended as
follows :—
“ The prophetic spirit is sometimes
oblivious of the rules of the drawing
room, and inspired conscience, like the
inspiring God, seeing a hypocrite, will
take the liberty to say so, and act
accordingly. Are the superficial ameni
ties, the soothing fictions, the smother
ings of the burning heart....... really
paramount in this world, and never
to give way ? And when a soul of
power, unable to refrain, rubs off, though
it be with rasping words, all the varnish
from rottenness and lies, is he to be
tried in our courts of compliment for a
misdemeanour ? Is there never a higher
duty than that of either pitying or con
verting guilty men—the duty of publicly
exposing them ; of awakening the popular
conscience, and sweeping away the
conventional timidities for a severe
return to truth and reality ? No rule of
morals can be recognised as just which
prohibits conformity of human speech to
fact, and insists on terms of civility being
kept with all manner of iniquity.”
I certainly have not appealed to any
conventional morality of drawing-room
compliment, but to the highest and
purest principles which I know; and I
lament to find my judgment so extremely
in opposition. To me it seems that
inability to refrain shows weakness, not
power, of soul, and that nothing is easier
than to give vent to violent invective
against bad rulers. The last sentence
quoted seems to say that the speaking of
truth is never to be condemned : but I
�”6
ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
cannot agree to this. When truth will
only exasperate, and cannot do good,
silence is imperative. A man who
reproaches an armed tyrant in words too
plain does but excite him to murder;
and the shocking thing is that this
seems to have been the express object
of Jesus. No good result could be
reasonably expected. Publicly to call
men in authority by names of intense
insult, the writer of the above distinctly
sees will never convert them, but he
thinks it was adapted to awaken the
popular conscience. Alas! it needs no
divine prophet to inflame a multitude
against the avarice, hypocrisy, and
oppression of rulers, nor any deep
inspiration of conscience in the multi
tude to be wide awake on that point
themselves. A Publius Clodius or a
Cleon will do that work as efficiently as
a Jesus; nor does it appear that the
poor are made better by hearing invec
tives against the rich and powerful. If
Jesus had been aiming, in a good cause,
to excite rebellion, the mode of address
which he assumed seems highly appro
priate; and in such a calamitous necessity
to risk exciting murderous enmity would
be the act of a hero; but, as the account
stands, it seems to me the deed of a
fanatic. And it is to me manifest that
he overdid his attack, and failed to
commend it to the conscience of his
hearers. For up to this point the
multitude was in his favour. He was
notoriously so acceptable to the many
as to alarm the rulers; indeed, the belief
of his popularity had shielded him from
prosecution. But after this fierce address
he has no more popular support. At his
public trial the vast majority judge him
to deserve punishment, and prefer to
ask free forgiveness for Barabbas, a
bandit who was in prison for murder.
We moderns, nursed in an arbitrary
belief concerning these events, drink in
with our first milk the assumption that
Jesus only was guiltless, and all the
other actors in this sad affair inexcusably
guilty. Let no one imagine that I defend
for a moment the cruel punishment
which raw resentment inflicted on him.
But, though the rulers felt the rage of
vengeance, the people, who had suffered
no personal wrong, were moved only by
ill-measured indignation. The multitude
love to hear the powerful exposed ar.d
reproached up to a certain limit; but, if
reproach go clearly beyond all that they
feel to be deserved, a violent sentiment
reacts on the head of the reviler; and,
though popular indignation (even when
free from the element of selfishness) ill
fixes the due measure of punishment, I
have a strong belief that it is righteous
when it pronounces the verdict “Guilty.”
Does my friend deny that the death of
Jesus was wilfully incurred?
The
“orthodox” not merely admit, but main
tain it. Their creed justifies it by the
doctrine that his death was a “sacrifice”
so pleasing to God as to expiate the sins
of the world. This honestly meets the
objections to self-destruction ; for how
better could life be used than by laying
it down for such a prize ? But, besides
all other difficulties in the very idea of
atonement, the orthodox creed startles
us by the incredible conception that a
voluntary sacrifice of life should be
unacceptable to God, unless offered by
ferocious and impious hands. If Jesus
had “authority from the Father to lay
down his life,” was he unable to stab
himself in the desert, or on the sacred
altar of the Temple, without involving
guilt to any human being? Did he,
who is at once “ High Priest ” and Victim,
when “offering up himself” and “pre
senting his own blood unto God,” need
any justification for using the sacrificial
knife ? The orthodox view more clearly
and unshrinkingly avows that Jesus deli
berately goaded the wicked rulers into the
deeper wickedness of murdering him ;
but, on my friend’s view that Jesus was
no sacrifice, but only a model man, his
death is an unrelieved calamity. Nothing
but a long and complete life could
possibly test the fact of his perfection;
and the longer he lived, the better for
the world.
In entire consistency with his previous
�ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS
117
determination to die, Jesus, when
arraigned, refused to rebut accusation,
and behaved as one pleading guilty.
He was accused of saying that, if they
destroyed the temple, he would rebuild
it in three days; but how this was to the
purpose the Evangelists who name it do
not make clear. The fourth, however
(without intending so to do), explains it;
and I therefore am disposed to believe
his statement, though I put no faith in
his long discourses. It appears (John
ii. 18-20) that Jesus, after scourging the
people out of the temple-court, was
asked for a sign to justify his assuming
so very unusual authority, on which he
replied : “ Destroy this temple, and in
three days I will raise it up.” Such a
reply was regarded as a manifest evasion,
since he was sure that they would not
pull the temple down in order to try
whether he could raise it up miraculously.
Now, if Jesus really meant what the
fourth Gospel says he meant—if he
“ spoke of the temple of his body ”—how
was anyone to guess that ? It cannot be
denied that such a reply prima facie
suggested that he was a wilful impostor;
was it not, then, his obvious duty, when
this accusation was brought against him,
to explain that his words had been
mystical and had been misunderstood?
The form of the imputation in Mark xiv.
58 would make it possible to imagine—
if the three days were left out, and if his
words were not said in reply to the
demand of a sign—that Jesus had merely
avowed that, though the outward Jewish
temple were to be destroyed, he would
erect a church of worshippers as a
spiritual temple. If so, “ John ” has
grossly misrepresented him, and then
obtruded a very far-fetched explanation.
But whatever was the meaning of Jesus,
if it was honest, I think he was bound to
explain it, and not leave a suspicion of
imposture to rankle in men’s minds.1
Finally, if the whole were fiction, and he
never uttered such words, then it was his
duty to deny them, and not remain
dumb like a sheep before its shearers.
After he had confirmed by his silence
the belief that he had used a dishonest
evasion indicative of consciousness that
he was no real Messiah, he suddenly
burst out with a full reply to the High
Priest’s question, and avowed that he
was the Messiah, the Son of God, and
that they should hereafter see him
sitting on the right hand of power and
coming in the clouds of heaven—of
course, to enter into judgment on them
all. I am the less surprised that this
precipitated his condemnation, since he
himself seems to have designed pre
cisely that result. The exasperation
which he had succeeded in kindling led
to his cruel death; and when men’s
minds had cooled, natural horror
possessed them for such a retribution on
such a man. His words had been met
with deeds; the provocation he had
given was unfelt to those beyond the
limits of Jerusalem; and to the Jews
who assembled from distant parts at the
feast of Pentecost he was nothing but
the image of a sainted martyr.
I have given more than enough indi
cations of points in which the conduct
of Jesus does not seem to me to have
been that of a perfect man. How any
one can think him a universal model is
to me still less intelligible. I might say
much more on this subject; but I will
merely add that, when my friend gives
the weight of his noble testimony to the
perfection of Jesus, I think it is due to
himself and to us that he should make
clear what he means by this word
“Jesus.” He ought to publish (I say it
in deep seriousness, not sarcastically) an
expurgated Gospel, for, in truth, I do
not know how much of what I have now
adduced from the Gospel as fact he will
1 If the account in John is not wholly false, I
think the reply in every case discreditable. If
literal, it all but indicates wilful imposture. If
mystical, it is disingenuously evasive; and it
tended, not to instruct, but to irritate and to
move suspicion and contempt. Is this the
course for a religious teacher—to speak darkly
so as to mislead and prejudice ; and this when
he represents it as a matter of spiritual life and
death to accept his teaching and his supremacy ?
�ON BIGOTRY AND PROGRESS
admit to be fact. I neglect, he tells me,
“a higher moral criticism,” which, if I
rightly understand, would explode, as
evidently unworthy of Jesus, many of the
representations pervading the Gospels—
as that Jesus claimed to be an oracular
teacher, and attached spiritual life* or
death to belief or disbelief in this claim.
My friend says it is beyond all serious
question what Jesus was; but his dis
belief of the narrative seems to be so
much wider than mine as to leave me
more uncertain than ever about it. If
he will strike out of the Gospels all that
he disbelieves, and so enable me to
understand what is the Jesus whom he
reveres, I have so deep a sense of his
moral and critical powers that I am fully
prepared to expect that he may remove
many of my prejudices and relieve my
objections; but I cannot honestly say
that I see the least probability of his
altering my conviction that in consistency
of goodness Jesus fell far below vast
numbers of his unhonoured disciples.1
1 [It has been stated that Newman’s attitude
towards Christ underwent a great change in his
last years. The truth is that some of the
criticisms in the foregoing chapter are based on
texts which Newman afterwards came to regard
as unhistorical. But it is not true that he ever
came to accept the character of Jesus as an
ideal of moral perfection. See his posthumous
pamphlet, Mature Thought on Christianity
(Watts & Co., 1897).—Publisher’s Note.]
Chapter VIII.
ON BIGOTRY AND PROGRESS
If any Christian reader has been patient
enough to follow me thus far, I now
claim that he will judge my argument
and me as before the bar of God, and
not by the conventional standards of the
Christian Churches.
Morality and truth are principles in
human nature both older and more
widespread than Christianity or the
Bible ; and neither Jesus nor James nor
John nor Paul could have addressed, or
did address, men in any other tone than
that of claiming to be themselves judged
by some pre-existing standard of moral
truth, and by the inward powers of the
hearer. Does the reader deny this ?
Or, . admitting it, does he think it
impious to accept their challenge ?
Does he say that we are to love and
embrace Christianity without trying to
ascertain whether it be true or false ?
If he say Yes, such a man has no love or
care for truth, and is but by accident a
Christian. He would have remained a
faithful heathen had he been born in
heathenism, though Moses, Elijah, and
Christ preached a higher truth to him.
Such a man is condemned by his own
confession, and I here address him no
longer.
But if faith is a spiritual and personal
thing, if belief given at random to mere
high pretensions is an immorality, if
truth is not to be quite trampled down,
nor conscience to be wholly palsied in
us, then what, I ask, was I to do when I
saw that the genealogy in the first
chapter of Matthew is an erroneous
copy of that in the Old Testament,
and that the writer has not only copied
wrong, but also counted wrong, so as to
mistake eighteen for fourteen ? Can any
man who glories in the name of Christian
lay his hand on his heart and say it was
my duty to blind my eyes to the fact
and think of it no further ? Many, alas!
�ON BIGOTRY AND PROGRESS
I know would have whispered this to
me; but if anyone were to proclaim it,
the universal conscience of mankind
would call him impudent.
If, however, this first step was right,
was a second step wrong? When I
further discerned that the two genealo
gies in Matthew and Luke were at
variance, utterly irreconcilable, and both,
moreover, nugatory, because they are
genealogies of Joseph, who is denied to
be the father of Jesus—on what ground
of righteousness which I could approve
to God and my conscience could I shut
my eyes to this second fact ?
When forced, against all my preposses
sions, to admit that the first two chapters
of Matthew and the first two chapters of
Luke are mutually destructive,1 would it
have been faithfulness to the God of
Truth or a self-willed love of my own
prejudices if I had said, “ I will not
inquire further, for fear it should unsettle
my faith ”? The reader’s conscience will
witness to me that, on the contrary, I
was bound to say what I did say : “I
must inquire farther, in order that I may
plant the foundations of my faith more
deeply on the rock of truth.”
Having discovered that not all that is
within the canon of the Scripture is in
fallibly correct, and that the human
understanding is competent to arraign
and convict at least some kinds of error
therein contained, where was I to stop ?
And if I am guilty, where did my guilt
begin ? The further I inquired the more
errors crowded upon me—in history, in
chronology, in geography, in physiology,
in geology.1 Did it then at last become
2
1 See Strauss on the infancy of Jesus.
2 My Eclectic reviewer (who is among the
least orthodox and the least uncandid) hence
deduces that I have confounded the two ques
tions, “Does the Bible contain errors in human
science?” and “Is its purely spiritual teaching
true?” It is quite wonderful to me how
educated men can so totally overlook what I
have so plainly and so often written. This very
passage might show the contrary if he had but
quoted the whole paragraph, instead of the
middle sentence only. See also pp. 57, 61, 62, I
68, 69, and 94.
I
119
a duty to close my eyes to the painful
light ? And if I had done so, ought I to
have flattered myself that I was one of
those who, being of the truth, come to
the light that their deeds may be re
proved ?
Moreover, when I had clearly per
ceived that, since all evidence for Chris
tianity must involve moral considerations,
to undervalue the moral faculties of man
kind is to make Christian evidence an
impossibility, and to propagate universal
scepticism; was I then so to distrust
the common conscience as to believe
that the Spirit of God pronounced Jael
blessed for perfidiously murdering her
husband’s trusting friend ? Does any
Protestant reader feel disgust and horror
at the sophistical defences set up for the
massacre of St. Bartholomew and other
atrocities of the wicked Church of Rome?
Let him stop his mouth and hide his
face if he dares to justify the foul crime
of Jael.
Or, when I was thus forced to admit
that the Old Testament praised im
morality as well as enunciated error, and
found, nevertheless, in the writers of the
New Testament no indication that they
were aware of either, but that, on the
contrary, “ the Scripture ” (as the book
was vaguely called) is habitually identi
fied with the infallible “word of God”;
was it wrong in me to suspect that the
writers of the New Testament were them
selves open to mistake ?
When I farther found that Luke not
only claims no infallibility and no inspira
tion, but distinctly assigns human sources
as his means of knowledge, when the
same Luke had already been discovered
to be in irreconcilable variance with
Matthew concerning the infancy of Jesus;
was I sinful in feeling that I had no
longer any guarantee against other pos
sible error in these writers ? Or ought I
to have persisted in obtruding on the
two Evangelists an infallibility of which
Luke shows himself unconscious, which
Matthew nowhere claims, and which I
had demonstrative proof that they did
not both possess? A thorough-going
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ON BIGOTRY AND PROGRESS
Bibliolater will have to impeach me as a
sinner on this count.
After Luke and Matthew stood before
me as human writers liable to and con
victed of human error, was there any
reason why I should look on Mark as
more sacred ? And having perceived
all three to participate in the common
superstition derived from Babylon and
the East, traceable in history to its
human source, existing still in Turkey
and Abyssinia—the superstition which
mistakes mania, epilepsy, and other
forms of disease for possession by devils ;
should I have shown love of. truth, or
obstinacy in error, had I refused to judge
freely of these three writers as of any
others who tell similar marvels ? Or was
it my duty to resolve, at any rate and
against evidence, to acquit them of the
charge of superstition and misrepresen
tation ?
I will not trouble the reader with any
further queries. If he has justified me
in his conscience thus far, he will justify
my proceeding to abandon myself to the
results of inquiry. He will feel that the
will cannot, may not, dare not dictate
whereto the inquiries of the understand
ing shall lead; and that to allege that it
ought is to plant the root of insincerity,
falsehood, bigotry, cruelty, and universal
rottenness of soul.
The vice of bigotry has been so
indiscriminately imputed to the religious
that they seem apt to forget that it is a
real sin—a sin which in Christendom
has been, and is, of all sins most fruitful,
most poisonous ; nay, grief of griefs ! it
infects many of the purest and most
lovely hearts, which want strength of
understanding, or are entangled by a
sham theology, with its false facts and
fraudulent canons. But upon all who
mourn for the miseries which bigotry
has perpetrated from the day when
Christians first learned to curse ; upon
all who groan over the persecutions and
wars stirred up by Romanism; upon all
who blush at the overbearing conduct of
Protestants in their successive moments
of brief authority—a sacred duty rests
in this nineteenth century of protesting
against bigotry, not from a love of ease,
but from a spirit of earnest justice.
Like the first Christians, they must
become confessors of the truth; not
obtrusively, boastfully, dogmatically, or
harshly, but “ speaking the truth in
love,” not to be ashamed to avow if they
do not believe all that others profess,
and that they abhor the unrighteous
principle of judging men by an authori
tative creed. The evil of bigotry which
has been most observed is its untam
able injustice, which converted the law
of love into licensed murder or gratuitous
hatred. But I believe a worse evil still
has been the intense reaction of the
human mind against religion for bigotry’s
sake. To the millions of Europe bigotry
has been a confutation of all pious
feeling. So unlovely has religion been
made by it,
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,
that now, as 2,000 years ago, men are
lapsing into Atheism or Pantheism ; and
a totally new “ dispensation ” is wanted
to retrieve the lost reputation of piety.
Two opposite errors are committed by
those who discern that the pretensions
of the national religious systems are
overstrained and unjustifiable. One
class of persons inveigh warmly, bitterly,
rudely, against the bigotry of Christians,
and know not how deep and holy affec
tions and principles, in spite of narrow
ness, are cherished in the bosom of the
Christian society. Hence their invective
is harsh and unsympathising, and appears
so essentially unjust and so ignorant as
to exasperate and increase the very
bigotry which it attacks. An opposite
class know well, and value highly, the
moral influences of Christianity, and
from an intense dread of harming or
losing these do not dare plainly and
publicly to avow their own convictions.
Great numbers of English laymen are
entirely assured that the Old Testament
abounds with error, and that the New is
not always unimpeachable ; yet they only
whisper this; and in the hearing of a
clergyman, who is bound by Articles
�ON BIGOTRY AND PROGRESS
and whom it is indecent to refute, keep
a respectful silence. As for ministers of
religion, these, being called perpetually
into a practical application of the received
doctrine of their Church, are of all men
least able to inquire into any fundamental
errors in that doctrine. Eminent persons
among them will nevertheless aim after
and attain a purer truth than that which
they find established; but such a case
must always be rare and exceptive.
Only by disusing ministerial service can
anyone give fair play to doubts con
cerning the wisdom and truth of that
which he is solemnly ministering ; hence
that friend of Arnold’s was wise in this
world who advised him to take a curacy
in order to settle his doubts concerning
the Trinity. Nowhere from any body of
priests, clergy, or ministers, as an order,
is religious progress to be anticipated
until intellectual creeds are destroyed.
A greater responsibility, therefore, is laid
upon laymen to be faithful and bold in
avowing their convictions.
Yet it is not from the practical
ministers of religion that the great
opposition to religious reform proceeds.
The “secular clergy ” (as the Romanists
oddly call them) were seldom so bigoted
as the “ regulars.” So with us, those
who minister to men in their moral
trials have for the most part a deeper
moral spirit, and are less apt to place
religion in systems of propositions. The
robur legionum of bigotry, I believe, is
found, first, in non-parochial clergy, and,
next, in the anonymous writers for
religious journals and “ conservative ”
newspapers; who too generally1 adopt
a style of which they would be ashamed,
if the names of the writers were attached;
who often seem desirous to make it clear
that it is their trade to carp, insult, or
slander; who assume a tone of omni
science at the very moment when they
show narrowness of heart and judgment.
To such writing those who desire to
1 Any orthodox periodical which dares to
write charitably is at once subjected to fierce
attack as wworthodox.
121
promote earnest thought and tranquil
progress ought anxiously to testify their
deep repugnance. A large part of this
slander and insult is prompted by a base
pandering to the (real or imagined) taste
of the public, and will abate when it
visibly ceases to be gainful.
The law of God’s moral universe, as
known to us, is that of progress. We
trace it from old barbarism to the
methodised Egyptian idolatry, to the
more flexible Polytheism of Syria and
Greece, the poetical Pantheism of
philosophers, and the moral Monotheism
of a few sages. So in Palestine and in
the Bible itself we see, first of all, the
image-worship of Jacob’s family, then the
incipient elevation of Jehovah above all
other Gods by Moses, the practical
establishment of the worship of Jehovah
alone by Samuel, the rise of spiritual
sentiment under David and the Psalmists,
the more magnificent views of Hezekiah’s
prophets, finally in the Babylonish
captivity the new tenderness assumed
by that second Isaiah and the later
Psalmists. But ceremonialism more and
more encrusted the restored nation, and
Jesus was needed to spur and stab the
conscience of his contemporaries, and
recall them to more spiritual perceptions ;
to proclaim a coming “kingdom of
heaven,” in which should be gathered
all the children of God that were
scattered abroad, where the law of love
should reign, and no one should dictate
to another. Alas ! that this great move
ment had its admixture of human
imperfection. After this, Stephen the
protomartyr, and Paul, once his perse
cutor, had to expose the emptiness of all
external sanctifications, and free the
world from the law of Moses. Lty to
this point all Christians approve of
progress, but at this point they want to
arrest it.
The arguments of those who resist
progress are always the same, whether
it be Pagans against Hebrews, Jews
against Christians, Romanists against
�122
ON BIGOTRY AND PROGRESS
Protestants, or modern Christians against
the advocates of a higher spiritualism.
Each established system assures its
votaries that now at length they have
attained a final perfection, that their
foundations are irremovable; progress
up to that position was a duty, beyond it
is a sin. Each displaces its predecessor
by superior goodness, but then each
fights against his successor by odium,
contempt, exclusions, and (when possible)
by violences. Each advances mankind
one step, and forbids them to take a
second. Yet, if it be admitted that in
the earlier movement the party of
progress was always right, confidence
that the case is now reversed is not easy
to justify.
Every persecuting church has numbered
among its members thousands of pious
people, so grateful for its services, or so
attached to its truth, as to think those
impious who desire something purer and
more perfect. Herein we may discern
that every nation and class is liable to
the peculiar illusion of over-esteeming the
sanctity of its ancestral creed. It is as
much our duty to beware of this illusion
as of any other. All know how easily
our patriotism may degenerate into an
unjust repugnance to foreigners, and
that the more intense it is the greater
the need of antagonistic principles. So,
also, the real excellences of our religion
may only so much the more rivet us in a
wrong aversion to those who do not
acknowledge its authority or perfection.
It is probable that Jesus desired a
state of things in which all who
worship God spiritually should have
an acknowledged and conscious union.
It is clear that Paul longed, above all
things, to overthrow the “ wall of
partition ” which separated two families
of sincere worshippers. Yet we now see
stronger and higher walls of partition
than ever between the children of the
same God—with a new law of the letter,
more entangling to the conscience and
more depressing to the mental energies
than any outward service of the Levitical
law. The cause of all this is to be found
in the claim of Messiahship for Jesus.
This gave a premium to crooked logic,
in order to prove that the prophecies
meant what they did not mean and
could not mean. This perverted men’s
notions of right and wrong, by imparting
factitious value to a literary and his
torical proposition — “Jesus is the
Messiah ”—as though that were or could
be religion. This gave merit to credulity,
and led pious men to extol it as a brave
and noble deed when anyone over
powered the scruples of good sense, and
scolded them down as the wisdom of
this world, which is hostile to God.
This put the Christian Church into an
essentially false position by excluding
from it in the first century all the men
of most powerful and cultivated under
standing among the Greeks and Romans.
This taught Christians to boast of the
hostility of the wise and prudent, and in
every controversy ensured that the party
which had the merit of mortifying reason
most signally should be victorious.
Hence the downward career of the
Church into base superstition was deter
mined and inevitable from her very
birth; nor was any improvement possible
until a reconciliation should be effected
between Christianity and the cultivated
reason which it had slighted and
insulted.
Such reconciliation commenced, I
believe, from the tenth century, when
the Latin moralists began to be studied
as a part of a theological course. It was
continued with still greater results when
Greek literature became accessible to
Churchmen. Afterwards the physics of
Galileo and of Newton began not only
to undermine numerous superstitions,
but to give to men a confidence in the
reality of abstract truth, and in our
power to attain it in other domains than
that of geometrical demonstration. This,
together with the philosophy of Locke,
was taken up into Christian thought, and
political toleration was the first fruit.
Beyond that point English religion has
hardly gone, for, in spite of all that has
since been done in Germany for the
�ON BIGOTRY AND PROGRESS
true and accurate exposition of the Bible
and for the scientific establishment of
the history of its component books, we
still remain deplorably ignorant here of
these subjects. In consequence, English
Christians do not know that they are
unjust and utterly unreasonable in
expecting thoughtful men to abide by
the creed of their ancestors. Nor,
indeed, is there any more stereotyped
and approved calumny than the declara
tion so often emphatically enunciated
from the pulpit, that unbelief in the
Christian miracles is the fruit of a wicked
heart and of a soul enslaved to sin.
Thus do estimable and well-meaning
men, deceived and deceiving one
another, utter base slander in open
church, where it is indecorous to reply
to them, and think that they are bravely
delivering a religious testimony.
No difficulty is encountered so long as
the inward and the outward rule of
religion agree, by whatever names men
call them—the spirit and the Word, or
reason and the Church, or conscience
and authority. None need settle which
of the two rules is the greater so long as
the results coincide ; in fact, there is no
controversy, no struggle, and also pro
bably no progress. A child cannot
guess whether father or mother has the
higher authority until discordant com
mands are given; but then commences
the painful necessity of disobeying one
in order to obey the other. So, also, the
great and fundamental controversies of
religion arise only when a discrepancy
is detected between the inward and the
outward rule, and then there are only
two possible solutions. If the spirit
within us and the Bible (or Church)
without us are at variance, we must either
follow the inward and disregard the
outward law, else we must renounce the
inward law and obey the outward. The
Romanist bids us to obey the Church
and crush our inward judgment; the
spiritualist, on the contrary, follows his
inward law, and, when necessary, defies
Church, Bible, or any other authority.
The orthodox Protestant is better and
123
truer than the Romanist, because the
Protestant is not, like the latter, consis
tent in error, but often goes right; still,
he is inconsistent as to this point.
Against the spiritualist he uses Romanist
principles, telling him that he ought to
submit his “proud reason ” and accept
the “ Word of God ” as infallible, even
though it appear to him to contain
errors. But against the Romanist the
same disputant avows spiritualist prin
ciples, declaring that, since “the Church”
appears to him to be erroneous, he
dares not to accept it as infallible.
What with the Romanist he before
called “proud reason,” he now desig
nates as conscience, understanding, and
perhaps the Holy Spirit. He refused to
allow the right of the spiritualist to urge
that the Bible contains contradictions
and immoralities, and therefore cannot
be received; but he claims a full right
to urge that the Church has justified
contradictions and immoralities, and
therefore is not to be submitted to. The
perception that this position is incon
sistent, and, to him who discerns the
inconsistency, dishonest, is every year
driving Protestants to Rome. And in
principle there are only two possible
religions—the personal and the cor
porate, the spiritual and the external. I
do not mean to say that in Romanism
there is nothing but what is corporate
and external, for that is impossible to
human nature; but that this is what the
theory of their argument demands, and
their doctrine of implicit1 (or virtual)
faith entirely supersedes intellectual per
ception as well as intellectual conviction.
1 Explicit faith in a doctrine means that we
understand what the propositions are, and
accept them. But if through blunder we accept
a wrong set of propositions so as to believe a
false doctrine, we nevertheless have implicit (or
virtual) faith in the true one if only we say from
the heart, “Whatever the Church believes I
believe.”
Thus a person who, through
blundering, believes in Sabellianism or Arianism,
which the Church has condemned, is regarded
to have virtual faith in Trinitarianism, and all
the “merit” of that faith, because of his good
will to submit to the Church, which is the really
saving virtue.
�T24
ON BIGOTRY AND PROGRESS
The theory of each Church is the force
which determines to what centre the
whole shall gravitate. However men
may talk of spirituality, yet let them
once enact that the freedom of indi
viduals shall be absorbed in a corporate
conscience, and you find that the nar
rowest heart and meanest intellect sets
the rule of conduct for the whole body.
It has been often observed how the
controversies of the Trinity and Incarna
tion depended on the niceties of the
Greek tongue. I do not know whether
it has ever been inquired what confusion
of thought was shed over Gentile Chris
tianity from its very origin by the imper
fection of the New Testament Greek.
The single Greek1 word 7r«rri$ needs
probably three translations into our far
more accurate tongue—viz., belief, trust,
faith; but ’ especially belief and faith
have important contrasts. Belief is
purely intellectual, faith is properly
spiritual. Hence the endless contro
versy about justification by -terr is, which
has so vexed Christians; hence the
slander cast on unbelievers or misbelievers
(when they can no longer be burned or
exiled), as though they were faithless
and infidels.
But nothing of this ought to be
allowed to blind us to the truly spiritual
and holy developments of historical
Christianity; much less make us revert
to the old Paganism or pantheism which
it supplanted. The great doctrine on
which all practical religion depends—
the doctrine which nursed the infancy
and youth of human nature—is “the
sympathy of God with the perfection of
individual man.” Among pagans this
was so marred by the imperfect charac
ters ascribed to the Gods, and the dis
honourable fables told concerning them,
that the philosophers who undertook to
prune religion too generally cut away the
root by alleging1 that God was mere
2
intellect and wholly destitute of affec
tions. But happily among the Hebrews
the purity of God’s character was vindi
cated ; and with the growth of conscience
in the highest minds of the nation the
ideal image of God shone brighter and
brighter. The doctrine of his sympathy
was never lost, and from the Jews it
passed into the Christian Church. This
doctrine, applied to that part of man
which is divine, is the wellspring of
repentance and humility, of thankful
ness, love, and joy. It reproves and it
comforts; it stimulates and animates.
This it is which led the Psalmist to cry,
“Whom have I in heaven but thee?
there is none upon earth that I desire
beside thee.” This has satisfied pro
phets, Apostles, and martyrs with God as
their portion. This has been passed
from heart to heart for full three thou
sand years, and has produced bands of
countless saints. Let us not cut off our
sympathies from those who have learnt
to sympathise with God; nor be blind to
that spiritual good which they have,
even if it be more or less sensibly tinged
with intellectual error. In fact, none
but God knows how many Christian
hearts are really pure from bigotry. I
cannot refuse to add my testimony, such
as it is, to the effect that the majority is
always true-hearted. As one tyrant with
a small band of unscrupulous tools
manages to use the energies of a whole
nation of kind and well-meaning people
for cruel purposes, so the bigoted few
who work out an evil theory with consis
tency often succeed in using the masses
of simple-minded Christians as their
tools for oppression. Let us not think
more harshly than is necessary of the
anathematising Churches. Those who
curse us with their lips often love us in
their hearts. A very deep fountain of
tenderness can mingle with their bigotry
itself; and with tens of thousands the
evil belief is a dead form, the spiritual
1 tSiK.a.i.03vwr] (righteousness), Scad-qKT] (cove
nant, testament), Xapis (grace), are all terms
pregnant with fallacy.
2 Horace and Cicero speak the mind of their
educated contemporaries in saying that “we
ought to pray to God only for external blessings,
but trust to our own efforts for a pure and tran
quil soul ”—a singular reversing of spiritual
religion !
�ON BIGOTRY AND PROGRESS
love is a living reality. Whether Chris
tians like it or not, we must needs look
to historians, to linguists, to physiologists,
to philosophers, and generally to men of
cultivated understanding, to gain help in
all those subjects which are prepos
terously called theology ; but for devo
tional aids, for pious meditations, for
inspiring hymns, for purifying and glow
ing thoughts, we have still to wait upon
that succession of kindling souls, among
whom may be named with special honour
David and Isaiah, Jesus and Paul,
Augustine, a Kempis, Fenelon, Leigh
ton, Baxter, Doddridge, Watts, the two
Wesleys, and Channing.
Religion was created by the inward
instincts of the soul; it had afterwards
to be pruned and chastened by the
sceptical understanding. For its perfec
tion the co-operation of these two parts
of man is essential. While religious
persons dread critical and searching
thought, and critics despise instinctive
religion, each side remains imperfect and
curtailed.
It is a complaint often made by reli
gious historians, that no Church can
sustain its spirituality unimpaired through
two generations, and that in the third
a total irreligion is apt to supervene.
Sometimes indeed the transitions are
abrupt from an age of piety to an age of
dissoluteness.
The liability to such
lamentable revulsions is plainly due to
some insufficiency in the religion to meet
all the wants of human nature. To scold
at that nature is puerile, and implies
125
an ignorance of the task which religion
undertakes. To lay the fault on the
sovereign will of God, who has “ withheld
his grace ” from the grandchildren of the
pious, .might be called blasphemy, if we
were disposed to speak harshly. The
fault lies undoubtedly in the fact that
practical devoutness and free thought
stand apart in unnatural schism. But
surely the age is ripe for something better
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tenderness, humility, and disinterested
ness that are the glory of the purest
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as morally—it will not be liable to be
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they left off to dogmatise, and approached
God’s world as learners; but it will lay
aside disputes of words, eternal vacilla
tions, mutual illwill and dread of new
light, and will be able without hypocrisy
to proclaim “ peace on earth and good
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who reject its beliefs and sentiments
concerning “ God and his glory.”
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�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Phases of faith : or, Passages from the history of my creed
Description
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Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 128 p. : ill. (front. port.) ; 22 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints
Series number: No. 31
Notes: Publisher's advertisements on pp. 127-128.||(HIS) First published in 1850. List of R.P.A. publications on pp. 127-128. Select list of Swan Sonnenschien & Co. publications inside back cover; Watts & Co. publications on back page. Printed in double columns. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Newman, Francis William [1805-1897]
Benn, Alfred William
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Watts & Co.
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1853 (1907)
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Theism
Faith
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Faith and Reason-Christianity
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Text
THE
SUPREME POWER
IN THE UNIVERSE.
BY
T. L. STRANGE.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS
SOOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
' .* '
1877.
Price Sixpence.
�LONDON :
FEINTED BY C. ~W. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W.
�THE
SUPREME POWER IN THE UNIVERSE.
--------_4_-------
HE subject upon which I venture to embark is
one which attracts the attention of every
earnest and reflecting mind, while it is apparent that
it involves considerations surpassing the powers of
the human intellect to apprehend or compass. The
finite cannot grasp the conditions of the infinite, and
yet the sense of the infinite forces itself upon us as
an imperious necessity. For example, we all see
that there must be an eternity of time and an infini
tude of space, because it is impossible that it should
be otherwise. Put time back to any limit, or space
to any bounds, and there must have been time and
space lying beyond the terms contemplated. And
there are other such conditions. Space must be
characterized by eternity equally as time, for such a
state as the absence of space is not imaginable. But
what does space involve ? It has been well observed
that the conception of “ nothingness ” is an impossi
bility. The space, therefore, in all its parts, muBt
have been occupied by something, and that some
thing we must accept as matter, however attenuated
in substance. Matter then has been eternal, as time
and space. But matter cannot be disassociated from
those properties which to our experiences are inherent
to it. That is, it must be what is capable of combina
tion, dissolution, and imparted motion. Being sus
ceptible of being acted upon by what is exterior to it,
it is fair to assume that what may operate upon it,
namely force or energy, is also vested with eternity.
Matter, occupying all space, and therefore immeasur
able in its possible dimensions, is also capable of being
brought to infinitesimal proportions. Reduce an atom
T
�4
The Supreme Power in the Universe.
to any scale, however minute, it cannot be denied
that with adequate means the process of reduction
may be continued perpetually. Thus time, space,
matter, the properties of matter in expansion and
divisibility, and force or energy, are all apparently
associated with infinitude. These are the circum
stances to be recognized in dealing with the important
■subject before us. Thegreat question to be consideredis
whether, beyond the elements sensibly working around
us, there is a higher power, supremely endowed, ope
rating in the universe and governing all things—a
power that has designed and constructed all that we
behold, and that directs all for the accomplishment of
intelligent ends ?
The bulk of mankind, deriving their ideas from
primitive and uninstructed times, have decided
this question by figuring to themselves an
imaginary being to take the place to be filled in
the constitution of the universe as its creator and
•ruler. They have formed this being, as might be
■expected, upon human models, in realization of human
standards of power and excellence, and its special
image is transmitted to them in company with the
'Country, language, and national sentiment with which
they happen to be personally linked. On the
other hand, among the thinking classes there is a
considerable and an increasing body who occupy
themselves with the finite, practically remitting what
is infinite to the precincts of the unreal. What they
can establish to the satisfaction of their senses, upon
positive experience, in connection with the operations
in nature taking place around them, they will ac
knowledge ; what cannot, in the same method and
■degree, be exactly demonstrated, they are content
either to disallow, or to disconnect themselves with
as to them unapproachable. They stand thus in the
opposite extreme to the emotional image worshipers.
But, in their process of negation, these would-be exact
thinkers may prove, possibly, to have placed them-
�The Supreme Power in the Universe.
5
selves at greater disadvantage relatively to the truth
than those who have satisfied their desires with wellmeant but fanciful representations, transmitted to
them through ancestral channels, and accepted by
them without questioning.
In such an examination as the present, the
argument from design must assert itself, however
often it may hitherto have been presented, and, as
some think, disposed of. Admitting that there are lawsinherent in nature which must prevail to whatever
use natural materials may be put, we are to consider
how matter may be acted upon and turned to account
without invading these laws. Man works in this
manner with the substances around him, ever con
forming himself to the laws affecting matter, but
converting the substances operated upon, and sub
jecting them to endless combinations, in order toproduce in shape, colour, texture, and adaptabilityy
whatever he desires to effect and serve himself of.
He is able to act even upon organized forms, altering
and improving them within certain limits. Wild
grasses are turned by him into edible grain, sour or
tasteless fruits are developed into delicious products,
flowers are diversified in structure and colour, and
domestic animals are varied and brought to high
standards of excellence. Attention to natural courses
in culture, supplies of nutriment, and conservation of
species or breed, brings about these remarkable results.
Some particular form is aimed at, and in time the
growth is moulded to acquire it. Thus we have
grey-hounds, race-horses, toy-terriers, &c. A change
of colour in the feathers of pigeons, or an alteration
of their bony structures, Mr. Darwin informs us may
be obtained premeditatedly by the proper measures.
But there is a point beyond which the operations of
man cannot extend themselves. In the organic
world he can act upon what exists, inducing varieties,
but he can create nothing. He cannot project
novel forms, or command the sources of life. He
�6
The Supreme Power in the Universe.
can improve but not originate. He cannot even con
ceive a new shape for an animal or a plant, but has
ever to . draw his ideas from existing shapes. The
objects in nature, organized and unorganized, are
endlessly diversified, but he is incapable of suggesting,
far less of producing and adding to these groups, one
purely original structure.
’
In the natural forms there are obvious evidences
of design and adaptation meeting us at every turn,
pointing to some unrevealed power that has planned
and executed the whole. Each object has its appro
priate place, and is surrounded by what is suitable
and necessary to it. Plants propagate themselves by
methods established for them, and take up nutriment
from the soil, the air, and the water supplies, by means
of organs provided them, and assimilate this and con
vert it into their various tissues by instrumentalities
specially constructed for such purpose. Great are
the diversities in the vegetable kingdom, but each
member of the innumerable family keeps its appointed
place and grade. The rose never has the sting of the
nettle, or the proportions of the lordly denizen of the
forest. The fig-tree does not produce the grape, or
the grape the thistle. The projected order is pre
served as by the edict and hand of a law-giver.
Though each form has apparently similar constituent
parts, none of these go astray to invade or disarrange
existing species. A plant is not engrafted on an
animal, nor a bird or fish upon a quadruped. Among
the animal tribes the evidences of what is entitled to
be called design are still more precise. These are put
together with complicated arrangements of articulated
bones, ligaments, vessels, fibres, and external cover
ings, all indispensable to the objects so provided, and
not to be interfered with, injured, or removed, with
out entailing serious sufferings and risks to the being
so operated upon. They are capable of locomotion
and volition. Some move on earth, some in air, some
in the waters, and they are specially framed for their
�The Supreme Power in the Universe.
7
respective elements. Appropriate food supplies are
provided them on which they can feed and sustain
their bodily frames. The adaptability of the sexes,
their propensity for each other, the care of offspring,
the instrumentalities given for attack and defence,
and the sagacity and methods of confederated com
munities such as the bees, ants, and beavers, exhibit
the agency of a designing, controlling, and protect
ing power in operation to fit them in organization and
■endowment for the ends of their existence.
In the highest of these vitalized forms, namely
mankind, there are superadded the manifestations of
mind, with the emotions and moral perceptions, to a
degree to set this race on a level of their own, and
give them the supremacy over all that is around them.
The intellect of man examines all things, weighs
consequences, draws conclusions, shapes therefrom
designed courses calculated to attain desired ends,
and stores, imparts, and thus perpetuates its acqui
sitions, raising ever to higher and higher standards
the fabric of human knowledge and excellence. Ad
vancing from what we can judge to have been the
condition of one in the stone age, living in caves,
clothing himself with the skins of animals, and occu
pying himself with but little else than the means of
satisfying his physical wants in the coarsest manner,
we see man in the present day raised to a compara
tively high level through the exercise of the faculties
with which he stands provided. He has surrounded
himself with conveniences and luxuries of habitation,
food, and clothing, and stored himself abundantly
with resources to minister to his ease, enjoyment, and
pleasure ; he enlarges his mind with useful and agree
able knowledge; he transports himself from place
to place, by land and water, in luxurious vehicles
anrl vessels moved without effort from himself, and
sends his messages, to whatever distances, with, a
speed resembling that of the lightning; he. supplies
himself with fuel, metals, and other materials, from
�8
The Supreme Power in the Universe.
the bowels of the earth, pierces mountains to forge
passages through them, spans rivers with roadways,
and transforms the surfaces of the earth to suit his
convenience and secure his ends; his skill sets at
nought physical difficulties, and his power is multi
plied thousands of fold by mechanical means adjusted
to meet with accuracy every purpose ; he exa-mi-neg
nature in her grandest and minutest forms by aids
enormously surpassing the measure of his natural
visual organs ; he analyses everything, ascertaining
its properties to serve himself of them; thus he puts
to use all that he comes in contact with, expanding
his knowledge and improving his status; he en
deavours to understand himself as well as all with
which he is associated; and in this pursuit he is ever
conscious of conditions that transcend the powers of
his apprehension, speaking to him of a supremacy of
knowledge, power, and goodness surpassing the ut
most limits of his conceptions.
Though the universe, in respect of time, space,
matter, and force, is constituted with infinitude, the
objects coming under our observation, one and all, it
is apparent, are of finite order. Whatever may be
their endings, it may be concluded that all have had
their beginnings. The orbs in space express to us
forms obtained by consolidation of matter. We see
vast nebulae floating about in shapeless masses, and
observe some of them in spiral motion, apparently
undergoing conversion into globes such as belong to
our own methodized system. The spectroscope re
veals to us that other spheres are constituted with
materials similar to our own; all seem to be governed
by the same laws, and the presumption is that all
have had a like origin. The crust of the earth speaks
to us of development by superadded matter, ever ad
vancing the capabilities of our globe. At first no
life existed on it; then the waters gave forth marine
products; then dry land appeared and terrestrial
products were generated; and the advance was
�The Supreme Po-wer in the Universe.
9
ever made from inferior to superior conditions, until
at length the stage of excellence in which we stand
was arrived at. Within some circumscribed period,
during the immeasurable expanse of time, everything
we behold, from the vastest orbs in the heavens to
the minutest objects upon earth, has had its beginning.
How have these forms been devised and projected,
with their successions and diversities, and their adap
tations each to its place and sphere ? If the proper
ties in matter were left to uninfluenced operation,
what could have resulted but shapeless combinations
and disruptions effected with ever recurring same
ness ? Could there have been changes of scene and
the constant introduction therein of fresh actors of
endlessly varied form and diversified characteristics ?
Could these have sprung into being, each from its
origin outlined and suitably and adequately endowed
for the position it had to fill ? And could all have
been arranged from the first in nicely-adj us ted correspondence with well-contrived, instrumentalities and
intelligently directed action ? It seems impossible,
with any degree of fairness, to attribute to insentient
matter such high results. Matter is but ingredient
constituted to be put to use by composition. It obeys
the control exercised over it by applied power, as in
stanced in the industrial works of man. In the
sphere that lies beyond his ability to influence, has
it been its own ruler, with capacity to originate diver
sities, fitting these with complicated appliances
specially constituted to secure definite ends ? We see
no signs anywhere, in the well-ordered and compre
hensive system in which we stand, of fortuitous or
eccentric results, of tentative efforts, or failures, and
the conclusion should be inevitable that chance opera
tions of insentient matter have nowhere prevailed,
but that all has been due to intelligence accomplish
ing predetermined ends in supremacy of wisdom and
of power.
_
The operations of man within the range of his
�io
The Supreme Power in the Universe.
means afford indications how, possibly, higher mani
festations, lying beyond the limits of his powers,
may have been brought about. The materials of
which all organized forms are composed exist abun
dantly in the treasuries of nature. In some manner
these are brought together and formulated into living
plants and animals, and again the tie that unites the
■components is severed and they fall into their former
separated or atomic condition. Man, making use
of the materials around him, applies these, according
to their properties and adaptabilities, to develop,
alter, and improve living organisms. He acquires
by experience a knowledge of what these substances
■are capable, and, putting them to use, advances
gradually to perfect his ends. He thus effects very
remarkable changes of form and character in the
objects operated upon, so that the original types
become scarcely recognizable. The process through
which the added matter on these forms is imposed
and incorporated, may be that by which their primi
tive constructions were framed and realized, namely,
the designed use, application, and consolidation,
of those materials of which, at their dissolution,
they are seen to have been composed. If thoughtful
supplies and adaptations are necessary to vary and
improve the plant and animal, thoughtful adaptations
and compositions, it seems fair to conclude, have
been necessary for the formation of the original
structures.
The conditions of life and thought claim special
attention. Some suppose that they are generated
in matter, occurring from its associated properties,
while others maintain they must be derived from
some superior source lying beyond the range of our
observation, and that the material combinations of
which we know are merely channels and instruments
through which the life and the thought act and are
exhibited. The appeal to experience gives us no aid
in arriving at the former conclusion, while, as far as
�The Supreme Power in the Universe.
11
it goes, it supports the latter. We see and are
conscious of the operating processes, while of the
sources of life and of thought we have no know
ledge. The manifested action depends upon the
character and condition of the instrumentality, but
we have no means of satisfying ourselves that the
instrumentality generates the action. Where the
organization is feeble, injured, or otherwise defective,
the expression of life, motion, and thought will be
correspondingly lowered, distorted, or imperfect.
A crooked or injured limb will assuredly exhibit
lameness, and a mal-organization or lesion of the
brain weak or perverted thought; and with degenera
tion of thought disturbance of the moral senses may
ensue. But it would be an obvious error to attribute
the source of motion, whatever its character, dis
torted or otherwise, to the limb itself; and equally
may it be viewed as error to ascribe the source of
thought, whether acting normally or abnormally, to
the tissues of the brain. There comes a moment
when the connection between the life and the
thought with the physical organization is snapped,
the latter being left and the former gone, and
then it should become evident that the sentient
properties stand with an origin independent of the
frame which has been once their habitation but has
ceased to hold them.
The prevalence of centralization in the orderings
of nature is a circumstance bearing upon the present
inquiry. The sun visibly rules the movements of
our globe and its associated planets, and, it may be
judged, is the source of supply of their most
important necessities. In like manner the principal
planets rule the movements of their satellites. The
sun, revolving on its centre, is apparently under the
governance of some superior sphere situated in the
expanse beyond it. The solar system, and the
countless orbs in space, are thought to be circling
round some common centre. The mineral, vegetable,
�12
The Supreme Power in the Universe.
and animal kingdoms are held within their proper
bounds, and every species connected with them has
its limits which cannot be transgressed. Each
organized object, whether plant or animal, has some
inward power caring for its existence, ministering to
its . wants, and directing it in efforts for its good.
Is it to be supposed that the law of centralization is
wanting Just where it is most required, and that the
great universe, with its multifarious and complicated
contents and arrangements, all working together in
associated regulation and mutuality of support, is left to
the influence of laws acting casually and independently
in matter without any central governor to watch
over and direct the whole ? Could the well-appointed
system, with all its diversified and orderly details,
which we witness, have resulted from natural forces
abandoned to fortuitous action ? And, were such
the process, should we not have seen tame uniformity
commonly prevailing, varied with confused inter
mixtures and calamitous catastrophes ?
When it is maintained that there is a power, the
author of all the structures we behold, having all in
his keeping and under his governance, and standiug
thus, in a measure, responsible for whatever is and
whatever happens, it is constantly objected, in view
of surrounding evil, weakness, and misery, that, per
mitting or necessitating such results, he cannot be
possessed of those attributes of perfect wisdom, capa
bility, and goodness, which should belong to such a
being, and which are universally ascribed to the
Creator by those who recognize his existence.
It is apparent, when we contemplate the circum
stances of our globe, that it has attained its existing
condition through a process of advancement from low
to higher results. It was, seemingly, shapeless
nebula, till consolidated into its present form; at first
it was without life upon its surfaces, then came
marine organizations, and afterwards those that are
terrestrial. The primitive was not the perfected con-
�The Supreme Power in the Universe.
13
flition, but all had to be developed through graduated
elaborations. Man himself forcibly illustrates this
principle in nature of progress from inferior to
superior stages. He has had to better himself
as to his food, clothing, habitation, conveniences,
knowledge, by exercising intelligent industry, all
that he requires having to be wrought out by his
own exertions, where nothing was presented to him
ready fashioned for his use. And as he has had to
provide for his physical wants, so also has he had to
minister to those demanded by his intellectual and
moral constitution.
In the processes of the physical advancements in
nature, it is remarkable how, by an evident law, one
object serves itself of others for purposes of self
advantage. The minerals and the gases of the
atmosphere feed upon allied substances, disintegrating
and absorbing matter standing in affinity to them;
the vegetables appropriate what they require from
the minerals and the atmosphere, adding their
acquisitions to their own systems ; and the animals
freely consume the vegetables, and also devour one
another, none being more destructive of lower life
than the intelligent beings standing at the head of
the created forms. To accomplish such ends in the
vegetable kingdom, leaves and rootlets, acting as
absorbents, are supplied, and in the animal, muscles,
talons, and fangs; while man is endowed with inge
nuity enabling him to fashion weapons, placing all
other living beings at his mercy. If we are to object
to evil and suffering in the world, the weak falling
sacrifices to the strong, consistency would require us
to demand that an end should be put to all these
operations whereby the superior orders receive their
supplies at the expense of the inferior.
Another objection taken is that the exercise of
free-will by man interferes with the idea entertained
of an omnipotent Creator. If man, it is observed,
is a free agent, he cannot be under the control of a
�14
The Supreme Power in the Universe.
supreme director; if not a free agent he is not a
responsible being. The attribute of free-will, or some
thing analogous thereto, belongs to spheres below that
of the human race. Wherever there is independent
action, there is an operation resembling, however
distantly, the expression of will in man. The attrac
tions and repulsions in organic matter act with
invariable certainty, and so far these substances may
be said to be left to their own courses. In organic
forms these properties take the shape of the affections
and antipathies, inducing the correspondent action of
love and hatred. The plants have a faculty resem
bling the will of animals whereby they may be said
to govern themselves for their good. They extend
their branches in the direction of the light, courting
its influences, and their roots in that of their nutri
ment ; trees will incline their stems so as best to
resist, prevailing winds, and the sensitive plant
exhibits aversion to touch such as might characterize
one of the animal tribe. Every animal, however low
in type, has the means of selecting and appropriating
what is calculated to serve for its sustenance, and it
is only specimens of the very lowest order which have
not liberty to move about as they may please. We
see among them, as plainly as in mankind, the exer
cise of the affections, the display of the antipathies,
sexual and parental love, rapaciousness in securing
their prey, or ingenuity in avoiding seizure, the whole
being manifestations of free-will operating among
them within the bounds of their natural capacities.
In man the scope of the will has more extended
action. Where the creature is low in scale its wants
are limited, and its occasions for ruling itself are
proportionately few, and therewith its liability to
error is reduced. The animals are therefore com
monly governed by a faculty of nearly unerring
quality, which we term instinct rather than rea
son. When there is the gift of high intelligence,
as in man, the field of the wants and the temptations
�The Supreme Power in the Universe.
15
is greatly enlarged, and he being left to fulfil his
desires through the exercise of his mental endow
ments, the risk of misdirecting himself is propor
tionately increased. He is conscious of two powers
within him, the one inclining him to what is right,
the other to what is wrong ; and his judgment is apt
to form erroneous conclusions respecting matters on
which it is exercised. Thus, while animals, as a rule,
are seen shaping their way in a natural and healthy
manner, man is liable to misuse his powers and to
plunge himself habitually into what is detrimental to
him. The question is how far the supreme Creator
and director contemplated can be held responsible
for the evil with which mankind are associated.
The laws of nature, whereby mankind have to rule
themselves, are so unvarying in their constitution,
that they cannot be broken without entailing, to a
certainty, corresponding unfavourable results. If
man, exercising his reason and free-will, misjudges
these laws, or disregards them, be it in ignorance or in
hardihood, he brings upon himself, inevitably, the
consequences attaching to the violation. If he walks
heedlessly into a river or over a precipice, his life is
endangered or destroyed ; if he deliberately puts his
finger into the fire he is burnt, or into a snake’s mouth
poisoned. He feels himself free to do all this or to
abstain from so doing. If he habitually gorges him
self with unwholesome food his health will suffer;
if he constantly inebriates himself his entire system
will be overthrown. The moral constitution, equally
as the physical, has its laws which cannot be invaded
with impunity. The man addicted to lying, stealing,
lust, violence, or any vice, debases himself, wounds
his conscience, forfeits his own self-esteem, and is
despised and avoided by all the respectable portion of
his fellow-creatures. He unfits himself for any honest
pursuit, is trusted by none, and becomes amenable to
the offended laws of his country. Unhappily the
degeneration of the parent, whether physically or
�16
The Supreme Power in the Universe.
morally, may be transmitted to his stock, and much
of man’s infirmities and obliquities belong to him
constitutionally through ancestral influences. Some
of his forefathers have disobeyed the laws of nature
in their own persons, and the injurious consequences
have been transmitted to their offspring. Much
depravity is also induced by the force of circum
stances and of example, whereby the individual is
enslaved in early youth before he has had sense or
fortitude to resist surrounding influences or assert
his independence. It is then asked, in respect of the
asserted author of our beings, whether, if not directly
responsible for the evil invading man, he is not so
indirectly, from having involved man in conditions to
incur the evil, and formed him weak and liable to be
prejudicially acted upon, duped, and betrayed into
what is hurtful to him ?
The answer to this question may perhaps be best
given by suggesting the converse of the condition
objected to. To be insusceptible of evil, man must
be so constituted as not to admit of evil invading
him, and the elements must be restrained from in any
way presenting evil to him. To fulfil the conditions
demanded, man must be established perfect in wis
dom, knowledge, and power, or, in a word, placed on
a level with his contemplated maker. The world,
and all connected therewith, must be altered to suit
beings so privileged. There must be no extremes of
climate, no storms, floods, or earthquakes ; water
must not drown, fire must not burn, food must be
never otherwise than beneficial, and all poisons must
be expelled; the animals must be harmless to man
and to each other, sustaining themselves in some
wholly innocuous manner, or rather made capable of
living without reducing other elements to destruc
tion, vegetal or animal, for the sake of supporting
themselves; there must be no catastrophes or acci
dents of any description, and death itself, with its
attendant debility to the dying man, and woe to the
�The Supreme Power in the Universe.
17
survivors, must be abolished. Thus the arrangements
of the creation must be put aside, and an entirely
new system introduced, in order that man may be
preserved free of the possibility of experiencing evil.
And what would be gained by the change ? There
•would be no sense of right and wrong where wrong
could have no room; there would be no appreciation
of virtue or wisdom where there was no vice and no
folly; all being perfect in body and mind, none
could require anything of another; there would be
no sympathies, no interchange of thought, no
stimulus to exertion ; all would be on the dead level
of unalterable equality.
The tenets of the Christians and the Secularists
leave both parties without the means of accounting
for existing evil. The Christians consign the greater
part of mankind to everlasting torment, whatever
they may have suffered on earth, making the very
existence of these rejected ones a continuous expres
sion of unrelieved and aimless evil; the Secularists,
seeing no future for man, leave all present evil ulti
mately remediless. The race, they say, may improve
in the course of ages to an infinite extent, but for
individual suffering in the meanwhile there is no
compensation ; and bitter are their complaints against
the ordering of creation which entails such results.
But if it may be believed that there is a future in store
for man, and that the entire race have been created
for final good, there are considerations, of an obvious
character, to clear the question of its difficulties.
Every transgression against the laws of nature,
physical and moral, being followed by disadvantage
ous and frequently painful consequences, it is appa
rent that the sufferings induced are designed to guide
the individual to other courses not entailing such
consequences ; that is, the evil visits the transgressor
for the purposes of correction and instruction, and
thus is enforced a system consistent with the pre
sumption that man has been created for good and
�18
The Supreme Power in the Universe.
not for evil; and as the desired results are not secured
in this life, it also becomes reasonably probable that
a future state of existence, when he has ended his
days on earth, is awaiting him, wherein the fruits of
his discipline will become apparent, and the training
needful for him be carried on continuously. Free-will,
within certain bounds, is thus necessary to man to
allow of the treatment in aid of his moral culture to
which he is subjected being maintained. If he could
not take action with spontaneity for his own govern
ance, he would be a mere automaton, executing his
appointed offices, but learning nothing. But with
liberty of action permitted him, and the consequences
of acting rightly or wrongly brought home to his ex
periences, the course of instruction necessary for his
advancement is plainly instituted. If his welfare
consists in his directing himself due north, every
deflection to the east or the west carries him out of
his way. Were no bad consequences to ensue from
his taking a wrong direction, he would pursue it to the
end and never reach his proper destination; but when
evil comes upon him at his first step in a wrong line,
he receives a warning which should arrest his course
and induce him at once to turn to a better path. The
process speaks of a moral governor and director pre
siding over human conduct and interests. The indi
vidual is subjected to constant discipline, here and
probably hereafter, in view of elevating his nature
and fitting him to be a recipient of boundless blessing.
To pause upon the circumstances of this fleeting life
and pass thereupon an ultimate judgment, is an
obvious mistake, if there is such a future before us ;
and without such future it is impossible to understand
why the discipline undergone should have been im
posed. We may take an illustration from the culti
vation of the vine. Its shoots are pruned away, its
roots are laid bare to the cold of winter, offensive
refuse is presented to it for its sustenance, and its
first efforts at production are balked, its clusters
�The Supreme Power in the Universe.
19
being nipped off and cast away as rubbish. At this
time, any one ignorant that there was a future
for the plant, would say an enemy is dealing with it;
but when at a later period it is seen spreading itself
around, its branches covered with luscious fruit, the
mystery is cleared up, and it is found to have ever been
in the hands of one caring for it, aiming at its good,
and knowing effectually how to attain his end. The
sour and uninviting wild grape, through the treat
ment it has undergone in interference with its natural
impulses, has been converted, by seemingly harsh but
really beneficial measures, into the first of fruits. In
like manner the gold, if it had a voice, might com
plain of the furnace of the refiner, while the process
for its purification is but a passing stage, necessary to
have it accepted and put to use as the most precious
of the metals. Just so is it with the human race, who
have to be advanced through the school of suffering
from their original low standard, scarcely lifting
them above the brutes around them, to the expression
of the highest excellence. To be turned from error
they have to be made sensible of the painful results
induced by error, and their spirits have to be lowered
and rendered ductile, apprehensive, and teachable;
and each has to learn his lessons for himself. A father
would gladly transfer to his son the advantage of the
experience he has earned, but the son would then be
a mere copy of the father, whereas, to be stable, he
must have a character of his own ; and it is only by
his individual training that this can be sealed to him
and be made to him an enduring benefit.
Is man, in the onward path marked out for him,,
which he has to pursue under such constant attention
to the circumstances in his way, left altogether to his
own resources unwatched and uncared for by any supe
riordirector? Is it in his case an assiduously maintained
culture unfollowed by a harvest ? Does he strive, at
whatever sacrifice, for spiritual advancement, and end
by obtaining no recognition? There are fields of know-
�20
The Supreme Power in the Universe.
ledge, apparent to him, lying beyond the reach even
of his apprehension. The conditions of measureless
expanses of time and space, and infinite resources of
matter and power, occur to him as necessities, but he
is unequal to grasp and comprehend such circum
stances. As he examines the roots of things he finds
himself incapable of fathoming any of them. He can
observe with tolerable accuracy immediate causes, but
the ultimate causes are always out of his reach. He
knows not how his food is assimilated, how life
enters his own or any other system, how any seed or
ovum fructifies and is developed into its appropriate
form. There are then founts of knowledge, of which
he is conscious, but which are unapproachable to him
in his present state of constitution. In the moral
field his apprehensions and desires are equally high
and aspiring, and his capacity for attaining the ends
he has in view in like manner limited and insufficient.
He can conceive standards of excellence too exalted
to be reached by any human effort. Govern himself
how he will he is always sensible of shortcomings.
He knows he might do better, but his inadequate
powers prevent his acting up to his recognized prin
ciples. He has aspirations of an indefinable nature,
proper to himself, in which others, whatever their ex
periences or maturity, are ill-qualified to take part.
These are the struggles of the inner man for expan
sion, recognition, satisfaction, which can be directed
only to some quarter external to and above himself,
where he may claim sympathy and support, and be
sure of being met and dealt with free of risk of mis
apprehension. Is there such a quarter in the unseen
world to which he may go for the relief and supply of
those his ultimate needs that he fully feels can never
be met and satisfied in any other direction ?
We are conscious, in our own systems, that mind
has command over matter, the direction of our
thoughts and studies, every movement of our limbs,
every action of which we are capable, being initiated
�The Supreme Power in the Universe.
11
and regulated by the power o£ will implanted m us.
One of superior will, intellect, or tone of feeling,
readily impresses and influences those around him,
and there are occasions when the dominion of ope
mind over other minds is evidently exerted with in
tention and success. If the physical forms around us
have been devised and put together by some unseen
constructor qualified to accomplish his designs in
whatever he thus undertakes, may we not believe that
those higher faculties belonging to man, his intelli
gence, emotions, and moral sentiments, which are not
accidents of his nature, but belong to all m various
degrees, under an universal law, proceed from a like
source and are subjected to a like governing agency t
And as the physical man is sustained by resources of
supply outside himself, may we not conclude that the
inner man, equally requiring sustenance and growth,
receives supports from a direction external to his
System, and is in the hands of a superior power,
cognizant of his wants, and ever ministering to him
for his good ?
.
•
i
The conscience is a faculty influencing our moral
condition, the existence of which all must recognize.
Fairly and honestly used its dictates will ever be in
the right direction, nor are its indications given in
uncertainty or weakened by compromise. As if by
the finger of a supreme director, . to the true anc*earnest seeker the proper path will be pointed out
and commended for adoption. And if the indications
given are disobeyed, ordinarily the thoughts of the
disobedient will be troubled till they yield and pursue
the course they are made to feel is the right one. If,
however, the teachings of the inward monitor are set
at nought, its action becomes weakened, the moral
perceptions are obscured or perverted, and the indivi
dual sinks into indifference or degradation; but the
witness is merely quelled and silenced, not absolutely
extinguished, the conscience of the most hardened
being always susceptible of awakenment by some
�22
The Supreme Power in the Universe.
visitation lowering and searching out his spirit,
or by some monition and appeal addressed to him
reaching his inmost apprehension. Is not this re
markable property, which< is common to man, just
such a medium as a superior power may make use of
to come into contact with us in order to stimulateour thoughts and direct our actions for our ultimate
good ?
It must in the end be conceded that whatever has
been offered in these pages as reasonable possibilities,
can only be accepted properly by those who are able
to believe and act upon the conditions spoken of. If
the Creator is to work sensibly upon the creature, it
is a first necessity that the existence of such a beinoas the Creator should be recognized. There are
multitudes who avow that there is such a being, but
who approach the subject no further. Theirs is an
acknowledgment based upon no personal persuasion,
but such as is merely due to the prevalence of com
mon consent. The Securalist may be forgiven for
challenging a creed not supported by better founda
tions, especially when it is seen to take its shape from
the crude anthropomorphic models of the ancients.
To feel that there is such a power as I presume to
point to, the sense of his being must be expressed by
habitual dependence upon his rule. He does not
show his hand to those who are not prepared to take
home to themselves the fact of his interpositions.
Nor can any trace his dealings in discipline of their
spirits who have not submitted their interests to his
direction and keeping.
The whole race, laden with infirmities and sur
rounded by temptations, are in a position to requirethe ruling hand of this supreme and infallible director,
and access to him must therefore be free to all.
There can be no gate to be closed or opened, the
mere circumstances of existence giving all a title to
approach their Creator, and receive at his hands the
satisfaction of their wants. Addressing themselves
�The Supreme Power in the Universe.
23
to the same being, the experiences of all resorting to
him, should be, and are, necessarily alike. And alike
also are their ultimate hopes. Setting aside all
artificial distinctions, and fancied stepping-stones,
deliverance from evil, and establishment in final
blessing, are the aims, in all their several forms of
worship of the devout, whatever their denominations,
whether Catholic, Protestant, Theist, Jew, Mahommedan, or Pagan. A common creed, based upon
natural and universal testimonies, awaits the accept
ance of mankind when they may bring themselves
to be satisfied with it—a creed full and comprehen
sive ; sufficing for every need and every desire;
giving no room, when once apprehended, on which
doubt, distrust, or divison can find a standing place ;
round which the whole race may range themselves
in assured union ; resting on foundations wide
-enough for all, adaptable to all, and which can be
disturbed only when the universe itself, with all its
associated conditions, is overthrown. It is a belief
that the Almighty Being standing as the author and
the ruler of all is our ever-present and unalterable
friend. Such a confidence should reconcile us to
every form of temporal evil, and bind us together in
the recognition of a brotherhood rooted in him—often
professed, but hitherto never realized. Every other
creed yet resorted to has introduced some inter
mediate agency, a circumstance necessarily occasioning
isolation, and promoting discord. This creed alone
is stamped with simplicity, grandeur, universality, and
every element of demonstrable truth ; suitable to the
merest child; sufficient for the most matured and en
lightened intellect; and holding out considerations and
prospects to tranquillize and satisfy every mind. It
provides the one who is governed by it with
grounds to reconcile him to the present life and its
manifold ills, and hopes to cheer and support him in
view of a life that has to come. The Secularist is
without either source of consolation ; evils unredressed
�24
The Supreme Power in the Universe.
embitter the thoughts he has of existing conditions,
and a future is not before him. The artificial creeds,
it is now apparent, cannot stand the knowledge of
the day, and are being manifestly subverted. It be
comes ns to supply their place with sufficiently broad
and solid foundations. We must not be content to
recognize and obey the intellect and disown the
emotional part of our systems, any more than we
should think of feeding the emotions at the expense
of the intellect. The whole man must be met in all
his requirements, and the sense that we are in the
hands of a beneficent creator, under training for
future blessing, is that which alone can compass us
in our varied conditions, remove all difficulties in our
paths, and fulfil our every need. If this be the true
faith, to this faith we may rest assured we all shall
come. Then the world at large will be introduced
to confidences and hopes it has never had, and its
advancement in all that should characterize it as the
work of him who has made it, will, it may be safely
concluded, be fairly initiated and prosper onwards
and for evermore.
PRINTED BY C. W. RBYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The supreme power in the universe
Creator
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Strange, Thomas Lumisden
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1877
Identifier
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G5522
Subject
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Cosmology
Theism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The supreme power in the universe), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Space and Time
Theism-History of Doctrines
Universe
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/28972e27d591285fe8c40c74b0daf119.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=LLpxcuRKY81gHQLTUB3C5imc3sMXIYbjQCa3AAVgUTiLyLjrNso1zzJ149VZHjQyzJxMqN-q3DO3RYsHsivfGtEYyo4vELOEgWlEGrbwBhMKVv9oIsbWd1h2kMx3DI5WFJNrrPmGO2PMq-FA8TBXgsBxj-RkWWsNyAoXUNqwL7L0D7ZVQfsMtvwuZRzcr5SEuAjf9YtltvIk1UNcN8FFVULM6JrG6-oZ%7Ee9QSbGupEmQXWdR9bYbQcpeZ9Cdh%7EMbhXogNtcJfHre1v1xEDmnsrhBtyjD1-1C%7EPjpfoEXDQO3SBWOWkd96coH3wF0lJx5Ix-QURqIvBwzkIOh4-bl8Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
d4d97a6a7f1e1d50f9fd42fe59f2dd8f
PDF Text
Text
THE
No. 25.] LANGHAM HALL PULPIT.
[june30,i878
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SZEZRGXZEOIT
PREACHED AT THE LANGHAM HALL, JUNE 23rd, 1878, BY
REV. CHARLES VOYSEYV
1 Cor. xiv. 8.—“ If the trumpet give an uncertain sound,
who shall prepare himselffor the battle ? ”
A Conference was held at South Place Chapel, Finsbury,
on the 13 th and 14th inst. convened by means of the following
circular.
a,
Pt.ACJ CHAPEL,
*
11 South Place, Finsbury,
London, E.C.
The Minister and Committee of the Religious Society meeting at South Place
solicit your attendance at a General Conference of Liberal Thinkers, to be held
here on June 13th and 14th, 1878, from 12 to 5 p.m. each day, for the discussion of
matters pertaining to the religious needs of our time, and the methods of meeting
them.
In assuming the initiative in this matter, our Society has no disposition to
commit anyone who may accept this invitation to any opinions held by its minister
or members. It is actuated by a desire to promote the unsectarian and liberal
religion of the age, now too much impeded by isolation and by misunderstandings
among those really devoted to common aims, and to utilise its building and organiza
tion for that purpose.
At the proposed Conference it is hoped that persons may be gathered who,
though working in connection with particular organizations, yet acknowledge no
authority above Truth, and are interested in the tendency to that universal religion
which would break down all partition walls raised by dogma and superstition between
race and race, man and man.
It is believed that light and strength may be gained for each and all by earnest
and frank consultation concerning such subjects as the relation of liberal thinkers
S0UTI1
Rev. C. Voysey’s sermons are to be obtained at Langham Hall,
43 Great Portland Street, every Sunday Morning, orfrom the Author
(by post), Camden House, Dulwich, S.H.
Price one penny.
�2
to the sectarian divisions of the world; their duties of negation and affirmation, and
the practical methods of advancing their principles.
The proposed meeting will he informal in its constitution, no regular represen
tation being at present in view, the assembly being thus left free to adopt any prac
tical course for the future that shall appear desirable.
A careful report of the proceedings will be printed.
Your reply, whieh it is hoped will be favourable, together with the names and
addresses of such persons as you believe would be interested in the proposed Con
ference, may be sent to Mr. MONCURE D. CONWAY, Hamlet House, Hammer
smith, London, W.
I will ask any candid religious person what possible objection
he could make to the terms of this circular. Indeed, I will go
further, and say, that it reflects great credit on those who drew
it up, and that, had the programme but been adhered to, few
conferences could have been more timely or more useful. The
wonder is that there was not a rush of earnest religious men
from every Church and Sect in the kingdom to bear their part
in discussing the religious needs of our time, and the methods
of meeting them. The archbishops and bishops in their
palaces, the deans and dignitaries of the Church, clergy of all
shades of opinion, ministers of religion among the Noncon
formists, active influential laymen, peers of the realm, mem
bers of Council and Legislature, philanthropists of every
school—in short, all men and women who are above frivolity,
and whose lives are occupied in useful work, might well have
been expected to be drawn together by such an invitation, by
such an admirable project. The object was exalted, it was set
forth in plain terms, free
office; and, lest any should
be deterred by a knowledge of the traditions or present charac
teristics of the place of assembly, the promoters wisely and
laudably stated in their circular that they had no desire to
commit any of the attendants of the Conference to their own
particular views.
Speaking for myself, it disarmed all opposition, and I was
ready at once to throw myself into the scheme, and to con
tribute, to the best of my power, to the deliberations of the
assembly. Looking round at the various schools of religious
thought, I could not but feel that the proposed object of the
Conference belonged even more to us than to any other asso
ciation. Our work was inaugurated, and has been manfully
maintained for no other purpose in the world than to study the
religious needs of our time, and to endeavour to meet them.
The very defects of our work are in one sense its merits. We
have aimed at providing a path easy and pleasant for those
who were weary and footsore in their search after reasonable
religion. We have tried to make the transition from old to
new as gentle and safe as was consistent with strict integrity.
�We have thrown away nothing that we could conscientiously
retain; we have retained nothing that we could not conscien
tiously use. We have added nothing that did not give promise
of being a grateful substitute for cast-off forms. It is not
perfect; it is purposely left open to correction and improve
ment, to suit our spiritual growth and the new needs of a
coming time. But from first to last it is an effort to recog
nize the religious needs actually before our eyes, and to meet
them with a reasonable satisfaction. A Conference professing
to be an interchange of thought on such a theme between
really religious people could not fail to be an attraction for us;
and again I say the proposal deserved our high appreciation
and our genuine thanks.
But the promise so fair, so fascinating, was only made to be
broken. The expectations raised by it were doomed to disap
pointment. Compared with the terms of the circular by which
the Conference was summoned the meeting was a signal failure.
In the first place we heard little or nothing of the “ religious
needs of our time,” and a great deal of downright, and some
vulgar, Atheism; one of the speakers going so far as to wish
to expunge the very name of religion from the face of the
earth. Allusions were also made to recent prosecutions for
illegal publications and were designated as “tyrannous.”
Women’s rights [which in one place and on some lips is a
term signifying all that is just and good and pure, and in
another place and on otherIip£^plies just the opposite] were
imported into the discussion; and when we Remember what
this phrase is associated with in America, we cannot but fear
that the reference to it in connexion with these prosecution s
was as dangerous to morals as to religion.
Speeches of this
tendency were not checked, but greeted with vociferous ap
plause. Very soon it became manifest that the main object
of the Conference as stated in the circular was ignored or
forgotten, and superseded by an entirely new one. This was
the formation of an association of all “Liberal thinkers ” for
their protection against the social and other consequences of
Their free thought. It was proposed to swamp all differences
between Atheists and Theists, and to unite for political and
social aims. In short the Conference wished to drop religion
altogether out of its programme, or to treat Faith in God as
a matter of perfect indifference or of curiosity, and only to
be tolerated in any members of the Association, so long as
they kept it out of sight and did not obtrude it upon the notice
of the body corporate.
�4
Considering the position I occupy, and the work which by
your faithful exertions I have been enabled to carry on for
so many years, I could not but think that such an assembly
was the very last place in which I ought to be seen.
I
formally withdrew from it on the ground of my objection to
certain speeches, and the evident favour with which they were
received.
If Liberal thinkers, as they call themselves, hold, to any
appreciable extent, atheism in religion, radicalism in politics
and socialism in morals, they are of course at liberty to make
any alliance they please, and for any object that may take
their fancy; but it is monstrous to expect to be joined by
those to whom atheism is a distressing and dangerous evil, to
whom radicalism is utterly distasteful, and to whom socialism
is revol ting.
*
To unite such wholly discordant elements for
any purpose would be a foolish enterprise; but when it is pro
fessed that they should coalesce in order to prosecute some
end which is called “ religious,” the absurdity is too palpable
to require exposure.
No doubt every man who has devoutly thought for himself
in matters of religion is more or less averse from the orthodox
dogmas; and in this one point alone could there ever be found
a meeting-place or common ground for the Theist and Atheist.
It was thought by some speakers at the Conference that this
would be sufficiently wide to^admit nf organised co-operation
between the two; but I venture to think that it could not be
made available without the entire submission and suppression
of religious belief, and the consequent dominance of Atheism.
There is a vast number of Theists, who, like myself, feel that
notwithstanding all our repugnance to orthodoxy and our de
sire to sweep it away, we are nearer in our sympathies to the
Orthodox than we are to the Athejst—at least such types as
were heard at the Conference. If in fact it were deemed de
sirable to organise a league to destroy any objectionable form
of thought, it would be more natural, and I think more wise,
for TheistB to join with the orthodox against Atheism than
• The term radicalism, I think, is somewhat ambiguous. Some may call them
selves “ radicals,” who do not hold what I here mean by radicalism. It is the
extreme of opposition to the constitution and aristocratic institutions of the country.
It seeks revolution, and only waits its opportunity to overthrow existing authority.
It avails itself of every chance to vilify and endeavour to bring into contempt es
tablished law, and desires nothing so much as a commune. But in objecting to it,
I do not forget that this kind of radicalism is not confined to socialist agitators and
low prints, but is exhibited in one of its aspects by that section of the clergy who
band together to set the law of England at defiance, and to pour contempt on our
Highest Courts of Justice,
�5
for Theists to join with the Atheists to put down orthodoxy.
But I question the advantage of such organizations at all. I
believe that the determined resistance offered by the power
ful, the influential and the lovers of order in our middle classes,
to the very beginning of free thought in religion, is due
entirely to the dread as to where it may lead. In religion,
they say, it may land us in utter Atheism; in politics it may
end in radicalism and revolution; in social morals to their
corruption and decay.—The dread of these evils has not only
kept back many excellent and generous-minded persons from
daring to think at all independently on religion ; but is now
keeping away from our side many who are quite convinced of
the superiority of our beliefs over those of orthodoxy, and who
would not scruple to come forward and help us boldly, if they
were quite sure that there was no danger of any of those evils,
and that they would run no risk of being mixed up with that
class of “ Liberal thinkers.”
If such an alliance as was proposed at the Conference were
to be entered into between Theists and such Atheists, it would
entirely frustrate the end in view, viz., the dissolution of or
thodoxy. . In my opinion, even if our feeling and taste
permitted it, such an alliance would have the effect of making
orthodoxy stronger than ever, of consolidating its loose and
crumbling walls, and of firing its defenders with a fresh
enthusiasm in its defence. / Jhey would feel not only that
their religion was in danger, but their social and moral peace
was threatened too; and the struggle which would then be
really undertaken on behalf of the common welfare of society
would give new security and new life to the dogmas which had
been attacked. Not by elements such as made themselves
manifest at South Place will orthodoxy ever be dethroned.
Free thought in religion was not the only or the chief object
sought by some of the promoters of this alliance. Free thought
means on their lips much more than that; and it is this arriere
pensee which lovers of order really dislike even more than they
dread Atheism.
The Conference will have done good, however, if it should
prove to have led to a better and more accurate discernment
of our own work and objects; if it should lead to the correc
tion of those misunderstandings and misrepresentations where
by we suffer from undeserved suspicions and lose the help of
those#whose sympathies we have already gained. We let it be
known then, once for all, that our sole purpose is a religious
one; that our quarrel with orthodoxy is not that it is too reli
�6
gious, but not religious enough ; that we want to elevate and
strengthen faith in the Living God and not to knock it down
and trample on it; that we aim at the preservation of social
order and of all domestic virtues, to deepen the respect of man
to man and not to sow the seeds of class-hatred and party
strife ; to seek after all new truth wherever it may be found;
but always to regard our treasure as a precious trust for the
benefit of mankind. The Atheistical party at South Place,
were apt to wind up their speeches by some brilliant appeal
on behalf of humanity. Let them not forget that our belief
in God adds to the sentiment the highest sanction and man
date of conscience, and that we are not one whit behind them
in desiring and seeking to release mankind from its burdens.
Let them and ourselves also remember that the best and
highest of philanthropists are still religious men, orthodox
Christians or orthodox Jews, and believers in God, and that it
is really an affectation on their part or on ours, if they or we
pretend to be setting up an altogether fresh standard of
human brotherly love. No doubt orthodox people need deli
verance from some bondage—such as we call superstition,
sacerdotalism, and spiritual fear. But do we not also need
deliverance from our own class of prejudices, bigotry and
intolerance, and much irrepressible conceit of which Atheism
is the most prolific mother ? If we wish to uproot the errors
of orthodox people we must show them some better and higher
truths in their place. If we wish to give them better spiritual
food, we must provide a real banquet for their hungering
and thirsting souls, and not make them sit down before empty
tables. It is hard enough for the most joyous and enlightened
believer to gain a hearing for his higher truth about God and
human destiny from orthodox people; how then can they be
expected to listen to those who not only deny God’s existence
altogether, but trample on His holy name in jubilant
blasphemy ?
We must, however, record our deep regret that that kind of
Atheism or Agnosticism (which is so often forced upon the
wearied and baffled mind rather than sought by the rebellious
and proud spirit) should be exposed to social disabilities. Too
often, men cannot help their convictions, especially in matters
of religion. No honest convictions should ever be visited with
punishment, not even with disrespect. On this ground I would
never have raised my voice against unbelievers, of whom I have
always spoken respectfully. But it is quite another matter
when an alliance is offered for our acceptance, by which our
�7
whole position and work would be compromised. Then is the
time when a protest may fairly be made; and the line drawn
in conspicuous colour between that party and ourselves; so
that no one may have the shadow of an excuse for suspecting
us of sympathies from which we utterly revolt. It is the
common right of all to make known our own individual posi
tions, our beliefs, our denials, our aims, social, or political or
religious; and therefore I felt bound to repudiate, with what
emphasis I could summon, all complicity with the opinions,
sympathies, and purposes expressed by the majority at the
South Place Conference of Liberal Thinkers.
I feel it also my duty to express profound regret that the
word “ religion ” has found a place in the list of the Rules of
the Association. It will mislead thousands, it has misled
some already. If the new Association care for what is generally
understood by religion, by all means let them adopt the right
name for it; but if in one breath they vilify and ridicule
religion, or give definitions of it, carefully excluding not only
the name but all idea of God, and then say that the promotion
of religion is one of their chief objects, then I deliberately
accuse them of making a fraudulent use of words—for what
purpose I do not assign—but nevertheless a wilful perversion
of a word which to 99 out of every 100 persons has a meaning
diametrically opposed to the meaning it has on the lips of the
Association.
r' '
I bear them no ill-will. I can but regret that men are so
divided as we are and must be in our present state of partial
knowledge. I am sorry that I have had to protest against
their proceedings, and to decline an alliance with them. But
I should have been far more full of regret and even of shame
had I left it uncertain whether I approved of their scheme or
not; had I left a single loop-hole for the accusation that my
sympathies were enlisted on their side.
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Theism neither radicalism, socialism, nor atheism: a sermon preached at the Langham Hall, June 23rd, 1878
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Voysey, Charles
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 7 p. ; 23 cm.
Series: Langham Hall Pulpit
Series No.: 25
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. The Langham Hall Pulpit, June 30, 1878. Printed by Upfield Green, Moorgate Street, E.C.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1878
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5588
Subject
The topic of the resource
Theism
Atheism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Theism neither radicalism, socialism, nor atheism: a sermon preached at the Langham Hall, June 23rd, 1878), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Atheism
Conway Tracts
Radicalism
Theism
-
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0dc29e5dc4d5bac06ded6ae3b5178fbc
PDF Text
Text
CT10?
THE TWO THEISMS.
BY
PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCO.TT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
��THE TWO THEISMS.
HOSE who are contending for free thought in
a
and
Tarereligion are contending for thatnoble prize,withheld
temporarily united, while
prize is
from the public by a powerful adversary. But the
moment they commence to use their freedom, the same
thing happens, and must happen, now as always here
tofore. Human infirmity clings to all. Each is finite,
and sees but partially ; hence their judgments are often
in opposition. The contrasts of opinion in Greek
philosophy, when there was no organized priesthood
to forbid or to cripple freedom of thought, were as ex
treme as now.
Some imagine that, because the schools of material
science work on in harmony, and the conflicts of
opinion rather assist progress, being but partial and
temporary, so will it be in religion, as soon as we
resolve to cultivate religious thought scientifically.
This might be the case, if materialism were the basis,
or if we had foundations recognized by all. But in
metaphysics, and in mental science generally, the great
discouragement of study has lain in the irreconcilable
and fundamental variance of the professors. Material
ism and Spiritualism fight together for possession of
the schools of morals and of psychology; so also of
necessity will they in religion. Those who wish to be
scientific are not agreed as to the bases and procedure
of the new (religious) science, for which they are hoping
in common. Every science has to work out its own
�4
The Two Theisms.
problems in. its own way. Strong analogies and har
monies are detected between the several sciences after
they arise and live; nevertheless each is born inde
pendently, and acts independently; nor can any endure
dictation from without, though hints and suggestions
may be welcome and profitable. Thus, after we have
agreed that free thought is necessary in religion, and
that a scientific religion is the thing to be desired, we
may easily remain as far apart in religious opinion and
belief as were Stoics and Epicureans ; or if our difference
be less extreme, it may be rather from holding more
negations in common than from agreement in affirma
tion.
Nor, when people profess to believe in God and call
themselves Theists, does this go far to indicate real
agreement. The question recurs, What do we mean
by God 1 If vre may not give a reply, the word is un
meaning to us, and we deceive ourselves in thinking
that we have any belief at all. But as soon as we give
a reply,—not as believing that it can exhaust the whole
reality, but merely that it may explain our thought,—some one arises to reprove us for presumption in sup
posing that we can limit the illimitable, and define the
incomprehensible. Men who by general suffrage are
eminent in some physical science, think forthwith that
their physical attainments justify their laying down the
law in religion; and we who have broken loose from
the dogmatism of the churches find that we have to
encounter a new fight for our freedom against the dog
matism of this or that “ man of science,” who perhaps
graciously allows us the field of “ the Unknowable”
or religion, or not even that; for it is well if the new
dogmatist will let us have any belief in a Superior
Spirit at all. Nothing is commoner than a shriek of
derision against a “ personal God.” Under the ground
less pretence that personality means limitation, or means
Anthropomorphy, we are forbidden to believe in a God
who has purposes and sentiments. A God wzUAowi
�The Two Theisms.
5
either purposes or sentiments is a God in whom we
cannot recognize mind at all, and is therefore a blind
force or a blind fate. A recent writer of great literaryeminence, while fancying that he is about to deliver
religion from sacerdotal metaphysics, emphatically de
nies, not the personality only, but even the unity of
God ; thus presenting us with nothing but a plurality
of either forces or abstractions, and plunging us into
an abyss of metaphysics still deeper—-onp also out of
which no practical religion has ever yet emerged.
Setting aside avowed Atheism and avowed Pantheism
(a very equivocal term), even in the apparently more
limited form of belief denoted as Theism, there are at
least two broadly distinguished schools of thought,
between which, if we remain Theists, it is necessary to
choose; and the more fully the two can be described
and contrasted, the greater will be the aid to students
of Free Religion. Indeed one might mark out a third
school, the Deism of the eighteenth century. This
pourtrayed the Creator as external to his creation,
which they supposed him to have endowed with selfacting forces. Matter, in this theory, was either created
or endowed with gravitation at a definite time, which
may be called the crisis or era of creation; so that the
action of God upon matter was convulsive and momen
tary ", and the great forces of the universe, which he
then bestowed on it, were regarded as no part of the
divine essence, but as the properties of matter. To
every planet he gave an 11 initial impulse,” which pre
vents its falling into the sun; and then left the system
to itself. Thus he may be said to have made a clock,
wound up the spring, and pushed the pendulum into
activity. Such apparently was the belief of the great
Sir Isaac Newton. But in the nineteenth century this
doctrine is almost universally disowned. The smallest
acquaintance with the great science of geology convinces
every one that the idea of creation as limited to a single
crisis of time has no plausibility whatever; that crea-.
�6
The Two Theisms.
tion is undoubtedly the work of continuous ages, enor
mous in duration, whatever its mode and progress;
moreover, that if God is to be recognized at all in the
universe, the great forces which are therein detected
by the mental eye are strictly divine forces, and that
any distinction between initial impulses as divine and
continued forces as not divine is groundless. This is the
incipient reconciliation of Pantheism and Theism.
Nevertheless, our Theism divides itself into two
schools, broadly separated, and for convenience it may
be allowed to entitle them Greek Theism and Hebrew
Theism. Of the former, the great Aristotle was pro
bably a worthy representative ; and it commends itself
to a great majority of those who are forward to
identify their faith with science. The cardinal point of
this is that it supposes God to have nothing, in him
or of him, but general Law. He may be described as
Force acting everywhere according to Law, under the
guidance of Mind. He is supposed to be so absorbed
in general action as to remain quite inobservant of the
detailed results, or at least unconcerned about them.
Thus he intends this earth to have day and night, to
have vegetation and various animals on it, moreover to
have a human population. These generalities he is
not too great to design and devise. But it is said, we
cannot suppose him to pay attention to any particular
man, without supposing him to attend to every
sparrow, to every oyster, to every stalk of sea-weed,
and this (it is thought) would be absurd. He wishes
the human race, as a whole, to attain its own perfec
tion, but it is thought puerile to suppose him to attend
to each individual; and, as favouritism would be a
human weakness, he has no love and no care for any
one of us. Conversely then, it would be gratuitous,
unseemly, perhaps impossible, for any of us to love
him. In accordance with this, Aristotle makes a
passing remark—“ for it would be ridiculous for any
one to say that he loves Jupiter;” not, I apprehend,
�The Two Theisms.
7
from his investing Jupiter with the colours of Greek
mythology, hut from his supposing no moral relations
to exist between the Supreme God and us. Of course
it will follow from that view that human injustice and
vice, great as are their mischiefs, are offences against
man or ourselves, not against God ; hence the idea
of “ sin against God ” cannot exist. God is not sup
posed to be concerned with the sin of an individual;
to confess it to him would be an impertinence which
Aristotle never seems to imagine possible. Indeed,
the same great philosopher esteems intellectual virtue
as higher than moral virtue, on the express ground
that God cannot possess moral virtue, which belongs
only to the natures which have passions to restrain
and direct wisely ; nor indeed is it intelligible to
ascribe moral virtue to a Being who is wholly solitary,
and has neither temptations to resist, nor duties to
fulfil. But probably the modern Theists of this class
will admit, that, when a Superior Being gives sensitive
life to other objects, he creates for himself relations to
them and duty to them, especially the duty of justice
not to create them for mere misery, or deal inequitably
with them ; and that two lines of imaginable conduct at
once open, according to one of which God would show
himself good, and according to the other evil. Hence
the epithet good attached to God is not idle and un
meaning, but has a real sense. I do not know, but I
hope, that those whom I entitle Greek Theists in the
present day regard it as rightful and becoming to
believe that God is good, even while contemplating
either that violence of the elements which causes
destruction and pain to myriads of his creatures, or the
preying of one class of animals on another. That pain
and death are strictly necessary, I suppose all thought
ful persons to understand.
But here a caution is needed, concerning the de
scription of omnipotence, — a word which is often
gravely misunderstood ; insomuch that one may doubt
�8
The Two Theisms.
whether it is wise to use it at all. If the word be
strictly pressed, omnipotence makes wisdom needless,
and leaves to it no functions. We cannot ascribe wis
dom, without implying difficult problems to be solved ;
but to omnipotence there can be no difficulty at all,
and no problem ; a “ fiat ” suffices. Hence in calling
God Wise, or All-Wise, we virtually assume that there
are limits to his power, even if we know not exactly
what. A second consideration shows that cases of
apparent impotence in God may be mere inventions of
human absurdity. It is a celebrated Greek saying
that “ the only thing which God cannot achieve is, to
undo the past.” This does but assert that divine
power is out of place in solving the absurd problem of
making contradictions simultaneously true ; such as,
“ Alexander conquered Darius,” a past fact, and,
“ Alexander did not conquer Darius,” the past fact
undone. Verbal contradictions belong to the puzzle of
human thought, and are no problem for power. One
who disputes this does not know what he is saying.
Even dull minds will find themselves constrained to
deny that God can create a God like to himself. To
create the uncreated, is a contradiction. This distinc
tion between the uncreated and the created is irrever
sible. We may advance from this to geometrical con
siderations. Archimedes discovered that a sphere is
exactly two-thirds of its circumscribing cylinder. To
bring about, by a divine fiat, that the ratio should be
three-quarters would be to establish a contradiction.
To deny that this falls within the sphere of power can
not shock piety. As well might one be shocked at the
denial that a geometrical shape can be made simul
taneously round and square. Further: mathematicians
easily imagine a force of gravitation which shall obey
a different law from that of Newton, and in following
out the inferences find no self-contradiction. Yet it is
more than possible that the Newtonian law is a rigid
necessity of the physical system, and that to change it
�The Two Theisms.
9
belongs not at all to the sphere of power, any more than
to reverse geometrical or verbal truths. JNevertheless,
it may justly be feared that some minds, who have
credit for “ philosophy,” ill understand thoughts
apparently so simple and obvious ; since the late
eminent John Stuart Mill committed himself to the
declaration that in some other world than this, for aught
he knew, two and two might make five; and that he
knew “ the Whole to be greater than the Part” by expe
rience only :—though it is evidently a verbal truth.
But as soon as we understand that the great geome
trical and physical laws of the universe are a condition
under which Creating Power acts, we find abundant
room for the profoundest wisdom. When we ascribe
Almightiness, it is only a short phrase for saying that
“ we cannot know the limits of God’s power in any of
the problems in which power is applicable ; and in
dealing with them, we assume that there are no limits.”
But this belongs to our ignorance, not to our knowledge.
The Homeric epithet Much-miglity may be preferred by
a rigid philosophy to Almighty, in speaking of that
which transcends knowledge.
The Theism which teaches that there is no definite
moral relation between an individual man and his
Divine Author, but only between the collective human
race and its source; and that the relation is limited to
this, that God by creating bound himself to be just to
the race collectively,—such Theism does not encourage
the individual to any acts of worship, and scarcely to
the sentiment of gratitude. Compare the case of a
land-owner who likes to have pheasants in his copses.
Perhaps he takes some pains to keeps away the animals
which are destructive to them, and in so far causes the
pheasants to increase and enjoy life. But if he does
not care for any one of them, neither does he wish any
of them to care for him. A Greek Theist was beset
by uncertainty whether, if he paid thanks and worship
to Jupiter, the god listened to him, or in any sense
�IO
The Two Theisms.
accepted his addresses ; hence, with but few exceptions,
we find no mark of moral contact between the Greek
soul and the soul of the universe.
The prevalent tendency of Greek philosophy to that
which Christians esteem to be pride and self-right
eousness, is perhaps to be ascribed to this cause.
Man stood erect in the presence of man, with whom
alone he recognised moral relations, and was not awed
and abashed by contrasting his own moral imperfection
with the essential holiness of God. Mr F. E. Abbot
probably extols this position of the Greek mind as
manliness ; for in his Impeachment of Christianity, he
has attacked the modern religion vehemently on this
ground. He says: “ It strikes a deadly blow at the
dignity of human nature, and smites men with the
leprosy of self-contempt.” But the phenomenon was
older than Christianity.
I turn to the Hebrew Theism. It recognises all in
God which I have described as Greek Theism, but adds
something more, and that of prime importance. It
does not suppose that he is absorbed, and as it were
exhausted, in general action, but believes that he takes
cognizance of individuals also. When Euripides denies
that Jupiter attends to the sins of individual men, he
argues, as Epicurus after him, that it would give the
god too much trouble. [Melanippe Desmotis.] “ If
Jupiter were to write down the sins of mortals, the
whole heaven would not suffice, nor would he
himself suffice, to look into each case and send its
penalty.” Thus the reluctance of the opposite school
to admit that the Most High attends to details,
really turns upon an ascription of feebleness to him.
The Hebrew Theist maintains that the universal agency
of the Divine Spirit is a fact j and that the division
of his innumerable acts into two classes, those which
we can refer to a definable law and those in which no
general law is discernible by us, is a division made to
aid our finite minds. Again, no one regards it as
�The Two Theisms.
11
partiality and “ favoritism ” in the rays of the sun,
that they act differently on chemical material differently
prepared ; nor does it imply “ mutability ” in God (as
objectors tell us), if he act differently on different
human souls, according to their state. Hence there is
no just a priori objection to hinder and reprove that
instinct of the heart which casts itself on God in
spiritual prayer ; nor is it superstitious to believe that
he will strengthen our virtue when we flee to him
for aid.
To the Hebrew Theist, God is emphatically “ a God
who searches the heart.” He is regarded as dwelling
in its recesses, and having (what can only be called) a
joint-consciousness with the individual man. The wor
ship is prevalently internal and unspoken, however
pleasant the sympathetic enthusiasm of common wor
ship when hearts are in unison. In creatures so im
perfect as we, and especially in the noviciate of heart
religion, no small part oi secret prayer will be, either
petition for more strength to fulfil duty, or expression
of grief for failures. An axiom of the religion is that
God desires from us inward and outward goodness,
holiness, and righteousness ; hence any wilful neglect,
any choice of the baser part instead of the better, is
accounted not merely to be unjust or vicious, but also
to be sin against God. I am aware that in the present
day men calling themselves Christians have pronounced
“ sin against God ” to be an absurd idea, and allege
that one who asks “ forgiveness ” supposes God to
nourish 11 unseemly resentment.” Such objectors
think themselves Christians and are not; nor is the
objection just. The longer any one has cultivated
religion as an inward life,-—the more frequent and
more solemn has been his self-dedication before the
Divine Spirit to all that is holiest and best,—so much
the more certain is he to feel that any wilful deviation
is an offence, not only against his own soul or (it may
be) against a fellow mortal, but also against God. If
�12
The Two Theisms.
the worshipper on any day have a bad conscience, a
cloud seems to hide the serene and glorious presence.
If then a keen grief seize him, what matters it whether
he use this phrase or that phrase, in seeking to recover
his lost ground ? A child conscious of wrong asks
“pardon” of his father, and does not hereby impute “un
seemly resentment; but he knows he is disapproved, and
he desires to remove disapprobation, which is to happen
through a change in himself, of course, but he is not
just then at leisure to study words accurately, and, it
may be, he blames himself extravagantly. “ We know
not what we should ask for as we ought, but he that
searcheth hearts knoweth what is the mind of the
spirit,” says Paul excellently. Such strivings are not
ineffectual, but eminently conduce to moral culture and
vital power, however much they may be reproved or
disdained by the unsympathising logician, who perhaps
has no personal experience in the matter. Alike
pointless is the sarcasm that it is hoped by prayer to
“ alter the purposes and modify the action ” of God ;
and that prayer “ asks him to work a miracle.” What
ever the weight of this against prayer for things
external, it has no application at all to that prayer
which concerns the heart of the worshipper only.
There is no reason why we should not hope that God will
act differently on souls that pray and on souls that do
not pray ; and wide experience reports that he does so.
Thus also a definite moral relation is recognized between
the Divine Spirit and the soul which seeks his intimate
influence; and (however it may be regretted or reproved
as sectarianism) the sense inevitably springs up that
there is in the human race an interior circle of saints
or “ people of God
insomuch that without being able
strictly to justify every phrase, still this ancient out
pouring of desire sounds as melody to the heart:
“ Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that
doeth righteousness at all times. Remember me, 0
Lord with the favour that thou bearest unto thy
�The Two Theisms.
*3
people. 0 visit me with thy salvation ; that I may
see the good of thy chosen, and rejoice with thine
inheritance."
As two seeds, in aspect alike, grow up into different
trees, so the fundamental difference of Hebrew from
Greek Theism, on a superficial view small, entails vast
moral results. With the Hebrew Theist religion is a
signal aid to morality; with the Greek Theist it is no
aid at all. Duty is everywhere easier to know than to
practise. It is an old complaint, “I see and approve
the better, but I follow the worse.” A Greek Theist
may be an eminently good man, but no thanks to his
religion; for when he encounters temptation, it adds
no strength to him. He does not believe that God
looks on and approves or disapproves his conduct.
But the Hebrew Theist, if he live in the spirit of his
religion, lives under the thought, “Thou, God, seest
me;” and it is harder to go wrong under the eye of a
virtuous friend, though it were but a man. His religion
is emotional, and adds a vital force to morality.
Again: if anyone believe God to love his creatures,
no impediment exists in the inequality of natures to
loving him in return. I know that modern “Greek
Theists” echo Aristotle’s incredulity, and call “love
for Jupiter” a delusion. Yet undoubtedly we love,
for their essential goodness, persons whom we have
never seen, though they may not know of our exist
ence; certainly then, if we believe that God knows
us, and loves us, and every way deserves love, it ought
not to be treated as beyond nature to love him. A
prominent and applicable test of love is pleasure in
anyone’s company-—that is, pleasure in a sense of his
presence. Though we judge God to be alway with us,
yet human society or needful absorption of mind in
business and duty very largely pre-occupies us; but if
at every vacant interval the heart springs back with
delight to the remembrance that God is present, such
a heart may surely be said to love God. Joy in a sense
�14
The Two Theisms.
of his nearness is attested by a long series of votaries
in the Hebrew school, which has propagated itself into
Christendom and Islam. Well-known Hebrew Psalms,
to which countless hearts have thrilled and echoed, pro
claim the blessedness of “ seeing God’s face ” (a strong
metaphor) and living under the light of his countenance.
As the hart pants for the water-brooks, so pants the
“saint” for a sense of his presence, whose loving kind
ness is better than life, whose approval brings fulness
°f j°yThus while Greek Theism is to the individual a
mere theory of the intellect, and possibly a science,
Hebrew Theism must be something else beside science,
namely, a life, dwelling in head and heart alike. It
attributes to God perfect goodness, perfect holiness—
words varying in sense with different minds, yet in all
suggesting something high above what the individual
has attained. Hence, in spite of dull imagination,
low morals, and a necessarily mutilated appreciation
of what God really is, the votary in this religion holds
up to his heart for worship an object far nobler and
purer than himself. If I refer to the poetical tale of
Job, who, on getting a mental sigh! of God, cried out:
“Behold, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes,”
I may justly be told that this is mythological. How
ever, the prophet called Isaiah in our Bibles said in his
own name, “ We are all as an unclean thing, and all
our righteousness is but filthy rags ”—words strangely
treated as a doctrine special to Christians, and tending
to undervalue practical righteousness ! On the con
trary, they are the vehement aspiration of the heart for
a higher goodness than its own—a heart utterly dis
paraging its own attainment in comparison to that
which it sees above it, and longs for. But I suppose
it will be added, “If such self-contempt is real, it is
debasing; it saps the dignity of man.” Yet it is not
visible that Luther, or John Knox, or Oliver Crom
well were deficient in manliness, if even they “ crawled
�The Two theisms.
x5
on the ground” under a sense of their own vileness,
contrasted to God’s purity. I fully admit to objectors
that the inward religion common to Jew and Christian
may become morbid, namely, by assuming an intensity
of grief which (in a weak nature) endangers moral
despair. The ups and downs of a much-tempted,
much-sinning man, often bitterly repenting, often
jubilant with delight—whose sins perhaps (like those
of the poet Cowper) are unknown to all but himself
and hardly believed by others—may entail a mental
malady like Cowper’s; or, in a more robust and carnal
nature, may drive a man into hardened courses. I
wish objectors to understand that I see this danger.
Nevertheless, as fire may burn us, and could not be
the great aid to us that it is if this were impossible, so
judge I of that mental contact between the impure soul
and its far purer object of worship. The humiliation
thus induced forbids a man to despise even the most
sinful and polluted of his race, makes him tender
hearted and forgiving, preparing him to believe that
there is a fertile seed of goodness in those who have
plenty of visible imperfection. I strongly deny that
such humiliation tends to unmanliness, or lessens
human dignity. The vehemence of passion uses
strong language—as in love, so in devotion. The
“self-abhorrence,” which is reproved as debasing, is
felt only in the contrast of our darkness to God’s
purity, and has nothing to do with the comparison of
man with man. To “crawl” before man is a loss of
dignity, but before God we have no dignity to claim.
Surely humility towards God must make us more
amiable to man. “To do justly and love mercy” are
in sweet concord with “ walking humbly with God.”’
If there is any truth in what I have here laid out, a
not unimportant inference seems to follow. A Hebrew
Theist (such as I have described), though he believe
neither in Moses nor in Jesus, finds true co-religionists
in pious Jews and pious Christians; and not in those
�16
The Two Theisms.
only who recognize him as “one of their invisible
church,” but in many who shun him and shudder at
him— many whose religion is disfigured by puerile or
pernicious error. On the other hand, he may regard a
Greek Theist as a good man, a noble man, a man to be
esteemed; but he does not find in him a co-religionist;
nay, rather regards him as “unregenerate” and needing
“conversion.”
So too the Greek Theist evidently
finds nothing in a respectable Atheist, however hard
and scornful, to repel him. The difference between
the two is one of intellectual speculation, and does not
at all touch the heart. Thus, I incline to believe, the
chasm which separates Theists who do not pray and
Theists who pray is the broadest of all dividing lines.
Those on this side are co-religionists with Jews,
Brahmoes, Christians, and Mussulmans; those on the
other side, are co-religionists with Pantheists (?) and
Atheists. When those nurtured in the old national
religions unlearn dogmatic authority, all human nature
may be united in a common belief of Hebrew Theism,
as conscious children of One God. But if we disbelieve
our personal relation to God, Religion has lost alike its
restraining and its uniting power. A Theism which is
a mere speculation of the intellect may indifferently be
asserted or denied. Atheism is morally on a par with
such Theism. Of course this is not adduced as any
disproof, but only as indicating the practical importance
of the controversy.
TURNBULL AND SPEAKS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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The two theisms
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Newman, Francis William [1805-1897]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Date of publication from British Library catalogue. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Publisher's list on numbered pages at the end.
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[1874]
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Theism
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Conway Tracts
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Theology
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Text
THE GENERAL MEETING
OF
THE THEISTIC SOCIETY
HELD
FREEMASONS’
AT
THE
HALL,
LONDON
ON
Wednesday, July 20th, 1870
AND
STATEMENT
OF
THE
COMMITTEE
APPOINTED BY THE MEETING
bg ©rber of
Committee
LONDON
LONGMANS,
GREEN,
1870
AND
CO.
�LONDON : PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
�CONTENTS.
PAGE
Report of the General Meeting ....
1
Resolutions passed at the General Meeting
71
Statement of the Committee
72
�I
•I
�PROCEEDINGS OF THE GENERAL MEETING
HELD AT
ON
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1870.
MR. WILLIAM SHAEN IN THE CHAIR.
The Chairman.—Ladies and Gentlemen, I will state,
in opening the meeting, the course of business which
has been proposed by the Committee. In the first
place, our Honorary Secretary, Mr. E. II. Busk, will read
a report from the Provisional Committee ; that report
will conclude with a set of resolutions which have been
prepared by the Committee. It will then be my duty,
on behalf of the Committee, to move the reception of the
report. If it is your pleasure, after hearing the report, to
receive it, there are three or four resolutions, which have
been prepared, which will be moved and seconded ; and
upon those any observations can be made and any dis
cussion can be taken.
The Honorary Secretary then read the following
report :—
The Provisional Committee appointed at the meeting
held on June 6, 1870, have communicated with persons
who might be supposed willing to aid in the formation of
a Theistic Society, and now submit the following report
of their proceedings, and of the information so collected
by them.
B
�Q
The Committee met shortly after the meeting, at which
they were appointed, and prepared a circular, in which
was inserted the provisional statement of the objects and
means of the Society, which they were instructed to cir
culate with their suggestions.
The following is a copy of the circular, which was pre
ceded by a list of the Provisional Committee.
1. The objects of the Society are to unite men, notwithstanding any
differences in their religious creeds, in a common effort to attain and
diffuse purity of Spiritual Life by (i.) investigating religious truth ;
(ii.) cultivating devotional feelings; and (iii.) furthering practical
morality.
2. The Society seeks to attain these objects by the following means:—
(1) By holding meetings for the reading of papers, and for
conference.
(2) By holding and encouraging meetings for the united worship
of God.
(3) By helping its members to ascertain and discharge their
personal and social duties.
(4) By the formation of similar Societies with the same objects
in various parts of the British Empire and other countries.
(5) By correspondence with those who may be supposed willing
to assist in the objects of this Society.
(6) By the issue of publications calculated to promote the above
purposes.
This Society is offered as a means of uniting all those who believe
in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, in the endeavour
to supplement their individual efforts towards goodness and truth by
mutual sympathy; to intensify their trust in and love to God by
fellowship in worship; and to aid each other in the discovery and
propagation of Spiritual Truth, that thus they may attain to the more
complete observance of the Divine Laws of Human Nature.
A meeting will be held at the Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street,
on Wednesday, July 20, 1870, at 7 p.m., for the purpose of definitely
constituting the Society. Your attendance at this meeting is requested.
In the meantime you are invited to communicate to the Provisional
Committee your opinion, and any information you can give on the
following subjects :—
a. The expediency of forming the proposed Society.
b. The best name for the proposed Society.
c. The names and addresses of persons or societies likely to be
interested in such a body.
�(1. The number likely to join in your neighbourhood.
e. Any practical suggestions as to the formation, objects, and modes
of action of the proposed Society.
The Committee invited suggestions and information on
various subjects, and have received, in answer to about
2,200 copies which have been circulated, upwards of 100
replies.
The suggestions and information that have been received
may be arranged under the four following heads :—
I. The expediency or inexpediency of forming the
proposed Society.
II. The best name for the proposed Society.
III. The number of persons likely to join in different
towns and districts.
IV. Practical suggestions as to the formation, objects,
and modes of action of the proposed Society.
I. The answers that have been received to the ques
tion whether it is or is not expedient to form the pro
posed Society have comprised every shade of feeling. They
may be roughly classified in the following manner :—
Those who think it expedient (including 5, who
merely express a desire for its formation) . . . 83
Those who think it inexpedient.................................... 17
Those who think the expediency doubtful....
7
107
These numbers do not include the members of the Pro
visional Committee.
The Provisional Committee are of opinion that these
answers afford sufficient encouragement to justify the
formation of the proposed Society.
II. The following names have been suggested for the
o
oo
proposed Society :—
‘ The Association for Promoting Practical Religion.’
‘ The Association for Promoting True Religion.’
B 2
�I
4
4 The Association for the Promotion of Practical Re
ligion.’
4 The Society for the Discovery and Propagation of
Spiritual Truth.’
4 An Association for Developing true Christian Charity
in St. Paul’s Sense.’
4 The Brotherhood of Faith.’
4 The Religious Brotherhood.’
4 The Brotherhood of all Religions.’
4 The Brethren of Progress.’
4 The Progressive Brotherhood.’
■ 4 The Fraternal Union.’
4 The Society of Human Brotherhood.’ 2.
4 The Brotherhood of Love.’ 2.
4 The British Free Church.’
4 The Church of all Religions.’
4 The Church Reform Society.’
4 The Open Church.’
4 The Church of the True God.’
4 The Church of Progress.’
4 The Free Catholic Church.’
4 The Universal Church.’
4 The Church of the Future.’
4 The Church of Religious Progress.’
4 The Church of the Law.’
4 The Church of all Faiths.’
4 The Church Founded on First Principles.’
4 The Universal Church of the Law.’
4 The English Branch of the Bralimo Somaj.’
4 The Friends.’
4 The Progressive Friends.’
4 The Moralists.’
4 The Free Religious Union.’ 3.
4 The Free Religious Society.’
4 The Free Religious Association.’ 2.
4 The Religious Union.’ 2.
�5
4 A Practical Religions Union.’
4 The Religions Alliance Association.’
4 The Religious Society of all People and of all
Nations.’
4 The Religious Liberal Association.’
4 The Society for the Promotion of Religious Liberty.’
4 The Modern Religious Society.’
4 The Rational Religious Society.’
4 The Common Brotherhood Religious Society.’
4 The Theo-Philosophical Society.’
4 The Universalist Society.’
4 The Universal Brotherhood.’ 2.
4 Sons and Daughters of God.’
4 The Universal Family of God.’
4 The Universal Family.’
4 The Christo-Theistic Society.’
4 The Christian Theists.’ 2.
4 The Eisotheistic Society.’
4 The Theistic Brotherhood.’ 2.
4 The Theistic Church.’
4 The Theistic Society.’ 3.
4 The Society of Theists.’
4 The Theistic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.’
4 The Theistic Theological Society.’
4 The Free Theistic Union.’
4 Theistic Christianity.’
4 The Deistic Society.’
Fifteen correspondents, therefore, have proposed names
in which the term Theistic occurs. On the other hand,
nineteen correspondents have declared themselves op
posed to that name, assigning various reasons for their
opposition ; and many others have proposed the other
names above reported, because they prefer them to the
epithet Theistic, which appeared in the heading of the
circular.
�6
III. The Provisional Committee beg to report that
they have received the following information as to the
persons likely to join in the movement.
The Committee have received the names of 245 persons
in various parts of the United Kingdom, as likely to co
operate, of whom ninety-eight have answered, expressing
themselves favourably towards the movement. Of these
persons, eighty-nine reside in the metropolis.
The Provisional Committee beg to report further, that
in addition to the names of individuals which are in
cluded in the foregoing numbers, they have received an
intimation, that at Edinburgh a congregation belonging
to a chapel, of which Dr. Page is the minister, and com
prising about one hundred members, will be likely to co
operate, and that in the same city there are about twenty
other persons who cordially desire such a Society.
These latter people formed a Society under the leader
ship of Mr. Cranbrook, but have become disunited in
consequence of the death of that gentleman, about a
year ago.
Mr. Walter Rew, of Sandgate, is the president of a
society, calling itself the ‘ Social Progress Association,’
and he has informed the Committee, that if the objects of
their proposed Society are sufficiently practical, he will
be happy to propose the amalgamation with it of his own
Association.
The Rev. W. J. Lake, of Leamington, is forming a
society in the Midland Counties, called the ‘Brotherhood
of Religious Reform,’ and has forwarded to the Com
mittee a copy of his programme. He has informed the
Committee that he will work with them, if their objects
are similar. The following is a copy of his programme :—
It is intended to form a Society, to be called ‘The
Brotherhood of Religious Reform,’ whose object shall be
to unite in a common religious fellowship, all who believe
�7
in the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man,
irrespective of all other beliefs they may hold, and by
this union of spirit to put an end to religious sectarianism
and to religious strife, and thus to lay a foundation for
the eventual building up of the one great church of the
living God, which shall be wide as the common need of
humanity, and which shall own as its members all who
love God, and who strive to lead a righteous and loving
life.
The operations of this Society will consist—
1. In the promotion of absolute religious equality ; to
be effected in this country mainly by the nationalisation
of the Established Church.
N.B. By the nationalisation of the Established Church
is meant, the abolition of the Act of Uniformity, and
of all compulsory belief or teaching. Also the establish
ment of a parishioner suffrage, by which the residents in
each parish shall be at liberty to select, from properly
educated and qualified candidates, their own minister,
and to determine the form and character of their worship.
2. It will be the business of this Society to investigate
the popular and accredited forms of religious belief, so
that, through the scholarly and scientific methods which
are now able to be employed, the absolute religious truth
may as nearly as possible be attained.
3. It will undertake the formation of public opinion
in accordance with these ascertained results, by the de
livery of lectures, and the promotion of controversy, the
issue of publications calculated to spread information on
these subjects among the people, and by all other likely
and appropriate methods.
4. It will undertake the immediate establishment of
a church or churches for the worship of God, in accord
ance with the fundamental elements of religious belief
before stated, and the maintenance of these by voluntary
effort, till such time as the national church shall be set
�8
free from the compulsory profession of sectarian dogmas
and mediæval creeds, and shall be thrown open, when
the majority of parishioners shall desire it, to the teach
ing and worship which sum up all the essential truth and
duty of religion in the simple requirements of love to
God as our father, and love to man as our brother.
IV. Among the suggestions that the Committee have
received in reply to their request for suggestions as to
the formation, objects, and modes of action of the pro
posed Society, are the following :—
As to the formation of the Society : That there shall
be, independently of the Society or Societies established
in London, a central Committee, which shall have for its
object the formation and encouragement of independent
branch Societies elsewhere, and shall serve as a means of
communication between such Societies, so as to preserve
union without compulsory uniformity of thought or action.
That admission to any of the affiliated Societies shall
be as wide as humanity itself, and with this view, that
there shall be no compulsory entrance fee or subscription.
The following suggestion has also been received, as
many persons cannot attend the meeting on July 20,
1870,—that the resolutions then passed shall be printed,
and votes taken from all the country correspondents who
have advocated the movement, before such resolutions
are finally adopted.
The following suggestions have been received as to
the objects of the proposed Society : —
Several correspondents approve of the statement of
objects contained in the circular.
One has suggested that the first object shall be ex
tended, so as to include the investigation of scientific as
well as religious truth.
It has been suggested that the Society ought to have
in view the two additional objects of :—
�9
I. Furthering education ; and,
II. Helping liberal churchmen.
Several correspondents have approved of the statement
contained in the circular of the modes of action proposed
for the Society.
One correspondent considers them too abstract and
indefinite ; on the other hand, another correspondent
recommends the adoption of as few rules as possible, and
seems to fear that these paragraphs will be found re
strictive.
None of the correspondents have objected to means
No. 1 (the holding of meetings for the reading of papers
and for conference), while several have written in favour
of it.
There has been much correspondence and difference of
opinion with reference to means No. 2 (the holding and
encouragement of meetings for the united worship of
God), the numbers for and against its adoption being
almost equally balanced.
There is a good deal of opposition to means No. 3 (the
helping of its members to ascertain and discharge their
personal and social duties), many persons believing that
it cannot be adopted as a mode of action without in
terfering with the individual conscience. It would appear,
therefore, that some of this opposition was occasioned by
a misapprehension of the aim of this paragraph.
No correspondent has expressed himself as opposed to
means No. 4 (the formation of similar Societies, with the
same objects, in various parts of the British Empire and
other countries) ; several, on the other hand, have advo
cated its adoption. It has been suggested that the action
of the central Committee in London should be supple
mented by the action of influential and energetic mem
bers, who should visit different provincial towns, and
stimulate to action those who feel the want of such a
Society as it is proposed to establish.
�10
Much has been written in favour of means No. 6 (the
issue of publications calculated to promote the above
purposes).
One or two think that the action of the Society in this
respect should be restricted to reprinting already existing
works or articles in periodicals which expound the prin
ciples of the Society.
Several suggest that a periodical or periodicals, monthly
or weekly, should be established for the diffusion of the
principles of the Society, for correspondence, and for the
information of country members.
In addition to the six modes of action proposed by the
circular, the three following modes of action have been
suggested, viz. :—
7. That lists of the members should be prepared and
circulated from time to time.
8. That the Society should assist in the formation of
libraries in various towns.
9. That there should be lectures given at fixed times
and places, accompanied by classical music, sacred or
otherwise.
The Committee have also received a pamphlet, con
taining very valuable practical suggestions, from Mr.
S. Prout Newcombe, of Croydon.
The variety of suggestions contained in the corre
spondence, of which the foregoing statement is an
analysis, as to the organisation of the proposed Society,
makes it desirable, in the opinion of the Committee, that
this subject should be further considered.
They will, therefore, invite the meeting to appoint a
Committee, by whom a scheme for the organisation of the
Society may be elaborated, and who shall report the
result of their labours to a meeting to be held early in
the ensuing year ; and they will request this meeting to
confine itself at present to resolutions by which the
�11
Society shall be constituted and its name determined, in
accordance with the general character proposed to be
given to it by the circular which has led to this meeting.
On the question of name, the Committee wish to report
that, although a majority has agreed upon a name which
will be proposed to the meeting, yet they have not
arrived at any unanimous conclusion. This result was
one that might be expected, having regard to the number
of different names suggested by their correspondents.
The Committee have found in this matter (as will
doubtless be found in many other cases) an occasion for
exercising that mutual deference of each for the opinion
of others which the proposed Society especially seeks to
cultivate, and without which it cannot exist.
The Chairman.—Ladies and gentlemen, I should have
hesitated to accept the responsible post of chairman of
this meeting if it had been intended to be anything in the
nature of a public manifestation; but we are met here
simply to have a friendly conference upon the very im
portant subjects which have been touched upon in the
printed circular which all of you have received, and
which have also been referred to in the report. I trust,
before the end of the meeting, we shall not only have
had a profitable and friendly conference, but really shall
have performed some practical business. Beyond that I
do not think it would be wise for us to attempt anything
at present. The facts which have been stated in the
report show what we have done to elicit opinions, and
what a large amount of sympathy with our views has
been expressed from all parts of England, and that there is
also, as might have been expected, a very wide diversity
of opinion expressed by our correspondents. I think it
is clear that, as we may, on the one hand, draw the con
clusion that a sufficient number of persons feel there
is a good work to be done by a society based on the
�12
principles which we have put forth to justify our proposing
to you that such a Society should now be founded, so, on
the other hand, it would be very unwise at the present
stage of proceedings to put the Society into a fixed and
crystallised condition. We must feel our way, gradually
establishing that which we feel ought to be established,
and leaving, as far as possible, the Society, when formed,
in an elastic state, to assume such a shape and adopt such
modes of action as it may from time to time find best
fitted to attain its objects. Probably many of those who
are here present may not be aware of the steps which
have led to the present meeting, and it may be well for
me, therefore, to refer shortly to them. This movement,
then, owes its origin to the arrival in this country of a
gentleman whom we already rejoice to call our friend—
Mr. Kesliub Chunder Sen. Since he came here, all of us,
I think I may say, who heard him speak at the meeting
held to receive him at the Hanover Square Rooms, or
who have from time to time since that meeting heard
him preach, have felt that in all its essentials the religion
of Mr. Sen was our religion ; and yet, on the other hand,
it is a remarkable fact that he did not find existing in this
country any religious organisation in which he could simply
feel himself to be at home. The feeling on the part of
his friends that there was something wrong in this state
of things led to a series of extremely interesting private
meetings, which were held at his house ; and in the
course of those meetings, the whole of which I had the
pleasure of attending, we found, as was to be expected,
that very similar thoughts had been excited in many
different minds, not only by his visit, but also by many
other circumstances which have occurred of late years.
Everybody seemed to be agreed that, somehow or other,
the religious organisations existing in England have for
the most part failed in their professed object—that reli
gion is, after all, nothing unless it is a uniting principle ;
�13
and yet, while everybody agrees in that opinion, some
how or other the actual religion professed in England
succeeds chiefly in keeping people apart, in marking
them off into separate bodies, and, when they are so
marked off, keeping them entirely asunder.
Then, looking at the subject from another point of
view, we all of us also felt that while, according to the
principles of our religion which we all accept, we ought
to consider ourselves one large human family, yet that, if
we looked into what was passing around us in our great
cities, throughout our country, and throughout the world,
we seemed to be acting in a very curious way when the
matter was considered from a family point of view. The
extraordinary contrast between the professed principles
of the religious organisations of civilised Europe, and the
actual practice of the most highly civilised nations, never,
perhaps, has received a more striking and melancholy
illustration than that which has taken place, even since
this meeting was summoned, in the terrible war which now
has actually commenced, and which, if we are a human
family, is, as all wars must be, a fratricidal war. In
trying to find out what was the cause of the two facts to
which I have alluded, we were pretty well agreed so far
as principle is concerned. With regard to the question
of religious organisations, it seemed to all of us, I believe,
that if we want to let religion do its proper work amongst
us, we must strip off the weeds and briars of multiplied
and complicated dogma which have encumbered and
choked the good seed of central religious truth. We
must get back, if we can, to that which is the foundation
of all religions, and in which we are all agreed. In this
attempt we find very little difficulty in accepting, as a
statement of that upon which we can all agree, the decla
ration that universal religion finds its sufficient foundation
in the two great truths of the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man. Again, looking at the question
�14
from a practical point of view, it seemed also clear that
if we could, instead of wasting our time in barren con
troversies, apply ourselves to deduce from those two
central truths practical laws for the conduct of human
life, and make the entire round of human life impli
citly obedient to the laws which those central truths
teach, we should then not only succeed in giving, within
the range of our own people, the proper work to religious
organisations so founded, but we should also have esta
blished a society in which no friendly stranger, like Mr.
Sen, coming among us could ever feel himself to be a
stranger. It might be very possible—in fact it would be
certain—that among us there would be developed a large
amount of honest and earnest difference as to detailed
truths and subordinate principles of deep interest and
importance. But we thought there would be a very
large number who would feel that a common belief in,
and a common acknowledgment of, the fatherhood of
God and the brotherhood of man is sufficient to form
the basis of a religious union, and that in that religious
union all those who agreed in those two principles might
comfortably, cordially, and fraternally find a place.
We determined to see whether we could at once evoke
a sufficient amount of sympathy with those views to
justify us in attempting to found such a society. We
drew up the circular which has been sent about England
to the extent, as the report informs you, of about 2,200
copies. To those circulars we have received rather more
than 100 replies. If we compare the number of replies
with the number of circulars sent out, it certainly seems
very small. On the other hand, I myself consider that
it is an encouraging, and, on the whole, a satisfactory
result. We had no time, and had no very good oppor
tunity, of making a careful selection of the persons who
should be sent to. We took two or three lists, which
were accessible to us, of persons who had either sub
�15
scribed to some fund or some society which seemed to us
to indicate sentiments somewhat kindred to our own, and
we addressed our circulars to every name appearing on
those lists. It is very likely that the whole subject may
have been quite strange to some of them, and a very large
number of persons in England, and probably elsewhere,
take a long time to answer circulars, so that it by no
means follows that, even of those who have not replied,
the majority do not take an interest in the subject. On
the other hand, those circulars have elicited, as you
have heard, from a large and widely-scattered body, a
considerable amount of real sympathy. I was very glad
to see that the meeting seemed to receive with a welcome
the declaration in the report of the Provisional Committee,
that in our opinion the amount of sympathy we had
evoked is sufficient to justify us in founding the Society.
It will be necessary of course to consider very carefully
how far we shall go to-night, and what we shall declare
to be the nature and objects and modes of action of the
Society. On that point, my own belief is that we ought
to proceed carefully and slowly, and that it is much more
important that every step we take should be such as
will excite as much sympathy as possible among all our
friends, than that we should proceed in a hurry to do
something which might seem to have a more complete
appearance. I am afraid of being in too great a hurry to
draw up rules or to do anything more than declare our
general principles. It is quite clear that among the
friends who have signified their sympathy with us we
shall find a very large amount of difference of opinion,
and, in point of fact, the foundation of that sympathy
conies from two different sides. I shall be extremely
sorry if we are not ultimately able to combine the sym
pathy which has been evoked on both sides. I refer
especially to what I may call the speculative side of the
question—free thought; and the practical side of the
�question—the religious life. A very large number of
people who find themselves dissatisfied with the creeds
and customs of religious organisations express themselves
ready to join any society which, throwing off all shackles
of that kind, simply determines to pursue truth, wherever
truth may lie ; and I heartily sympathise with them, and
shall heartily rejoice if we find in our future Society the
means of assisting every earnest attempt at the investi
gation of truth in the freest possible way.
But, on the other hand, I take a still deeper interest in
the other side of the question, the practical application of
the principles we have accepted to the formation of a
religious life. It seems to me that the social evils of the
day may all be traced to the fact that there is such a wide
divorce between the principles which we profess when
we speak religiously, and the every-day practice of our
lives. I think, therefore, that while, as I have said, I
have the deepest sympathy with and shall always be ex
tremely glad to join in any free investigation of specula
tive truth, it will come more home to us as real pressing
business at the present time to see what we can do in
helping each other to ascertain what are the rules to
which we ought to render our daily lives subject, in order
that we may literally live upon this earth as a family of
God’s children ought to live.
Now, the wide differences which appear to exist and
the various shades of opinion which are prevalent among
our friends have been singularly and rather amusingly
illustrated by the long list of proposed names for this
Society which has been read to you by our Honorary
Secretary. It may be said that it makes very little dif
ference by what name we call ourselves, and that prac
tically the work which we do is the all-important subject.
No doubt that is so in the long run. Yet I am quite
sure that the feeling of our correspondents, which has led
them to lay great stress on the wise selection of a name,
�17
is, on the whole, a true one. Our name will be at
once the flag and the motto we display to the world,
and it is really of importance that we should adopt a
name which, while clearly expressing our principles, shall
attract as much and repel as little as possible. There
are many names which I could heartily accept, if there
were not already attached to them some unfortunate
association ; and I think it is important for us to avoid
any name which has already associated with it thoughts
and feelings and actions with which we should not wish
in any way to be identified. When we discussed this
question among ourselves in committee, even in a meeting
of from nine to a dozen, we found that we had the most
curiously varied associations with several of the names
which have been read to you. Among others I may
mention the term ‘Theistic.’ This term is one which, in
the mind of our friend Mr. Chundcr Sen, signifies every
thing which is most delightful and most religious and
devout. For my own part I have long looked upon it as
a word closely connected with all that I most value in
free religious thought—thought which is free, and, at the
same time, really religious; but yet I find that that is by
no means the case with many of those with whom it is
very important that we should be able to work in this
movement. We find among our correspondents that the
term is distinctly disliked and dreaded by a considerable
number. I mention this because it is the term I should
myself have by far preferred to any other, and yet it is
one as to which 1 have come to the conclusion that it
would be unwise in the Society to adopt it. You have
heard that, among the resolutions to be submitted to you
presently, is one for a name for the Society, and that that
name was not arrived at unanimously by the Committee.
In accordance with a common custom in such cases, it
was understood that we should not come down as a
committee and request you to accept the name proposed,
c
�18
.
but that tlic question should be left entirely free and un
shackled, that it should be discussed here and voted upon
without any weight being given to the accident that
there happened to be in the Committee a majority in
favour of a particular name. Accordingly, an amend
ment to that resolution will be moved. It is an amend
ment to the effect that it would be wise in us, on the
present occasion, to avoid pledging ourselves to any
name at all, and that the name, like the further details of
the Society, should be postponed to be further considered,
first by the Committee, whom we shall ask you to appoint
to-night, and afterwards by a meeting of the Society to
whom the Committee will report. I shall say no more
on that subject now, because it will have to be fully laid
before you at a later period of the evening.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is one point referred to
in the report, upon which there has been a good deal
of misapprehension among our correspondents, and on
which, therefore, I would say one word. It is with
regard to the third of what we have called the means
which the Society proposes to adopt, and which is worded
as follows : ‘ By helping its members to ascertain and dis
charge their personal and social duties.’ For my own
part, I consider, as I have already intimated, that that is
perhaps the most interesting and the most important
subject to which our attention can be directed, and I am,
therefore, extremely anxious that it should not in any
way be misunderstood. Some of our correspondents
have objected to that proposal, on the ground that it
would be impossible to adopt any practical measures for
giving it effect without infringing the rights of individual
conscience. It would be suicidal for a Society like ours,
which intends, as far as it can, to be an embodiment of
freedom with order, to do anything which could be open
to the accusation of infringing the rights of individual
conscience ; and the idea must have arisen, I think, from
�19
the supposition, that, under that head, it was intended to
adopt personal and social regulations which should be
binding upon the members of the Society. Nothing of
the kind has ever been contemplated by the Committee,
and I am quite sure nothing of the kind would be accepted
by the Society. One of the great rocks upon which, as I
think, the existing religious organisations of the country
have split, and are splitting, is what they call ‘ church
discipline.’ I trust that our Society will never attempt
to establish anything in the shape of church discipline.
While, however, everybody is absolutely free to do that
which is in accordance with his own conscience, it
seems to me that we should be abdicating what is the
great privilege of a religious fraternity, if we were to
shrink from discussing the question of personal and social
duties with those who may be willing to discuss them
with us. I trust we shall find it possible in an earnest
and faithful manner to assist each other in the attempt to
investigate in what way the principle of the brotherhood
of man ought to be applied to our daily life, in order to
produce the effects which we feel ought to follow from it,
but which we see around us at the present time do not
follow from it. I hope, therefore, the Society will accept
that as one of the most important branches of its ope
rations, at the same time being extremely careful that
nothing whatever shall be done, which can, in any way, be
said to be even an attempt to infringe individual liberty.
There is only one other point to which I need advert.
I think it would be wise to agree not only that a consi
derable part of the details of the working regulations of
this Society should be left in a provisional state, but that
we should express, in the constitution of the Society, the
idea that we can never expect to arrive at perfection,
and that the Society itself, therefore, is one of indefinite
progress. I, with some of those who are now present,
took a part in the attempt, which has come to an untimely
c 2
�20
end, to found what was called the ‘ Free Christian Union.’
From the first it seemed to me there were fatal errors in
the constitution of that Society, and I think the most fatal
of all was the declaration that any attempt to change
the programme, or the statement of the principles upon
which the Society was founded, should be considered
ipso facto a dissolution of the Society. In my view,
no Society is worthy of permanent existence which does
not embody in itself the idea of progressive development.
I do not, of course, mean that we are always to be
seeking change, but that we should always feel that
what we hold is good only until we see something better.
I should very much prefer to see in the constitution of,
our Society a distinct declaration, that once in five years
or once in a certain term of years, the whole constitution
should be submitted to the members of the Society for the
purpose of seeing whether suggestions could not be made
for improvement, rather than to see there anything like
a declaration, that, when we have once come to a con
clusion, we are to bind ourselves for all future time to
that conclusion, and that not only we ourselves for the
rest of our lives, but also those who may come after us,
are to agree with our present opinions.
I will not detain you, ladies and gentlemen, any longer.
I must express my great thanks for the kindness with
which you have listened to what I have said, and I will
now in conclusion move that the report which has been
read be received.
The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried
unanimously.
The Rev. J. E. Odgers.—Mr. Chairman, ladies and
gentlemen, I feel that the motion, which I have to re
commend to the meeting, follows with peculiar fitness
after the speech which has been just delivered, and is, in
point of fact, but the natural consequence which will
�21
suggest itself to every person who has heard you, Sir, with
sympathetic feeling. The resolution which I have to
propose is this—‘ That in the opinion of this meeting it is
desirable to form a Society to unite men, notwithstanding
any differences in their religious creeds, in a common
effort to attain and diffuse purity of spiritual life, by,
first, investigating religious truth ; secondly, cultivating
devotional feelings; and, thirdly, furthering practical
morality.’ I trust, Sir, that thus far the feeling of the
meeting will support both you and myself, and that the
applause which followed the statement in the report, that
the Committee felt justified in the formation of this Society,
is but the token of a wide and large sympathy both in
this room and outside it. For myself, I am only a country
minister, and I feel at present the strongest hope, from
this meeting, from the words you have uttered, from the
collection of opinion which has passed through the hands
of the Committee, that we may have a Society which shall
furnish those who labour for the principles of attaining
and diffusing spiritual life with a strong motive for ac
tion ; and by those means we shall bind those who
spiritually labour into one common bond of sympathy,
and give them at once that breadth of view and that as
surance of brotherly spirit of which they oftentimes feel
sorely in need. At the same time I rejoice to find that
this sympathy is a sympathy of spirit, and does not ne
cessarily involve an agreement in dogmatic propositions—that this Society proposes to take in all those who cordially
have those three objects in view, notwithstanding any
difference in their religious creed. While we are labour
ing, perhaps each in our several spheres, to support the
thought which is trusted to us, to cultivate and encourage
the life which we most deeply approve, and are perhaps
joined with some dogmatic body for the spread of the
theological views which commend themselves to us,
putting our hands to the plough as far as we can, and
�22
striving by association to make the truth, dear to us, per
fectly common to all mankind,—I feel that there is a need,
not only beyond that, but rendered necessary by those
associations, that we should go somewhere where a larger
and wider field would be open to us, where we should
escape at once from the doctrines which do attend sincere
individual labour in the search after, and propagation of
truth, and also which, in a double measure, attend the
religious associations of those who dogmatically agree.
Therefore, I look forward with the greatest pleasure to
joining and supporting, as far as in me lies, an association
where those, who theologically and religiously differ, may
come, and, taking their stand upon the first article of any
religious creed, however dogmatic, namely, 41 believe
in one God, the Father Almighty,’ may there get glimpses
of sides of religious life which have hitherto been closed
to them ; may find further views of religious truth shining
in on their minds as to those who are, generally speaking,
in time and place separated from them, and return to
their individual work of ascertaining and maintaining the
truth, and spreading, by teaching and example, practical
morality, with their minds refreshed by heartfelt com
munion with others, who bid them God speed across the
barriers of divergent theological theory, and, at the same
time, gaining that outlook into ultimate truth which the
naturally prophetic tendency of the mind does gain for
itself after having every opportunity of hearing the sincere
enunciation of opinion, which is at the present time broken
and varied as the truth reflects itself through the souls of
individuals.
I therefore submit most heartily, and with the strongest
individual feeling, this resolution to the meeting, and I
trust that what I have said will not be thought unprac
tical in itself, or as warring against the practical aims and
objects of the Society. If I, looking at it from my own
point of view, put the speculative side—the subjective
�23
side—first, I do not wish in the least to depreciate any
enumeration of practical ends, however various they
may be. The letters which I have received from my
own correspondents when I have sent them the circulars
of this Society mention very many practical aims, all of
which are in themselves most desirable, and may well
call for religious co-operation; but, at the same time, I
feel that these are early days to speak of the practical
aim of the Society. The great thing is to feel that we
are individually working only for those particular aims
which are dear to us who have communion, in the
highest and deepest sense, with others who are far off,
who are working for the same objects that we all pledge
ourselves to work for, and I feel at the same time that
ends will present themselves—they must follow out of
such communion of thought as I trust will be charac
teristic of this Society, and that we shall gain from this
Society ardour and heartiness of spirit, that we shall re
turn not pledged to any kind of mechanism or organisa
tion which is to hide the fact, that whatever good we do
must come from the determination and aspiration of the
soul, and will, therefore, be strengthened both for thought
and for work by the Association, the formation of which I
most heartily commend to this meeting. Therefore I beg
to propose to the meeting the resolution which I have
already read.
The Chairman.—Ladies and gentlemen, I have the
greatest possible pleasure in saying that this resolution
will be seconded by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. I must be
allowed to say that, not only because Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell is a valued personal friend of my own, but
because her taking part in this meeting I look upon as a
practical illustration of a great principle.
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.—Ladies and gentlemen, I
second this resolution. Its object is union—the union
of all those who heartily love God. It is union for a
�24
practical purpose, viz., the attainment and diffusion of
pure spiritual life; a life which will express itself by
earnestly striving to carry out God’s Will in every action.
There is great necessity for such union. God has given
us enough glorious truth—moral, religious, and scientific
—to regenerate the world, if we would but put that
truth into practice; but we do not know how to shape
into deeds the teaching we get from pulpit, lecture-room,
and book ; this is not taught us. We allow ourselves to
float down the current of evil customs, shutting our eyes
to some, growing indifferent to others, because alone we
do not know how to avoid doing what everybody else
does. We thus become partakers in all the evils that exist
around us, and drunkenness, immorality, destitution, dis
honesty, crime, all have their roots in our own daily life.
There is no escaping from this terrible but grand brother
hood which binds us all together. Single-handed we cannot
resist the overwhelming force of social evils, but united we
may. With the strength of union we may insist upon a
truer education for our children; wTe may teach prac
tically habits of simplicity and industry to youth ; we
may carry out business honesty ; wTe may create a purer
social atmosphere around us. Such effort to regenerate
practical daily life, it appears to me, is the common
meeting-ground of all religious persons. We, with an
earnest Christian faith, can here joyfully meet all those
who love God and seek to obey his laws ; and in this
united effort to realise God’s laws we shall found the
Universal Church. I have great pleasure, therefore, in
seconding this resolution.
The Chairman.—I would now invite any lady or gentle
man to express any opinion on this matter. I hope it
will not be considered necessary, in order that an opinion
may be expressed, that it should be different from those
which we have already heard, for we should be just as
glad to hear additional reasons on our side of the ques
�25
tion, as wo should be ready to hear any opinion not
agreeing with ours. We should be very glad if those
friends from a distance, especially, would say what they
think on the matter.
Mr. F. Wilson.—Sir, I should just like to ask a ques
tion of the gentleman who proposed this resolution, and
it is this—how can people who differ in theological
matters agree to assemble under the proposition he
suggested ? We must have an individual and responsible
idea common to all the members of the Society, or else
the thing cannot work. We must have a centre, and
then you may widen the circumference to any extent
you please, but this centre must be universally recog
nised as a substantial starting-point.
The Chairman.—I don’t know whether Mr. Odgcrs
would wish to answer that question himself, but I must
say I myself consider that it is impossible for men to
unite for any good purpose, unless they also unite in
some common definite belief. On the other hand, I am
certain, from practical experience, that it is very possible
to unite people who combine with that common belief
quite an indefinite amount of theological difference. I
think, therefore, there is no reason at all why we should
despair of uniting in our Society people who, agreeing in
the two principles which we have adopted, namely, the
Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man, yet add to
those principles a very indefinite amount, and possibly a
wide amount, of divergent belief on other points. Cer
tainly we should wish that the question whether they
could or could not unite with ns should be determined
by each individual for himself or herself.
Mr. Wade.—Sir, you were good enough to send to me
a circular stating to me the objects of the proposed
Society. I must say I was much puzzled to give an
answer to the questions which were asked, and I came
here to-night to hear some further elucidation from you.
�26
But I am puzzled now to know in which direction any
superfluous energies one might have can be thrown,
which might not be given to any existing free Chris
tian Church. I had hoped, sincerely hoped, since I
gathered from the Chairman that the old Free Christian
Union is dead, or must die, that we might probably
strike out some new course which, in consequence of the
desire for union among the various churches, and among
those outside the churches, might have drawn together
numbers of persons who, religiously speaking, have no
homes. The Chairman said we need not be agreed as to
a name to-night, but that is to be left open, and then the
following speaker who proposed the first resolution
ignores practicalities altogether. So far as I could follow
him, we might just as well be a corporation to propagate
moonshine as to ignore practicalities. Will you give me,
if you please, something upon which to act ? You ask
me to join you. Will you give me some definite notion
of what this Society is doing, or proposes to do, over and
above what any other Christian church is doing and may
do, such a church as that of Mr. James Martineau or such
as that of Mr. Conway ? We are asked to join with some
other rational beings in doing some work which those
churches are not doing. Show me, if you please, in what
way I can put my hand to the plough. My friend, who
spoke to the resolution, invited us to lay hold of, not a
real plough, but some speculative plough which he had in
his mind. Will you show me a real plough, which I can
lay hold of and work some great furrows, but do not let
us drive off into mere generalities, for that is the rock on
which many associations have split. I am a member of
the Free Christian Union, and I have asked what am I to
do in it. I have got no answer beyond paying my sub
scription to the Society from year to year, and receiving
a pamphlet, which of course, I am delighted to have. If
there is no work to be done, what on earth is a union re
ll
�27
quired for? Ought it not to do something to put into
practice that which stands as the second article of your
creed, that is, love towards man ? Surely that is not a
very difficult thing to do. Either you have got some
thing to do beyond what the other churches are en
deavouring to do or you have not. If you have, let us
know it. If you have not, what good will this Society
do ? If you will be so good as to enlighten my ignorance
on that point I shall be glad. I believe I do not stand
alone in that matter by a good many. We should be
glad to hear, since the mover of the resolution said he
ignored practicalities, some one who would tell us in
what way we can unite to do a work which is not being
done by any other Christian church in the country.
The Chairman.—I think I may make one very short
reply to the kindly criticism, with which we have been
favoured by the gentleman who has just sat down. In
the first place, I did not understand Mr. Odgers to ignore
practicalities. In the printed statement which is before
the meeting, there are three objects stated. The first
is, investigating religious truth. The second, cultivating
devotional feelings. The third, furthering practical
morality; and in the last paragraph those same general
objects are slightly modified and altered in their order.
They are there stated as follows : that the ‘ Society is
offered as a means of uniting all those who believe in the
Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, in the
endeavour to supplement their individual efforts towards
goodness and truth by mutual sympathy;’—that corre
sponds with that which is put third in the paragraph
above, namely, ‘ furthering practical morality.’ Then, ‘ to
intensify their trust in and love to God by fellowship in
worship ;’ that is, in other words, the second object stated
in the first paragraph, namely, ‘ cultivating devotional
feelings.’ Then, ‘ to aid each other in the discovery and
propagation of spiritual truth, that thus they may attain
�28
to the more complete observance of the Divine laws of
human nature.’ That which is there put last corresponds,
I take it, to that which is put first in the first paragraph,
namely, ‘ investigating religious truth.’ I think the only
difference between the mover and seconder of the
resolution was, that Mr. Odgers distinctly stated that he
was more drawn by his sympathy for what is stated
first in the first enumeration of the objects of the Society
and last in the second enumeration of those objects,
namely, ‘ investigating religious truth,’ and less to the
practical part; whereas Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell stated that
her great interest was in furthering practical morality,
which is put last in the first and first in the second enu
meration of the objects of the Society, namely to supple
ment individual efforts towards goodness and truth, by
mutual sympathy.
Then, with regard to the question, whether our friend
should join us or not; of course we invite everybody to
join us who wishes to do so. But for my own part I do
not imagine that we shall be joined by a great many of
those who are in the happy position of belonging to a
society which entirely satisfies them. If any member of
the Portland Street congregation, or the South Place
congregation feels that either of those particular churches
completely satisfies all his desires for religious fellowship,
let him remain and be satisfied. We do not seek to
render him dissatisfied, but it is a fact which we find
existing, that there is a large number who do feel dis
satisfied, and who want something more. We offer our
organisation as an attempt to find out among ourselves
the causes and nature of our own dissatisfaction, and the
best practical mode of getting satisfied. Whether any
particular individuals, ladies or gentlemen, should join us
or not is, as I said before, a question which must be left
entirely for themselves to settle. For my part, I think
the enumeration of means under the second head of our
�29
printed circular holds out a prospect, if we can succeed in
getting the Society formed, of a good deal of practical
work which is not much done by any existing church
that I know of. The very first is this, ‘ Holding meetings
for the reading of papers and for conference.’ I am not
aware of any church that attempts anything of that kind
—certainly, neither of the two which have been referred
to does so. Then, secondly, ‘ Holding and encouraging
meetings for the united worship of God.’ That of course
is done by every church. But, taken in connection with
our avowed intention to endeavour to unite those who
belong to the various great branches of monotheistic
theology—Christians, Brahmos, Jews, Parsees, Mohamme
dans, it offers a work that has not yet been attempted, as
far as I know, by any existing church, whether orthodox
or free. Then, thirdly, ‘ Helping its members to as
certain and discharge their personal and social duties.’
No doubt the minister does something towards helping
the members of his congregation to ascertain and dis
charge their duties; but there is very little mutual
fraternal help arising out of the fellowship of the
scattered congregations with which I am acquainted in
London. Those three objects, to say nothing of corre
spondence and the issuing of publications, seem to me
to point out a very large field of practical work. I am
glad that all these questions should be asked, because the
more carefully the matter is considered the better it will
be for us. But we can only lay before you, as I said
before, that which is in our own minds and hearts ; and
if you find that you are perfectly satisfied without any
thing we have to offer, we cannot ask you to join us.
If, however, what we do place before you does seem to
you to be attractive, and to hold out some hope of
useful action on your part, then we ask you to join us.
Mr. Edward Webster.—Sir, I wish to make a few ob
servations with reference to what fell from the gentleman
�30
at the other end of the room (Mr. Wade). I would, in the
first place, ask those who are present, whether an Asso
ciation of this description is, or is not, a necessity of the
age, or rather of the intellectual religion which is so
rapidly spreading throughout the country ? If it be not
a necessity, then this Association will exist but a very
short time, notwithstanding the ability with which I am
quite sure its concerns will be conducted, from what I
have already heard from the Chairman to-night. But if
it be, as I for one undoubtedly think it is, a necessity of
the age, then you will go on, and you will establish
practically the most important religious principles that
have ever yet been communicated to the world. It
is impossible for any person who is at all connected
with the current literature of the age—with what is
going on in general society—I may say, in all ranks of
society, from the highest to the lowest—not to be aware
that doctrines and rules, in connection with religion,
which only twenty-five years ago were received as in
violable, arc now openly questioned—openly questioned,
not for the purpose of depreciating Christianity or re
ligion, but for the noble and exalted purpose of arriving
at truth, and that truth the most important of any. What
are we, and whither are we going ? what is to become
of the undying soul which every one in this room pos
sesses ? Hitherto science has not been applied to religion.
Look at all the religions of the world, and you will find
that science has had nothing whatever to do with them.
But that wondrous intellect of man, which has given us the
electric telegraph, which has enabled us as it were to fly
more speedily than the dove—that intellect is now being
applied to religion, and the consequence is, that there will
be new revelations of the dispensations of Almighty God
to man, and what hitherto have been considered penalties
and punishments will be found to be constructed upon
laws, spiritual, physical, and moral, absolutely perfect in
�31
their conception, and which have never required, and
never will require change, or amendment, or superses
sion, but by certain operations, slow to us but sure, are
effecting the ultimate social and religious civilisation of
the world. Gentlemen, union is strength ; and to tell
me that we are to stop because we cannot this evening
fix upon a name, is absurd. We shall have a name soon
enough, and such a name, I hope, as will unite very
many in supporting this Society. I do not hesitate to
say, and I am not a very young man, that the institution
of this Society has caused me more satisfaction than the
institution of any Society I ever heard of. Its importance
cannot be exaggerated. There is as yet no religion intro
duced into the world, which answers the conceptions of a
highly intelligent, highly cultivated, and highly benevolent
man. Therefore, Sir, I give you all the support I can, and
I most heartily hope that this Society is the commencement
of a thorough religious civilisation, and that it will end in
establishing universally, not only the worship of God, but
the brotherhood of man. Then, Sir, we shall not hear of
men armed to the teeth, and applying that noble mind
which God has given us, not for the purpose of insuring
human happiness, but for the purpose of destroying each
others’ lives. Christianity, as developed, has totally failed
to regenerate mankind. Eeligion founded on man’s in
tellect only will regenerate it, and that religion I trust
you are going to inaugurate this evening.
Mr. James Burns.—Mr. Chairman, and friends, I do
not rise to criticise the objects stated in the programme
of this Society, but rather to suggest something of a
practical character. I am already connected with a body
of people in this kingdom, numbering perhaps 20,000,
who are already endeavouring to do what this Society
contemplates. I see a number of those persons in this
room, and from them we can have practical suggestions
and sympathy. Now, Sir, there are several things con
�32
nected with religion. In the first place, there is senti
ment. We hear a great deal too much of that. In the
second place, there is faith; there is a great deal too
little of that. Then we have corresponding belief. Re
ligion is full of belief, but we put action out of view.
Then again, we have got dogmas or principles, but we
have not got objects. We cannot get all people to believe
alike, because every man will believe in accordance with
his culture and organisation. But there is one thino- we
can get all people to do, and that is, to move with one
beneficial object, namely, human happiness—an object of
all minds above idiocy. But we can never get two
minds to entertain the same conception of the same thing.
Even as to colours, if the organisation of vision is defec
tive, many persons entirely differ. I have to tell you,
ladies and gentlemen, that this Society is the expression
of that which has been going on among some people for
many years past, and all the things considered in your
programme are already at work in this kingdom. We
have Sunday meetings, where papers are read, and where
there is free conference. We have churches, where
there is no toll at the door, and no card for admission on
the platform. Again, we have religion in this country
which may be called scientific religion. What is meant
by that ? Simply, that there is no belief in a religion
which is not founded on facts. A scientific religion re
quires to be based upon man, and not upon God. What
do we know about God? We know nothing about God
further than what He has revealed of Himself, through
human consciousness. Let us realise the great fact of
human consciousness, and then I say all that we know
about God or anything else we can know only by careful
and intelligent investigation, and there are many things
which we can never tell with any degree of certainty.
To try to do so is unphilosophical, and can lead to nothing
but dogmatism. Why should we have dogmatism at all,
�33
where there is intelligence? Intelligence supersedes
dogma. Let us never name the word again, because it
is the sunken rock on which every ship has foundered
which has professed to take mankind to a religious haven.
What do we require to know ? We want to know what
constitutes human happiness. We want to know what
are the objects of human existence. Suppose it is im
mortality. The great object of scientific religion is to
liscover the fact of immortality—what becomes of men
after they leave off their mortality ? In what condition
lo they exist, and what is the relation of the present life
so the future life ? If you can answer those questions,
you know how to found a scientific religion, because you
?annot have a religion made up of mere morality;
morality is not religion—morality is only the performance
>f the various duties of life—
The Chairman.—Allow me, Mr. Burns, to suggest to
7ou that we are rather wandering to subjects which will
>ccupy a great deal of time, and I should like to
‘onfine the discussion to the resolution, which has been
noved and seconded, and to know whether or not we
hould adopt it.
Mr. A. C. Swinton.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlelen, among the objects of the proposed Theistic Society,
s stated in the prospectus issued by the Provisional
ommittee, is, ‘ To unite men, notwithstanding any differnces in their religious creeds, in a common effort to
ttain and diffuse purity of spiritual life.’ The question
now feel it my duty to put, in the presence of this
ssembly, is, Does this proposed Association mean to live
ccording to the divine laws of human nature, as that
reat example among men, Jesus Christ, lived? If so, of
>urse it must thoroughly renounce the present un•otherly system of life, and all that pertains to it. And
ch Theist, as a true child of God, and in His name,
ill proclaim by every deed of his daily life the falseness
D
�34
and criminality of the present system—a system based
on animalism, by which the millions of our actually de
serving fellow-creatures are forced by those who are
more powerful and cunning than themselves to be life
long slaves, and are thereby persecuted in the cruellest
manner, body and soul, to the present injury, and far
greater sin, of both oppressor and oppressed. If, there
fore, this proposed Theistic Society, despite its name and
provisions to the contrary, does not mean to supplant
this brutalising wrongdoing by the pure spiritual life its
Committee proposes to practise, then I say that far more
than is at present done by all the anti-Christian Churches,
and people falsely called Christians, is its dishonour of
God and its mockery of humanity. A few freed souls
have been striving to plant on earth that spiritual life
which the gentle and all-loving Nazarene, amid the
greatest opposition, many centuries since, heroically
proved to the world all might live, if they determined to
cast aside sensual selfishness, which blinds them, and
trust to the guidance of the divine soul within each one
of us for happiness, ever increasing and eternal. More
of these efforts may be heard of from me at the close of
this meeting, if it is desired, or of the Editor of the
‘Alpha,’ 15 Southampton Row, Holborn.
Mr. J. Baxter Langley.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and
gentlemen, I rise with very great hesitation, because I
feel the question which I raise is one upon which there
is a great difference of opinion among those who desire
earnestly to co-operate in a religious movement of the
kind to be inaugurated here. The word ‘devotional’
occurs in the resolution, and I am sure it will convey to
many minds, as it did to mine, the idea of prayer
in public worship and prayer in the sense of petitioning
to the Deity. I believe that there are a very large num
ber of persons who are animated by religious sentiment,
who nevertheless believe that prayer in that sense is not
�35
part of our religious duty, and that it places both man
and God in a wrong position. Therefore I know that,
supposing the resolution were carried with the word
‘ devotional ’ included in it, it would drive away from you
many of those whom I should like to see united with
you—namely, those who philosophically object to the
word ‘ devotional ’ as relating to a form of prayer. I
simply wish to raise the question, whether that word
must be regarded as an essential part of the resolution.
If so, it will exclude myself and those with whom I
am accustomed to co-operate among the advanced
Unitarians.
The Chairman.—We have been desirous so to pre
pare our resolutions as to cause as little difference as
possible ; but I have no doubt it would be quite im
possible to draw up any resolution, and it would be use
less if we could succeed in doing it, which would exclude
nobody. There must be a certain amount of community
of feeling, as I have said already in answering a previous
question. I can only say that the phrase which has been
objected to expresses one of the main objects of the
Society. The cultivation of devotional feeling was a sub
ject which was well considered and very deliberately and
unanimously adopted by the Provisional Committee;
and on the part of that Committee, I have no hesi
tation in saying that they intend to adhere to that phrase.
With regard to what it applies to, or what it means, I
have no authority to enter into that question at all; each
person must judge for himself as to the phrase itself.
The Committee who have called this meeting, and who
have hitherto acted in this movement, heartily adhere
to it.
Mr. E. D. Darbisiiire.—Sir, I feel very much interest
in the programme which I hold in my hand, but I have
very great doubts as to the object of the proposed
Society, much as we have heard of it. I have taken
p 2
�much pains to form my own opinion upon those subjects
mentioned in the circular. I am in doubt at this moment
whether the object of the Society is to unite men or to
make a common effort to attain and diffuse purity of
spiritual life. If the object of the Society is to unite men,
I am afraid the Committee, in their efforts to unite, will
lose that precision of thought, and that resoluteness of prin
ciple, which always disappear from attempts at compro
mise. The object of the Society, so far as I have heard
from the speakers to-night, is a common effort to attain
and diffuse purity of life ; not to unite men. We do not
care for the mere fact of uniting men. The mere fact of
uniting men is of no use. If they are heartily unanimous
in their object—if they are prepared to pledge them
selves to join together—if they hail with the sincerest
thankfulness the authority of the moral law, recognising
similar devotion on the part of their members, whom
they did not know before, as they themselves feel—they
will gather strength from knowing that others have the
same aspiration and the same longing with themselves,
and they will earnestly unite for such a purpose. That
is all our resolution proposes, as it seems to me—that the
Society shall be formed for a common effort to attain
purity of life, and not to unite men.
The Chairman.—Mr. Darbishire is. undoubtedly quite
correct in what he has said. The object of the Society is
a common effort, and it is to unite men only so far as is
necessary to carry out that common effort. Of course
there can be no common effort without union. The
object of the union, no doubt, is not as an end, but
simply as a means — the end being the common
effort.
The resolution was then put to the meeting, and
carried, with four dissentients.
�37
Mr. Vansittart Neale.— Mr. Chairman, ladies, and
gentlemen, the resolution which I have been asked to
propose is, that the name of the Society be ‘The Uni
versal Religious Association.’ Before I address myself to
the resolution distinctly before you, I wish to disclaim,
in my own name, any notion that I am speaking for any
body except myself. I infer it is one of the charac
teristics of the Society which I hope to see formed, that
in it we should feel that we are not bound by the
opinions of other people ; that we do not pledge our
selves to accept the opinions of all those with whom we
may be associated in this Society, or whom we may ask
to join in the Society ; nor are we to ask them, or require
them, to accept our opinions. But we do ask, and we
hope it may be possible to show, that there should be a
common basis of union, defined, distinct, and practical,
so far as such union can be practical, upon which we may
act, preserving to ourselves that individuality of opinion
without which I myself am convinced it is perfectly im
possible that mankind could ever arrive at a general
acceptance of any religious truth as something in which
they commonly agree.
Now, Sir, as to the name. I have heard, what I was not
aware of before, that it is intended to propose that the
question of the name to be given to this proposed Society
should be deferred for further consideration. I confess
my own opinion is that it would be a great mistake to do
so. Unless it should appear to-night that there is an
irreconcilable diversity of opinion as to what the name
ought to be, I think that the not adopting a name would
be as much as to say we do not ourselves clearly under
stand what we want, we have no distinct idea what the
Society is to exist for, and therefore it is impossible for
us to give it any title which would enable any other
people to tell what it is we ask them to join in. I myself
have a very distinct idea of a principle up >n which I
�38
think it is possible to form the Society, and perhaps I
may be allowed very shortly to fall back upon what has
already been said as to the question which has been
asked, because I think the conclusive answer has not yet
been given—I mean the question as to what such a
Society as this can do which any other free Christian
Church cannot do. I say the answer to that question is
this : it can unite those persons who, having a deep reli
gious feeling, cannot join any Christian Church. That is
what it can do. It can unite the gentleman wrhom I
have the honour to see to-night on my left (Mr. Sen) ; it
will unite the Mohammedan and the Parsee; and it will
unite gentlemen like the author of ‘ The Phases of Faith ; ’
it will unite numbers of those who are now balancing
between Pantheism and the acceptance of that which we
have called Theism. It may unite all those who cannot
and will not join any Christian Church, and in doing that
you will do much to make all those who are members of
Christian Churches understand what it is they ought to
aim at. That is the principle on which I would support
this Society. That is what I think this name, which I
propose, expresses. I think it is apparent, from the list
of names read to you from the report to-night, that there
are at least three different views or heads of what the
name for such a Society as this should be, all of which, I
think, are mistaken ones. There are certain persons who
think that the Society should come out with a definition
of what they call absolute or universal religion, and thus
place itself in a species of critical antagonism to all ex
isting forms of faith. I think that would be a very great
mistake. The object of the Society, I consider, is to bring
men into that state of mind towards each other in which
it may be possible for them thoroughly, fairly, and calmly
to investigate and to judge of what there is which is true
and what there is which is not true in different religious
faiths. Until they have brought themselves into that
�39
state of mind they cannot be in a state of mind to define
in a satisfactory manner what are the religious truths
which they themselves coincide with, and which they
seek to inculcate. Again, there are certain persons who
would suggest apparently that the Society should put
itself under the protection of some existing religious in
stitution, or under some form of Christianity. Here again
I consider we should start upon a great mistake if we did
that. I myself do accept individually that truth as to
which others differ ; for I do accept, and hold, and believe
in the truth of that which has been considered by many
persons to be altogether contrary to reason, that which
has been the foundation of what is called the Catholic faith,
upon which Christianity has been historically founded.
I accept it entirely, although I am not going, of course,
to occupy the meeting with any discussion upon that
point. But I consider that there is no religion, there is
no faith, there is no religious dogma whatever, which
is not influenced by the myths and legends or notions
with which it has been associated. No society which
could hope to bring man generally to the acceptance of a
faith that should extend all over the world can exist at
all if it does not leave itself open to the true, careful,
calm investigation and examination of all those matters
that may be contemned, or may be insufficiently founded
on facts in the existing creeds. Then again there is
another idea which has been prevalent to a certain extent
in America—namely, that the Society is to meet and say,
‘ We hold a number of very different opinions, and we
simply agree to come together and tell each other that
we differ.’ I think that would be an extremely unsatis
factory foundation on which to form the Society. I
cannot imagine that the Society would attain any valuable
action if it were to adopt that as its sole basis. What is
it that the Society ought to stand upon ? I consider that
the Society aims at doing this : it aims, or should aim,
�40
according to my idea, to unite men within their different
faiths by leading them to feel that all of them are, to use
a Biblical phrase, the sheep of one Master, although they
may be separated for the present in many different folds ;
to lead them to believe that there is a spirit common to,
pervading all religions, even those which we most gene
rally condemn as false religions ; there is a spirit per
vading them all, which is the profound spirit of religion,
a part of which each one of the special creeds has
more or less ambiguously given utterance to, but to which
it is our object to bring them back, saying to men, ‘You
remember that all your own acts, all your own dogmas,
all that you, in your own particular religious creeds, may
endeavour to insist upon, they are only helps, and should
be regarded only as helps, to the development of a com
mon foundation which may be said to be the manifesta
tion of the really divine and universal religion of man.’
I consider that every religion has, more or less, been
founded upon trust in God. It is perfectly true that the
idea of trust has been embarrassed by a great deal of
distrust; it is quite true that men are continually talking
as if they were, and imagined themselves to be, in an
tagonism to God, and God in antagonism to them, and
they suppose that it is necessary to put an intervening
mediator between themselves and God, in order to relieve
that antagonism which they imagine exists. But this
mediator and the system of mediation have been intro
duced because they have got in their minds, in spite of
all this intellectual trust, a profound feeling of distrust in
the Being who is the Author of their own lives and the
Author of this wonderful world, and because they wish
to get rid of and relieve any element of distrust, and to
give vent to the confidence in the Being on whom their
lives depend.
Then I say that every religion has, more or less, sought
to affirm fellowship among men. There again we have
�41
the same sort of error. That fellowship lias been limited
to the fellowship of some particular nation, or the fellow
ship of those belonging to some particular sect, or hold
ing some particular set of opinions. There has been a
failure in establishing a feeling of fellowship among men
by having a common relation to the Great Being to whom
they owe their existence. The third great element has
been this : that religion is a matter of revelation ; it is
not an invention of man’s imagination only, but that it is
something which man, through his imagination, appre
hends as the action of God towards him, by means of
which man is brought, through the action of God, to the
apprehension of those deep and spiritual truths upon
which his whole life depends. Here again we have had
the same sort of mixture of error with truth which we
have found in other cases. Here again it is our object
to eliminate that error. Men have generally supposed
that the idea of a revelation was something authoritatively declared at some part of the remote past, and
which for ever after was to be accepted upon certain
grounds with the same evidence. There is another and
grander idea of revelation, wdiich has been imputed to
the Roman Catholic Church—the revelation of a con
tinuous progress, or something going on from the begin
ning of the world, and which will never terminate till the
world itself is terminated—a continual manifestation of
God to man by means of which man is brought into a
more thorough appreciation of his relation towards God,
and, therefore, his relation towards himself. It is the
belief in this system of revelation of continual progress
which I say we substitute for the idea of the authorita
tive revelation, and it is that which completes the scheme.
The third great principle which lies at the bottom of all
religions, and which it is the object of this Society to call
forth and bring out in its purity------ I do not wish to
occupy your time much longer, but these considerations
�42
appear to me very essential to bring before the Society
(although I have been able to do so only in a very im
perfect manner), in order to make you share my convic
tion that the Society has a distinct object on which it
may be formed, and which it may express by its name.
I think the name suggested is one which meets all those
views as well as any name that can be suggested. ‘ The
Universal Religious Association ’ expresses, I think, all
those convictions. It expresses by the word ‘ universal ’
a desire to take in all mankind, that we regard the pro
cess of revelation as something carried on among all
nations throughout all ages, and that we go to all of
them, in order to invite all to join us, and gather from
all of them those signs and features of truths which they
have adopted. Again, it is to be a religious association.
It is to be a union of trust in God; and it affirms the
fellowship of men one with another, which is the second
great principle upon which true religious faith is founded.
I say, therefore, that this name seems to me to express
the object of the Society, such as I conceive it to be, as
fully as any name could express it; and I have, there
fore, no hesitation in recommending to this meeting that
that name should be adopted.
Mr. Andrew Leighton.—Mr. Chairman, I will consult
the desire of the meeting by exceeding brevity, and I
will simply formally second this resolution, reserving to
myself the opportunity of making any remarks at the
close of the discussion if it should be necessary, but not
otherwise.
The Chairman.—As I know there is an amendment to
be moved to this resolution, perhaps it would be con
venient that that should be proposed before any general
discussion takes place.
Mr. Edward Henry Busk.—As you, Sir, have called
upon me to move the amendment at once, I certainly
will do so. Taking as I do so great an interest in this
�43
Society, I move any amendment upon a resolution which
the Provisional Committee has thought fit to bring before
the meeting to-night with the greatest regret. It is from
no wish to force upon the Committee, or upon the Society
which this meeting has declared its desire to found, any
name of my own selection. It is, perhaps, not even
from any feeling that the name which the majority of the
Committee desire to recommend to-night is in itself very
objectionable, but it is from a great desire on my part to
prevent the Society from being misconstrued unneces
sarily by those who have not joined it. The name itself
may seem a very unimportant matter; but, in fact, the
name is the only thing which comes before persons who
are not members of the Society. The name to them re
presents the Society. It is a very important thing, there
fore, that the name should represent the object of the
Society, and, as far as possible, be kept free from being mis
represented and misunderstood. At the same time, it is
not at all important, in my view, that a name should be
speedily fixed upon. We have already passed, almost
unanimously, a resolution which states in very distinct
terms the objects which it is proposed that this Society
shall have in view. It cannot, therefore, be said that, in
thus declining to choose a name to-night, this meeting is
forming a Society without having any distinct object. It
has three very distinct objects ; but at the same time the
name, the short placard which will set before the external
world the objects which we have in our hearts and minds,
is a thing, in my judgment, requiring careful considera
tion. It is not, of course, my place to make known to
the meeting everything that has passed in committee, but
I think I may inform the meeting that the list of names
I have read in the report only came before the Committee
last Monday, and they had then and there to select a
name. Therefore I do think there was very little time
for thought as to the best name to be selected. There
�44
was not unanimity at our committee meeting, as you,
Sir, have said ; and I feel that the subject of choosing a
name is so important, as compared with the fact of being
without a name for four or five months, that I do earnestly
entreat the meeting to consider whether the choice of a
name ought not to be deferred until we have had a longer
time to consider. It is in itself a matter of detail, and,
as the chairman has already informed you, it is the inten
tion of the members of the Provisional Committee to brine»o
before this meeting a resolution to the effect that it
should be referred to a Committee to complete the or
ganisation of this Society, to form rules as to member
ship and as to the management of the Society, and various
questions of that kind which cannot be gone into at a
meeting of this general nature. I therefore move the
amendment, ‘ That this meeting do not commit itself to the
choice of a name, but that the choice of a name be re
ferred, together with the other details of completing the
organisation of the Society, to the Committee,’ which I
hope this meeting will soon appoint.
I will not detain the meeting one instant more. I
wished merely to put before you, as shortly as possible,
the extreme importance of the choice of an appropriate
name, and the desirability of not taking any step which
we should at any time wish to retract, and which we
should regret having taken hastily and without due con
sideration.
Mr. Armstrong.—I beg leave to second the amend
ment, not exactly in the same interest in which it has
been moved by Mr. Busk, but because a name has been
running in my own head which has not been mentioned,
and which I cannot help thinking would recommend
itself to a large number of persons; and, in order that
that name may have a chance of being considered by
the Provisional Committee, I rise to second Mr. Busk’s
amendment. I suppose that the liuc of thought and
�45
feeling which has led the gentlemen forming the Pro
visional Committee to call us together to-night has
been, at any rate, a certain dissatisfaction with the
general lines of religious thought existing around us.
Thought on serious matters seems at the present day to
be running chiefly in two channels: the one is the
ancient channel which regards certain dogmatic beliefs,
whatever they may be, as essential to salvation, and
insists that all men must come to one dogmatic belief in
order that they may be saved; the other is the reaction
on that old belief, which is beginning to overthrow all
distinctively religious thought, and to teach us that man
need not look to anything higher than himself for instruc
tion and light, and that all that has been accustomed to
go by the name of religion may be entirely abandoned.
I apprehend the desire of the Committee would be to
take a medium course; and while rejecting the notion
that any special dogmatic belief, be it Ritualistic, Evan
gelical, or otherwise, is necessary to salvation, nevertheless
they would contend that some religious belief, or, at any
rate, some religious life, is necessary to salvation in its
highest sense—that salvation is an assimilation with the
Divine Being, whom they believe to govern the universe;
and the great religious work before us is to draw man
nearer to that Divine Being. Whether these thoughts
ran in the mind of the Committee or not I cannot tell.
I can only judge from the internal evidence which I find
in the prospectus. I have only endeavoured, as I sup
pose all who received this circular have, to get out of my
brain some name to express this object. I entirely agree
with Mr. Busk, that our name is an exceedingly im
portant point. By our name we shall stand or fall ; by
our name we shall be judged by Saturday Reviewers and
all that tribe ; and if they can find anything to ridicule
in our name, we shall find it hard to contend against it.
But of the names our secretary read, every one con
�46
tained either the word ‘ Religious’ or the word ‘ Theistic.’
Objections have been urged to both those names, the
objection to ‘ Theistic’ being, I presume, that, however
grand and noble the word may be in itself, it may give
rise to certain prejudice, and is not generally understood
in its proper and primary sense. A Theist is a person
who believes in a God. Nevertheless, I have spoken to
many Christian persons of various Churches who were
quite shocked at my notion that they were Theists. I
think, therefore, it would be well if we could find some
other name than ‘Theistic’ by which we could express
our objects, and which there would be no objection to
our adopting. On the other hand, the objection to the
word ‘ Religious,’ to my mind, is that there are things
professed as religious which I, for my own part, am not
inclined to recognise as religious in the proper sense of
the word. The Secularists and the Positivists tell us of
Secular religion and Positive religion. I have no objec
tion either to Secularists or Positivists. I believe many
of them are good and earnest men, but at the same time
I do not think we should find it practicable to work in a
religious association with them. I do not think we
should find we had a common aim and object, and I
doubt whether a society such as that would be found to
be practically useful. I would, therefore, suggest that
the Committee do consider the word ‘ Monotheistic.’ The
word is a very long one, and it may sound too learned.
At the same time I think it combines all that one under
stands by Theism, without having any accretion around
it such as gathers around the word ‘Theistic.’ I sup
pose you do not contemplate being Polytheists, and
therefore I do not think, by adding the word ‘ Mono ’ to
‘ Theistic,’ that you will practically narrow your Society
at all. Monotheistic may seem to be a word out of place
in England; you may say that, by taking the name of
Monotheistic, it is implied there is a Polytheistic Society
�47
against whom we are engaged. But this Society is
not an English Society; it is not even a European
Society; but it is to be a world-wide Society, if the
world will join us. Polytheism is not yet eradicated
from the world ; it still exists in many countries in the
East; and I think by adopting such a name as Mono
theistic we should avoid all prejudice such as gathers
around the word ‘ Theistic.’ We should be distinct and
precise, and not misunderstood by any party ; not lay
ourselves open to ridicule, but express exactly what are
the objects of the majority of the members of the Pro
visional Committee. I have great pleasure, therefore, in
seconding Mr. Busk’s amendment.
Mr. Owex.—Sir, I would support the amendment, and
merely observe that the suggestion made by the last
speaker is one I approve of, although I should like it
better were the title to be ‘ Monotheistic Brotherhood.’ I
was heartily pleased and delighted when I read the pro
spectus, and I thought if a name could be selected in
which both points might be embraced, that of the father
hood of God and the brotherhood of man, it would be
very desirable. I think this comes nearer to it than any
name which I have yet heard. For that reason I sup
port, or rather endorse, what the last speaker has said. I
regret to find that there should be any division to-night.
I believe that in spirit we all agree. I think Mr. Swinton
ought to be satisfied with what this Society intends to do.
It is what I have desired to see for a long time—namely,
a broad platform where any man might stand upon equal
terms with others. I have had much experience with
different denominations, those who profess the popular
Evangelical views and others, and I do not question the
reality of their convictions and enjoyment, although I do
not agree with them. I say there is a reality among
them, and I respect them, and I want to be able to stand
>n the platform side by side with them. I give them
�48
credit for their sincerity, and can understand them when
they say they can realise acceptance with God. I can
appreciate the worthy stranger to whom I have listened
with satisfaction and delight, though introducing views so
different, when he took for his text, ‘ God is love,’ and
when he illustrated that love by referring to the return
ing prodigal. I thought then it was time we had a
movement such as is now being inaugurated, and I hope
those of my friends who have not gone cordially with the
votes will reconsider it, and will not act in opposition, but
in concert. There will be opportunities afforded for con
ference and for the reading of papers, and the Society
will afford them an opportunity of submitting any views
which they may desire to bring before us. I have very
frequently said, and I wish you to bear it in mind (and I
have been labouring outside for many years in attempt
ing such an object), that the things you are now suggest
ing I have attempted to do. I have referred to the
Catholic Church. They have one grand idea, but their
mistake is that they want every one to be of one mind.
But cannot we have all under one Shepherd? Cannot
we have all in one fold, and be looked upon as one
Church ? As things are now, a premium is paid on
hypocrisy. We want each man to be true to himself.
In opening associations like this there will be every
scope offered for humility, as there is a bare possibility
that we may be wrong. When we establish a Society
like this, if any member has anything to communicate,
he will be in a position to do so more than he is now,
when the different sects stand at daggers’ points.
Air. E. Webster.—Sir, I think it would be wise to post
pone the final resolution of this Society with regard to
the name, because I think the name in itself is very im
portant indeed. Moreover, I should object to the name
that has been mentioned, because it is too vague. ‘ The
Universal Religious Society ’ would not carry to ordinary
�49
minds the true nature of this Association. I presume, of
course, when the Society comes to be organised it will
have some system of public worship, because, unless it
applies to the spiritual sentiment of human nature, it will
at last merely become an institution for the circulation of
papers on theological subjects. Man is, by nature, a
gregarious creature, and more especially in matters con
nected with religion, and unless you have some system of
public worship I venture to predict your Society will
ultimately fail. The words ‘ Religious Association ’ do
not point to religious public worship at all. If you had
some such name as this, 4 The Church of God for all
People of all Nations,’ the word 4 Church ’ would in
this Christian country carry with it an idea of public
worship. I do not mean to say that that is a better
name than that which is mentioned in the resolution. I
should like to know very much from our Asiatic friends
what the meaning of the word 4 Theistic ’ is, as understood
in that part of the world, but the word throughout
Christendom has a certain definite meaning. I mention
that now for the purpose of showing my reasons for
voting for the amendment. I think the name has never
been sufficiently considered, and I am not content with
the name that has been mentioned, because it is much
too vague.
Mr. Charles Pearce.—Mr. Chairman, brothers, and sis
ters, I shall support the amendment, but not for the same
reasons for which my friend opposite (Mr. Armstrong)
supported it; and, before I make a very few remarks, I
should like to clear away one or two difficulties which
probably his remarks have made. He suggested a name
in his own mind as one which was suitable to this
Society—that is, Monotheistic, if I understood him aright,
because in the world there were many gods, or rather
there was worship of what are supposed to be numerous
gods. Without entering into any theological discussion,
E
�50
I desire simply to carry your minds back some 4,000 years
since, and to remind you that all the efforts of Moses
were to destroy the worship of gods and to enunciate the
worship of the one true God. Therefore I earnestly
hope you will dismiss from your minds at once any idea
of adopting such a name. We do not want to have this
country and the world embroiled, as were the nations
around the Children of Israel, for the purpose of putting
down the worship of many gods. Our brother’s obser
vations would not apply, for he said we have Positivists
and Secularists ; and I do not think that the name pro
posed, of ‘The Universal Religious Association,’ would be
a name under which we could unite with Positivists and
Secularists. I gathered from his remarks (I do not wish
to do him any injustice) that he would not unite with
Positivists and Secularists. Now, if he did say so, he at
once condemns himself as being unfit to join this Associa
tion. For I take it that if we believe in the fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of man, if a man be a
Positivist because he has by using his intellect become a
Positivist, he is still a child of God and still a brother ;
and it is just the same if he be a Secularist. I say, all
honour to the noble Secularist of Manchester who chal
lenged his lordship the Bishop to meet him on some fair
platform. They are men and they are brothers.
Now I will state my reason for not agreeing with the
name ‘ Universal Religious Association.’ My reason is
simply this, that no one attempts to define religion. Mr.
Vansittart Neale says, if we ask what is the meaning of
the term ‘ religious,’ we must criticise all religions. Of
course we must. There is only one religion, and that is
very easily found if you are desirous of finding it—it is
the religion of love. It was professed by Jesus Christ
1,800 years ago. It was professed by Confucius nearly
3,000 years since. It was professed by Brahma and
Buddha. It was professed by all the Reformers. We
�51
do not want the religion of love hampered up with doc
trines or dogmas at all. Then we must say what is the
meaning of the word ‘ religious.’ If you can apprehend
thoroughly your relationship to God, or to the cen
tral source of life, call that central source by any name
you please, if you once recognise that from the central
source you issue, then you are a child of the central
source; and every man, woman, and child, no matter
where they are, or in what condition or circumstance,
are your brothers and sisters, and that is the religion of
love. I only support the amendment upon the name to
night that there may be some time to think of the name.
The name proposed is a very fine name, and it is one of
the most suitable you could think of, if you could only
well define in your own mind what religion is. When I
sent in my reply, I thought no name was so suitable as
‘ Theistic Union,’ if Theism were thoroughly exemplified.
I only oppose the carrying of the resolution and support
the amendment that you may think over it, and come
better prepared at the next meeting to vote as to the
name to be given to this Association.
Now let me ask you just to consider one statement.
You say you are here with the desire to associate to
gether as brothers and sisters in forming this Association,
and if you form it under the title of a ‘ Universal Religious
Association,’ you accept the definition of religion that it
is your duty to God, knowing your relationship to Him,
and you accept the duties which devolve upon you when
you meet your brothers. This is important ; and please
to listen to it fairly and in the same spirit in which I offer
it to you. Do you think that the Divine Being is a
respecter of persons? No, you do not. Do you think
the Divine Being gives one man 800,000/., and gives
800,000 men nothing a year ? Certainly not, and He
never intended it. If we are going to work, and not to
talk, one of our efforts will be to carry into daily life that
E 2
�52
precept laid down by the Nazarene Carpenter, ‘ As you
would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto
them.’
Mr. Baxter Langley.—I should like to say a word
or two with regard to the name to be given to the Asso
ciation. I am still in hopes that, as the Society was itself
open to discussion and consideration, it may hereafter
amend the first resolution and adopt some other prin
ciple. I submit for your consideration, and with due
respect, that you will find by experience that you cannot
do by the resolution what I had hoped you intended to
do. I wish to say one or two words as to this Society
being called ‘ The Universal Religious Association.’ I want
to show you, in one or two brief sentences, that it cannot
be universal if you adhere to your first resolution. As I
understand, we came here together to-night to bring as
large a number as possible into religious association ; and
the gentleman at the bottom of the room, very early in
the meeting, said with great force, as I thought, that the
Society must offer something beyond that offered by other
Churches. The question is whether, having adopted the
platform you have to-night, and having determined to
adhere to it, you are not, by calling yourselves ‘ The Uni
versal Religious Association,’ placing the Society in an
equally absurd position as if you called yourself the
Catholic Church. With all respect to the gentlemen who
have spoken, I hold that there are a very large number
of Secularists who are tired and worried to death with
discussions, disputations, and debates upon dogmatic reli
gion who would gladly have welcomed a meeting of this
kind if it had been of such a nature as to present a
platform which was unobjectionable to them. I believe
it was quite possible to adopt a platform which, while it
would have included those connected with Christian
Churches, would yet have been so adapted to the wants of
the age as to have included all those men who are animated
�53
by deep religious feeling and desire religious co-operation.
The orthodox Churches are admitted to have failed, and
a great number have admitted that many of the heterodox Churches have failed. It is a fact that I very
much regret. Having been identified with the Unitarian
Churches, I can say that they are comparatively desolate
and deserted. They are only filled when there is some
man of remarkable ability and eloquence who calls to
gether a congregation simply by the dramatic character
of his eloquence. They have all been rendered desolate
by the fact that they have determined to have as a basis
of worship that there should be a certain creed ; that
lies at the root of the whole of this evil. If you could
adopt such a platform as would be truly universal
then you would bring in a very large number of
people—some of those speculative persons who have
been alluded to in terms hardly so respectful as ought to
have been used—you would bring in a large number of
earnest Secularists who desire to join in what is commonly
known as Christian work and benevolent enterprise.
Now, what are the two ideas which you have embodied
in your programme which would prevent, I believe, the
possibility of this union ? I know that many persons
adhere to the idea of a personal God as being essential
to true religion. I am not an atheist myself, but I claim
that there is a religious spirit existing in the minds of
those who differ from me and from you on that essential
point. I believe there is an enormous amount of useful
effort to be carried on in the world without any dogma
of that kind. And it is a dogma with regard to the
personal existence of the Deity. The other idea to which
I have alluded is that which may be said to have been
embodied in George Coombe’s ‘ Constitution of Man ’—a
work written by a man of the highest ability, of great
earnestness, and of deep religious feeling. His chapter
on Prayer has been adopted and accepted by a large
*
�54
number of persons calling themselves Christians. If you
are to adopt the two ideas to which I have referred, you
cannot get a basis of union which will embrace persons
other than those embraced in the existing Churches;
the Church in South Place includes a very large
number of persons who go the length to which I have
referred to-night. There are other persons who go the
same length among Unitarian ministers. There are very
broad and liberal views preached from their churches,
and I would point to Mr. Mark Wilks, of Holloway, where
discourses of the most profound character are delivered
from the pulpit. It is a matter of grave importance
that you should not hastily take a name because it adds
one more difficulty which you will throw in the way of
adapting yourselves to the wants of the present age. I
am convinced myself, from my knowledge of the common
people (not such as those we see in this room to-night),
many of whom hunger and thirst after some notion of
this kind—I am quite sure you will not bring them on
your platform unless you are careful to avoid the difficul
ties attaching to other Churches, one of which I think
you have thrown in your way by adopting the resolution
you have to-night. I beseech you, therefore, not to
throw a further difficulty in the way by adopting an un
suitable name, because if you do it will only add one more
to the difficulties already existing.
The Chairman.—I think it must be quite clear that
the meeting is not prepared, at any rate unanimously, to
accept a name to-night. On the other hand, we are ex
tremely anxious to get to the next resolution, to which
our friend Mr. Sen will speak. Under those circum
stances, I have the permission of the mover and the
seconder of the resolution to withdraw the resolution
in favour of the amendment, and if that is done we
may at once dispose of this question, and shall be able
to proceed with a more interesting discussion.
�55
Mr. Leighton.—I desire to say one word before you
withdraw the resolution. I was myself asked to second
this resolution on coining into the room to-night, but
have had no time for its consideration. From the
general sense of the meeting, I think it would be desir
able that further consideration should be given. I am
quite willing, and am glad that the mover of the resolu
tion is also, that it should be withdrawn. I want the
meeting to give their sanction to the proposition that the
name, whatever it be, shall be made as broad as possible
—to include all humanity. The question I have been
considering in my own mind is whether even the term
Theistic, broad as that is, would not exclude some who
ought to be included. The religious sentiment is a com
mon principle; all people have it, Secularists as well as
others; and some Secularists I have found to be morp
intrinsically religious than many professing Christians. A
name, therefore, which would include such persons should
surely be the one adopted by such a society as ours.
Mr. Leighton then controverted Mr. Baxter Langley’s
objections to the word ‘ devotional,’ holding that the
question raised was simply one of definition, which each
person must settle for himself, just as each had to define
for himself what was meant by religion.
Mr. Cunnington.—I hope I shall not be considered to
intrude if I occupy your attention for a moment, being
the individual who had the honour of proposing to the
Provisional Committee the name which has been so much
controverted. I do not rise for the purpose of justifying
the name or recommending it, seeing what the present
feeling of the meeting is, but merely for the purpose of
presenting what I think may be a practical inconvenience.
We must have, as it seems to me, some designation in
order that our friend Mr. Busk may be communicated
with. If you have no name it might be temporarily the
Nameless Society. You must have some name, or you
�56
cannot address our friend Mr. Busk. If you cannot agree
upon the name of the Society, let it be ‘The Nameless
Society,’ or something that would prevent the practical
inconvenience of having no title.
The Chairman.—I do not think practical inconvenience
would be at all felt. We came here to-night as a pro
posed Theistic Society, and until something else is adopted
you have that name upon the prospectus, which, I think,
will answer all practical purposes. The resolution now
before the meeting is that the subject of the name be
referred to the Committee to be appointed to complete
the organisation of the Society.
The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried
unanimously.
Baboo Kesiiub Chunder Sen.—Sir, before I introduce
the resolution with which I have been entrusted, I re
quest your permission to say a few words. I have always
felt strongly the importance and necessity of establishing
spiritual fellowship and union among all classes and races
of men. That there should be political and social differ
ences among mankind is not at all surprising ; but that
men and women should fight with each other in the name
of religion and God is really painful and surprising. The
true object of religion is to bind mankind together, and
to bind them all to God. If we see that in the name of
religion, men, instead of promoting peace on earth and
goodwill among men, are trying to show their antagonism
and animosity towards each other, then certainly we must
stand forward with our voice of protest and say religion
is defeating its own legitimate object. I have always
been distressed to find in my own country how many of
the Hindoo sects in India fight with each other, and how
they combine to war with Mohammedans and Christians,
whom they look upon and hate as their enemies. It is
far more painful to see how that spirit of bitterness
�57
and sectarian antipathy has been persistently manifested
towards the Hindoos by many professing Christians.
None preached so eloquently and so ably the doctrine
of the true love of God and the love of man as Jesus
Christ. It is, therefore, extremely unpleasant to us all
to see those who profess to be his disciples hate the
Hindoo as a heathen who has no hope of salvation,
and who has not one single spark of truth in his own
mind. Narrowness of heart has oftentimes its origin in
narrowness of creed. Men hate each other, men con
taminate their hearts with sectarian bitterness, because
they believe that there is no truth beyond the pales of
their own denominations and churches. This is a fatal
mistake, and to this may be attributed all those feelings
of bitterness and mutual recrimination which have con
verted the religious world into a painful scene of war and"
even bloodshed. Religion is essentially universal. If
God is our common Father, His truth is our common pro
perty. But the religious world may be likened to a vast
market; every religious sect represents only a portion of
truth; religion is many-sided; each individual, each
nation, oftentimes adopts and represents only one side of
religion. In different times and in different countries,
therefore, we see not the entire religious life, but only
partial religious life. The Hindoo represents religion
in his peculiar way, the Christian in his. The men
of the first century represented religion in their own way
according to the circumstances in which they lived ; and
so the men who are blessed with modern civilisation re
present religious life in their own way. If we desire to
adopt religious life in its entirety and fulness, we must
not, we cannot, reject or ignore any particular nation or
any branch of God’s vast family. If we embrace all
nations and races from the beginning, from the creation
of man down to the present moment; if we can take in
all religious scriptures, all so-called sacred writings ; if we
�58
are prepared to do honour to all prophets and the great
men of all nations and races, then certainly, but not till
then, can we do justice to universal and absolute religion
such as exists in God. To prove true to Him, to prove true
to humanity, we must do justice to all the departments of
man’s religious life as they are manifested in different ages
and in different parts of the world. The English Chris
tian has no right to hate the Hindoo heathen, nor has the
Hindoo heathen any right to treat the English Christian
with sectarian antagonism and hatred. Both must em
brace each other in the fulness of truth and in the fulness
of brotherly love. I rejoice heartily to see such a thing
foreshadowed in the constitution of the Society about to
be organised. I feel that modern nations and races are
getting their eyes opened to the catholicity of true reli
gion, after centuries of spiritual despotism and sectarian
warfare. Men are beginning to feel that, in order to be
true to nature and true to God, they must cast away
sectarianism and protest against spiritual tyranny and
kiss freedom and peace. The object of this resolution is
to bring together religious men in India, America, Ger
many, France, and in other parts of the world, into one
Monotheistic brotherhood, so that they may all recognise,
love, and worship God as their common Father. The time
has come when such a movement ought to be practically
organised, when all nations and races should be brought
together into one fold. English Christians ought to ex
tend their right hand of fellowship to my countrymen,
and my countrymen ought to extend their right hand of
fellowship to all those who stand beyond the pales of
Hindoo orthodoxy; so that, while they differ from each
other on certain dogmatic questions of theology, they
still recognise each other as brethren, and show their pre
paredness to vindicate the unity of the human race in the
face of the existing conflicting chorus of theological
opinions. It is impossible to establish unanimity of
�59
opinion among mankind, and those who have tried to
bring about such unanimity have always failed. I hope,
therefore, the friends and promoters of this movement
will not commit that great mistake. Let individual
liberty be recognised ; let every individual right be vin
dicated and respected; but still at the same time, while
we recognise differences of opinion, let us feel, and let
us declare, that it is possible to have a common platform
of action, where we can exchange our sympathies with
each other as brethren. There is another mistake which
I hope this Society will not commit, and that is, ever
to assume an arrogant and hostile attitude towards exist
ing sects. We should always assume a humble position.
We must stand at the feet of our ancestors, all those who
have gone before us, and who have left for our enjoy
ment precious legacies of religious life and religious
thought. All honour to such men. Hindoo, Christian,
Chinese, Buddhist, Greek, and Roman—men of all nations
and races—men of all ages—who have in any way
laboured successfully to promote the religious, and moral,
and social amelioration of mankind, are entitled to the
undying gratitude of all succeeding ages. In forming a
Society like that whose formation we contemplate at
present, we feel morally constrained to honour those
spiritual and moral benefactors to whom we owe “ a debt
immense of endless gratitude.” At their feet we sit
to-day, and to them we desire to offer our hearts’ thanks
givings, and we desire to recognise them individually
and unitedly, as those friends and brothers who have
directly or indirectly brought us into that position in
which we feel enabled to establish and organise a Society
like this. It is on account of the light which we have
received from them through succeeding generations that
we are prepared to come forward to-night and stand
before the world as a Theistic brotherhood. We cannot
dishonour them; though they belong to different nation
�60
alities, though they may be of different times and races,
we cannot for one moment dishonour them. We cannot
with pride and arrogance say we do not owe anything to
the Christian Scriptures, we owe nothing to the Hindu
Scriptures, we owe nothing to Confucius. We owe much
to all these sources of religious revelation and inspiration.
To their lives, as the lives of great men, we owe a great
deal. Our attitude, therefore, must be an attitude of
humility towards those who have gone before, an attitude
of thankful recognition; and towards existing Churches
also we must assume the same attitude. If there are
friends around us who think it their duty to criticise
severely our proceedings, to hold us up to public derision
and contempt, they are quite welcome to do so; but let
us not, as members of this Society, for one moment
cherish in our hearts unbrotherly feelings against them.
Our mission is a mission of love, and goodwill, and peace.
We do not stand forward to fan the flame of religious
animosity, but our desire is to extinguish the flame of
sectarian antipathy, if it is possible for us to do so. We
go forth as ministers of peace ; we shall love all sects ;
Christians and Hindoos we shall look upon as brothers,
as children of the same Father ; their books we shall read
with profound reverence ; their priests we shall honour
with thanksgivings ; and to all those around us who desire
to treat us as men who have no hopes of salvation, even
to them we must show charity and brotherly love. I
hope, therefore, not a single member of this Society will
ever think it right or honourable to manifest the bitter
spirit of sectarianism towards any religious denomination.
There are in England at present, I understand, nearly
300 religious sects into which the Christian Church has
been divided. That such a thing should exist in the
midst of Christendom is indeed painful, I may say fright
ful. Let us do all in our power to bring together these
various religious denominations. I do not see why we
�61
should not exercise our influence on Christian ministers
to exchange pulpits with each other. Why should not
the people of one congregation visit the church of another
congregation ? Why should not the various preachers of
the Christian Churches try to harmonise with each other ?
Christian people sometimes go the length of thinking
that the whole religious life is monopolised by themselves.
During my short stay in this country I have been struck
with the fact that English Christian life, however grand
and glorious it may be—and it certainly is in many of its
aspects and features—is sadly deficient in devotional fer
vour in the world ; deficient in feelings such as those
which a deep and trustful reliance upon a personal and
loving God alone can inspire, support, and sustain. Some
thing like that is to be found in India. I do honestly
believe that in India there is such a thing as spirituality.
In England there is too much materialism. That is my
honest conviction. If England and India were to unite
and receive from each other the good things they ought
to receive from each other, we should be able to form a
true Church, where spiritual fervour and the activity of
material life would harmonise, in order to form the unity
of religious life. Whether, therefore, we come to Eng
land, America, Germany, or France, or any other country
where similar religious movements are going on, we ask
them to co-operate with us; we ask the whole world to
treat us as fellow-disciples, to give unto us all the good
things they possess and enjoy for our benefit, that we
may thus collect materials from all existing churches
and religious denominations in order, in the fulness of
time, to construct and uprear the future Church of the
world.
Friends, these are the words that I intended to say
to-night, with a view to invite you all to look upon this
Society as an association of love, and peace, and humility,
not of hatred, mutual persecution, and sectarianism. If
�G2
this Society should live long—and why should it not live
if it is God’s Church and God’s society?—if this Society
be spared to continue in a career of honourable useful
ness, it will bless our hearts ; it will bless your country
and my country; it will bless the whole world. I need
not soar into regions of imagination and fancy in order
to depict in glowing colours the future Church of the
world ; but this I must say, that from the time the light
of religion dawned on my mind, up to the present moment,
I have always been an advocate of the glorious principle
of religion which is summed up in these two great doc
trines, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
man ; and so long as I am enabled to work, whether here
or in my own country or elsewhere, it shall be my duty
to speak, and feel, and labour in such a way that not
only my own countrymen may, under the guidance of
God’s Spirit, and with God’s help, be brought into one
fold, but that all nations and races, so far as is possible
with my humble resources and powers, may be influenced
to feel the necessity of bringing themselves into one
vast family. Oh! may that blessed day soon come
when the earth, untrod by sect, or creed, or clan, shall
own the two great principles — the universal father
hood of God and the brotherhood of man ! I beg to
propose this resolution to the meeting: 4 That in the
opinion of this meeting it is desirable that the Society
should correspond without delay with similar societies in
India, America, Germany, France, and elsewhere, as
suring them of our sympathy and fellowship.’
Mr. Cunnington.—Ladies and gentlemen, I have had
the honour of being asked to second this resolution. I shall
not be so presumptuous as to attempt to add anything to
what Mr. Sen has said, and I shall occupy your time but a
few moments. Mr. Sen has dwelt very forcibly, and very
properly, on the obligations we are under to those who
have preceded us in the discovery and propagation of
�63
religious truth. There is a further idea which strikes me
as being also important, seeing that in Ilim whom I
recognise as the Deity there is neither variableness nor
shadow of turning ; there is no change in His laws, and
the same element, or the same disposition, exists in
humanity now as in former times; and while we ap
preciate at its proper value the truth which has been
handed down to us by past generations, we do not lose
sight of the importance of recognising the inspiration of
the present day. I am one of those who think there
cannot be any difference or clashing between the advocates
of physical science or truths that relate to matter, and
those who are the advocates of truths which relate to
spiritual things, or to the mind. All truth must be in
harmony if it is rightly understood. Both matter and
mind have, according to my conception, been given to us
by the same Being, who is perfect, and in whom there
can be no imperfection. It is on account of our not
sufficiently comprehending the laws of that Being that we
see around us the lamentable and degrading state of society
which exists. I take it that if the interests of society had
been more practically insisted upon there would have been
comparatively less difference of opinion than there is and
less importance attached to the name, which there is, as
it seems to me, a difficulty in accepting. When we see
about us the want of common honesty, the want of truth
fulness, the physical degradation which exists amongst so
many of our fellow-creatures, whilst we are living in a
land groaning, I may say, under its wealth—if the
principle was recognised that property has its duties as
well as its rights, it would go, I think, far towards
remedying the evil which exists in society ; and whatever
name we give to our Society, whatever our aims may be,
unless they are brought to have a practical bearing on
the ills which are patent to all of us, it will be of but little
use. Our object must be to give it a practical direction;
�64
we must make up our minds to act upon the simple
principle, as between man and man, of doing unto others
as we would be done by. I will not attempt to analyse,
or to dilate upon the two grand principles which have
been referred to, of the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man. It is because, as I think, those two
principles, rightly understood, are sufficient to unite the
whole of us, while we have our own individual opinions,
and hold them sincerely, earnestly, and ardently, that
we may be in a position to join those who may differ
from us, and to give them credit for the same sincerity
which we claim for ourselves.
But, Sir, I am not speaking to the resolution, which is,
that this Society should put itself in communication with
similar societies in all parts of the world. I firmly
believe, using the language of our great poet, that
‘ one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,’ and
I believe that the religious element in some shape or
other exists in all conscious humanity. It is believing
that, that I cordially sympathise with, and second, the
resolution which has been proposed.
The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried
unanimously.
Mr. Conway.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen,
I rise for the purpose of moving a resolution to the
effect ‘ That a Committee of twelve be appointed, with
power to add to their number, to complete the organisa
tion of the Society, and for the present to manage its
affairs; of this Committee, five to be a quorum ; and that
this Committee report to a future general meeting, to be
held as early as they can arrange.’
At this late stage of the meeting I do not feel inclined
to occupy the attention of the audience very long. For
myself, Sir, I would rather sit silent and see this move
ment go on, having perfect faith in the soundness of the
�Go
sped which we tire engaged in planting to-night. 1
believe it to be seed falling into honest soil, and I have
so many opportunities of appealing to the public, and
expressing my opinions, and even of monopolising the
expression of opinion, that I should be much more
pleased to hear some of the rest speak. I will not,
ho wever, let a movement, from which I hope great
things, pass without stating that it has my entire
sympathy, and I heartily approve of it, although, of
course, in many details, it does not exactly express my
particular ideas. I have my own peculiar views about
what constitutes devotion. I do not believe in that which
is called private or public prayer. I am not willing,
with others, to be called a Christian in the usual accepta
tion of the word, because I think I love and admire Jesus
Christ too much for that. I have my various feelings, of
course. Something fell from our chairman which looked
as if he believed we were not quite satisfied with our
respective local associations, and therefore came hither.
I do not agree with that. I think we may be perfectly
well satisfied in our local congregational arrangements,
and at the same time feel there is room for a larger
association with people who disagree with us and people
who are far removed from our ideas ; and the presence
of disagreement, and the presence of misgiving, and the
variety of ways of looking at things which have been
manifested in this meeting to-night are the most hopeful
signs we have ; they show that we are beginning to launch
out into something wider than the little associations
which we have with our own sects, and, instead of heaping
up sect upon sect, we shall come in contact with other
ways of looking at things throughout the world. I believe,
Sir, this Society will stand related to religion exactly as
the British Association of Science stands with regard to
science. There is a Royal Institution for teaching
science, and there is a Jermyn Street School, and there
F
�66
is the Ethnological Society—all practical institutions for
teaching science ; and also there is a great movement in
this country, and in every country where there are
scientific societies, devoted to the union of scientific men
for great purposes, and for the prosecution of vaster dis
coveries than any one society could accomplish by itself ;
and exactly as the Social Science Association stands
related to particular institutions, or the British Associa
tion stands related to a particular scientific association,
so I understand this Association to stand related to any
special religious movement. I should have been glad
were it openly called, what I believe it substantially is,
a Religious Science Association, and that we should an
nually have our meetings for the study of such things
and furtherance of such ends, just as people meet an
nually at Social Science or British Scientific Associations.
However, Sir, I candidly endorse the idea that this meeting
is practically tentative, and the object of this resolution
is to further that idea. It is a seed which we arc
planting, and we propose to appoint a Committee, in order
that they may cultivate that seed through the tenderest
part of its existence—namely, its gradual first growth,
its first tender blade, before it has got the sturdiness
and strength to which it can grow of itself. I think it
is clear that it would be impossible to decide what shall
be the practical mission of an association like this. It
is manifestly impossible for us to decide on the emer
gencies of the future, the exigencies which are to come,
the great demands which are to be made on the united
religious heart and free thought of this country. We
cannot decide till occasions arise, for new occasions teach
new duties, and there is not in this world a limb of any
animal, or form of any plant, that did not come into
being because there was a need which arose for the exist
ence of such animal or plant : every limb, every tree,
every leaf, every lin, in this world was created because
�G7
it was wanted by the surroundings, the great practical
results and emergencies of life. Our movement, then,
must be considered as a small egg, and it is to be formed
in this world as every other organic form has been con
stituted in obedience to the requirements which call
forth the vital germ and give it shape. As it lives,
as it grows, the light which will shine upon it will
give it its proper powers ; the rain which will fall will
clothe it with exactly the duties it needs, and the objects
it should have in view. We must trust this seed to the
eternal elements of this world ; we must trust it to God ;
we cannot decide at present everything it is to do, for
there may arise in distant years some great question upon
which it may be desirable, or even necessary, to call a
special meeting and take some united action. There may
be some other Oriental brother or brothers to wel
come, and then this Society will be here to open its arms
to such a brother, and not to let him wander about to be
tossed hither and thither, and to be preached at at my
lord’s table by his chaplain. He will not be left to be
called a Pagan here and there ; and there will be a large
welcome and a large hearing wherever there is a Society
which regards him as a true, devout, and religious teacher.
And, Sir, there may arise great questions of religious free
dom—questions arising touching religious movements,
national religious establishments, and many other things
in this world, where it will be necessary for people united
in some great salient points to take some practical action ;
and that practical action will decide what limbs, what
shape, what features, we shall have; for it is clear that,
if you try to do too much by giving this Society a
distinct shape beforehand, if you try to make a machine
answer all your ends before you know what those ends
are, if you make your machine without reference to
what may happen in the future, if you do that, you
will find, I think, that the machine will become very
F 2
�68
tiresome, very bungling, mid, in the end, useless. I
repeat, I would rather begin low down, where all things
in nature begin—first of all the mere blade, and let that
grow as the Eternal Tower shall decide and the course
of events shall determine. That is all I have to say, and
that is why it seems to me eminently proper that we
should have a Committee to watch over us, to avail them
selves of every ray of light which shall foil upon our
effort, to avail themselves of all suggestions which may
be made from whatever quarter, to see that we start
well, to see that the first beginnings of this seedling
shall be well cultured, well pruned of all that is ex
traneous, so that we shall see that in the end it is fit
for the garner. Those twelve gardeners who will con
stitute the Committee, those twelve horticulturalists
who are to tend this seed and to watch over it, should,
I think, be appointed by us, and, therefore, I most cor
dially move, with the highest hopes as to the progress
of this Society in the future, that this Committee be
appointed.
Mr. Kisto Gobindo Gupta.—Ladies and gentlemen,
I cannot speak very much. But I have much pleasure in
seconding the resolution which has just been put forward
as to the necessity of the proposed Association, and as to
the necessity for a Committee to manage its business.
Much has been already said upon the subject, and I can
only add my voice to say that I have personally felt the
necessity of such an association, more perhaps than any
body else in the room. In India we have similar associ
ations, but here some of my friends and myself do not
find any distinct association where we can feel ourselves
quite at home. So, if the proposed Association should
be formed, it will be a welcome place to all of us. I
have, therefore, much pleasun1 in seconding the reso
lution.
�69
Mr. Owen.—The last speaker said that he and his
associates have not been able to feel themselves at home
in any association now existing in this country. There
is a class who have not felt themselves at home in any
of the Churches, and hence the question was raised, Why
do not the working classes go to church ? If you arc
going to form a Committee, take heed to that, have regard
to that; do not disregard the working classes ; do not get
a highly respectable and a thoroughly English Committee.
I do not think anyone has attached more importance to
the visit of our distinguished Indian friend than I have;
but what has been his work in India ? He has been
endeavouring to deal a death-blow against caste. Have
any of those associated with him said one word about
the caste which exists in England? And is not that the
curse of our country? And so long as that exists all
that we have said simply amounts to nothing, and
there can be no religious union. I want to test the
matter; and if you are in earnest, I will promise you
that thousands will back you in your work. I have
addressed, I may say, hundreds of thousands of people in
this metropolis, and I have scarcely ever opened mv lips
without advocating the same principles that you have
advanced to-night. I hope, therefore, you will be explicit
on this one point, and don’t let us have a respectable
Committee. I am sure you do not misunderstand me.
I mean that the working classes have not felt them
selves at home, because they are not what is considered
the respectable class. I believe that Jack is as good as
his master, and in fact a good deal better. The working
classes are the industrious bees, and they are better than
the drones any day. I have the greatest respect for
every gentleman present; but I only ask you to be considerative, and to do something worthy of the name of
Chunder Sen. He has the noblest spirit I have seen. I
�70
doubt whether I ever heard a man open his lips in my
life for whom I have a greater veneration. I hope, there
fore, we shall do something worthy of such a man.
After some further discussion, the resolution was put
to the meeting and carried unanimously; and the Com
mittee was subsequently named.
A vote of thanks to the chairman terminated the pro
ceedings.
©
�RESOLUTIONS PASSED AT A GENERAL MEETING
HELD AT
THE FREEMASONS’ 11ALL, LONDON,
ON
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1870.
MR. WILLIAM SIIAEN IN TIIE CHAIR.
1. That, in the opinion of this meeting, it is desirable
to form a Society to unite men, notwithstanding any
differences in their religious creeds, in a common effort
to attain and diffuse purity of spiritual life by, (1) in
vestigating religious truth, (2) cultivating devotional
feelings, and (3) furthering practical morality.
2. That the subject of the name of the Society be
referred to the Committee to be appointed to complete
the organisation of the Society.
3. That, in the opinion of this meeting, it is desirable
that the Society should correspond without delay with
similar societies in India, America, Germany, France, and
elsewhere, assuring them of our sympathy and fellowship.
4. That a Committee of twelve be appointed, with
power to add to their number, to complete the organisa
tion of the Society, and for the present to manage its
affairs ; of this Committee, five to form a quorum ; and
that this Committee report to a future general meeting,
to be held as early as they can arrange.
A Committee of twelve ladies and gentlemen was then
ippointed, of whom the following have consented to act :
—Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Ananda M. Bose, Edward
Henry Busk, Moncure D. Conway, George Hickson,
Andrew Leighton, Miss E. A. Manning, S. Prout New•ombe, William Sliaen, and Edward Webster.
�72
STATEMENT OF THE COMMITTEE.
— ♦----
The Committee have begun the task committed to
them by the general meeting, and have agreed upon the
following statement for immediate publication :—
The Committee fully recognise and appreciate the
innumerable efforts which have been made by eminently
religious and good men for the amelioration of mankind,
physically, intellectually, and morally, and acknowledge
that a large debt of gratitude is due to these earnest
and devoted men ; but at the same time they feel that
the results of all the efforts which have been made leave
abundant room for, and encourage, fresh exertions upon a
basis as broad and comprehensive as possible.
It is felt that a belief in the two great principles of the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men forms a
sufficient basis for religious communion and united action.
This Society is offered as a means of uniting all who
share this feeling, in the endeavour to supplement their
individual efforts towards goodness and truth by mutual
sympathy; to intensify their trust in and love to God by
fellowship in worship; and to aid each other in the dis
covery and propagation of spiritual truth ; that thus they
may attain to the more complete observance of the
divine laws of human nature.
It is. intended to seek the attainment of those objects
by the following means, namely—
1. The holding of meetings for the reading of papers
and for conference.
2. The holding and encouragement of meetings for
the united worship of God.
�73
3. The helping its members t<> ascertain and dis
charge their personal and social duties.
4. The formation of similar societies, with the same
objects, in various parts of-the British Empire and other
countries.
5. Correspondence with those who may be supposed
willing to assist in the objects of this Society.
6. The issue of publications calculated to promote
the above purposes.
The Committee now invite all persons who concur in
the views thus expressed to join the Society. Any person
may become a member by communicating his or her
name and address in writing to the honorary secretary,
in the form appended to this statement.
It is not proposed to have any compulsory subscription’
but all members are invited to contribute to the funds
of the Society.
In the resolution, under which the Committee arc
acting, the objects of the Society are declared to be,
the investigation of religious truth, the cultivation of
devotional feelings, and the furtherance of practical
morality.
With reference to the investigation of religious truth,
the Committee feel that it is desirable that meetings for
the reading of papers and for conference should be
established as soon as possible, and intend to organise
such meetings in the autumn of this year.
The Society will also, with a view to the attainment of
this object, aid in the study of already existing works,
reprinting them when necessary, and will assist in pub
lishing original works.
Under this head will also stand the task of compiling
a collection of the purely religious passages from all the
different Bibles or Sacred Scriptures to which access can
be obtained. The compilation of this work may be begun
without delay.
It is hoped that the Society may soon be in a position
�74
to aid in the establishment in many towns and villages of
libraries in which those books shall find a place which
arc calculated to disseminate the principles of the Society,
and in the publication of works specially intended for the
young.
As to the second of the three objects of the Society,
devotional feelings may be indirectly cultivated in a
variety of ways, such as by a sincere study of science, by
art, or by literature. In fact, all the higher pursuits of
the intellect and imagination, and all developments of
pure social, and domestic affections materially tend to the
increase of the feeling of devotion.
These various means may be encouraged, but can
hardly, at least at present, be actually employed by the
Society. But the Society can hold meetings for the worship
of God, and thereby give such of its members as desire to
attend a means of directly aiding each other in the culti
vation of feelings of devotion.
These meetings, while strengthening and elevating the
spiritual communion between each member and God, will
afford opportunities of public worship to those who feel
themselves excluded from meetings for worship based on
dogmatic theology, and will practically demonstrate the
possibility and desirability of the union for public wor
ship of persons holding different creeds.
The Committee intend, therefore, to arrange, in the
autumn of the present year, meetings of the Society for
united worship.
Another means of furthering this object, which may be
at once begun by the Society, is the collection of a book
of prayer and praise, to contain passages from already
known books and hymns, as well as prayers, meditations,
and hymns which may from time to time be contributed
by members. This book, subject to continual revision,
will be valuable both as an aid in the conduct of meet
ings for united worship and for private use by individual
members.
�75
The third object, namely the furthering of practical
morality, naturally branches off in two directions—the
personal and social.
Under the first head, the aid to be afforded by the
Society will consist principally of the mutual countenance
and support which the members will afford each other in
the endeavour to carry out into their daily life, whether
in the family, society, or in their public or commercial
avocations, the principles of high and pure morality.
It is, perhaps, needless to remark that nothing in the
nature of Church discipline is contemplated or will be
established.
Besides this mutual support among the members, the
Society may itself aid in the realisation by them of a pure
spiritual life by means of its meetings and conferences,
where, by reading papers and by friendly discussion, ques
tions relating to the conduct of life may be treated and
developed.
In connection with the social branch of this subject,
such meetings as are last described will be most useful,
and these subjects will be considered in the meetings to
be organised by the Committee in the autumn of the
present year.
The number of problems to be dealt with under this
head is enormous : and whether or no it will be found
advisable for the Society, as a society, to take any active
part in directly attempting to mitigate the evils which
attach to our present civilisation, such as pauperism, war,
intemperance, &c., or itself to attempt any philanthropic
object ; yet there can be no doubt that the Society can
and ought at the earliest possible moment to afford ample
and frequent opportunities for the reunion of its members,
whereby their individual views may be widened and
defined, and their individual action may consequently be
rendered more intelligent, useful, and energetic.
�76
A list of the members will shortly be printed and cir
culated among the members of the Society.
The time and place, at which the proposed meetings
for united worship and for friendly conference will be
held, will be announced to all the members.
Additional copies of the foregoing pamphlet entire, or
of the concluding portion alone, containing the resolutions
adopted at the general meeting and the statement of
the Committee, can be obtained on application to the
honorary secretary, Edward IIexry Busk, Highgate, N.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
STOTTISWOODK AND CO., NEW-STREET SQtTARtt
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
��187
To Edward Henry Busk, Esq.
Dear Sir,
Please to add my name to the List of Members of the
Society which was founded at the. General Meeting held at the
Freemasons’ Hall, London, on July 20, 1870, for the purpose
of uniting men, notwithstanding any differences in their
religious creeds, in a common effort to attain and diffuse
purity of spiritual life by (fY) investigating religious truth,
(2) cultivating devotional feelings, and (3) furthering prac
tical morality.
L am, dear Sir,
Yours truly,
Name in full
Address__ ____________
I
���
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Proceedings of the general meeting of the Theistic Society held at Freemasons' Hall, London on Wednesday, July 20th, 1870 and statement of the Committee appointed by the meeting
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Theism
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Conway Tracts
Theism
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Text
S'txOASié3l
MORE RATIONAL?
DISOtrSSION
I
BETWEEN
4
Mr. JOSEPH SYMES
GEORGE
■ ♦
LONDON :
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, STONECUTTER STREET
E.C.
�H
�NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
... .IS ATHEISM OR THEISM THE MORE
RATIONAL!
LETTER I.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
Some weeks ago, Mr. St. Clair delivered a discourse in Bir
mingham on “ The Folly of Atheism.” When informed
thereof, I wrote to that gentleman, respectfully inviting him
to a public oral debate on the question now at the head of
this letter. This he courteously declined, but suggested a
written discussion instead. It now falls to my lot to furnish
the first of. twelve letters,, six by each disputant, to appear
alternately at intervals of not more than a fortnight. Mr.
Bradlaugh deserves our best thanks for'So readily opening
the columns of the National Reformer for this discussion.
Without any “ beating about the bush,” I shall at once
proceed to show why I regard Atheism as being more
rational than Theism. Theism is belief in a God, or deus,
or theos. Atheism is the absence of that belief, with the
general implication, as I apprehend, that the individual
destitute of that belief has done his best to weigh the merits
of conflicting theories, to sift the Theistic evidence, and has
logically concluded that Theism is irrational.
Atheism, requires no direct evidence, nor is it susceptible
of "it. It is arrived at,^n the most logical fashion, by a
course of destructive criticism applied to the God-theorjt.
This theory, when fairly examined, crumbles to dust, and
then evaporates, leaving the investigator without a Godiiand
without belief in one.
As I desire this contest to be definite, earnest, and real,
1 will state my objections to Theism plainly and fairly,
'so jthat my opponent may have the best opportunity of
refuting them. And let it be borne in mind that to state
valid objections to Theism is to put forward equally valid
reasons in favor ofAtheism. Now, as Theistic arguments
usually- take two forms, the intellectual and the moral; as
�4
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
Theism is as much an assertion of or belief in God’s moral
attributes as in his natural attributes or in his bare existence,
I cannot be straying from the subject in discussing the
moral aspects of the question. To show that the moral
attributes of God are fictions will go very far indeed towards
refuting Theism and justifying Atheism. The following
questions will covey most of the ground :—
I. Does there «Assist an infinitely good God ?
II. Does there exist an infinite God whose goodness
exceeds his evilness ?
III. Does there exist an infinitely wise God ?
IV. Does there exist an infinite God whose wisdom exceeds
his folly ?
V. Does there exist a God of absolutely unlimited power?
VI. Does there exist a God whose power exceeds his
weakness ?
VII. Does there exist a God who is in any sense infinite?
VIII. Does there exist any God at all ?
I. The first question, Does there exist an inhnitelugood God?
may be dismissed without any discussion ; for infinite good
ness would render all evil for ever impossible. Infinite
goodness could produce nothing less than infinite good.
Evil, if existent, must limit goodness ; evil does exist; there
fore infinite goodness does not.
II. Does there exist an infinite God whose goodness exceeds
his evilness ? I am sorry to have to use so uncouth a word
as “ evilness,” but I have no other that will so well express
my meaning.
1. It is generally held among Theists that an Infinite God
created all other things. If so, what motive could have
prompted the act ? That motive could not have been an
■exterior one. From the nature of the hypothesisJLit musthave been one confined solely to himself, arising from his
own unrestrained, uninfluenced desires. In a word, he must
ha^made the universe for his own sake, his own ends, his
own pleasure.
Now a being who accomplishes his own pleasure or profit
by or through the pleasure or profit of others, and no ptherwise, must be pronounced just and benevolent. But he who
gains his own ends irrespective of the rights, the profit,
and the pleasure of others, is selfish. He who sends others,
who are helplessly under his sway, on errands for his
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
5
personal advantage alone, and knowing they must suffer
excruciating pain and die in the undertaking, is a horrible
^Tr-is said that an infinite God created the universe, and peopled it with sentient beings. Those sen
tient beings, in the nature of the case, could not
be consulted beforehand: their life, organisation, circum
stances of all kinds were decided for Hem and imposed
upon them. And a being more good than evil would have
felt himself in honor and justice bound to provide for the
happiness of those creatures before giving them life while
a being more evil than good would have consulted his own
pleasure chiefly, if not entirely, and have cared little or
nothing for the happiness of his creatures. The last clause
seeems to me to describe, but partially only, the action of the
hypothetical God who is supposed to have created the uni
verse. For pain and misery have been the cruel lot of
his creatures from the remotest epoch to which geology
carries U8 back.
“The whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together until now.” Want, disappoint
ment, bitter warfare, pain, and death are the normal con
dition of the universe as far as it is known. No natural
law has been more fully ascertained than this :—Life is an
endless strife; and each combatant must must kill or be
killed, must eat or be eaten. Another law is, That victor
and vanquished succumb to another foe and die, despite their
struggle for existence. These laws hold good not merely as
regards individuals: races also die out. And if there be
purpose and plan in nature it can only be such purpose and
plan as uses sentient beings for the pleasure of the creator,
who cai®s no more for their welfare than the worst of slave
owners does for his human chattels.
.
2. Nay! more. According to the creation hypothesis,
every pang endured by the creature must have been fore
seen and provided for beforehand. The man who invents
an infernal taachine, say Thomassen of Bremer Haven
notoriety, must be immensely less selfish than the creator
of the world. Thomassen had some want to supply,,^ome
sort of excuse for his awful deed. But an infinite and
eternal being is without excuse; and a being that does
wrong without excuse, knowing what he is doing, must be
actuated by pure malignity ; especially when, as is the case
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
of all creatures of this hypothetical God, his victims are
absolutely helpless:—they cannot resist him, cannot out
manoeuvre him, and can get no sort of redress for any wrong
they may suffer.
It may perhaps be safely laid down, that he is extremely
good, who does good according to his knowledge and power.
But he “ who know^th to do good and doeth it not, to him
it is sin.” An infinite God knows everything, and his
power is unlimited. Why does he not do good “ as he hath
opportunity ? ”
The only conceivable reason must be
that he is unwilling. He must therefore be extremely evil.
When to this is added the fact that he does immeasurable
evil to helpless beings, we shall at once perceive that the
Theistic object of worship must be totally evil; for even
the seeming good he does is done merely to please himself.
Even if the world contained as much good as evil, theft
would not prove the creator good, for reasons I have given.
But the existence of only one evil would legitimately raise
the suspicion that he was evil, because a moment’s effort on
his part would remove that evil and replace it by good.
But when we find that evil is inseparably mixed with the
universe; when we find that during all its ascertainable
history, and in every direction, at least as much evil as good
has prevailed, we cannot hesitate, except in deference to
old prejudices, to pronounce judgment to the -effect that the
world’s creator is the embodiment of selfishness and ma.bgnity, and destitute of any discoverable redeeming trait in
his character.
It is at present unnecessary to enlarge upon this subject.
But if the goodness of the hypothetical creator cannot
logically be maintained, and if the extreme contrary can be
p logically'and truthfully propounded, as I contend, the next
i question to be answered is,
I
III. Does there exist an infinitely wise God? This, too,
' must be examined and answered by the study of the facts of
Nature ; and it need not delay us longer than did the ques
tion of infinite goodness. If there were infinite wisdom^Mo
such things as fools and folly would exist. These are enor
mously plentiful; whence come they ? Wisdoniicannot
produce folly; a perfectly wise being could not produce a
fool. Some say the great majority of men are fools;
certain it is that large numbers are such. Who made them
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
7
so ? If there be a creator, he makes the philosopher and the
dolt, the mathematician and the idiot. No wise father
would have an idiot son, if he foresaw its possibility and
knew how to prevent it. Yet the great father, as people
call their deity, produces idiots by the score and fools by the ,
million. Infinite wisdom, therefore, is no better than a
myth, nor more accordant with known facts than the infalli
bility of the Pope.
Want of space compels me here to break off my argument abruptly, though I hope to resume it in my next.
LETTER IT.
From Mr. G. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
As I expect to find in Mr. Symes an honest and fair
opponent, I shall not require a definition of all the terms he
uses, but I may point out that if his definition of Atheism
is correct, we shall want some other word to set forth the
denial of God’s existence. Theism is belief in a God ; and,
according to Mr. Symes, Atheism is simply the absence of
that belief, and valid objections to Theism are equally
valid-reasons in favor of Atheism. I should have thought
this more accurately described Agnosticism than Theism;
but as I am equally opposed to both, perhaps it will not
matter. If the Deity is said by one person to be dead, and
by another to be dumb, I confute them both if I prove that
he speaks. It is only fair I should allow that one sentence
of Mr. Symes’s seems to separate the Atheist from the
Agnostic—the sentence, namely, which says that the Atheist
has logically concluded Theism to be irrational. The
Agnostic does not pretend to do that. At the same time
the question is here begged, or else the language is a little
loose, for, if I am right, no individual can logically conclude
that Theism is irrational, but can only come to such a
conclusion illogically.
I am prepared to prove the existence of an intelligent
Creator of man, and to defend his perfect goodness. I shall
not attempt to defend all the positions which Mr. Symes
sets out to assault. His eight questions, which he says will
cover most of the ground, would no doubt do so, and lead
�8
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
us into oceans of talk as well. I have no desire to meddle
much with the unfathomable and the incomprehensible, and
must decline to be drawn into a discussion of the infinite,
which I do not understand. Six questions out of Mr. Symes’s
eight concern the infinite ! They were, perhaps, prompted
by his idea of what I, as a believer in God, would be likely
to assert; for he says, “It is generally held among Theists
that an Infinite God created all other things.” When he
understands that I maintain a humbler thesis, perhaps he
will withdraw or modify some of these questions. I main
tain that there is an intelligent Creator of Man, against
whose perfect goodness nothing can be proved. If man has
a Creator, that Creator must be called God.; and if there
is a God, the evidence of whose action is to be seen in us
and about us, then Atheism is irrational. It is a larger
question whether God is infinite in all his attributes. It is
another question whether God created all things, matter
and its properties included. I am certainly not going to
maintain that every attribute of God is infinite ; for the
clue and the key to the mystery of evil are to be found in
limitation of power. Like John Stuart Mill, I conceive a
limit to Omnipotence, and that enables me to maintain God’s
perfect goodness. Or rather, I define omnipotence to be the
power of effecting all things which are possible, and I show
that some things are impossible to any worker, because they
involve mathematical or physical contradictions. When,
therefore, Mr. Symes advances to show that “ the moral
attributes of God are fictions,” I have an answer for him
which some Theists have not.
The first question of the eight is in the form, “ Does there
exist an infinitely good God ? ” and in the answer to it there
is a semblance of mathematical demonstration. But I
venture to think that the word “ infinite ” leads to a little
unconscious conjuring. I shall be satisfied to defend God’s
perfect goodness against all attacks. I will not say whether
the goodness is infinite, and what ought, to follow then; but
I calmly assert that the bare fact that “ evil does exist” is
no proof that perfect goodness does not. Mr. Symes con
cludes his demonstration with the Q. E. D. that “ therefore
infinite goodness does not.” I should be glad if he would'
come out of the unfathomable and tell me what he has to
show against perfect goodness. I admit that some evil exists
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
9
but limited evil for a limited time is quite consistent with
perfect goodness. It was consistent with goodness in the
case of a father I knew, who submitted his child to the
operation of tracheotomy in order to save its life. Limited
evil for a limited time is forced upon every child who is
kept to his lessons; and it argues no want of goodness
in the parent, but only a certain intractableness in things,
making it impossible to attain desired results except
by means and methods which may sometimes be a little
unpleasant. I feel myself at liberty to use these human
illustrations because I have left out the word “ infinite ” and
am considering the action of a Deity who creates and educates
man. The Iggfiitions of all work are similar, whether the
worker be human or divine.
Space exists, and matter exists. Mr. Symes must allow
that they can exist without having been created, because he
does not believe in a Creator at all. So far I am inclined
to agree with him that space and matter may always have
existed. But whether matter has been created or not is
of little importance in this discussion, if it be allowed
that without matter and space nothing could be made
and no processes could go on—that for instance there
could be no world like this and no human creatures to com
plain of its arrangements. In fact there could be no
arrangements, if there were nothing to arrange and no space
to arrange it in. The Creator is, we may say, bound to have
matter—whether created or uncreated—if he is to accom
plish anything at all. No blame, therefore, can attach to
him on account of the mere existence of matter. All
depends upon what use he will make of it. Now the mere
existence of matter implies certain properties, such as
extension and impenetrability. Further, nothing can be
done with matter without moving it, to bring its parts and
particles into new positions. But the motion of matter in
space is according to the laws of motion, which cannot well
be imagined to be different from what they are. Without
these laws of motion and properties of matter there could
be no universe and no human life, and no printing of this
discussion in the pages of the National, RefdjSffier. At the
same time the Worker, using these mean^and materials,
does his work under conditions which preclude certain results
as physically impossible, as for instance that there should be
�10
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
adjacent mountains without a valley ; and which sometimes
involve concomitant results which may not be wished for,
as when a sculptor chisels out a statue but makes a mess of
chippings ¿ha dust. The end desired is achieved, and more
than compensates for the temporary inconvenience. The
inconvenience is no accident and no surprise, but is foreseen
and deliberately accepted, on account of the good that shall
follow.
Seeing that I regard the matter in this way, many things
which Mr. Symes has said shoot wide of my position. I
am not obliged to consider what motive induced the Deity
to create the universe—whether it was an exterior motive
or one confined solely to himself. I maintain that he
Seated man. I allow that he must have found his own end
in doing it. I do not allow that he has done it regardless
of the good of his creatures: else creatures so logical
ought all to commit suicide at once. Mr. Symes defines
the Creator’s obligations to his creatures in a way which
ought to prevent most men from marrying and becoming
fathers. Because sentient creatures suffer pain and misery,
a good Being, he says—even a Being more good than evil—
would have refrained from creating them without consulting
them. The force or weakness of such an argument depends
very much upon the amount of pain and misery compared
with enjoyment, and very much upon the question whether
pain and misery are to be temporary or permanent. On
both points Mr. Symes holds a view which in my estimation
is not justified by the facts. He dwells on the struggle for
existence—which he describes as a law that each combatant
must either kill or be killed, either eat or be eaten—he
describes the strife as prevailing from the earliest geologic
ages ; and he infers that the Creator cares no more for the
welfare of his creatures than the worst of slave owners does
for his human chattels. But here, in the first place, some
illusion is produced by looking down a long vista of pain
and death. When we look along a grove the trees seem to
touch one another; yet in reality the open spaces are more
than the trees. We may, if we choose, look down that vista
of the ages and see young life and happiness, and mother’s
love and joy at every stage. Nor is it the fact that there are
no deaths but such as are violent. Nor is it the case that
violent deaths occasion much pain and misery. Follow the
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
11
life of an individual bird, or dog, or human being, and
inquire whether misery or enjoyment preponderates : that is
the fair way to judge, and not by bringing all the misery of
long ages into a near focus.
And then, as to the permanence of pain, misery, evil, Mr.
Symes declares that “ evil is inseparably mixed with the
universe.” This statement he emphasises, and gives no hint
that he expects evil to work itself out. I should have
thought that, as an Agnostic and an Evolutionist, he would
have followed Herbert Spencer in this as well as in other
things; and Spencer has a chapter to show that evil must be
evanescent. By the law of evolution the human race is
progressive—the purpose of nature (the Creator’s purpose,
as I should say) is being worked out, stage after stage. It
is therefore delusive to judge the present condition of the
world as though it were intended to be final ; it is unfair to
judge the past and present without taking into account the
drift and tendency of things. In a manufactory we don’t
judge in that way of the things which are being made, and
which we chance to see “ in the rough.” If evil is evanes
cent, and the consummation of things is to be glorious, it is
not irrational to believe that present pain is like the tem
porary evil of the sculptor’s chippings, the passing irksome
ness of the school-boy’s discipline, and that “ the sufferings
of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the
glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.”
And here, Mr. Editor, I must break off abruptly, like
Mr. Symes, having come to the end of the space allotted.
Else I could easily double the length of this letter, without
departing from the text Mr. Symes has given me : for he
does at least say something.
LETTER III.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
The first paragraph of Mr. St. Clair’s letter requires no
remark; the second may detain us for a few minutes. The
infinity of deity, it appears, is given up. That being so,
Mr. St. Clair should have clearly defined the term god.
The sense he attaches to the word must be exceedingly
�12
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
different from that which Theists in general attach to it;,
and, as I am totally at a loss to know what his god is, I
can neither aecept nor attack his views until he favors me
with them. I shall feel obliged if in his next he will define,
as clearly as possible, “god,” “ creator,” “created,” “intel
ligent creator.” A further favor will be conferred upon me
if Mr. St. Clair will give his reasons in detail for believing
that man was created by “ an intelligent creator,” and also
his grounds for supposing that creator to possess “ perfect
goodness.” At present he merely declares his belief ; I need
his evidence.
Why does my opponent call limited power Omnipotence ?
Is it not equivalent to limited illimitability ? or finite
infinity ?
Mr. St. Clair is prepared to defend the perfect goodness
of man’s creator. But how can a finite, that is, an imperfect
being, be perfect in any respect? My former objections to
infinite goodness press with equal force against perfect good
ness, for perfect and infinite are here the same. Goodness,
perfect or imperfect, finite or infinite, must from its very
nature prevent or remove evil in the direct ratio of its power
or ability. Mr. St. Clair contends that “ limited evil for a
limited time is quite consistent with perfect goodness.” He
may as rationally contend that “limited darkness for a
limited time is consistent with perfect light.” Darkness,
however limited, is incompatible with perfect light; so evil,
though but for a day, and covering but an area of one square
inch, would prove that perfect goodness did not exist. The
illustrations used—the case of tracheotomy and the unplea
sant processes of education—are both as wide of the mark
as possible. They are not cases of perfect goodness resort
ing to temporary evil, but of imperfect goodness and limited
power choosing the less of two evils where it is impossible to
shun both.
“ The conditions of all work are similar, whether theworker be human or divine.” This may, for aught I know,
be true, for I have no notion of a divine worker. But does
Mr. St. Clair mean to say that his god is compelled to
choose between two or more evils, just as we are? If so,
what necessity urges him ? We are driven to labor by
hunger, cold, storms, and innumerable pains and diseases.
Does god, too, labor for his bread, his clothes, shelter, or
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
13
medicine? If not, how are “ the conditions of all labor
similar, whether the worker be human or divine ? ” Will
Mr. St. Clair explain ?
How does my worthy opponent know that evil is limited
as to time ? Can he assure me that any square foot of the
earth’s surface is or ever was totally free from evil ? How
does he know, or why does he assume, that any square foot
of the earth’s surface ever will be entirely free from evil ?
That many evils will diminish in process of time, through
man’s growing wisdom, I cheerfully believe. But, no
thanks to deity for that. Man is improving on god’s
work, and removing evils that ought never to have been in
it. Here the consumer has to labor and suffer and spend
all his energy rectifying the blunders of the manufacturing
deity, or making improvements he never thought of, or else
was too idle, or too weak, or too evil, to introduce.
But does any man conceive that all evil will ever be
removed ? Will the storms be hushed into eternal calm ?
the earthquake heave its final throb and cease for ever ?
the volcano spout no more its terrible agents of destruction?
disease and death prey no longer upon animals and men ?
If these are ever conquered, man must do it, for they are
god’s agents for destroying men—if god there be. Can
Mr. St. Clair name one evil his god ever removed ?
Mr. St. Clair seems to hold the eternity of matter. Is
god also eternal; and if so, how do you ascertain that ?
I am not just now much concerned to inquire whether the
creator found matter ready to his hand, or first made it; but
I contend that he who arranges matter as we find it in
Nature (not in art) is not good. The tree is known by its
fruit. Matter is so arranged as to give pain, produce
misery, and death universal! And if so arranged by an
intelligent creator, he must therefore be more evil than
good. When Mr. St. Clair speaks of the “ end desired ” in
the “ chippings and dust ” of the sculptor, I can pretty well
understand him; but does he know the aim and end of the
creator ? If not, what is the value of his illustration ?
It is of no use to say that creatures “ ought to commit
suicide,” if my contention is correct—ought not to marry,
&c. Has not the creator rendered that impossible for most
men by passion and an invincible love of life ? And is it
kind to stretch a poor wretch longer upon the rack of this
�14
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
rude world by so forbidding him to die, though his every
breath is on® of pain ? Goodness never arranged it thus.
I am not concerned with striking the balance between evil
and good; I merely contend that goodness cannot originate
evil, except unwittingly; that perfect goodness would render
all evil impossible. I do not yet see any just cause to retract
or soften a single statement in my first letter; and shall
therefore proceed now to deal with my questions as far as
space will permit.
But Does there exist an infinite god whose wisdom
exceeds his folly ? Wisdom conducts its affairs with reason,
prudence, economy, and directs its energies to the attain
ment of some definite and worthy end. Does any man
know the final cause of the universe, the latest and highest
end aimed at by the creator ? It seems only reasonable that
the Theist should know this before he ventures to attribute
wisdom to his deity.
I grant that if the “ works ” of Nature exhibited evidences
of wisdom as far as men can observe them, and no cases of
evident folly were discoverable, the Theist would have the
best of reasons for assuming that all the universe was equally
well arranged and conducted. But if the known parts of
Nature exhibit folly in its worst conceivable forms, then
the only rational view to take is that the universe at large is
a blunder, and its creator a blunderer.
It is frequently assumed that a fool is reprehensible for
his folly, and that if men are fools, it must be their own
fault. But that cannot be the case, for no man makes him
self. The creator must take all the responsibility. He who
made men made most of them fools ; therefore he must be
more foolish than wise. And man, be it remembered, is
according to Theists the most important part of the creation
hereabouts. Man, they say, is the crowning piece of his
creator’s workmanship; and all else in the solar system is
subservient to his welfare. Be it so ! But what folly to
make all this and then to people the world with fools !
Such folly cannot be excelled, even by the lowest of
intelligent creatures. And my objections to the wisdom or
“ intelligence ” of deity are equally forceful, whether god
be finite or infinite; for I contend that he is far more foolish
than wise.
The folly of the hypothetical creator, whatever his
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
15
power, is seen everywhere—at least, I know of no spot free
from it. Here grow beautiful grass, and herbs, and trees ;
and human industry turns the region into a paradise, dotted
over with towns and villages. The people increase rapidly,
and their flocks, and herds, and farm produce keep pace
with them. Civilisation in all its branches rises and pro
gresses. There dawns a day when the sun shines in
splendor, the breezes gently blow, birds pour out their
melody, and man is contented and happy in some degree;
but there comes a dismal sound, and a mysterious shaking;
and ashes, and stones, and dust shower down in torrents
burying all life in a burning tomb. If an “ intelligent
creatoiiS makes men, why does he thus destroy them ? If
they need destroying, why did he make them so ? Those
creatures of his are of all ages from the youngest embryo to
the oldest man. Why destroy what is scarcely begun ?
Why begin what is to be so quickly destroyed ?
This “ intelligent creator ” produces blossoms in spring,
and then nips them by senseless frosts ; he makes the grain
to grow, and then destroys it by wet or a summer storm, or
parches it by drought; splendid crops of potatoes to flourish,
and then turns them to corruption by the fungus known as
“ the diseasethe cattle to multiply, only to die by
pleuro-pneumonia or foot and mouth disease ; a whole human
population to flourish for years, only to die by famine and
fever. And all this is the constant, every-day conduct of
man’s “ intelligent creator ! ”
I am deeply interested and anxious to see how my re
spected opponent will be able to reconcile divine “ intelli
gence ” or goodness with the phenomena of the earth.
The next question I have set down for discussion is:
VI. Does there exist a God whose power exceeds his weak
ness ? This question, to my surprise, has been answered
already by Mr. St. Clair, by implication at least; for he
informs us that, “Like John Stuart Mill, he conceives a
limit to Omnipotence.” That conception, when rendered
into plain English, can only mean that Mr. St. Clair’s god
is of merely finite power ; and as finite power can bear no
comparison with infinite power, we must conclude that Mr.
St. Clair’s deity has infinitely greater weakness than
strength.
If I were contending merely with Mr. St. Clair, I could
�16
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
at once pass on to the next question; but I am attacking
Theism in its broadest sense ; and, with all due respect to
my opponent, must decline to narrow the ground to the
dimensions of his peculiar Theism, except by easy and
logical stages.
I hold the doctrine, that force or power can be measured
only by its effects. A force may produce motion in several
phases, or it may be expended in resistance, stress, etc.
But in every case the effect is exactly equivalent to the
cause. An infinite cause could result in nothing short of
infinite effect. But infinite effect does not exist; nor can
any conceivable sum of finite effects amount to one infinite
effect; therefore no infinite cause or infinite power exists.
Now Theists do not pretend to know their god except as
a cause—unless I am mistaken. But if no infinite cause
exists, their god must be finite. But that which is finite
can bear no comparison with the infinite; therefore the power
of a finite being, however great, must be immensely less
than his weakness.
I will close by asking whether it was good, or wise, or
honest for a being of such limited capital, that is, power,
etc., to undertake so great a work as the creation and
direction of the universe ? Though he may be making his
own fortune and ensuring his own pleasure, he is doing it
by the most reckless expenditure of human and animal life,
and by the infliction of unspeakable misery upon helpless
beings. A god of honor and mercy, it seems to me, must
either have stopped the machine in utter disgust, or else
have committed suicide countless ages ago.
LETTER IV.
From Mr. G-. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
Space did not permit me to deal with the whole of Mr.
Symes’ first letter ; and now I must let it go, because his
second letter gives me text enough for a second reply. In
this discussion I should be glad if a respectful tone can be
observed in speaking about the Deity. It cannot serve the
purpose of my opponent, nor of the Editor, that Theists who
begin to read our arguments should throw down the paper
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
17
in disgust. Mr. Symes expresses himself “ totally at a loss
-to know what my god Is.” I shall be grateffflF if he will
•oblige me by spelling the word with a capital G, because, for
one thing, my God is not the same as Mumbo Jumbo or
any little imaginary divinity worshipped by an African
tribe. Mr. Symes asks for definitions of “ god,” “ creator,”
“ created,” “intelligent creator;” but probably a dictionary
will supply his want at the present stage. In my previous
letter I told him distinctly enough what I understand the
tgrm God to mean: God is the intelligent Creator of man.
This is sufficient for our present purpose. To believe in a
.Creator of man—not a blind force, not an unguided pro
cess wjkich has resulted in his coming into existence, but in
an intcmigent being who made him—this is to be a Theist.
And since the evidence of God’s operation is to be seen in
man’s own frame, this theistic belief is rational, and the
opposite is irrational. This is what we have to argue about,
-and I should be glad if my opponent would keep to the
subject. If it could be shown that the Creator of man is
an evil Being, it might be reasonably maintained that he
ought to be called a Devil instead of a God ; and therefore
I have undertaken to rebut all attacks upon his perfect
goodness. In my last letter I repelled some objections of
this kind, and was enabled to do so successfully, because I
did not foolishly contend that the Deity possesses infinite
power, adequate to the accomplishment of all manner of
impossibilities.
Mr. Symes exclaims, “ The infinity of Deity, it appears,
is given up.” I never maintained it, and therefore I have
not given up anything. It seems to be inconvenient to my
opponent that I do not maintain it. He declines, he says,
“ to be narrowed to my Theism; he attacks Theism in its
broadest sense.” That is to say, he is confident that he
could confute other Theists, but he cannot easily confute
me. I showed him that his eight propositions about the
Infinite, mostly shoot wide of my position ; but he thinks it
well to return to them, and persists in attacking the impos
sible compound which he has set up as the God of those
who believe in God. No doubt he can do some amount of
iconoclastic work here; but what is that to me? If-he
amuses himself and your readers by wasting half the space
at his disposal, perhaps I ought not to complain ; but I am
�18
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
not bound to follow him into this region, and shall only do
so when I can spare the time. I will pursue him just a little
way now. He considers that a Theist ought to know the
final cause of the universe before he ventures to attribute
wisdom to the Deity 1 But surely I may admire the struc
ture of the eye, and perceive it to be well adapted for
seeing, without waiting to examine the heart or learn the
use of the spleen. I may study and admire the human
frame as a whole, and not feel obliged to be dumb concern
ing it because I have not begun the consideration of the
solar system. My opponent wants me to begin at the cir
cumference of the universe, because it has no boundsg and
he wishes to see me bewildered and floundering^ Yet
immediately he himself ventures to judge of the universe as
a whole, and pronounces it a blunder, and its creator a
blunderer, on the strength of some exhibitions of folly (a£
he counts them) in its known parts.
One exhibition of folly, he considers, is the creation of
fools. Repeating a statement of his former letter, he asserts
that most men are fools, and that he who created them so
must himself be more foolish than wise. My reply is that,
whatever the actual proportion of fools, ignorance comes
before knowledge, folly before wisdom, in the natural order
of things. The crude and unfashioned material must date
earlier than the wrought and finished. The educated man
is a production of a more advanced sort than the ignorant
and uncultured man ; he is the same creature in a later stage
of development. But Mr. Symes—whom nothing will satisfy
save impossibilities—demands the later before the earlier.
My opponent thinks that infinite goodness is incompatible
with the existence of the slightest evil at any time. He
imagines that infinite goodness in the creator would prevent
any evil outside of him. To my mind this is not so, unless
the creator, besides being infinitely good, is also omnipotent,
and omnipotent in a sense which enables him to overcome
physical and mathematical contradictions and accomplish
impossibilities. But, to simplify the discussion, I refrain
from contending for infinite goodness, and contend for per
fect goodness. My opponent does not see the difference,
but conceives that his former objections to infinite goodness
press with equal force against perfect goodness. He con
tinues his unconscious legerdemain with the word infinite.
�; ■ w:./ -’
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
•
w’
19
He asks, “ How can a finite, that is, an imperfect being, be
perfect in any respect ? ” Amazing! We am to suppose
there is no perfect circle conceivable unless it be infinite in
its dimensions, and that no man could be perfectly truthful,
no child perfectly innocent, no flower perfect in its beauty.
The flower must be as large as the universe, it seems, before
its beauty can be perfect. The argument against the per
fect goodness of Jesus Christ would have to run in the form
that his body and soul together were not so big in cubic
measure as all the worlds and spaces which make up the
TCT7rai/, or grtffttall! “ Goodness will prevent or remove evil
to the extent of its ability.” Yes; but since no ability
whatever can be sufficient to surmount impossibilities, limited
^evil nifty exist for a limited time, and be subservient to
greater good (like the inconvenience of scaffolding during
the building of a house). Mr. Symes uses what he supposes
to be a parallel, that limited darkness is not consistent with
perfect light. But this shows some obscurity of thought.
Darkness and light are opposites, and so are good and evil ;
but not goodness and evil. I did not say that limited evil
was consistent with perfect good, as an existing condition
of things everywhere; I said it was consistent with perfect
goodness as an element of character existing in the Deity.
With God, in the higher plane of his operations, as with
man on a lower, it may be wise and good to “ choose the
less of two evils where it is impossible to shun both.”
“ How do I know that evil is limited as to time ? ” How
does Mr. Symes know that it is not ? Let him read Herbert
Spencer’s chapter on the “ Evanescence of Evil.” Let him
ask himself what prospect there is of the eternal duration
of a thing which is continually diminishing in amount. He
admits that evils are diminishing through man’s agency,
man’s growing wisdom. So they ought some day to end.
But he declines to give God the glory. Now the Creator of
man is the author of man’s wisdom. He employs man as
his best instrument to improve the face of the earth and
weed out evils from society. To a Theist this is so, of
course; the creator of man’s body is the author of his spirit
and the guide of his course. But with curious blindness to
the Theistic position, Mr. Symes seeks to infer that man is
wiser than his maker. He reckons disease and all destructive
forces as God’s agents for evil, but does not reckon physi
�20
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
cians, philanthropists and reformers as his agents for good.
He fails to see that on the theistic hypothesis the evils which
man remov^God removes.
Mr. Symes contends that “ he who arranged matter as we
find it, is not good,” because it produces pain and other evils.
He would not say this of any human operator. When I
saw him the other day at a public meeting, he complained
of neuralgia and talked of going to a dentist. I am afraid
the dentist would have to arrange matter so as to give tem
porary pain, and yet the dentist might be good and might do
good. It is not the poser which my oppontml thinks it is,
to ask me whether I equally know the end and aim of fhp
Creator. I’m not going to search for it among the infinities.
Looking at the human jaws, and the apparatus of the teeth,
in connexion with food and the digestive organs, I think I
know the aim and end of the Creator in giving us teeth. It
is that we may chew our victuals. And then their occa-wr
sionally aching is an incidental evil, which may have some
bearing on his omnipotence, but does not bear witness against
his goodness. Mr. Symes’ next paragraph is curiously con
tradictory. He considers life a torture, every breath pain,
death preferable ; but does not commit suicide because lie
has an invincible love of life !
I have agreed with Mr. J. S. Mill that physical “ con
ditions ” put some limit to omnipotence as we might other
wise conceive it. Mr. Symes pounces upon this, but does
not seize it well. He says, “ Here is an admission of finite
power, and since finite bears no comparison to infinite we
must conclude that Mr. St. Clair’s deity has infinitely greater
weakness than strength.” Does this sound conclusive ? I
may correspondingly argue as follows,—My God can do
something, therefore his weakness is not utter inability, not
infinite weakness ; it is finite, and bears no comparison with
the infinite, therefore he has infinitely greater strength than
weakness. Why does not Mr. Symes give up dabbling in
this ocean of the infinite, which is too deep for both of us,
but where, if I choose to follow him, I can make quite as
great a show as he of letting down a plumb-line ? He wants
me to tell him—“ Is god eternal, and how do I ascertain
it?” What I think on the subject, I’ll tell him another
time : at present I assert that the human frame had a
creator—it is a designed machine, and machines must have
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
21
intelligent makers—and I challenge him to show that this,
my belief, is irrational.
“ Why do I call limited power omnipotence ? ” If power
to do all possible things is not to be called omnipotence we
must drop the term. I found the term in use and I used it:
but it is not essential to my argument. If Mr. Symes can
imagine the ability to do impossible things, he has powers
of imagination which transcend mine. I do not expect the
Deity to cause two and two to be five, and the whole to be
less than one of its quarters; I do not look for him to
make squares without angles, and a succession of days without
intervening nights. I believe in a Deity who can do all
¿lings not Involving contradictions. Can Mr. Symes show
that this belief of mine is irrational ? The kind of world
which my opponent demands—brand-new and straight off—
would involve impossibilities. His cry is for the moon.
He wants blossoms which never suffer from frost; he asks
for anjunbroken succession of good crops; he desires the
absence of all liability to disease in man and beast. Can
he suggest how a fleshly body, or any animal organism
could be made free from all liability to disease ? His
notion of the universe leaves no room for incidental evils,
necessary concomitants, “ partial evil, universal good ”—in
which I find the explanation of many difficulties.
I have only space to assert afresh that the human
frame is a machine, the human eye is an instrument;
machines and instruments have to be made ; the maker of
man is God; therefore Theism is true and it is rational to
believe it.
LETTER V.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
I cannot say if it was my fault or the printer’s that “God”
was spelt with a small g ; but I am not anxious to be read
by those who would throw down the paper in disgust for
such a trifle. I cannot induce Mr. St. Clair to give me a
sight of his deity, and therefore do not know what it is he
worships. It is not Mumbo Jumbo, nor yet an infinite god;
it is “ the intelligent creator of man,” he informs me. But
�22
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
no such being exists, as far as I can ascertain ; and why
should I give a capital G to a myth ? My opponent is
illogical in demanding honor for his god before he has
proved that he has one worthy of honor, especially when all
known facts are so strongly against his position. I respect
Mr. St. Clair, for I know him ; I don’t know his god ; to
give him capital letters might be construed to signify that
I both knew and honored him.
“The intelligent creator of man” is no more a description
of deity than “the tree that bears oranges” is of the orange
tree. I wish to know what the deity is; he merely speaks
of what he does. What was he before creating man ?
What is he apart from that action altogether ? I cannot
believe Mr. St. Clair knows, nor do I believe he has any
god at all. He can confute and confound me by a real
exhibition of his deity in his next letter.
My opponent rather unceremoniously sends me to “a
dictionary ” for definitions of “ God,” etc. I go. “ GOD,
n. [Sax., god; G., gott; D., god; Sw. and Dan., gud;
Goth., goth or guth.~\ 1. The Supreme Being ; Jehovah ;
the Eternal and Infinite Spirit, the Creator, and the Sove
reign of the Universe,” etc. (Webster’s Improved Diet. ;
Glasgow, W. Mackenzie.) What am I to think of Mr. St.
Clair’s consistency ? In both letters he has, almost indig
nantly and with something akin to sneering, repudiated the
“ infinity ” of god ; and yet I find this attribute duly set
out in the only definition of his deity which he has as yet
condescended so much as to indicate ! I must now pi ess
him to be candid : Is the definition to which he directed me
correct? If so, why does he reject the “infinity” or
decline to “maintain” it? If this definition be incorrect,
why did he refer me to it ?
I will next deal with a few of the fallacies and mistakes
of his second letter. 1. Mr. St. Clair is mistaken in as
suming that he “ successfully repelled ” any objections of
mine to god’s goodness. The strength of my objections
lies in the well-known and horrible facts of nature, which
cannot be explained away. Goodness, finite or infinite,
removes or prevents every evil in its power. Does Mr. St.
Clair venture to assert that there is no evil now in the world
which his deity could remove if he would ? If be cannot
remove so much as one of them—say cancer or neuralgia—
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
23
why call such a weakling god ? If he can and will not,
where is his goodness ? I demand no “ impossibilities ” of
deity, unless he is extremely weak. If he is not able to do
immensely more than I require, he should retire from his
post.
2. Mr. St. Clair, in not “ maintaining ” the infinity of !
I his god, “gives it up”—in the only sense I intended. I
j have suffered no sort of “ inconvenience ” from this. Oh
i dear, no! The only inconvenience I feel in this contest '■
lies in the fact that I have nothing but shadows and tinCertainties to contend with, phantoms,
“That flit e’er you can point the place.”
Would Mr. St. Clair kindly furnish me with one or two
stubborn Theistic facts, if he has them ?
3. It is amusing to learn that I waste “ half my space ”
in demolishing the “infinite” god, the very deity my
opponent sent me to the dictionary for! I presume that
must be his own ? 4. “ Ignorance comes before knowledge,
folly before wisdom.” No doubt. And in many millions
of cases the ignorance and the folly are never superseded by
anything better. Does Mr. St. Clair hold that, “whatever
is best ” ? What point has his remark else ? A perfectly
good and wise god would have permitted no folly, nor have
left his creatures ignorant of anything necessary to be
known. I expect Mr. St. Clair to contend in his next that
folly argues the wisdom, and evil the goodness, of his deity,
while inability to remove evils is proof positive of his
omnipotence.
5. My opponent jumbles mathematics, morality, and
botany in the most edifying manner in his allusion to the
circle, the child, and the flower. Geometrical conceptions
are not “ beings;” they are abstractions. Innocence and
beauty may be perfect in a very imperfect and extremely
limited sense ; is that so with god’s goodness ? Mr. St.
Clair is extremely unfortunate in his analogies. All that
he has yet tried are failures. Or else his god is one of
very slender means. He is a surgeon performing “ tracheo
tomy,” a sculptor chipping stones into shape, a parent
“ educating ” his children, a builder employing “ scaffolds,”
etc. Before he has done, I fear he will rouse my sympathy
for this god as the most unfortunate victim of circumstances
�24
ATHEISM OK THEISM?
that ever lived. The orthodox divinity is certainly superior
to this. He never loses his power, and is self-reliant all
throughout his career. But Mr. St. Clair’s deity is so com
pletely under the control of circumstances, mostly adverse
ones, that I expect my opponent to announce next that a
memorial of condolence is to be despatched to him, and a
subscription opened to replenish his exhausted exchequer.
With the old-fashioned Christian god “ all things were
possible ; ” with Mr. St. Clair’s it seems quite the reverse.
No excuse could possibly be urged for any wrong done by
the orthodox deity ; nothing hut excuses have yet been urged
for this new one. I point out his misdeeds and show up his
criminal conduct. But Mr. St. Clair is ever ready with an
apology—“ Well, yes, but he couldn’t help it.” And this
poor thing must have a capital G-! Well, well. He needs
one!
6. Unless Mr. St. Clair knows that his god has removed
one evil, it is irrational to expect him to remove all. If
evil and good are compatible at all, and “ for a limited
time,” why not for ever ? How long must evil last to be
inconsistent with goodness ? “ Darkness and light are
opposites, so are good and evil; but not goodness and evil.”
Is that “ legerdemain ” or theology? It cannot be called
“ confusion of thought,” for thought is absent. We were
informed in Mr. St. Clair’s first that the conditions of all
labor were the same. What now does he mean by in
sinuating that man works on a “ lower plane ” than god ?
How is that assumption to be reconciled with the further
statement that god works by man ? God’s work is man’s
work, and man’s is god’s, if that be so. I shall be delighted
to be assured that all evil will be removed. But what are
its laws ?—laws of origin, progress, and decay ? Will
death and pain go ? Suppose they did go; the crime of
their introduction or creation remains.
7. God employs man to “ improve the face of the earth
and to weed out evils from society.” Assertion without
evidence. If true, what must be thought of a god that
creates evils and nourishes and perpetuates them for indefinite
periods, and ultimately uses man as his catspaw to remove
them ? How horribly they burn their fingers often in the work!
What confusion of thought and of moral perception must
possess a man who can count the author of all evil good,
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
25
and thank him for removing evils by the agency of human
suffering. What a monument that deity would have if all
the bones of his miserable agents could be collected and
reared into one stupendous pyramid—the bones of the
swarming millions who have perished horribly in removing
divine evils, of the poor blind slaves whipped on by the
crudest taskmaster that ever lived to undo the mischiefs
his folly or malice created. What can be the state of mind .
that supposes the “ physician ” who does his best to heal
sickness to be incited thereto by the author of that sick
ness—that the philanthropist who shelters, feeds, and
clothes the orphan is inspired by the being who murders the
parents ? When you “ gather grapes of thorns or figs of
thistles,” then may the author of evil incite to good deeds.
Or must we suppose the deity to be destitute of moral
qualities, and engaged in supernal legerdemain, throwing
in evils with one hand and removing them by the other, using
men as sentient and suffering marionettes in operating his
play ?
8. A dentist would have no calling if deity had not
“ scamped ” his work. If he inflict more than necessary
pain, he is considered cruel. An infinite god, such as I was
sent to the dictionary for, could have been under no
necessity to inflict any pain. Mr. St. Clair’s god seems able
enough for mischief, but almost powerless for good—a being
that needs endless apologies.
9. If my opponent’s deity renders death infinitely desirable
as a refuge from bis tyranny, and yet blocks the path to
it by inspiring an invincible love of life, wherein lies the
“ contradiction ” of my reference to it ?
10. I must leave my opponent for the present floundering
in the hopeless task of proving that his deity must be infi
nitely powerful because he can do “something.” Not I, '
but he, is the one who “ dabbles in the ocean of the infinite.”
11. Mr. St. Clair seems to hold that omnipotence is equiva
lent to the power to do all possible things. Is that new? I
never heard of its being used to signify the power to do
impossible things. I thought from his former letter that
“ omnipotence ” with him designated limited power ; it now
returns to its old condition, and in this letter signifies what
is indicated above. I wish Mr. St. Claii’ would be a little more
definite. He now “ believes in a deity who can do all things
�26
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
not involving contradictions.” Well, I have asked for no
contradictions, the very reverse. This belief of Mr. St.
Clair’s is highly irrational. You cannot possibly know how
many things could be done not involving contradictions ;
nor can you possibly know what power might be necessary
to perform them ; nor is it possible you should have any
reason for believing your deity to possess such power. If
that confession of faith is not a “ dabbling in an infinite
ocean,” what is it ? It is immensely amusing to see how
Theists and semi-Theists talk ! Their knowledge and ex
perience is about on a par with ours; yet they profess
belief in that into which, in the very nature of the case,
they can have no insight. But faith not founded on know
ledge must be irrational. Thus I show Mr. St. Clair’s creed
to be baseless and destitute of reason.
12. Perhaps my opponent will kindly show that a world
such as I desire would involve “ impossibilities,” or that a
God such as he believes in could not have made such a one ?
I do want “ blossoms that never suffer from frost; ” who
does not ? I do desire “ an unbroken succession of good
crops ; ” will Mr. St. Clair say that he does not ? Else why
is he pleased at the thought that all evil will ultimately
cease ? To judge from my opponent’s remarks, one might
suppose that it were a fault to desire good and not evil. Is
it so ? I hope it is no sign of depravity to hate evil and to
protest against evil-doers, even when they are deities. Does
Mr. St. Clair enjoy evil ? Would he not remove it all, if he
could ? He hates evil as I do ; but, like a lawyer with an
utterly indefensible client, he struggles to show a case
where there is none, and tries to defend an incongruous
rabble of half-formed and contradictory conceptions, mostly
remnants and tatters of old superstitions, loosely and unsymmetrically strung together on verbal threads, and col
lectively called God. It is pitiable to see a man of his
intellect and goodness engaged in hot conflict defending
error against truth, and palliating and excusing all evil for
the sake of the fancied author of it all.
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
27
LETTER VI.
From Mr. G. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
I regret that Mr. Symes should persist in speaking con
temptuously of the Deity. The little matter of the little
g ” in the name of God, if it was the printer’s fault, he
now makes his own. He considers he is not called upon to
give a capital G to a myth. No, but until he has proved God
to be a myth, he must allow the possibility of his existence;
and he ought to speak respectfully. In this third letter he
uses language about the Deity which renders it painful for
me to continue this discussion. It is a smaller matter that
he should forget the courtesy due to an opponent, and
insinuate a want of candour, as he does by “ now pressing
me to be candid.”
The question we were to discuss is set forth thus : “ Is
Atheism or Theism the more rational ? ” As Mr. Symes is
a professed Atheist, one would expect him to advance
reasons for believing that Atheism is rational, that there is
Ho God, and that the word ought to be spelt with a small g.
But it would be a difficult task, and as yet he has not at
tempted it. He would have to explain how things came to
be as they are without any intelligence either originating,
guiding, or controlling. His position is, that the eye was
not made to see with, the teeth were not made for mastica
tion, the human frame was not made at all. Like Topsy,
he “ specks it growed !” He knows that steam-engines do
Hot grow, except under the hand and mind of intelligent
engineers, but he thinks that human bodies do. He is
aware that telescopes and opera glasses have to be fashioned,
but he imagines that that'more wonderful instrument, the
human eye, is a sort of accident. Human intelligence has
grown up out of the dust; and there is no other origin for a
mother’s love or a martyr’s self-devotion. There is intelli
gence in every workshop, and at the head of every successful
business in the world, but none presiding over the universe.
Out of the fountain head have come greater things than
ever were in it. These are a few of the things which Mr.
�28
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
Symes has to defend and show to be rational. No wonder
that he defers the task !
He has not even fairly set about the alternative task of
showing Theism to be irrational. I have let him know
that I believe in an intelligent creator of man, worthy to be
called God because of the greatness of his power and the
goodness displayed in his operations. I have explained that
by “ creator ” of man I mean former of man out of pre
existing materials, and author of him as man. I have
urged that this belief of mine is rational, because the human
frame is a machine—in fact, much more, for it is a compli
cation of machines and instruments—and all machines and
instruments at all comparable to the bodily parts and organs
have required intelligence to form them. Telescopes are made,
and for a purpose; so must eyes have been: steam-engines
are made, and for a purpose, and so is the machine of the
human body. This is my rational belief. To deny these
things is to deny that similar effects require similar causes
to produce them, and is quite irrational. But instead of
showing my Theism to be irrational my opponent sets forth
a form of Theism which is irrational, and, therefore, easy to
refute, and picks out some inconsistencies in that. His
method may be summarised as follows:—“ Theism is belief
in an infinite God, a God of infinite power can do all things,
a God of infinite goodness would do all good things, but all
conceivable good things have not been done, therefore, a
God does not exist.” But this argument is fallacious : all
that follows is that either the power or the goodness of God
is less than infinite, and 1 have shown that we have no
right to credit the Deity with a power of effecting impossi
bilities. Omnipotence must be limited in that sense and to
that extent, and we must not expect to see contradictions
reconciled. God’s goodness I defend, and undertake to
show the inconclusiveness of anything which may be urged
against it. I do not contend for infinite power in the sense
of power to effect impossibilities. I do not deny almightiness if properly defined; though it is not essential to my
argument to contend for it, since something less than
almightiness may have sufficed for the creation of man.
Mr. Symes does waste ink in trying to commit me to his
absurd definition of Deity. The “infinite God” whom he
considers that he demolishes is only the image which he
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
29
himself had set up and wrongly exhibited as mine. I can
not allow it is mine any the more because he has found one
something like it in “Webster’s Dictionary.” Certainly,
when he demanded definitions, I said that a dictionary
might serve his purpose at that stage ; but I did not say it
would serve or satisfy me at all stages. Mr. Symes also
amuses me by his awkward gymnastics in the ocean of the
infinite. I followed him into the deep just to drive him out ;
so now he tries to get to shore before me, and shouts out
that it is I who am dabbling in the bottomless sea. Seeing
that I am leaving the waters, he tries to entice me back
again. He protests that he will now be reasonable. He
will confess himself confuted and confounded if I will afford
him, in my third letter, a real exhibition of my Deity!
Very likely; but I really cannot allow myself to make the
attempt. Regarding myself as only a creature, inferior to
my Creator, I do not presume to comprehend all his great
ness, so as to be able to give an exact description, or paint
an adequate portrait. I have heard of genii being induced
to go into a bottle, and I can imagine a Goliath taking a
Tom Thumb in his hand; but I for my part do not profess
to have th’s superiority over God. To define God would be
to chalk out his limits. As I decline to contend for a Deity
possessing contradictory infinities, my opponent wishes to pin
me to the equally foolish alternative of a God with no infinity
at all, a very limited marionette figure, such as I might
comprehend all round and put forth upon the stage for
Mr. Symes to laugh at. If God is not infinite in all senses,
I am to describe him ! But I do not feel shut up to any
such dilemma. God is the intelligent Being who consciously
and deliberately gave existence to man.
Mr. Symes complains that “ intelligent Creator of man ”
is no description. I have not promised a description, and
my argument does not require it. I judge that man had a
maker, as I judge that Cologne cathedral had an architect.
The architect of that cathedral is not known ; his name has
not come down to us, and no description could be given that
should distinguish him from others ; but the cathedral is
sufficient evidence that he existed. It is more rational to
believe in an architect than to disbelieve. I defend the
rationality of believing in God. I am not bound to give an
exact description of him. The question “ What was he
�30
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
before creating man ? ” I am not obliged to answer. I offer
Mr. Symes the “stubborn Theistic facts” which he asks for.
Human eyes are instruments superior to opera-glasses;
opera-glasses are designed for a purpose, and formed only
under intelligent direction; therefore nothing less than
intelligence will account for the existence of human eyes.
The human frame is a machine, including within itself
several subordinate machines of engines and levers ; repeat "
the above argument. A mother’s affection is intended for !
the good of her offspring, for the preservation of its life, for
securing the succession of generations ; and yet this affection
is not accounted for by saying it is of human origination ;
it owes its origin to the author of life, who planned the
succession of generations. These are Theistic facts, so
stubborn that no Atheist can satisfactorily dispose of them,
if I may judge from such attempts as I have seen As I
gave my opponent two out of these three facts before, he
had no ground for crying out that he has nothing but
shadows to contend with.
I define omnipotence to be the power of doing all things
not involving contradiction and impossibility. Mr. Symes
questions whether this view is new. I am not much con
cerned about that: it is the view I hold and I challenge
him to prove it irrational. He says he never heard of
“ omnipotence ” being used to signify the power to do im
possible things. If, then, my view is the only one he has
ever heard of, why does he ridicule it and allude to it as
semi-theistic? why does he say the orthodox divinity is
superior to mine ? why does he complain that I give him no
sight of the deity I worship ? But in truth my opponent
himself assumes that omnipotent goodness ought to do im
possible things—ought to give us the full-blown flower of
creation before the bud, and accomplish grand results
without processes involving incidental evil. He wishes me
to explain to him how it is that a God, such as I believe in,
cannot make such a world as is asked for. I have only to
say that no God could do it, because all operations must
have a beginning, a process and an end, and no conceivable
power, out of Hibernia, can make the end come before the
beginning. Will my opponent show me how it is to be
done ? Will he state a method by which the earth and
moon may be allowed to keep their present orbits, and light
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
o1
01
remain subject to its present laws, and yet eclipses be
rendered impossible ? Can he devise a human body that
can live and move and yet not be at all composed of flesh
subject to wounds ? Does he not see that a great and good
result may carry some minor undesirable concomitants along
with it ? Does he think he could show that any of the
evils he complains of are not of this sort ?
He seems to have great difficulty in grasping the thought
that all operations imply a process, take up time, and
involve incidental results which are not directly bargained
for. They may not be desired, yet may be foreseen and
accepted, because they lie in the path by which greater good
is to be attained. Mr. Symes says that he points out the
misdeeds and shows up the criminal conduct of God, and that
when he does so I reply, “ Yes, but he couldn’t help it.”
This is my opponent’s way of admitting that when he
charges the sufferings of mortals upon the Deity, as a Being
who could prevent them but will not, I have a reply for
him. I show that instead of limiting God’s good intent and
beneficent action, it is equally a solution of the difficulty if
we suppose a limitation of power. Then I show that limita
tions actually exist, in the ever-present conditions under
which operations are performed and ends wrought out. This
view of mine, which I reverently maintain, the language
of my opponent grossly misrepresents as equivalent to
making God “ the most unfortunate victim of circumstances
that ever lived.” It makes him and it leaves him almighty.
The alternative would have been to maintain that the power
of deity is without limits of any sort—that he can make
squares without angles, or diffuse a limited quantity of
material through a greater space without spreading it thinner.
This might have pleased Mr. Symes, who now parades
“the orthodox divinity who never loses his power, the oldfashioned Christian God with whom all things were pos
sible.” He never heard of any view of omnipotence different
from that which I maintain ; but he has heard of this oldfashioned Christian God so different from mine, and thinks
such a conception of God preferable. Naturally so, because
it is the conception which he feels able to demolish, as it is
composed of inconsistent parts.
Mr. Symes, unable to comprehend the temporary use of
scaffolding, except for human builders, inquires how long
�32
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
evil must last to be inconsistent with goodness ? Probably
as long as the good process which necessitates it as a con
comitant is still proceeding, and has not got beyond the
stage which requires it. I am surprised it should appear1
to Mr. Symes’s intelligence that the evil which is compatible
with goodness for a limited time, may as well be so for ever.
A stormy voyage may be endured because of the desirability
of migrating to a better country; but surely the storms
must be differently regarded if it is known that they are to
be perpetual and there is no port to be reached. Mr. Symes
forms his impression of the storms while he is sea-sick,
and refuses beforehand to find any compensation in reaching
the haven of rest. Suppose the storms go, he maintains
that the crime of their introduction or creation remains.”
He persists in charging all evils upon the Deity as crimes, as
though he knew enough of the ultimate issues of things to
justify him in saying there has been the least departure
from wise and good arrangements. If impossibilities could
be effected we might have the fruit before the bud, and ripe
apples before sour ones. If Mr. Symes is going to be
reasonable he must not ask for such things. He does ask
for them when he demands wisdom before ignorance and
declares that a good and wise God would not have left his
creatures ignorant of anything necessary to be known. And
he does ask for them, in my opinion, when he complains
against God on account of any evil whatever. He cannot
show that whatever is is not best, in the sense of being the
best possible at the present stage of the general progress.
As usual I leave much unsaid for want of space.
LETTER VII.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
Mr. St. Clair’s third is no stronger in facts or arguments
than his two former letters. It would, however, be unkind
to grumble, as he cannot present a strong case for Theism,
for the very sufficient reason that no such case exists.
He complains of my “ language about the deity.” Well,
in that he shows himself as unreasonable, though not so
cruel, as Nebuchadnezzar when he sent the three Hebrews
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
33
to the fiery furnace for refusing to worship his image. Mr.
St. Clair thinks I should “ advance reasons for believing
Atheism to be rational.” Each of my letters has teemed
with such reasons, not one of which has been yet refuted.
Has my opponent read what I have written ? I have also
shown how irrational it is to believe in a good and omni
potent god. The facts of nature proclaim aloud that no
good god exists; and there does not exist one fact, or one
aggregation of facts, to warrant the belief that an omni
potent god lives. Therefore Mr. St. Clair’s belief is
irrational. The believers in Mumbo Jumbo, the infalli
bility of the Pope, transubstantiation, or witchcraft, are not
more irrational than a Theist. They all believe, no doubt,
sincerely enough, but without any adequate reason.
In my last I expressed the anticipation that my opponent
would in his next argue the omnipotence of his deity from
his “ inability to remove evils.” Mr. St. Clair, in the
penultimate paragraph of his third letter, obligingly fulfils
my prediction by affirming that “ a limitation of power ”
, . . “ makes and leaves god almighty.”
Mr. St. Clair takes umbrage at my request that he would
be “ candid.” The request arose from that reference to the
dictionary and its necessary connexions. I do not yet know
whether the dictionary contains a definition he approves.
It seems to me—I may be in error—but it seems to me that
candor would have set me at rest on that before now.
At length Mr. St. Clair plunges into the Design Argu
ment—the most fallacious and ill founded of all the argu
ments for divine existence.
1. Adaptation argues an adapter, and an intelligent one.
Does it? Water is as well adapted for drowning land
animals as it is for marine animals to live in. Fire is
beautifully adapted to burn men; falling stones, trees, etc.,
storms, floods, explosions, fevers, famines, wild beasts, earth
quakes, and a thousand other evils are delightfully fitted to
kill them. Old age, too, will do it equally well. It cannot
be denied that the processes of decay and destruction show
as much regularity of action and as perfect adaptation of
means to ends as the processes which result in life. Perhaps
Mr. St. Clair regards an earthquake, a cantier, or any other
destructive agency as a “ sort of accident;” he fails to see,
probably, how beautifully, cunningly, and maliciously
�34
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
they are fitted for their work of destruction and misery 1
Certain skin diseases, tic-doloreux, sciatica, cramps, the
stone—how beautifully they are all adapted to the work of
inflicting pain ! Racks, wheels, stakes, gyves, “ boots,”
thumbscrews, bastinadoes, swords, guns, etc., are all made,
and argue or imply makers ; but earthquakes, plagues, frost
and snow, floods, famines, wild beasts, fevers, small-pox,
cancer, and what not, are immensely superior as agents of
pain and death, and yet Mr. St. Clair seems to see no design
in them, and fails to recognise the existence of a perfectly
malignant god, who made them all for his own pleasure !
Can perversity of intellect proceed farther? My worthy
opponent can readily enough perceive the design and the
malice of an infernal machine, and yet fails to recognise
the design and the malice of diseases and famines! He
recognises the folly or the malice of warriors, murderers,
and tyrants who kill or torture a few; and yet cannot admit
that there must be an omnipotent god, who cunningly con
trives and maliciously sets in motion the grand and perfect
machinery of nature to destroy all living things 1 He admits
the existence of folly and malice amongst mankind, and yet
refuses to admit that far greater folly and malice “ preside
over the universe ! ”
Of course, it cannot rationally be contended that god is
infinitely foolish and malicious, though he is “ perfectly” so.
He cannot do “ impossibilities,” nor things involving “ con
tradiction.” He found matter to his hand, and had to work
under the “ same condition of labor ” that men work under ;
and so, though the universe is not absolutely and infinitely
bad, yet it is as bad as the deity could possibly make it.
And, further, we are not to argue that because some scraps
of good, or seeming good, really do exist, that therefore the
good is eternal; for “ limited good for a limited time ” may
be consistent with perfect evil, and the deity is working by
various agencies to remove all good from his universe; and
then nought but evil will remain for ever!
There is Mr. St. Clair’s argument simply reversed.
2. But I must notice in detail the very few natural pheno
mena my opponent condescends to mention. The eye he
instances as a proof of design and beneficent divine work
manship. He says it is superior to opera-glasses. The best
eyes, no doubt, are better than opera-glasses. But our best
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
35
telescopes and microscopes far transcend the eye as optical
instruments. Its qualities are coarse and rudimentary com
pared with theirs. Eyes ! They are beautiful and ugly,
of good color and of disagreeable ; there are blear eyes,
goggle eyes, squint eyes, wall eyes ; color-blindness is a
defect observed in many thousands. Millions upon millions
of eyes never see at all. Were they made to see with ?
Had a beneficent creator made eyes, he would have
ensured their good performance. Had he meant them
for human advantage, he would have turned out
respectable workmanship. I wonder he did not do that
for his own credit. What optician could follow his example ?
All over the civilised world are ophthalmic institutions,
where men are constantly engaged patching up, or actually
improving, the work of Mr. St. Clair’s divine manufacturer,
who made eyes of water, jelly and soft fibres, whereas they
should have been made of hard and tough material, so that
disarrangement and destruction were next to impossible.
And these eyes, good, bad, useless, are palmed off upon us
by the maker, whether we like them or not. He gives no
guarantee for their performance either, as a respectable
jnanufacturei’ would, nor does he ever repair them when
dace out of order. There is no sense of honesty, decency or
shame in this deity. If he bestows eyes as a duty, they
ought all to be good ; if out of charity, it is a mockery to
give a poor wretch the eyes we often see !
If the eye is a divinely-manufactured article, as Mr. St.
Clair says (without attempting to prove it), then the worker
knew less of optics than I do, or else carelessly did his
work. The eye is not achromatic, and it has too many
lenses, the many surfaces of which waste light. It has the
defect of astigmatism, which shows that its maker did not
know much of mathematical optics. This grand instru
ment, the crowning work of an almighty god, has two
odd curves in the front—that is, in the cornea.
Everyone knows that the common run of spectacles
have a longer curve horizontally than perpendicularly,
and so has the eye !
Our best lenses are ground to
mathematical correctness, and the same curve prevails all
over the same side ; but the eye is herein defective. Hence
we cannot see, at the distance of clear vision, a horizontal
and perpendicular line distinctly at once : one of them is in
�36
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
focus when the other is out. Had there been a wise and
beneficent creator, he would long since have corrected this
defect, for opticians pointed it out generations ¡fince in
their critiques upon the eye. The eye, therefore, if made at
all, must be considered as the work of a mere amateur, and
-of one who worked more for his own amusement than for
human welfare.
3. The teeth! First of all, we are born without any;
later we “cut” them in misery, convulsions, often at the
expense of life.' The teeth thus cut are not permanent,
after all; in a few years they drop out, or are pushed out
by the so-called permanent teeth. And these!—in many
cases they begin to decay in a very few years ; henceforth
the victim of this dishonest tooth-maker is subject to tooth
ache, neuralgia, and dyspepsia. He also has to go to the
expense of new teeth, stuffing, etc., if he can afford them.
And may I ask my opponent what he would think of a
dentist who furnished him with teeth that ached, and
and decayed, and tumbled out ? What would he say if any
dentist treated him half so badly as his deity treats thousands?
If eyes and teeth are really manufactured by deity, Mr. St.
Clair must refute my criticisms, or admit that his deity is a
clumsy or careless worker, and also very dishonest and cr^jel.
These facts must be met and explained before Theism can
be shown to be rational.
4. But Mr. St. Clair seems to me virtually to give up all
possible right to use the Design Argument by admitting, as
he does, the independent existence of matter. If there be a
mystery in nature, then the existence of matter is that
mystery. And, further, there must be, from the nature of the
case, as much, at least, as much, if not more, design and
adaptation in the very elements of matter as in any living
thing. And, further still, I am not aware that anyone has
yet drawn the line between living matter and non-living
matter, nor have I any reason to suppose such a line
possible. All matter is probably alive, and always was
so, and ever will be so, though in far different degrees.
I affirm, too, that the adaptation between the molecules,
or atoms, or whatever the ultimate elements of matter may
be called, must be more perfect than between the parts of a
man. No man is perfect; nor is his best organ beyond the
range of adverse criticism. No man is perfectly adapted to
�ATHEISM Oli THEISM ?
37
his environment—at best his adaptation is but a makeshift,
a “ roughing it,” a period of unstable equilibrium, a tight
rope dance for dear life, with absolute certainty in every
case of a fatal fall by way of finale.
Turning from man, look at the ocean. Its waves swell
and roar and break a million million times ; but its water
changes not. Its atoms of hydrogen and oxygen are in
perfect equilibrium, in perfect mutual adaptation. So was
it when the first water flowed ; so will it be for ever. And
could that adaptation, so perfect, so absolute, so time-defy
ing, be the result of an accident, or natural result of merely
natural forces, as Mr. St. Clair implies ? And will he con
tend that the most perfect adaptations require no adapter,
while asserting that the imperfect, evanescent, and miserable
adaptations seen in man required for their production
an almighty and intelligent god ? To do so may be
prime theology, but it is not philosophy, nor science, nor
reason.
Mr. St. Clair now admits that he cannot define deity. I
suspected as much—he has no deity to define. Then why
does he contend for what he does not understand ? Like
the woman of Samaria, he “ worships he knows not what.”
“A mother’s affection is intended for the good of her off
spring,” my opponent informs me. It is impossible that he
can know that it is “ intended” for anything; that it does
effect the good of her offspring, though not invariably, is at
once conceded. What more does Mr. St. Clair know about
it ? And what is a mother’s hate “ intended ” for ? And
this hate “ owes its origin to the author of life.” Rabbits
frequently eat their young; is that also at the instigation
of deity ? Such arguments as my opponent deals in are
not “ Theistic facts,” as he supposes; they are merely
superstitious fictions unworthy the respect of a man
like Mr. St. Clair. To talk about deity caring for a
mother’s offspring is to me simply shocking. Who is
it' kills children in millions by measles, whooping cough,
convulsions, fever, small-pox, by earthquake, flood and
famine ? If there really does exist a deity, he kills millions of
children every century by famine. Has Mr. St. Clair ever
reflected on that fact ? Why, if a mother’s love has any
“ intention ” at all, it is to defend her child as long as
possible against the murderous attacks of this very deity,
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ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
who meets us at every turn and “ seeks to kill us ” at every
stage of life.
Will Mr. St. Clair give me one proved Theistic fact in
his next ?
LETTER VIII.
From Mr. Gr. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
Robinson Crusoe was puzzled as to his whereabouts in the
great ocean, but he was able to explore his little island;
and he might have made canoe voyages and gradually
extended the area of his knowledge, though hopeless of
including all the world. Mankind, in like manner, have
mapped the solar system, and delved down to the Silurian
rocks with their fossils, and they find their knowledge real
and useful, though it brings them no nearer to the beginning
of time or the boundaries of space. Our inability to com
prehend the Infinite is not a reason for undervaluing the
things within our reach. It is foolish to say we explain
nothing, because we cannot fully understand the first origin.
Things are explained, in a degree which gives the mind
some satisfaction, when we trace them back to their causes.
The trade winds, for instance, are accounted for by the
sun’s heat and the earth’s rotation : and this explanation is
not rendered inaccurate by pointing out that the cause of
the earth’s rotation is not known, and that the sun’s heat
itself requires accounting for. I, in my Crusoe fashion,
explore, and am obliged to be content with something less
than infinite knowledge. I trace some things to man’s intel
ligent action as their cause, and am convinced that certain
steam-engines, pumps, microscopes, &c., would not have
existed but for his operation. I find other things which I
can only explain by ascribing them to an intelligence which
is not man’s. The worker is not seen, but the work is seen;
and I know there must have been an architect of the human
frame, as I know there must have been a designer of
Cologne cathedral.
The human eye would be enough evidence if I had no
other. “ Was the eye constructed without skill in optics ? ”
asks that great mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton—“ or the
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
S9
ear without knowledge of sounds ? ” The argument is a
thousand-fold stronger for regarding the human frame as a
designed structure taking it as a whole ; for the eye stands
to the body only as the east window to the cathedral. The
teeth are a beautiful apparatus, surpassing human inven
tions, when we consider their growth, their enamelled pro
tective covering, their office, and their position at the
entrance of the alimentary canal, in proximity to the
tongue and the sources of saliva. The valves in the blood- vessels are so manifestly placed there with a view of securing
the circulation of the blood that Harvey inferred the Crea
tor’s intention, and so was guided to his discovery. It is a
question which all great investigators ask—“ What is the
creative intention in this arrangement ?■ ” for they find it a
clue to discovery. I must not linger over the human body:
let Atheists read Paley, Brougham, and Bell, and some of
them will give up their Atheism and take to refuting Mr.
Symes’s worn-out objections. Every creature is admirably
adapted to its mode of life and to the element in which
it lives. If we desired to give the body of a fish the best
form for moving through the water we should have to
fashion it as a solid of least resistance. “ A very difficult
chain of mathematical reasoning, by means of the highest
branches of algebra, leads to a knowledge of the curve which,
by revolving on its axis, makes a solid of this shape ....
and the curve resembles closely the face or head part of a
fish.” Let the young reader, perplexed by Mr. Symes’s
objections, read more of this in Lord Brougham’s “ Objects,
Advantages and Pleasures of Science.” The feathers of the
wings of birds are found to be placed at the best possible
angle for assisting progress by their action on the air. In
the Duke of Argyll’s “ Reign of Law ” there is a chapter
concerning the admirable mechanism of the bird’s wing. A
bird is heavier than the air in which it is sustained, and it
has to make headway against a resisting atmosphere. Man’s
poor attempts to make wings usually result in the disaster
of Imlac in Dr. Johnson’s “ Rasselas ” ; man’s attempts to
navigate the air by balloons are so poor that the Customs
Officers have no fear of being eluded. If we wish to see
how material laws can be so bent as to effect a designed
purpose we must study the problem of a bird’s flight.
Leaving birds for insects, how marvellous it is that the
�40
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
cabbage butterfly should always lay its eggs on the cabbage,
the leaves of which are so suited for the nourishment of the
young grubs, and will be so much relished! That butter
fly has no taste for cabbage leaves itself, and it will not live
to see its offspring, yet its instinct—which is not of its own
creation—guides it aright. These are samples of Theistic
facts, in one department. When Mr. Symes has dealt with
them I can furnish more.
In my Crusoe fashion, I discern an intelligence at work
which is not my own, nor that of my brother man, which
immensely transcends mine and his, though, with my Crusoe
limitations, I have not the means of deciding the measure
of its greatness. I discern a worker, whether infinite or
not—a worker operating under conditions, whether the con
ditions be self-imposed or not. He accomplishes many
things which I can appreciate ; He seems to be working
out greater purposes which I do but dimly grasp.
As an evolutionist I discern something of a purpose
running through the ages, independent of the will of kings
and legislators. I perceive a gradual advance to higher
platforms of life, at present culminating in man. Man did
not come until the earth had been prepared for him, and
stores of coal and iron laid up for his use. Apparently he
could not come without lower creatures preceding him ;
because he had to be born from them. As a race, we have
had to go through our schooling, for in no other way could
we become educated; our struggle with difficulty makes
men of us, unless we neutralise it by taking the discipline
sulkily. Had the Creator been perpetually at our elbow to
do our lessons for us, to work for us while we slept, and to
help us over all stiles, we should never have attained intel
lectual manhood and moral strength. Man is progressing
still, and therefore will be a nobler creature by and bye.
His surroundings are subject to an evolution and improve
ment, which advances pari passu with himself. He himself
is the Creator’s latest-fashioned and best-adapted instru
ment for effecting these desirable adaptations, commissioned
to carry on and carry out some of the highest purposes of
God. It is a great thing to be conscious of this ; and I am
bold to say that thousands of good people are conscious of
communion with a Higher Soul, of inspirations received
from him, and of tasks assigned by him, the act omplish*
4
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
41
meut of which is another phrase for co-operation with him
and doing his will on earth.
This Divine Worker seems to be limited by “the con
ditions of all work.” rAs regards ourselves and our own
work, we candlbt conceive how we could live at all in a
dreamy, shifting, chance world, not subject to fixed con
ditions. We are finite and conditioned, and cannot realise
an utterly different kind of existence. It would follow from
this alone that anything which the Creater may do with us
or for us must be conformable to the conditions of the
world we live in if it is to be comprehensible to us. Although,
therefore, He be great beyond all assignable limits, he must
necessarily look limited to us. Where we see him operating
we see him making use of natural forces, moulding and
directing them. The natural forces in themselves are neither
moral nor immoral—steam, electricity, and strychnine have
no conscience, and are not to be blamed or praised for their
effects. They may be turned to good uses or to bad uses—
strychnine to poison or to relieve, steam to work a locomo
tive or propel a murderous bullet. We infer a worker and
his moral character from the use made of natural forces.
Mr. Symes does not distinguish between forces working
blindly and forces working under intelligent direction, but
insists on ascribing all results to God, or else none. This
is not what I discern, for I perceive that some things have
been contrived by some Intelligence, and of other things I
do not perceive it.
An enlightened evolutionist ought to know that “ Evil ”
is “ Good in the making.” It has been so in the past,
again and again. Perfect goodness is producing more and
more good constantly (evil, as Spencer shows, is evanes
cent) and may probably produce infinite good in the course
of time. But Mr. Symes is not content to have it produced,
he wants his bread before the cake is baked.
Mr. Symes finishes his last by asking “Will I give him one
proved Theistic fact?” Well, something depends upon
what is allowed to be “ proof,” and that again depends upon
whether you have to convince a man of common sense or a
man of uncommon obstinacy. If folk possess eyes it is no
guarantee that light will reach their minds, if they choose
to live in a camera obscura. My opponent closes the shutters
and then complains that things are dark. What can I do
�42
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
with a man who does not believe that eyes are given him
to see with ? On the same principle his faculties are not
given him to enable him either to reason correctly or to
understand arguments. Perhaps I ought not to be surprised
that my proofs are thrown away upon him.
1 have noticed in going through a cut-glass manufactory
that although the workmen are skilful and the processes are
ingenious by which the crude “ metal” is blown, annealed,
ground on wheels of iron for the pattern, and on wheels of
stone and wood for smoothing and polishing—I have noticed
that accidents are liable to occur at every stage, and some
few cruets, wine-glasses, decanters, etc., get broken and
thrown into the waste tub. But if I want to see what is
being produced, and was designed before it was manufac
tured, I go not to the waste-tub, but to the show-room.
Certainly even a fractured salt-cellar in the waste-tub
would show design—a formative design accidently baulked,
not a design to produce fracture and waste—but a wise man
will rather go to the show-room. Mr. Symes, I imagine,
would go to the waste-tub and refuse to see anything out
side of it. He invites us to contemplate blind eyes, rotten
teeth and people suffering from cancer. He assures us that
had a beneficent Creator made our eyes He would have
ensured their good performance. I should reply that He
does so. “ Not in all cases,” says my querulous friend,
“ why I find squinting eyes and blind eyes, and here are
ophthalmic institutions ! ” True, man’s heart of pity leads
him to heal. Man’s intelligence enables him to understand
something of optics. In both respects he is growing up in
the ways of his Heavenly Father. The modest Newton
admired the Divine skill in optics: but Mr. Symes claims
to “ know more of optics himself,” and to be able to teach
the Creator his business. The eye “ought to have been made
not of water, jelly, and soft fibres, but of hard and tough
material.” Surely Alphonso of Castile has come back again.
That monarch said that had he been of the privy council of
the Deity he could have advised the formation of the solar
system on a better plan ! Had he said this concerning the
actual solar system instead of against the false system of
Ptolemy, it would have been irreverent, not to say blasphe
mous. I count it rather inconsistent in Mr. Symes to want
any uyes at all, as he thinks they were not made to see with
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
43
and are an endlass bother. Perhaps the hard and tough one£
which he would substitute would be faulty in their re
fraction (for all work is conditioned by the material).
Can my opponent assure me that it would not be so ? Has
he got any of these eyes ready-made, and do they answer
perfectly ? or is this an empty boast of his about improving
upon the Creator’s work ? I doubt not that there is a good
reason for employing soft humors and delicate fibres in the
eye, and then I admire the care and wisdom which have
provided so well for the protection of such a delicate organ,
by the position given to it, in a bony socket defended by lids
and lashes and ramparts. “ But the eye lacks achromatism,
and has the defect of astigmatism, and follows the pattern
of inferior spectacle-glasses in having two curves in the
cornea.” Rather random assertions these : take for instance
the first. Chromatism is color-ism; a double convex lens
or magnifying glass causes objects to appear with rainbow
colored fringes. This was a defect for a long time in
telescopes, and telescopes free from the defect are called
achromatic. Well, are we troubled and inconvenienced by
seeing these colored fringes when we use the naked eye ?
Is any reader conscious of it ? Now what is the fact ? All
telescopes were defective in this particular, and Sir I.
Newton had said that there could be no remedy, until it
occurred to an ingenious optician that the difficulty must
have been overcome by the Maker of the eye. So he
examined the eye till he discovered how it was overcome,
and then by imitation of the Creator’s method invented the
first achromatic telescope. I would call my opponent’s
attention to this, but I suppose it is of no use ; he will
persist in regarding the eyes as clumsy workmanship and in
complaining that they are palmed off upon us whether we
like it or not. The traveller Vambery mentions that in
Bokhara they punish slaves by gouging out their eyes. Mr.
Symes, to be consistent, ought not to protest against the
■cruelty, since in his estimation it involves no loss, and the
Chief cruelty is in having the eyes thrust upon us. But in
answer to his astounding assertion that the eye is not
respectable workmanship and that the best telescopes far
transcend it as optical instruments, it is sufficient to say
that we can see with our eyes, unaided by telescopes, whereas
we cannot see with telescopes unaided by eyes.
�44
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
My opponent not only damns his eyes, but curses his
Jreth. First because he is born without them! On his
theory this ought to be an advantage, so far as it goes. But,
considering that other beautiful provision of the beneficent
Creator, which supplies a fountain of milk for the infant
lips to draw from, teeth are not only not required for a milk
diet, but would be inconvenient to the mother. Then Mr.
Symes cries out, “ We cut them in misery! ” He is always
afraid of a little pain. “The first set are not permanent.”
No, becau-e the child will grow, the jaws will lengthen, and
there will be room enough for larger teeth, and for thirtytwo instead of twenty. Mr. Symes, as a child, had less
jaw; which reminds me, however, of a pun made by John
Hunter, the famous surgeon. While he was once lecturing,
and pointing out that in the higher animals the jaw is
shorter, while the intelligence, of course, is greater, his
pupils were chattering nonsense to one another. “ Gentle
men,” said Hunter, “let us have more intellect and less
jaw!” I don’t know whether those young men had attained
their wisdom-teeth. Mr. Symes is annoyed that even the
second set of teeth are subject to neuralgia and decay.
This he considers a great Atheistic fact. The evil appa
ratus of the teeth is thrust upon us in the same cruel
manner as our clumsily-made eyes, and we may any day
have an attack of neuralgia. At length, however, the
teeth decay and leave us, and then what do we do ? Why,
it appears, we have to go to the expense of a new set, so
essential are they, and this is made an additional subject of
complaint! By the bye, I suppose I must not pass over the
question put—what should I say if a dentist supplied me
with teeth that ached ? I should say that he was cleverer
than any other dentist I had met with, for the aching was
proof that he had connected the teeth with nerves, and made
them live. I should say I was glad to have living teeth in.
my mouth, instead of dead ivory, and that I was satisfied
the teeth were contrived for me to eat with, while their very
occasional aching was only an unpleasant incident, and per
haps brought on by my own folly. Careful people will not
often catch cold in the face, and good, moral people will not
so devote themselves to Venus and mercury that their teeth
fall out.
Let us come to adaptations. Of course I am not going.
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
45
to be pinned to any definition which makes adaptation the
same thing as design. Some adaptations may not be
designed. There’s a distinction to be drawn between mere
fitness to produce a result, and purposive fitness which intends
to secure the result. But Mr. Symes as usual does not
perceive distinctions which make all the difference. He
says that water is adapted for drowning and fire for burning.
Granted: but are they purposely adapted, deliberately
designed and fitted ? This is the very essence of the question.
When the jeweller’s boy drops a watch, gravity and “ the
law of falling bodies” are adapted to smash it; but that is
an accidental adaptation, not to be compared with the
adaptation of part to part in the construction of the watch
—not to be compared with it, but rather contrasted.
Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall, and the egg thus smashed
could not say that gravity was unadapted to produce the
result ; but compare this with the purposive adaptation of
an egg, as I will now epitomise it from Professor Owen’s
lecture on “ Design.” An egg is made convex and dome
like, to bear the weight of the sitting bird. It contains a
whitish spot, which is the germ, in which the development
of the chick begins. The germ is on one side of the yolk,
quite near to the shell, for it is necessary that it should be
brought as close as possible to the hot brooding skin of the
sitting hen. Now it is a fact that though you take as many
eggs as you please, and turn them about as often as you
like, you will always find this opaque white spot at the
middle of the uppermost surface of the yolk. Hunter com
pared this phasnomenon to the movements of the needle to
the pole. Of course there is an apparatus -which secures
this result; but it is an apparatus, a piece of machinery.
“ As the vital fire burns up, organic material is reduced to
carbon ; a membrane, over which the blood spreads in a
net-work of minute vessels, like a gill or lung, then extends
from the embryo to the inner side of the shell, between it
and the white; the shell is made porous to allow the air
access to this temporary respiratory organ ; and the oxygen
combining with the carbon, it exhales as carbonic acid. As
the chick approaches the period of its extrication, it is able
to breathe by its proper lungs, and in the vesica aeris, or
collection of air at the great end of the egg, it finds the
wherewithal to begin its feeble inspirations, and to utter the
�46
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
Jow chirp which may be heard just before it chips the shell.
And how does it effect this ? By means of a hard knob
specially formed upon the end of the upper beak, and which,
after it has done its work, disappears.” All this appears to
me something very different from the adaptedness of the
hard ground to break the egg if it falls; but Mr. Symes
would have us believe that the adaptation is of the same
sort! His words are, “ It cannot be denied that the pro
cesses of decay and destruction show as perfect adaptation i
of means to ends as processes which result in life.”
He argues that if anything is designed, earthquakes,
plagues, cancer, etc., are designed to cause pain, and must
be regarded as proving a malignant God. But can he show
that the fitness or adaptation in these agencies is purposive ?
I can see design in an infernal machine ; oh yes ! but I am
not convinced that earthquakes are an infernal arrangement,
much less that teeth are a diabolical invention because
they sometimes ache. The adaptedness of the teeth for
mastication bears the appearance of a good purpose; the
adaptedness of an earthquake to rock down houses is
not clearly purposive at all. There are influences of
destruction and of decay, I admit; but the constructive
operations are what I see design in. If I don’t attribute
the former to God, my opponent must not object, since he
does not either.
I have a word to say which must be fatal to this idea
that the forces of decay and destruction are purposive, if
any are, and prove a malignant deity. A malignant deity
finding pleasure in destruction, would soon destroy every
thing. But, in fact, the agencies which build up are
stronger than the agencies which destroy; construction
gains upon decay, good gains upon evil. For evil is evanes
cent as Herbert Spencer shows, in a chapter which Mr.
Symes will not deal with. Even if destruction had to be
ascribed to a destroying deity, construction would have to be
ascribed to a deity engaged in building up. Then, as the
same being would hardly build up with one hand and destroy
with the other, Mr. Symes would be landed in Dualism, or
the old Persian belief in two Gods. The further fact that
construction is gaining upon decay, good gaining upon evil,
would force him to admit that the good deity was the
stronger. The way out of this difficulty is only to be found
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
47
fai Theism as I advocate it—one God, operating under con|
ditions. One proof and test of this Theism consists in the
fact that evil and decay do not carry purpose on the face of
them, while organised adaptations do.
If the reader grasps this fact he will see through my
opponent’s curious attempt to turn my argument round and
make it appear equally good for proving the existence of a
malignant deity. He suggests such a being, “ laboring
under conditions ” which prevent infinite evil from being
effected at once, but “ working by various agencies to remove
all good from his universe.” He does not seem to see
that this implies a universe of “ good ” to begin with, and
that this is another form of his irrational demand that the
finished thing should exist before the crude and unwrought,
the perfect v^ork before there has been time for its elabora
tion. He wants his cake before it is baked, before the flour
is kneaded, before the wheat is grown.
LETTER IX.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
Mr. St. Clair says he “ knows ” there must have been
an “ architect of the human frame,” as he knows there
must have been “ a designer of Cologne Cathedral.” Well,
then, the human frame must be an architectural production,
or building. Of what Order, of what Style is it ? I never
saw it described in any book on Architecture : how is that ?
So baseless is my opponent’s Theism that he confounds
language in order to support it. If he will prove that
man’s frame is an architectural structure, I will prove
Cologne Cathedral to be a mushroom, of an edible sort, too.
Mr. St. Clair having no case, no real god, no facts to
support his superstition, cherishing a blind belief in an
impossibility, resorts to the unconscious legerdemain of
deceiving himself and his readers by the use of poetical and
mythical language, in which the distinction between natural
objects and human manufactures is ignored, and a potato
is dubbed a building and a building designated a turnip.
This is what the “Design argument” resolves itself into;
and under its witchery, men, not otherwise unfair or
�4 <8
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
^logical, run through fantastic mazes of bewilderment,
vainly persuading themselves that they are reasoning, when
they arc only floundering in “ Serbonian bogs,” following
the Theistic will-o’-the-wisp, manifestly benighted and lost,
and yet assuring you with the utmost gravity that they and
they alone are perfectly self-possessed and well know their
whereabouts, and whither they are tending.
With Mr. St. Clair, teeth are yet a beautiful apparatus
designed and intended for mastication. Has he never
reflected that nutrition is totally independent of mastication
and teeth in countless millions of beings ? The child lives
without teeth, so does many an old man ; sheep and cows
have no front teeth in the upper jaw; the whale, the
dugong, the ornithorhynchus, ant-eaters, and all birds are
destitute of teeth. If presence of teeth argues design, what
does their absence argue ? If ^od gives a man teeth to eat
with, I presume he means him to cease eating when he
destroys them. Instead of that, my opponent and other
irreverent and disobedient Theists, either misunderstanding
or disregarding the divine intimation, rush away to the
dentist and get other teeth wherewith to obstruct the divinf
intentions ! Will he explain his conduct?
Of course, I admit that nature can in some departments
immensely exceed man, but that does not prove any exis
tence ctbopc nature. The valves of the blood-vessels are
manifestly placed there to secure the circulation of the
blood, says my opponent. He might as well affirm that a
river-bed is manifestly placed where it is to secure the flow
of the river that way. Which existed first, rivers or river
beds? Which existed first, valves or blood-circulation?
There is in the animal world abundant circulation without
valves or veins. The cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises,
&c.) have no valves in their veins; and yet, I presume,
their blood circulates as well as ours. Circulation goes on
in a speck of protoplasm where there is no structure at all.
Even in organisms, the heart may be very diverse, and yet
serve the owner as well as we are served. In frogs, toads,
&c., there is but one ventricle; in most fish there is but one
auricle and one ventricle; in the lancelet there is but a
single tube. But their blood circulates as well as ours.
Had Mr. St. Clair’s deity felt any deep concern for
human welfare, he would have placed, had it occurred to
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
49
him, valves in the deep arteries, so that the poor wretcH
who ruptures one of them should not bleed to death.
I grew out of Paley, Brougham, and Bell’s theology years
ago. What naturalist or physiologist to-day shows any
respect to their crude Design argument ? Besides, Mr. St.
Clair has no right to refer to them; his god is not theirs—
theirs was almighty and infinitely wise; his a poor puny
thing for whom his single high priest is ever making
apologies.
If every creature were adapted, !< admirably ” or not, “to
the element in which it lives,” it wmuld never die. Geological
strata furnish absolute proofs that no creatures, no race of
creatures, were ever yet “ admirably adapted to their con
ditions.” Whole races have died out. Will my opponent
kindly explain ? Has he ever read of famines, coal-pit
disasters, earthquakes? What sort of a world does he live in?
Has he never passed a shambles or a cemetery ? Do the
creatures of his marvellously concocted god die of excessive
adaptation to their environments, or what ?
The fish is of just the right shape—the solid of hast
resistance fits it for its element. This looks learned and
imposing. But are all inhabitants of the water of one shape?
How is the solid of least resistance realized in the spermaceti
whale, with its big, blunt, square-fronted head ? In the
hammer-head? In the “ Portuguese man-of-war ? ” In
those slow ones that fall a prey to the swift ? Mr. St. Clair
reminds me of that venerable lady who could not sufficiently
admi re the ■wisdom of god in making rivers run down hill
and along the valleys. That, certainly, is a very strong
proof of divine existence; for rivers would run the other
way if there were no god, just as surely as fishes would be
of divers shapes, instead of being all of one pattern as they
now are, if there were not a god to make them all in his own
image.
The feathers of a bird’s wings are placed, I am informed,
at the “ best possible angle for assisting progress,” etc.
And cold is found in the best possible conditions for freezing
the early buds and blossoms and for killing men and children
exposed to it. Heat is well adapted to warming purposes.
Had there been no god, heat would probably freeze things,
and frost would roast, boil, or burn them. There is as much
design in the one case as in the other. Mr. St. Clair may
�50
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
next tell us the design in the wings of a penguin, a moa, or
an apteryx.
The cabbage butterfly deposits its eggs by instinct, says my
opponent. How does he know that sight or smell does not
guide it ? Has he consulted the insect ? What is instinct ?
And what right has Mr. St. Clair’s god to destroy my cabbages
by the disgusting caterpillars which spring from those eggs ?
Gardeners kill those caterpillars by myriads every year; but
the real destroyer of our gardens is Mr. St. Clair’s god.
Whose instinct or instigation leads the ichneumon to deposit
its eggs right in the body of a caterpillar, so that its
murderous brood should eat up their living host ? Whose
instinct guides the tapeworm to a human body ? Whose
instinct guides the locusts to lay waste a country and produce
a famine ?
My opponent says that butterflies and other objects men
tioned in his second paragraph are “ samples of theisti®'
facts.” So much the worse for deity and Theism, if true. I
had supposed, however, that Mr. St. Clair knew the differ
ence between Theology and Natural Science 1 Must I
enlighten him ? The eye and the circulation of the blood
are anatomical and physiological facts, not Theistic; birds
and fishes are subjects in zoology, and insects belong to the
sub-science of entomology. Cannibalism is as much, possibly
more, a Theistic fact as any yet named. Though if my
opponent will claim for his god the credit of creating all
noxious and destructive pests, including fleas, bugs, tape
worms, etc., I suppose an Atheist need not complain.
What my opponent says of “ discerning an intelligence
at work,” a “ worker .... whether infinite or not,” a
“ purpose running through the ages,” etc., is no doubt
borrowed from one of his discourses; and sure I am it
edified all the devout who listened to it. But discussion is
not a devotional exercise exactly, and I must beg him to
translate those liturgical scraps into plain language,
specially that about the “purpose running through the
ages.” The language is good ; I wonder if the purpose is.
I am in a fever-heat of anxiety to hear what it is my
opponent discerns, whether anyone else may get a glimpse
of it—at not too great a cost. The man that can “ discern
a purpose running through the ages ” of human history
must be either very much clearer sighted or immensely
�ATHEISM OB THEISM ?
51
more superstitious than anyone that I know. Indeed, I
must, till evidence be forthcoming, regard the boast as
nothing more than a rhetorical flourish. Is Mr. St. Clair a
clairvoyant, I wonder, or subject to second sight ?
“Man,” we are gravely told, “did not come until the earth
had been prepared for him.” Neither did the tapeworm, till
man had been prepared for him. It is worthy of note, too, that
pickpockets, forgers, swindlers, fortunetellers, inquisitors,
aristocrats, and vermin generally “ did not come till the
«
earth had been prepared for them.” And, who would credit
it ? there never was a chimney sweep till chimneys existed !
In that fact “ I discern ” a profound “ purpose ” of a two
fold nature:—1st. Chimneys were intended and designed to
be swept, and to this end divine Providence made coals
black and sooty, else sweeps would never have had any
work; 2nd. He made the sweeps in order to clear the flues
of their foulness. Mr. St. Clair may close his eyes to these
facts as long as he pleases ; they are Theistic facts—if any
and are a most remarkable proof of design and
intelligence. It was just as impossible for man to antedate
his necessary epoch, or to postpone it, as for sweeps to precede chimneys. Man’s coming was the natural and inevitable Outcome or result of all the phænomena that preceded
him io-flis own line of development. You have no better
proof that water is a natural product than that man is such.
He had nbJntelligent creator, nor was one required. Man
is a natural, not supernatural, phænomenon. His so-called
creator is Really his creation, a fancy, a bugbear, and
nothing more. It is high time for Atheists, I think, to
cease beating about the bush, and tell the Theist bluntly
that his gods are figments neither useful nor ornamental,
th® offspring of ignorance, fear, and slavery—to-day mere
grim and curious survivals of the epochs when superstition
was unchecked in its growth and sway.
Mr. St. Clair at length takes refuge in inspiration and
. infallibility. “ I am bold to say,” says he, “ that thousands
of good people are conscious of communion with a higher
soul, of inspirations received from him, and of tasks assigned
by him.” Here my opponent chooses for his comrades the
phrenzied prophets and priestesses of ancient superstitions ;
the hysterical nuns who converse with Mary at Lourdes and
where not; Johanna Southcott, Joseph Smith Edward
�52
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
Irving, Brigham Young, Mother Girling, et hoc genus
omne, whose name is legion, whose “ inspirations ” and god
given “ tasks ” have been “ thick as autumnal leaves in
Vallombrosa,” and have included every absurdity and every
crime known to history. What has god not “inspired?”
What has he not imposed as a task? “I could a tale
unfold,” but space forbids.
Will my opponent name one syllable of truth or an original
idea that either he or any other person ever derived from
“inspiration” or in “communion” with this higher soul?
Ah, me! This world is very wonderful. Socrat^ had a
deemon, Prospero was served by Ariel, Faust had his Mephistopheles, and Mr. St. Clair has his “ higher soul,” spelt with
initial capitals ! This higher soul of his—I may speak
with some authority—is but himself, in dim, shadowy, and
magnified outline, a very Brocken Spectre, projected on the
soft clouds of his superstition. I once had the diswg^
badly, but recovered long since. Do not despair, good sir;
the rising sun of common-sense and healthy Atheistic
thought will soon fling his powerful beams on the very spot
where your magnified and ghostly shadow now sits, and the
mists which form the throne of your deity will rarify and
vanish along with the occupant!
But to claim inspiration is to claim infallibility. If you
are sure you have communion with some one, to discuss the
question of his existence, to ask if belief in it is rational, are
highly improper—you have settled the matter by fact, and
there is an end of it. There is no arguing with an inspired
man ; nor should he himself attempt reason, it is unneces
sary. An inspired man should merely dogmatise—as Mr.
St. Clair does. He never argues, he merely states. I under
stand him now; he is weak in logic, but invincible in
faith. Men who hold communion with higher souls rarely
argue well. The reason is obvious:—no man that can
reason well and has a good case ever thinks of rushing into
inspiration. Inspiration is the despair of logic; it is the
refuge of those who are bankrupt of reason. Mr. St. Clair
must no more grumble with the Pope and his infallibility ;
he claims it too, and for exactly the same reasons. Had
the Pope been able to prove his other claims, he would have
had no excuse for claiming infallibility and “ communion
with the higher souls.” Just so, if Mr. St. Clair had been
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
53
able to make out even a passable, lame, blind, and limping
case in this discussion, we should have heard nothing about
inspiration and “ consciousness ” of deity. Any devout
worshipper can extort just as much real inspiration from
old clouts and mouldy bones as my opponent derives from
his god. Of course there is no arguing with this new
Moses—he is up among the crags of Sinai contemplating his
god, speaking to him face to face, reflecting on his feet, or
viewing other “ parts ” of his splendid person. I hope he
will publish his inspirations when he descends.
I should not show any respect to Mr. St. Clair were I to
notice some few sentences in his letter, one close to the end
for example. No man not near his wit’s end could permit
himself deliberately to publish that about gouging out
eyes, &c.
Lastly, Mr. St. Clair has written four out of his six
betters, and yet no shadow of a Theistic fact. Assertions
—-bold enough many of them—we have had in abundance,
but no sound reasoning, no evidence of a divine existence
yet. Is he reserving his arguments and facts for his last
letter, and does he intend to overwhelm me then without
leaving me the possibility of reply? I should like to know
what his god is. Has he not yet made up his mind about
him ?
____
Postscriptum.—I have now, Friday evening, seen the
conclusion of Mr. St. Clair’s long letter. I understood
we were to confine ourselves to two columns and a-half each
letter; but here is one from my opponent of nearly five
columns. If his logic were equal to the length of his
epistles, I should soon be hors de combat, but the logic is in
the inverse ratio of the cubes of the lengths, and so I have
but little to do.
The first sentence of his supplement seems very much like
swearing. I do not “ damn eyes ” or “ curse teeth ; ” I
point out their faults and thus damn their maker, if there be
one. All I have done is to employ fair and honest criticism
respecting the manufactures of this new deity manufactured
by Mr. St. Clair. The really good things of Nature I no
more ignore nor despise than my opponent; I merely show
what sort of a god he has, if he has one. The excuses and
apologies he makes for his most unfortunate deity sufficiently
�54
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
show that Mr. St. Clair feels what I say and cannot refute
my criticisms. This is all I desire of him. He cannot deny
my facts, nor can he successfully defend his poor god upon
one single point, except by representing him as being weak
to contempt. Why contend for such a god ?
Considering how much Mr. St. Clair can write without
saying anything to the point, how long are his letters, how
weak his arguments, how many his words, how few his facts,
and how pointless even those are which he produces, it seems
to me that Hunter’s joke about the “ Jaw ” should have
been reserved for his own behoof. I have nothing at all to
do with the size of the jaw. If the deity made the jaw toe
small for its purpose, my opponent will need to make another
apology for him. I beg to ask : could Mr. St. Clair’s deity
have made the jaw and teeth so that they could grow at an
equal rate, or could he not? Could he have given every
person a good set of teeth that would do their work without
aching, or could he not ? Does he know when producing a
set of teeth that they will begin to decay almost as soon as
completed ? Does he intend them to do so ? Does he intend
them to give pain, or not ? I ask the same about the eyes.
Does this poor deity know when making a pair of blind eyes
that they will never see? Does he intend them to see, or
not? Mr. St. Clair will not answer these questions; his
false position will not allow him.
He would like a dentist who could give him an aching set
of teeth! I have long suspected him of joking, now I am
sure of it. If two of his new teeth pinched his gum, he
would return to the dentist to have them rectified. It is
only when Quixotically defending his poor god that he
pretends to despise pain. It seems to me very heartless to
speak of “ Venus and Mercury ” as he does when he must
know that many people, children for example, who devote
themselves to neither, suffer horrible pain both in connexion
with teeth and eyes—ay, every organ of the body. Is
human suffering a thing to be joked with? Evidently
“ communion with that higher soul ” whom he supposes to
have made this dreadful world, has produced its natural
effects and rendered my opponent callous to the sufferings
around him. Of course, it is only when the spirit of the
lord is upon him and he rises in wrath to do battle for his
deity that he feels no sympathy for human pain. It was
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
i
1
5S
converse with fancied deities that led to all the atrocit’js
of the middle ages. Once believe in a god that inflicts pain,
that makes people deformed, sickly, that afflicts them with
all the horrible diseases that flesh is heir to, and you make
, light of all pain but your own, out of sympathy for your
god and in acquiescence with his supposed intentions. This,
1 I fear, is my opponent’s condition. During this discussion
' he has persevered in ignoring suffering, and has spoken of
all evils as if they were flea-bites. It is, I am sure, his
irrational Theism that makes him do so.
The egg is descanted upon by my opponent. Well, did it
never occur to him that, here, as in every other case he can
mention, the creator, if such there be, must have made the
necessity for his design and adaptation before meeting that
necessity by contrivances? Young are produced in a great
variety of ways. Was it necessary that eggs should be
laid and then brooded over for weeks by the bird ? If so,
whence came that necessity? And does the deity know
whe# he is so carefully constructing an egg that it will
never be laid ? that fowl and egg will both die and rot
together? Or does he know that Mr. St. Clair will eat
g it for breakfast ? What a silly deity to manufacture such
countless millions of eggs, eggs of fishes, and eggs of fowls,
for the purpose of developing them into animals, when he
knows all the while that only a very few of them can
possibly reach their destination ! If he does not know their
destiny, he must be equally contemptible.
Mr. St. Clair tries to establish a distinction between
a mere fitness to produce a result, and purposive fitness
which intends to secure the result. This is a bold flight.
He won’t be “ pinned to definitions,” but he will assume
ability to distinguish between accidents and purposed events
in Nature. I presume his “ communion with the higher
soul ” must have been exceedingly close to authorise him to
speak thus. Is he the grand vizier of his deity, or who ?
Does he suppose his god would overdo his adaptation?
The destructive forces and processes of nature are just as
much organised and arranged for the set purpose of destroy
ing as anything that can be named. To the point: Does
Mr. St. Clair argue or hold that all pain is accidental?
That death is not intended, not designed ? Will he venture
to give a direct answer to these questions ? Are the teeth
�56
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
of cats, tigers, lions, etc., less evidently adapted to their
work of killing than the egg for its supposed intention ? Is
an earthquake less adapted to the destruction of life than
warmth and eggs are to produce or extend it ? Is a famine
less adapted to destroy than a harvest to sustain ? Is the
Spring more fit to produce blossoms than the frost is to nip
them ?
No; a malignant deity would not at once destroy every
thing, for two reasons : 1st. He might be too weak, as Mr. St.
Clair’s is ; 2nd. He would lose most of his horrible pleasure.
Malignancy would do just what my opponent’s god is doing,
raise up generation after generation, as long as he is able,
for the gratification of torturing and destroying them. No .
doubt, if Theism be at all rational, Dualism is the only '
logical form it can take. I am neither Monotheist nor
Duotheist: the whole belief appears to me so irrational and
absurd that I cannot think that civilised men of to-day
would be swayed by it, were their minds not perverted in
that direction in early life.
Indeed, it vastly surprises me to find a partial sceptic,
like my opponent, resuscitating the Design Argument,
which the “ Bridgewater Treatises ” so long ago elaborated
to death. I wish he would say a word or two on the tape
worm, the trichina, and other pests. It is so delightfully
amusing to me to hear a Theist expatiating on the goodness
of deity as displayed in the evils of life 1 “Evil and decay
do not carry purpose on the face of them, while organised
adaptations do.” Indeed 1 What would become of all new
organisms if the old were not cleared off by decay and
death? Beasts, birds, and fishes of prey, are not then
organised to destroy ? The wings of the hawk, the legs of
the tiger, the shape and tail of the dolphin were not
organised to enable them to destroy their prey ? The smut,
a fungus that destroys wheat, the dry rot, barnacles that
eat ships to destruction, locusts, caterpillars, phylloxera,
the empusa muscoo, a fungus that kills flies, the botrytis
bassiana, a fungus which attacks the silkworms, and reduced
the annual production of cocoons in France between the
years 1853 and 1865 from 65,000,000 to 10,000,000; thepotato disease, which caused such suffering and misery in
Ireland—these fungi are not organised, Mr. St. Clair, by im
plication, affirms! What will not Theism lead a man to say?
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
57
He quotes Professor Owen—Does he not know that Owen
and other great Naturalists can tell by the examination of
a tooth whether an unknown animal was a carnivore or a
vegetarian, etc. ? Were the teeth, muscles, viscera, etc.,
of a carnivore “purposively” adapted for killing, tearing,
, and digesting other animals, or not ? Yes, or no ? pray.
!■
My opponent must try again—I wish to encourage him.
He has not yet laid the first stone of rational Theism. No
Theistic fact has he given us yet, no argument or criticism
of mine has he upset so far. I don’t blame him. He has
undertaken an impossible work. All material, all force,
all arrangements (except those of art), all causes, all effects,
all processes, are natural; the supernatural is but a dream.
LETTER X.
From Mr. G-. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
Mr. Symes, in his postscript, again tilts at somebody who
believes in the supernatural. When I spoke of conscious
jbommunion with a Higher Soul, and inspirations received
from Him, I knew 1 was saying something the seeming
refutation of- which was easy; sol prefaced it with—“I
am bold to say.” No doubt all sorts of fanatics have
claimed inspiration. But I do not contend for the divine
ness of phrensies, nor argue for the special inspiration of the
Hebrew prophets. I hold reasonably that all new light of
knowledge and all new impulse to duty is inspiration. Tracing
effects back to causes, I come at last to One Divine Fount.
To Him I ascribe all life, all faculty in man, all insight
into truth, and all the development, improvement and refine
ment which are synonymous with progressive civilisation.
So, when I am requested to name one syllable of truth or a
single original idea derived from inspiration, I name all, for
there is not one which has had any othei’ ultimate source.
I may be referred to secondary or proximate sources, but
that would be like referring me to the printer’s types and
the compositor’s muscular exertions as an explanation of
Tennyson’s poem on “ Despair ” in the November number
of the Nineteenth Century. I am told that the Higher Soul
of which I speak is but myself projected in magnified form
�58
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
on a cloud, and there is just that modicum of truth in as
sertions of this sort which serves to lead some persons into
Atheism. Mr. Symes need not address me as though I were
ignorant of all that has been urged in the way of proving
that “ man makes God in his own image.” I believe man
has often done so, and I employ myself sometimes in destroy
ing such images. But just as there is true astronomy,
notwithstanding early and still-lingering superstitions of
astrology, so there is a true theology. I have shown that
there are evidences of purpose in nature—proofs of a Mind
at work—and there is a mind in man which reads and
understands the realised thoughts in nature and the designs
in progress. Hence it is true to say there is a God, and
that man, intellectually, is made after his likeness.
The closing paragraph of the postscript shows again how
Mr. Symes mistakes the issue. He says: “ All material,
all force, all arrangements (except those of art), all causes,
all effects, all processes, are natural; the supernatural is but
a dream.” Is this supposed to be good against me? I might
almost claim it as my own. My opponent denies the dis
tinction between the natural and the supernatural. So do I,
unless you define “ supernatural” to be the action of mind,
whether human or divine. He maintains a distinction be
tween the natural and the artificial. So do I. I perceive
for myself, and I point out to him, that all “ arrangements ”
made by man, and therefore called artificial, are effected by
the use of “ material ” and “ forces ” and “ causes ” ; so
that to judge whether they be artificial or not we have to
look for evidences of mind, purpose, design. Then I point
out that, judged in this way, the human eye is an artificial
production ; yet not a production of man’s art, and therefore
must be the work of some other Artificer. For similar
reasons, I am forced to the same conclusion regarding many
other things, and in a general way regarding the evolution
of the human race and the progress of the world,
“ I see in part
That all, as in some piece of art,
Is toil co-operant to an end.”
I don’t call these works supernatural; but seeing that they
are superhuman I reckon them as divine art. But Mr.
Symes, because it is po-sible to distinguish between divine
art and human, denies all resemblance; as though that
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
59
followed ! In his first paragraph, flippant and foolish, be
cause he does not find the human frame classed with orders
of architecture, he objects to my saying it has been built
up. He ought to have read a little book called “ The
House I live in”—a work on the human body. But he
would like, if he could, to laugh my legitimate analogies out
of court.
Paley, Brougham, and Bell—my God is not theirs. If
he means that my theology is not quite the same as theirs,
I assent, for I take into account Evolution, which they, in
their day, could not do. The arguments of Paley only
want restating in terms of the Evolution theory. The
machinery, and arrangements, and adaptations which Paley
ascribed to the Creator, some Atheists now ascribe to Evo
lution, as though Evolution were an intelligent creative
entity. Mr. Symes has been slow in launching this
boomerang, probably being little familiar with it, or know
ing it to be ineffective against Theism as I defend Theism ;
but now, for lack of better missiles he hurls it, though
timidly, as one who fears it will come back upon himself.
He disputes my argument that the valves in the blood
vessels are intended to secure the circulation of the blood,
OD the ground that a river makes its own channel. A few
zoological facts are adduced to support the inference, I
imagine, that the blood has constructed the blood-vessels
and given them a gradually increasing complication as we
advance from protoplasm through animals of low organisa
tion, up to man. This is an argument from Evolution.
So there is a gradual advance, is there? with increasing
Complication in the apparatus, and with the noble frame of
man as the result, and yet no design in any of it! Topsy
’spects it comes of itself! natural causes account for it!
Topsy does not comprehend that in divine art, as well as
in human, what is designed by the mind has to be accom
plished by the aid of ‘‘natural” instruments. All that the
eye can see is the instrument and the process; for the
existence of the originating mind has to be mentally
inferred, the guiding and governing spirit is only spiritually
discerned.
Alphonso suggests an improvement in the circulating
apparatus ; he would “ place valves in the deep arteries, so
that the poor wretch who ruptures one of them should not
�60
ATHEISM OK THEISM?
bleed to death.” It seems that valves in the blood-vessels'
might be placed there for a purpose if Alphonso were taken
into counsel! Now there are valves in the arteries, which
allow the blood to flow out from the heart, through the
system, and prevent its regurgitating. If this is the very
thing which Alphonso considers a wise arrangement, why
does he object to it when I call it wise? Or would he make
them to open the reverse way ? Then certainly the heart’s
blood would not pour through an accidental rupture, but
neither would it flow through the system at all, and there
fore we could not live. The arrangement suggested for the
arteries is that which does prevail in the veins; and there
fore there is much less danger from a ruptured vein than
from a ruptured artery. But how could you have circula
tion, if both sets of valves were adapted for sending blood
to the heart, and neither set would allow it to come away ?
Alphonso here shows himself very wise indeed. He is
again asking for contradictory arrangements; he again
fails to see that the Creator is working under conditions.
Mr. Symes, who has not a syllable to say in the way of
proving his Atheism to be rational, can only find material
for his letters by drawing out his opponent—“ Could God
make jaws and teeth in a certain way?” .“What isinstinct?” “Will I make plainer the purpose running
through the ages ? ” etc. Though aware of the trick, I will
say as much as my space allows, about Evolution. Briefly,.
Evolution explains the introduction of new species on to
this planet, in the following way. Taking some alreadyexisting species, the offspring inherit the parental likeness
with variations ; afterwards, in their individual life, they
may undergo modifications, which in turn they transmit to
their offspring. The particular varieties best suited to
external conditions, survive, and leave offspring equally
well suited, or even better suited. Variation upon variation,
in successive generations, causes the difference from the
original to become great, and the creatures are then classed
as a distinct species. In this way one species is born from
another, as truly as an individual is born of its parents.
This inheritance with modifications, is creation by birth.
If external conditions change, the modification takes a
direction which adapts the creature to them. If the crea
ture changes its habits, or migrates and comes under new
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
61
conditions, the modification takes the form of increased
growth in the organs and parts now especially called into
use, and diminished growth of the parts disused. It is no
poser for Mr. Symes to ask me the design of the wings of
the penguin, the moa and the apteryx: their wingshave
become reduced to remnants too small to fly with, because
they changed their habits, because they found a paradise
and preferred not to fly away from it. The wings of their
progenitors served their purpose well; inheritance repro
duced them as long as they were wanted; and when new
conditions or changed habits demanded the greater growth
of other organs, the forces of development were turned in
that direction. Could any self-acting arrangement be more
beautiful ? This is creation from age to age. This is part
of the method by which the purpose of the ages is being
elected. I am not contending for the supernatural instan
taneous creation of elephants with tusks full grown, but for
creation by natural means ; and here we see it going on.
Does Mr. Symes know anything at all about Evolution ?
Has he even read Darwin and Herbert Spencer? His
notion of creation seems to exclude evolution, and his
notion of evolution to exclude creation : but there are two
things he cannot do.: (1) explain any possible process of
creation without evolution, (2) explain how Evolution got
itself into geai’ without a Creator—I mean into such gear
as we find, when its machinery produces organised creatures
of higher and higher sort, culminating in man ; yes, in man,
with his marvellous frame and flesh, blood and brain, reason
and conscience, heart and hopes.
God created man; that is to say, the human race
has been born in fulfilment of the divine purpose. The
i idividual, tracing his parentage backwards, must pass
beyond “Adam” to some creature who was the common
progenitor of men and apes. Of course, man could no
more antedate his necessary epoch and come before his
time than sweeps could precede chimneys, to' use Mr.
Symes’s sooty illustration. I will grant Mr. Symes that; I
will grant him that man could not be born before his parents.
With equal readiness I assent to the proposition that, just as
with the individual infant, the human race was the necessary
result of the phenomena which preceded it in its own line of
development. That is to say, man is a product of natural
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ATHEISM OR THEISM?
causes, “ a natural and not a supernatural phenomenon.”
But if this is supposed to exclude a creative Mind, which
designed and fashioned man, I need only ask whether the
statue of Priestley, in Mr. Symes’s town of Birmingham, is
not at once the production of the sculptor’s design and the
inevitable result of particular movements of chisels upon a /'■
block of marble. There is no human production except by
the agency of natural causes ; there are no marks of inten
tion stamped upon such productions without a mind to give 5
them origin and authorship.
Mr. Symes, because I twitted him for crying so much
about his toothache, wrongfully represents me as being
callous to human sufferings. I think, if he had studied
Evolution, he would hardly speak of “ a God that inflicts
pain .... and afflicts people with all the horrible diseases
that flesh is heir to.” He wishes to know, “ Do I hold that
all pain is accidental ? and will I venture to give a direct
answer ? ” Of course I will. As I understand this discus
sion, Mr. Symes does hold that all pain is accidental.
Topsy ’spects that all pain comes of its own self. I, for my
part, have no hesitation in saying that the capacity to suffer
pain is deliberately designed, is manifestly for the gcod of
the individual, and a necessary factor in the evolution of
the higher animals. It may seem a paradox to say that
pain, when it occurs, is a good thing, and yet that it should
be removed as quickly as possible. Nevertheless I say it,
and can show it to be true. If you rest your hand on a
heated iron plate, it will disorganise the flesh. That is un
desirable, because it deprives you of a handy servant. The
pain which tells you that you are running this risk is no
evil, but a sentinel’s warning, a red-light danger signal, a
telegraphic intimation to use caution. We should be badly
off without the capacity for pain, while we should be want
ing in sense not to try and get rid of it by removing its
cause. Returning to “ the purpose runuing through the ,
ages,” it will be found that the animals with the most highly
developed nervous system and greatest capacity for pain
have become the higher animals in other respects, and are
classed high by the naturalist. Sensibility to pain has saved
theii’ progenitors from many dangers, has given them an
advantage in the “ struggle for existence,” and has promoted
their upward evolution in proportion to its acuteness.
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
63
Mr. Symes, who, two or three letters back, thought life
not worth living, has a great objection to death. I thought
so, because when I showed that he ought logically to commit
suicide it was not agreeable to him. When he passes a
cemetery, or reflects that whole races of creatures have died
out, he is much concerned, and marvels that I can retain
my Theism. As with pain, so with death, he demands to
know, “ Do I hold that death is not intended or designed ? ”
and how about beasts of prey—“Yes or no, pray ”? This
peremptory attitude, when used on a platform, might cow a
timid man, and at all events helps to produce an impression
that he is shirking a difficulty. To shirk difficulties is not
my custom. But when Mr. Symes adduces the earthquake
as apparently designed to destroy men, I cannot accept the
instance, because I cannot see that earthquakes are pur
posely adapted to rock down cities. Having some idea of
geological facts, I believe that earthquakes were before
cities in the order of time, and men in their ignorance have
built their cities on the earthquake lines. But the tiger’s
claws and fangs I accept as being plainly designed to fit the
animal for catching and tearing prey. I have before asserted-—and my opponent cannot disprove it—that every
organ is for the good of its possessor. If any exceptions
can be brought forward, I will show that they literally
prove the rule. The tiger’s organs are for the tiger’s
advantage ; so far there is design, and even beneficence.
It is equally true, of course, that the tiger’s claws are a dis
advantage to the tiger’s prey—to the individuals which fall
victims. This has been a great difficulty to the minds of
many good people who have not ransacked nature to find
atheistic arguments. I have only space to say that the
weeding-out of inferior and ill-adapted animals, with the
survival of the fittest, who leave offspring “fit” as them
selves, is a necessary part of the machinery for the evolu
tion of the higher animals. Without this arrangement
there never would have been a race of mankind. It ill
becomes us to quarrel with the process which gave us birth.
The death of those weak individuals is for the good of the
species, and the entire arrangement adds to the sum of
animal enjoyment. Death, in the form in which it comes
to the lower animals, is generally unexpected and seldom
painful; death, as it comes to man, is no evil if it be the
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ATHEISM OR THEISM?
portal to higher life. But Atheists, of course, are without
hope. The moral difficulties of the “ struggle for life ” are
dealt with in a volume which may be seen in the British
Museum and in the Birmingham Free Library—a volume
called “ Darwinism and Design,” written by George St.
Clair.
LETTER XI.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
Mr. St. Clair entered upon this discussion with the
ostensible object of showing that Theism is rational and
more rational than Atheism. But either he has never
seriously engaged in the work or else has wofully failed in
spite of honest and earnest effort. • What a iheos, deus, or
god is has yet to be learned—my opponent has no settled
opinions upon the subject. If he has, why does he not
straightforwardly state the proposition he intends to main
tain, and then allege only such facts and employ only such
reasoning as may tend to establish his theory ?
His Theism has evidently never been thought out ; he has
adopted it as he adopted the fashion of his coat, and has
never investigated the one or the other critically. If he has
investigated his Theism and really does understand its
nature, ramifications, and bearings, he most scrupulously
keeps it all secret, as Herodotus did much of what he was
told about the gods in Egypt—the most secret mysteries he
refused, from the most pious motives, to reveal. This is to
be regretted, especially as my opponent has so much to
reveal, if he could be induced to do it, being imbued with
plenary inspiration. Though, like most modest men, now
that I ask him to let us know what his god has told him, I
find his bashfulness so overpowers him that he cannot
summon up sufficient courage to give the world a single
syllable of what he heard or saw on Horeb or in the third
heaven. It is a pity the deity did not select a more appro
priate prophet ; but the ways of divine providence are
notoriously odd, capricious, uncertain, contradictory, and
insane.
Mr. St. Clair asks if I know anything of evolution. No
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
65
doubt that is intended to be a tit for some tat of
mine,
I may say that I understand Darwin and the
resMf the evolutionists sufficiently to know that evolution
is purely Atheistic, that nature is all-sufficient for all her
operations; that no god is wanted, needed, or desirable for
‘ any of her processes. I am obliged to Mr. St. Clair for
calling attention to his own book on the subject, though fir
the purposes of this discussion it was unnecessary ; and, if
Mr. St. Clair does not understand Darwin far better than
he does his poor deity, the book cannot be worth reading.
A man who can write five long letters on Theism without
naming one Theistic fact, or attempting a logical or rational
argument in support of his position—five letters full of
irrelevancies, side-issues, platitudes, uncertainties apologies
for deity, misrepresentation of natural facts, pompous
boasts of divine inspiration, and ability to “ discern the
purpose” of god “running through the ages,” and the dis
tinction between accidents and “purposive” events in
nature—whatever knowledge such a man may have, his
temper and disposition, his total want of ballast and critical
acumen must unfit him entirely for writing a work on
-evolution or any other philosophical subject.
If nature operates her own changes, evolution is a
beautiful theory ; but admit a god who works by means of
evolution, and the whole aspect of the subject is changed;
evolution becomes the most perfect system of red-tapism
that can be conceived. If evolution results in good, all
that good was as much needed millions of years back as
now; but red-tape decided that whole generations must
perish, that evils and abuses could not be removed, except
by an interminable and bewildering and murderous process,
complex beyond expression or thought—whereas an honest
■ and able god would have done the work out of hand and
i shown as much respect for the first of his children as for
later ones. But Mr. St. Clair’s murders generation after
J generation of his family for the sake of working out some
change, the evolution of a new organ, the gradual atrophy
or decay of old ones, the rise of a new species or the
destruction of aboriginal races.
I shall not further follow up Mr. St. Clair’s remarks.
They are not to the point, even approximately. He con
founds language and mingles art and nature, and thus
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ATHEISM OR THEISM?
bewilders his unwary reader instead of informing him. Long
since I should have ignored what my opponent says, only
my action would have been misunderstood. To prove
Theism rational one must prove that there is a god. This
has not been done. Then you must connect god and nature.
This has not been done; in fact, Mr. St. Clair is reduced to
the necessity of admitting that his god is weak and even a
part of nature—a big, stupid giant, most probably living in
that region to which the celebrated Jack climbed up by a
bean-stalk.
Here follow some positive evidences that there is no god
existing, except the mere idols and fictions of worshippers,
etc.—
1. No trace of one has been observed, no footstep, copro
lite, or what not. The only life of which mankind has any
knowledge is animal life and vegetable life; and it is in
conceivable that there should be any other.
2. The world was never made, nor any natural product
in it ; and therefore a maker is impossible.
3. The universe, so far as it is known, is not conducted
or governed, nor is any department of it, except those de
partments under the influence of living beings. Nature’s
processes consist in the interaction, attraction, repulsion,
union and disunion of its parts and forces, and of nothing
else.
4. All known substances and materials have definite and
unalterable quantities and attributes or qualities. Their
only changes are approximation, recession, combination, and
disunion; and all the phenomena of nature are the sole re
sults of these, one class of phenomena being no more
accidental or designed than another. Design is nowhere
found beyond the regions of animal action, and animal
action is nothing more nor anything less than the outcome
or the result, however complex, of the total forces and
materials which alternately combine and segregate in all
animals. An animal is what he is by virtue of his ante
cedents, his physical combinations and disunions, and his
environments.
All known facts lead logically to the above conclusions,
and it is naught but superstition or irrational belief that
assumes or predicates the contrary. Nor is any honest result
ever gained by assuming the existence of a god: it explains
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
67
nothing, it leads to nothing but confusion. More than that,
it is an attempt to explain nature’s mystery by creating a
still ^eater mystery, which is unphilosophical. Further
still, it is an attempt to expound nature by (1) that which
is not nature, or (2) by a natural phenomenon or set of
phenomena; for your god must be either natural, super1 natural, or artificial. Mr. St. Clair’s is not supernatural,
but natural. Very well; if it be natural, as he says, it is
an unknown phenomenon, or substance, or force ; and there
fore cannot be utilised in any way by reason. A false
philosophy or imposture may appeal to the unknown to
explain difficulties ; the whole round of religion consists of
nothing else than examples of it. But true philosophy
never attempts to explain the known by the unknown.
5. Mr. St. Clair believes in evolution, and yet holds the
dogma of a former creation. That is to play fast and loose
with reason; for why do you ascribe any power to physical
causes, if you refuse to regard them as sufficiently power
ful to originate, as well as to develope the phsenomena of
Nature ? Mr. St. Clair ascribes all the evils of life to
second causes, all its goods to deity. That is good Theology,
but the worst Philosophy. If life is physically sustained,
developed, and modified, it must be physically originated.
The only logical conclusion to be drawn from Theistic pre
misses is that each event, each phenomenon, each change is
the work of a separate god, or fairy, or devil—beings of
whom nothing is known beyond the fact that everyone of
them was created by man for the express purpose of creating
and governing the world or parts of it. But the philosopher
will never think of using them in any way till their real
existence and action have been placed beyond a doubt.
6. If the world was really made, it was not intelligently
made,, for it is chiefly a scene of confusion, strife, folly,
insanity, madness, brutality, and death. No intelligent
creator could endure the sight of it after making it:—be
would put his foot on it and crush it, or else commit suicide
in disgust. In geology the world is but a heap of ruins ; in
astronomy an unfortunate planet, so placed as regards the
sun that one part roasts while another freezes.
7. Men talk of the wisdom and goodness seen in God’s
creation ! He made man, and left him naked and houseless,
ignorant of nearly all he needed to know, a mere brute. He
�68
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
showed neither goodness nor wisdom here. It is only by a
painful process “ running through the ages,” a prqgtes of
blood, murder, starvation, and the death of millions %pon
millions that our civilisation has been achieved; and what
is it even now ? A civilisation of fraud, brutality slightly
veiled, hypocrisy wholesale, superstitions the most costly
and profound, a civilisation that houses the dead better than
the living, that pauperises survivors to bestow costly tombs
upon the dead, that builds splendid temples for gods and
priests to sport in, and leaves men and women to rot physi
cally, mentally and morally, in dens !
8. But this god never interferes for human good. This
governor of men never governs. He might prevent all
crime ; he prevents none. What is the use of a god who
could not or would not prevent the murder of Lincoln, Gar
field, and thousands of others ? If he could, and was by,
he is an accessory or worse ; if he couldn’t, he has in man
a creature he cannot control, and is therefore contemptible.
9. I am aware that some Theists urge that god could not
interfere, as I suggest, without violating man’s free-agency.
Whether Mr. St. Clair holds that opinion I cannot just now
say; but all along I have aimed at a much wider Theism
than that of Mr. St. Clair, and shall therefore make a remark
or two on this subject.
(1.) All government interferes with free-agency. And no
one complains that a government should try to prevent
crime. Indeed, that is one of its main functions. And a
government that does not, to its utmost knowledge and
power, prevent crime, is a bad government. Well, the socalled divine government prevents none ; what is its use?
Not to prevent crime is to encourage its commission. This
the divine government does.
(2) The free-agency plea is silly. Every murderer, every
tyrant destroys the free-agency of his victim. Does god
respect the free-agency of the victim less than that of the
villain ? Does he scrupulously refrain from checking the
latter while he inflicts wrong and death upon the former ?
Human laws are professedly (many of them really) framed
to protect the innocent and weak, and to restrain the strong
and vicious; divine laws must have a contrary intention, if
the free-agency plea is correct.
Finally.
I am well aware that my style of treating thia
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
69
subject must be very offensive to some. But I make no
apoloev for it. I adopt it deliberately and of set purpose.
I regard Theism as immensely stupid, so much so that
serious argument is wasted upon it, just as it would be
waste labor to try to disprove transubstantiation or to
show that Laputa could not fly as Gulliver describes.
Uncompromising ridicule seems to me the best weapon
wherewith to attack this miserable fetishism of my
opponent. I have used it unsparingly and heartily, and hope
my opponent has enjoyed the discussion as much as I
have.
I close without a spark of ill-will towards Mr. St. Clair,
and beg to express the opinion that his failure is not due
to any intellectual defect in him, but to the utterly im
possible proposition he undertook to defend. It is no
disgrace to fail where success is impossible. Nor do I
claim any credit to myself—Atheism is so easy to defend
that I must have been totally excuseless to have failed in it.
LETTER XII.
Fi‘‘om Mr. G. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
Mr. Symes goes off the platform with a laugh, and tells the
audience he has won a victory ; but he must be conscious
all the time that he has not dislodged his antagonist from
his entrenchments. I have been disappointed in my op
ponent. His first letter confirmed the assurance which he
had given to me privately—that this discusssion should be
“ definite, earnest, real ”—but his last contains the con
fession that he has deliberately adopted an offensive style
and dealt in uncompromising ridicule, because he considers
that serious argument would be wasted upon so stupid a
subject as Theism.
All through this discussion I have only used half the
notes made on a first reading of Mr. Symes’s letters, and
now, in order to find room for a general summing up, I
must withhold the detailed reply which I could give to his
last. It is annoying to have to leave so many fallacies
unanswered ; but I think I have replied to most statements
which could claim to be arguments, as far as my space
allowed.
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ATHEISM OR THEISM?
Mr. Symes opened the discussion, and ought to have
advanced some reasons for considering Atheism rational;
but he confessed at once that he had nothing positive to
urge in favor of his negative, but should confine himself to
picking holes in Theistic arguments. His letters have
abounded with peremptory questions, and every answer I
have given has afforded material to tear to pieces or snarl
at. My opponent began by asking eight questions, six of
which involved a discussion of the infinite, the infinite being
easy to juggle with. The definition of God which he pre
ferred was the vulgar definition, which involves a contradic
tion, and would therefore have given him an opportunity of
dialectical victory. He wished me to say that God is a
Being infinite in power and infinite in goodness, and he
wanted the former part of this definition to mean that the
power of Deity is adequate to accomplish things which are
in their very nature impossible. Then he would have argued
that infinite goodness would desire to free the world at once
from all evil, pain and inconvenience; that infinite power
could accomplish this ; but that it is not done, and there
fore no God exists. I refused to define Deity in the way
dictated to me, but it was all the same to my opponent—
his arguments were only good against the vulgar definition,
and so he attacked that. He set forth at large that there
was a good deal of pain and trouble in the world, which, to
his mind, must be inconsistent with the existence of an
infinite God. Of course, it is not really so unless, besides
possessing infinite goodness of nature, the Creator possesses
unlimited power, and that in a mathematical sense. Now, I
have shown that the Creator cannot possess unlimited power
in this sense, and therefore my opponent’s objection to God’s
existence on the ground that “ evils ” exist is not conclusive.
The analogy of human labor employed in building a
cathedral shows us that a fine pile may be completed in the
course of time. It leads us to compare past phases of the
world with the present, that we may discover the movement
and tendency of things, for
“We doubt not, through the ages one increasing purpose runs.”
We go as deep down into the past as Evolution will enable
us to do, and, beginning at the lowliest forms of life, we
find a gradually ascending series. At length we come to
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
71
man, who, even as a savage, is superior to all that went
be£a^. But the savage, as Gerald Massey says in his
“TSe of Eternity,” is only the rough-cast clay model of the
perfect statue. The savage advances into the condition of
a barbarian, and the barbarian, in time, becomes civilised.
But God has not yet finished the work of creating man into
his own image. It is astonishing that any student of Evolu
tion, possessing two eyes, should go to the quarry and fetch
out fossils for the purpose of showing that creatures have
suffered and died, and should fail to get any glimpse of “ a
purpose running through the ages.” But this is the case
with my opponent, to whose eye Evolution “ is purely
atheistic.” He also fails to see that, on this rational view
of creation, evils may be only temporary ; nay, more, that
they are certainly diminishing, and tend to vanish altogether.
I have invited my opponent three times over to find any
flaw in the reasoning of Herbert Spencer, where he main
tains that evil is evanescent; but it would have suited him
better if he could have quoted Spencer in a contrary sense.
The Creator’s power is exerted under conditions and
limitations arising out of the mathematical relations of
space “and time. It is, therefore, not “ in fining’ in the
vulgar sense. The vulgar definition of God wants mending;
and this is about all that Mr. Symes has been able to show.
As I, for my part, never put forth the vulgar definition, he
ought not to have given us a panorama of the evils of the
world, much less have made it revolve ad nauseam. The
rational Theism which I hold is not overturned by the
temporary occurrence of evil. But, when Mr. Symes found
this out, he took to ridiculing my God as a being who is
less than infinite in the vulgar sense, and professed to find
the orthodox God immensely superior.
Besides exposing the fallacy of the chief objections
brought against the existence of a Divine Being, I have
advanced positive proofs, from the marks of design in his
works. I lay stress on the fact that organs such as the
eye, and organisms such as the body, are instruments and
machines comparable to those designed and made by man,
and which never come into existence except when contrived
by intelligence. We never see the human mind going
through the process of designing. We never see the mind
at all. We have to look for marks of design in the work.
�72
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
It is the same with regard to the Divine Spirit. Objection
is made to Design, on the ground that Evolution explains
all things without a Creator; but I have shown that this is
not the case. Mr. Symes has hunted up all the blind eyes
he can find, and the perverted instincts, which do not effect
their asserted purpose, and is daring enough to say that
eyes are not made to see with. The difficulty is fully
explained by what I have said of the analogy between
divine and human work, performed under conditions, and
with concomitants of evil. I have challenged our clever
Alphonso to show us a pair of those superior eyes which he
says he could make, but he does not do so. He had only
made an empty boast.
Connected with Design is Adaptation. Mr. ¡Etames is
irrational enough to say that if anything is designed all
things are designed, and if Adaptation is seen in anything
it is seen iu all things. He sees it as much in the accidental
smashing of an egg as in the wonderful formation of the
egg to be the ark of safety for an embryo chick. This
astounding nonsense is forced upon him by his Atheism,
and must be charged to the irrational theory rather than to
the man4 But in seeking to bolster it up, Mr. Symes made
use of one argument which might seem to possess force un
less I exposed its weakness, and I had no space to do that
in reply to his fourth letter. He said that if there be design
anywhere it must be in the elements of matter especially,
where I do not seem to see it, as I bring forward organised
structures, living things. He says all matter is probably
alive—“ probably ! ” An instance of modesty in Mr. Symes,
though immediately afterwards he becomes positive again,
and says “ I affirm.” He affirms something about invisible
atoms, namely, that there is adaptation between the atoms,
and “ an equilibrium stable, perfect, time-defying,” far
superior to the unstable adaptation of living creatures to
their surroundings. My reply must be brief. An atom is
that which has no parts. It cannot therefore have any
organs, nor be an organism, nor possess life. Out of atoms,
as out of bricks, larger things are built up, and in some of
them I discern a certain architecture which speaks of Design.
Whether the bricks themselves are a manufactured article
does not affect my conclusion. The “ adaptation between
the atoms ” which Mr. Symes discerns and affirms cannot be
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
73 ’
in their interiors, for they are without parts. If he means
an adaptation of atom to atom, as in the chemistry of water,
I ne«d not deny it, though two or three bricks in combina
tion don’t impress me like the cathedral of the human body;
and as to the “ perfect, time-defying equilibrium ” of the
atoms of oxygen and hydrogen which form water, electricity
will unsettle it at once.
Has Mr. Symes proved Atheism to be rational? He
began by declaring that “ Atheism requires no direct evi
dence,” which I must interpret to mean it has none to offer.
What he now pretends to offer in his last comes late, and is
not good. Has he disproved the rationality of Theism ?
No, not as I present Theism to him. He said, very early,
that he “ must decline to narrow the ground ” to Theism as
I preset it, and, accordingly, what he has chiefly attacked
has be$n the vulgar definition of Theism. Now the dictionary
definition may go as far as I am concerned, but God remains.
If there are some difficulties on the theory of Theism,
they are only increased when we fly to Atheism. Atheism
accounts for nothing. Pain and misery, which are so much
complained of, are just as much facts whether there be a
God or no. Atheism does nothing to explain them, to
release us from them, to help us to bear them. An en
lightened Theism shows that sensibility to pain is a gracious
provision, warning us in time to escape greater evils and
contributing to our upward evolution. Evil is accounted
for as “ good in the making” or the necessary accompani
ment of greater good, or the temporary inconvenience lying
in the path to some glorious goal. Whatever is, is the best
possible at the present stage, if only all the relations of
things were known to us. Death enters into the great
scheme, for, by the removal of the aged, room is made for
younger life, and the total amount of enjoyment is increased.
At the same time, this is no hardship to those who pass
away, for the life of the individual soul is continued here
after and carried higher. This belief brightens the whole
of life and gives a very different aspect to pain and trouble and
death, which might fairly cause perplexity if death were the
final end.
The one advantage I derive from Mr. Symes’s letters is
that they seem to show me how men become Atheists.
There are certain questions which cannot be answered, and
�74
ATHEISM OK THEISM?
they are always asking those questions. There are certain
difficulties of belief, and these they cherish in preference to
the stronger reasons for faith and hope. There is sunshine
and shadow in the world, and they prefer to dwell in the
gloom. They search out all the crudities and failures, stinks
and sores, diseases and evils which the world affords, or ever
has afforded, and look at them through a magnifying glass.
Impressed with the magnitude of the loathsome heap, and
oblivious of everything else in creation, they presume to
think they could have advised something better if the
Creator had only consulted them. Had there been a wise
Creator he surely would have done so 1 Henceforth they
shriek out that there is no God; and nevertheless, illogical
as they always are, they whimper at pain instead of bearing
it, and complain of evils as though therewere some God
who was inflicting them. They complain that life is not
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maliciously desigued and the greatest evil of all. They
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• “ Come from the brute, poor souls—no souls
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Yet that couple cherished love for one another and pity for
all that breathe, and ought to have inferred thence that
unless a stream can rise higher than its source, there must
be much more pity and love in the Great Fount and Heart
of All Things.
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Is atheism or theism more rational? A discussion between Mr. Joseph Symes and Mr. George St. Clair
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Symes, Joseph [1841-1906]
Saint Clair, George
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 74 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's list, dated January 1882, on pages at the end numbered [1]-8 and 17-22, i.e. p.9-16 are missing. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh.
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Freethought Publishing Company
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1882
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RA1777
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Atheism
Theism
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Is atheism or theism more rational? A discussion between Mr. Joseph Symes and Mr. George St. Clair), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Atheism
NSS
Theism
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■
--------- ~
V,
Tlut^Js k^w?i> tX-| tvJ<Si>,
“IS IT REASONABLE
TO
WORSHIP GO D?”
VERBATIM REPORT
OF
TWO NIGHTS’ DEBATE AT NOTTINGHAM
BETWEEN
THE REV. R. A. ARMSTRONG
AND
CHARLES BRADLAUGH.
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,.
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1878.
I
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH
28, STONECUTTER STREET.
�PREFACE.
I have been invited to prefix a few sentences to this
debate in its published form, and I am glad to avail myself
of the opportunity so courteously accorded.
Many have criticised my conduct in consenting to meet
in public debate one whose teachings, both theological
(or anti-theological) and social, they and I alike regard as.
in many respects of pernicious tendency. My reply is, that
those teachings are influencing large numbers of men and
women; that to denounce them, is simply to intensify their
influence in some quarters; and that they must be met
face to face if their force is to be diminished. I regard oral
public discussion as one of the least efficient methods for
the discovery of truth; but I cannot blind myself to the
fact that it is almost the only method by which what I hold
to be true, can get the ear and the attention of some classes
of the community; and I perceive that if a man can trust
his temper and is also interested in his cause and not in
himself, he may in this way do some good which he can do
in no other. If it be given him to touch one heart or
enlighten one soul, it is a cheap price to pay, that a laugh
may go against him, or even that some good and sincere
persons may think he has acted wrongly.
The debate itself can only touch the edge of subjects so
stupendous as Theism and Worship. But some may be
�IV
PREFACE.
led by it to thought or to study, on which they would not
otherwise have entered.
I select three points in this debate for a further word or
two :
(i.) I said Mr. Bradlaugh could not “ conceive a better
world.” The expression is ambiguous. He and I both con
ceive and strive to promote a better state of things than that
now existing. But we can conceive no better constitution
for a world than that of a world so constituted as to evoke
the effort of mankind to advance its progress and improve
ment. The evil is not in itself good; it is only the
necessary condition of good. The moment you conceive
a world existing from first to last without evil, you conceive
a world destitute of the necessary conditions for the
evolution of noble character; and so, in eliminating the evil,
you eliminate a good which a thousand times outweighs
the evil.
(2.) “ Either,” argues Mr. Bradlaugh, in effect, “ God could
make a world without suffering, or he could not. If he could
and did not, he is not all-good. It he could not, he is not
all-powerful.” The reply is, What do you mean by allpowerful? If you mean having power to reconcile things
in themselves contradictory, we do not hold that God is
all-powerful. But a humanity, from the first enjoying
immunity from suffering, and yet possessed of nobility of
character, is a self-contradictory conception.
(3.) I have ventured upon alleging an Intelligent Cause
of the phenomena of the universe; in spite of the fact that
in several of his writings Mr. Bradlaugh has described
intelligence as implying limitations. But though intelli
gence, as known to us in man, is always hedged within
limits, there is no difficulty in conceiving each and every
limit as removed. In that case the essential conception of
�V
PREFACE.
intelligence remains the same precisely, although the change
of conditions revolutionises its mode of working.
The metaphysical argument for Theism, though I hold
it in the last resort to be unanswerable, can never be the
real basis of personal religion. That must rest on the facts
of consciousness verified by the results in character flowing
from the candid recognition of those facts. It is useless, as
well as unscientific, for the Atheist either to deny or to
ignore those facts. The hopeless task that lies before him,
ere Theism can be overturned, is to prove that experiences
which to many a Theist are more real and more unquestion
able than the deliverances of sight, of hearing, or of touch,
are mere phantasies of the brain.
I addressed the following letter to the Editor of the
National Reformer after the debate.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ NATIONAL REFORMER.”
Sir,—Some of those who heard or may read the recent discussion
between Mr. Bradlaugh, and myself may be willing to pursue the
positive argument for Theism and Worship which I adopted—-as distin
guished from and supplementary to the ordinary metaphysical argument
—at greater length than the limits of time permitted me to expound it in
the debate. Will you allow me to recommend to such persons three
works which will specially serve their purpose ? These are—Theodore
Parker’s “Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion” (eighteenpence, British and Foreign Unitarian Association, 37, Norfolk Street,
Strand) ; F. W. Newman’s “ Hebrew Theism ” (half-a-crown, Triibner);
and the Rev. Charles Voysey’s “Mystery of Pain, Death, and Sin”
(Williams & Norgate, 1878). I would gladly add to these Professor
Blackie’s “ Natural History of Atheism ”—a book of much intellectual
force—were it not that he indulges too often in a strain of superior
contempt with which I have no sympathy.—I am, &c.,
Richard A. Armstrong.
Nottingham,
Sept, <pth, 1878.
�vi
PREFACE.
I only now further desire to refer the reader to Mr. Brown
low Maitland’s “Theismor Agnosticism” (eighteen-pencer
Christian Knowledge Society, 1878).
Tennyson shall utter. for me my last plea with the
doubter to throw himself upon the bosom of God in
prayer:—
“Speak to him, thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit can.
meet,—
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.”
R. A. Armstrong.
Nottingham,
Sept. 23rd, 1878.
�Is it Reasonable to Worship God?”
The first of two nights’ debate in the Co-operative Hall,
Nottingham, between the Rev. R. A. Armstrong and Mr.
Charles Bradlaugh; G. B. Rothera, Esq., in the chair.
The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen,—I have had
the pleasure, during the last few weeks, of spending a very
pleasant holiday on the heather-covered mountains of
Scotland. On reaching Edinburgh on my way homeward,
I received a letter from my friend, Mr. Armstrong, inform
ing me of the arrangements for to-night’s debate, and
of the wish that was felt that I should preside. Though a
private communication, yet as it contains the grounds
upon which the request was made, and in part also
those upon which I was induced to comply, I shall
be glad if Mr. Armstrong will kindly give me per
mission to read that letter to you. It is as follows :—“ My Dear Sir,—I have obtained your address from your
son, and you must blame him for enabling me to molest you
with my importunities in the midst of your holiday.
“ Circumstances have led to my receiving an invitation from
the local branch of the National Secular Society, and from Mr.
Bradlaugh, to debate with the latter on the reasonableness of
religious worship. At first strongly disposed to decline, I have
been led, together with the friends whom I have consulted, to
believe that it was my duty to accept the task, and, however
distasteful, I am now in for it.
“ It is to take place at the Co-operative Hall, on two consecu
tive nights, Thursday and Friday, September 5 and 6, and we
are most anxious to secure the services—which I hope will be
chiefly formal—of a competent chairman who will possess the
respect of both parties. My own friends and the Secularists
independently suggested your name, and we all feel that we
should be deeply indebted to you if you would preside over us
on the two nights. My earnest desire is to throw such a tone
into the meetings as shall make them really helpful to genuine
�8
truth-seekers, and I have good ground for believing that manysuch will be present.
■ “ I sincerely hope you will do us all this favour. I do not
know where else to turn for a chairman that will be so acceptable
to all concerned. Your speedy and favourable reply will be very
welcome to yours truly,
R. A. Armstrong.
“Burns Street, Nottingham, Aug. 24, 1878.
“ G. B. Rothera, Esq.”
Now, ladies and gentlemen, on receiving that letter my
first impulse was, I think naturally, to decline, and that
for two reasons—first, I find that as one gets on in life there
is a stronger and stronger disposition to avoid the excite
ment of public meetings, to seek more and more the ease
of one’s own arm-chair, and to enjoy that best of all society,
our books (hear). Beyond this I had real misgivings as to
my ability to fill, as I ought, the duties sought to be put upon
me. Nevertheless, on slight reflection, these difficulties
vanished. I felt that there were occasions, of which this,
probably, was one, when it becomes us to lay aside con
siderations of personal ease and convenience in the hope to
meet the wishes of, and to be useful to, one’s neighbours
and friends. Now, in occupying this position I must not
be considered to identify myself with either the one party
or the other (hear). I may agree with either, or with
neither. I am here, as I believe you are here, interested in
a question of the gravest concern to all of us, as an earnest
inquirer, anxious to learn and not afraid to hear (applause).
My position, I take it, is very much akin to that of the
Speaker of the House of Commons. I have simply to
regulate the order of debate, and to ask at your hands
—what I am sure I shall receive—such orderly and consis
tent behaviour as will become an assembly of English gentle
men. Now,in those who have charged themselves with the
responsibility of this debate we have men of acknowledged
ability and high culture (applause)—men who, I am sure
will know well how to reconcile the duties of courtesy with
the earnestness of debate. In addressing themselves to the
present question, it must, I think, be clearly understood
that the question, as it appears upon the paper, is not to be
narrowed to a simple inquiry whether it is reasonable that
we should worship God. A much wider issue must be
covered by the debate, if it is to satisfy the expectations
of this audience. The question is one, I take, it between
�9
Theism and Atheism. It is not enough to postulate a Deity,
and then ask whether it is reasonable or not to worship him.
What I think we have a right to ask is, tfyat the gentle
man charged with the affirmative of the proposition
shall adduce such evidence as will establish satisfactorily
the conclusion that there is a Deity to worship.
The
position of the Atheist, I take it, is not one of disbelief,
but of simple unbelief.
He does not say that God
is not, but he affirms the lack of evidence for the
position that God is (hear). He does not even say
that there may not be a God. What he does say is that
if there is a God he has failed to manifest himself, either by
the utterance of his voice, in audible revelation, or by the
impression of his hand upon visible nature. I take it, there
fore, and think Mr. Armstrong will be prepared to
accept the position, that it will be incumbent upon him, at
the outset of the discussion, to address himself to a con
sideration of the proofs in favour of the position that there
is a God to worship. If he succeed in this, then, I
think, there will be a very difficult and trying ordeal before
Mr. Bradlaugh to prove that, God, being existent, is not
entitled to the reasonable worship of his creatures (applause).
Pardon me these remarks by way of introduction. Before
calling on Mr. Armstrong to open the debate, I may just say
that, by arrangement between them, Mr. Armstrong, upon
whom the affirmative rests, is to be allowed half-an-hour
to open the discussion; Mr. Bradlaugh half-an-hour in
reply ; that then the next hour will be divided into quarters,
each speaker having a quarter of an hour alternately
(applause). The result of this arrangement will be that
Mr. Armstrong will open the debate to-night, which will
be closed by Mr. Bradlaugh, while to-morrow night Mr.
Bradlaugh will open the debate and Mr. Armstrong will
■close it. This, I think, you will regard as a satisfactory
arrangement, and a liberal one, inasmuch as Mr. Bradlaugh
concedes to Mr. Armstrong the advantage of the last word
(applause).
Mr. Armstrong, who was cordially received, said : Mr.
Chairman and friends—I wish to say two or three words at
the outset of this debate as to its origin. You are many of
you aware that a short time ago Mr. Bradlaugh visited this
town, and gave a lecture in defence of Atheism, from this plat
form, in answer to Professor Max Muller’s Hibbert lectures.
I was led to be present then, and I offered some remarks
�IO
at the close. Mr. Bradlaugh rejoined, and in the course of
his rejoinder threw out, in a courteous manner, a challenge
for me to meet him and discuss these weighty matters at fur
ther length. I thought no more of it then, not conceiving it
to be my duty to take up that challenge. A few days after
wards, however, I received a letter from the Secretary of
the Nottingham branch of the National Secular Society
stating that many persons had been much interested in the
words that fell from me, and that they would consider it an
obligation conferred upon them, and others earnestly in pur
suit of truth, if I consented to meet Mr. Bradlaugh in this
manner. I replied, that for my own part, I was but little
sanguine of any good effects, or a balance of good effects,
resulting from such a meeting; but that the invitation being
couched in such courteous and earnest terms, I would con
sult with friends on whose judgment I placed reliance, before
finally replying. I consulted these friends, and at the same time
thought the matter over further; and I came to the conclusion
that, though it has undoubtedly happened that on too many
occasions theological debates have been the root of bitter
ness and strife, yet, nevertheless, two men really in earnest
about what they have to say, and speaking to persons also
in earnest, who have come neither for amusement nor ex
citement—-I came to the conclusion that a debate, con
ducted with tact and temper on both sides, might (may I
say by the blessing of God ?) conduce rather to good than
to evil (applause). Under these circumstances, I accepted
the challenge. I did so, though, as I said in my letter to
the chairman, it is distasteful to me, because if I make any
thing of this occasion it can only be by exhibiting to you
my inmost heart. We are not going to talk in a superficial
manner—we are not going to bandy compliments, nor, I
hope, exchange rebukes; but, each of us is going to search
his inner consciousness, and try to express to the audience
that which he finds therein. It is, perhaps, more distasteful
to me on this occasion than to Mr. Bradlaugh, since I find,
or believe myself to find, in my inner consciousness certain
facts which Mr. Bradlaugh will no doubt tell you he does
not find in his inner consciousness. These facts are to me
of the most solemn and sacred nature conceivable, and to
expose them before a large and public audience is a thing
very like a sort of martyrdom. If I were not confident
that, however little you may sympathise with what I say,
you will treat it with respect or consideration, I woul
�11
never consent to drag the sacred thoughts of my soul before
you to hold them up as an exhibition (hear). I am to
maintain to-night—not to demonstrate (as you will see
if you look at the bills)—the proposition that it is
reasonable to worship God. Mr. Bradlaugh has not
necessarily to disprove, but to impugn, that proposition.
Now, all I have any hope of doing to-night is this—to
show that it is reasonable for me and for others conscious of
mental phenomena in themselves more or less akin to those
of which I am conscious, to worship God. Would that I
could touch you with the beauty and the sweetness
of this belief—would that I could hold up before you, in all
its glory and sublimity, in all its strength and holiness, the
beauty and the sweetness of the worship of God. Could
I succeed in doing so, I should take your imaginations
captive. I think I should get the suffrage of your reason.
It is as though, sir, to-night, I had been called upon to
prove that my dearest friend is worthy to be loved—ay,
•even that my dearest friend exists; for, if God is aught to
us, he is our dearest, nearest friend—present when all
others are taken from us, a sure refuge in every moment of
temptation and of woe ; the very highest and most intimate
reality of which the mind can conceive—the sum and sub
stance of all existence. Well, now, how do I know this
God ? Who is this God of whom I speak ? Let me try to
tell you how it seems to me that I have made acquaintance
with him. I find that at certain moments of my life there
is that which I can best describe aS a voice—though it is a
metaphor—addressed to me, influencing largely my conduct.
I find that there are in me, as in all men, strong instincts,
strong desires, strong self-interests—some lower, some
higher, some less worthy, some more worthy, than others.
I find that but for this voice of which I speak I should be
entirely swayed thereby, as, so far as I can see, the brutes
of the field and the forest are swayed thereby. But I find
that sometimes, at moments when these instincts are the
very strongest within me, and when I am about to throw
myself into their realisation and give them expression in
■fact—I find, sometimes, at these moments that there comes
to me somewhat which, so far as my consciousness delivers,
is not myself. There comes to me somewhat stopping me
from indulging these instincts and bidding me to curb them.
Ifindatothertimesthatmyinstinctsof self-preservation, of self
regard, of pleasure-loving, and so forth—my appetites—
�12
would lead me to hold back from a certain course of action.
So far as I can judge, looking into my own mind, myself is
against that course of action. It appears to my reasoning
powers and inclinations that I had better keep out of it.
But there comes now somewhat which comes from outside,,
and which is no part of myself, which says, “ Go and do it.”
That was so when I received the invitation to this debate.
Again, I find that on certain occasions—alas! that I should
have to say it—I have defied this monitor, I have done that
which it told me not to do, or not done that which it bade
me to do. I find then that there enter into me from some
where—I know not from whence—pangs of remorse keener
than ever came from any personal sorrow, more biting than
ever came from any physical pain. There have been times,
however—let me thank God I can say so !—when I have
obeyed this voice, followed its dictates in spite of all myself
seeming to drag me from it; and my experience is that on
these occasions there has entered my soul, from whence I
cannot tell you, a peace surpassing that given us in any
other circumstances—a peace in the light of which the
sorrows that at other times might cut me to the heart seem
light and small, a peace in the beauty and holiness of which
these'sorrows seem wonderfully diminished. I will tell you what
I call the source of that voice which I fancy speaks to me
in that fourfold manner. I call the source of that voice
“ God,” and that is the first thing I mean by God. I call the
source of all these monitions and admonitions, these ex
hortations and rebukes, this voice of reproval and of
approval, the voice of God; because I must give it some
name, and that seems to me the simplest and the truest name
I can give it. I might, perhaps, be inclined to doubt
whether all this was not fancy (though I hardly think I
should) if, so far as I could gather, it were an unique experi
ence of my own; but I find that it is not so. I find that
this voice is recognised by every true man and woman I
meet. They may obey it or not, but they recognise it, and
allow that it is there. I behold the picture by Millais
of the day before the awful massacre of St. Bartho
lomew. I see the maiden leaning on her lover’s bosom
whilst he looks down upon her with looks of love and
tenderness, and she strives to tie around his arm a scarf.
She knows of the impending massacre, that all Protestants
are to be slaughtered, and she would fain put this badge
upon his arm as a secret signal to preserve him from the
�13
sword. Does he accept this method of escape ? Although
his inclination is to remain with his beloved, the strength of
his right hand is given to tear the badge from his arm, and
he faces death, not with joy, but with an exceeding bitter
sorrow for the moment—he faces death in simple loyalty
and obedience to the voice which has spoken to his heart.
That is an experience which you will all recognise—one
which, in less or in greater force, we have all had. What
ever explanation may be given—and, doubtless, Mr. Brad’
laugh has an explanation of his own—this voice of con
science is to me one of the primary evidences of the exist
ence of God. Nay, I will not call it an evidence; it
is God speaking to me (applause). This conscience
has been described by Mr. Voysey, in his recentlypublished sermons in refutation of Atheism, as fol
lows : “ The collision is so complete between the higher
voice and the impelling instinct, that one can only feel that
the two are radically different in nature, and. must have had
a different source. . . .To have the power of doing
intentionally what one shrinks from doing, and to
deny one’s self the pleasure which is so fascinating,
and which one longs to do, is to prove the immense superi
ority of our inner selves over the visible universe.”
To have the power, as that man, that Huguenot, must have
had it, to deny one’s self the pleasure which is so fascinating,
and for which one longs, is to prove the immense superiority
of our inner selves when hearing the voice of God over the
visible universe. Again, speaking of conscience, Voysey says :
“The conscience which makes us mortify our flesh with its
affections and lusts, and which often mars our happiness and
embitters our pleasure, upbraids us with reproaches and
stings us with remorse, that voice which hushes our cry for
happiness, which will not endure a single selfish plea, but
demands unquestioning obedience, and bids us fall down in
the very dust before the Majesty of Duty—we all, in our
secret hearts, revere this power, whether or not we obey it
as we should. At least, we pay to it the homage of our inmost
souls, and feel how great and grand it is to be its slave.”
Now, sir, I desire to pass on to another method, by which it
seems to me that I apprehend this being. Having made the
acquaintance with this awful voice—and the philosopher
Kant said two things filled him with awe, the starry
heavens and the moral nature in man—I pass on to another
matter. Behold the starry heaven itself. I know not how
�14
it is with you, but I will tell you my experience—and we are
told by scientific men that we must bring everything to the test
of experience. Sometimes when I have been out oftemper—as I
am sometimes, like other people—sometimes, when I have been
much distracted with cares, when troubles and pains have
been thick upon me, it falls to my lot to go out beneath the
starry heaven. What is it that I experience in my soul ? I
go through no process of metaphysical reasoning, I do not
argue with myself, but I simply feel that there is a Divine
presence there, in whose hand are all these stars and all
these worlds—a great voice singing, “ I am strong and I am
good, and you are safe nestling in my hand.” I know not
if that corresponds with the experience of all here,
but that it corresponds with the experience of many, I
feel sure ; and let me ask such not to drive away these
holy feelings, but to trust them as the assurance which
God gives of his presence. It may be that in those lakes
and mountains which you, sir, have seen of late, you
may have heard a message whispering to your soul of a
peace beyond the peace of earth—of a presence before
which all things are well. In others, not so sensitive per
haps to the beauties of natural scenery, such experience
comes in the tones of music—in some grand symphony or
some sweet song; and they feel lifted away from the things
of earth,' and they feel lifted into some presence in which it
is a joy to be, and which fills their soul with peace. That
presence I call, having no other name for it, the presence of
God. Observe, that in this I am not philosophising about
the cause—I am not saying that God is the cause and so
on; I am only relating the experience of my consciousness,
reported to you as faithfully and truly as I can read it. Let
me read what Professor Blackie wrote the other day:
“ Many things can be known only by being felt, all vital
forces are fundamentally unknowable.” And, says Francis
Newman, that arch-heretic : “ The astronomer is ever aware
of the presence of gravitation and the electrician sees all
things pervaded by electricity—powers descried by the mind,
unwitnessed by any sense, long unknown to the wise, still
unknown or undiscerned by the vulgar j yet this percep
tion of things hidden is not esteemed cloudy.” Now,
having made some acquaintance with this awful, inscrutable
something, to which I venture to give the name of God, I
venture to lift up to it the voice of my soul, and strive
to throw myself towards that Being. And what is my
�i5
experience ? Let us go to experience again: I find
when my mind is bewildered and in doubt, when it
is all involved with difficulties, that somehow, when I
address that Being, there comes to my soul . “ clear
shining,” and I see things plainer and more beautiful than
before. I appeal to him in pain and sorrow—not with the
coward’s prayer, but simply asking that I may feel his pre
sence, to endure it j and the pain and sorrow have become
light on the instant assurance that God is there to comfort
and console. I pray to him in weakness, when my strength
fails, and what is the result? That a new manhood
comes to me, and I feel that wondrous power which
over-arches all the worlds, and I feel that I have in me
also somewhat of his strength. I appeal to him, last of all,
in temptation, when the wrong deed presses closely on my
inclinations, and what do I find ? That strength is given
me to stand up against temptation, and he answers
according to the immemorial prayer of Christendom:
deliver us from temptation, This is experience, or I fancy
it is. It is not theory. Again, I am in gladness. When
is my gladness greatest, and when is it richest? Why,
when it flows up and out, in thankfulness and adoration, to
the source to which I trace it. Then my gladness seems to
receive an influence which lifts it up above. No gladness
is the true gladness without that. Let me conclude this
half-hour by reading a very short extract from Professor
Newman. Speaking of the instincts of mankind, he says:—
And the instinct of Religion is the noblest of them all,
The bravest, the most enduring, the most fruitful in mighty
deeds,
The source of earliest grandeur, unitress of scattered tribes ;
Even in the crudeness of its infancy,when unpurified by science,
Yet teeming with civilisation, with statesmanship, with letters.
Mistress of all high art, and parent of glorious martyrs.
And if from it have come wars, and bigotries, and cruelties,
Through infantine hot-headedness and unripeness of mind,
We take your aid, O Sceptics ! to purge it from all such evils,
And kindly honour we pay to you for your battles against super
stition ;
Yet the very evils ye deplore, prove Religion’s mighty energy,
And the grasp deeply seated which she has within human
hearts.”
(Loud applause.)
Mr. Bradlaugh : Thanking you, sir, for acceding to the
request which I would have gladly joined in had I had any
�right of acquaintance to entitle me to make it; thanking you
for undertaking what is always a troublesome duty, however
well a debate may be conducted, of presiding over a dis
cussion, permit me to say one word only as to the opening
which fell from your lips. There is only one phrase in that
which I desire to note, so as to save myself from the possi
bility of misapprehension. I quite agree with the view you
put of the position the Atheist takes, except that if Dualism
be affirmed, if more than Monism be affirmed, if more than
one existence be affirmed, and if it be the beyond of that one
existence which is called God, then the Atheist does not
say there may be one, but says there cannot be one; and
that is the only distinction I wish to put as against the very
kind words with which you introduced the speakers this
evening The question for our debate is : “ Is it reasonable
to worship God ?” and to determine this question it is
necessary to define the words “worship” and “God,”and next
to decide whether belief in God is reasonable or unreason
able ; and, secondly, whether worship is, under any, and
if any, what,. circumstances, reasonable or unreasonable.
And I am afraid I must here except that, in the speech to
which I have just listened, and which, from its tone and
kindly style, is perfectly unexceptionable, there is not one
word at present—it may possibly come later on—which may
fairly be taken as approaching a definition either of the word
“ God ” or the word “ worship. ” By worship I mean act of rever
ence, respect, adoration, homage, offered to some person.
According to this definition, worship cannot be offered to the
impersonal, and according to this definition it would be
unreasonable to advocate worship to be offered to the im
personal. Under the term “worship” I include prayer—which
is, evidently, from the opening, also included in the term
“worship” by the rev. gentleman who maintains the opposite
position to myself—praise, sacrifice, offerings, solemn ser
vices, adoration, personal prostration. For the word “God,”
not having a definition of my own, I take—not having yet
gathered, in what has fallen from Mr. Armstrong, enough to
enable me to say that I understand what he means by it—I
take the definition of “ God” given in Professor Flint’s Baird
lectures ; not meaning by that that Mr. Armstrong is bound
by that definition, but asking him to be kind enough to note
where he thinks that definition is incorrect, and to kindly tell
me so, for my guidance in the latter portions of the debate.
By “ God,” for the purpose of this debate, I shall mean a self-
�i7
existent, eternal being, infinite in power and in wisdom, and
perfect in holiness and goodness ; the maker of heaven
and earth. And by “self-existent" I mean, that, the con
ception of which does not require the conception of
antecedent to it. For example, this glass is phenomenal,
conceived, as all phenomena must be conceived, by the
characteristics or qualities which enable you to think
and identify it in your mind, but which cannot be con
ceived except as that of which there is possible ante
cedent and consequent, and which, therefore, cannot be
considered as self-existent according to my definition. By
“eternal”and by “infinite” I only mean illimitable, indefinite,
tome—applying the term “eternal ” to duration, and the word
“ infinite ” to extension. I take Professor Flint, or whoever
may hold the definition I have given of God, by “ maker ”
to mean originator; and then I am in the difficulty that the
word “ creator,” in the sense of origin, is, to me, a word
without meaning. I only know creation as change ; origin
of phenomena, not of existence; origin of condition, not
origin of substance. The words “ creation ” and “ de
struction ” are both words which have no other
meaning to my mind than the meaning of change.
I will now try to address myself to some of the argu
ments that were put forward by Mr. Armstrong. He
said that to him the notion of entering into this debate was
distasteful to him, and he addressed somewhat of an in
quiry as to my own feeling on the matter. No ! the dis
cussion of no one subject more than any other is distasteful
to me, unless it be of a personal character, in which it might
involve my having to say things upon which I should not like
to mislead and upon which it would be painful to me to
state the facts. Then a discussion would be distasteful to
me; but such a discussion as this is not any more distaste
ful to me than the discussion of an astronomical or geolo
gical problem; and I will urge to those who go even further
and say, that not only is such a matter distasteful, but that the
discussion of Theism is really immoral, to such I would read
from a recent volume entitled “ A Candid Examination of
Theism”:—“If there is no God, where can be the harm
in our examining the spurious evidence of his existence ?
If there is a God,- surely our first duty towards him must
be to exert to our utmost, in our attempts to find him, the
most noble faculty with which he has endowed us—as care
fully to investigate the evidence which he has seen fit to
�furnish of his own existence, as we investigate the evidence
of inferior things in his dependent creation. To say that
there is one rule or method for ascertaining truth in the
latter case which it is not legitimate to apply in the former
case, is merely a covert way of saying that the Deity—if
he exists—has not supplied us with rational evidence of
his existence.” Now, that is the position I am going to
put to you; and there ought to be nothing distasteful
to anyone in proving most thoroughly the whole of the
evidence upon which his supposed belief in God’s existence
rests. The grounds of his belief ought to be clear to him
self, or they are no sufficient grounds for his belief, even to
himself. If they are clear to himself they ought to be
clearly stateable to others; because, if not, they lie under
the suspicion of not being clear to himself. That which is
sufficient to him to convince him, is either capable of being
clearly stated—although it may not carry conviction to
another—or it is not. If it is not capable of being clearly
stated, I would suggest it is because it does not clearly exist
in his own mind. Now Mr. Armstrong says that he feels as if
called upon to prove that his dearest friend ought to be
loved, as if called upon to prove that his dearest friend
exists. He spoke of God as being to him his dearest
friend, and he followed that with some words as to which I am
not quite sure whether he intended to use them in the sense in
which they fell upon my ears. He described God as “ the
sum and substance of all existence.” I do not want to
make any verbal trick, and if I am putting more on Mr.
Armstrong than he meant to convey I should like to be put
right when he rises again, and I will ask him if he considers
God to be the sum and substance of all existing; and, if
he does not, I will ask him in what respect he distinguishes
between God, in his mind, and the sum and substance of
all existence ; because clearly, when he used those words he
had some meaning in his mind, and I should like to know
these two things : First, do you identify God in your mind
with the sum and substance of all existence ? If not, in
what respects do you distinguish God in your mind from
the sum and substance of all existence ? If you say that
you identify God with the sum and substance of all exist
ence, then I ask, are we included in that, sum and substance
of all existence ? And if we are included in that sum and
substance of all existence, is it reasonable for one phe
nomenon or for a number of phenomena, to offer worship
�T9
to any of, and to how much of, what remains ? Then he
addressed himself to the very old argument, which he put
so beautifully, when he said : “How do I know God?” and
launched into what is known as the argument from conscience,
an argument very fully stated by Professor Flint in the
Baird lectures to which I have referred. Mr. Armstrong
said, and here I will take a little exception; he said : “ In
me, as in all men here, are strong instincts; in me, as in all
men, there are strong desires; in me, as in all men, there is
a voice.” That is just the blunder; that is not true. I do
not mean that in any sort of disrespectful sense. If you
take a volume like Topinard’s “ Anthropology ” you find
that men’s desires, men’s emotions, and men’s instincts all
vary with race, all vary with locality, with type, all vary with
what Buckle called “Food, climate, soil, and life surround
ings and I ask, if there be this variance in individuals of
different races, nay, more, if there be this variance in in
dividuals of the same race at the same moment, and if the
members of the same race vary in different places and ages,
as to their instincts, desires, and emotions, I ask you whether
there has been the same variation in the source of it? You
say the source is God, and if so, how can a variable source
be a reliable object of worship ? Then let us see a little
more. “ I do not desire to do something, but my monitor
says ‘ Do ” or the reverse; and thus voice is the evidence
of Deity. I should have been obliged if Mr. Armstrong
had defined exactly what it was he meant by conscience,
because here we are going terribly to disagree. I am going
to deny the existence of conscience altogether, except as a
result of development upon organisation, including in that,
transmitted predisposition of ability to possible thought or
action. But if that be so, what becomes of this “ still small
voice,” of those desires and instincts? The mere fact
that the mother may have worked in a cotton-mill while
childbearing and have had bad food, or that the father may
have beaten her—his brutality may result in the awakening
of a desire and instinct exactly the opposite of that which Mr.
Armstrong has, and the organisation fitted for repeating
which may be handed down through generations. I stood
this morning for other purposes at the doors of Coldbath
fields Prison. One man who came out gave a sort of shrill
whistle and plunged into the crowd with a defiant and a
mocking air, showing that his conscience, his monitor, said
nothing to him except that he was glad he was outside, and
�20
ready to war with the world again (applause). I am not
wishing to press this view in any fashion unkindly or unfairly; '
I am only wanting to put the thing as it appears to me. I
want to.know: “ Does Mr. Armstrong contend that there is a
faculty identical in every human being which he calls con
science, which does decide for each human being, and
always decides, in the same manner, what is right and what
is wrong ? Or does he mean that this ‘ monitor,’ as he calls
it, decides differently in different men and in different
countries ? And if ‘ yes,’ is the source different in each case
where there is a different expression ? And if ‘ yes,’ is it
justifiable and reasonable to offer worship to an uncertain
source, or to a source which speaks with a different voice, or
to a source which is only one of a number, and of which you
do not know how far its limit extends, and where its juris
diction begins or ends ? ” Let us follow this out a little
more. We have not only to define conscience, but we have
also to define right and wrong, and I did not hear Mr. Arm
strong do that. I did hear him say that when he had done
something in opposition to his monitor he felt remorse. I
did hear him say there was struggling between himself and
his monitor, and here I had another difficulty. What is the
himself that struggles, as distinguished in his mind from the
monitor that he struggles against ? If the struggle is a
mental one, what is mind struggling against ? and if it is not,
how does Mr. Armstrong explain it ? Let us, if you please,
go to right and wrong. By moral I mean useful. I mean
that that is right which tends to the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, with the least injury to any. I am only
following Jeremy Bentham. That is my definition of right.
Many matters which have been held to come within that
definition in one age have been found in another age not to
come within it, and the great march of civilisation is that
from day to day it instructs us in what is useful. I submit
that instead of adoring the source of contradictory verdicts
it is more reasonable to find out for ourselves some rule we
can apply. For example, here Mr. Armstrong’s conscience
would not raise any particular objection to his taking animal
food, unless he happens to be a vegetarian, and then, I am
sure, he would conscientiously carry it out; but the majority
of people’s consciences in England would raise no great
objection to taking animal food. Yet in China and in
Hindustan hundreds of thousands of human beings have
died because vegetable food was not there for them, and
«
�21
their consciences made them prefer death to tasting
animal food' I want to know whether the conscience is
from the same source here as in Hindustan, and I want to
know, if that is so, which people are justified in worshipping
the source ? Take the case of murder. Mr. Armstrong’s
conscience would clearly tell him that it was wrong to murder
me. And yet there are many people in this country who
would not go to that extent. But I am going to take a
stronger illustration. There are a number of people who
think it perfectly right to bless the flags of a regiment, and to
pray to the God whom Mr. Armstrong asks me to worship,
that a particular regiment, whose flags are blessed, may kill
the people of some other particular regiment as rapidly as
possible. This shows that there are confusions of mind as
to what is meant by murder, and a like confusion exists on
a number of other matters on which the monitor is
misrepresenting.
And then Mr. Armstrong has said^
“ I mean by God the source of admonition, rebukes,
remorse, trouble,” and he says: “ It is a conscience-voice
which is recognised by every true man and woman.”
I am sure he would not wish to put any position
stronger than it should be put, and he put it, too, that this
was the feature in which man differed from the brutes. I
am inclined to tell him that not only there is not that recog
nition to-day amongst the physiological and psychological
teachers, but that we have a number of. men whose re
searches have been collected for us, who show us that what
you call the “ still small voice,” this monitor, these desires,
instincts, emotions, are to be found—varied, it is true
—right through the whole scale of animal life. Whereever there is a nervous encephalic apparatus sufficient
you have—except in the fact of language—wider distinc
tion between the highest order of human race and the
lowest, than you have between the lowest order of human
beings and those whom you are pleased to call brutes. I
will now only take the illustration of the eve of St. Bartho
lomew, which is fatal to the argument of Mr. Armstrong.
He gave the Protestant lover—a very fine character—reject
ing the symbolic bandage, and preferring to die for his faithy
or, .as Mr. Armstrong put it, “ to face death in simple
loyalty rather than play the hypocrite, and the source of that
feeling was God.” Was that the source of the feeling
which led Bruno to be burnt at the stake as if for Atheism,
or for Vanini, burnt for Atheism ; or for Lescynski, burnt
�for Atheism; or for Mrs. Besant, robbed of her child because
of her avowal of Atheism (hisses) ? You are hissing ; wait
whilst I answer. Is the source of your hissing, God ? Then
what a cowardly and weak thing, and little fitted for worship
must be that source (applause). I desire to deal with this
subject in all gravity, in all sincerity, in all kindness, but I
plead for a cause—weakly, it is true—for which great and
brave men and women have died, and I will permit no insult
to it in my presence—(cheers)—knowingly I will pass none.
I believe my antagonist to meet me loyally, honourably, and
honestly, and I believe him to meet me earnestly and
sincerely. I believe he has no desire to wound my feel
ings, and I 'do not wish to wound his ; and I ask you, the
jury here, to try to follow the same example set by him
in this debate (cheers).
Mr. Armstrong, being received with cheers, said:
It is very difficult indeed to think on these deep
problems under consideration with excitement amongst
the audience present, therefore I hope that you will be as
quiet as you can. I will begin at once with a confession
—and this, at any rate, will be a testimony of my candour—
by saying that the moment I had spoken certain words in
my opening speech I thought: “'Mr. Bradlaugh will have
me there;” and he had me (laughter). The words
were those in which I spoke of God as the sum and
substance of all existence. Now, to me, God is a much
simpler word than the phrase, “ sum and substance of all
existence.” Whether God be the “ sum and substance of
all existence ” I know not, for those words convey to me
less clear meaning than the word “God” conveys to me. The
source, moreover, of my immediate knowledge of God is
such that it can make no asseverations whatever upon deep
questions of metaphysics, as to what the “ sum and sub
stance of all existence” may consist. Mr. Bradlaugh has taken
a definition of God from Professor Flint. He is a Scotchman,
and Scotchmen are very fond of definitions (a laugh). Very
often, too, their definitions obscure their subject-matter, and
it is far harder to get any proper significance from them than
in the thing which they intended to define. I am
utterly incapable of saying whether that definition of Pro
fessor Flint’s is an accurate definition of God or not. What I
mean by “God,” and perhaps Mr. Bradlaugh will take it as the
best definition I can here give, is the source, whatever it be, of
this metaphorical voice—of these intimations or monitions,
�23
that come to me in certain experiences which I have. Mr.
Bradlaugh, of course, devoted much time to answering Pro
fessor Flint. He asked whether God was the source of that
loyalty with which the Atheists he mentioned went to the
stake, and’I say from the bottom of my heart, that he was. God
knows the Atheist though the Atheist knows not him. God
is the source of loyalty of heart, in whomsoever it may be.
If others are led to propound propositions which I believe
to be false, and if they dispute other propositions which I
believe to be true, do you think that God is going to judge
them for that, so long as they have been true and faithful to
their own reasoning powers (applause) ? Mr. Bradlaugh
noticed the phrase which fell from me, about a discussion
like this being distasteful to me. I did not say that the
matter under discussion was distasteful to me. I did not say
that a discussion under other conditions would be distasteful
to me. I did not say that it was at all distasteful to me to
search the grounds of my own belief, for my own belief
would be poor indeed were not such search my constant
practice (hear, hear). Mr. Bradlaugh laid great stress,
during the greater part of his speech, upon what
appear to be, in different races and in different
climes, the different and contradictory deliverances of
conscience. That difficulty is one which has been
felt by many persons, and dealt with, well and ill, by
various writers. The difficulty is one of importance, and it
arises, perhaps, from the word “ conscience ” being used in
various different senses. My use of the word “ conscience ” is
simply as being that voice of God (as I still call it) which says,
“Do the right; don’t do the wrong.” It does not in anyway say
what is right or what is wrong. That which I call the right,
like so much of our manhood, is the gradual development
and evolution of history, and it is largely dependent, as
Mr. Bradlaugh, says, upon climate and other external sur
roundings. We have to reason about what is right and wrong.
We must have gradual education of the individual and
of the race to get a clearer and more worthy conception of
the right and wrong ; and all I claim for conscience is that
the man, having resolved in his own mind what is right and
what is wrong,this conscience says, “Do the right,and do not
the wrong.” Therefore, instates of barbarous society, where
misled reason has induced persons to think certain things
were right which we look upon as crimes, still the voice of
conscience must necessarily tell them to do the right. The
�24
thing is right to the individual if he thinks it right. It may
be a terrible mistake of his—it may be a terrible mistake to
believe or teach certain things; nevertheless, the voice of
conscience says, “ Do the rightit does not define what
the right is. That is one of the things which God leaves to
be developed in humanity by slow degrees. Thank God, we
see that the idea of the right and the wrong is purifying—is
clarifying in the course of history. The conception of what
is right and what is wrong is better now than it was a
hundred years ago; the conception of what is right
and what is wrong is better still than it was a thou
sand years ago.
Many of the things then considered
laudable are now considered base; and many of the things
then considered base are now considered laudable. This
voice of which I speak, however, like all other voices, may
not be equally perceived at all times. Supposing that you
were at school, and a certain bell rang at six o’clock every
morning. If you accustom yourself to rising when the bell
rings, you will naturally enough go on hearing it; but if you
get into the habit of disregarding it, and turning over on the
other side for another nap, the bell may sound loudly but
you will cease to hear it. So it is, I take it, with the voice
of God, which ever speaks—which ever pleads—but against
which man may deafen himself. He may make himself so
dull of understanding that he may not hear it clearly. Not
only the individual man’s own obstinacy may make
him dull of hearing, but it must be conceded that this
dulness of hearing may descend to him from long
generations of those from whom he proceeds. It may
be a part of his inheritance. But it does not follow that
this voice does not exist, and that it does not still plead with
him if he had the ear to hear it. No man is so lost but that
if he strives to hear, that voice will become to him clearer and
more clear. I ask you here whether you find any difficulty
in deciding what, to you, is right or wrong? Mr. Bradlaugh
is very fond of definitions. The words “right’’and “wrong’’are
so simple that any definition of them would only obscure
them. I know, andyou know, what you m ean by right and wrong.
If I say of a thing, “ That is not right, don’t do it,” you know
what I mean. Can I speak in any plainer way than to say
of a thing, “ That is not right ” ? If there is no better way
of explaining what you mean than this—if there is no plainer
way—it is best not to attempt to define the word, because
the definition would only tend to obscure it. Not being
4
>
�25
much accustomed to debates of this description, much of
what I desired to say in the first half-hour was not said. I
am told that all this experience which I have been trying
to relate to you is fancy, and I am asked to prove that there
is some being who can be imagined to be this God whom I
believe I hear speaking to me. I might ask : “ Is it not
enough that not only do I think I hear this voice, but that
so many hundreds and thousands of the great and good
have also thought so ? Is it not enough that many of the
great reformers, many of the great leaders in the paths of
righteousness and mercy, in this England of ours, tell us that
they hear this voice ? You must, if you deny it, either think
they lie or that they are deluded. When Newman, Voysey,
Theodore Parker—the glorious abolitionist of America—
say that it is their most intimate experience, it is somewhat
shallow to assert that there is nothing in it. I am not one
of those who think that the existence of a God can be
proved to the understanding of every one in a large audience
on a priori grounds. At the same time the balance of
probability on a priori grounds seems to be, to me, strongly
in favour of Theism. I find that there is, in my own.
mental constitution, a demand for cause of some kind for
every phenomenon. I want to know what has led to thephenomenon, and I find a good many other people are apt to
inquire in the like direction. Even very little children,
before they are sophisticated by us teachers and parsons,
want to be informed as to the causes of things. Another
point — I cannot help believing that all cause must beintelligent. Yes, I knew that would go down in Mr. Brad
laugh’s notes; but I say again, I cannot conceive of any
cause which is not intelligent in some sort of way (applause).
Mr. Brad laugh : There are two things which are evidently
quite certain so far as my opponent is concerned; one is that
we shall have a good-tempered debate, and the other that we
shall have a candid debate. Mr. Armstrong has said frankly,
with reference to the definition of God, that he is perfectly in
capable of saying whether the definition of Professor Flint is
correct or not, and he has, I think I may say, complained that
I am too fond of definitions. Will he permit me on this to read
him an extract from Professor Max Muller’s recent lecture :
“ It was, I think, a very good old custom never to enter
upon the discussion of any scientific problem without giving,
beforehand definitions of the principal terms that had to be
employed. A book on logic or grammar generally opened
�with the question, What is logic? What is grammar ? No
one would write on minerals without first explaining what he
meant by a mineral, or on art, without defining, as well as
he might, his idea of art. No doubt it was often as trouble
some for the author to give such preliminary definitions as
it seemed useless to the reader, who was generally quite
incapable in the beginning of appreciating their full value.
Thus it happened that the rule of giving verbal definitions
came to be looked upon after a time as useless and obsolete.
Some authors actually took credit for no longer giving these
definitions, and it soon became the fashion to say that the
only true and complete definition of what was meant by
logic or grammar, by law or religion, was contained in the
books themselves which treated of these subjects. But
what has been the result ? Endless misunderstandings and
controversies which might have been avoided in many cases
if both sides had clearly defined what they did and what
they did not understand by certain words.” I will show you
presently where this need of accurate definition comes so
very strongly. Mr. Armstrong is quite clear that he knows
what right means ; he is also quite clear that you know
what he means. That may be true, but it also may not, and
I will show you the difficulty.
Suppose there were a
thorough disciple, say of some bishop or church, who thought
it right to put to death a man holding my opinions. That
man would think the capital punishment for heresy right,
Mr. Armstrong would not. That man’s conscience would
decide that it was right, Mr. Armstrong’s would decide that
it was not. What is the use of saying you both know what
is right ? The word right is a word by which you label
certain things, thoughts, and actions, the rightness of which
you have decided on some grounds known only to yourselves.
It may be they are pleasant to you or disagreeable to your
antagonist. I, in defining morality, gave you my reason for
labelling the thing with the name “right.” Mr. Armstrong has
given you no reason whatever. Mr. Armstrong says that
conscience is the voice of God which says : “ Do that which
is right, don’t do that which is wrong.” Yet the divine voice
does not tell you what is right and what is wrong. Hence
that conscience talking to the cannibal: “ It is right to eat
that man, he’s tender; it’s wrong to eat that man, he’s
tough ”—(laughter)—and the voice of God says : “eat the
tender men because it is right; don’t eat the tough men
because it is wrong.” I ask how that illustration is to be
�27
dealt with? If the voice does not in any way enable you to
determine the character of the act, then it simply means
that what you call the voice of God asks you to continue
committing every error which has been bequeathed you
from past times as right, and to avoid every good thing
because in past times it has been condemned and is yet con
demned as wrong. If that is to be the conclusion, then
I say that the voice of God is not a voice to be worshipped,
and that it is not reasonable to worship such a voice
and taking that to be the definition I submit that upon
that a negative answer must be given in this debate.
Mr. Armstrong very frankly and candidly says that the
conception of what is right and wrong is being cleared
and purified ‘ day by day. That is, the conception now is
different to what it was one hundred years ago, and better
still than it was a thousand years ago; but the voice of
God, a thousand years ago, told the Armstrong and Brad
laugh then living, to do that which conscience said to them
was right, and which the conscience to-day says is wrong.
Was God governed by the mis-education, the mis-informa
tion, and the mis-apprehension of the time ? If the God
was outside the ignorance of the day, why did he not set the
people right ? Was he powerless to do it ? In which case,
how do you make out that he is God ? Or had he never the
willingness to do it ? In which case how do you make out
that he was God good ? And if he preferred to leave them
in blindness, how do you reconcile that? Then we are told
the voice is not always clear, but that you may make it more
clear by a habit of obedience. That is so I suppose. And you
may transmit the predisposition to the habit of galloping tohorses on this side the ocean, the predisposition to the
habit of trotting to horses on the other side the ocean;' tothinking MahommedanisminTurkey,and to thinking another
“ ism ” in England, and some other “ism” in Hindustan.
You do not transmit the actual thought any more than you
transmit the actual gallop or trot, but you transmit the pre
disposition, given the appropriate surroundings to reproduce
any action physical or mental. And the source of this is
God, is it ? I vow I do not understand how the Theist is to
meet the contradiction thus involved. Then, Mr. Arm
strong says that when he uses the word “ right,” he defies
anyone to make it plainer. Let us see what that means :
I forge a cheque; Mr. Armstrong says that’s wrong. Why?
Oh ! it is a dishonest and dishonourable thing, it tends to
�28
injure, and so on. But let us see whether you are always
quite clear about these things ? When you are annexing a
country, for example; praying to your God that you may
annex successfully, and that he will protect you when you
have annexed, does not your conscience run away with you,
or does not God mislead you in some of these things ? Is
it not true that the moment you get outside the definition
of the word “ right,” and the moment you say : “ I have a
standard of right which I will not tell you, because nothing
I tell you will make it clear ” you are launched at once into
a heap of absurdities and contradictions ? You think it is
right to have one wife, the Turk thinks it right to have two.
How are you to determine between them ? It only means,
that one of you has labelled bigamy “ right ” and the other
has labelled it “ wrong.” You must have some kind of ex
planation to justify what you are talking about it. We had
an argument offered by Mr. Armstrong which, if it meant
anything, meant that the voice of the majority should pre
vail. Mr. Armstrong said, that it was not only his experience
but that of thousands of others. Does he mean to tell me
that problems of this kind are to be determined by an un
trained majority, or by the verdict of a skilled minority ?
If by a majority, I have something to say to him, and if by
the skilled minority, how are you to select them ? In his
first speech, which I did not quite finish replying to, we
were told that God’s peace and beauty were apprehended in
lakes and mountains. But I have seen one lake—-Michigan—
the reverse of peace and beauty; I have seen little vessels
knocked about by the waves, and dashed to pieces ; and I
have seen Mount Vesuvius when it has been the
very opposite of calm and beautiful, and I have
heard of the houses at Torre del Grecco—though I
have never seen it—being burned in the night by the fiery
lava stream. Where is the peace and beauty of that scene ?
You can take peace. Given a lake, and I can show you a
tornado. Given a mountain and I can give you Vesuvius
with the fiery stream burning the huts of the fishers on the
slope of Torre del Grecco. Did God do this ? Did God
run the two vessels into one another on the Thames and
have those hundreds of people drowned? If you take
credit for the beauty you must also take debit for the
pain and misery (applause). Well, then, I am told that re
ligion is the noblest of all instincts. Max Muller tells us—
whether that be true or not, as Francis Newman puts it—that
�29
religion is a word about which people never have agreed in
any age of the world; about which there have been more
quarrels than about any other word, and about which people
have done more mischief than about any other word; and
I will ask our friend to explain, if it be the noblest of all
instincts, how is it that people have racked each other, and
beheaded each other, and tortured each other by, or in the
name of, this religion ? We are told, and I am thankful to
hear it, that we sceptics have purged it of a great deal of
mischief, and we hope to do more in that way as we go on
(applause). And here—and I want to speak with as much
reverence as I can on the subject of prayer, and it is ex
tremely difficult to touch upon it without giving my oppo
nent pain—so I will deal with it as a general, and not a
personal question. Mr. Armstrong said, after speaking of
how he prayed against temptation : “ He answered me as he
has answered the immemorial prayer of Christendom and
delivered me from temptation.” Why does he not deliver
from the temptation that misery, poverty, and ignorance
bring to the little one who did not choose that he should be
born in a narrow lane, or a back street, in an atmosphere
redolent of squalor and filth ? This little one, whom God
can lift out of temptation, but whom he lets still be cold and
miserable, whom he sees famishing for food, him whom he
sees go famishing to the baker’s, watching to steal the
loaf to relieve his hunger—why won’t he deliver this little
one ? Does Mr. Armstrong say: “ Oh, the little one must
know how to pray before God will answer him ” ? Oh, but
what a mockery to us that the source of all power places
within the reach of the temptation—nay, puts as though
surrounded by a mighty temptation trap, so that there should
be no possible escape—that little one, and then gives way to the
skilled entreaty, high tone, habit-cultured voice which Mr.
Armstrong uses, while he is deaf to the rough pleading of the
little one, and allows him to sink down, making no effort
for his recovery ! I have only one or two words more to
say to you before I again finish, and I would use these to
ask Mr. Armstrong to tell me what he meant by the word
“ cause,” and what he meant by saying “ cause must be
intelligent ” ? By cause, I mean, all that without which an
event cannot happen—the means towards an end, and by
intelligence I mean the totality of mental ability—its activity
and its results in each animal capable of it.
Mr. Armstrong: Mr. Bradlaugh has just been re-
�3°
buking me for my laxness with respect to defini
tions, and has come down upon me with a great autho
rity. Now, it is a habit of mine not to think much
of authorities as authorities, but rather of the value
of what they say. Mr. Bradlaugh came down upon
me with Max Muller, and read a sentence in reference to the
value of definitions, to the effect that they were wonderful
things for preventing and avoiding controversies and dis
putes. Is it, I ask, Mr. Bradlaugh’s experience that the
number of definitions given from public platforms in his
presence has tended to less controversy or to more ? Has
there been more or less talk with all these definitions, than
there would have been without them ? I fancied that Mr.
Bradlaugh’s career had been one very much connected with
controversies, and that the definitions which he has been ac
customed to give have not had the effect of leaving him in peace
from controversy. I am perfectly amazed at Mr. Brad
laugh’s memory, at the wonderful manner in which he
manages to remember, with tolerable accuracy, what I have
said, and to get down as he does the chief points of my
speeches.
I have, unfortunately, a miserable memory,
although I have an excellent shorthand which I can write,
and I cannot generally read it (laughter). Trusting, however,
to those two guides, I must endeavour to reply. Mr. Brad
laugh unintentionally misrepresented me when he alleged
that I had said that the voice of God, called conscience, was
not always clear. I did not say that that voice was not always
clear -—- what I said was that it was not always clearly
heard. I illustrated this by the simile of the bell, the sound
of which was perfectly clear of itself, but which was not
heard by those who would not heed.
Mr. Bradlaugh
also accused me of going in for the authority of majori
ties, because I quoted a number of names and said
that I might quote many more who concurred in the
belief in Deity grounded upon the sort of experi
ence which I said that I had myself enjoyed. Now, the
opinions of the majority have no authority—at least they go
for what they are worth, but are not a binding or an absolute
authority. But the experience of a majority, or of a minority,
or of a single individual, has authority. The experience
of a single man is a fact, and all the rest of the world not
having had that experience, or thinking that they have not
had it, does not make it less the fact. Therefore, if you
have half-a-dozen men upon whose words you can rely, who
�3i
say that they have had a certain experience, because Mr.
Bradlaugh says he has not had such experience, that makes
it none the less the fact. Now I approach that awful question
which stares in the face of the Theist—and which
ioften seems to stare most cruelly—this question of the evil
in the world. It is a question upon which the greatest
intellects of mankind have broken themselves, one which
has never been really explained or made clear, either by
the Theist or the Atheist, but which is probably beyond the
solution of the human faculties. All that we can do is to
fringe the edge of the mystery, and to see whether the best
feelings within us seem to guide us to anything approaching
a solution. Do you think that these things of which Mr.
Bradlaugh has spoken do not touch me as they touch
him ? Look, say, at the poor child born in misery, and
living in suffering; it would absolutely break my heart if I
thought that this could be the end of all. I believe that it
would weigh me down so that I could not stand upon a
public platform, or perform the ordinary business of life, if I
believed that there were beings in the world of whom misery
and sin were the beginning and the end. But I thank God that
I am enabled to maintain my reason upon its seat, and my
trust intact. I know, or I think I know, God as a friend. If he
be a friend to me, shall he not be a friend to all ? If I know
by my own experience his wondrous loving kindness, can I
not trust him for all the rest of the world, through all the
ages of eternity ? You may see a son who shall be familiar
with his father’s kindness, who shall always be kindly treated
by his father ; and there shall be a great warm love between
them. But the child sees certain actions on the part of his
father which he cannot explain. He beholds suffering
apparently brought by his father upon others, and is,
perhaps, inclined to rebel against his father’s authority. But
which is the truest child—the child who, having himself
experienced his father’s love, says : “ Well, this is strange, it
is a mystery; I would it were not so, but I know that my father
is good, and will bring some good out of this which could
not have been obtained otherwiseor the child who says :
“All my experience of my father’s goodness shall go to the
winds. I see a problem which I cannot explain, and I will,
therefore, throw up my trust, rebel against the paternal
goodness, and believe in my father’s love no more ! ” It
would be base in such of you as may be Atheisst
to rest in such a trust, since vou do not know the
�32
love of God; but were you touched with that love
this trust would come to you. It would come to you in
your best and truest moments, the moments when you feel
that you are most akin with all that is good and holy, and
when you feel, as it were, lifted above what is base. ’ This
problem of the evil in the world, I have said, surpasses the
faculties of humanity to solve, either from the platform of
the Theist, the Atheist, or the Pantheist. . I ask you what
you conceive to be the highest good to humanity ? Is not
the highest good, virtue ? You say, it may be, happiness is
better. Take the Huguenot. One way, with him, led to
happiness, the other to destruction. Was the choice he made
the better or the worse ? You say the better ? Then you
hold that virtueis betterthan happiness. Withregardto virtue
imagine, if you can, a world free from every sort of suffer
ing, from every sort of temptation, every sort of trial, what
a very nice world to live in, but what very poor creatures we
should all be ! Where would be virtue, where valour, where
greatness, where nobility, where would be all thos’e high
functions which call forth our reverence, and make
us look up from men to the God of man ? The world
is not made of sugar-plums. I, for my own part, can
not conceive how virtue, the highest good which we can
conceive, could possibly come about in human character
unless human character had evil against which it had to
contend (applause). If you can tell me how we could have
a world in which men should be great, and good, and
chivalrous, and possess all such qualities as raise feelings of
reverence in our bosoms, where nevertheless all should be
smooth and easy, you will have told me of something which,
I think, has never been told to any human being (applause).
Mr. Bradlaugh : A large number of definitions lead to
more controversy or to less. If the definitions are offered
to the minds of people well educated, and thoroughly
understanding them—to much less controversy and to more
accuracy; and when they are offered to people who are yet
ignorant, and have yet to understand them, then they lead
to more controversy, but even there, also, to more accuracy.
I am asked: Can you tell me how to make a world ? I
cannot. Do you intend to base your conclusions on my
ignorance ? If there be an onus, it lies on you, not on me.
It is your business to show that the maker you say ought to
be adored, has made the world as good as it can be. It is
not my business at all to enter upon world-making. Then
�33
I am not sure—while I am quite ready to be set right upon
a verbal inaccuracy—I am not sure there is very much dis
tinction between the voice not being heard, and not being
clearly heard. It is said to be the voice of God that speaks;
but he made the deafness or otherwise of the person to
whom he speaks, or he is not the creator, preserver, “ the
dearest friend in whom I trust, on whom I rely”—these
are Mr. Armstrong’s words. If God cannot prevent the
deafness, then the reliance is misplaced; if he made rhe
deafness, it is of no use that he is talking plainly; if he
has made the person too deaf to hear his voice, then the
voice is a mockery. Then I had it put to me, that the
opinions of majorities were not binding as authority; they
only had their value as expressions of opinion ; but that i
the experiences of individuals are binding. What does
that mean? Is there such a certitude in consciousness
that there can be no mistake in experience ? What do
you mean? When you have a notion you have had an
experience, and I have a notion you have not had it?
Supposing, for example, a man says : “ I have ex
perience of a room which raced with the Great Northern
train to London ; it was an ordinary room, with chairs and
tables in it, and none of them were upset, and it managed
to run a dead heat with the Great Northern express.” You
would say : “ My good man, if you are speaking seriously,
you are a lunatic.” “ No,” he would say, “ that is my ex
perience.” Mr. Armstrong says that that experience de
serves weight. I submit not unless you have this : that the
experience must be of facts coming within the possible range
of other people’s experience; and mustbe experience which is
testable by other people’s experience, with an ability on the
part of the person relating to clearly explain his ex
perience, and that each phenomenon he vouches to you, to
be the subject possible of criticism on examination by your
self, and that no experience which is perfectly abnormal,
and which is against yours, has any weight whatever with
you, or ought to have, except, perhaps, as deserving ex
amination. When it possibly can be made part of your
experience, yes; when it admittedly cannot be made part
of your experience, no. A man with several glasses of
whisky sees six chandeliers in this room ; that is his ex
perience—not mine. I do not refuse to see; I cannot see
more than three. Mr. Armstrong says the problem of evil
never has been made clear by Atheist or Theist. There is
D
�34
no burden on us to make it clear. The burden is upon
the person who considers that he has an all-powerful friend
of loving kindness, to show how that evil exists in con
nection with his statement that that friend could prevent
it. If he will not prevent it, he is not of that loving
kindness which is pretended. Mr. Armstrong says: “My
dear friend is kind to me, shall I not believe that he is
kind to the little lad who is starving?” What, kind
to the lad whom he leaves unsheltered and ill-clad
in winter, whose mother is drunken because the place
is foul, whose father has been committed to gaol ?
Where is the evidence to that lad of God’s loving kind
ness to him ? God, who stands by whilst the little child
steals something; God, who sets the policeman to catch
him, knowing he will go amongst other criminals, where he
will become daily the more corrupted; God, who tells him
from the Bench through the mouth of the justice, that he
has given way to the temptation of the devil, when it is the
very God has been the almighty devil (applause). That
may be a reason for Mr. Armstrong adoring his friend, but
it is no reason for this poor boy to adore. “ Ah,” Mr.
Armstrong says, “ my reason for homage is this. I should
be dissatisfied if this were going to last for ever, or if this
were to be the whole of it; that is so bad I should be in
anguish were there no recompense.” You condemn it if it
is to continue. How can you worship the being who allows
that even temporarily which your reason condemns ? Has
he marked his right to be adored as God by the
little girl who is born of a shame-marked mother in the
shadow of the workhouse walls, who did not select the
womb from which she should come, and whose career, con
sequent on her birth, is one of shame and perhaps crime
too. Ah ! that friend you love, how his love is evidenced
to that little girl is yet to be made clear to me. Then
comes another problem of thought which I am not sure I
shall deal fairly with. Is the highest good virtue or happi
ness ? But the highest happiness is virtue. That act is
virtuous which tends to the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, and which inflicts the least injury on any—that
which does not so result in this is vice. When you put happi
ness and virtue as being utterly distinguished, in your mind
they may be so, but not in my mind. You have confused
the definition of morality which I gave on the first opening;
you have, without explaining it, substituted another in lieu
�35
•of it. You would be right to say my definition is wrong,
■and give another definition, but you have no right to ignore
my definition and use my word in precisely the opposite
sense to that in which I used it. A very few words now will
determine this question for this evening, and I will ask you
to remember the position in which we are here. I am
Atheist, our friend is Theist. He has told you practically
that the word “ God ” is incapable of exact definition,
and if this is so, then it is incapable of exact belief. If it is
incapable of exact definition, it is incapable of exact
thought. If thought is confused you may have prostration of
the intellect, and this is all you can have. Our friend says
that he prays and that his prayer is answered daily, but he
forgot the millions of prayers to whom God is deaf. In his
peaceful mountains and lakes—Vesuvius and Lake Michi
gan escaped him. The fishers in Torre del Grecco, they on
whom the lava stream came down in the night, had their
lips framed no cry for mercy ? Did not some of those
hundreds who were carried to death on the tide of the muddy
Thames, did not they call out in their despair ? and yet he
was deaf to them. He listened to you, but it is of those
to whom he did not listen of whom I have to speak. If
he listens to you and not to them he is a respecter of
persons. He may be one for you to render homage to, but
not for me. First, then, the question is : “ Is it reasonable
to worship God?” and the word “worship” has been left
indistinctly defined. I defy anyone who has listened to
Mr. Armstrong to understand how much or how little he
would exclude or include in worship. I made it clear how
much I would include. Our friend has said nothing
whatever relating to the subject with which we have had to
deal.. His word “God” has been left utterly undefined;
the words “ virtue ” and “ happiness,” and the words “ right”
and “ wrong,” are left equally unexplained; the questions I
put to him of cause and intelligence have been left as
though they were not spoken. I do not make this a re
proach to him, because I know it is the difficulty of the
subject with which he has to deal. The moment you tell
people what you mean, that moment you shiver the Vene
tian glass which contains the liquor that is not to be touched.
I plead under great difficulty.
I plead for opinions that
have been made unpopular; I appeal for persons who, in
the mouths of their antagonists, often have associated with
them all that is vicious. It is true that Mr. Armstrong has
B 2
�36
no such reproach. He says that God will only try me
by that judgment of my own reason, and he makes my
standard higher than God’s on the judgment day. God
made Bruno; do you mean that Bruno’s heresy ranks as
high as faith, and that Bruno at the judgment will stand
amongst the saints ? This may be high humanity, but it is
no part of theology. Our friend can only put it that because
in his own goodness he makes an altar where he can worship,
and a church where he would make a God kind and loving
as himself, and that as he is ready to bless his fellows, so
must his God be; but he has shown no God for me to
worship, and he has made out no reasonableness to wor
ship God except for himself, to whom, he says, God is kind.
Alas ! that so many know nothing of his kindness (applause).
I beg to move the thanks of this meeting to Mr. Rothera
for presiding this evening.
Mr. Armstrong : I wish to second that.
Carried unanimously.
The Chairman : Permit me just to express the obliga
tions I feel under to you for having made my duty so
simple and pleasant. My position as chairman necessarily
and properly excludes me from making any judgment what
ever upon the character and quality of what has been
addressed to you. Notwithstanding that, I may say this i
that it is, I believe, a healthy sign of the times when a num
ber of men and women, such as have met together in this
room, can listen to such addresses as have been made to
night, for it will help on our civilisation. And if you want
a definition of what is right, I say that our business is to
learn what is true, then we shall do what is right (applause).
�37
SECOND
NIGHT.
The Chairman, who was much applauded, said : Ladies
and Gentlemen—It is with much satisfaction that I re
sume my duties as chairman this evening. No one occupy
ing this position could fail to be gratified with the high tone
and excellent temper of the debate which we listened to
last night (hear, hear), or, in noting as I did, the earnest,
sustained, and intelligent attention of a large and much
over-crowded audience (applause). I regard this as a health
ful sign of the times. There are those who look upon such
a discussion as this as dangerous and irreverent. I do not
share in that opinion (hear, hear). There is an intelligence
abroad that no longer permits men to cast the burden of
their beliefs upon mere authority, but which compels them
to seek for reasons for the faith that is in them (hear, hear).
To those, I think, such discussion as this, maintained in the
spirit of last evening, cannot fail to be useful. It is obvious
that the first requisite of religion is, that it be true. Fear of
the results of investigation, therefore, should deter no one
from inquiry. That which is true in religion, cannot be
shaken, and that which is false no one should desire to pre
serve (applause). Now, as you are aware, Mr. Armstrong in
this discussion is charged with the duty of maintaining the
proposition that it is reasonable in us to worship God. The
negative of that proposition is supported by Mr. Bradlaugh.
Under the arrangement for the debate, Mr. Bradlaugh is to
night entitled to half-an-hour for his opening, Mr. Arm
strong to half-an-hour for his reply. After that a quarterhour will be given to each alternately, until Mr. Armstrong
will conclude the debate at ten o’clock. I have now great
pleasure in asking Mr. Bradlaugh to open the discussion
(applause).
Mr. Bradlaugh, who was very warmly received, said :
In contending that it is not reasonable to worship God, it
seemed to me that I ought to make clear to you, at any
�38
rate, the words I used, and the sense in which I used them,
and to do that I laid before you last night several definitions,
not meaning that my definitions should necessarily bind
Mr. Armstrong, but meaning that, unless he supplied some
other and better explanations for the words, the meaning
I gave should be, in each case, taken to be my meaning all
through. I did not mean that he was to be concluded by
the form of my definition if he were able to correct it, or if
he were able to give a better instead ; but I think I am now
entitled to say that he ought to be concluded by my defini
tions, and this, from the answer he has given (hear, hear).
The answer was frank—very frank—(hear) and I feel
reluctant to base more upon it than I ought to do in a dis
cussion conducted as this has been. If I were meeting an
antagonist who strove to take every verbal advantage, I
might be tempted to pursue only the same course; but
when I find a man speaking with evident earnestness, using
language which seems to be the utter abandonment of his
cause, I would rather ask him whether some amendment
of the language he used might not put his case in a
better position. His declaration was that he was perfectly
incapable of saying whether the definition, which I had taken
from Professsor Flint, of God, was correct or not (hear,
hear). Now, I will ask him, and you, too, to consider the
consequence of that admission. No definition whatever is
given by him of the word “ God.” There was not even the
semblance, or attempt of it. The only words we got which
were akin to a definition, except some words which, it
appears, I took down hastily, and which Mr. Armstrong
abandoned in his next speech, the only words bearing even
the semblance of a definition, are “ an awful inscrutable
somewhat” (laughter and hear, hear). Except these words,
there have been no words in the arguments and in the
speeches of Mr. Armstrong which enabled me, in any
fashion, to identify any meaning which he may have of it,
except phrases which contradict each other as soon as you
examine them (applause). Now, what is the definition of which
Mr. Armstrong says that he is incapable of saying whether or
not it is correct? “ That God is a self-existent, eternal being,
infinite in power and wisdom, and perfect in holiness and
goodness, the maker of heaven and earth.” Now, does
Mr. Armstrong mean that each division of the definition
comes within his answer ? Does he mean that in relation to
no part of that which is predicated in this definition is he
�39
capable of saying whether it is correct or not ? Because, if
he does, he is answered by his own speech, as a portion of
this defines God as being perfect in holiness and goodness,
in power and wisdom; and it defines him as eternal in
duration and infinite in his existence; and also defines him
as being the creator of the universe. Now, if Mr. Armstrong
means that “ as a whole, I can’t say whether it is correct or
not,” or if, in defending his position, he means that, haying
divided the definition in its parts, he cannot say whether it is,
in any one part, correct or not, then I must remind him that,
in this debate, the onus lies upon him of saying what it is he
worships, and what it is he contends it is reasonable of us
to worship (hear, hear). If he cannot give us a clear and
concise notion of what he worships, and of what he says it
is reasonable for us to worship, I say that his case has fallen
to the ground. It must be unreasonable to worship that of
which you, in thought, cannot predicate anything in any way
—accurately or inaccurately (applause). Mr. Armstrong
evidently felt—I hope that you will not think that the feel
ing was justified—that there was a tendency on my part to
make too much of, and to be too precise as to, the meaning
of words used. Permit me to say it is impossible to be too
precise; it is impossible to be too clear ; it is impossible to
be too distinct—(hear, hear)—especially when you are dis
cussing a subject in terms which are not used by everybody
in the same sense, and which are sometimes not used by the
mass of those to whom you are addressing yourself at all
(applause). It is still more necessary to be precise when
many of those terms have been appropriated by the teachers
of different theologies and mythologies, such teachers having
alleged that the use of the words meant something which, on
the face of it, contradicted itself, and by other teachers who,
if they have not been self-contradictory, have attached meanings
widely different to those given by their fellows (hear, hear).
I will ask you, then, to insist with me that what is meant by
God should be given us in such words that we can clearly
and easily identify it (hear, hear). If you cannot even in
thought identify God, it is unreasonable—absolutely un
reasonable—to talk of worshipping “ it ” (applause). What
is “ it ” you are going to worship ? Can you think clearly
what it is you are going to worship ? If you can think clearly
for yourself what it is, tell me in what words you think it.
It may be that my brain may not be skilled enough to fully
comprehend that, but, at any rate, we shall then have an
�4°
opportunity of testing for ourselves how little or how much
clear thought you may have on the subject (laughter and ap
plause). If you are obliged to state that it is impossible to
put your thoughts in words so clear and so distinct that I may
understand the meaning of it as clearly as you do, or that
a person of ordinary capacity cannot comprehend the words
in which you describe it—if that is impossible, then it is un
reasonable to ask me to worship it (loud applause). I say it
is unreasonable to ask me to worship an unknown quantity
—an unrecognisable symbol expressing nothing whatever.
If you know what it is you worship—if you think you know
what it is you worship—I say it is your duty to put into
words what you think you know (hear, hear). We have had
in this debate some pleas put forward, which, if they had
remained unchallenged, might have been some sort of pleas
for the existence of a. Deity, but each of those pleas has in
turn failed. I do not want to use too strong a phrase, so I
will say that each in turn has been abandoned. Take, for
instance, the plea of beauty, harmony, and calmness of
the world, as illustrated by lakes and mountains, to
which I contrasted storms and volcanoes. Mr. Arm
strong’s reply to that was: “ But this involves problems
which are alike insoluble by Theist and Atheist.” If it is
so, why do you worship what is non-capable of solution ?
If there be no solution, why do you put that word “ God ”
as representative of the solution which you say is unattain
able, and ask me to prostrate myself before it and adore it ?
(applause).
We must have consistency of phraseology.
Either the problem is soluble—then the onus is upon you
to state it in reasonable terms; or it is insoluble, and then
you have abandoned the point you set out to prove, because
it must be unreasonable to worship an insoluble proposition
(applause). Howdoyou know anything of that God you askus
to worship ? I must avow that, after listening carefully to what
has fallen from Mr. Armstrong, I have been unable to glean
what he knows of God or how he knows it (hear, hear). I
remember he has said something about a “ voice of God,”
but he has frankly admitted that the voice in question has
spoken differently and in contradictory senses in different
ages (loud cries of “no, no,”)—and those who say “no,”
will do better to leave Mr. Armstrong to answer for him
self as to the accuracy of what I state (hear, hear). I say
he frankly admitted that the voice he alluded to had spoken
differently and contradictorily in different ages. (Renewed
�4i
cries of “ no ”). I say yes, and I will give the evidence of
my yes. (Cries of “ no, no,” “ order,” and “ hear, hear.”)
I say yes, and I will give the evidence of my yes (hear,
hear, and applause).
Mr. Armstrong said that in one
hundred years there had been a purification, and an
amelioration, and a clearing away; and that that change
had been vaster still since one thousand years ago (ap
plause). He is responsible for admitting what I said
about the definition of morality being different in one
age and amongst one people, to what it is in another
age and amongst another people; and if that does not mean
exactly what I put substantially to you, it has no meaning
at all (loud applause).
I strive not to misrepresent
that which I have to answer; I will do my best to under
stand what it is that is urged against me. Those who hold
a different judgment should try, at least, to suspend it until I
have finished (hear, hear, and applause). In the Baird
Lectures, to which I referred last night—and let me here
say that I don’t think that any complaint can be fairly made
of my quoting from them—something was said last night
about my using great men as an authority. Now I do not do
that; but if I find that a man, whose position and learning
gave him advantages with regard to a subject upon which
I am speaking, and he has expressed what I wished to say
better than I can do—if I use his language it is right
I should say from where I have taken my words (hear, hear)
And if I remember right, we had, last night, quotations from
Charles Voysey, Professor Newman, Professor Blackie, and
a host of similar writers on the other side. I take it they
were given in the same fashion that I intended in giving the
names of the writers of the quotations I have cited—not for
the purpose of overwhelming me with their authority, but
simply to inform me and you from whence were got the
words used (hear, hear). Now, Professor Flint, in his book
on Atheism, directed against the position taken up by men
like myself, says : “ The child is born, not into the religion
of nature but into blank ignorance; and, if left entirely to
itself, would probably never find out as much religious truth
as the most ignorant of parents can teach it.” Again, on page
23 he says : “The belief that there is one God, infinite in
power, wisdom, and goodness, has certainly not been
wrought out by each one of us for himself, but has been
passed on from man to man, from parent to child: tradi
tion, education, common consent, the social medium, have
�42
exerted great influence in determining its acceptance and
prevalence.” Now, what I want to put to you from this is
that, just as Max Muller and others have done, you must try
to find out whether what is to be understood by the word
“ God ” is to be worshipped or not, by tracing backwards
the origin and growth of what is to-day called religion. You
will have to search out the traditions of the world, should
there fail to be any comprehensible meaning come from the
other side. Now, what God is it that we are to worship ?
Is it the Jewish God? Is it the Mahometan God? Is it
the God of the Trinitarian Christian ? Is it one of the
gods of the Hindus ? Or is it one of the gods of the old
Greeks or Italians, and, if so, which of them ? And in each
case from what source are we to get an accurate definition
of either of those gods ? Perhaps Mr. Armstrong will say
that it is none of these. He will probably decline to
have any of these Gods fastened upon him as the proper
God to worship ; but the very fact that there are so many
different gods—different with every variety of people—contra
dictory in their attributes and qualities—the very fact that
there is a wide difference in believers in a God makes it but
right that I should require that the God we are asked to
worship should be accurately defined (applause). In
the current number of the /Jonteinporary Review, Professor
Monier Williams, dealing with the development of Indian
religious thought, has a paragraph which is most appro
priate to this debate. He says, on page 246 : “ The early
religion of the Indo-Aryans was a development of a still earlier
belief in man’s subjection to the powers of nature and his
need of conciliating them. It was an unsettled system,
which at one time assigned all the phenomena of the uni
verse to one first Cause; at another, attributed them to
several Causes operating independently; at another, sup
posed the whole visible creation to be a simple evolution
from an eternal creative germ. It was a belief which,
according to the character and inclination of the
worshipper was now monotheism, now tritheism, now
polytheism, now pantheism.
But it was not yet
idolatry. Though the forces of nature were thought of as
controlled by divine persons, such persons were not yet
idolised. There is no evidence from the Vedic hymns that
images were employed. The mode of divine worship con
tinued to be determined from a consideration of human
liking and dislikings. Every worshipper praised the gods
'
�43
because he liked to be praised himself. He honoured them
with offerings because he liked to receive presents himself.
This appears to have been the simple origin of the sacrificial
system, afterwards closely interwoven with the whole re
ligious system. And here comes the difficult question—
What were the various ideas expressed by the term sacrifice?
In its purest and simplest form it denoted a dedication of
some simple gift as an expression of gratitude for blessings
received. Soon the act of sacrifice became an act of pro
pitiation for purely selfish ends. The favour of celestial
beings who were capable of conferring good or inflicting
harm on crops, flocks, and herds, was conciliated by offerings
and oblations of all kinds. First, the gods were invited to
join their worshippers at the every-day meal. Then they
were invoked at festive gatherings, and offered a share of
the food consumed. Their bodies were believed to be com
posed of ethereal particles, dependent for nourishment on
the indivisible elementary essence of the substances presented
to them, and to be furnished with senses capable of being
gratified by the aroma of butter and grain offered in fire
(homa); and especially by the fumes arising from libations
of the exhilarating juice extracted from the Soma plant.”
I will allege that .you cannot give me a definition of
God that does not originate in the ignorance of man as to
the causes of phenomena which are abnormal to him, and
which he cannot explain. The wonderful, the extraordinary,
the terrific, the mysterious, the mighty, the grand, the
furious, the good, the highly beneficent—all these
that he did not understand became to him God. He
might have understood them on careful investigation
had his mind then been capable for the search,
but instead of that he attributed them to huge per
sonifications of the Unknown—the word behind which
to-day is God, and it is the equivalent for all he observed,
but did not comprehend, for all that happened of which he
knew not the meaning (applause). It was not education but
ignorance which gave birth to the so-called idea of a God
(hear, hear). And I will submit to you that, in truth, all
forms of worship have arisen from exaggeration and mis
application of what men have seen in their fellow-men and
fellow-women. A man found that a big furious man might
be pacified and calmed by soothing words; that a big
avaricious man might be satisfied and pleased with plenteous
gifts ; that this one might be compelled to do something by
�44
angry words or harsh treatment; and that this one could be
won by supplications to comply with his wishes—and what
he imagined or observed as to his fellows he applied to the
unknown, thinking, no doubt, that that which he had found
efficacious in the known experience, might also be efficacious
in that in which he had no experience. And what did you
find ? You found the sailor at sea, who’did not understand
navigation, offering candles to his Deity, or special saint,
and promising more offerings of a similar character if the
Deity brought him safe into port. I say it is more reason
able to teach him how to steer than how to worship, and also
more reasonable to know something about the science of
navigation. That would prove much more serviceable than
worship, for when he relied upon candles, he ran upon rocks
and reefs, but as soon as he understood navigation, he
could bring his own ship safely into port (applause).
Prayer is spoken of by Mr. Armstrong as an act of wor
ship. What does it imply ? It implies a belief held on the
part of the person who prays, that he may be noticed by the
being to whom he prays; and it also implies that he is
asking that being to do something which he would have left
undone but for that prayer. Then does he think that he can
influence the person whom he addresses by his rank or by his
position ? Does he think he can influence his Deity by his
emotion ? Does he think that as he would win a woman’s
love, so he would gain God, by passionate devotion ?
Does he think that, as he would frighten a man,
so he would influence God through fear ? Does he appeal
to God’s logic, or to his pity? Does he appeal to his
mercy or to his justice ? or does he hope to tell God one
thing he could not know without the prayer ? (loud applause.)
I want an answer, here, clear and thorough, from one
who says that prayer is a reasonable worship to be offered to
God (renewed applause). Something was said last night
about a cause being necessarily intelligent, and I think, in
my speech afterwards, I challenged the assertion. Nothing
was said to explain what was meant, nothing was done to
further explain the matter, and although I defined what I
meant by cause, and defined what I meant by intelligence,
no objection was taken. Now, I have seen a hut crushed
by an avalanche falling on it, as I have been crossing the
Alps.
Does Mr. Armstrong mean to tell me that the
avalanche which crushed the hut was intelligent, or that it
had an intelligent wielder? If the avalanche is intelligent,
�45
why does he think so ? If the avalanche has an intelli
gent wielder, please explain to me the goodness of that
intelligent wielder who dashes the avalanche on the cottage ?
(applause). If you tell me that it is a mystery which you
cannot explain, I say it is unreasonable to ask me to worship
such a mystery—(renewed applause)—and as long as you
call it a mystery, and treat it as that which you cannot explain,
so long you have no right to ask me to adore it. There was
a time when man worshipped the lightning and thunder,
and looked upon them as Deity. But now he has grown
wiser, and, having investigated the subject, instead of
worshipping the lightning as a Deity, he erects lightningconductors and electric wires, and chains the lightning and
thunder God; knowledge is more potent than prayer (ap
plause). As long as they were worshipped • science could
do nothing, but now we see to what uses electricity has been
brought. When they knew that the lightning-conductor
was more powerful than the God they worshipped, then
science was recognised the mighty master and ruler, instead
of ignorant faith (applause). I have already submitted that
there has not been the semblance of proof or authority for
the existence of any being identifiable in words to whom it
would be reasonable to offer worship, and I will show you
the need for pressing that upon you. A strong statement
was made last night which amounted to an admission that
there was wrong here which should not be, and that, but for
the hope on the part of the speaker that that wrong would
be remedied at some future time, he would be in a state of
terrible despair. He gave no reason for the hope, and no
evidence why he held the hope. He only contended that
things were so bad here that they would be indefensible
except for the hope that they woutd be remedied. This
admission is fatal to the affirmation of God to be worshipped
in the way here mentioned.
Then we had something said
about experience. All experience must be experience of the
senses : you can have no other experience whatever. To
quote again from Max Muller: “ All consciousness begins
with sensuous perception, with what we feel, and hear, and
see. Out of this we construct what may be called con
ceptual knowledge, consisting of collective and abstract
concepts. What we call thinking consists simply in addi
tion and subtraction of precepts and concepts. Conceptual
knowledge differs from sensuous knowledge, not in sub
stance, but in form only. As far as the material is con
�46
cerned, nothing exists in the intellect except what existed
before in the senses.” It is the old proposition put in
different, forms , by Locke, Spinoza, and others, over and
over again, but it has to be taken with this qualification that
you have innumerable instances of hallucinations of the
senses. Delusions on religious matters are open to the re
mark that of all hallucinations of the senses—as Dr H
Maudsley shows in the Fortnightly Review—all halluci
nations of the senses those on religious matters only keep
current with the religious teachings of the day. Sight, touch
smell, hearing, feeling—all are the subject of illusion as is
shown over and over again. Any man bringing as evidence
to us the report of experience which is only of an abnor
mal character, is bound to submit it to a test which is some
thing beyond in severity that which we should apply to
normal events. . The more abnormal it is the more par
ticularity in detail do I wish, in order to examine it, so that
I may be able to identify it; and the more curious the state
ment the more carefully do I wish to test it. Loose words in
theology will not do, and here I submit that at present
we stand, with, at any rate, on one side, nothing whatever
affirmed against me. I gathered last night—I hope incor
rectly—I gathered last night—I hope the words were spoken
incautiously—that Mr. Armstrong held it to be natural that
a man should have to struggle against wrong, vice, and folly,
for the purpose of bringing out the higher qualities, and that
it was alleged that it was to that struggle we were indebted
for our virtue. If that were a real thought on the part of
Mr. Armstrong it is but a sorry encouragement to any
attempts, at reformation and civilisation. Why strive to re
move misery and wrong if the struggle against them is con
ducive to.virtue ? It would take a long time to bring about
any ameliorating change in society if such doctrine were
widely held (loud applause).
The Rev. R. A. Armstrong, who was applauded on rising,,
said : Mr. Chairman and Friends—I wish, in justice to
myself, to say that I freely offered Mr. Bradlaugh the choice
of parts as to the order of speaking. I know not which way
the balance of advantage lies; but after the speech we
have listened to, I think you will agree with me that he who
speaks, first the second night has a considerable pull (laughter).
Last night as I passed down that awful flight of stairs, which
they must climb who, in this town, would soar from the nether
world to the celestial realms of Secularism, I heard many
�47
•comments, and among others one man just behind me said:
“Oh ! Armstrong is nowhere in Bradlaugh’s hands. Bradlaugh
can do just what he likes with him ” (laughter). Now, my
friend said the very truth in a certain sense. As a debater
I am nowhere compared with Mr. Bradlaugh. He has
fluency-—I compute that in thirty minutes I can string
together some 4,000 words, while, I fancy, Mr. Bradlaugh’s
score would be just about 6,000—so that to equalise our
mere mechanical advantages I ought really to have three
minutes to every two of his. If I have omitted many things
which I ought to have said, it is due to this reason (laughter
and hear, hear)—for I have not been silent during the time
assigned to me. Of course, I do not complain of this.
Then, to say nothing of Mr.'Bradlaugh’s powerful intellect, to
which I do not pretend, and his wide reading, he is in
constant practice at this work so new to me, so much so that
I find almost every thought he expressed last night, and in
almost—sometimes precisely—identical language, printed in
his pamphlets, and much of it even spoken in one or other o
his numerous debates. Take this, along with his prodigious
memory, and you will see that the doctrine of Atheism has,
indeed, in him, the very ablest defender that its friends could
wish. And if what he says is not enough to demolish
Theism, then you may be sure that Theism cannot be
demolished (applause). But then, friends, I do want you not to
look on this as a personal struggle between Mr. Bradlaugh
and myself at all. I no more accept it in that light than I would
accept a challenge from him to a boxing match, and I think
you will all agree with me that in that case, in discretion I should
show the better part of valour (hear, hear, and laughter).
We are both speaking in all earnestness of what we hold to be the
truth. Neither of us, I presume, in the least, expects to make
converts on the spot: converts so quickly made would be
like enough to be swayed back the other way next week.
But we do desire that the seed of our words should sink
into your minds; that you should give them your reverent
attention, that, in due season, so far as they are good
and true, they may ripen into matured convictions of
the. truth (applause). And now let me look back at the
position in which this conference was left last night. I am
the more at liberty to do so, as to-night Mr. Bradlaugh has
only—or chiefly—done two things, namely, repeated some
things whichhe saidlast night, andanswered certain arguments
of Professor Flint. That is perfectly fair, but it is equally fair
�48
for me to leave Professor Flint to answer for himself (hear
hear, and applause). And I complain that Mr. Bradlaugh
either did not listen to, or did not understand, what I
endeavoured to put in plainest words about the function of
that voice of God which we call conscience (hear, hear).
Observe, that while in different climesand ages, ay, in the same
manat different times, the conceptions of the particular deeds
that come under the head of right differ, the idea of rightness
itself, of rectitude, is always and invariably the same, from its
first faint glimmer in the savage little removed comparatively
from the lower animal, from which he is said to be
developed, to the season of its clear shining, luminous and
glorious, in hero, prophet, martyr, saint—in Elizabeth Fry,
in Mary. Carpenter, in Florence Nightingale. To speak
metaphysically, the abstract subjective idea of right is the
same and one, but our ideas of the concrete and objective
right develop and progress ever towards a purer and more
beautiful ideal. We have by our own powers to satisfy our
selves as best we can what is right. But when we have
made up our minds, the voice of God sounds clear as a
bell upon the soul and bids us do it (applause). This I
stated again and again last night, yet to-night again Mr.
Bradlaugh has confounded the two things. Mr. Bradlaugh
raised a laugh with his story of the cannibal objecting to the
tough, and choosing the tender meal. That cannibal, in so
far, does but illustrate how a man is swayed by those lower
instincts and desires which I rigorously and definitely'dis
tinguished and separated from conscience. Why Mr. Brad
laugh confounded this with a case of the deliverance of
conscience I cannot think, because I am so sure it wasneither to make you grin nor to confuse your minds (hear,
hear). The latter part of the first night’s debate turned on
the mystery of evil. But Mr. Bradlaugh did not then ven
ture to allege the possibility of a world in which noble character
could be developed without the contact with suffering and
pain (hear, hear). He said he was not called upon to make
a world ; happily not; but at any rate he should not question
the excellence of the world in which he lives unless he can at
least conceive abetter—(loud applause)—and I say that where
evil had never been, or what we call evil, manliness, bravery,
generosity, sympathy, tenderness, could never be (applause).
A world without temptation would be a world without
virtue (hear, hear). A world all pleasurable would be a
world without goodness, and even the pleasurable itself
�49
would cease by sheer monotony to give any pleasure at all. A
world not developed out of the conflict of good and evil,
or joy and pain, would necessarily be an absolutely neutral
world, without emotion of any sort. Unless the whole
tint is to be neutral, you must have light and shade; and the
only test by which to judge whether the power controlling the
world is good or evil—God or Devil, as Mr. Bradlaugh says—
(applause)—is to note whether light or darkness preponderates;
and not only that, but whether the movement, the tendency,
the development, the drift of things is towards the gradual
swallowing up of darkness by the light, or light by darkness;
w'hether freedom, happiness, virtue, are in the procession
of the ages losing their ground, or slowly, surely wanning
ever fresh accession (applause). I take it, then, that if we
are to have a final predominance of goodness—nay, even of
happiness, if you make that the highest good—it can only be
by these things winning their way by degrees out of the evil
which is their shadow. And I invite you once more to test
this from experience. My own experience, clear and sure,
and that of every other devout man, is simply this : that
whatever sorrow, whatever pain we suffer, though it wring
our very heart, the time is sure to come when, looking back
thereon, we thank God that it was given us, perceiving that
it was good, not evil, that befel us, being the means, in
some wray or other, of our further advance in happiness or
goodness, or nearness to our heavenly Father. You tell meit is
all very well for me; but you point to those whose lot is cast in
less pleasant places, and ask me what of them ? Is God
good to them? Well, I will take you to a dark and dismal
cellar beneath the reeking streets of a mighty city. And
this picture is not drawn from fancy, it is a photograph
from the life of one I know of. In that dark and poor abode you
shall enter, and you shall see an aged woman to whom that
spot is home. She is eaten up with disease, the inheritance,
doubtless, of her forefathers’ sin. For fifty years her simple
story has been of alternations between less pain and more.
Beside her are two orphan children, no kith or kin of hers,
but adopted by her out of the large love which she nurtures
in her heart, to share the pence she wins from the mangle,
every turn of which is, to her, physical pain. Well, surely,
she knows nought of God, has none of those “ experiences ”
which Mr. Bradlaugh treats as if they were luxuries confined
to the comfortable Theist in his easy-chair, or on his softlypillowed bed. Ay, but she is rising from her knees to
�5°
turn to the dry crust on the board, which is all she has to
share with the children. And what says she as you enter ?
“ Oh, sir, I was only thanking God for his good
ness, and teaching these poor children so.” Now,
if Mr. Bradlaugh is right in declaring we can know
nought of God, then that old woman ought never
to have eased her laden heart by the outburst of her prayer,
ought to have cast out of her as a freak of lunacy the peace
that stole upon her there as she rose from her knees, ought to
have shunned teaching those children, whose lot was like to be
as hard as hers, one word about the reliance that she had
on God (applause). Instead of that she taught the pros
perous man who stumbled down the broken stair into her
abode, a lesson of trust and faith in the goodness and pre
sence of God, which he never forgot as long as he lived
(hear, hear and applause). I sat the other day beside a
dying girl. Her body was in hideous pain, but her face was lit
with a light of beauty and of love which told a wondrous tale of
her spirit’s life. She died, and her mother and her sisters
weep to-day. But a new love, a new gentleness, a new
sense of the nearness of the spirit - world has already
blossomed in their home, and, I am not sure that they
would call her back even if their voices could avail. So it
is; this woe which we call evil is the sacred spring of all
that is beautiful and good (hear, hear). To the Atheist the
world’s sorrow must, indeed, be insupportable. If he be
sincere and have a heart, I do not know how he can ever
eat and drink and make merry, still less how he can make a
jest and raise a titter in the very same speech in which he
dwells with all the skill of practised eloquence upon that
woe (applause). If I were an Atheist I hardly think I could
ever throw off the darkness of this shadow. But, believing
in God, whom I personally know, and know as full of love,
I am constrained to trust that, though this evil be a mystery
the full significance of which I cannot understand, and
though relatively to the little sum of things here and now it
seem great, yet that relatively to the whole plan and sum of
the universe it is very small, and that that poor child, born
of sin and shame, who knew no better than to steal the loaf,
shall one day wear a diadem of celestial glory, and be by no
means least in the Kingdom of Heaven. And when I see
the Atheist smiling, laughing, having apparentlya lightheart in
him, I am bound to suppose that he too, somehow, trusts that
..goodness and happiness are going to win in the end—that
�is, that goodness is the ultimately overruling power. And.
if he believes that, he believes in the power which men
call God (applause). Now, Mr. Bradlaugh has casti
gated me with some severity for not obliging him
with definitions. It is impossible, he says, to be too
precise in the use of words, and I agree with him.
But by definitions I cannot make the simplest words
in the English language more plain to you (hear, hear).
He, himself, has given us some . specimens of defini
tions which I do not think have made things much clearer
than they were before. There are three words of import
ance in the title of this debate, and I will try, since Mr.
Bradlaugh has experienced difficulty in understanding me,
whether I can tell him more distinctly what I mean by them.
Those three words are “ reasonable,” “ worship,” “ God.”
When I say it is reasonable to do a thing, I do not mean
that I can demonstrate to you with the precision of, mathe
matics that every proposition, the truth of which is assumed
in that act, is true; but Ido mean that the propositions, on the
assumption of which the act proceeds, are, at least, sufficiently
probable to win the verdict of an unbiassed judgment, and
that the act itself is likely to be found to be a good. Mr.
Bradlaugh himself has defined “ worship ” as including
“ prayer, praise, sacrifice, offerings, solemn services, adora
tion, and personal prostration.” If Mr. Bradlaugh will kindly
occupy his next fifteen minutes by defining to me exactly
what he means by each of those terms, I may be better able
to tell him whether I include them all in worship, and
whether he has left anything out. But at present I do not
find that any one of them is simpler or more comprehensible
than the term worship, while “prayer, praise, sacrifice, and
offerings,’’each might mean at least two very different things
“ solemn services ” is hopelessly vague ; “ adoration,” as I
understand it, is included in some of the others; and before
we know what “personal prostration” means, we must
define “ person ”—no easy matter—and then explain what'
we mean by the “ prostration ” of that person (laughter and.
applause). Meanwhile, I have described, at the very outset,
that energy of my soul which I call worship, namely, that in
which I address myself to God as to one immeasurably sur
passing me in goodness, in wisdom, in power, in love (hear,
hear). I don’t think this is plainer than the good old Saxon
word “worship;” I think that word conveys a pretty clear
meaning to most men. But Mr. Bradlaugh finds it easier to
�52
understand long phrases than simple Saxon words; and my
. only fear now is that he will want me to define all the
words in my definition—(laughter)—and though I am ready
enough to do that, I fear it would take a week (renewed
laughter, and hear, hear). God:—You ask me to define God,
and you say I have not in any way done so. You quote
the metaphysical definition of Flint, and want me to enter
into metaphysics. What do you mean by defining ? Do
you mean to draw a circle round God, so as to separate him
from all else ? If you do, I reply, I can’t; because, as far as
I can see, or my imagination can extend, I discern no
boundaries to God. But if you mean to ask simply what I
mean by God, I mean—and I said this again and again
last night—the source of the command that comes to me
to do right, to abjure wrong ; the source of the peace
that comes to me even in pain, when I have done right,
and of the remorse that comes to me even in prosperity
when I have done ill. I mean also the source—which
I believe to be identical — of the wondrous sense of
a divine presence which seizes me in the midst of
nature’s sublimest scenes — ay, and even of nature’s
awful catastrophes. I mean also the source of the
moral and spiritual strength that comes to me in response to
the worship which my soul pours forth; and if you want to
know what I mean by my soul, I mean myself. What else
besides the source of these things God maybe, I cannot tell you.
It is only so—in his relation to me—that I directly know him.
Beyond that he is the subject of philosophy, but not of im
mediate knowledge. I believe him to be very much more;
but that does not affect the reasonableness of worshipping
him, and that is the subject of our debate (hear, hear). So
that I cannot define God in the way I can define Notting
ham, or Europe, or the earth (hear, hear). I cannot tell
how much is included in his being \ how much, if any, is
excluded. I can tell you what he is to me, in relation to me—
and that is the only way in which any entity can be defined—
and I can tell you what other men testify by word, by deed,
by martyrdom, he is to them (hear, hear). Beyond that I
have no instruments by which to measure; and therefore
I take up no pen with which to write down the measure
ments, or define (applause). But Mr. Bradlaugh says if
we cannot exactly define an object we are incapable of exact
thought or belief concerning it. Did Mr. Bradlaugh do al
gebra at school ? That most exact and prosaic science con-
�•sists largely in reasoning about unknown quantities ; that is,
about some x or_y, of which you only know that it has some
one or perhaps two definite relations to certain other things.
You don’t know what x or y is in itself—only some function
by which it is related to a and b and c. From that relation you
reason, and sometimes from it you get by subtle processes
to infer a vast deal more, and it will perhaps prove just from
that relation that x must be such and such a number, or that
it must be infinite. Does Mr. Bradlaugh say we can have
no exact thought about the x in the algebraic equation,
before we have worked out the whole sum ? Yes, we know
it in its relations or some of them. Yet the very essence
of algebra is that x is undefined. The human soul is the a, b,
•or q the well-known, the familiar; God is the x, related wondrously thereto, yet none has ever yet worked out that sum.
The supremestphilosophers, who hereare school-boys indeed,
have only displayed workings on their slates which, to
use again mathematical language, show that x approaches
towards a limit which is equal to infinity (hear, hear). But
Mr. Bradlaugh says there should be no belief in that which we
•cannot define. Now, I challenge Mr. Bradlaugh in all re
spect and sincerity to define himself (applause). If he de
clines or fails, I will not say we must cease to believe in Mr.
Bradlaugh, but that is the necessary inference from his
maxims. Mr. Bradlaugh says all experience must be the
experience of the senses. By which sense does he experience
love, indignation, or all the varied sentiments which bind him
to his fellow-men and women (applause) ? Mr. Bradlaugh
told us in his concluding speech last night that no ex
perience of another man’s can be anything at all to him
until tested by his own. Is, then, a man born blind un
reasonable if he believes that others have experience of
some wonderful sensation, making objects very vividly
present to them, which they call sight ? Shall the man born
■deaf say he does not believe there is such a thing as sound ?
I know not whether Mr. Bradlaugh has any personal ex
perience of the heat of the torrid zone. Does he believe
it ? Has he tested the height of Mont Blanc ? If not, does
he hold his belief in suspense as to whether it is 15,000 feet
high or not ? The fact is the enormous majority of the
beliefs on which we act every day of our lives with perfect
•confidence are founded either on sheer Faith, untested and by
us untestable, or on Testimony, that is the recorded experience
■of others which we have not tested. But Mr. Brad
�54
laugh says that if the alleged experience of another
is “ abnormal ” we must not believe it. He did
not define “abnormal,” and I want to know who is
to be judge whether my experience of the command that
comes to me in conscience is abnormal or not. Mr. Brad
laugh ? This audience ? With confidence I accept the ver
dict of any gathering of my fellow-men and women, knowing
that my experience herein has a sure echo in their own. But
Mr. Bradlaugh says, if someone said a room ran a race,
you would call him a lunatic. That argument means
nothing, or else it means that Martineau and Newman, and
all great and good who have recognised God—ay, and Voltaire
and Thomas Paine—Theistsboth—are to be counted lunatics
(hear, hear). Time has prevented—I hope it may not still
prevent—my stating clearly what I mean, when I proceed on
philosophical grounds to allege my belief that there is an
intelligent cause. “Intelligent ” I shall not stop to define,
unless I am challenged to it, because I presume intelligence
in you (applause). “ If there were no such supreme intelli
gence,” says Mr. Voysey, “ the universe, supposing it to be
self-evolved (and of course unconscious, since it is not intel
ligent) has only just come into self-consciousness through
one of its parts—viz., man. It had been, so to speak,
asleep all these cycles of ages till man was born and his
intellect dawned upon the world, and, for the first time, the
universe realised its own existence through the intelligent
consciousness of one of its products. I do not think
absurdity could go further than that. If there be no self
conscious intelligence but man, then the universe is only
just now, through man, becoming aware of its own exist
ence ” (hear, hear, and applause). “ Cause,” Mr. Brad
laugh, I think, has defined, in language which in
cluded the words, “ means towards an end.” A mean o:
means, however, is, by the very conception of the word, the
second term in a series of three of which the end is the
third, and “means” implies some power making use of
those means, and that power is the first term in the series.
Now, I claim that cause is that first term, whether there be
two more, or only one. By “ cause ” I mean—and you
mean, if you will search your thought—the initiating power,
that which begins to produce an effect. Now, my mind is so
constituted that to speak to me of a power which initiates
effects, yet is not conscious, intelligent, is sheer nonsense;
therefore I hold the power which displays itself as one in the
�55
%
uniformity of the laws of nature, and lies behind all phe
nomena—the growth of the grass, the rush of the cataract,
the breath of the air, the stately sailing of the stars through
their geometric paths, to be intelligent, conscious, to do it
all by distinct purpose; and I can in no way otherwise con
ceive. I conceive this source of the geometric motion of
all the spheres and of the minutest dance of protoplasm in the
nettle’s sting as always, everywhere, ofpurpose producing these
effects. And the worship which I gave God as I know him
in relationship to me is refined and glorified by the conception which thus dawns on me of his being. And in the
words of Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire, I commune thus
with myself: “ Where,” says he, “ is the eternal geometrician ?
Is he in one place, or in all places without occupying space ?
I know not. Has he arranged all things of his own sub
stance? I know not. Is he immense without quantity
and without quality ? I know not. All I know is, that we
must adore him and be just ” (loud applause).
Mr. Bradlaugh : It is perfectly true that what I have said
here I have said before, and very much of what I have said I
have printed before. I am quite sure that Mr. Armstrong
did not intend that as any blame upon me. [Mr. Arm
strong : Certainly not.] In fact, if any advantage accrued,
it would accrue to him, because, having what I had to say
on the subject to refer to, he would be better able to answer
it by previous preparation. Why I mention it is because
one person seemed to think that it was very reprehensible on
my part to say here anything that was not perfectly new.
I make no claim to originality, but try to say the truest
thing I can in the clearest way I can (hear, hear, and
applause). Then I am told that I did not pay attention
enough to what was said last night about the functions of
the voice of God. I have been told to-night that the idea of
righteousness and rectitude has always been one and the
same amongst all human beings, from the savage to the
highest intellect. If telling me so is evidence of it, then,
of course, I must be content. But, unfortunately, I am not
content, but say that the evidence is all the other way (hear,
hear, and a laugh). I have read carefully Wake’s latest book
on the evolutions of morality, tracing out the growth of
notions of morality amongst savages. I have read Tylor,
Broca, Lubbock, Agassiz, Gliddon, Pritchard, Lawrence,
and I think I am familiar with the best of ancient and
modern authors on the subject; and I say it is
�56
absolutely contrary to the fact that the notions of
morality are, and always have been identical from
the lowest savage to the highest intellect. It is abso
lutely contrary to the fact that one and the same idea of
right always and everywhere prevails (hear, hear). It is not
a question of my opinion ; it is a question of the conclusive
evidence laboriously collected on the subject, and I am
sorry to have to put it in that plain and distinct way (hear,
hear). Then I am told, and I am sure Mr. Armstrong
would not have said that unless he thought he did, that he care
fully separated last night the lower instincts which were not
included in conscience from the higher mental qualities.
But to my memory this was not so, and I have read the
whole of the speeches to-day in the reporter’s notes, and I
must say I found nothing of the kind. Now we have a.
greater difficulty. How much and how many—how much
of the mental instincts, and how many of the mental faculties
—are we to class as going to make up conscience, and how
much not ? I do not pretend to make the classification.
It rests upon the person who has the burden of proof here..
I deny there has been, as yet, even an attempt at classifica
tion, and I call for some statement which shall enable me
to understand that; without it is to be foregone. Then I
had it returned upon me that I had no right to criticise this
world unless I could conceive a better. The very act of
criticism involves the conception of the better. When I
point out something insufficient or wrong, that criticism
implies the conception of something conceivably better if’
that were changed. If you want, now, an illustration of
something possibly better, I would point to the famine in
China. There, actually, millions of people are dying for
want of food, and, for the purpose of sustaining life a little
longer in themselves, the members of families are eating
their own relations. If I were God I should not tolerate
that—(applause)—nor could I worship a God who does.
Mr. Armstrong, in his speech, pointed out what he terms an
intelligent purpose. It may be for an intelligent purpose that
millions of the Chinese should die of starvation, and actually
eat one another for want of food ; but if it is, I cannot
understand the goodness of the intelligent purposer. You
cannot take one illustration and say that it is the work of an
intelligent person, and then take another and say that it is.
not. If it is the intelligence of God displayed in one caseit must be in another, unless Mr. Armstrong contends that
�57
there are a number of Gods, amongst which number there
must be a good many devils (laughter and loud applause).
There are many things of a similar kind I could point out,
and ask the same question with regard to; where is the intelli
gence of God as displayed in permitting the Bulgarian
atrocities, the Russo-Turkish war, the Greek insurrection—
or in the world nearer home, its crime, misery, and want
(hear, hear, and applause). I do not draw the same moral
from the story of the starving woman that Mr. Armstrong
would draw. While you thank God for the crime, pauperism,
misery, and poverty, I say that you are degrading yourself.
The Atheist deplores the misery, the poverty, and the crime,
and does all he can to prevent it by assisting the sufferers to
extricate themselves, instead of spending his time in blessing
and praising a God for sending the woe and attributing it to
his superior intelligence (applause). Then there was an
astounding statement which came more in the sermon part
of the speech than in the argumentative portion of it
(laughter). Perhaps that may account for the wealth of its
assumption, and also for deficiency of its basis. It was that
freedom, happiness, and virtue, through the power of God,
were continually winning their way. How is it that an intelli
gent and omnipotent God does not look after them more,
and see that they overcome opposition a little faster than
they have done ? Mr. Armstrong says that I fight shy of
experience. I don’t do anything of the kind. I fight shy of
experience which will not submit itself to any test; I fight
shy of experience which cannot bear examination and
investigation; I fight shy of such experience only. Our
friend gives us the experience of a dying girl. Now, I do
not mean to say that every religion in the world has not
been a consolation to dying people—that belief in a God
has not been a consolation to persons who have enjoyed the
full power of their mental faculties on their death-beds. Since
I was in America some time ago I saw a copy of a sermon
preached by a New York clergyman, who had attended,
what he believed to be the dying bed of an Atheist, and he
said that he hoped that Christians would learn to die as
bravely and as calmly as the Atheist seemed prepared to
die. Luckily that Atheist did not die. He is alive to
night to answer for himself (applause and hear, hear). I
don t think an illustration of personal experience in that way
can go for much. The man and woman who die in possession
of their faculties, with strong opinions, will generally die
�strong in those opinions. Men have been martyred for
false gods as well as for the one you would have me worship.
It is useless to make this kind of an appeal in a discussion,
in which there was room and need for much else. Heavenly
stars, a crown, and that kind of thing are not as certain as
they ought to be in order to be treated as material
in this discussion. And then Mr. Armstrong says what he
would do and how he would feel if he were an Atheist.
Charles Reade wrote a novel, which he entitled “ Put yourself
in his Place.” Mr. Armstrong has been trying to put him
self in the Atheist’s place, but he has not been very success
ful (hear, hear). The Atheist does not think that all the
evil which exists in this world is without remedyj he does
not think that there is no possible redemption from sorrow,
or that there is no salvation from misery (hear, hear). He
thinks and believes that the knowledge of to-day a little,
and to-morrow more, and the greater knowledge of the day
that will yet come, will help to redeem, will help to rescue
the inhabitants of this world from their miserable position ;
and further, that this is not to be in some world that is to
come, but in the world of the present, in which the salva
tion is self-worked out (loud applause). The Atheist will
not make promises of something in the future as a compen
sation for the present miseries of man. Instead of saying
that for prayers and worship the poor woman or man will
have the bread of life in future, he tries to give her and him
the strength to win bread here to sustain and preserve life as
long as it is possible to do so (applause). The diadems,
too—which our friend has to offer to the poor—which are to
be worn in heaven by those who have had no clothes here
—possess no attraction to the Atheist; therefore he does nor
offer them, but, instead, tries to develop such self-reliant
effort as may clothe and feed those who are naked and
hungry while they are here. He directs his efforts towards
human happiness in the present, and believes that in the
future humanity must be triumphant over misery, want, and
wrong (applause). A diadem of celestial glory may or may
not be a very good thing; of that I do not look upon my
self as a judge, so long as I have no belief in its possibility.
That there is much misery and suffering in the world I
know, and it rests with Mr. Armstrong to prove whether it
is better to try and remedy it here or to worship its author
in the doubtful endeavour to obtain as recompense a crown
of celestial glory (hear, hear, and applause). But which
�59
God is it that we are to worship ? Is it the Mahometan
God, or the Jewish God? Is it one of the Gods of the
Hindus ? Is it the Christian’s God ? If so, which sect of
Christians? You must not use phrases which mean
different things in different mouths (hear, hear). Then we
come to definitions, and, having objected that there was
no necessity for defining, or having objected that defining
would not make things more clear, with the skill and tact of
a practical debater, my friend goes through every word
(laughter). Prayer, we were told, has two distinct meanings.
Might I ask in which sense it was used in the first speech
made last night? You did not tell us then that prayer had
two senses. I ask why you did not tell us ? I might have
thought it was one fashion when you meant another. I ask
what meaning you meant when you used it ? What two
senses has prayer towards God ?—in which of the two senses
did you use prayer—and, knowing it had two meanings,
why did you not tell us in which sense you used it ? Then
praise, too, you said, is to thank God for his goodness; and
as you used the word many times last night you knew what
you meant by it, having relied upon it so firmly that it
seemed to be an evidence of God’s existence (applause).
By sacrifice I mean an act of real cowardice. The coward
does not dare to pay in his own person for the wrong which
he has done, so he offers something or somebody weaker in
his stead. He tries by offering a sacrifice to avert the ven
geance which would fall—and, according to his creed,
ought to fall—upon himself. Sacrifice is the act of a
coward (applause). Offerings are of flowers, of fruits;
offerings of young animals, lambs, kids; sometimes the
offerings are things which come the nearest to their hands;
sometimes the sacrifice consists of inanimate things which
had a special value to the worshipper; sometimes the
first fruits of their fields or flocks, which they offer
to the source, as they think, of the plenty in those
fields and flocks.
In later times, offerings have got
to be much more complex; but even now you will still find
them, in modified fashions, in the Churches of England
and Rome. The mutual system is that which operates in
every form of worship which makes any sort of claim to re
ligion. The word “ worship ” was only used as a general
word which covers the whole of those forms, leaving our
friends to select and repudiate, and in any case the burden
is on Mr. Armstrong to make the meaning clear (hear,
�6o
hear). I read the whole of the speeches of last night with
out finding any repudiation or question about the definitions
I presented ; and I submit it is scarcely fair, after what has
passed, to ask me to further define them at this late stage
of the debate. I should have had no objection had it been
invited at the earliest outset (applause). Well, now, we
have worship defined as “ the energy of my soul.” Well,
but you have not explained your soul. Why do you call it
soul ? Where is its place in your body ? Is there any
thing about soul you can notice so as to enable me to know
anything at all about it ? Will you take your definition of
soul from Voltaire, whom you have quoted against me?
When you reply, will you tell us what Voltaire, Professor
Newman, Paine, or Martineau say upon the subject of God,
and in which of their writings you will find that which all
the others would accept as a definition ? You must
remember the Theist of Paine’s time is not the Theist of
to-day, and I want you to tell us what are the specific
opinions of each of those you have quoted—of Francis
William Newman, of John William Newman, of Martineau,
of Thomas Paine, of Voltaire—as to the questions I have
asked (applause). Which of the Gods is it that I am to
understand Mr. Armstrong as defending and asking me to
worship (loud applause) ?
Mr. Armstrong : Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentle
men,—I am somewhat at a loss as to which of the numerous
questions I am to answer first. I shall not take them in
any logical order, but simply pick out of my note-book
the most important of them. Mr. Bradlaugh has said
that the act of criticism of the world implied the conception
of a better world. Mr. Bradlaugh has tried to describe his
conception of the better world, and I have tried in my pre
vious speeches to show that he would not make it better.
And I again submit that, instead of being better, it would
be worse (hear, hear). He says he does not draw the same
conclusion from that poor woman in the cellar that I
do. He says that while you are content to suffer, you de
grade yourself. Now, there are two kinds of content.
You may be content like the sloth or the sluggard, or you
may be content like that poor woman, who while trying to
improve her position, still remained poor to the end of her
days, and yet at the same time felt the peace of God in
her heart.
Does the belief in a God, as a fact,
make men less energetic and vigorous in improving
�6i
their own condition, or trying to improve that of
others ? I don’t believe it does (applause). I believe you
have Theists as well as Atheists, who devote their kindly
sympathies to the good of their fellow creatures. They are
content in one sense and discontent in another sense.
They have that holy discontent which makes them anxious
to remedy the world’s evil, and that content which makes
them see God, who is working from evil to good (applause).
We have been told by Mr. Bradlaugh what the Atheist will
do ; how he will give the bread of this life to the hungry
child; the Theist will do the same (applause). The
Theist will—but no, I will not institute these comparisons ;
we are each, I feel sure, striving to do our best; so I won’t
enter into comparisons (rounds of applause). He says it
is unreasonable to worship an insoluble proposition. A
proposition is a grammatical term signifying a statement,
and I am not aware that I asked anyone to worship a
statement or proposition at all. I have called upon you
to worship God (applause). He says I did not separate
the lower instincts from the higher mental qualities in
man. I do not say I did. But I did separate the lower
instincts from the voice of God in conscience. I said that
it was entirely distinct from the lower instincts in man. I
said that the voice had a right to command and rule these
lower instincts (hear, hear). He asks me which God it is
that I am preaching. I will tell you what God I ask you to
worship—the best that you can conceive, whatsoever it is
(applause). I want you all to worship the best that you can
conceive (rounds of applause). If the Hindu’s idea is the
best he can conceive, let him, by all means, worship it
(hear, hear). If the Jew’s God is the best he can imagine,
let him pay homage to it. If the Christian’s idea of God
is the highest he can conceive, let him be true to it and
worship it, and it will make him a nobler man (applause).
It is not mere names which signify in a matter of this
kind. Though each sect may give him different names,
it is still the same God (hear, hear). Mr. Bradlaugh
wants to know which of them all I uphold as God ;
which of the different types I acknowledge, or ask you
to acknowledge.
Is it the God of Martineau, of New
man, of Parker, or of whom else ? I say it is that which is
common among them all—namely, the conception of good
ness and excellence which you will find in every one
of their definitions.
It is that God which they
�62
-all recognise, and concerning which they only go wrong
when they begin to try and define it metaphysically
{hear, hear). Mr. Bradlaugh wants me to define God;
further than I have done so, I cannot. In the words of
the Athanasian Creed an attempt is made to define the undefinable. The Athanasian Creed tries to explain the whole
of that which overrules the universe instead of describing
simply that which is in relationship to you. I have always
been under the supposition that that was a practice of the
theologian which had greatly retarded the progress of the
world. Mr. Bradlaugh spoke of prayer as implying a hope
—a hope to induce God to do what he would not do with
out prayer; and he wanted to know in what sense I used
the word “prayer” in my speeches. I have not used the
word “ prayer ” without describing what I meant. At least,
I have not done so to my knowledge ; if I have, I am
sorry for it (applause). Mr. Bradlaugh says that prayer im
plies a hope of inducing God to do what he would not do
without it. For my part, I doubt whether some things
that have been called prayers, such as the prayers for the
recovery of the Prince of Wales—(loud hisses and laughter)
—for wet weather, and for fine weather, have very much
influenced the divine counsels (hear, hear and applause).
But what do I mean by prayer ? As I have said before,
the addressing of my soul to this power which I feel and
recognise above me; and the law of the answer of prayer—
and it is as much a law as any law of nature—is that they
who do thus energise themselves towards Godbecomethereby
more susceptible to the energising of God towards them. The
law is that he who energises or addresses himself towards
God, consciously, reverently, and of set purpose, thereby sets
at motion a law by which he becomes more susceptible to
God’s addressing of himself to him, and so he gains to him
self the strength, moral and spiritual, which we find in prayer
(hear, hear). Mr. Bradlaugh picked out one of the words from
his own definition of worship. By sacrifice he said he meant
the act of a man who was too cowardly to bear the result of his
own actions. As far as that definition goes, I may say I do
not include it in my idea of worship (applause). Now, sir,
I have striven to the best of my power to be precise and
clear in my words. It is true I have not dealt with the
matter from a platform purely metaphysical. lama positivist
in most things, understanding by a positivist one who founds
his philosophy on observed phenomena. I have passed out
�63
of the stage in which men believe that theological theories
will solve all the problems of the universe. I have passed
out of the stage in which Mr. Bradlaugh now is, in which
metaphysics are looked upon as the best ground of reason
ing we can have. I have passed into the stage in which
positive thought, the recognition of phenomena, is recog
nised as the best starting-point we can have from which
to get at the truth. Auguste Comte traces the progress of
the thought of the world and of the individual from the
theological stage to the metaphysical stage, and from that
to the positive stage. I invite Mr. Bradlaugh to look
at things from that stage, and to see whether he cannot
make his thoughts clearer by the use of the positive method
than by the use of the metaphysical (loud applause).
Mr. Bradlaugh : The curious thing is that I have never
used the word metaphysics, and I have offered to affirm no
proposition that does not relate to phenomena. I am as
tounded to hear that I am a metaphysician (laughter and
applause). Is it because I only used language which I can
make clear that my opponent gave me that title ? It is
because he does not use language that is related to phe
nomena that he is obliged to commend his Theism by
speaking of it as a problem which is insoluble (applause).
I have not done anything, as far as my case is concerned,
except use language relating to phenomena. Now, I have
only a few moments, and this speech will be my last in this
debate. I would, therefore, like you to see the position in
which we stand. I am told that the improvement I would
suggest would in no sense tend to virtue. I must refer again
to the state of things in China, where the members of the
same family are eating each other for want of food. Would
it not tend to virtue if their condition was remedied (ap
plause) ? I wish my friend and myself to look at things
from this point of view, and, as he is in the positive way of
thinking, let him put himself in the same state as they are,
and then ask whether an amendment of the condition
would not tend to greater virtue (renewed applause). What
God is it that we are to worship ? Oh, the God it is reasonable
to worship is the best we can conceive—but no conception has
yet been put before us. You have been told a great deal
about stars, but the more important facts and arguments
still remain unchallenged (hear, hear). Now, I am asked,
does belief in God hinder philanthropy ? Yes, when it is
held as those do hold it in some parts of the world, who.
�64
think that God has designed, in his thought and intelligence,
and for good purposes, that a famine should take place, such
as the one in China (hear, hear). There are at least people
among the Mahometans and the Hindus whose virtue has
been clearly shown to have suffered much more from religion
than from civilisation (applause). The case put as to prayer is
one which I think has something peculiar about it. We are
told first of the law of prayer, which is said to be as much
a law of nature as any other law. Well, now, by law of
nature (Mr. Armstrong : Hear, hear)—I don’t know if I am
misrepresenting you—I only mean observed order of
happening (pouring water from glass); I do not mean
that there has been some direction given that this water shall
fall, but that, given the conditions, the event ensues. Law
of nature is order of sequence or concurrence, the observed
order of phenomena. What observed order of phenomena
is there in the order of prayer ? When the prayer prays
“ himself he sets a law in motion.” Is this so? We are
told that the prayer for the recovery of the Prince of
Wales did not much tend to alter the divine counsel. Mr.
Armstrong did not tell you how he knew that.
His
own admission here proves that prayer is sometimes
offered in vain, taking the observed order of its phenomena
(hear, hear). He spoke of the holy discontent in pious
men which set them to seek to remedy evil. Holy discon
tent against the state of things which God in his intelligent
purpose has caused ! Then the holy discontent is dissatis
faction with God’s doings. How can you worship the God
with whom you are dissatisfied (applause) ? But what is the
truth of the matter ? In the early ages of the world man
saw the river angry and prayed to the river-god; but science
has dispelled the river-god, and has substituted for prayer,
weirs, locks, dykes, levels, and flood-gates (hear, hear). You
see the same thing over the face of nature wherever you go.
What you have found is this : that in the early ages of the
world gods were frightful, gods were monstrous, gods were
numerous, because ignorance predominated in the minds of
men. The things they came in contact with were not under
stood, and no investigation then took place ; men wor
shipped. But gradually men learned first dimly, then more
clearly, and god after god has been demolished as science
has grown. The best attempt at conception of God is
always the last conception of him, and this because God
has to give way to science. The best conception of God is
�65
in substituting humanity for deity, the getting rid of, and
turning away from, the whole of those conceptions and
fancies which men called God in the past, and which they
have ceased to call God now (applause). Mr. Armstrong
thought that it was because men had given different names to
God that I tried to embarrass him by bidding him choose
between them. It was not so; it is the different characteristics
and not the different names that I pointed out as a difficulty.
We have gods of peace, gods of war, gods of love, a god of
this people, or of that tribe, a god of the Christians, a
god of misery, of terror, of beneficence—these are all
different suppositions held by men of the gods they have
created. It has well been said that the gods have not
created the men, but the men have created the gods, and
you can see the marks of human handicraft in each divine
lineament (applause). I cannot hope, pleading here to
night, to make many converts. I can and do hope that all
of you will believe that the subject treated wants examina
tion far beyond the limits of this short debate. I have a very
good hopeindeed,and reallybelieve thatsome good has been
done when it can be shown that two men of strong opinions,
and earnest in their expressions, can come together without
one disrespectful word to each other, or want of respect in
any way; without any want of due courtesy to the other;
and with a great desire to separate the truth and the false
hood (applause). If there has been unwittingly anything
disrespectful on my part, I am sorry for it. I have to thank
Mr. Armstrong for coming forward in the manner in which
he has done, and I can only ask all to use their services in
making the spread of virtue, truth, and justice easier than
it has been. I am aware that I have nominally a vast
majority against me, but I do not fear on that ground, and
still shall continue to point out falsehood wherever I may
find it. At any rate, the right of speech is all I ask, and
that you have conceded. I have only an earnest endeavour
to find out as much as I can that will be useful to my
fellows, and to tell them as truly as I can how much I
grasp. It is for you—-with the great harvest of the unreaped
before you—who can do more than I, to gather and show
what you have gathered; it is for you who have more truth
to tell it more efficiently; and when you answer me I put it
to you that so far as the world has redeemed itself at all, it
has only redeemed itself by shaking off in turn the Theistic
religions which have grown and decayed. So far, it seems
c
�to be a real and solid redemption (applause). When re
ligion was supreme through the ignorance of men, the people
were low down indeed, and a few devoted men had to
grapple with the hereafter theory and all the content with
present wrong which the belief in it maintained. Take a
few hundred years ago, when there was little or no scepticism
in the world. Only a very few able to be heretical—the mass
unable and too weak to doubt or endure doubt. Look at the
state of things then, and look at it now. Could a discussion
like this have taken place then ? No. But it can since the print
ing-press has helped us; it can since the right of speech has
been in good part won. Two hundred years ago it could not
have been. Two hundred years ago I could not have got the
mass of people together to listen as you have listened last night
and to-night, and had not men treated your religion as I treat it,
we should not have therightof meeting even now (applause)’
If you want to convince men like myself, hear us; answer
us if you can—say what you have to say without making it
more bitter than we can bear. We must believe it if it is
reasonable, and if not we must reject it. So long as there
is any wrong to redeem we shall try to redeem it our■selves (applause). We may be wrong in this, but at
least we do our part.
I do not mean that in the same
ranks as my friend there are not men as sincere and as earnest,
men as devoted, men as human-redemption seeking as myself,
but I, or the best of those for whom I plead, urge that their
humanity is not the outcome of their theology (applause).
Then their experience of right, their hope of life, and their
experience of truth rest entirely on what they do here. And
I will ask you this : do you not think it is quite possible, as
Lessing says, that he who thinks he grasps the whole truth
may not even grasp it at all ? like the one deceived by the
juggler's trick, he may think he holds something in his hand,
but when it is opened it is empty (hear, hear). Take the
truth as you can—not from me, not from him, not from any
one man. There is none of the bad which is all bad, none of
the good all good, none of the truth all true: it is for you to
select, to weigh, to test for yourselves (hear, hear). Many
of us stumble in trying to carry the torch in dark places in
the search for truth, but even in our trembling steps the
sparks we scatter may enable some to find the grains of truth
we miss ourselves (loud and prolonged applause).
Mr. Armstrong : Mr. Bradlaugh, the body to which I
belong also have the majority against them; over that
�we can shake hands. Let us try, each in our own way, as
may best seem to us, to serve what we hold to be true (ap
plause). Depend upon it, whether there be a God or
not, we each shall do best so. If there be no God, then
you tell me I shall still do well to serve humanity. And
if there be a God, he will gather you also, my brother, to
his arms, so long as you are true—true and absolutely sincere
in those convictions which come to you from the reason
which he has given you (loud applause). You have
told us that while religion held sway men were down-trodden.
While superstition held sway it is true they were (applause) ;
while false ideas of a cruel and lustful God held sway, it is
true they were (applause); but just in proportion as men’s
thoughts of Godt have purified and clarified, just in pro
portion as they have restored to Christianity its sweet
meaning, just in that proportion religion has risen to be a
power in the world of all that is good and sweet and holy
(applause). Now, sir, to speak of what I said about the
prayers for the recovery of the Prince of Wales. I said I
thought they had been of little avail.
But the prayer for
spiritual purity from a Christian man does win its answer by
a law—a law of nature, I will now say, since you have defined .
a law of nature as the observed sequence of phenomena;
but I dared not so call it until I knew what your definition
■of nature might be. But let us come back from these philo.sophisings, in which it is so easy to go wrong, to the test of
experience. Mr. Bradlaugh says I do not submit the ex
periences of which I have spoken, to the test. I invite you to
test them, and see whether Mr. Bradlaugh has upset them
or not. If you test them fairly and then find them false,
then come and tell me so. They are neither uncommon
nor abnormal experiences, but the experiences of nearly every
man and woman. It may be that their hearing is dull, but
still they know the voice. You all know those in which the
initiative comes from God, the voice of conscience, of which
I spoke ; you all know the solemn feeling which comes over
you in the presence of the majesty of nature. You all may know
the other things in which you have to take the initiative.
Heed those things whether you believe they come from God
or not, and you all may know the other—that of worship
—and its answer. My contention solely is, that it would
be reasonable for you to seek for that experience, that it is
reasonable in us to practise it (hear, hear). And now I will
tell you a little story for the end of this debate, of a little
�68
family of children; and as I shall not found any argument upon
. it, I do not think it will be unfair. They sat one Christ
mas Eve in a chamber where the wintry gloom of early
twilight fell. The eldest son sat and talked of the good
ness of their father, and how, from the earliest days he
could recollect, his tenderness had sheltered him, and how
he seemed to have a heart to love every little child all
through the world, and how he was surely even now prepar
ing some sweet surprise for them every one But John, the
second boy, had lived all his life at a school on the far sea
coast, where he had been sent, that rough ocean breezes might
strengthen his weakly frame, and now, tanned and burly,
he had just come home for Christmas, and he had not even,
seen his father yet. And he said he did not believe they
had a father ; that Theophilus, declaring he had seen him,
was nothing to him, for if there was one thing he had learned
at school, it was not to trust the experience of other people
till tested by his own. But Edward said he, too, knew they
had a father; he, too, had seen him, but he was very stern,
and he thought they could all do as well without him, and
what could be more unkind than to leave them there in
. twilight solitude on Christmas Eve. And little Tom sat
apart in the very darkest corner of the room, with a tearstained face, crying as if his heart would break, over
the hard sums set him there to do, and thinking that
his brothers were a selfish lot of fellows, to talk and talk, and.
not care for him and his hard task. And Theophilus had
just come to steal his arm around little Tom’s waist, and dry
his tears, and try if he could not help him to do his sum,
when the door of the next room was thrown open and a
blaze of light flashed upon their faces, and one after the other
they all rushed in and beheld their father standing by such a
glorious Christmas-tree as boys never beheld before. And
for each and all there were gifts so rare and precious—the
very things they had longed for all the by-gone half. And for
John, who had been so far away and had not known his father,
there was a grasp of the father’s hand so strong and tender,
and a kiss from the father’s lips so sweet and loving, that he
felt as if he had known that dear father all his life ; and as
for little Tom, all his tears were dissolved in rippling
laughter, and he quite lorgot his sum, for on his brow was
set the brightest coronet on all the tree, and they told him
he should be king through all the long Christmasday to follow. And now, dear friends, may the peace of
�69
God which passeth all understanding, that peace which the
perishing things of the world can neither give nor take away,
that peace promised to the weary by our dear brother,
Jesus Christ, even in the midst of all his suffering and woe,
be with you for ever. Amen (applause).
Mr. Armstrong having sat down, rose again and said,
—And now, Mr. Chairman, I desire to move to you the
hearty thanks of this meeting for your conduct in the chair,
for your impartial manner of ruling over us, and the kind
words you have spoken. I thank you, Mr. Bradlaugh, for
the courtesy and fairness with which you have conducted
your part in this debate; and I thank you, sir, for presiding
over us (applause).
Mr. Bradlaugh : I second that motion. I cannot say
that we can thank you for your fairness, for, fortunately, you
have had no opportunity of showing it. But I thank you most
heartily for accepting a position which might have been one
of great difficulty and the taking of which may cause you
to be misrepresented. I also thank Mr. Armstrong for having
met me, and for the kindly manner in which he has spoken
(applause).
The vote of thanks was put and carried unanimously.
The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen,—the thanks
which have been given to me are due rather to the gentle
men who have spoken. I cannot but praise the admirable
way in which they have rendered my position almost a
sinecure. This debate has shown that a subject of such
great importance can be discussed fairly, liberally, honestly,
as this has been, and that no danger threatens him who
occupies the chair, or those who lay their honest and earnest
views before you. I feel that I have derived much know
ledge from the truth which has been laid before us ; and I
do feel that there is a growing interest in things of this
sort, which is itself a proof that discussions of this kind are
very useful (applause).
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Is it reasonable to worship God?
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Armstrong, R.A. [Rev.]
Bradlaugh, Charles
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 69 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Verbatim report of two nights' debate at Nottingham between the Rev. R. A. Armstrong and Charles Bradlaugh. Inscription in ink: "Mr M.D. Conway, with RAA's kind regards." From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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Freethought Publishing Company
Date
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1878
Identifier
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CT78
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ("Is it reasonable to worship God?"), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Subject
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Atheism
Free Thought
Theism
Apologetics
Atheism
Conway Tracts
Free Thought-Controversial Literature
Religious Disputations
Theism