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ON THIS AND THE OTHER WORLD.
BY
FRANCIS W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence
��THIS WORLD AND THE OTHER WORLD.
HE title I have assumed for this tract may appear
gigantesque : hut the reader will kindly remember
that no author need attempt to exhaust his subject. In
fact, I do but intend to make various remarks chiefly
on one writer who has devoted intense effort to the
topic. The philosophers who will have no theology,
except such as can be elicited by the study of that
which is external to the human mind, may attain to a
belief in some world-ruling Supreme Being, but in no
case are likely to have even the faintest expectation of
renewed existence for individual man after death. In
extreme contrast to this, such Theists as were Lord
Herbert of Cherbury, and, recently deceased, Theo
dore Parker and Mazzini, make human immortality a
first principle of religion. So is it with the Bengali
Theists, members of the Brahmo Somaj ; to whom I
cannot allude without expressing admiration and sym
pathy. My friend, Miss F. P. Cobbe, an ardent ad
mirer of Theodore Parker, is by far the most vigorous
and prominent advocate of this doctrine among ourselves;
which, in spite of the double-edged nature of the argu
ments on which she relies, deeply moves me.
In republishing her Essays on Life after Death, which
appeared in the Theological Review, she has prefixed an
elaborate, and, in many respects, valuable Preface,
commenting on Mr J. S. Mill’s three Posthumous
Essays. Perhaps it may seem needless to say, that in
T
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On this World and the other World.
everything which Miss Cobhe writes, there is sure to
be much that commands my interest and true sym
pathy ; but I avow this distinctly now, because I am
about to express strong dissent from her cardinal argu
ments and statements : and it may be well here to quote
from her what I regard as a primary truth, p. iii.
“We shall never obtain our truest and most reliable
idea of God from the inductions which science may help
us to draw from the external world. Spiritual things
must be spiritually discerned, or we must be content
never to discern them truly at all. In man’s soul
alone, so far as we may yet discover, is the moral
nature of his Maker revealed,” as in a mirror..............
“ If (as we must needs hold for truth), there be a moral
purpose running through all the physical creation, its
scope is too enormous, its intricacy too deep, the cycle
of its revolution too immense, for our brief and blind
observation. It must be enough for us to learn what
God bids us to be of just and merciful and loving, and
then judge what must be his justice, his mercy, his
love,” &c., &c.
One caution I desire here to add. Owing to essen
tial differences of nature, we need to practise virtues
which cannot exist in God. The exhortation, “ to
imitate him,” in order that we may attain high virtue,
is a precept in the Sermon on the Mount, which Miss
Cobbe, with many assenting, regards as high wisdom,
p. 216 ; but to me it seems a profound mistake, vir
tually reproved by my quotation from her, just made.
We do not see by our outward eyes the moral virtues
of the most High. We find nothing of him outside
of us to imitate ; we only gain some knowledge of him
by first knowing and feeling pure and noble impulses
in ourselves. But when Miss Cobbe deduces from this
precept of imitating God’s indiscriminateness, “ which,
for eighteen centuries has rung in men’s ears,” that
“ we ought to make the same sacrifices for the vicious,
as we should readily make for a beloved friend,” she
�On this World and the other World.
5
seems to forget that we cannot imagine the possibility
of God making any sacrifices at all. At least I do not
yet believe that she would seriously assert that “ mak
ing sacrifices ” is one of his virtues. When from an
imaginary quality in Him, she deduces a superlatively
high-flown and doubtful duty for us, this may warn us
how dangerous is the method she employs.
Nay,
poetry may sternly warn us :—
“ Must innocence and guilt
Perish alike ?—Who talks of innocence ?
Let them all perish. Heav’n will choose its own.
Why should their children live ? The earthquake whelms
Its undistinguish’d thousands, making graves
Of peopled cities in its path ; and this
Is neav’n’s dread Justice ; ay, and it is well.
Why then should we be tender, when the skies
Deal thus with man ? ”
(Mks Hemans’ Vespers of Palermo.)
Surely this is as good an argument as that based upon
the Rain. We cannot be wise in imitating the action
of the elements. All such precepts are an ignis fatuus.
In my belief, duty must stand on its own basis, as a
purely human science, to which religious knowledge
contributes absolutely nothing.
Upon pre-existing
morals, spiritual judgments are built. Religion cannot
tell us what is moral, though it can give great force to
moral aspirations. It can immensely aid us to self
restraint and sacrifice for the attainment of virtue,
hereby in turn making individuals nobler, and conduc
ing to more delicate moral perception, out of which
rises an advance of moral science itself.
But I proceed to Miss Cobbe’s topic, The Hopes of
the Human Race,—that is, the doctrine of human im
mortality. The new Hindoo Theists propound it as a
spiritual axiom. Apparently this was Theodore Parker’s
idea, who, nevertheless, also reasoned for it, if I re
member, from the alleged universal yearning of man
kind. The fact that all men so yearn, always appeared
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On this World and the other World.
to me very doubtful; nay, from the history of Hebrew
religious thought, a formidable objection arises : nor is
any such yearning of unspiritual men to me a worthy
argument. Indeed, what do they want ? A life as
closely like this life as possible, only more comfortable.
How can such desires, however universal, be an omen
that they will be gratified ? But when it is asserted,
that in proportion as men become sounder in morals,
and purer in religion, so does this belief of an after
existence, in which sin shall be subjugated, and evil
practically annihilated, grow up and take deep root;
the assertion (if true), comes to me with great weight.
It may not be decisive against objections, but I (cannot
make light of it; and the very possibility of an after
life, has, in my belief, a specific influence on spiritual
thought and feeling.
But to Miss Cobbe mere * possibilities and probabi
lities seem feeble : she is a bolder reasoner. To express
my own judgment, I fear I must say, she is an audaci
ous reasoner. The “ existence of evil ” is with her I a
dread mystery,” which (I am glad to say), she tries to
present as an exception; yet, she only doubtfully admits
Paley’s assertion, that “ it is a happy world after all
and calls his solution (pp. xlii., xliii.) “ an easy-going
optimism.” Truly, in my sentiment, the surrender of
this fact (for, a fact I consider it) would inflict on
Theism a most formidable wound. If there be no
future life, “ Man (she says), is a failure, the consum
mate failure of creation.” On this assertion she bases
the belief, that there must be a future life, to set right
what was wrong here. Seeing that we (the few) are
here happy, and that others, “ no worse than we, and
often far better,” (i drag out lives of misery and priva
tion of all higher joy, and die, perhaps, at last, so far
as their own consciousness goes, in final alienation and
revolt from God and goodness,” therefore, we demand
for these [Italics in the original] “ another and a better
life at the hands of the Divine Justice and Love: and
�On this World and the other World.
7
in as far as any one loves both God and man, so far he
is incapable of renouncing that demand.
One who
thanks God for hisTown joys, and is satisfied without
making “ demand for farther existence for himself or
anybody else,” she entitles “ selfish,” pp. lxiv., lxv.
Now, I try to apply this by taking the case of some
singularly wicked man, whose crimes or vices bring
him to a shameful death; and I ask myself, Could I
approach God in prayer, with this man’s name on my
lips, and say : “Thou hast created him, and hast not
hitherto shown him common justice, or common kind
ness ; thou hast allowed him to become depraved and
miserable ; therefore, I demand of thee a renewed life
for him, in which thou mayst redress thy injustices
and neglects.” To my feelings, such an address is the
height of presumption : even a harsher word may seem
appropriate. It reminds me of a much milder prayer,
that of a Frenchman, opening with the words “ Fear
not, 0 my God, that I am about to reproach thee.”
Yet I cannot see wherein my hypothetical prayer differs
from Miss Cobbe’s argument, except that the one is
said inwardly to one’s self, the other is said inwardly to
him who reads the heart. In substance they are the
same. My reason, as well as my sentiment, is shocked
by it; yet, she “ commends it to us as the true method
of solving the problem of a life after death,” p. lxvii.
Such an avowal is to me very revolting; and from one
whose many high qualities are justly appreciated,
cannot be passed over without definite protest and
disavowal.
Why are we to admit that man, as we see and know
him in this world, “is a failure,—the consummate
failure of creation?” This is a natural idea to those
who believe that the first man was perfect in virtue, and
that a golden age was succeeded by ages of silver, of
brass, of iron, and of clay. “2Etas parentum pejor
avis,” &c. 1 From one who not only has laid aside the
fables of Gentile religions, but reads Lubbock, Darwin,
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On this World and the other World.
and Tyndall, we might far rather expect a cheerful
light-heartedness, if not a joyful exultation, that by the
mysterious guidance of a hidden providence, our race is
ever advancing. History is to me a book so bitter of
digestion, that when consulted by aspiring ladies, I
have never dared to advise their study of it, without
warning them how very painful it is. Yet history
brings to me an unshaken conviction that man is no
failure, but a noble success,—the noblest success in the
only world open to our moral sight. The men of the
present day, collectively and on the average, are far
superior in virtue, as well as in knowledge, to those
of oldr
“ Atrides ! speak not falsely, when
Rightly to speak thou knowest.
For us, our boast it is to be
Far better than our fathers.”
Let those who tremble at crumbling creeds fancy
that man is becoming viler and viler, that the ages of
faith and goodness are past, and that we are ripening
for a fiery deluge, as Noah’s contemporaries for the
flood. But from Miss Cobbe I claim a clear perception
that the sway of reason is ever winning on passion and
caprice; that compassion wins on selfish recklessness ;
forethought how crime may be hindered, wins on rude
vengeance ; mild rule wins on severity; woman wins
on man; slavery is fast dying, serfdom is doomed; the
millions obtain a consideration never before accorded to
them; not only is public war less inhuman, less reck
less, less permanent in its ravages, but insurgents too
are less frenzied and milder in their successes ; nor are
foreigners so alienated as once. Man claims foreign
men for brethren as never before. Superstition,
bigotry, persecution are disowned, and are marvellously
abated. All the civilized profess, however little they
practise, equal morality to all races of men ; in all the
strongest communities, science and literature unite
many nations. The increased brilliancy of our light
�On this World and the other World.
9
discloses, alas ! the blackness of our guilt as never
before ; but this is a necessary part of our shame, our
repentance, and our purification. Our crimes and our
vices cause thousands of English hearts to weep
inwardly, as if they were daily afflicted by great
domestic calamity. We will not dissemble nor dis
parage the guilt, which is our common disgrace, and, to
the right-minded, the greatest of afflictions; yet it is
good to be thus afflicted, and it is a part of the agency
by which our nation and all the foremost nations of the
world are to be elevated; yes, and we may boldly say,
this ennobling process is perpetually going on, and
that, with very sensible acceleration. What more
(David Hume well asks) can we wish for than the
gratification of a [noble] passion ? and what passion can
be, in a man, more noble than the longing after a
better and better future for mankind? Miss Cobbe
herself expects this better future; “To judge from
irresistible analogy (she says), every future generation
will have a livelier sympathy with the joys and
sorrows of all sentient beings, such as scarcely in
their tenderest hours the most loving souls of former
ages experienced” (p. xx.). If human nature thus
advances, why does she account man to be a consum
mate failure, if there be no life after death ? Certainly
I, for one, cannot allow that to contribute to the
permanent and true welfare of the human race, of
which we are organic parts, is a slight honour, an
insufficient reward for a whole life of virtue; and
whether from Miss Cobbe, or from anyone else, I must
regard it as mischievous, delusive, and morbid, to pre
tend that life is a mournful dream, an empty bubble,
unless it is to be followed by an immortality. If
seventy years of life are worthless, so are seven
millions. The multiplication of bubbles gives nothing
but bubbles : it cannot change the quality. Life, in
the instinctive belief even of the miserable, is worth
having,—is intrinsically full of joy to every healthy
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On this World and the other World.
being. At least, suicides are but a fraction of the
race, and Miss Cobbe will not claim them as par
ticularly sound-minded. To the sound-minded, life
is surely precious; and if it have many pangs, of body
or mind, she herself does not wish it otherwise. Every
great birth comes forth with severe travail; and the
less we have to grieve for personally, the greater the
heartache which must be borne for others. Neverthe
less, every good man joyfully accepts this, nor can it
disturb his serene peace. To hold that pain is an
essential part of the high-training through which God’s
wisdom leads mankind, will not be called by Miss
Cobbe “ an easy-going optimism.” It has long
appeared to me that Virgil, in his treatment of this
whole topic, showed himself a wise philosopher,—
wiser than Christians and wiser than Atheists. “ Pater
ipse colendi Haud facilem esse viam voluit, &c., ...”
“ It was Jupiter (says he) who added evil venom to the
hideous serpent, and ordered the wolves to prowl and
the sea to heave; and shook down the honey from the
leaves, and hid away the fire, and stopped the wine
that ran abroad in rills; that use by practice might,
little by little, hammer out diverse arts—.” To earn
bread by the sweat of the brow, was, in Virgil’s belief,
no curse fulminated from an angry God on the human
race, but a stem necessity imposed by a wise God,
counselling for our exaltation, and “forbidding his
realms to become benumbed in drowsiness.” Miss
Cobbe, in her Intuitive Morals, emphatically proclaims
that virtue is the highest human good, which also it is
the grand unchanging purpose of God to promote in
his human world. She evidently has not changed from
this conviction. She must refuse to admit that the
physical pains suffered by the human race (however
inexplicable in separate instances), do at all in a broad
view affect the great argument of Theism. Moral evil
alone can, in her view, weigh against it.
Consider then the two opposite extreme cases of
�On this World and the other World.
11
her moral argument quoted above. Take, first, a
robber tribe—from the hills of India or from an
Eastern archipelago—or take a family of Thugs.
They were brought up from childhood with a very
narrow moral horizon. Duty to their nearest kin or to
their tribe, they understood; but truthfulness, or mercy,
or justice, to any beyond their tribe, they no more
dreamed of as duty, than an English sportsman thinks
of truthfulness or justice to salmon or hares, or an
ancient Greek or Roman to barbarians whom it was
convenient to attack. Surely it is a great mistake to
account men as wholly without virtue, or wholly miser
able, because the circle within which their virtue is to
be exercised is deplorably narrow. To deny the piety,
or morality, or mental happiness of an ancient Hebrew
king, because of his ferocity to Moabites or Ammonites,
does not belong to a very deep philosophy. His con
science did not condemn him. The Thug had a still
stranger and more perverse religion, coupling itself
more visibly with avarice. He perhaps may be cor
rectly described as having never had a chance of
attaining a noble moral state, and at last dying under
the English hangman, “in alienation to God” Yet
few persons, I think, will see in the fact any proof
that Thugs have a claim on God for a future life in
order to win a nobler morality. In contrast to this,
take the deplorable case of a man of high and refined
genius, subtle talent, poetical gift, easy and fluent
eloquence—acceptable alike to the cultivated and the
rude—a man reared in the highest cultivation both of
the family and of the schools (such a man was well
known in my youth)—who nevertheless surrendered
himself to the love of wine, beer, spirits, laudanum—
in short, any narcotic; and first disgraced himself
beyond recovery, becoming enamoured of the coarsest
company, and before long went down into the grave,
a miserable victim of his debaucheries. Will Miss
Cobbe say, “ God is neither just nor merciful, unless
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On this World and the other World.
he doom this man to be saved in another and a better
life ? ” To me the whole argument seems inadmissible;
but I must leave it to the reader’s judgment.
At the bottom of all seems to reside an assumption,
that if God permits wrongs and “undeserved suffering”
in this life, he must needs give retribution in another
life. Man, she says, is bound to do justice and mercy
without delay; but God, having an eternity to work in,
may put it off to a distant time (p. xxxvi.). In early
theology, the Divine Ruler was compared to a human
king, who had his throne and his court, his errand
bearers, his armies, his judges or judge, his executioners
and his prison. Minos, 2Eacus, Rheadamanthys, accord
ing to 2Egypto-Greek notions, judged the dead, as Jesus
for the Christians. Retribution for the crimes of earth
was of course a paramount object in such mythology.
Retribution for our sins or errors we often suffer here,
and therefore may suffer also in a future world; but in
neither case (in my estimate) barely because God is just.
Miss Cobbe propounds (p. 117), as a solemn fact of the
future, a mental purgatory of awful misery, and con
cludes its description by the words, “ when it has been
accomplished, the blessed justice of God will be vindi
cated” (p. 119). Perhaps by justice she here means
nearly the same as goodness; in which case I reverently
accept the thought as possible: yet I fear that the word
contains with her the idea of retribution—of forensic
punishment—which is notoriously the prevalent creed.
“Virtue,” says she (p. 28), “cannot be without reward;
nor can the crimes which human tribunals fail to reach
escape retribution for ever” (so p. 41, 42). But the
analogy from human to divine punishments breaks
down entirely. Indeed, no wise law-giver punishes
for retribution’s sake. Though, without past guilt, the
judge has nothing to punish (for of course he dares not
to touch the innocent); yet the purpose of punishment
is to prevent guilt in the future. ~Li the officer of law
could have prevented it in the past, and did not, he
�On this World and the other World.
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would be himself to blame. What theology will pro
nounce that God was incapable of hindering sin in the
past, but will be capable of it in the future ? or that,
having been capable in the past, he neglected his duty,
but he will be more attentive in the future ? To put a
chasm and a convulsion between his present and his
future action, seems to me both morally and intellectu
ally inadmissible. The argument that he can delay
punishment, because he has an eternity to work in, is
singularly weak, as if his convenience were the matter
in question; but we have to consider what is equitable
and beneficial to his frail creatures. Elsewhere I have
used a comparison, which I venture here to reproduce,
of punishments by a schoolmaster. These should be
applied day by day, to keep the boys from offence.
The quicker the punishment follows the offence, the
more effective it is as a preventive : hereby it is kept
light—mere chidings may suffice for good discipline.
But if the master were to reserve all punishment to the
year’s end, and meanwhile only threaten and warn, the
volatile temper of children, unable to look far forward,
would make his warnings vain. Impunity would over
throw all discipline, and lead on into actual crime.
Then we should severely blame the master, and almost
exculpate the children. Now, if we are to reason
morally concerning the divine action, we cannot believe
him to leave the guilty unpunished in the present
world, and then to reserve severe punishments for them
in the distant unknown hereafter; nay, without even
public intelligible warning of a future tribunal; though,
indeed, to men as frail and short-sighted as children, no
such warning could be of avail. For this reason, all
idea of future retribution, as such, seems to me quite
untenable in the present stage of knowledge. Such a
Theodice as Leibnitz made an axiom, has no plausi
bility. The punishment of guilt Miss Cobbe regards
as entirely purifying, remedial, and beneficial. Good.
But for the innocent, and for those guilty ones whose
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On this World and the other World.
guilt is their misfortune, she intensely demands redress
of wrongs.
“ A tortured slave, a degraded woman,
must be immortal; for God’s creature could not have
been made for torture and pollution” (p. 49). It
would be unjust in the Creator (she alleges, p. xxxvii.)
to create a being “who endured on the whole more
misery than he enjoyed happiness.” An infant which
is born sickly, and, after lingering in undeserved pain
(p. xli.), dies without enjoying life, in her estimate is
injured by its Creator unless it has hereafter a balance
of happiness—a dialect more like to Bentham than we
might expect from her. Of course animals have never
“deserved” the torments which cruel men inflict on
them: must not a just God give them future redress ?
It is almost necessary for her, and she seems not averse,
to adopt from Bishop Butler the immortality of dead
animals. I will only here say, that such a theory
seems to break down with its own weight.
The
essence of justice (she says, p. 42) is, that 11 no one
being shall suffer more than he has deserved, or undergo
the penalty of another’s guilt.” What moral beings
have “ deserved ” is hard to know; that we must suffer,
one for and from another, is involved in the unity of
our race, but not as a forensic penalty.
What perhaps shocks me most, is the instability of
faith to which Miss Cobbe’s logic would lead us. After
much discussion, she brings out the flat avowal, as the
net result (p. 48)—“ Either man is immortal, or God is
not just!1 The whole passage seems to glance at what
I have myself written: my kind friend evidently hopes
to lead me forward to her more elevated position, while,
alas ! she repels me. She seems quite to forget how
limited is our knowledge of the possible and the im
possible ; and that it is by no means certainly beyond
the sphere of external science to establish that the
re-existence of an individual man, whose body has
crumbled to dust, is a physical contradiction. Wherein
Identity consists, no one seems able to say. We know
�On this World and the other World.
15
that our minds and souls were either bom with our
bodies; or, if with Plato we say they pre-existed, their
previous existence was nothing to us. I cannot shut
my eyes to the possibility of its being hereafter accepted
as a physical and metaphysical certainty, that a disem
bodied soul of man is a monstrous idea, against nature,
intrinsically absurd, and incapable of being identified
with a man who has lived in organic flesh. If this
were proved to me beyond dispute, should I then con
clude (or would my friend draw the inference) there
fore God is unjust ? Miss Cobbe herself seems nearly
convinced that memory has been scientifically proved to
depend on “the brain-tablet” (pp. 74-77). What would
future existence be to any of us, if it cut away all the
memory of the present world 1 I confess, if my con
fidence that God is just, depended on the certainty that
man is immortal, while the latter opinion is possibly
disprovable by science, I could have no firm faith in
the attributes of God at all. Miss Cobbe means to
make faith in God primary, and a belief of man’s
immortal life secondary (p. xiii.). Most rightly; but
in fact her proposed dilemma overthrows faith in God,
if immortality be disproved. This I hold to be a very
grave mischief. We censure those preachers who assert
that all moral law rests on supernatural evidence, on
miracles, on an infallible Bible, and that whoever dis
believes miracles may as well be immoral as moral. We
say that such preachers lay a trap for men’s feet, and
prepare for them a career of profligacy so soon as they
unlearn superstitions. But is not Miss Cobbe laying a
net for our feet, a dilemma to cast us into black darkness
of religious sentiment, if ever the progress of external
science happen to prove (which, for anything which she
or I know, may happen) that identity is absolutely
irrecoverable when the vital organs are all dissolved ?
If this were established to-morrow, my cheerful, happy
faith in God would remain undisturbed. I cannot
look with terror on science, but believe that all truth
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On this World and the other World.
is good for us. That God works under strict conditions,
all thoughtful persons know, who ascribe wisdom to
him. Mr J. S. Mill, it seems, imagined religious people
to be unaware of this, and thinks to refute them, when
he is saying, coarsely indeed, yet in substance the same,
as they say reverently; but this merely shows how
little intercourse he ever held with any high religious
mind. But only the fanatical can insist that reverence
for God shall depend on his doing for us things intrin
sically impossible.
Miss Cobbe seems anxious to
possess us with an agonizing despair concerning this
present world, if there be not an immortality awaiting
us. She fancies that nothing but clear light or total
darkness is possible: any intermediate position she
calls “playing fast and loose with our beliefs in
immortality” (p. xi.). But between certain knowledge
that a proposition is true and certain knowledge that it
is false, there must very often (and oftenest in the
highest inquiries) be an intermediate state of great
uncertainty; and if this be inevitable to our present
condition, it must be accepted as best for us by all who
revere God.
Spasmodic discontent with inevitable
ignorance, is a morbid state. It is not our task to
govern the world. As we are not “ equal to eternal
cares,” how can we wisely undertake to decide what
conduct is required from the divine justice? It is
astonishing to me that a deeply pious mind can enter
on such an argument. Never did I imagine that on a
religious question I should find myself on the side of
Mr J. S. Mill, and against Miss Cobbe: but so it
seems now to turn out. Sadly and scornfully she
rejects his declaration that the benefit of the doctrine
of immortality I consists less in any specific hope than
in the enlargement of the scale of the feelings.”
Specific hope 1—I never had any, and I am convinced
that very few people have; but the intellectual con
ception of a life after death I feel to be enlarging and
ennobling, though incapable of being fixed. Mr Mill,
�On this World and the other World.
17
I think, does not exhort us to cultivate delusions con
cerning it: he only insists that immortality is not
(cannot he) a proved and certain truth.
That no
proof has hitherto been attained available for all
spiritual minds, appears to me an undeniable certainty.
Not the less is it possible, that always to discuss the
topic and never settle it, enlarges the human senti
ment.
No argument seems to me less weighty than that
favourite one, “ I could not have a day’s happiness,
unless I believed I should meet my babe, or my
husband, or my sister, in Paradise : therefore there
must be a Paradise.” This is certainly very deep in
Miss Cobbe, who indicates that she was brought to a
belief in immortality by the death of one deeply
beloved.
Deep grief has its values,—grief for the
loss of friends, as well as grief of other kinds: I
certainly do not plead for heartlessness or apathy.
But as, when a revered parent departs in very full
age, grief is milder and soon fades into sweet and
sacred remembrance, so too ought it surely to be with
every loss, though for a while acuter. But to nourish
perpetual grief, to refuse every consolation but a belief
in immortality,—vowing to be miserable for life, if we
cannot attain this conviction,—presents itself to me as
emphatically morbid.
With the educated, the whole idea of God’s govern
ment of the world is essentially changed, since the
time that Christianity became prevalent.
Jew and
Christian, Manichaean and Arab, Saxon and Celt, so
far as they believed in any divine government at all,
supposed it to be carried on by direct intervention.
Jesus himself (if we believe his biographer), announced
the doctrine : “ If I pray to my Father, he will
presently give me more than twelve legions of angels.”
While this angelic theory was current, all the reasonings
concerning divine rule were different from what we
can now accept. At present neither of our Protestant
Archbishops, nor yet Archbishop Manning, expects
�18
On this World and the other World.
divine aid for the church through the swords of angels.
We hold universally, that divine influence follows
subtler paths for working its designs; a procedure
for which there must be profound reasons. Some
reasons we understand, but our knowledge must ever
remain mutilated and very partial.
If cruel and
undeserved torture had been prevented, that of course
would be the thing to rejoice us; that it has not been
prevented, startles us dreadfully; but after it has been
permitted, it cannot be undone. If it be an imputa
tion on the Divine Justice, let it have what weight it
may. To raise animals or men from the dead, and
give them a balance of happiness as a late compensation
for injustice, does not exalt my idea of the divine rule;
and for man to devise, this method of divine compensa
tion for injuries, which, according to our barbarian
reasoning, God ought to have prevented, strikes me
as reasoning equally barbarian.
This leads to a matter already touched on,—the
assumption that God’s future rule is to differ from his
past rule. If theology could be a web spun entirely
out of the head and heart, we might abide by our own
theories of divine rule, unmolested by material science.
But in fact it is from the outer world, reasoned on by
us, that the first suggestion of a World Spirit comes,
and from our own spirits we reason out some of the
attributes of that Spirit from whom is our origin.
Then we are bound to check our notions by observed
facts. We cannot disregard external attestations: then
we discover to our dismay that the divine rule is
wonderfully, nay, terribly, different from what we
expected.
Surely then humility should conclude;
“We are somewhere in mistake : God is wiser and
better than we, and our fancies were folly.”
How
then can we add, “ Because he has not done now what
we thought he ought to do, we are quite sure he will
do it hereafter, else he would not be just.” I had
fancied that only an infantine philosophy could expect
God’s future rule to differ from his past; that is, a
�On this World and the other World.
19
different law of justice to rule in a future (or in an
unseen), world, from that which exists in the seen and
known world.
To argue: “ This present world is
terribly bad, therefore there is an unseen world in
which everything is good; or if not, then God is
unjust,” appears to me to be planting the germ of
Atheism, and not at all to attain the wisdom, or even
the humility, of modern science. I cannot consent to
condemn as bad, the only world of God which I surely
know. There is evil in it which appals us, and evil
against which we are bound all our lives to struggle ;
but it is not, therefore, simply bad, and requiring a
supplementary world to be believed in, before we will
praise God for the present world. To say so, is to
throw contumely on all the religion of the early
Hebrews. Yet with its abundant infantine errors, it
originated for us that inward piety, which Miss Cobbe
with me values as life ; a piety, which according to
her, if I rightly understand her logic, was with them
groundless, because they did not believe in immortality..
But again, the future world which Christians
imagine (and apparently Miss Cobbe also), is to have
no evil in it. Whether this mean physical or moral
evil, in both cases it seems to me incredible. Beings
which have no bodies cannot have bodily pain j yet if
we imagine a community of personalities without
wants, none seem to have duties : something of want
and possible pain appears even desirable.
And if
there be duties (without which we are not moral
beings) finite creatures must always make partial
failures and be liable to error, wrong-doing, sin; and
virtue, which in a finite being cannot be divinely
perfect, must always need effort, sometimes even
struggle, to rise. Is it credible, that our Creator, who
put us in this world for present duty, should intend us
to hammer out for ourselves the image of an unrevealed
world, and plant this in the front of our adoration of
him, as something to be believed as firmly as his
existence and goodness 1 I confess, nothing has made
�20
On this World and the other World.
me so sympathize with the Secularists, as reading this
Book of Miss Cobhe. A future life which can only
be conceived most dimly, hidden away in the back
ground and reverentially contemplated as possible, acts
on us profoundly, like gazing into nightly darkness, and
seeing the mysterious infinite universe. It acts much
on the sentiment, little on the intellect; it does not
use up the mind by fruitless activity, nor has it any
influence at all for evil. As for its reasonableness,
even so severe a reasoner as J. S. Mill does not
censure, and rather commends it. But a doctrine of
immortality, thrust into the front of religion, intruded
upon us as a condition without which we may not
believe God to be just, distorts all proportions and
perspective, and perniciously carries minds into endless
argumentation hostile to tranquil serene reverence.
Thereby it defeats the end which my very devout
friend sincerely proposes to herself.
I more than ever doubt, whether religious thought
concerning these particular matters has changed since
the age of Cicero. In his dialogues are found sub
stantially all that our materialists can now urge against
a divine rule. It has often occurred to me, that the
Oriental doctrine of the stubbornness of matter was
perhaps only their mode of stating, that God works
under conditions,—partially known to us.
Side by
side with Atheism or Pantheism, were men, like
Cleanthes, who held to the belief of a perfect and just
God. The Stoics and Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus
did not need the belief of future existence (though like
Socrates many of them half believed it), to maintain
that virtue was the chief good, and that this remained
true even to a martyr dying on the rack. If Miss
Cobbe, assuming the character of a Satanic tempter,
had put to Thrasea her question, “ Why is it worth
while for you to persevere in virtue, when you are in
five or ten minutes to be annihilated 1 ” he would have
replied, “simply because virtue is the chief good;”
and I think she would applaud.
�INDEX TO MB SCOTT’S PUBLICATIONS,
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On Public Worship
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�List of Publications—continued.
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Letter and Spirit
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------HENNELL, SARA S.
On The Need of Dogmas in Religion. A letter to Thos. Scott
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Another Reply to the Question, “What have we got to Rely on, if we
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CANNOT RELY ON THE BIBLE
-06
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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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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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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On this and the other world
Creator
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Newman, Francis William [1805-1897.]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 20, [4] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Publisher's list on unnumbered pages at the end. Date of publication from British Library catalogue. Critique of Frances Power Cobbe's 'Essays on life after death' republished from Theological Review, with an added 'elaborate, and, in many respects, valuable Preface commenting on Mr. J.S. Mill's three Posthumous essays'. p. [3]. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Date of publication from British Library catalogue.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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[1875]
Identifier
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G4857
G5501
Subject
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Death
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 (On this and the other world), 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
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Afterlife
Conway Tracts
Frances Power Cobbe
Future Life
Morris Tracts