1 10 11 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/3a8352ad14ad98f5140fbfb5d02be4ea.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=kXbNME-UWH4Q%7EF4KCJYhGD2qs%7ECLvkCjNsp3C0DXpNapyBTIyh7x4PHcvexdwG9WrisHpIANef9SW-IJ7MtpsNMRsYzMr0GrfZksMCkQSz2ZTAuqsZuu42RSy8UDqOI1HtpPIyu9jFlOlhcWRUBwB2r7RhTAPfd1djfm1UB%7EKQEdRvpPn4DiDbLGTjdDrvrWT4FyoUkWv9iSJ9i249%7EschOiui%7Exu30VZPD%7E5Zlr0CjLQj-a4VdLgPYOO958-ellOCiYopan1Fb5MqiEL4w4ii2I2kqE-9H6wf6YRXJcoNN9kPR1uf-d5gJSBt5Uag4N5WNbVvQhBFVJFPBJQDBr0Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f52f1d9a317cbdf7c324be273b67217b PDF Text Text Ti N?hJ5 ’ r' NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY • a ; O0,. 1 KloviSirn, .'/ ■••4t a. ’••< C^AgV- J A THE SERVICE OF MAN / T �Clairvaux, Fitzjohn's Avenue, N. IK May i6tll, 1886. My dear Clodd. The book which I wish to publish is entitled “ The Service of Man: An Essay towards the Religion of the Future. ” It is, of course, largely founded on Positivist principles, but by no means exclusively so. And, as a matter of fact, Comte is never referred to or even named. Great harm has been done to Positivism by forcing Comte crude and simple down people's throats and winding tip every paragraph, like the prayers in the liturgy, with “ through Auguste Comte our Lord." But that is not the chief reason why I have chosen this course. I differ often so deeply and completely from Comte that I cannot take him as my sole authority; and, on the other hand, to controvert him was not desirable or needed. The object of the book is to show how the Service of God, or of Gods, leads by natural evolution to the Service of Man ; from Tlieolatry to Anthropolatry. Always yours most sincerely, Jas. Cotter Morison. �THE SERVICE OF MAN AN ESSAY TOWARDS THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE BY JAMES COTTER MORISON [issued for the rationalist tress association, ltd., by arrangement WITH MESSRS. KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER, & CO., LTD.] WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. 1903 ��JAMES COTTER MORISON : IN MEMORIAM1 James Cotter Morison is in a special sense one who has left his work even more in the memory of his friends than in permanent fruit before the public. At school and at college this man, who in general acquaintance with ancient scholarship and in wide historical know­ ledge seldom met any superior, was, as happens so often, unmarked by prizes and the ordinary academic honours. Like John Ruskin, John Morley, Algernon Swinburne, and so many of our best writers, he passed through Oxford without official recognition or public honour—gathering, perhaps, all the more that he never entered into any competitive race, a thirst for books, a full harvest of knowledge, and a true zest for historical literature. Though he had no university distinctions, he made many friends at Oxford, and was at once marked by generosity of nature and sympathetic charm in conversation. With John Morley, his contemporary, of the same college, he maintained a life-long friendship, and perhaps a still closer communion of literary interests with the famous scholar, tutor, and ulti­ mately Head of Lincoln College, Mr. Mark Pattison. We can many of us recall the graceful and sympathetic account of his old tutor which Morison wrote on the death of the Rector. Sympathetic charm, affection, gene­ rosity, fertility and grace in social converse, were the leading qualities of Morison’s nature. There have been of course in our day many men of greater learning; though Morison’s knowledge was very wide and well possessed. There have been many men of more brilliant wit; though he would often delight a room by the point and felicity of his talk. There have been some men of more astonishing fancy and poetic imagination; though neither fancy nor imagination was wanting in him. But what in a really supreme degree was the mark of Morison’s conversation was, not so much its learning, its wit, its fancy, its ingenuity, but that which is often wanting when learning, wit, and fancy are most abundant—I mean genuine sympathy, the sense of contact of spirit with spirit. He was no master of mono­ logue, no habitual teller of stories, no lecturer, no egotist in society. He loved to find at their best those around him, to put himself in contact with their hearts, their brains, their experience; he drew out what was in his companions, he stimulated their curiosity, gratified their interests, gathered from them all he could, gave them all he knew, exchanged with them knowledge, and suggested to them fresh fields, new ideas. There was keen intellectual activity in this. But there was far more of affec­ tionate sympathy. In this quality he had no superior in the society in which ’This appreciation was originally delivered to the Positivist Society then meeting at Newton llall, and is reproduced here in a slightly abridged form. �6 JAMES COTTER MORISON: IN MEMORIAM he lived. I almost doubt if he had an equal. Let us do full justice to this rare, this beautiful quality. It is one very different from that which is often admired as con­ versational brilliance. I am not one of those who would set much store by con­ versational brilliance in itself, where the brilliance is an end, the habit one of display, the motive egoism. The sym­ pathetic union of mind with mind, the touch of one character upon another, the genuine desire to give new life and put fresh warmth into a friend’s spirit— this is, surely, a moral faculty of singular value and true social delight. And how rare is it! There are learned men, clever men, men of bounding elasticity of mind and temper, who instruct, amuse, dazzle us. But how often do they stand apart by themselves to themselves, from fastidiousness of intellect, from self-absorption, from a certain hardness and coldness of nature, taught them in the long stern work of their lives. How rare are those who, having given their lives to study, have the freshness and freedom of a college lad, when for the first time in his life he begins to feel all the charm, the uses, the emotion of true conversation! How seldom do the brilliant men really relish the brilliance of others, at least in the first comer or the stranger. How often is the scholar dull, the wit irritating, the student sententious, the great talker fatiguing. Now Morison, who was certainly scholarly, witty, learned, and brilliant, was never, I think, fatiguing; for he was always first and foremost sympathetic : his sympathy covered all he did, coloured and warmed all he said. Sympathy is the bond of Humanity. In the magnificent aphorism of Comte, “ If the kingdom of Heaven belong to the poor in spirit, the kingdom of Man belongs to the rich in heart.” Though men speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not sympathy, it profiteth nothing. Though men under­ stand all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not sympathy, it is nothing. Sympathy covereth a multitude of sins. Sympathy is but one side of the great Apostle’s untranslatable and illimitable dycon)—and Morison had sympathy. Sympathy stands out in his social life, in his friendships and his admirations, and it stands out in his literary works. It shines forth in his intense love of music, the most sympathetic of the arts. It shines out in his love of art, and his study especially of architecture. It stands out in his early college life ; in his life in Paris, where he lived long in the centre of a Positivist group ; in his life in London; in his devoted regard for men who in turn taught, fascinated, and delighted him—men so very different, yet who each left impressions on his mind :—first, I think, and earliest, Mark Pattison; then perhaps Cardinal Man-| ning ; afterwards Thomas Carlyle ; and, lastly and finally, for the last five-andtwenty years of his life, our venerated chief, M. Pierre Laffitte. Few men of our time have ever understood Paris and Frenchmen more intimately than he. And it was by his sympathy and affectionate instinct even more than by his long experience and incessant study. I well remember his life in Paris, where he lived some years with his wife and family, as a link between literary Englishmen and French republicans—a link, too, to some extent, between classes of Parisians who are very seldom seen in the same room, and who are not very willing so much as to �TF. rSmORISON: IN MEMORIAM Bonverse or act together. Yet Morison, as one outside the strife of class and party in Paris, by virtue of his kindly and genial bonhomie, would gather together those who seldom met elsewhere. I well remember his Paris home, where there came men of mark in the world of letters and the world of politics; Louis Blanc and some of the older school of socialists, some of the younger revolu­ tionists, conservative politicians, and young men already of promise in the administration, physicians, - lawyers, journalists, and artists, mingled with workmen, clerks, employes, typical men of the Parisian democracy. All felt at home—all were friendly, bright, and at ease. In Morison’s home it was difficult for any man not to feel at ease, not to be bright and friendly. He led them to feel what he was himself. He was brilliant, sympathetic, genial, and the source of brilliance, sympathy, and good fellowship in others. There were but few other houses in all Paris where such men could meet and be at ease. It was his gift. It is a rare gift, and a precious. Sympathy, I have said, was the key­ note of his nature; sympathy was the keynote of his best work in letters. It is sympathy, even more than eloquence, more than study, more than art, which makes his St. Bernard a really fine and permanent work. It is a beautiful book, a true book, a conclusive book, what a book ought to be. It is one of those books which are, in a way, decisive on a great crucial social problem. The deepest question of our day is thisDo men in society require any spiritual guidance ? Is a spiritual power a real thing; is it a possible thing? Is a Church an evil or a good ? And, as matter of history, was the Catholic Church a blessing or a 7 curse ? As a matter of religion, had the Catholic Church anypermanent residuum of good in it at all ? I know no problem in social science, in morality, in religion, so crucial as this—no task which litera­ ture can so usefully undertake. On this great problem Morison’s St. Bernard is decisive, final, crucial, so far as history is able to decide. It is the life of one of the most perfect natures recorded by man, engaged in one of the most central duties, in one of the most typical epochs in all human story. It is a life told with entire simplicity, the most genuine enthusiasm, with exact historic truth, with no unscientific weak­ ness, with no foolish blindness to hard fact, with perfectly rational sense and self-possession. But a picture of a most vivid personality, with complete under­ standing of its meaning, and with all the issues, the circumstances, all the problems manfully faced and laboriously worked out. It is no pedant’s work; it is no mere student’s monograph; it is not a literary tour-de-force. It is a noble portrait of a real saint. And the brush of the painter is dipped in sympathy. Now, it is no slight thing to reach inwards into the depths of the spirit of a true saint. When a famous painter was asked how he mixed his colours, he answered, “Sir, I mix them with brains.” If Morison had been asked how he studied history, he might have replied, “Sir, I study it with sympathy.” His St. Bernard was written in sympathy, and it was prepared with sympathy, under the influence of three men—how very different, and yet each having much to tell us about an Abbot of the Middle Ages—Cardinal Manning, Thomas Carlyle, and Auguste Comte. It was in preparing his book on St. Bernard that Morison first acquired �8 JAMES COTTER MORISON: IN MEMORIAH that deep interest in the Catholic Church, that real insight into the Catholic Church as a historic power, which he retained during life, and which breaks out in fine fragments in his latest book. It was then that he sought permission, and obtained the privilege, of passing some weeks within a Cistercian monastery, where he submitted to the sternest and most exacting form of monastic disci­ pline. It was a teaching which coloured and deepened his whole mind through life. This fragment about twelfth-century monasticism was dedicated to Thomas Carlyle “ with deep reverence and grati­ tude ; while writing it Morison was pro­ foundly influenced by his intercourse with the author of “Past and Present”; but the moral or theory of the book is already drawn from the teacher whom he was soon to know more intimately, in whose teaching he remained finally ab­ sorbed—I mean Auguste Comte. . The same spirit of sympathetic enthu­ siasm glows throughout another picture of Catholic zeal, the beautiful monograph on Joan of Arc. It comes out in a richer way in the address which he gave in Newton Hall on the 31st of December, the Day of the Dead, on the human idea of subjective immortality. In a very different vein, also, it essentially colours those two excellent studies, the Lives of Gibbon and of Macaulay, where the effort to judge these famous writers at their best so often appears through mani­ fest disagreement with their judgment and their tone. It is a curious example how resolutely bent was Morison’s mind on a really appreciative spirit (to use that somewhat ill-favoured word) that he used to say, in writing his Life of Macaulay, that he was constantly in fear of rather overdoing the effort to show abundant justice to a writer for whose style, method, and historical standpoint he himself had so strong a distaste. In his historical, as in his critical work, there is always the same mark—if we must use that clumsy word—the appre­ ciative spirit, the irresistible eagerness to get at the best side of an author, of a book, of an institution, of a historical character, to feel with their senses and to place himself in their position. In how many an essay, monograph, review— now, alas I forgotten, or soon to be for­ gotten; too many, I fear, unsigned, un­ known even to his closest friends;— through how many of them does this appreciative spirit run! In such historical monographs as I have mentioned, in his graceful and thoughtful lectures, in his enthusiastic estimate of Dr. Bridges’s book on Richelieu and Colbert, in his reminiscences of Mark Pattison, in his essay on Art, in the piece on Madame de Maintenon, in scores of short pieces full of just judgment and various know­ ledge. It is mournful to think how scattered, how unknown, how perilously near to final waste and extinction, is so much good fruit of head and heart, which was not knit up into unity and system in life. Most mournful of all is it to think on the long years of labour that he gave to his History of France, the fruit of so much ripe study, of such instinctive insight into character, of such grasp of institutions—all now, we fear, gone to waste, to uselessness, and final nothing­ ness. It is the law of our life—a law inexorable, solemn, and full of warning. As the old Hebrew poet said : “ Let me know mine end, and the number of my days : that I may be certified how long I have to live. For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain : he heapeth up riches, and cannot �JAMES COTTER MORISON: IN MEMORIAM tell who shall gather them.” “In the morning it is green, and groweth up : but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered.” Or, as the great Persian poet said :— 9 have been disposed to make, that the book is in any sense an exposition of the Positivist conception of what the Service of Man may become. I cannot myself look on it as an exposition of Positivist opinion at all. It was not so “ With them the seed of wisdom did I sow ; And with mine own hand wrought to make it designed by the author; it is not so in grow ; execution or result. And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d:— The book is a fragment, or rather a I came like Water, and like Wind I go 1 collection of fragments, introductory to “ There was a door to which I found no key : a work that has never been written. There was a veil past which I might not see : Continually before the book appeared I Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was—and then no more of Thee and can remember Morison explaining to me Me.” his purpose. The present book, he Happily we have risen above the said, was in no sense to be a Positivist mysticism of the Hebrew poet, the utterance. It should not contain Comte’s scepticism of the Persian poet. In his teaching ; it should not refer to Comte. thoughts about life and about death It should handle certain topics of religion Morison was neither mystic nor sceptic, and social morals which stood on the but Positivist. It would have been threshold of the question. Ultimately, strange indeed if one so intensely sym­ he said, he hoped to complete a book pathetic had not trusted in Humanity; on constructive lines, which was, in fact, to be the substantive and positive view and he did trust in Humanity. I have said nothing of his last work— of the Service of Man—a far more The Service of Man. It was but a important and far more extensive task, fragment—indeed, not so much a frag­ as he felt it to be. The essays now ment as a bundle of fragments—-some­ before the public wTere the critical, preli­ what hastily thrown together into a minary part. The Service of Man in its volume when he felt the approach of ultimate form, I can well remember his death, arranged with little cohesion and saying, was to be a sort of “ Whole Duty plan, and put out when his mortal of Man,” from the Positivist point of disease had already insidiously sapped view, in simple words which the least educated could understand. his energy. That book has not been written. I I know nothing about it so excellent know not if any portions of it exist. as its beautiful title, a phrase which in itself is worth many books, and will And, as that is the case, as the con­ prove quite an epoch in the growth of structive and positive treatise on the our faith. The Service of Man has Service of Man is wanting, I almost many noble passages and fine sugges­ regret that the critical and controversial tions ; but for my part I can hardly part has ever been put forth. Most judge of its meaning or its tendency in assuredly, to my thinking, not a little in the absence of the conclusive work to the book as we have it now is in no sense which it was simply a collection of intro­ Positivist teaching, is not even compatible ductory chapters. Most emphatically with Positivist teaching. We should be do I deny the suggestion which some failing in our duty if we allowed it to be �13 JAMES COTTER MORISON: IN MEMORIAM publicly assumed that this book as it stands impressionable, so elastic, could not be is in the remotest degree an embodiment rigid, would be over-indulgent to himself of the Human Religion. It was not so and to others, would be too ready to meant; assuredly it is not so in fact. yield, to receive, to assimilate, too care­ There is much in it which, on moral and less of discipline, moral and mental, too religious grounds, I should myself most eager to see truth anywhere and good in emphatically repudiate, as entirely alien all things. A nature of inexhaustible to the whole spirit of Comte’s teaching. sympathy like his, a brain of such vivid I mean much that is said about the receptive impulsiveness, was far too problem of population, and still more prone to submit to the impression of much that is said as to the origin of the every powerful mind, of every fascinating moral sense and the nature of man’s book, of every creative and fertile con­ moral responsibility. Even at this ception, and in each case was too willing moment, and on this occasion, and full to exaggerate its value. And Morison as I am of affection and regard for my not seldom did exaggerate the value of dead friend, I cannot pretend any sym­ things, and of books, and of men. To the main conceptions of Humanity pathy with the strange paradox : “ The sooner the idea of moral responsibility he was uniformly true, to the great con­ is got rid of, the better it will be for ception of the Service of Man, to “ the society and moral education.” If these cultivation of the heart, as incomparably words are to be taken literally, I say a the most important both to our own thousand times—No ! Society and moral happiness and that of others,” and finally education rest on the idea of moral re­ to the beautiful idea of Subjective sponsibility as the very cornerstone of Immortality in Humanity. In the last the entire edifice. letter that I had from him—just before In spite of this, Morison, as I say, his death—he said : “ I am obviously in accepted in its main spirit the faith in the last lap of life’s race, but how far Humanity, and for the last twenty years through it I cannot say. I have been of his life clung to it as a final and suf­ thinking much of Comte’s views on the ficient basis of belief. But not, be it objective and the subjective life. And said, without considerable reserves, much I seem never to have realised them occasional fluctuation of mind, and some before. I feel that the transition will definite antagonism. We here have no be rather a boon than a pain.” The absolute standard of orthodoxy ; we pro­ same idea was finely worked out in his fess no verbal adhesion to all Comte’s impressive discourse on the Day of the utterances; we do not set up to judge Dead. each other’s orthodoxy, or to censure He died in the faith of Humanity, each other’s backslidings from the truth. supported by the confidence and hope that Man does not end here as the I do not desire to be judged myself. beasts that perish, but continues to live Most assuredly I shall not presume to judge him. He read and accepted in the memory of those who loved him, Comte freely for himself, even as we claim in the continuance of much true work and beautiful teaching, in the mighty to read him and accept him for ourselves. Like all of us, Morison had the defect of continuous life of Humanity itself. In his qualities. A nature so versatile, so the absence of specific directions, his �JAMES COTTER MORISON: IN MEMORIAM family provided for his burial in the way that they felt most congenial to their feelings. And, in the absence of specific directions, that is the natural and obvious course that awaits us all. But none the less it is our duty here to keep alive, as we best are able, the memory and the work of our departed friend and brother. A life of such activity, of such culture, of such varied accomplishments, of such high designs and difficult tasks —in so large a part marred, mutilated, buried in the grave, by his long malady and too early death—such a life has profound and solemn lessons for us. How truly does it speak in those pathetic words of the teacher of old : “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day : the night cometh when no man can work.” Let us, too, work the works of Humanity, as our dead friend yet speaks to us, in the Service of Man ; for it is Humanity that has sent each of us, which has taught us, fed us, protected us, and has set us to work—to work at what?—at what else can man work but at the Service of Man? The night cometh when no man can work with his hands, when no man can work visibly, no man can work con­ sciously, but when we all work invisibly, in the consciousness of others—unseen, but really—when our brains, our hearts, our good deeds continue to work in Humanity. Death is for each of us not the end of life, unless it be made the end by the heartlessness, the indiffer­ ence, the cruelty of those who survive ii on earth. The grave has not the victory, unless we who stand beside it and live deliberately choose to bury in it the memory, the love, the work of our dead friends, relations, and teachers, with tlH same final abandonment with which we bury in it their bones. We are each of us some fraction, some organ, some representative (how­ ever humble and unknown) of the Humanity which confers on every worthy servant a truly immortal life. Whether or not there be to any a lite beyond the grave is a question which depends on those who survive. For children, relatives, friends, contempo! raries of all sorts, the higher duties of Family, of Friendship, of Humanity, do not end as the fresh sods are piled upon the grave. They only then begin. Th J last sad offices are over. The moral 1 the spiritual, the religious uses of death! the moral, the spiritual, the religious ideas of life after death, then truly begin —not so much for our dead parent, friend, teacher, fellow-worker—no, rather, they begin for us. Let us think of our dead friend and fellow-labourer as we knew him at his best, with his warm heart, with his generous nature, with his bright vivacity! with his intensely sympathetic impulses! and think not that he is dead, but that he sleepeth—that the best of him yet lives and works in our lives, in our thoughts, and finally in the bosom of the Humanity which made him. Frederic Harrison. �CONTENTS Pace Chapter I. Introductory - II. The Decay of Belief III. Wiiy Men Hesitate- - - - - - -13 ...... ... . . . IV. The Alleged Consolations of the Christian Religion V. On Christianity as a Guide to Conduct - - - 32 - 42 VI. Morality in the Ages of Faith ----- VII. Wiiat Christianity has Done VIII. The Service of Man - 52 - 69 ...... 94 IX. On the Cultivation of Human Nature - - - - 16 29 • - 103 �THE SERVICE OF MAN Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY A ruined temple, with its fallen columns and broken arches, has often been taken as a suggestive example and type of the transitory nature of all human handi­ work. “Here we see”—so runs the parable of the moralist—“ the inevitable end of man’s most ambitious efforts. Time and the elements cast down and consume his proudest fabrics. He builds high, and decorates with sculp­ tured ornament his palaces and fanes. But his work is hardly finished before decay begins to efface its beauty and sap its strength. Soon the building follows the builder to an equal dust, and the universal empire of Death alone survives over the tombs of departed glory and greatness.” The parable of the moralist is only too true. Decay and death are stamped not only on man and his works, but on all that surrounds him, on all that he sees and touches. Nature herself decays as surely, if not as rapidly, as the work of his hands. The everlasting hills are daily and hourly being worn away. Alps, Andes, and Himalayas are all in process of a degradation of which there is no repair. Nay, the Sun himself, the universal author and giver of life in our planet, is only a temporary blaze—a fire perhaps already more than half burnt out, hastening to its final consummation of cold and lightless ashes. And pro­ bably no other fate is in store for the countless stars which bespangle the nightly firmament. The animalcule, whose existence is measured by a summer’s day, and the galaxy which illumines the heavens for millions of ages, are alike subject to the common law of all life—growth, decay, and death. Some may think that an exception ought to be made to this statement in favour of the perennial vitality of Truth. Truth, it will be said, does not wear out, decay, and die. The Elements of Euclid are as true now as they were two thousand years ago. Truths obtained by induction and verified by experiment, or by correct deduction from true principles, do not change and pass away with the generations of men who hold them. It is therefore rash, such objectors would say, to assert that all things con­ nected with man are destined to ultimate extinction. His reason is independent of time, and has that in it which belongs to eternity. All must see this in regard to the incontrovertible truths established by science; many see it in tuitions of the mind, and others in doctrines of religion supposed to be divinely revealed. It is often added that it is fortunate for man that, amid the constant change going on in the phenomenal world, a permanent reality does exist, on which he can lay hold—eternal truth. It would be careless to overlook the importance of this counter-statement. About the permanence of truth there can be no question. Whether it be obtained by observation, generalisation, or deduction, verified by experiment and proof, we may safely assert that such truth will last as long as the human mind remains constituted as it is. But does that entitle us to claim eternal duration for any truth ? No one believes that the human race will last for ever. �M THE SERVICE OF MAN There is a probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that neither man nor his dwelling-place will exist beyond a certain, though it may be a very large, number of years. Now, when the human race shall have ceased to exist, would it be correct to say that the truths cognised by the human mind will survive it ? This could only be maintained by an idealist, who should place their continued existence in some extra-mundane Eternal mind—as that of God—which may be an article of faith, but hardly of reason. Moreover, if true propositions can exist after all the minds which could affirm them have disappeared, why should they not exist before the phenomenal ap­ pearance of those minds ? Can we consistently say that the propositions of Euclid existed in the Carboniferous era ? If so, why not assert that all the truths yet to be discovered in the remote future exist at present ? There is no question that things undreamt of in the philosophy and science of to-day will be trite commonplaces two or three thousand years hence. But are they truths now or yet ? Not only they are not, but the great probability is that, if they were expressed in words now, they -would be denounced as wild and dangerous errors. So that it is still legitimate to say that even truth exists for a time, while we admit that verified truth will have a duration co-equal with that of the human race. It is to be observed that the only truths that belong to this permanent class are the truths of simple observa­ tion, or of rigorous scientific inference. They have always been few in number, if compared with the multitude of pro­ positions held to be true by the mass of mankind. They are now increasing with unprecedented rapidity, owing to the great development of the scientific spirit in modern times. They obviously stand quite apart from the truths supposed to be derived from divine revelation. The latter differ from them both as to the method by which they were obtained, and especially in their durability. Lengthy as may seem the existence of the great religions of the world when measured by our small scale of chro­ nology, yet their transitory, not to say ephemeral, character is manifest to reflection, and even to observation. Go where we will on the earth’s surface, we find traces of bygone men—of their tombs, of their ashes, their temples— which testify to the former existence of religious beliefs nowr extinct. These beliefs embodied the most precious and profound of all truths in the devout conviction of those who held them, but they were so far from permanent that often they move the wonder and even the laughter of after-ages. Perishable as are brick, stone, and marble, they have outlived in countless instances the faiths which once wrought them into majestic architecture in their own honour. Temples often survive their creeds by thousands of years. Wind, rain, and frost disintegrate the roof and the walls of a shrine with more or less rapidity, according to climate; but they are not so swift or potent to destroy the material fabric as knowledge and science are to undermine the conceptions and assump­ tions on which the religious beliefs were founded, and for which the sumptuous fanes were erected in a spirit of reverence and sacrifice. Not less marked in another respect is the difference between the truths derived from religion and the truths derived from science. The truths of science are found to be in complete harmony with one another. Where this harmony is wanting, it is at once felt that error has crept in unawares. We never give a thought to the alternative hypothesis, that truths in different sciences or departments of knowledge may be inconsistent and mutually hostile, and yet remain truths. On the contrary, we find that the dis­ covery of new truth has invariably among its results the additional effect of corrobo­ rating other and older truths, instead of conflicting with them. In the history of science it has often happened that a �INTRODUCTORY newly-discovered truth has proved incon­ sistent with prevalent opinions, which had the sanction of tradition in their favour. But the position has always been felt to be intolerable, and that one of two things must happen—either the new truth must reconcile itself with the old opinions, by the necessary modifica­ tion ; or the old opinions must reconcile themselves with the new truth by a similar process. In astronomy the heliocentric theory, and in biology the circulation of the blood theory, produced the latter result, and revolutionised those two sciences by expelling a number of previously unsuspected errors. In modern times, on the other hand, the plausible theory of spontaneous genera­ tion has been forced to beat a retreat through its proven' inconsistency with older truths firmly established. Now, with regard to the truths announced with the credentials of a divine revelation, we find a very different state of things. There seems to be no exception to the rule that, the older religions grow, the more infirm do they become, the less hold do they keep on the minds of well-informed and thought­ ful men. Their truths, once accepted without question, are gradually doubted, and in the end denied by increasing numbers. This fate happened to Greek and Roman polytheism, and according to all appearances it is now happening to Hindooism, Islam, and to both Protestant and Catholic theology. We have to consider what a very surprising fact that is, on the supposition that any one of these religions is true. All the chief dogmas of the Christian and Mohamme­ dan creeds have been for several centuries before the world. They once were not v only believed, but adored. Now the numbers of those who doubt or dispute them are increasing every day. Time has not been their friend, but their enemy. Instead of becoming more firmly rooted in men’s esteem and con­ viction, instead of revealing unexpected connection and compatibility with other truth, instead of being supported by an 1! ever-growing mass of evidence which would make their denial insane rather than unreasonable, they are seen more and more to lack the proofs and credentials never wanting in the case of genuine truth, from which they differ in this important respect—that, whereas scien-l tific truth, though often disputed and opposed on its first presentation to the world, invariably ends by becoming absolutely certain and unquestioned, religious conviction begins with un­ doubting acceptance, and, after a shorter or longer period of supremacy, with the growth of knowledge and more severe canons of criticism, passes gradually into the category of questioned and disputed theories, ending at last in the class of rejected and exploded errors. That the world, in its cultivated! portions, has reached one of those great turning-points in the evolution of thought which mark the close of an old epoch and the opening of a new one, will hardly be disputed by any well-informed person. The system of Christian theology and thought which arose out of the ruins of the Roman empire has beejii gradually undermined, and its authority] so shaken that its future survival is rather an object of pious hope than of reasoned judgment. Apologists, indeed, are not wanting, they are per* haps never so numerous; but they cannot stem the torrent which is rushinsa away from theology in the direction of science, and that negation of theology! which science implies. Regarded as a question merely of speculation, the crisis is one of the most interesting which the world has seen, only to bq compared to the transition from poly­ theism to Christianity, in the early centuries of our era, and to the great Protestant revolt from Rome. But the speculative interest pales before the momentous practical interest of the crisis. A transfer of allegiance from one set of first principles to another, especially on subjects relating to morals and conduct, cannot be effected without considerable loss of continuity and order �16 THE SERVICE OF MAN by the way. Many will halt between Humanity. A common and lofty stan­ the two regimes, and, owning allegiance dard of duty is being trampled down in to neither, will prefer discarding all the fierce battle of incompatible prin­ unwelcome restraint on their freedom of ciples. The present indecision is action. The corruption of manners becoming not only wearisome, but under the decaying polytheism in the injurious to the best interests of man. Roman world, the analogous corruption Let Theology be restored, by all means, during the Reformation and the Renais­ to her old position of queen of the sance, offer significant precedents. It sciences, if it can be done in the light of would be rash to expect that a transition, modern knowledge and common-sense. unprecedented for its width and diffi­ If this cannot be done frankly, on the culty, from theology to positivism, from faith of witnesses who can stand crossthe service of God to the service of Man, examination in open court, let us could be accomplished without jeopardy. honestly take our side, and admit that Signs are not wanting that the prevalent the Civitas Dei is a dream of the past, anarchy in thought is leading to anarchy and that we should strive to realise in morals. Numbers who have put off I that Regnum Hominis which Bacon belief in God have not put on belief in I foresaw and predicted. Chapter II. THE DECAY OF BELIEF Opinions and systems of thought as well as institutions, which enjoy a con­ siderable lease of life in the world, have many of the characteristics of organisms, or at least of organs belonging to ani­ mated beings. The fact that they came into existence and survived during a longer or shorter period proves that they discharged a function of more or less utility ; that they were in harmony with the surrounding conditions, and hence found both exercise and nourishment for their support. If in time they gradually cease to discharge a useful function, become atrophied and disappear, their case is almost exactly parallel to the rudimentary organs found in so many animals, which, having ceased to be of use, become shrunken and meaningless, and only persist in an abortive form by virtue of the law of heredity. Such ■organs in the body politic resemble these analogues in the body natural, in that they often continue to exist long after their presence has ceased to subserve any useful purpose of life. The common trait of rudimentary organs belonging to either category, biological or sociological, is that they survive their use, that they are nourished and live at the expense of the organism in which they exist, and long after they have ceased to make any return for the support they obtain. In the animal world rudimentary organs may or may not be noxious to the organism in which they inhere; in the social organism they unquestionably are so, especially by their occupying the room and preventing the development of active and efficient organs which would succeed and replace them. That the Christian religion is rapidly approaching, if it has not already reached, this position, is a part of the thesis main­ tained in these pages. The decay of belief now general over Christendom �THE DECA Y OF BELIEF may be regarded from two points of view, and traced up to two distinct causes— one rational, the other moral. The current faith has come increasingly into conflict with science in proportion as the latter has extended in depth and area. The isolated points of collision of former days have been so multiplied that the shock now is along the whole conter­ minous line between science and theo­ logy ; and it would not be easy to name a department of inquiry-which has not, in some measure, contributed aid to the forces arrayed against the popular belief. More important still is the changed tone of feeling with regard to this subject. Time was, and even a recent time, when the prestige of Christianity was so great that even its opponents were overawed by it. But now men are ready to openly avow that they find a great deal in the Christian scheme which is morally shock­ ing ; and in the estimation of many minds nowadays, probably the moral difficulties outweigh the intellectual. Nothing is more common than the assertion that any objections now made to Christianity are worn-out sophisms, which have been answered and disposed of over and over again by previous apolo­ gists. Sometimes we are told that the objections are as old as the time of Celsus, and were refuted by Origen ; but, gene­ rally, Bishop Butler is the favourite cham­ pion who is credited with a preordained victory over all opponents, past, present, and future. Butler was so great a man, and his work, considered as a reply to the shallow deism of his day, was in many respects so successful, that it argues a certain irreverence for his character to load him with false praise and unmerited laurels. But these claims often made for Butler and others have their interesting and instructive side. They show how little apt the theological mind is to see the real points at issue, and to recognise the full gravity of the present crisis. To suppose that argu­ ments directed against such disputants as Toland, Collins, or Tindal—pertinent as they might be, and, indeed, for the 17 most part were—are equally potent when directed against the methods and results of modern science, implies a complete misconception of the true bearings of the question under discussion. In the early eighteenth century the light of science had hardly got beyond the first glimmer­ ings of dawn. Mathematics and as­ tronomy were the only sciences which had passed into the positive and final stage. Chemistry, geology, biology, historical criticism, were not yet in a position to speak with authority even on subjects in their own province, and were far from being in possession of vast stores of verified truth obtained by rigorous application of correct methods, such as now impose respect on the most ignorant and careless. The deists were, to say the least, as unscientific as the theologians. Their fancies about the “light of Nature,” which was to replace the Christian re­ ligion, were as arbitrary and absurd as any mythological legend. Tindal de­ clared the light of Nature to be a “ clear and certain light which enlightened all men,” and from this fact he inferred that “our duty both to God and man must, from the beginning of the world to the end. remain unalterable, be always alike plain and perspicuous”; a doctrine which had the serious defect of being contra­ dicted by the total experience of the human race. Butler had no difficulty in showing that to advance such opinions was to “talk wildly and at random.” No blame attaches to the deists, able and worthy men most of them, for not transcending the knowledge of the age. They attempted prematurely to solve a problem, before the means of solution were at hand. What they would have liked to do was to give a rational explanation of Christianity as an historical phenomenon ; but they had neither the historical nor the scientific knowledge requisite for such an undertaking. They consequently fell back on such vague metaphysical conceptions as the “light of Nature,” and essayed to show that Christianity was not mysterious, or that it was as old as the creation—mere c �i8 THE SERVICE OF MAN sophisms which they probably believed, but which were quite incapable of scien­ tific proof. It is not a little surprising that apologists in the present day should be able to deceive themselves as to the immeasurable distance which separates arguments of this kind from the in­ ferences unfavourable to theology de­ duced from science. Theobjectof science is not to supply hostile data for the use of agnostics against religion; though there is reason to think that many do believe that to be its chief end and aim. The object of science is knowledge, the increased number of those truths which are capable of verification and proof. If here and there its conclusions conflict with the current theology, the fact is of secondary importance, and of no per­ manent interest at all to science as such, which is concerned with positive, not negative, results. Every statement and proposition in the most elementary scientific primer probably conflicts with some theology or other. Yet it often seems to be assumed that the sole or the chief object of the labours of scientific men was to find means and arguments to damage the Bible. Scientific men, a most hard-worked and industrious class, have a better appreciation of the value of time, and of the wisdom of minding their own business. They, ho doubt, come upon results which are fatal to the currently-received opinions about the Bible. But these results interest them much less than they do those who are assured that the Bible is the Word of God. The tables have been turned since the days when Science timidly sued for leave to examine nature, and to draw a few conclusions of her own. Then Theology was queen, and made her power felt. Inquirers worked then, so to speak, with a halter about their necks, and were anxious, above all things, to appease their mighty enemy by every mark of deference and docility. Now the old sovereign has become the suppliant—a rather importunate and intrusive suppliant—but still by her demeanour, if not her -words, admitting that she has been discrowned. She no longer, with haughty bearing, issues her anathemas on the progress of the human mind, but she is in great anxiety to show that, appearances notwithstanding, this progress is not incompatible with her pretension. Geology seems to contra­ dict Genesis in a very direct and final way. “That is all your mistake,” says Theology; “ Geology and Genesis are in most perfect union; in fact, the science confirms the Scripture so wonderfully that each reflects light on the other.” The fact that the geology thus warmly accepted now was once resisted with energy and anger as an impious and futile science is passed over. New light as to its harmony with Scripture -was not noticed until it had attained a position of power which made it more desirable as a friend than as a foe. The fact is suggestive. A convenient mode of showing the way in which science has cut the ground from under the feet of theology will be a quotation from a once famous and remarkable book, which in its day, and for a long time after, was regarded, with justice, as a powerful piece of argument in favour of the current religion. Dr. Samuel Clarke was a man of con­ siderable ability and of very great attainments ; he was also a man of high and honourable character, and his Boyle lectures, commonly known as his two discourses, On the Being and Attri­ butes of God, and on The Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, enjoyed an immense popularity, not only at home but abroad, all through the eighteenth century. The book is now read only by the curious in religious archaeology. In an elaborate argument, intended to show that, although the Christian doctrines “ may not be dis­ coverable by bare Reason unassisted by Revelation, yet when they are discovered by Revelation they are found most agreeable to sound, unprejudiced Reason,” Clarke proceeds to prove that the account in Genesis of the formation �THE DECA Y OF BELIEF of the earth is entirely credible, in the following passage : “ That, about the space of six thousand years since, the earth was without form and void—that is, a confused chaos, out of which God formed this beautiful and useful fabrick we now inhabit, and stocked it with the seeds of all kinds of plants, and formed upon it man, and all other specimens of animals it is now furnished with—is very agreeable to right reason. For though the precise time, indeed, when all this was done, could not now have been known exactly without Revelation; yet, even at this day, there are remaining many con­ siderable and very strong rational proofs which make it exceedingly probable (separate from the authority of Revela­ tion) that this presentframe arid constitu­ tion of the earth cannot have been of a very much longer date. The universal tradition delivered down from all the most ancient nations of the world, both learned and barbarous ; the constant and agreeing doctrine of all ancient philosophers and poets con­ cerning the earth’s being formed within such a period of time out of water and chaos ; the manifest absurdities and con­ tradictions of those few accounts which pretend to a much greater antiquity; the numbers of men with which the earth is at present inhabited ; the late original of learning and all useful arts and sciences; the changes that must neces­ sarily fall out naturally in the earth in vast length of time, as by the sinking and washing down of mountains, the consump­ tion of water by plants, and innumerable other such-like accidents—these, I say, and many more arguments drawn from Nature, Reason, and Observation, make that account of the earth’s formation exceedingly probable in itself, which, from the revelation delivered in Scripture­ history, we believe to be certain.”1 This passage shows what a compara­ tively easy matter the defence of the Bible was in Dr. Clarke’s day. He could, 1 Truth and Certainty of Christian Tci'etalicn, p. 187 ; edition 1724. without fear of serious contradiction, make assumptions which no one would venture to make now. The “ strong rational proofs,” which show that the earth cannot be much more than six thousand years old, would be hard to find. Why the shrinking and washing down of mountains was evidence of the recent date of the earth is difficult tosee; and the “ consumption of water by plants,” implying that the water of the globe was being rapidly used up and annihilated, is an interesting example of old notions on chemistry. In the earlier discourse on the existence of God, Clarke had been enthusiastic over the support given to his thesis by the dis­ coveries of his day :— “ If Galen, so many ages since, could find in the construction and constitution of the parts of the human body such undeniable marks of contrivance and_ design as forced him then to acknow­ ledge and admire the wisdom of its author, what would he have said if he had known the late discoveries in anatomy and physics, the circulation of the blood, the exact structure of the heart and brain, the uses of numberless glands and valves for the secretion and motion of the juices in the body: besides several veins and other vessels and receptacles not at all known or so much as imagined to have any existence in his days, but which now are discovered to serve the wisest and most exquisite ends imaginable ?”T Bacon’s famous maxim, that “a little philosophy inclineth men’s minds to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds back to religion,” is now being reversed. The early glimpses of the marvels of nature afforded by modern science undoubtedly were favourable to natural theology in the first instance. Knowledge revealed so many wonders which had not been suspected by ignorance that a general increase of awe and reverence for the Creator was the natural, though not very 1 Page 103. �20 THE SERVICE OF MAN logical, consequence. But a deeper philosophy, or, rather, biology, has rudely disturbed the satisfaction with which “ the wisest and most exquisite ends ” were once regarded. It is now known that, for one case of successful adaptation of means to ends in the animal world, there are hundreds of failures. If organs which serve an obvious end justify the assumption of an intelligent designer, what are we to say of organs which serve no end at all, but are quite useless and meaningless ? Such are the rudimentary organs in plants and animals, the design of which seems only to point to an unintelligent designer. ■ “Some of the cases of rudimentary organs are extremely curious—the presence of teeth in foetal whales which, when grown up, have not a tooth in their heads, and the presence of teeth which never cut through the gums in the upper jaws of our unborn calves....... Nothing can be plainer than that wings are formed for flight; yet in how many insects do we see wings so reduced in aize as to be utterly incapable of flight, and not rarely lying under wing-cases, firmly soldered together.”1 Again: “Eyes which do not see form the most striking example of rudimentary organs. These are found in very many animals, which live in the dark, as in caves or under­ ground. Their eyes often exist in a welldeveloped condition, but they are covered by membrane, so that no ray of light can enter, and they can never see. Such eyes, without the function of sight, are found in several species of moles and mice which live underground, in serpents and lizards, in amphibious animals (Proteus, Cacilia), and in fishes; also in numerous invertebrate animals, which pass their lives in the dark, as do many beetles,crabs, snails,worms,”etc.2 Another strange instance is “ the rudiment of the tail which man possesses in his 3-5 tail vertebrae, and which, in the human embryo, stands out prominently during 1 Origin of Species, p. 450. a Haeckel, History of Creation, vol. i., p. 13. the first two months of its development. It afterwards becomes completely hidden. The rudimentary little tail of man is an irrefutable proof of the fact that he is descended from tailed ancestors. In woman the tail is generally by one vertebra longer than in man. There still exist rudimentary muscles in the human tail which formerly moved it.”1 That facts of this nature, which have only been a short time before the world, should fail to convince theologians brought up in a completely different order of ideas is in no wise surprising. The due weight of facts will no more be allowed than the due weight of argu­ ments, by minds which habit and educa­ tion, and, perhaps, even a sense of duty, have combined to bias against them. But the effect on the younger and suc­ ceeding generations is very great, and is already perceptible. When theology was attacked in front with metaphysical argu­ ments, such as were used by the old deists, it was able to make a very stout and plausible resistance. But now its position, in military phrase, has been turned ; the heights around it and behind are occupied by an artillery which render further defence impossible. Take the instance of the origin of man. The whole scheme of Christian theology is mean­ ingless except on the assumption of the fall of man from a primitive state of innocence and virtue. Unless theolo­ gians are prepared to throw over St. Paul, they must hold that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Perhaps no one doctrine ever believed by man has had a more terrible history than that of “ original or birth-sin,’’which, as the Ninth Article says, is “the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam ; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s 1 Ibid, vol. i., p. 289. �THE DECA Y OF BELIEF wrath and damnation.” But if ever a thesis was demonstrated, it is that man has not fallen, but risen, and that from the lowest level of animal existence. No court of justice ever witnessed a more complete discomfiture of an unfounded claim to a noble title and estate than the defeat of this theological claim for man, that he was made in the image of God, placed in Paradise in a state of purity, from which he fell through disobedience. The result is serious. The New Testament endorses the fall in the most emphatic way ; the Incarnation itself had no other object than that of neutralising its effects. Yet it is proved to be a mere fiction of a primitive cosmogony. The general rejection of miracles is another symptom of the decay of belief. The once active controversy as to the possibility of miracles has become nearly extinct, because one of the parties to it has been growing steadily in numbers and authority, while the other party has declined. The refuters of Hume address constantly-decreasing audiences, and the belief in miracles will shortly (like the belief in witchcraft in the seventeenth century) die a natural death among the educated classes. The notion that the testimony of men, however worthy and sincere, can suffice to establish a mira­ culous event is no longer felt to be serious. The testimony of credible witnesses is valueless, unless they be competent witnesses as well—competent to observe with patience, accuracy, and coolness the alleged facts. Were such observers present at the working of the miracles in Palestine which Paley patronises ? The argument against miracles has gained immensely in force since Hume’s day through the growth of the historic method, and the larger con­ ceptions of human evolution which have led to the incipient science of sociology. Hume’s principle was tersely and fairly enough stated by Paley thus : “ That it is contrary to experience that testimony should be true, but not contrary to experience that testimony should be 21 false a true statement, but not beyond the reach of plausible objection, as Paley showed. The moment we introduce the historic element, the question seems transferred to a higher court. Primitive, early, and unscientific man is at all times and everywhere prone to see miracle in everything that appears odd or strange to his limited experience, Ignorant of nature’s laws, he finds no difficulty in assuming their violation ; he lives in an atmosphere of fiction, fable, and myth, and much prefers a miraculous explanation of an event to a rational or real one. The belief in miracles is universal in wholly unscien­ tific times. With the growth of culture it diminishes; with the extension of science it disappears. Miracles are never supposed to occur except where and when an antecedent belief in them exists. In other words, the belief in miracles depends not upon objective facts, but on the subjective conditions of the witnesses’ minds. Paley tried to parry the obvious, objection that the best way to silencethe gainsayers of miracles would be torepeat them. “ To expect, concerning a miracle, that it should succeed upon repetition is to expect that which would make it cease to be a miracle; which is contrary to its nature as such, and would totally destroy the use and purpose for which it was wrought a remark less acute than Paley’s remarks usually are. Assuming that a miracle reveals the presence of a supernatural power, why should its repetition destroy its miracu­ lous character; above all, why should it destroy its use? If miracles are intended to convert the stiff-necked and hard of heart, what more likely way of bringing them to submission than the repetition of miracles? And, according to Scripture, this was pre­ cisely the way in which Pharaoh, King of Egypt, was humbled. He resisted the miracles wrought by Moses and 1 Paley's Evidences: Preparatory Considera­ tions. �22 THE SERVICE OF MAN Aaron with stubbornness all through the first nine plagues ; but the universal slaying of the first-born broke even his spirit. Such must always be the effect of repeated miracles; and there can be no doubt that even at this day, in the midst of all this science and scepticism, if mira­ cles were again wrought in a public place and manner, so as to remove the sus­ picion of trickery and legerdemain, the effect of them would be greater than ever it was. Suppose a prophet of God were to appear among us, and announce that he had a revelation to make. According to Paley, his only way of making it would be by miracle; he therefore would per­ form miracles. As all difficulties vanish before Almighty power, one miracle would be the same as another to him; and let us suppose him to walk on the water, down the centre of the Thames, from Putney to Mortlake. May we not be sure that one such achievement would produce a sensation perfectly over­ whelming, not only in London, but to the furthest limits of the civilised world ? If he rapidly followed up this miracle by others—fed with a few loaves the crowds on Hampstead Heath on a Bank Holiday, or those on Epsom Downs on the Derby day ; gave sight to a man notoriously blind from his birth, or raised from the ■dead a putrescent corpse which had lain four days in the grave—can we remotely conceive a limit to the excitement which would ensue ? Would not such a re­ action against current scientific notions set in as would sweep everything before it ? Supposing always that the miracles were bona-fide miracles, such as are assumed to have been wrought in Judsea some eighteen hundred years ago, we may even be sure that many, if not all, of the chief men of science would be among the most impressed, if not the most ex­ cited, and be prompt to own that they had made a great mistake in asserting the invariability of nature’s laws. A complete recast of the philosophy of the inductive sciences would be one of the least results of a manifestation of genuine miracles. As for its effect on the cause of religion, there can be little room for doubt. The passionate yet hopeless yearning, which now fills so many minds, to retain a rational belief in the super­ natural would be replaced by a serene joy over the triumph of faith. It may suit Paley to say that repetition of miracles would destroy their use, but he must be a lukewarm theologian who does not at times wish from the depth of his heart that an authentic miracle could be produced. Yet it is at this momentous crisis in the religious affairs of the world, when the enemy is carrying one position after another, and has all but penetrated to the citadel of belief, that no miracles occur—that no miracles are claimed, except, indeed, of the compromising species made at Lourdes, and now and then of a fasting girl exhibited in Belgium and in Wales. When no one doubted the possibility or the frequency of miracles they abounded, we are told ; that is, when, by reason of their number and the ready credit accorded to them, their effect was the least startling, then they were lavished on a believing world. Now, when they are denied and insulted as the figments of a barbarous age, when the faith they might support is in such jeopardy as it never was before, when a tithe of the wonders wasted in the deserts of Sinai and the “ parts beyond Jordan ” would shake the nations with astonishment and surprise—when, in short, the least expenditure of miracle would produce the maximum of result— then miracles mysteriously cease. This fact, which is utterly beyond contest, has borne fruit, and will yet bear more. Instead of a short chapter, a long volume would be needed to set forth in detail even a spicileghtm of the rational­ istic arguments which have operated to produce a decay of belief. Any one interested in the subject will easily find them in the appropriate quarters—in the attacks on, and still better, in the defences of, the Bible. The width of the breach between reason and faith, between theology and science, is hardly denied ; and the noteworthy fact is that only one �THE DECA Y OF BELIEF of the parties hopes for, or believes in, an ultimate reconciliation. Reason and science have made up their minds on the subject, and would gladly leave it alone, and attend to their own affairs. It is theology that cannot resign herself to a permanent quarrel, and is always pursuing science with a mixture of entreaty and reproach, and begging the latter to hear her cause over again, and not to say with cruel harshness that the separation is for good and all. We may, therefore, leave this side of our subject with a concluding observation. On no point were apologists more confident than on the impossibility of explaining the uprise of Christianity otherwise than by a supernatural principle. In the words of Archbishop Whately, “No complete and consistent account has ever been given of the manner in which the Christian religion, supposing it a human contrivance, could have arisen and prevailed as it did. The religion exists—that is, the phenomenon; those who will not allow it to have come from God are bound to solve the phenomenon on some other hypothesis less open to objection; they are not, indeed, called on to prove that it actually did arise in this or that way, but to suggest (consistently with acknowledged facts) some probable way in which it may have arisen, reconcilable with all the circumstances of the case. That infidels have ’never done this, though they have had nearly two thousand years to try, amounts to a confession that no such hypothesis can be devised which will not be open to greater objections than lie against Christianity.”1 The passage is interesting on other grounds than the particular one with which we are concerned, and leaves us the alternative of a low opinion either of Whately’s candour or of his perspicacity. The suggestion that infidels had or could have been “trying” for nearly two thousand years to concoct an hypothesis adverse to Christianity could only be 1 Logic, bk. iii., § 17. 23 based on a strange ignorance of the state of the human mind during at least three-fourths of that period, or on the safety of such an innuendo in the dark ages when the Logic was published (1829). But this need not detain us. The important point to observe is how completely Whately’s assertion that a rational explanation of the origin of Christianity has never been given has, by the Biblical and historical studies of the last half-century, been overthrown. Strauss, F. Ch. Baur, Keim, and Hausrath, to name only the chief writers, have made the early history of Chris­ tianity at least as intelligible as other scholars have made the early history oil Rome. To the unhistoric minds of the eighteenth century, the uprise of a religion in Palestine in the first centurl claiming supernatural authority, seemed as extraordinary and unaccountable as d similar phenomenon would have been in Paris or London. The religious passions! especially among uncivilised races, were at once disliked and misunderstood. Even Robertson the historian could only see in the Crusades “a singular monu­ ment of human folly.” There was sup­ posed to be no alternative between a truly divine relation and an artful fraud designed by priests for their own benefit. Whately’s phrase, “ supposing ChriB tianity a human contrivance,” points to this crude notion. With enlarged con­ ceptions of the variety of man’s nature, and historical development, the sponta­ neous appearance of such a religion^as Christianity is now seen to be quite natural and regular in such an age as t® first century. The mythopceic faculty of the human mind at certain stages is capable of more wonderful achievement than any exhibited in the New Test® ment, and is at this day in full operation in British India, weaving legends and creating gods with unchecked luxuriant® Meanwhile, the historical character of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and the genuineness of several epistjjes ascribed to St. Paul, have been grave® impugned, and, in the opinion of many, �24 THE SERVICE OF MAN seriously damaged ; an opinion not shaken by the counter-efforts of the Christain apologists. Again, the fortress of theology has been surrounded and commanded by the forces at the disposal of knowledge. But mere rationalism, however cogent to some minds, often remains power­ less on others, and those frequently possessing the best qualities of intellect and character. The deepest change which this age has seen in reference to men’s attitude towards the current theology has taken place, not in the region of the understanding, but in that of the heart. It is not so much that the Bible, with its miracles and legends, is felt to be untrue and incredible by the trained reason ; a great number of theological dogmas are felt to be morally repulsive and horrible, by the more humane conscience of modern times. This change of sentiment is so great and far-reaching that there is no wonder that its import is imperfectly seized, or even wholly missed by those whom the accidents of education and surroundings have preserved from its influence. It is a change not less momentous than that which placed the Christian converts of the Roman period in the position of passionate hostility to the immoralities and indecencies of decaying polytheism. Even divines are becoming aware that the eternity of hell­ torments is a doctrine of waning efficacy, on which it is easy to insist too much. Some are discovering that it lacks Scrip­ tural authority, and beseech us not to believe that anything so dreadful is delivered in the Word of God. The minimising of irksome tenets is a fre­ quent resource and an unfailing symptom of decaying faith. Julian and his pagan sophists essayed to spiritualise offensive Greek myths. There is no ground for doubting the bona fides of such attempts, but they rarely succeed. The obvious question, “ If your new interpretation is the right one, why was it not discovered before ? why did what you admit to be dreadful error receive apparently for a j I I ! 1 I long time Divine sanction ?” cannot be answered; and the question is followed by another: “If your predecessors taught error in the dogmas you discard, what guarantee have you to offer that those dogmas which you still maintain may not some day be discovered to be equally untenable ? How can you be sure that your successors, when hard pressed by the science of their day, will not, like yourselves, find good reasons for throwing them over ?” The eternity of hell torments is a doctrine discarded by a number of divines, who yet cling to the doctrines of the Incarna­ tion and the Atonement. There is nothing to assure us that, in a hundred years’ time, these also will not be discovered to be unscriptural. The Christian theology, in its main features, was evolved during the most calamitous period which the human race has lived through in historic times. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire still remains the greatest catastrophe on record ; the slow death protracted over five centuries of the ancient world. Every evil afflicted men in that terrible time : arbitrary power, the most remorse­ less and cruel; a grinding fiscality, which at last exterminated wealth ; pestilences, which became endemic and depopulated whole provinces ; and, to crown all, a series of invasions by barbarous hordes, who passed over the countries like a consuming fire. It wTas in this age that the foundations of Christian theology were laid—the theology of the Councils and the Fathers. The conception of God, of his relation to and dealings with the world, was evolved in a society wThich groaned under unexampled oppres­ sion, misery, and affliction. Needless to say, it was an age of great and almost morbid cruelty : the games of the circus were a constant discipline of the inhuman passions. After the empire had vanished, for long centuries there was no great improvement. The barbarism of the Frankish period may be seen at full length in the pages of Gregory of Tours. The Carling empire was an oppressive �THE DECA Y OF BELIEF tyranny ; the Feudal Age, one of lawless rapine on the part of the strong, and cowering anguish on the part of the weak. It was in this evil time that the Christian Theology was evolved, com­ mencing with the great doctrines defined by the Fathers, and afterwards reduced to a logical system by the scholastics, especially by St. Thomas, the Angel of the schools. With such visible rulers of the world before them, it is no wonder that men formed very dark and cruel notions of the invisible ruler, who disposed of all things. Cruelty, injustice, arbitrary power, were too familiar to be shocking, too constant to be supposed accidental or transitory. The real world before their eyes was taken as a dim pattern and foreshadowing of the ideal world beyOnd the grave. God was an Almighty Emperor, a transcendental Diocletian or Constantine, doing as he list with his own. His edicts ran through all space and time, his punishments were eternal, and whatever he did his justice must not be questioned. And thus those words came to be written, “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault ? For who hath resisted his will ? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God ? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dis­ honour?”1 which, probably, have added more to human misery than any other utterances made by man. St. Paul’s teaching fell on a fertile soil. For some fifteen hundred years the human con­ science was not shocked by it. Since the rise of the Arminian theology there has been a gradual and growing revul­ sion of feeling, and now it is said plainly that the “ potter has no right to be angry with his pots. If he wanted them different 1 Romans ix. 18-21. 25 he should have made them different.” The pretensions of an “ omnipotent devil desiring to be complimented ” as all­ merciful, when he is exerting the most fiendish cruelty, are no longer admitted in abashed silence. But if the great difficulty of hell and eternal punishments were happily surmounted, there remain, in the whole Christian scheme of redemption, moral iniquities and obli­ quities which no good man of the present day, whatever his religion or theology, would willingly be guilty of himself. The notion that God wanted to be pro­ pitiated by the death of the innocent Christ is a thoroughly base and barbarous one; natural enough in rude ages, when costly sacrifice was a recognised mode of appeasing angry deities, but repellent now. Hardly the most depraved man, in his right mind, would accept the vicarious punishment of one who had not offended him in lieu of one who had. A high-minded man would endure almost anything rather than countenance such an enormity. The idea is barbarous, well worthy of Chinese conceptions of justice, content if the executioner gets a subject to operate on, but indifferent whether it be the culprit or not. Yet this cruel and barbarous notion is the centre of the Christian religion; at least, it has not yet been discovered to be unscriptural, I believe. Again, Satan may well give latitudinarian theo­ logians trouble in this world as in the next. When they have explained away his eternal function of tormenting souls in hell, they will have to extenuate his strange temporal avocations on earth, and to explain how they can be permitted by a merciful God. A fallen angel of vast skill, subtlety, and guile is allowed to tempt men and women, even young children, to commit sin, to allure them away from Christ, to jeopardise their hopes of Paradise. And God, who permits this, is supposed to hate sin. If he had wished sin to abound, what could he have done more than to allow the arch-fiend, aided by legions of minor devils, to go about like a roaring lion �26 THE SERVICE OF MAN seeking whom he may devour, with con­ stant access to men, nay, to their most inward minds, whispering evil thoughts, stimulating criminal passions, and, how­ ever often driven away by holy prayer, ever renewing his assaults on poor souls, up to the last moment of mortal agony, when he oftener succeeds than fails in carrying them off to his place of torment? Christ’s petition, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one,” has never been heard, or it has not been granted. We are always being led into temptation; we are never delivered from the evil one on this side of the gates of death. A supernatural being who wrecked man’s felicity in Paradise, and brought sin and death into the world, is appointed to the office of tempting men at all times, in all places, throughout life; he is able to enter into the minds of his victims and pervert their souls, in society and in solitude, in sleep, and even in prayer, capable of assuming all disguises, even to appearing as an angel of light. A human seducer, however artful and vile, is restricted as to times and opportunities in corrupting the innocent. Satan has constant and in-, visible access. Now, a parent or guardian who allowed children under his charge to associate with bad characters would be justly condemned as wanting in a sense of duty and humanity. But God permits something infinitely worse, by the whole difference between an immortal evil spirit and the most profligate of earthly tempters. Let any human father try and imagine the anguish with which he would see his innocent, inexperienced daughter walking arm-in-arm with an accomplished and fascinating seducer. Would not his instantaneous step be to put an end to such corrupting inter­ course ? Would not public opinion largely condone violent measures on his part, if it should appear that the designs of the villain had been crowned with a calamitous success? Yet the heavenly father is supposed to see this and far worse every hour and minute of the day; to see the young, the weak, the unprotected, assailed by a supernatural tempter, his own creature, his rebel angel, wholly evil and malignant; and to see him succeed in his attempt to ruin souls. And then the betrayed, poor human victim, not the fiend, is punished. The fiend, indeed, is punished, but not for these acts against humanity. The righteous God promptly avenged insubordination and disrespect to himself. But ever since man’s creation Satan has had compensations. His dominion is ever extending (as all orthodox theologians admit that the number of the damned far exceeds that of the saved), and he is well entitled to boast in the words of the poet : “ To reign is worth ambition though in Hell ; Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” The old answer to such considerations was that they were horribly profane, and “ must be put down with a strong hand.” They impiously meddled with “mysteries” which man in his fallen state could not fathom, but must reverently adore. To which it is now replied that there is no mystery at all in the matter. Barbarous and cruel ages have ever generated bar­ barous and cruel religions. Nay, obscene and revolting rites and practices, which cannot be named, have been, and still are, sanctioned by religion. These were outgrown by the progressive nations of the West when Christian monotheism pre­ vailed. And now Christian monotheism is sharing the fate of its predecessors ; it is being superseded by the growing con­ science of mankind. But the fact is that these somewhat old-fashioned controversies about the credibility of miracles, the evidences of Christianity, the authenticity of portions of Scripture, and similar topics, are now dwarfed and overshadowed by a far mightier question which has come to the front with great rapidity in this age. The being and attributes of a God have been a subject of esoteric discussion in the schools of philosophers for centuries, but only recently have been seen to pass from the closet to the market-place, and to become one of the deepest questions �THE DECA Y OF BELIEF of the day. No more surprising change of fundamental conceptions will be recorded by the future historians of philosophy than that which has super­ vened in the last twenty-five or thirty years in reference to the idea of God. Up to a recent time the sturdiest sceptics as to the truth of revelation were mostly deists or pantheists, and often repudiated atheism with warmth. The wittiest scoffer who ever attacked Christianity, Voltaire, was a firm deist, and declared that if God did not exist he would have to be invented. The extreme school of Diderot and D’Holbach, even in the sceptical eighteenth century, failed of a wide acceptance. Now the conception of God is freely treated by many of the leaders of philosophical and scientific opinion as a transitory phase of thought which the growth of knowledge has finally terminated. The natural history and evolution of the idea of God is traced in calm outline from its cradle to its grave—from its nascent form in Animism to its metaphysical presenta­ tion as an inscrutable First Cause, the absolute, unconditioned, and unrelated to the phenomenal world. The idea of God has been “ defecated to a pure transparency,” as one eminent writer phrases it; it has been “ deanthropomorphised,” to use the language of another. A new and widely-current word has been invented to designate the large class of persons (mostly persons of exceptional knowledge and ability) who refuse to entertain any more the idea of a single divine Being, maker of all things in heaven and earth. Agnostics are to be met with on every side ; the place of honour is given to their articles in the most popular monthly reviews; and, just as in the fourth century the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation were discussed in the streets of Constantinople by shopkeepers and their customers, so now, at dinner parties and gatherings of both sexes, the existence of God emerges from time to time as a topic of conversa­ tion, ending often in negative conclusions. Every middle-aged man can remember a 2I time when such a transformation of sentiments and opinions would have appeared beyond the pale of possibility. As in the case of the Christian theology, the difficulties are twofold! intellectual and moral, which have extin­ guished in many minds the traditional belief in a Supreme Being. So long as men were able and content to believe in an anthropomorphic deity—an infinitely glorified and exalted man—then difficul­ ties were not perceived; a feeling also of religious awe daunted the mind from looking up and scrutinising even its own conceptions with a steady gaze. But the growth of knowledge and a higher morality have made the concep­ tion of an anthropomorphic God less and less endurable, even to professed theologians, who have been as ready as philosophers to dehumanise the deity. But the difficulty is that, in proportion as the conception of God is stripped of its human attributes and removed away into the absolute, in the same proportion does the conception cease to offer an object capable of exciting human sym­ pathy, and, what is not less important, does it cease to be conceivable. “Simi­ larly with the logical incongruities^ more and more conspicuous to growing intelligence. Passing over the familiar difficulties—that sundry of the implied divine traits are in contradiction with the divine attributes otherwise ascribed; that a god who repents of what he has done must be lacking either in power or foresight; that his anger presupposes an occurrence that has been contrary to his intention, and so indicates defect of means—we come to the greater difficulty: that such emotions, like all emotions, can exist only in a conscious­ ness which is limited. Every emotion has its antecedent ideas, and antecedent ideas are habitually supposed to occur in God. He is represented as seeing and hearing this or the other, and as being emotionally affected thereby. That is, the conception of a divinity possessing these traits of character ntcessarily continues anthropomorphic, �28 THE SERVICE OF MAN not only in the sense that the emotions ascribed are like those of human beings, but also in the sense that they form parts of a consciousness which, like the human consciousness, is formed of successive states. And such a con­ ception of the divine consciousness is irreconcilable with the unchangeableness otherwise alleged, and with the omnis­ cience otherwise alleged. For a con­ sciousness, constituted of ideas and feelings caused by objects and occur­ rences, cannot be simultaneously occu­ pied with all objects and all occurrences throughout the universe. To believe in a divine consciousness, men must refrain from thinking what is meant by con­ sciousness—must stop short with verbal propositions; and propositions which they are debarred from rendering into thought will more and more fail to satisfy them. Of course, like difficulties present themselves when the will of God is spoken of. So long as we refrain from giving a definite meaning to the word ‘ will,’ we may say that it is possessed by the Cause of all things, as readily as we may say that love of approbation is possessed by a circle; but when, from the words, we pass to the thoughts they stand for, we find that we can no more unite in consciousness the terms of the one proposition than we can those of the other. Whoever conceives of any other will than his own must do so in terms of his own will, which is the sole will directly known to him, all other wills being only inferred. But will, as such, is conscious, if it presupposes a motive, a prompting desire of some kind; absolute indifference excludes the con­ ception of will. Moreover, will, as implying a prompting desire, connotes some end contemplated as one to be achieved, and ceases with the achieve­ ment of it; some other will referring to some other end taking its place. That is to say, will, like emotion, necessarily supposes a series of states of conscious­ ness. The conception of a divine will, derived from the human will, involves, like it, localisation in space and tinlfe; the willing of each end excluding from consciousness, for an interval, the willing of other ends, and therefore being incon­ sistent with that omnipresent activity which simultaneously works out an infinity of ends. It is the same with the ascription of intelligence. Not to dwell on the seriality and limitation implied as before, we may note that intelligence, as alone conceivable by us, presupposes existence independent of it and objective to it. It is carried on in terms of changes primarily wrought by alien activities—the impressions gener­ ated by things beyond consciousness and the ideas derived from such impressions. To speak of an intelligence which exists in the absence of all such alien activities is to use a meaningless word. If to the corollary that the First Cause, considered as intelligent, must be continually affected by independent objective activities, it is replied that these have become such by act of creation, and were previously included in the First Cause; then the reply is that, in such case, the First Cause could, before their creation, have had nothing to generate in it such changes as those constituting what we call intelligence, and must therefore have been unintelligent at the time when intelligence was most called for. Hence it is clear that the intelligence ascribed answers in no respect to that which we know by the name. It is intelligence out of which all the characters consti­ tuting it have vanished.”1 On the moral side it is found impossible to reconcile the attributes of mercy and benevolence in the Creator with the con­ dition of the animal world, which presents an almost continued scene of carnage and cruelty, and has done so from its commencement. Not only are the stronger carnivora fashioned and armed for the purpose of hunting and killing their prey—a gazelle or antelope, in a state of nature, is compelled to fly three times daily for its life—but innumerable 1 Herbert Spencer, Nineteenth Century Re­ view, 1885. �WHY MEN HESITATE parasites exist in the bodies and at the expense of animals generally much their superiors. “ Of the animal kingdom as a whole, more than half the species are parasites.” If each individual species, as Agassiz said, is an “ embodied creative thought of God,” his benevolence must be acknowledged to be of a singular character. The best apologists admit that a mere metaphysical deity, an absolute First Cause defecated to a pure transparency, is not enough. What they wish to restore is a belief in the God to whom they learned to pray by their mother’s knee. And they are abundantly justified from their point of view in such a wish. The only God whom Western Europeans, with a Christian ancestry of a thousand years behind them, can worship, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; or, rather, of St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and of the innumerable “blessed saints,” canonised or not, who peopled •, the Ages of Faith. No one wants, no | one cares for, an abstract God, an Un­ j knowable, an Absolute, with whom we stand in no human or intelligible relation. What pious hearts wish to feel and believe is the existence, “ behind the veil” of the visible world, of an invisible Personality, friendly to man, at once a brother and God. The unequalled potency of Chris­ tianity as a religion of the heart has ever consisted in the admirable conception of the Man God, Jesus Christ. Even a I power hostile to man, if conceived as I embodied in a person, has been felt pre­ ferable to vague, passionless, unintelligent force; because a hostile person could be propitiated, could be appealed to, could be brought over to mercy and goodwill ; by prayer and sacrifice. That is to say, I that an anthropomorphic God is the only | God whom men can worship, and also I the God whom modern thought finds it increasingly difficult to believe in. I Chapter III. WHY MEN HESITATE The series of arguments and considera- : has Rationalism, after such brilliant tions against the current theology, of j victories, not triumphed completely ? which a very imperfect summary was Why is the British Sunday without a attempted in the last chapter, might parallel in Europe ? Why on that day seem sufficient to bring about a rapid are museums and theatres still closed, extinction of the vulgar belief; and and the churches and chapels full ? The possibly that extinction is not so far off obvious answer that we are the most as both those who wish it, and those conservative of races is not satisfactory. who deprecate it, may be apt to think. We can overturn quickly enough institu­ Still, whatever may be the case in tions with which we arc really dis­ France and Germany, Christianity, if contented. The inference is that the moribund, is by no means dead, in this mass of Englishmen, in spite of the wide country at least: the land which has prevalence of agnostic views, are not yet done most to work out the philosophy satisfied in their hearts that an improved of Evolution is perhaps still the most substitute for Christianity can be found. Christian in faith and practice remaining Intellectually, their allegiance to it has in the world. The question arises, Why been much shaken, but their feelings �THE SERVICE OF MAN have not been changed in a similar degree. This may be explained in two ways. First, a certain slow-footed sure­ ness in the national character, which refuses to move with haste in matters of paramount importance. Among the peoples who embraced the Reformation, the English were the most tardy in their open and general revolt from Rome. Secondly, in no country has Christianity of late years been less offensive to any class of dissidents. Unlimited religious liberty has permitted every shade of religious or irreligious sentiment to assert itself after its own heart, in its own fashion. Even the Established Church, once so insolent and oppressive, has, on the whole, shown a wise spirit of compromise and toleration, and is, perhaps, less hated now than at any past period of its history. A touch of genuine persecution would long ago have caused an explosion, which would not only have annihilated the Establishment, but have reacted injuriously on the other sects. In the absence of the stimulus given by persecution even to unpopular opinions, agnosticism has had to make its way on its own merits, so to speak, on a fair field, and certainly with no favour. Among certain groups, with whom intellectual cultivation is the main business of life, it has had a great success, far greater than could have been expected in only a recent past; but it has not extended and penetrated through the great mass of the middle and upper classes. And the obvious reason is that agnosticism, so far, has not only not had feeling with it, but it has had feeling against it. A belief in the unknowable kindles no enthusiasm. Science wins a verdict in its favour before any competent intellectual tribunal; but numbers of men, and the vast majority of women, ignore the finding of the jury of experts. They cling passionately to the belief in the supernatural; they listen even with patience and flattering hope to the deeply suspicious and suspected pro­ fessors of spiritualism and thought-read­ ing, athirst for a hint, a suggestion, an evanescent fact, which would lighten the gloom of the grave. Above all, they will believe, in spite of science and the laws of their consciousness, in a good God, who loves them and cares for them and their little wants and trials, and will, if they only please him, take them at last to his bosom, and “ wipe the tears for ever from their eyes.” “ A. l’enfant il faut sa mere, A l’ame il faut son Dieu.” In this respect, at least, Carlyle was a true son of his age, and expressed one of its deepest heart-pangs in that bitter cry of the Everlasting No :—“ To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead in­ difference, to grind me limb from limb. O the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death ! Why was the Living banished thither companionless, con­ scious ? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God ?” That is the true voice of a Christian man who has lost his faith. Some thousand or fifteen hundred years of Christian train­ ing has given this passionate turn to the feelings, this infinite craving for sympathy with the Invisible Lord; who must exist, men fondly say, because to doubt him is to despair. Again Carlyle is representa­ tive : “ Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours—of that Truth, and Beginning of Truth, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than Day-spring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah ! like the mother’s voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults ; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too exasperated heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnelhouse with spectres; but godlike, and my Father’s !” How little the celestial music soothed the exasperated heart of the care-laden man, his tragic biography is a melancholy witness. �WHY MEN HESITA TE Though perhaps the chief, the yearn­ ing for divine sympathy is not the only ground of men’s hesitation to follow the guidance of intellect in this matter. The idea still prevails that Christianity is, after all, the best support of morality extant. What system of ethics, it is asked, can compare with the Sermon on the Mount ? There are even some who hold that paradise and hell can ill be spared ; the one as incentive to good, the other as a deterrent from evil. How can you expect, it is inquired, self-sacrifice, devotion to duty, if man is to die the death of a dog, and to look for no here­ after? It is assumed as obvious to common-sense that in that case we shall eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Self-indulgence the most gross, crime the most unscrupulous, are taken for granted to be the natural and spontaneous pre­ dispositions of man, if he did not dread having to pay dear for them in the next world. Wickedness and sin are what he naturally likes, virtue and righteousness what he naturally detests. The pleasures of lying, robbery, impurity, and murder are beyond dispute j they would fill the cup of enjoyment to the brim, could one only get it without fear of after-conse­ quences in the lake of brimstone. Who can be so ignorant of human nature, nay, of his own heart, as to doubt of these all too fascinating temptations and attractions ? As it is, even with the fires of Tophet flaming in the distance, men cannot resist their allurements, or prefer “ The lilies and languors of virtue To the roses and raptures of vice.” Therefore, it is only too certain that a general abrogation of Christianity would be at once followed by a reign of universal licence; and, by the lower order of apologists, it is not seldom broadly hinted that that is the desired result. Take away the mingled fear and hope of a future state of rewards and punishments, and what possible check can be imagined to the universal indulgence of unbridled desires ? Without staying to point out that reasoners of this class, whatever their other merits, cannot be complimented on their estimate of human nature, and that they, at least, can with little grace reproach any opponents with degrading man, we have to remark that the con­ clusions of the reason, so far as they are adverse to Christianity, are here met not with arguments, but with threats, with appeals to the passions of a very powerful kind; and that it can excite no surprise that, on the whole, passion has the advantage in the conflict. We shall try to examine these points with some care, and inquire (i) if religion has really been in the past the solace and consolation it is asserted ; (2) whether Christianity is such a stay and support to morality as it is said to be; and (3) whether a general outbreak of crime and debauchery may be expected as a natural result of the disappearance of the established theo­ logy? �32 THE SERVICE OF MAN Chapter IV. THE ALLEGED CONSOLATIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION It is worthy of remark that, in propor­ tion as Christianity has met with intel­ lectual opposition, a progressive tendency has been shown by divines to veil the harsher and more inhuman features of their creed. The older race of theo­ logians, with no fear of criticism before their eyes, spoke out freely; they preached high doctrine, and found an austere pleasure in dwelling on the awful judg­ ments of God. The small number of the saved, the multitude of the damned, the narrowness of the way which leads to life, the breadth of that which leads to destruction, were topics on which they loved to dwell and the congregation to ponder. To a large extent this tone has been dropped, and replaced by one to which it is the direct contrary. Preachers prefer to dwell on the cheerful and bright side of religion—on its glorious promises, on the delights of the heavenly Jerusalem. They certainly speak with much less unction of the “wrath to come”; and if they say nothing to impair the belief in God’s justice, which leads him to punish sin with endless torments, they enlarge more on his “mercy” and “the things he hath prepared for them that love him.” In some cases religion is chiefly recom­ mended as offering a graceful and pleasing appendix to life, as depriving death of its sting and the grave of its victory, and opening a prospect up to the sunlit heavens, amid clouds and glory and the most sublime scenery that can be imagined. This change of tone, which, as a broad matter of fact, cannot, I apprehend, be denied, has followed on as a wide result of the great humanitarian movement which began towards the middle of the eighteenth century. When legislation and manners were equally marked by cruelty; when criminals were tortured to death, and prisoners kept in noisome dungeons reeking with jail fever and swarming with vermin; when popular sports largely consisted in inflicting pain on men and animals—it is no wonder that gloomy and inhuman views of religion passed without challenge, or even with favour. The alteration of feeling, together with its cause, were quaintly expressed by an American divine, who had been reproached by an English visitor for too slight an insistence on the eternal damna­ tion of the wicked : “ Our people would not stand it, sir,” was the reply. But the point which more immediately con­ cerns us is whether the old religion of terror, or its modified and softened modern version, was or is such a source of solace and inward joy as is commonly assumed. Any one who has had the privilege of knowing intimately one of those rare and beautiful souls in whom a single-hearted piety seems spontaneous would be slow to deny that such solace may exist. The meek and chastened spirits do occasionally know that peace of God which passeth all understanding. But it is equally certain that that peace is subject to painful interruptions, and that in almost exact proportion with the growth of a tender and watchful con­ science does the liability to such eclipses increase. It is the presumptuous, not the truly devout, who dwell always in a complacent conviction of their accep­ tance and favour with God. All spiritual doctors abound in warnings against the two opposite dangers, on the one hand, of over-confidence, self-righteousness, Pharisaism ; on the other, of despair and hopeless despondency of ever pleasing God. The proud content of the Pharisee �THE ALLEGED CONSOLATIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 33 can never be put to the credit of religion, not worthy of thy consolation, nor of as it is the temper which is most of all any spiritual visitation; and, therefore, thou dealest justly with me when thou condemned by true piety. “ Humility, leavest me poor and desolate. For if I and modesty of judgment and of hope, could shed tears as the sea, yet should I arc very good instruments to procure mercy and a fair reception at the day of not be wrorthy of thy consolation. Where­ fore I am worthy only to be scourged our death; but presumption or bold and punished, because I have grievously opinion serves no end of God or man, and is always imprudent, even fatal, and and often offended thee, and in many things greatly sinned; so, then, on a true of all things in the world is its own greatest enemy : for the more any man account, I have not deserved even the presumes the greater reason he has to smallest consolation.”1 Cardinal Wiseman, in his preface to fear.”1 Any solace, therefore, of this kind, derived from religion, must be the English translation of the works of repudiated and struck off the account as St. John of the Cross, has the following illegitimate and in a manner fraudulent remarkable passage : “ It may be con­ —a deadly spiritual sin seizing the reward sidered a rule in this highest spiritual of perfected saintliness. It is the anxious life that, before it is attained, there must and careworn penitent whom we have to be a period of severe probation, lasting consider, those who, when they have often many years, and separating it from done all that they can, still regard them­ the previous state, which may have been selves as unprofitable servants. Theo­ one of most exalted virtue. Probably, many whom the Catholic Church honours logians prescribe elaborate remedies against despair as a “ temptation and a as saints have never received this singular horrid sin ”; but it is a sin to which the gift. But in reading the biography of humble, the meek, and the truly devout such as have been favoured with it, we shall invariably find that the possession are exposed, and not the wicked and worldly. How often it has been pushed of it has been preceded, not only by to the destruction of reason, resulting a voluntary course of mortification of in religious madness, the statistics of sense, fervent devotion, constant medi­ insanity are there to show. Even when tation, and separation from the world, it stops short of this fearful consumma­ but also by a trying course of dryness, tion, and appears in the milder form of weariness of spirit, insipidity of devo­ desponding anxiety, and fear lest the tional duties, and, what is infinitely sinner has lost favour in the sight worse, dejection, despondency, tempta­ of God, those moments of coldness tion to give up all in disgust and almost and tediousness of spirit form a heavy despair. During this tremendous proba­ deduction from the hours of peace and tion the soul is dark, parched, and way­ happiness enjoyed between, as every less, as earth without water, as one book of devotion, from the Psalms staggering across a desert, or, to rise to downward, abundantly shows. “ My a nobler illustration, like Him remotely God, my God, look upon me; why hast who lay on the ground on Olivet, loathing the cup which He had longed for, beyond thou forsaken me: and art so far from my health, and from the words of my the sweet chalice which He had drunk complaint ? O my God, I cry in the with His apostles just before.” A prince day-time, but thou hearest not: and in of the Church may, no doubt, be trusted to speak correctly on this matter. the night-season also I take no rest.” In order to show that these afflictions Thomas a Kempis denies that the are not peculiar to Catholics, a few truly contrite sinner has any ground even sentences may with advantage be quoted to hope for consolation. “ Lord, I am ’ Holy Dying, ch. v., § 6. 1 Imitation, iii. 52. n �34 THE SERVICE OF MAN from that strange book of Bunyan’s, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners:—“ And now was I both a burden and terror to myself, nor did I ever so know as now what it was to be weary of my life and yet afraid to die. Ob, how gladly now would I have been anybody but myself, anything but a man, and in any condition but my own, for there was nothing did pass more fre­ quently over my mind than that it was impossible for me to be forgiven my transgression and to be saved from wrath to come........ I found it hard work now to pray to God, because despair was swallowing me up. I thought I was, as with a tempest, driven away from God, for always when I cried to God for mercy this would come in, ‘ ’Tis too late; I am lost: God has let me fall, not to my correction, but to my condemnation.’ About this time I did light on that dread­ ful story of that miserable mortal, Francis Spira—a book that was to my troubled spirit as salt when rubbed into a fresh wound. Every sentence in that book, every groan of that man, with all the rest of his actions in his griefs; as his tears, his prayers, his gnashing of teeth, his wringing of hands, his twisting and languishing and pining away under that mighty hand of God that was upon him, were as knives and daggers in my soul. Especially that sentence of his was frightful to me : ‘ Man knows the begin­ ning of sin, but who bounds the issues thereof?’ Then would the former sen­ tence as the conclusion of all fall like an hot thunderbolt against my conscience, for you know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. “ Then should I be struck into a very great trembling, insomuch that at some­ times I could for whole days together feel my very body as well as my mind to shake and totter under the sense of this dreadful judgment of God that should fall on those that have sinned that most fearful and unpardonable sin. I felt also such a clogging and heat at my stomach, by reason of this my terror, that I was especially at sometimes as if my breast­ bone would split asunder: then I thought concerning that of Judas, who, by his falling headlong, burst asunder, and all his bowels gushed out.” If we admit that such periods of depression are at last more than com­ pensated by the ecstasy which may follow them, yet it is obvious that the religious life, in its highest forms, is very far from uniformly leading through paths of pleasantness and peace, as is sometimes assumed. A state bordering on despair, which lasts for years, is no light matter; and it would be no conclusive proof of a carnal mind to hesitate before encounter­ ing such anguish, even with the ultimate certainty of its transmutation into ineffable joy. But, as Cardinal Wiseman tells us, there is no certainty of such in this life: only in heaven can the Christian hope for an adequate return for his spiritual trials in this world. “ If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable,” said St. Paul of himself and fellow Christians; and it follows that neither in the design nor in the result is Christianity adapted to confer the highest earthly happiness : it is not a present solace, but the promise of one hereafter. A future life, however, is one of the most enormous assumptions, with­ out proof, ever made; and yet, on this immense postulate, all the alleged con­ solations of religion of necessity hang. By considering the case of the truly religious, we have discussed the question, on the most favourable terms to Chris­ tianity, as a source of happiness. The profoundly pious are at times refreshed with the “ beatific vision ” in the course of their pilgrimage. But there are numbers of the half - converted, the ■worldly, the openly wicked, who believe enough to be full of anxiety and fear, and yet never attain to assurance of complete peace with God; and perhaps these constitute the majority of professing Christians. If you obtain access to their inmost thoughts, you will rarely find that �THE ALLEGED CONSOLATIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 35 religion has been a consolation to them, but a perpetual source of inward unrest and alarm, though they never have had the strength or the grace to turn finally to God. These pains of the spirit are by no means the only trials which the Christian has to encounter. The preva­ lence of heresy and schism has ever afflicted devout men in proportion to their devoutness. One of the peculiar­ ities of this age, indeed, is the extra­ ordinary cessation of controversy and absence of new doctrines within the Christian communion. Never, perhaps, since the Council of Jerusalem, has there been so marked an abeyance of serious theological dispute. Middleaged and old men, who can remember the Tractarian controversy and the Gorham controversy, when the coun­ try was filled with tumult about matters of faith, can appreciate the strange, great calm which now prevails. Whether true believers have any reason to rejoice in the change may be doubted. The differences within have been fol­ lowed by far more serious hostilities from without, and it is the deadly war -with the sceptic and the infidel which justly pre-occupies the earnest thoughts of Christian men. This last state, which is worse than the first, tends to make us forget how painful were the anxieties as to the threatened prevalence of “grave error,” whenever serious controversies arose: what fiery pamphlets were published by deans, archdeacons, and even by bishops; what agitated letters appeared even in the secular newspapers ; what meetings were convened, and what danger to Christian verity was apprehended if the faithful did not see to it. The world has rolled so far away from this state of things that even those who witnessed it retain but an imperfect recollection of the remote scene. Who can easily recall the excite­ ment consequent on the publication of so anodyne a work as Professor Jowett’s edition of St. Paul’s Epistles? How difficult to remember the time when the illustrious Master of Balliol was a perse­ cuted man, considered more than passing rich with forty pounds a year, for teaching Greek as it had not been taught by a Regius professor from time immemorial? But faith was still lively and vigilant, even in that recent past—a very pale reflection of its former brightness, no doubt. To realise what it once was, and what mental distress it could cause, we must have recourse to reading; and, with such historical imagination as we can command, revive an extinct con­ troversy : not one of the mightier disputes of the sixteenth century, the dust-cloud of which reached up to the heavens and obscured the stars; but a relatively minor one, and only an episode in that, the fate of Jacqueline Pascal. Jacqueline, the younger sister of Blaise Pascal, was remarkable for talent and beauty even in her own family, in which beauty and talent were hereditary gifts. Like Pope, she lisped in numbers, and composed verses which were not con­ temptible before she had learned to read. Her grace of person and manner caused her to be invited to play in a comedy before Richelieu, and, though only nine years of age, she so charmed the Cardinal that he recalled her father, who had incurred his displeasure, from exile. We have letters of hers written in her twen­ tieth year, in which she gives to her sister, Madame Perier, a lucid and intelligent account of a conference between her brother Blaise and Descartes, when they discussed the discovery of the barometer, and the phenomena of atmospheric pressure. But religion already occupied all her thoughts, and she resolved to become a nun of Port Royal, though, out of deference to her father’s wish, she refrained from taking the veil until after his death. “ She made all her prepara­ tions in my presence,” says her sister, Madame Perier, “ and fixed the. fourth of January as the day for entering the convent. On the eve of that day she begged me to speak about it to my brother, to avoid taking him by surprise. ....... He was much touched, and retired �36 THE SERVICE OF MAN very sad to his room without seeing my sister, who was in a small apartment where she was wont to pray. She did not leave it till my brother had gone, fearing that the sight of her might give him pain. I gave her the tender mes­ sages he had charged me with, after which we all went to bed. But I could not sleep. Although I approved heartily of her resolution, its magnitude so filled my mind that I lay awake all night. At seven the next morning, as I saw that Jacqueline did not rise, I thought that she also had not slept, and I found her fast asleep. The noise I made .awakened her, and she asked me the time. I told her, and inquired how she felt, and if she had slept well. She replied she was well, and had had a good night. Then she arose, dressed herself, and went away ; doing this, as all things, with a tranquillity and composure of soul which cannot be conceived. We took no farewell of each other from fear of breaking down, and I turned away from her path when I saw her ready to go out. In this way she left the world; it was the fourth of January, of the year 1652, she being twenty-six years and three months old.” Sister Jacqueline, of Saint Euphemia Pascal, was for nine years a nun at Port Royal, and became subprioress and mistress of the Novices. In the latter character the duty of teaching young children to read devolved upon her, and she introduced into the convent the new system of giving merely the phonetic value of the letters and not calling them by misleading names, which was the invention of her brother Blaise, and obtained afterwards great renown in the “Grammaire Generale” of Port Royal. But the pious Jansenist foundation was already doomed. The Jesuits had not yet avenged the Provincial Letters. Strong with the support of the pope and the king, they produced a formulary, the signature of which was compulsory on all ecclesiastics. It referred to the eternal question of the Five Propositions, ind declared that they were in the book Augustinus of Bishop Jansenius, and were contrary to the faith. Much subtlety was employed to find a means of signing it in a non-natural sense, and the chiefs of the Jansenist party, to escape destruction, visibly wavered. But Jacqueline, like her brother Blaise, was made of sterner stuff, and resisted all compromise with passionate zeal. At last the great authority of Arnauld and Nicole prevailed upon their followers to accept the bitter cup prepared for them by their enemies. Pascal swooned away when this decision was taken. Jacqueline yielded at last to the pressure of her superiors, and signed the formulary, but with such grief and anguish of soul that she predicted she would die of it; as, indeed, she did in less than six months. The affliction of the just and the prosperity of the wicked has always been a serious difficulty to pious persons who combined reflection with devotion. “ Wherefore do the wicked live, become old,, yea, are mighty in power? Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.”1 And the prophet goes on to say in his anguish : “ God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked........ He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant........ My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death ; not for any injustice in mine hands : also my prayer is pure.”2 Probably few religious persons have escaped the bitterness of feeling that they were unjustly chastened, that the rod of God was upon them and not upon the wicked. They no doubt repelled the thought with an “ Aflage Satana I ” regarding it as a snare of the tempter. But because the thought was banished from the mind, was the load removed from the heart ? This is a trial which theologians must admit is all 1 Job. xxi. 7-9. 2 Job. xvi. II, 14-17. �THE ALLEGED CONSOLATIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 37 their own—a clear addition to the weary weight “ of all this unintelligible world.” Agnostics at least, when smitten by the sharp arrows of fate, by disease, poverty, bereavement, do not complicate their misery by anxious misgivings and painful wonder why they are thus treated by the God of their salvation. The pitiless, brazen heavens overarch them and believers alike; they bear their trials, or their hearts break, according to their strength. But one pang is spared them, the mystery of God’s wrath that he should visit them so sorely. The exceeding bitter cry of the dying Jesus, “ My God, my God, why hast thou for­ saken me?” never comes to their lips, for it never rises in their hearts. “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.” A fitting yet terrible end of the Passion ; for what more awful thought could come to a devout believer in God than that he was forsaken of God ? It may well have been tin's, even more than the nails through his feet and hands and the spear in his side, which broke the heart of the Son of man, and made Him yield up the ghost. Christ’s followers have discovered consolations and viatica in the hour of death which were denied Him. But the most truly humble and devout at times find their chief anguish there where they have most looked for relief. A more pious, God-fearing woman than the charming French poetess, Madame Desbordes Valmore, could not easily be found. But her life was one long scene of bitter trial, poverty, and bereavement. At last the cup runs over, and this plaintive cry escapes her: “Yes, Camille, it is very poignant; here I am alone, without brothers or sisters, alone and severed from all the dear souls I have so loved, without the con­ solation of surviving them and being able to accomplish their desire, which was ever to do some good........ What can one say in the presence of these decrees of Providence? If one has deserved them, the case is more sad. I often search my heart and try to find out what may have caused me to be so heavily smitten by our dear Creator ; for it is impossible for his justice to punish thus without a cause, and that thought very often suffices to overwhelm me.”1 The above extracts will probably be considered sufficient to show that it is by no means so plain as it is often assumed to be that the loss of the Christian religion would deprive men of immense consolation and an abiding source of inward happiness amid the trials of life. There is a serious set-off on the other side, and this was admitted with no difficulty in the days when the faith was menaced by no danger. “ Do not seek ” says Jeremy Taylor, “ for deliciousness and sensible sweetness in the actions of religion, but only regard the duty and the conscience of it. For although, in the beginning of religion most frequently, and at other times irregularly, God complies with our infir­ mity, and encourages out duty with little overflowings of spiritual joy and sensible pleasure and delicacies in prayer, so as we seem to feel some little nearer of heaven, and great refreshment from the spirit of consolation; yet this is not always safe for us to have, neither safe for us to expect and look for; and when we dor it is apt to make us cool in our inquiries and waitings upon Christ when we want them ; it is running after him, not for the miracles, but for the loaves; not for the wonderful things of God and the desire of pleasing him, but for the pleasure of pleasing ourselves.”2 Now­ adays the effort made is in the opposite direction, and to dwell on the “ sensible pleasures ” and “ delicacies in prayer,” in order to enhance the contrast between the bright glory and prospects afforded by the religious life, and the gloomy and hopeless future which are supposed to afflict the infidel. The object now is to make religion attractive, and it has been pursued with very marked success. Let any one compare the taste and beauty 1 Sainte-Bcuve, Lundis, vol. xii. 2 ZfoZj' Living, cap. iv., § 7. �38 THE SERVICE OF MAN of a choral service in a modern church Meditations of James Hervey, which ran or cathedral with the harsh and grating through numerous editions when it first ugliness which made “ going to church ” appeared, and was still a favourite with in the days of our youth an ascetic pious folk in the earlier portion of the exercise. The coarse, untutored voice present century. Such pompous and of the village shoemaker or tailor who tawdy fustian one would hope could acted as clerk; the hideous boxes called hardly have been accepted for eloquence, pews; the dolorous and droning music ; had it not been supposed to convey vital the whole framed in a choice specimen religious truth. As a poetaster of the of Georgian architecture, barbaric with day expressed it: white-wash and clumsy ornament, will still “ In these loved scenes what rapturous graces return to the memory in a dreamy mood. shine, These things have gone, and are replaced Live in each leaf, and breathe in every line ; What sacred beauties beam throughout the by what is very often a real artistic suc­ whole, cess ; good music and singing, the dim To charm the sense and steal upon the soul.” religious light of stained windows, flowers, mosaics, or paintings, in Soul and sense are charmed in this wise: churches often not untouched by the “The wicked seem to lie here, like spirit of mediaeval beauty. This great malefactors in a deep and strong dun­ reform in the ordering of divine service geon ; reserved against the day of trial. has passed beyond the limits of the ‘ Their departure was without peace.’ ■Establishment, and penetrated even Clouds of horror sat lowering upon their among the dissenters, whose chapels no closing eyelids; most sadly foreboding longer display the resolute deformity of the blackness of darkness for ever. a past age. The outward change has When the last sickness seized their been preceded and accompanied by a frame, and the inevitable change ad­ deeper inward change; the doctrine of vanced ; when they saw the fatal arrow terror has been laid aside, and replaced fitting to the strings; saw the deadly by a doctrine of mildness and hope, so archer aiming at their life; and felt the much so that few realise the gloomy envenomed shaft fastened in their vitals horrors of the old creed. The younger —good God ! what fearfulness came generation has hardly an idea of the : upon them ! What horrible dread over­ dismal spiritual pit in which their fathers whelmed them ! How did they stand lived. In the eighteenth century the shuddering upon the tremendous preci­ case was still worse. The chill shade of pice, excessively afraid to die, yet utterly religious dread spread beyond the circle unable to live.—O ! what pale reviews, of the professedly devout, and darkened what startling prospects, conspire to life and literature. Only profane revellers augment their sorrows I They look back­ ■ passed out of it, and their example was not ward ; and behold ! a most melancholy edifying. In what a cavern of black scene! Sins unrepented of, mercy slighted, thoughts did Samuel Johnson pass his and the day of grace ending. They look life, and what a fearful “ Horror of the forward, and nothing presents itself but Last” got hold of him in his latter days. the righteous Judge, the dreadful tribunal, Edward Young, who inveighed against and a most solemn reckoning. They wealth and honours in order to obtain roll around their affrighted eyes on them, adjusted with skill and care the attending friends, and, if accomplices in -strains of his venal muse to the popular debauchery, it sharpens their anguish to taste, and sang that consider this further aggravation of their guilt, That they have not sinned alone, “A God all mercy is a God unjust.” but drawn others into the snare. If Few books in the last century were more religious acquaintance, it strikes a fresh popular with serious persons than the gash into their hearts, to think of never �THE^LLEGED CONSOL A ELONS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 39 seeing them any more, but only at an unapproachable distance, separated by the unpassable gulph.”1 Will any one presume to say that, for one death-bed which has been smoothed by religion, a thousand have not been turned into beds of torture by such teaching as this ? But we must go back to the palmy days of Calvinism, to Scotland in the seventeenth century, to realise fully the revolting devil-worship which once passed under the name of Christianity, and, what is more, really was Christianity, gospel­ truth, supported by texts, at every point taken from Scripture. No class of litera­ ture lies buried deeper in oblivion than old-fashioned theological literature. Its brilliant but transitory life is followed by a perennial death, from which there is no resurrection. Dead divinity is the deadest thing that ever lived. Only now and then a literary historian recalls one of these vanished spectres; the mass of believers are content to ignore their spiritual ancestry. Take the case of the Rev. Thomas Boston, a minister of the Church of Scotland, who lived in the latter end of the seventeenth and begin­ ning of the eighteenth century. Boston was one of the most shining lights of the Scottish Church, and his most famous book, Human Nature in its Fourfold State, was for a long period almost placed on a level with Holy Scripture. It is certainly a very wonderful book, written with great power, and eloquence of a kind which might well impose upon readers who accepted the writer’s pre­ mises. It seems written in a white heat of sustained passion, in which the devil­ worshipper (for Boston is nothing else), persuaded that he had conciliated his devil for his own purposes, deals dam­ nation on all poor wretches not so favoured, with an exultant and fiery joy which is really astounding to witness. The man would have delighted, one would say, to be a stoker in the infernal regions. Out of a volume of five hundred * Meditations among the Tombs, vol. i., p. 94. pages I select a page or two which are nothing but average specimens of a tone of thought which I apprehend would be generally repudiated by theologians now­ adays ; so far have we declined from Christian verity1:— “ Consider what a God he is with whom thou hast to do, and whose wrath thou art liable unto. He is the God of infinite knowledge and wisdom; so that none of thy sins, however secret, can be hid from him. He infallibly finds out all means whereby wrath maybe executed towards the satisfying of justice. He is of infinite power, and so can do what he will against the sinner. How heavy must the strokes of wrath be which are laid on by an omnipotent hand ! Infinite power can make the sinner prisoner, even when he is in his greatest rage against Heaven. It can bring again the several parcels of dust out of the grave, put them together again, re-unite the soul and body, summon them before the tribunal, hurry them away to the pit, and hold them up with the one hand, through eternity, while they are lashed with the other. He is infinitely just, and there­ fore must punish; it were acting contrary to his nature to suffer the sinner to escape wrath. Hence the execution of his wrath is pleasing to him; for though the Lord hath no delight in the death of a sinner, as it is the destruction of his own creature, yet he delights in it, as it is the execution of justice. ‘ Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest.’ Mark the reason : ‘ For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness’ (Ps. xi. 6, 7); ‘I will cause my fury to rest upon them, and I will be comforted’ (Ezek. v. 13); ‘I also will laugh at your calamity ’ (Prov. i. 26). Finally, he lives for ever, to pursue the quarrel. Let us therefore conclude, ‘ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’ ”2 1 Boston’s book first appeared in 1720. It has been republished by the Religious Tract Society. 2 T. Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State. The Misery of Man's Natural State. Motive 4. �40 TIIE SERVICE OF MAN Again, in another place of the same which makes them, like Pashur (Jen chapter, Boston says : “ There is wrath xx. 4), ‘a terror to themselves.’ God upon his soul. He can have no com­ takes the filthy garments of their sins, munion with God ; he is ‘foolish, and which they were wont to sleep in securely, overlays them with brimstone, and sets shall not stand in God’s sight ’ (Ps. v. 5). them on fire about their ears, so they ....... There is war between Heaven and them (natural men), and so all commerce have a hell within them.” It may be doubted if, among all the is cut off........ God casts a portion of worldly goods to them, more or less as a aberrations of the human mind, anything bone is thrown to a dog; but, alas, his so horrible as this was ever attained wrath against them appears, in that they elsewhere; and this was the creed of the poor Scots for more than two hundred get no grace........ They lie open to fearful additional plague on their souls, even in years. In reading the works of such a man as Boston, one is tempted to admit this life. Sometimes they meet with one of his favourite dogmas, that the deadening strokes, silent blows from the heart of man is deceitful above all things hand of an angry god; arrows of wrath, and desperately wicked. He evidently that enter into their souls without noise. ‘ Make the heart of this people fat, and gloats and revels in the ideas of wrath, make their ears heavy, and shut their brimstone, fiery strokes, stunning blows, eyes, lest they see with their eyes ’ (Isa. and all the apparatus of his infernal torture-chamber. There is a sort of vi. 10). God strives with them for a while, and convictions enter their con­ concupiscence of lust in his passion for cruelty; it tickles his prurient appetite, sciences ; but they rebel against the light; and, by a secret judgment, they and reaches to a depravity almost insane. receive a blow on the head; so that If he stood alone, the case would be from that time they do, as it were, live merely one of pathology; but he was a and rot above ground. Their hearts are representative man, and spoke in the deadened, their affections withered, their names of millions in this country and consciences stupefied, and their whole abroad. The power of the human mind souls blasted ; ‘ cast forth as a branch to throw up and nourish poisonous and withered ’ (John xv. 6). They are growths of this kind is a very sad and plagued with judicial blindness. They regrettable one. It has stained with shut their eyes against the light; and blood many pages of history, and is not, they are given over to the devil, the one is sorry to say, an abomination con­ god of this world, to be blinded more fined to Christians. The inhuman fana­ (2 Cor. iv. 4). Yea, ‘ God sends them tics of the French Revolution—-Marat, strong delusions, that they should believe Hebert, Fouquier-Tinville, and Robes­ a lie ’ (2 Thess. ii. 11). Even conscience, pierre—are inferior specimens of the same like a false light on the shore, leads breed. But their lust of cruelty, hideous them upon rocks, by which they are as it was, had not the infinite scope and broken in pieces. They harden them- ■ transcendental character of Boston’s ; selves against God, and he leaves them I yet the Reign of Terror in France, which to Satan and their own hearts, whereby ‘ lasted but a few months, is still pointed they are hardened more and more. to by Christians as a supreme instance They are often ‘ given up unto vile affec­ of the wickedness into which unbelievers tions ’ (Rom. i. 26)........ Sometimes they inevitably fall. The reign of terror in meet with sharp fiery strokes, whereby Scotland, which lasted two centuries, is their souls become like Mount Sinai, quietly dropped out of memory, or where nothing is seen but fire and smoke, certainly is never consigned to the ever­ nothing heard but the thunder of God’s lasting infamy which is supposed to have wrath, and the voice of the trumpet of a overtaken the atheists. On the whole broken law, waxing louder and louder, this is an advantage, and the less we deal �THE ALLEGED CONSOLA LIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 41 in retrospective anathema the better; but then all parties should benefit by the amnesty. Even Carlyle, who ever remained a sort of distorted Calvinist, could see that nothing was gained by “shrieking” over the horrors of the French Revolution ; and agnostics would do well to abstain from hard words about Calvinists. Determinists and evolution­ ists must hold that all phenomena of the human mind, whether welcome or otherwise, had a very good reason, for their existence, in that they were caused like any other phenomena. Calvinistic or Terrorist principles cannot be too forcibly condemned, discouraged, or counteracted. Like frightful forms of disease, they show what terrible evils human nature is exposed to. But we do not properly blame disease, if we are wise; we strive to combat it and prevent its recurring again. The poor victims of disease, whether mental or physical, rather deserve our pity than our scorn. They contracted it because they were exposed to its noxious germs. The antecedent evolution of Scotland and France had produced the moral miasma and the minds ready to receive it, which led to the breaking out of those two dreadful pestilences, Scotch Calvinism and French Terrorism. While they pre­ vailed in their greatest virulence, the minds of men were deformed and made hideous, as their bodies might be by small-pox or elephantiasis. In this slight retrospect over the darker side of theology, I should misrepresent my meaning if I seemed to blame the men who held opinions, according to my view, very pernicious. Our war should not be with men, but with dogmas, principles. The dogmas, under the con­ ditions, were inevitable, just as the Plague of London, under the then conditions of over-crowding and neglect of cleanliness, was inevitable. But we cannot blame the men who suffered from the Plague; we cannot even blame their ignorance of the laws of health, because they could not then have known better. We now do know better, and we keep down the Plague. In the same way, Calvinism was a creed held by men who could not know better. The antecedent history of Scottish thought had led to a super­ stitious adoration of a fragment of old oriental literature, the Bible, which was supposed to contain the authentic will and testament of the Creator of the universe. This supposed divine word had been, so it was thought, somewhat kept in the background and slighted by the powerful Catholic Church, which had reigned supreme for centuries, and pressed on men’s minds with no light yoke. Every word of this old oriental book, very interesting and valuable in its way, as a specimen and picture of primitive culture, was imagined to be in the handwriting of the Most High. Every bloody deed recorded, every fantastic and horrible thought enun­ ciated, such as must appear in such a document or collection of documents compiled in such an age, was regarded as approved and authenticated by Almighty Wisdom. When these and similar facts are considered, it does not seem inexplicable that the Scotch and other Calvinists thought and acted as they did. They came to horrible results and conclusions, but these were logical conclusions from the premises. Similarly Rousseau and Robespierre were the most logical of men. The fault lies in the premises—in the one case, that the Bible is the wTord of God; in the other, that the Contrat Social is the utterance of pure reason. �42 THE SERVICE OF MAN Chapter V. ON CHRISTIANITY AS A GUIDE TO CONDUCT The next point to be considered is whether the Christian religion is really so strong and efficient a support of morality as it is common to suppose. An affirmative answer is generally taken for granted, as if the case were too obvious to admit of doubt or even of argument. The purity and elevation of the ethics of the gospel are indeed often asserted to be a sufficient proof of its divine origin. Those theologians who wince somewhat under the scientific argument against miracles recover all their self-possession when they dwell on the ethical side of their creed. If the casting out of devils from demoniacs is admitted to present difficulties, on the ground that it was and still is a common Eastern superstition to regard lunatics as possessed by evil spirits, a superstition which the evangelists shared with their countrymen and contemporaries, it is maintained that the Sermon on the Mount is its own evidence of divine inspiration. “ Never man spake like this man.” The spiritual depth and sublimity of Christ’s teaching must, it is argued, be superhuman, from the fact that to this day it has never been sur­ passed or approached, and never will be in the most remote future. It is agreed that all the great changes and improve­ ments that have been made in public and private morals, between pagan and modern times, must be set down to the vivifying effects of Christianity, which has raised women, struck the fetters from the limbs of the slave, moralised war, conquest, and commerce—in short, done every good thing that has been done in the last sixteen or eighteen centuries. This is that moral evidence for Chris­ tianity which is far more convincing than the evidence derived from works of power. Not that the latter is to be slighted or ignored; but one speaks to the heart, and must abide valid and persuasive through all time; the other addresses the head, and perhaps may not always be equally cogent. Now, it will not be necessary for the purpose of this inquiry to dispute the claims thus advanced. Many of them indeed are obviously without foundation, as the raising of the status of women and the liberation of the slave. But, for the sake of argument, and to avoid complicated side issues, let them be granted; and even then we maintain that it can be proved that Christianity is not favourable to morality in the way and degree commonly supposed. And by morality is meant right conduct here on earth ; those outward acts and inward sentiments which, by the suppression of the selfish passions, conduce most to the public and private well-being of the race. Paley, with that clear, but at times somewhat cynical, common sense which marked his acute intellect, is willing to admit that “ the teaching of morality was not the primary design ” of the gospel. “ If I were to describe,” he goes on to say, “ in a very few words, the scope of Christianity as a revelation, I should say that it was to influence the conduct of human life, by establish­ ing the proof of a future state of reward and punishment—‘ to bring life and immortality to light.’ The direct object, therefore, of the design is to supply motives, and not rules ; sanctions, and not precepts. And these were what mankind stood most in need of. The members of civilised society can, in all ordinary cases, judge tolerably well how they ought to act; but without a future state, or, which is the same thing, without credited evidence of that state, �ON CHRISTIANITY AS A GUIDE TO CONDUCT ■43 they want a motive to their duty; they which conduces, to happiness, either in want, at least, strength of motive, suffi­ ourselves or others, here, is evidently a cient to bear up against the force of trivial matter compared to the conduct passion and the temptation of present which conduces to happiness hereafter. advantage. Their rules want authority. An eternal future must, in minds capable The most important service that can be of even remotely realising such an idea, rendered to human life, and that, con­ overwhelm and crush into insignificance sequently, which one might expect a minute, temporal present. Even a beforehand would be the great end and long temporal future suffices to do this. office of a revelation from God, is to The inconveniences, for instance, of a convey to the world authorised assurances sea-voyage which is going to land us in of the reality of a future existence. And an abiding home in the Colonies or although doing this, or by the ministry India are borne with comparative of the same person by whom this is equanimity or indifference, on the done, moral precepts or examples, or ground that they will soon be over, illustrations of moral precepts, may that it does not very much matter, as be occasionally given, and be highly the real object is not to live happily at valuable, yet still they do not form the sea, but to prepare for happiness and original purpose of the mission.”1 In prosperity in the distant land for which other words, the purpose of the mission we are bound. A colonist does not was to make men fit for a future state of prepare the outfit of a seaman, does not reward, and to supply sanctions which look upon the ship which carries him as would deter them from conduct which his permanent dwelling-place. He no would make them fit for a future state of doubt secures what comfort he can at punishment. Salvation in the next sea ; but, if he is a wise man, his medi­ world is the object of the scheme, not tations are directed to his future life on morality in this; and, although the two land beyond the ocean. It would be objects may occasionally coincide, it is very questionable prudence in him to only a casual coincidence. Such dif­ learn seamanship or navigation, to study ference of ends must lead to a difference charts, and make himself master of the of means. The road which is intended position of shoals and rocks. He would to lead to happiness in heaven must say that such matters concerned persons diverge from the road which is intended who intended to pass their working lives to lead to happiness limited to this on the sea, whereas he had wholly earth. And if anybody says that he different objects in view; the soil, the does not see the necessity of such climate, and the crops proper to the divergence, that happiness in heaven country he intended to inhabit were the may well be only a prolongation of things that concerned him. The parallel happiness on earth, he may be asked only fails in the inadequacy of . the to reflect on the inevitable dwarfing and analogy between the longest life in a subordination of this life, a transitory colony and eternal life in heaven. If space of a few years, to a prospect of life is only a short voyage, destined to eternal life in heaven. Clearly, if this terminate in paradise or hell, what life is only a short, probationary trial­ thoughtful person could care how he scene, preparatory to entrance upon passed it? If, moreover, he were told eternity; if, moreover, conduct here is on good authority, or such as he con­ supposed to influence or decide our sidered transcendently good, as. being status there, happiness in this life is not divine, that happiness during this life’s a thing to be considered by prudent and voyage was more than likely to risk thoughtful persons; and the conduct eternal happiness -hereafter, his in­ difference to happiness here would probably become enmity to it. He 1 Evidences of Christianity, Part II., cap 2. �44 THE SERVICE OF MAN would lend but a careless ear to those utterances of representative Christian doctors. who urged him to study the conditions It is admitted by all Christians that and follow the conduct, often painful and irksome, which conduced most to man is saved only through the merits earthly happiness. He would say, as and passion of Christ. But difficulties good Christians have always said: “That arise concerning the true doctrine of jus­ is not the one thing needful. What do tification. The Protestants, speaking I care for happiness in this vale of tears ? generally, hold that a man is justified by My thoughts are naturally engrossed faith alone. The Catholics hold that co­ with the means of securing eternal operation with grace is needed on the happiness in the world which is to part of man to ensure salvation. It will come.” And the reply would be dictated not be necessary to enter the labyrinth by prudence and common sense. How of subtle disputations which have sur­ it happens that, as a matter of fact, so rounded this question from the days of few persons, who yet believe, or say they the Reformation. To the impartial do, in the future state of reward and spectator itwouldappear that the Catholic punishment referred to by Paley, by the view is the more rational, and the Pro­ admission of all preachers, take this testant the more scriptural. But this serious view of their position and duties, domestic quarrel among theologians does is a matter of interesting inquiry, but not concern us at this moment, inasmuch one which does not concern us at this as all Christian doctors agree that true moment. repentance and turning to God, however If these arguments are sound, and I these may be brought about, are rewarded scarcely apprehend that they will be by salvation. Past sins, nay, a whole disputed, it follows that on a priori life of sin, if repented of before death, grounds we should be justified in con­ are a far less obstacle to entrance into cluding that morality would be waived paradise than the most exemplary and as an end, in comparison with salvation, virtuous life, if unaccompanied by true among the most devout Christians. faith in Christ. And this, surely, is to And this is what we find does happen. discountenance morality in the most It happens also in all Churches and sects, direct way, making it the “ filthy rags ” showing that it is not an accidental but of which the Calvinists have so much to an essential characteristic of the Christian say. That this is the genuine doctrine scheme. But this is a very inadequate of all Christians I proceed to show by a statement of the case as it really stands. few quotations. The Established Church It is not going too far to say that the may well come first with the eighteenth doctrine of all Christians in the final article of her creed. “ They also are to result is antinomian and positively im­ be had accursed that presume to say, moral. They do not only not support and That every man shall be saved by the strengthen morality as they claim to do ; Law or Sect which he professeth, so that they deliberately reject and scorn it. he be diligent to frame his life according They place on a level the most virtuous to that Law, and the light of Nature. and the most flagitious conduct, carried For holy Scripture doth set out unto us on throughout a long lifetime; and this only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby certainly must be held to be putting as men must be saved.” great an affront on morality as it is pos­ True faith and repentance at the last sible to inflict. moment, even in articulo mortis, are suf­ As these assertions may be regarded as ficient to blot out a life of sin. “ There savouring of paradox, I proceed not to never was a doubt in the Church,” says give more or less plausible reasons for Dr. Pusey, “ that all who die in a state of accepting them as true, but to prove grace, although one minute before they them, and that by the most authoritative were not in a state of grace, are saved. �ON CHRISTIANITY AS A GUIDE TO CONDUCT ....... We know not what God may do in one agony of loving penitence for one who accepts His last grace in that almost sacrament of death.”1 Thus penitence is everything and morality nothing. Years of sin which may, which are sure to have caused widespread moral evils, to have been a source of corruption and leading astray to the weak and ignorant, are all obliterated by one moment of loving penitence ; that is, they are oblite­ rated as regards their effects on the sinner’s status in the next world. He is washed in the blood of the Lamb, and goes to glory. But the partners and companions of his sins, whom he pro­ bably seduced, the women he ruined, the youths his example depraved, they sur­ vive and will be punished, unless, indeed, they follow his example to the letter, and close a life of wickedness by an act of timely repentance ; and in that case, like him, they will be as well off as if they had led the most virtuous of lives. Can any one presume to say that such doc­ trine encourages morality ? What could discourage it more ? The article just quoted, and the words of Dr. Pusey, may be allowed to stand warrant for the English Church in this particular. Now let us turn to the Catholic Church. And we will take as her representative an illustrious Saint and Doctor, whose works have received the approbation of his superiors, St. Alphonso de’ Liguori. In the first chapter of a book called The Glories of Mary, it is written: “We read in the life of Sister Catherine, of St. Augustine, that in the place where she resided there was a woman of the name of Mary, who in her youth was a sinner, and in her old age continued so obstinate in wickedness that she was driven out of the city, and reduced to live in a secluded cave ; there she died, half consumed by disease, and without the sacraments, and was conse­ quently interred in a field like a beast. Sister Catherine, who always recom­ 1 What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punish­ ment, p. 115. 45 mended the souls of those who departed from this world, with great fervour, to God, on hearing the unfortunate end of this poor old woman, never thought of praying for her, and she looked upon her, as did every one else, as irrevocably lost. One day, four years afterwards, a suffering soul appeared to her, and exclaimed, ‘ How unfortunate is my lot, Sister Catherine ! Thou recommendest the souls of all those that die to God ; on my soul alone thou hast not com­ passion?’ ‘And who art thou?’ asked the servant of God. ‘ I am,’ she replied, ‘ that poor Mary who died in the cave.’ ‘And art thou saved?’ said Catherine. ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘by the mercy of the Blessed Virgin Mary.’ ‘And how?’ ‘ When I saw myself at the point of death, loaded with sins, and abandoned by all, I had recourse to the Mother of God, saying, “Lady, thou art the refuge of abandoned creatures : behold me at this moment, abandoned by all; thou art my only hope; thou alone canst help me; have pity on me.” The Blessed Virgin obtained me the grace to make an act of contrition. I died, and am saved ; and, besides this, she, my Queen, obtained that my purgatory should be shortened, by enduring, in intensity, that which otherwise would have lasted for many years. I now only want a few masses to be entirely delivered; I beg thee to get them said, and on my part I promise always to pray for thee to God and to Mary.’ Sister Catherine immediately had the masses said; and after a few days that soul again appeared to her, shining like the sun, and said, ‘ I thank thee, Catherine : behold, I go to Paradise, to sing the mercies of my God, and to pray for thee.’ ”z Nothing can be more plain. A life from youth to old age continued in “obstinate wickedness” is cancelled by an act of contrition, and, after a short 1 The Glories of Mary, translated from the Italian of St. Alphonso de’ Liguori, founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. By a Father of the same congregation. Page 19. (London, 1852.) . �46 THE SERVICE OF MAN purgatorial purification, the sinner appears “ shining like the sun.” Could a life of blameless self-denial and virtue have led to a better result ? The book I quote is full of such stories. Here is another :— “ Belluacensis relates that in an English city, about the year 1430, there was a young nobleman, called Ernest, who, having distributed the whole of his patrimony to the poor, became a monk, and in the monastery to which he retired led so perfect a life'khat he was highly esteemed by his superiors, and this esteem was greatly increased by their knowledge of his tender devotion to the most Blessed Virgin. It happened that the city was attacked by the plague, and the inhabitants had recourse to the monastery, in order that the religious might help them by their prayers. The abbot commanded Ernest to go and pray before the altar of Mary, forbidding him to leave it until he should have received an answer from our Blessed Lady. The young man, after remaining three days in prayer, received an answer from Mary to the effect that certain prayers were to be said: this was done, and the plague ceased. After a time Ernest cooled in his devotion towards Mary: the devil attacked him with many temptations, and particularly with those against purity, and also to leave his monastery. From not having recommended himself to Mary, he unfortunately yielded to the temptation, and resolved to escape by climbing over a wall. Passing before an image of Mary which was in the corridor, the Mother of God addressed him, saying, ‘ My son, why dost thou leave me?’ Ernest, thunderstruck and repentant, sunk to the ground, and replied, ‘But, Lady, dost thou not see that I can no longer resist; why dost thou not assist me?’ ‘And why hast thou not invoked me?’ said our Blessed Lady. ‘ If thou hadst recommended thyself to me, thou wouldst not have fallen so low; but from henceforth do so and fear nothing.’ Ernest returned to his cell, his temptations recommenced, again he neglected to recommend himself to Mary, and at last fled from his monastery. He then gave himself up to a most wicked life, fell from one sin into another, and at length became an assassin; for, having hired an inn, during the night he used to murder the poor travellers who slept there. Among others, he one night killed the cousin of the governor of the place. For this crime he was tried and sentenced to death. It so happened that before he was made a prisoner, and while evidence was being collected, a young nobleman arrived at the inn. The wicked Ernest, as usual, determined to murder him, and entered the room at night for this purpose; but lo! instead of finding the young man, he beheld a crucifix on the bed, all covered with wounds. The image cast a look of compassion on him, and exclaimed, ‘ Ungrateful wretch! is it not enough that I have died once for thee? Wilt thou again take my life ? Be it so. Raise thy hand, strike!’ Filled with confusion, poor Ernest began to weep, and, sobbing, said, ‘ Behold me, Lord; since thou showest me such mercy, I will return to thee.’ Immediately he left the inn, to return to his monastery, there to do penance for his crimes; but on the road he was taken by the ministers of justice, was led before the judge, and acknowledged all the murders he had committed. He was sentenced to be hung, without having the time given him to go to confession. He recommended himself to Mary, and was thrown from the ladder; but the Blessed Virgin pre­ served his life, and she herself loosened the rope, and then addressed him, saying, ‘ Go, return to thy monastery, do penance, and when thou seest a paper in my hands, announcing the pardon of thy sins, pre­ pare for death.’ Ernest returned, related all to his abbot, and did great penance. After many years, he saw the paper in the hands of Mary, which announced his pardon; he immediately prepared for death, and in a most holy manner breathed forth his soul.”1 1 The Glories of Mary, p. 48. �ON CHRISTIANITY AS A GUIDE TO CONDUCT It is quite clear that an ardent zeal to save souls is compatible with great indifference as to bodies. One would like to know what became of the poor travellers whom the ruffian Ernest murdered in their sleep. Was time granted them to make an act of con­ trition ? But it is absurd to take such a narrative au serieux. What is serious is the unmistakeable character of the teach­ ing implied. And can anything be imagined more cynically immoral ? Here is a man represented as falling into the most abominable anti-social crime which it is possible to commit. The wretch deserved a hundred deaths for his dastardly midnight murders; conduct more injurious than his to society simply cannot be conceived. Yet he is not only saved from the gallows by the Mother of God herself, but his life is prolonged in order that he may have time to repent and to get his precious soul taken to heaven — a place which, by the way, if it contain many such characters as he, would offer very un­ pleasant company to moral men. And let no one reject with impatience the above specimens of Christian teach­ ing on the ground that they are not Christian at all, but abject popish superstitions and inventions. Our next witness to prove that in this matter all Christians agree in vilipending a moral life and conduct, and placing it below a life of crime, provided the latter be terminated by an act of repentance and turning to God in time to cheat the devil, shall be the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, who will not be suspected of any leaning to Romish error. This is what he says : “Regeneration is an instantaneous work, and justification an instantaneous gift. Man fell in a moment....... Shall the devil destroy us in a moment, and Jesus be unable to save us in a moment?”1 Again: “ My dear hearer, whoever thou mayest be, whatever thy past life may have been, if thou wilt trust Christ, thou 47 shalt be saved from all thy sin in a moment; the whole of thy past life shall be blotted out; there shall not remain in God’s book so much as a single charge against thy soul, for Christ, who died for thee, shall take thy guilt away, and leave thee without a blot before the face of God.” Again : “ Ah ! my friend, let me assure you....... that there is hope for the vilest through the precious blood of Jesus. No man can have gone too far for the long arm of Christ to reach him. Christ delights to save the biggest sinners....... O ye despairing sinners, there is no room for despair this side the gates of hell. If you have gone through the foulest kennels of iniquity, no stain can stand out against the power of the cleansing blood....... You great sinners shall have r.o back seats in heaven! There shall be no outer court for you. You great sinners shall have as much love as the best, as much joy as the brightest of saints. You shall be near to Christ; you shall sit with him upon his throne; you shall wear the crown; your fingers shall touch the golden harps; you shall rejoice with the joy which is unspeakable and full of glory....... Thirty years of sin shall be forgiven, and it shall not take thirty minutes to do it in. Fifty, sixty, seventy years of iniquity shall all disappear as the morning’s hoar - frost disappears before the sun.”1 Two things are to be remarked in connection with these quotations : First, that we have here a singular agreement on one particular point, among divines who usually are in complete antagonism. Dr. Pusey, St. Alfonso de’ Liguori, and Mr. Spurgeon may be regarded as repre­ sentatives of opinions as widely divergent as could well be found among men calling themselves Christians. Yet they agree in the opinion that no amount or duration of sin can be accounted as a bar to salvation, provided a suitable act of repentance or contrition has been 1 “ A Sermon to Open Negiectersand Nominal 1Jesus at Bethesda: a sermon delivered by I Followers of Religion;” March 24th, 1867. C. H. Spurgeon, April 7th, 1867. �48 THE SERVICE OF MAN performed on “ this side of the gates of hell.” They differ at once if you ask for details as to how the act of contrition or repentance is to be carried out. Mr. Spurgeon bids the sinner turn to Jesus. St. Alfonso tells him to have recourse to the Mother of God ; the mere words of which precept the great Baptist minister would probably regard as savouring of blasphemy. But the result is the same. A long life devoted to sin can be blotted out in a moment by a change in the sinner’s mind. Secondly, this result has exclusive reference to the next world. By the hypothesis in each case, the life in this world is supposed to be as good as over ; and it has been a life of iniquity, says Mr. Spurgeon; of obstinacy in wickedness, says St. Alfonso. But para­ dise is attained, nevertheless. Now, can this doctrine be regarded as one leading to morality in this world? Must it not, rather, have a directly opposite effect ? As many as believe it—and how many millionshave ?—are invited,nay entreated, to believe also that it makes absolutely no difference as to their future welfare whether they lead virtuous lives here below or the most profligate, provided they repent a moment before death. Preachers may insist as they will on the dangers of deferring repentance to the last, on the awful results which will follow if the sinner is suddenly cut off, without having had time to make his peace with God. One part of their teaching destroys the effect of the other part. They admit, they proclaim that repentance, however late, will take the sinner to heaven. Human nature being as it is, we cannot wonder that the result in this world is varied, and on the whole very unsatisfac­ tory. The minute minority of naturally pious and tender minds embrace the cross with passion and ardent love, not unmixed with holy fear; they realise fully that they stand in jeopardy every hour; they work out their salvation in fear and trembling, and not unfrequently are exposed to a strain too severe for their faculties, and they become, like Pascal, morbidly anxious about their future state, or, like Cowper, they pass the limits of sanity, and fall for a longer or shorter time into utter despair. But these are the small minority of times d'elite. The bulk of mankind are com­ monplace all round, in their virtues and vices equally ; and they languidly believe and languidly practise their belief; but so imperfectly and perfunctorily that it is the universal complaint and lamenta­ tion of preachers of all denominations that the world lieth in wickedness and is dead in its sins. Nothing could be more frank and candid than Mr. Spurgeon’s language to his congregation on this head : “ You sin, and yet you come to a place of worship, and tremble under the word ; you transgress, and you weep and transgress again....... You are as religious as the seats you sit upon, but no more; and you are as likely to get to heaven as those seats are, but not one whit more, for you are dead in sin, and death cannot enter heaven.”1 Bourdaloue, the greatest preacher in the classic age of French pulpit eloquence, said : “ Nous sommes Chretiens, et nous vivons en pai'ens ; nous avons une foi de speculation, et dans la pratique toute notre conduite n’est qu’infidelite. Nous croyons d’une fagon, et nous agissons de l’autre....... Avoir la foi, et vivre en infideles, voila ce qui fait le prodige....... Ah! Chretiens, faisons cesser ce prodige, accordons nous avec nous-memes ; accordons nos mceurs avec notre foi; autrement que n’avonsnous pas a craindre de cette foi profanee, de cette foi scandalisee, de cette foi deshonoree ?”2 Again, he says: “ N’entend on pas dire sans cesse que tout est renverse dans le .monde, que le dereglement y est general; qu’il n’y a ni age, ni sexe, ni etat, qui en soit exempt; qu’on ne trouve presque nulle part ni religion, ni crainte de Dieu, ni probite, ni droiture, ni bonne foi, ni justice, ni charite, ni honnetete, ni pudeur; que ce n’est partout, ou presque partout, que libertinage, que 1 “ A Sermon to Open Neglecters,’’etc. 2 “ Sermon sur la Religion Chretienne.” �ON CHRISTIANITY AS A GUIDE TO CONDUCT 49 dissolution, que mensonges, que tromperies, qu’envie de s’aggran dir et de dominer, qu’avarice, qu’usure, que concus­ sions, que medisances, qu’un monstrueux assemblage de toutes les iniquites.”1 “ The title of Christian,” says Wilber­ force, “ implies no more than a sort of formal general assent to Christianity in the gross, and a degree of morality in practice, little, if at all, superior to that for which we look in a good Deist, Mussulman, or Hindoo.”2 It seems difficult to reconcile these candid admissions by eminent authori­ ties with the current claim made for Christianity as a supremely moralising influence. But we can hardly be wrong in tracing the general failure of preachers to arouse their flocks to the fact, already dwelt on, that they undo with one hand what they do with the other; that, anxious above all things to save souls in the next world, and making that infinitely the most important object, they one and all present the doctrine of Justification, though varying much from one another in minor points, in a form which neces­ sarily depreciates the value of morality in this world. With one voice they tell men that all they do is evil and wicked, and that there is no health in them. They dwell with exaggerated language on the sinfulness of sin and the extent and vileness of human corruption. But, except in a few special cases of unusually sensitive natures, they do not awaken the prick of conscience; men feeling in a dumb, inarticulate way, that their tone is unreal and conventional, or even merely professional. Even when they do alarm the conscience they as promptly send it to sleep again by their doctrine that a moment’s repentance can put everything straight, and that one plunge in the blood of the Lamb will remove all the guilty stains from a sinner’s soul. Mr. Spurgeon, in the sermon from which I have already quoted some passages, avows th's very openly. “ It is the easiest thing,” he says, “ in the world to impress some of you by a sermon, but I fear me you never will go beyond transient impressions. Like the water when lashed, the wound soon heals. You know, and you know, and you know, and you feel, and feel, and feel again, and yet your sins, your selfrighteousness, your carelessness and wilful wickedness, cause you, after having said, ‘ I go, sir,’ to forget the promise and lie unto God.” But the eloquent preacher had apparently forgotten what he had himself said on the previous page, or at least he had not sufficiently weighed the natural effect of his words. “ Thirty years of sin shall be forgiven, and it shall not take thirty minutes to do it in.” It is no wonder if men and women, with hearts and minds made dull and heavy with toil and trouble, should remember more easily and pleasantly the consola­ tion conveyed in the last remark than the objurgation of the previous one; and should dwell more on the efficacy of repentance when once set about than on its immediate need and urgency. Con­ sequently, we find that it is the most scrupulous and tender consciences which have most difficulty in embracing the great Protestant dogma of justification by­ faith alone. “The essence of Luther’s gospel is this : that a person so affected, that is, with scruples of conscience, has only one great struggle to go through in order that he may attain the indefectible promise of eternal salvation, and that the struggle is not against those sins, but against his own conscience, which would fain impede his full assurance of immediate pardon.”1 The records of execution show, on the other hand, that malefactors of the deepest dye have often little or no difficulty in turning to Jesus when circumstances compel it. This is acknowledged by the Christian Observer2: “Thousands of deeply peni­ tent and humble-minded persons have lived many years, and perhaps died, in a state of deep depression, because they 1 Opuscules: Petit Nombrc des Plus. 2 Practical View, cap. iv. 1 Ward, Ideal of a Christian Church, second edition, p. I712 January, 1884, p. 16. E �5° TIIE SERVICE OF MAN could not attain to that confident assur­ of the Jewish nation which made them ance that their sins were, pardoned at last insupportable to the Roman which they were told was essential to world. Yet, was he punished or made salvation; while murderers have gone to do penance, to make amends to the to the gibbet, exulting in strains of society he had injured ? The human rapture, as though they were being law did indeed give him his deserts by carried to the stake as faithful martyrs hanging him as a thief and probably a murderer, and so far morality was of Jesus Christ.” But the most momentous authority avenged. A powerful deterrent was for holding a life of wickedness on earth applied, not unlikely to prevent others immaterial, and no impediment to the from doing otherwise. But Christ undid promptest ascent into heaven, provided all the effect of that salutary severity in an act of contrition has been performed a moment when he promised him imme­ in time, has yet to be cited. It is that diate salvation, and for what ? For of Christ himself as he hung upon the deferential speech to himself, which the cross. “And one of the malefactors hypothesis that Christ saw to the bottom which were hanged railed on him, saying, of his heart will not allow us to regard If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. as a piece of artful time-serving, suggested But the other answering rebuked him, as politic in his desperate circumstances; saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing but which, without that hypothesis, would thou art in the same condemnation ? undoubtedly be open to such a suspicion. And we indeed justly; for we receive Thus preachers have the very highest the due reward of our deeds: but this authority for asserting that turning to man hath done nothing amiss. And he God, even at the last moment, wijj save said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me a soul in the next world, the admitted when thou comest into thy kingdom. object of Christianity; and agnostics And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say have equally a right to declare that unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me ; Christianity thereby shows itself hostile to morality in this world. The penitent in paradise.”1 This is almost exactly parallel with thief’s life, we may assume, was a per­ the case cited by St. Alphonso of the nicious one as far as this world was woman “ who was a sinner.” Though concerned. What good could his repen­ it is not mentioned in the gospel, we tance do to any denizen of this earth ? may suppose and grant that the penitent If it be said that it might lead others to thief made a due act of contrition; that repent after a life of crime, the answer is Christ was able to see to the bottom of that in proportion as they resembled him his heart, and that he truly repented they also would be qualifying for heaven, him of his sins. Does that in the least and not for well-doing in this world. remove the slight which Christ passed Man may injure his fellows in their most upon morality by taking him to paradise vital interests ; he may rob, murder, “ go in spite of his past evil life ? What did through the foulest kennels of iniquity ”; his repentance do to cancel that ? The there shall not remain in God’s book a evil that he had done in the world was single charge against his soul, provided still left working behind him : his bad he looks to the bleeding Lamb. On the example; the insecurity to person and other hand, the best of good works are property involved in his robber’s career; of no account, are worse than “filthy the pain and suffering he had caused in rags,” and no doubt have the nature of any case; all his immorality, in short, sin “ unless they be consummated in was left to work on, and contributed, no real vital communion with Christ.” It doubt, its share to that frightful depravity would not be easy to conceive a doctrine more injurious to morality than this Christian scheme, on which the morality 1 Luke xxiii. 39-43. �ON CHRISTIANITY AS A GUIDE TO CONDUCT 5i of the world, as on the surest foundation, men may become the worst, and vice versa, as they may be touched by grace is supposed to rest. Indeed, this inherent opposition or not, it is obvious that morality is a between morality and the gospel has figment of the fancy, having no sub­ been held by large sections of Christians stantial existence or foundation in the as an article of faith. “ Luther,” says nature of things. The difference is not Moehler, “not only taught that Christ between good and bad men, whose had not come to impart to men a purer goodness and badness depend on their ethical code, but even maintained that moral endowment fins the training they he had come to abolish the moral law, to receive, but between the recipients of liberate true believers from its curse both grace and the non-recipients ; and thesefor the past and for the future, and in are interchangeable according to the that way to make them free. The good pleasure of God. We can never evangelical liberty which Luther pro­ tell, therefore, whether the greatest pounded announces that even the sinner now may not become the greatest decalogue shall not be brought into saint before his end; nor whether the account against the believer, nor its best of men may not suddenly become violation be allowed to disturb the prodigies of wickedness. This unknown conscience of the Christian, for he is factor of Grace vitiates all calculation. exalted above it and its contents.” No doctrine more inconsistent with the Moehler goes on to say that the re­ facts of human nature can well be con­ formers refer to Christ not as the ceived, and therefore no more misleading strengthener and sanctifier, but exclu­ guide of conduct could be adopted. sively as the forgiver of sins; “they Imagine such a theory applied to agri­ regarded the mediator only in his culture, and that there was no reason, capacity of pardoner.” The great apart from the grace of God, why the Catholic divine is at pains to show the most fertile soil should not become superior moral tone of his communion the most barren, or the reverse. If in this respect. But the extracts just such were the case, what inducement cited from St. Alphonso de’ Liguori i would a farmer have to choose good prove that the Catholic Church has no land and cultivate it with care ? The advantage over the Protestant on this worst land might serve him as well as. point. The Virgin takes the place of the best, and bring him overflowing, Christ as a free pardoner of the grossest crops; and that with no effort on his sins, in consideration of an act of con­ part, for “ God giveth the increase.” He has only to wait or pray for fertilising trition and genuine repentance. To the above considerations it may grace. Or apply it to the raising of be added that the doctrine of grace is horses or cattle. The grazier or breeder presented in a way to become a standing cannot trust to the qualities of his stock. rebuke and depredator of morality. His thoroughbreds may suddenly become “Humility,” says Canon Liddon, “is valueless animals, which no one would the condition and guarantee of grace; take at a gift; while his neighbour, who and, as St. Augustine says, there is no had nothing but screws and low-breeds, reason, apart from the grace of God, has all at once a magnificent collection of why the highest saints should not be the superb cattle. Men differ at least as worst of criminals.”1 In that statement much as animals in their inherited quali­ I suppose all theologians would concur. ties; and to say that a man naturally But it is easy to see how fatal such a courageous, high-minded, benevolent, doctrine is to a systematic culture of and just can become vile and cruel, morality. If, at any moment, the best cowardly or criminal, is not a whit less irrational than to say that a thorough­ bred Arab can become a cart-horse. The 1 Oxford Sermons ; VI. �52 THE SERVICE OF HAN faulty theory leads, as a matter of course, to disastrous practice. It is no exaggera­ tion to say that the vigilant, painstaking cultivation of the moral side of man’s nature has never been taken in hand with earnest persistence, because theology has always been celebrating the power of grace, to the depreciation of ethics. A miracle of grace, which removes the heart of stone and replaces it by a heart of flesh, might always be expected, or at least hoped for. Punctual performance of the moral law, social duty to the com­ munity and individuals, could well be postponed without harm, in view of the celestial transfiguration which converts a sinner from a bond-slave of Satan into a saint of God. If this conversion takes place in the last hour or minute of life, we have seen that, by the unanimous con­ sent of theologians of all schools, it is enough; the object has been attained; a soul has been saved ; the sinner’s past wickedness has been blotted out, as regards its effects upon him. But its effects on society are not considered, and the result must be, and is, solely injurious to morality as far as it relates to conduct in this world. That depends on the per­ formance of social duty; salvation depends on repentance and the subjective attitude of the soul towards God. And this re­ pentance is powerful to cancel any number of previous breaches of the moral law. In other words, morality is not the one thing needful, but repentance is. Chapter VI. MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH In the previous chapter we saw on the best evidence, that of eminent doctors in various denominations, that true Christian doctrine postponed morality to repen­ tance; and that salvation in the next world depended on other things than good conduct in this. The obvious inference was, that under such a scheme morality must necessarily be more or less slighted and undervalued, and that the alleged support afforded to ethics by the Christian religion must be either denied or considerably diminished. It will be perhaps useful to confirm this abstract deduction by examples taken from the past of the actual working of Christian doctrine. If only a tithe of the compliments which it is usual to pay that doctrine be true, it is clear that the more we retrograde into the ages where it held undisputed sway over men’s minds, the more moral we ought to find the public and private life of the world. Wickedness and crime are assumed to be the natural result of neglected religion. No other cause is usually thought of in explaining the atrocities of the French Revolution. Here we see, it is remarked, the proper effect of atheism and for­ saking of the divine light of the gospel. Again, the corruption and immorality of the lower Roman Empire show what becomes of man when left to himself. The line of argument is too familiar to need further repetition of it. Now, we may profitably consult history as to the truth of these assumptions. Do we find, as a matter of fact, that the Ages of Faith were distinguished by a high morality? Were they superior in this respect to the present age, which is nearly on all hands acknowledged not to be an age of Faith ? The answer must be in the negative. Taking them broadly, the Ages of Faith were emphatically ages of crime, of gross and scandalous �MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH wickedness, of cruelty, and, in a word, of immorality. And it is noteworthy that in proportion as we recede backward from the present age, and return into the Ages of Faith, we find that the crime and the sin become denser and blacker. The temperature of faith rises steadily as we penetrate into the past, almost with the regularity which marks the rise of the physical temperature of the air as we descend into a deep mine ; but a neglect and defiance of morality are found to ascend in a corresponding ratio. This, it must be owned, is an anomalous result, if morality be indeed so dependent on Christianity as is commonly supposed. When all men believed and doubted not, we should have found, according to the Christian hypothesis, a godly world; devout people living always with the great Day of Judgment before their eyes, crushing down the lusts of the flesh, in view of the tremendous penalties pre­ pared for those who indulged them. But we find nothing of the kind. On the contrary, we find a state of things to which our imaginations are scarcely able to do justice in these comparatively tame and moral days. A progressive improve­ ment has taken place in men’s conduct, both public and private; but it has coincided not with an increase, but with a decay, of faith. This, beyond any question, is the most moral age which the world has seen ; and it is as certainly the least believing age since Christianity became the religion of the West. The inference is plain, that Christianity has not been so favourable to morality as is usually assumed. Let us turn back, and take a brief ex­ cursion through the ages behind us. The present century need not detain us long. Most persons would admit that the state of morals when George the Fourth was king left much to be desired. The scandals of the Court were bad enough ; but no Court, however bad, can compromise a nation. The mass of the population was coarse, insolent, and cruel, and permitted things which would not be tolerated for a moment now. That there 53 were exceptions, not only of individuals, but of whole though small classes, no one would deny. The Clapham Sect was a conspicuous example in a corrupt world ; and many of the dissenters were truly pious, God-fearing people, who had turned away from the prevailing grossness. But these were only fractions of the nation. The general tone was low, violent, and brutal. The drinking, gambling, prize­ fighting, cock-fighting, bull-baiting Eng­ land of the Regency is hardly to be realised in these decorous days ; though old men “ still creep among us,” who can partly resuscitate it for us, if carefully questioned. Let one of those venerable seniors be induced to describe the con­ dition of London in his youth, and no hearer will have any doubt as to the' extraordinary change for the better which has taken place in the last two genera­ tions. From this century we pass into history; and as the object is to ascertain the moral tone of previous ages, let us quote the following passages from a writer, who was selected by common acclamation as “ the great moralist,” and was one of the most brave, noble, and conscientious men who have ever lived, Samuel John­ son :—“ He talked of the heinousness of the crime of adultery, by which the peace of families was destroyed. He said : ‘ Con­ fusion of progeny constitutes the essence of the crime; and, therefore, a woman who breaks her marriage vows is much more criminal than a man who does it. A man, to be sure, is criminal in the sight of God; but he does not do his wife a very material injury, if he does not insult her; if, for instance, from mere wanton­ ness of appetite, he steals privately to her chambermaid. Sir, a wife ought not greatly to resent this. I would not receive home a daughter who had run away from her husband on that account.’ ”r This was Johnson’s settled opinion, as, eleven years after, we find Boswell recording another conversation, in which the same 1 Croker's Boswell, chap. xxi. �54 THE SERVICE OF MAN thought recurs : “ I mentioned to him a cannibals in India, who subsist by dispute between a friend of mine and plundering and devouring all the nations his lady, concerning conjugal infidelity, about them. The president is styled which my friend had maintained was by Emperor of the Mohocks, and his arms no means so bad in the husband as in are a Turkish crescent. Agreeable to the wife. Johnson : Your friend was their name, the avowed design of their in the right, Sir. Between a man and i institution is mischief, and upon this his Maker it is a different question ; but i foundation all their rules and orders are between a man and his wife, a husband’s I founded. An outrageous ambition of infidelity is nothing. They are connected doing all possible hurt to their fellow­ by children, by fortune, by serious con­ creatures is the great cement of their siderations of community. Wise married assembly, and the only qualification women don’t trouble themselves about required in the members. In order to infidelity in their husbands.”1 exert this principle in its full strength Now, this is a very good instance of and perfection, they take care to drink the improvement which has taken place themselves to a pitch that is beyond the in the course of the last hundred years. possibility of attending to any motive of That very offence for which Johnson said reason and humanity, then make a he would not receive his daughter home, general sally, and attack all that are so if it were committed by a husband, is unfortunate as to walk the streets now so universally admitted to be an through which they patrol. Some are injury of the most serious kind that the knocked down, others stabbed, others statutory law of the land does precisely cut and carbonadoed........ The particular what Johnson said he would not do—give talents by which these misanthropes are protection to the injured wife. distinguished from one another consist As we go further back in the century, in various kinds of barbarities which we make a visible approach to the state they execute upon their prisoners. of nature. Cowardly murders and brutal Some are celebrated for a happy outrages are perpetrated almost with dexterity in tipping the lion upon them, impunity and very little loss of credit which is performed by squeezing the by people of the highest rank. The nose flat on the face, and boring out the exploits of the Mohocks must have eyes with their fingers. Others are rendered the streets of London, in the called the dancing-masters, and teach reign of Queen Anne, considerably more their scholars to cut capers by running ■dangerous and disgusting than any swords through their legs........ A third Californian diggings frequented by the are the tumblers, wrhose office is to set rabble and outlaws of Europe and women on their heads, and commit America in the early days of the gold certain indecencies, or rather barbarities, discoveries. A contemporary says : on the limbs which they expose.”1 Slitting “There are a certain set of persons, noses, cutting people down the back, and among whom there are some of too putting women in tubs which were rolled great a character to be named in these down Snow Hill, were among their diver­ barbarous and ridiculous encounters, did sions. they not expose themselves by such The manners and customs of persons mean and ridiculous exploits ”; and their of quality were those of semi-savages. portrait is thus drawn by the Spectator: Thackeray, who knew the period well, “A set of men who have erected them­ does not go too far when he says : “You selves into a nocturnal fraternity, under could no more suffer in a British drawing­ the title of The Mohock Club, a name room, under the reign of Queen Victoria, borrowed, it seems, from a sort of a fine gentleman or a fine lady of Queen 1 Ibid., chap. Ixix. 1 Spectator, No. 324.. �MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH Anne’s time, or hear what they heard and said, than you would receive an ancient Briton.” This is the manner in which “gentlemen” quarrelled in the good old times : Sir Cholmley Dering, knight of the shire for Kent, and Mr. Thornhill fought a duel, in which the former was killed. This caused a judicial inquiry, and “ the first Evidences were such as related to the quarrel begun at the Toy at Hampton Court, April 27th, 1711, who deposed that an assembly of about eighteen gentlemen met there at that time, a difference happened between the deceased and the prisoner. Upon their struggling and contending with each other, the wainscot of the room broke in, and Mr. Thornhill, falling down, had some teeth struck out by Sir Cholmley Dering’s stamping upon him.”1 Naturally a duel followed. “ They fought,” says Swift, “at sword and pistol this morning in Tuttlefields, their pistols so near that the muzzles touched. Thornhill discharged first, and Dering, having received the shot, discharged his pistol as he was falling, so it went into the air.” Thornhill was convicted for manslaughter, but he was apparently soon abroad again, as he was murdered by two men, who stabbed him on horse­ back, five months afterwards, at Turnham Green. The well-known case of the murder of Will Mountford, the actor, by Lord Mohun and Captain Hill, in a ruffianly ambuscade, would seem well suited to show the profligate temper and degraded public opinion in the reign of William the Third. The incident is thus related by Thackeray:— “ My lord’s friend, a Captain Hill, smitten with the charms of the beautiful Mrs. Bracegirdle, and anxious to marry her at all hazards, determined to carry her off, and for this purpose hired a hackney coach with six horses and halfa-dozen soldiers to aid him in the storm. The coach, with a pair of horses (the 1 Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, chap, xxxviii. 55 four leaders being in waiting elsewhere), took its station opposite my Lord Craven’s house in Drury Lane, by which door Mrs. Bracegirdle was to pass on her way from the theatre. As she passed, in company of her mamma and a friend, Mr. Page, the captain seized her by the hand, the soldiers hustled Mr. Page and attacked him sword in hand, and Captain Hill and his noble friend endeavoured to force Madam Bracegirdle into the coach. Mr. Page called for help; the population of Drury Lane rose; it was impossible to effect the capture, and, bidding the soldiers go about their business, and the coach to drive off, Hill let go his prey sulkily, and he waited for other opportunities of revenge. The man of whom he was most jealous was Will Mountford, the comedian. Will removed, he thought Mrs. Bracegirdle might be his; and accordingly the captain and his lordship lay that night in wait for Will, and, as he was coming out of a house in Norfolk Street, while Mohun engaged him in talk, Hill, in the words of the Attorney-General,- made a pass and run him clean through the body.”1 Mohun was tried for the murder by his peers of the Upper House, and acquitted by sixty-nine votes against fourteen. “ One great nobleman,” says Macaulay, “ was so brutal and stupid as to say : ‘After all, the fellow was but a player, and players are rogues.’ ”2 This, on the first blush, seems downright atrocious. But there are slightly extenu­ ating circumstances connected with the case which make it a degree less horrible. In the first place, the murder and the judgment, as Macaulay points out, were generally condemned by public opinion. In the second place, the Lords were actuated by a violent esprit de corps, and defending their privileges which were being attacked by the Commons. That which largely neutralises these con­ siderations is the fact that Mohun was a 1 Lectures on the Humourists. 2 Macaulay’s History of England. �56 THE SERVICE OF MAN popular character in London, and that the anecdotists speak very kindly of his practical jokes. In the next reign he was singled out for honourable dis­ tinction, and accompanied “ Lord Macclesfield’s embassy to the Elector of Hanover when Queen Anne sent the Garter to H.E. Highness.” Were the men of that generation infidels, despisers of God’s Holy Word, and demoralised by a ■ dreary disbelief in the unseen world ? On the contrary, they were fanatically religious. Their zeal about spiritual matters was fervid in the extreme. A hint that the Church was in danger filled them with gloomy passion. As soon as Sacheverell’s trial began “ it took up all men’s thoughts, so that other business was at a stand. It was clear from the very outset of the trial that the popular favour was wholly on the doctor’s side. He lodged in the Temple, and came every day in solemn procession through the Strand to West­ minster Hall. A> he passed, great crowds gathered round his coach, striving to kiss his hand and shouting ‘Sacheverell and the Church for ever!’ Those who would not join in the shouts were often insulted or knocked down. The ardour of the multitude was even less justifiably shown by their attacks on some meeting­ houses,in which thepewsweredemolished and burned.”1 The connection between Christianity and morality does not seem very plain here. If we now cross the Channel and examine the condition of morals under the Old Monarchy of France, we shall find that the record of Catholicism in this respect is in no wise purer than that of the rival communion. It is a common opinion that the very great licence of manners which distinguished the French upper classes in the latter part of the eighteenth century was one of the many evil results of the prevalent infidelity propagated by Rousseau, Diderot, and Voltaire. But such an idea has no 1 Lord Stanhope, Reign of Queen Anne, chap. xii. foundation. Corrupt as was the society which read the novels of Louvetand the younger Crebillon, it was in a variety of ways superior to the society to which Bossuet and Bourdaloue preached, and which flocked to hear the sacred dramas of the spotless Racine. The whole of the reign of Louis XIV. was marked by a great depravity of manners, and his depravity was found quite compatible with an ostentatious and possibly sincere attachment to religion. The king, in spite of the gross immorality of his private life, was a bigot in matters of faith, and he was not an ungraceful or inadequate representative of the people who looked up to him as to an almost supernatural being. No stress need be laid on the laxity of the gay lords and ladies who filled his brilliant Court, although, if a firm belief in Christianity were the safeguard of pure morals, as it is supposed to be, their lives present an unaccountable anomaly; for, as Bour­ daloue said to their faces, they lived like pagans though they believed like Christians. The point of interest for us is to note how largely Christianity failed to overcome the flesh and the devil, even in an age when it had entirely its own way, was zealously supported by the State, and able to wield its tremendous sanctions without pause or hesitation. And, again, what we have to take most account of is the average tone and temper of public opinion with regard to crime and immorality. Sporadic and exceptional crime may occur in any age, and yet cast no reflection on the average standard of morals. It is otherwise when immorality is common, if not general, and when a life of great licence and scandal may be passed without attracting discredit or remark. And this rule applies especially to the conduct of ministers of religion. If the clerical order can indulge in abandoned courses without exciting reprobation, we may be sure that we do an age no injustice in pronouncing its standard of morality . to be low. When the officers of an army give an example of cowardice and �MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH insubordination, we know what to expect of the rank and file. We have many instances during the reign of Louis XIV. which show the great corruption of the clergy in that age, and the little resentment or surprise which it caused. The lives of some of the' most prominent ecclesiastics were openly scandalous. The famous Cardinal de Retz led a life of which any decent layman would now be ashamed. But it may be said that de Retz was one of those political Churchmen who took orders merely with ambitious views to worldly advancement, and who ought not to be considered as true clerics. He also lived in times of revolution, when men’s morality is apt to break down. So we will pass him over. These remarks do not apply to Harley de Champvallon, Archbishop of Paris. He lived in times of profound internal peace, he never played any part in politics, and he was for years the acknowledged leader and representative of the French Church. He was permanent chairman of the Assembly of the French Clergy, and a preacher of such popularity and power that, during a course of his Lenten sermons, the church was kept open at all hours, and footmen, in order to retain the best places, were forced to spend the whole night in them. Yet he was a man of profligate private life, and not so very private, as his amours were notorious. “ Notre Archeveque de Paris, Quoiqu’il soit jeune, a des faiblesses ; Voyant qu’il en avait trop pris, Il a retranche ses mattresses ; Les quatre qu’il eut autrefois Sont a present reduites a trois. ” Several great ladies of the Court—la Marquise de Gonville, la Marechale d’Aumont, Madame de Brisseu—were among his conquests, but Madame de Bretonvilliers was his maitresse en titre, as la Montespan was of Louis XIV. He was not even content with these irregularities, but carried off by force Mademoiselle de la Varenne, a public singer, the mistress of a gentleman 57 named Pierrepont. The latter avenged himself in a way characteristic of the age; he lay in wait with three men, seized the faithless Varenne (who seems to have made no objection to the exchange of a poor for a rich lover) as she was returning to the house the arch­ bishop had given her, and had her unmercifully beaten with rods. It was probably his only mode of retaliation. Meddling with Monseigneur and his pleasures was attended with danger and punished severely. Two priests who had lampooned him were sent to the galleys, one for life. One of the arch­ bishop’s mistresses was the Countess of Northumberland, a former favourite of Charles II. The prelate used to visit her in a convent of Benedictines at Conflans. He died suddenly, at a good old age, in the presence of his last “amie,” la Duchesse de Lesdiguieres, and had his funeral oration pronounced by le pere Gaillard. It appears there was some little trouble in finding a preacher—a fact creditable to the time, as far as it goes. The convents, not without reason, had a bad reputation. Louis XIV., who was not a man to speak evil of religious orders, said of the Carmelites : “Je savais bien qu’elles etaient des friponnes, des intrigeuses, des ravaudeuses, des bro­ deuses, des bouquetieres, mais je ne croyais pas qu’elles fussent des empoisonneuses.”1 “ There were often, says Michelet, “twelve parlours in a convent, in which each nun, without being heard, could converse with her lover or a female intriguer yet more dangerous.”2 But Protestants and infidels are only too ready to believe evil of convents as if they all must necessarily be nests of iniquity—a most unjust supposition. Port Royal at this very time contained women of angelic purity. We may therefore leave them, and pass to the lower ranks of the secular clergy. A good example of the tone of public 1 Madame deSevigne, Lettres, Oct. 15th, 1677. 2 Histoire de France: Louis XIV., note iii. �58 THE SERVICE OF MAN opinion with regard to clerical irregu­ larity will be found in the following story :— “On the 7th of November, 1665, the cure of Saint-Babel was condemned to death for a crime he had committed three years before. He was a man of parts, intelligent in matters of business, but carried away by his passions, and not particular in setting a good example in his parish. He was especially ill-famed for his amours—and amusing stories were told about him, amusing if the tone had not been connected with sin and wholly unbecoming his sacred profession. He was accused in the world of having instructed his female parishioners in an entirely novel manner, and having inspired them with a love remote from the love of God. His turn for gallantry would show itself at such unseasonable moments that on one occasion, having been sent for by a good woman in mortal sickness to hear her confession, he neglected to administer to her the Sacraments, in order to amuse himself in winning the affections of a girl to his liking, whom he found in the house; and thought no more of the salvation of the mistress in his design against the honour of the maid. He forgot his character as a priest as soon as he had seen her personal charms, and love overcame duty. Instead of listening to the confession of the one, he employed his time in making his declaration to the other; and far from exhorting the sick person to die piously, he solicited her who was in good health to live in sin; and, taking her by the hand and the chin, he said : ‘ What a trial it is for me to be called by a person whom age and sickness have reduced to extremity, and what a joy it would be to come and see you who have youth and beauty. I own that I do not like to hear the story of past sins which these good old women relate to us, and that the sins of youth are much more agreeable. Let madame your mistress think over the way in which she has passed her years, and let us consider how we will pass ours ; let her examine and see if she has sinned, and let me know if you can love one who loves you. Do not be surprised if you see me abandon my duties in order to satisfy my inclination, and, if you love me, regard me as a man and not as a cure, and reflect that you can be at once my mistress and my parishioner, and that you will find in me a pastor and a lover equally devoted.’ ” This worthy priest was not interfered with for this and similar indiscretions. He came to an untimely end by being hanged for the more serious offence of murder, into which he was tempted by a natural exasperation at having been placed in a ridiculous and painful posi­ tion by one of his flock. It happened thus. At a short distance from his parish he had a grange in which he kept, not only his corn and fruit, but, when occasion required it, the young­ women whom he fancied. Hetook reason­ able precautions to ensure privacy, and even diverted a road which ran past the grange, in order to escape the curiosity of passers by who might feel a wish to inquire what he was doing in his retreat. Still suspicion was excited, and a peasant, more enterprising and mischievous than the rest, artfully closed the door of the grange and fastened it on the outside, when he had good reason to think that the cure was within, as, indeed, he was, with a young woman, whom he had chosen out of his own church. . The imprisoned pair were forced to wait till liberated by a chance wayfarer, and the exposure of the cure was complete. He vowed a terrible vengeance on his betrayer, and soon carried it out by having him beaten to death. The very next day he said mass for the defunct, but the friends of the latter brought the cure before a local tribunal, which acquitted him. It was only three years later, when a special commission of judges, known as Les Grands-jours d’Auvergne, were sent by Louis XIV. to suppress the unbridled crime in. Auvergne, that M. Guillaume Boyer, the cure in question, came by his deserts. �MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH The Church did all it could to save him. But Colbert was at the head of affairs, and lay-justice had its way. Now, to whom are we indebted for this interesting story? To no other than the illustrious Flechier, the elo­ quent preacher who became Bishop of Nimes. His Memoires sur les Grandsjours <TAuvergne are among the choicest pieces of French prose of the early classical period, not without a flavour of “bel esprit” and “ preciosite,” recalling the Hotel de Rambouillet, but still, by their finesse and style, worthy of the Great Age. But all must admit that the tone of sly humour in which the crimes of the priest are recorded is very singular, and conclusive that clerical irregularities were considered objects rather of mirth and pleasantry than of serious reproba­ tion. Would any clergyman, especially of so high a character as Flechier, dream of speaking of them in such a strain now ? We will next take the case of the famous Abbe de Choisy, as illustrating the kind of life a Churchman might lead under Louis XIV., not only without discredit, but with general respect and esteem. The Abbe de Choisy came of a good family “ of the robe ”—that is to say, he belonged to that rich and powerful class of hereditary civil servants who carried on the government of the old French monarchy. His position in the world is sufficiently shown by the fact that his mother, a woman distin­ guished by her wit and fine manners, could say to the young Louis XIV. that, if he wished to become a polished man, he ought to frequent her society. One may suppose she did not neglect the education of her son, and we know, indeed, that she loved him to excess. This was the result of her bringing up. After leaving the theological seminary—for he was intended for the Church from the first—Choisy immediately became an actor, or rather an actress, and for several months appeared on the stage at Bordeaux. His mother, in his child­ hood, had taken pleasure in dressing 59 him as a girl, partly, perhaps, from private whim, but more probably to please the perverted tastes of Monsieur (Duke of Orleans), the king’s brother, who had a passion for wearing female attire. Choisy was nothing loath, and soon surpassed his Royal Highness in his fondness for a woman’s costume. In order to gratify his propensity, he bought a house, as he himself tells us, in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau, in the centre of the “ bourgoisie of the people,” that he might “ dress himself as he liked, among folks who would not complain of anything he did.” He soon became noted for his elegant female attire, and, though his sex was well known, no one seems to have been scandalised. So far from that, his services were requested in the parish church to present the hoi)’ bread and collect the offertory. He became one of the attractions of the church, and a source of great profit to his employers. In one day he collected two hundred and seventytwo livres. People came from other parishes when it was known he was going to collect. “I will admit,” he says, “ that in the evening at the salut (the benediction) I experienced a great pleasure. It was night, when the talk is free. I heard several times, in different parts of the church, people saying, ‘ But can it be true that that is a man ? He has good reasons for wishing to pass for a woman.’ ” It may well be supposed that this comedy was continued beyond the walls of the church, for objects less innocent than making strangers stare. Choisy took a large country house near Bourges, where he passed as la Comtesse des Barres, and spent four years in a round of systematic seduction. Details cannot be given ; they are to be found in his own narrative by the curious in such moral monstrosities. Even more singu­ lar than his turpitudes is the chuckling cynicism with which he relates them. Yet he never lost caste for his rascality. Once only, apparently, was he reproved, by the Due de Montausier, who told him �6o THE SERVICE OF MAN he ought to be ashamed of himself for such conduct; but his clerical brethren seem to have been as accommodating as he could wish. When he went to Bourges he imparted his secret to the cure, which, as he says, it was only fair to do. But the cure was not in the least scandalised, and came to dine and sup at the rake’s house, sitting at table with the innocent little victims, mere children often, of the latter’s licentiousness. But that is not all. When the Cardinal de Bouillon went to Rome to attend the Conclave for elect­ ing a new Pope, he took Choisy with him as his “ conclaviste.” He afterwards occupied the same post in the service of the Cardinal de Retz (a worthy pair), and took a part, if we may believe him, in the election of Odescalchi (Leo XL). He lived till eighty, and was doyen of the French Academy, when he died in great honour as a man of wit and fine manners. It is needless to add that he was “ con­ verted ” before the end, with what profit to the world does not appear. Scotland and Spain share the bad pre­ eminence of having been, each in their way, the most fanatical nations in Europe. It would be difficult to say in which of the two religion was made most repulsive and inhuman. In both countries nearly every object was postponed to the pro­ tection and propagation of the national faith. But Calvinism in Scotland was more blighting and deadly to all things beautiful than Catholicism in Spain. Terrible as it must have been to know that the invisible eye of the Holy Office was fixed upon your movements, and even upon your thoughts, and that at any moment you might disappear behind its dreaded walls, only to emerge in a San Benito in the ghastly procession to an Auto da Fe, yet Spanish life was not blackened and gnawed into hideousness by the Spanish Inquisition as Scottish life was by the Scottish Inquisition. After all, there were joy, laughter, and song in Spain; there were poetry and painting; Cervantes, Calderon, and Murillo, bright children of the South, in whom the world still finds delight. But in Scotland every green and wholesome thing was smitten as by a black frost. “To be poor, dirty, and hungry, to pass through life in misery, and to leave it with fear, to be plagued with boils and sores and diseases of every kind, to be always sighing and groaning, to have the face streaming with tears and the chest heaving with sobs; in a word, to suffer constant affliction and to be tormented in all possible ways—to undergo these things was deemed a proof of goodness, just as the contrary was a proof of evil. ....... It was a sin to go from one town to another on Sunday, however pressing the business might be....... No one on Sunday should pay attention to his health, or think of his body at all. On that day horse-exercise was sinful; so was walking in the fields, or in the meadows, or in the streets, or enjoying the fine weather by sitting at the door of your own house. To go to sleep on Sunday before the duties of the day were over was also sinful, and deserved church censure. Bathing, being pleasant as well as whole­ some, was a particularly grievous offence ; and no man could be allowed to swim on Sunday. It was, in fact, doubtful whether swimming was lawful for a Chris­ tian at any time, even on week days, and it was certain that God had, on one occasion, shown his disapproval by taking away the life of a boy while he was in­ dulging in that carnal practice.”1 Life must have been made intolerable by a system of spies and informers who were paid for delating breaches of the Sab­ bath.2 “ Sometimes a brother and sister, or a man and his wife, walking quietly together, would find themselves under the observation of the emissaries of the Kirk. In short, if fanatical belief in Christianity, coupled with the most intemperate zeal in enforcing the pre­ cepts of the Bible, could have made a people moral, the Scotch should have 1 Buckle, History of Civilisation in England, vol. ii., pp. 395-398. Buckle corroborates every statement by redundant evidence. 2 Chambers’s Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. iii., p. 344. �MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH been a moral people towards the middle and end of the seventeenth century. Nearly a century of gospel-teaching at the highest pressure should, if Chris­ tianity be as favourable to morality as is commonly supposed, have produced very marked results in the form of correct and orderly living. The reality does not correspond with this pleasing inference. Indeed, to judge from the accounts left us by Spalding and other contemporaries, the country districts of Scotland presented a savage scene of lawless violence, frequently ending in murder. Gentlemen, neigh­ bours, and often relatives, quarrel and fight and kill each other like barbarians, with or without provocation. However, homicide, which of all crimes in a peaceful state of society is the most injurious and detested, is often viewed with strange leniency in periods agitated by fervent religious and social or political revolution. In the eyes of ferocious partisans, killing is no murder when it thins the ranks of their enemies. This was the case in Scotland at the time referred to; it was so in France, both under the Red and White Terror; and only recently it was the same in Ireland. We will, therefore, pass over the Scotch man-slaying of the seventeenth century, and refer to that milder form of vice which has nearly usurped' the name of “ immorality ” for its own exclusive use in familiar speech—illicit intercourse between the sexes. On no part of ethics have Christians of all denominations laid greater stress that on chastity, yet with far less result in the way of producing purity of manners than might have been expected, even among those who made a particular display of religion. In 1640 a portion of the Covenanting army was under General Monro, on its way from Banff to Aberdeen. “Then Monro and his soldiers,” says Spalding, marched that night (Friday) to Turriff; Saturday, they marched therefrae to Inverurie and Kintore; Sunday, they marched therefrae to Aberdeen, and by the way, at Bucksburn, they had a 61 sermon taught by their own minister.” They no doubt “hungered and thirsted by the way,” and could not pass the Sabbath, though on military duty, without hearing the Word. But when they reached their quarters in Aberdeen, their behaviour left much to be desired. “Of the performances of the Covenanting troops occasionally posted in Aberdeen, we hear from the commissary clerk of‘daily deboching ’ and ‘drinking,’ night walking, combating and swearing, and bringing sundry honest women-servants to great misery. Sixty-five of this honest sister­ hood were delated before the church courts; twelve of them, after being paraded through the streets by the hang­ man, were banished by the burgh. Several were imprisoned in a loathsome vault, while others, more fortunate, found safety in flight.”1 What was done to the pious profligates who had brought them to this “ great misery ” does not appear. Later on in the century the General Assembly felt called upon to proclaim a general fast on account of the backslidings of the people. “ There hath been a great neglect,” they say, “of the worship of God in public, but especially in families and in secret. The wonted care of sanctifying the Lord’s Day is gone, cities full of vio­ lence, so that blood touched blood. Yea, Sodom’s sins have abounded among us—pride, fulness of blood, idleness, vanities of apparel, and shameful sen­ suality.”2 And there is no reason to believe that this is one of the rhetorical exaggerations of sinfulness common to religious persons in moods of depres­ sion. Referring to a slightly earlier date, Mr. Chambers says: “The number of cases of uncommon turpitude in a time of extraordinary religious purism forces itself upon our attention....... Offences of a horrible and unnatural kind continued to abound to a degree which makes the daylight profligacy of the subsequent 1 Burton, History of Scotland, vol. vi., p. 322. 2 Chambers’s Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. ii., p. 42. �62 THE SERVICE OF MAM reign (Charles II.’s) shine white in com­ parison. ‘ More,’ says Nicoll, ‘ within these six or seven years, nor within these fifty ye irs preceding and more.’ Culprits of all ages, from boys to old men, are heard of every few months as burned upon the Castle Hill of Edinburgh. Sometimes two together—young women who had murdered their own infants— were frequently brought to the same scene of punishment. John Nicoll states that on one day, October 15th, 1656, five persons—two men and three women—were burnt on Castle Hill for offences of the several kinds here glanced at, while two others were scourged through the city for minor degrees of the same offences.”1 The meaner vices of fraud and cheat­ ing, often supposed to be modern inven­ tions from which the pious old times were free, were not uncommon in Edin­ burgh in the seventeenth century. “ The beer, ale, and wine sold in the city were all greatly adulterated. It was customary to mix wine with milk, brimstone, and other ingredients. Ale was made strong and heady with hemp seed, coriander seed, Turkish pepper, soot, salt, and by casting strong wash under the cauldron when the ale was brewing. Blown mutton and corrupted veal, fusty bread and light loaves, false measures and weights, were common. In all these particulars the magistrates were negli­ gent, so that the people were abused and neglected.”2 One does not see how, under the head of morals, the people of the Ages of Faith were superior to the people of to-day. When we consider that the com­ petition was much less severe than it is now; that the size of the towns was many degrees smaller than at present; and that the opportunities of escaping observation and punishment now afforded by our immense cities were then correspondingly less, we must 1 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 242. 2 Chambers’s Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. ii., p. 240. admit that the average of morality was singularly low, although the average of religious belief and zeal was singularly high. The few extracts quoted above give a most inadequate impression of the general violence, grossness, cruelty, and licence of the period during which every effort was made and almost every other worthy object was sacrificed with a view to making the people devoutly Christian. We have surely a right to say, after so large and protracted an experiment, that the moralising element in Christianity has been over-estimated. Here was Christianity at work without any competing principle; it was zeal­ ously supported by the secular power; yet we find crimes of “ uncommon turpi­ tude ” co-existing with “ extraordinary religious purism.” It is not an answer to say that but for Christianity, matters, bad as they were, would have been worse; and for this good reason, that a great improvement in decency, order, and civilisation generally, co­ incided in Scotland with a marked decline in religious fervour, such as set in about the middle of the last century. What is true and quite fair to allege is, that the Scottish people in the seven­ teenth century were in that stage of semi - barbarism in which no moral principle is able to take a firm hold. Only the slow growth of knowledge and industry can civilise such a people. But this is the doctrine of evolution, not of grace. The latter, as emanating from Almighty power, can no more be arrested or withstood by imperfect development in the race than by moral degradation in the individual. At least, that is the theory. In practice, we may observe, the growth of morality depends on con­ ditions widely remote from those which favour the vigour and tenacity of theo­ logical beliefs. As already shown, Chris­ tianity preaches salvation in the next world, not morality in this ; and accord­ ing to the rules laid down we may not doubt that numbers of the Scotch, in the darkest period, after the commission of every crime against human ethics, �MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH were at last touched by grace and were saved, or at least should have been. The point does not admit of verification, and we therefore cannot tell whether celestial happiness did supervene as a compensa­ tion for the miseries of a barbarous exist­ ence on earth. The fact remains that those miseries were not mitigated, but were often very much increased, by a fanatical belief in the words of Scripture. The cruelty and injustice perpetrated in obedience to the disgusting superstition about witchcraft, a thoroughly scriptural tenet, fill up one of the most horrible pages in the history of mankind. Sor­ cerers were burnt in batches of four, five, and even of nine at a time on the Castle Hill. But the more zealous spirits were not satisfied. “There is much witchery up and down our land,” says Robert Baillie; “ the English be but sparing to try it, but some they execute.”1 Our sympathy is justly given, in the first instance, to the wretched victims; but the mental anxiety and terror of their persecutors must have been no light burden. We will now, for a few moments, turn our attention to Spain, the single Euro­ pean country which rivalled Scotland in its zeal for religion. One of the liveliest accounts of that interesting nation will be found in the letters of a French lady, who went to Spain in 1679 to attend upon the young queen Henriette, the daughter of the un­ fortunate Henrietta of England, sister of Charles II. I confine my extracts to the matter in hand—the union, or rather the disconnection, of morality and reli­ gion :—“The frequent assassinations in this country, on account of some affront or other, seem to authenticate these facts. If a man receives a box on the ear or a stroke in the face with a hat, nay, with a handkerchief or a glove; if he be called a drunkard; or a reflecting word happens to pass on his wife’s virtue, these 1 Chambers’s Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. ii., p. 244. 63 must be wiped off with no less than the blood of the aggressor, and that by assassination. For they say it is not just that, after a signal affront received, the offended party should put his life in an equal balance with the offender. They are so tenacious of revenge that they will not lay aside an injury for twenty years after ; if they happen to die before they accomplish it, they will recommend the same upon their death-beds to be exe­ cuted by their children. I had it from credible hands that a certain person of note, dreading the revenge of his enemy, went to the West Indies, where he stayed twenty years, till, hearing that both he and his son were dead, he returned to Spain, yet not without changing his name for his greater security ; but in vain, for, notwithstanding all his precaution, the grandson of his enemy, though not above twelve years of age, found means to hire a ruffian, who assassinated him soon after his return. “ Most of their assassins are natives of the city of Valentia, a wicked generation, who will venture at anything for money, and are always provided with firearms that will discharge without noise, and stilettoes....... I was told that a certain Spaniard of note, having agreed with one of these Bandoleroes, as they call them, of Valentia, for a certain sum of money to dispatch his enemy, but a reconcilia­ tion being made soon after betwixt them, he acquainted the Bandolero with it, desiring him not to put his design into execution, though at the same time he allowed him the money as a voluntary gift. But the assassin replied that he scorned to have any of his money with­ out deserving it, to do which he must either kill him or his enemy. The gentle­ man, being willing to preserve his own life, was forced to let him put in execu­ tion what he had designed against the other, unless he would have resolved to seize him—-a thing of dangerous conse­ quence in Spain, where these ruffians are so numerous and so closely united that they are sure to revenge the quarrel of any of their companions, which makes �64 7'HE SERVICE OF MAN Spain the most doleful theatre of tragical scenes in the universe. “ What is more surprising than all the rest is, that as well those who leave no stone unturned to put their revenge in practice, as those who put them in execution, should engage themselves in certain devotions for the success of their enterprises, at the very time they are going to give the mortal wound to an innocent person of their own religion and country.”1* Now, as regards the Spanish observa- • tion of the seventh commandment: “ The Spaniards are so kind-hearted to one another in love affairs that, if a man meets his mistress in a place where he has no opportunity of conversing with her in private, he need only go into the next house and to request the master (whether he know him or not) to give him the opportunity of talking with a lady of his acquaintance in private in his house, and he is sure it will scarce ever be refused.” What is meant by the euphemistic term “talking ” is made clear ■by the following strange disclosure : “I remember that, talking the other day with the Marchioness d’Alcannizas, one of the greatest and most virtuous ladies I of the Court, she frankly told us that, if a gentleman should be alone with her for half an hour in a convenient place, and not ask her the last favour, she should think he despised her, though she should, at the same time, not grant his request.” Again, we have to notice the co-exist­ ence of a very low moral tone with the most exalted religious zeal and passionate religious belief. It is unnecessary to proceed through the previous centuries with so much detail, otherwise it would be easy to show that the sixteenth century was far more immoral, in the widest sense of the word, than the seventeenth. The Court of the later Valois is painted for us by the gar­ rulous Brantome; and one fails to see 1 The Ingenious Letters of the Lady’s -------Travels into Spain, Harris’s Collection, ii., p. 756> ed. 1705. how it differed, except for the worse, from the Court of Caligula or Commodus. The Italians were more refined, but even more wicked, and impressed the English of Elizabeth’s reign, by no means a squeamish or fastidious folk, with a “ sense of the rottenness of the country whence they obtained their intellectual nourishment, with a sense of frightful anomaly, of putrescence in beauty and splendour, of death in life, and life in death.”1 No one would expect better things of the fifteenth century, in which the Wars of the Roses in England, and the final struggle against English domi­ nation in France, had the usual effect of protracted warfare in injuring morality. That the fourteenth century, the era of the great Schism, of the captivity of the Popes at Avignon, and of the Black Death, should have been a period of extraordinary licence and crime cannot surprise us. Both civil and ecclesiastical government were impaired by the events of the time, and pestilence is usually followed by moral irregularities. So we pass these ages over, and stop for a moment in the thirteenth century, the age par excellence of beautiful things, when chivalry is supposed to have been in its noble prime, when the Church exerted a calm and serene sovereignty over the kneeling nations, when mediaeval art reached its supreme and chaste perfection, when the philosophy and theology of the Latin Church cul­ minated in works almost as intricate and wonderful as the maze of pinnacles, flying buttresses, arches, and columns which, surviving still in the cathedrals of Amiens or Chartres, sing us a deceptive siren song of beauty which lures us to their epoch as to a Golden Age. It was very far from a golden age. On the contrary, it was an age of violence, fraud, and impurity, such as can hardly be con­ ceived now. We will take it in its ideal moment—in the reign of St. Louis, the best of kings, and perhaps the best man 1 Euphorion, by Vernon Lee. �65 MORALm' TN THE AGES OF FAITH who ever lived. We will take as-' a witness one of his most trusted and1 valued friends, Eude Rigaud, Arch­ bishop of Rouen, and we will see what he says of the morals of the clergy of his own diocese, which, like a good pastor as he was, he was constantly visiting for the purpose of discipline and reform. The Regestrum Visitationum^ or the diary of the pastoral visits of Archbishop Rigaud, forms a quarto volume of up­ wards of six hundred closely-printed pages. It extends from the year 1248 101269. Rigaud had been a Franciscan monk, a student at Paris of scholastic philosophy under our famous countryman, Alexander of Hales, and at an early period acquired reputation as a preacher of uncommon eloquence. . A tradition obtained that he had been elevated to the archiepiscopal see of Rouen, where he had gone to preach, on account of the impression produced by his piety and learning on the Chapter. Rigaud wished to refuse the proffered dignity, but his professions were disregarded; the Pope, Innocent IV., relieved him of his vows to reject ecclesiastical honours, and he was consecrated archbishop in the month of March, 1248. In the month of July, in the same year, he began his pastoral visitations. He travelled about from monastery to monastery, and sometimes was entertained at the expense of the monks, but more often at his own. Indeed, the religious houses seem fre­ quently to have been in debt, and hardly in a position to give worthy hospitality to so great a lord as an archbishop. He often discovered, both among the secular and the regular clergy, very unclerical habits and amusements, sometimes inno­ cent, at other times very much the con­ trary. He found the nuns of St. Arnaud had fallen into the evil practice of singing the Psalms and Hours to the Virgin with unbecoming haste—“ cum nimia festinatione et precipitatione verborum,” and ordered, very properly, that one verse should not be begun till a previous one had been finished. The nuns, moreover, did not observe the rule of silence; and ate meat in the infirmary as often as three times a week. A sick sister would have two or three healthy friends to see her, and regale them with a more dainty repast than the usual convent fare. They all had a measure of wine, but some drank more than others, which was not allowed. Some even gave wine to persons outside the convent, with­ out obtaining leave; for this offence they were made to go without wine the next day. The nuns also had a fondness for linen chemises and sheets, which were against the rule, and these luxuries were forbidden. On the whole, the convents for women, which Rigaud visited, seem to have been fairly correct, and certainly did not afford examples of the gross licentiousness of the monks and priests. Many of the latter fell under episcopal censure for irregularities which would not nowadays be considered very serious, and give a notion of a rollicking, schoolboyish tone, which has an odd effect. Riding about on horse­ back in an unclerical garb is noted with disapprobation, and seems to have been a common fault. Buying and selling horses was hardly so venial in a priest; no more, perhaps, was the keeping of dogs for hunting purposes. But it was easy to do much worse. One is surprised to find charges of drunkenness constantly recurring. Frequenting taverns and play­ ing at dice were certainly unbecoming in a clergyman, especially when carried so far as to cause the priest to leave or lose his clothes in the public-house, “ aliquando amittit vestes suas in tabernis.” One is glad to see that Archbishop Rigaud would not. stand such indecorum, and deprived the incum­ bent who had been guilty of it of his living. But these transgressions are insignificant, both in number and gravity, compared with the incessant sin of incontinency, which is alleged on nearly every page in the most aggravated form.. Priest after priest is charged with immoral conduct, some with married women, some with keeping two mistresses at F �66 THE SERVICE OF MAN once, one with incest with his own niece.1 Without a certain monotony of repeti­ tion, it is impossible to convey the impression produced by this protracted catalogue of clerical disorders. “We found the priest of Nesle in ill-repute, on account of a certain woman who is said to be pregnant by him; he also trades, and ill-treats his father, who is the patron of the church he holds. This parson fought with a certain knight with a drawn sword amid a clamour and con­ course of his friends and relations.”2 “ The priest of Gonnetot was charged with criminality with two women, and he went to the Pope about the matter, and when he returned he is said to have offended again. The priest of Wanestanvilla was accused with reference to a woman, one of his own parishioners, and her husband on that account departed over sea. He kept her eight years, and she is pregnant; he also plays at dice and drinks too much; he frequents the taverns, does not abide in his church, and goes with a hawk on his fist when­ ever he likes. Also the priest of Braysur-Seine is accused with reference to a certain woman; and because she refused to live in the presbytery, he went to live with her, and had his food and corn brought to her house. Also the priest of Saint-Just haunts taverns, and drinks till he is full up to the throat. Also Lawrence, priest of Longceil, keeps the wife of a man who is abroad; she is called Beatrice Valeran, and he has a son by her. 3 We found that the 1 “ Item presbyter de Mesnilio David est inobediens et habet pueros suos secum, et concubinam alibi: item duce se invenerunt in domo ipsius et se verberaverunt invicem. Item pres­ byter de Sancto Richario infamatus de quadam conjugata, parochiana sua. Item presbyter Sancti Remigii notatus de ebriositate, non defert capam, ludit ad talos, frequentat tabernam, et ibi multociens verberatur. Item Magister Walterus presbyter de Grandi Curia, infamatus est de propria nepte et de nimia potatione.”—Regest. Visitationum Arch. Rothomagensis, par Th. Bonnin, Rouen, 1852, pp. 20, 21. 2 Ibid., p. 19. 3 Ibid., p. 29. priest of Panlyu was famed for incontinency with a maidservant of his, and likewise with two other women, who afterwards bore him two sons; also he is noted for inebriety; he sells his wine, and makes his parishioners drunk. The priest of Auberville is seriously noted for incontinency,and he married a certain woman with one of his servants, in order that he might have free access to her. Also he had relations with a certain Englishwoman, whom he kept a long time, and sinned with her again after being corrected by the archdeacon; also with the daughter of a poor woman who lives hard by the cross.”1 Although the nuns, compared with the priests, appear to have been well-behaved, we occasionally meet with convents in which there were great disorders. “ We visited the convent of the Blessed Mary of Almeneschiis. There are thirty-three nuns. All are possessed of property: they have saucepans, copper-kettles, and necklaces. They contract debts in the village, and eat and sit at tables in groups. Each nun has money given her to provide for her table and her kitchen. Many are absent from Compline and Matins, and drink after Compline. Sister Theophana is given to drink. They have no regular time for confession or com­ munication. Sister Hola lately had a boy by one Michael of Vai Guido. Secular persons freely enter the cloister and talk with the nuns. They never dine in the refectory. Dionisia Dehatim is accused of ill-conduct with Nicholas de Bleve. They quarrel finely in the cloister and the choir. Alice, the cantatrix, had a boy by a man named Christian. Also the prioress formerly had one boy. They have not got an abbess, as the last recently died.”2 A most improper set of ladies, certainly, considering their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The strange thing is that Archbishop Rigaud did not visit them, so far as appears, with any censure; perhaps their wealth 1 Regest. Visitationum Arch. Rothomagensis, 2 Ibid., p 82. p. 25. �MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH 67 and social position made it impolitic to no doubt because a refractory or litigious do so. Indeed, the grosser sins of the priest, especially by appealing to Rome, flesh are treated with what we should could give rise both to trouble and consider singular mildness. Early lapses scandal.1 The next witness I would like to call from virtue, and even later ones, are pardoned on promise of reform. Only was a cardinal, an intimate friend and in the case of hardened and persevering co-reformer of the great Hildebrand, sinners are strong measures taken. “We Pope Gregory VII., the Blessed Peter warned them,” says Rigaud—and in one Damiani. Unfortunately, the very nature case “them” included Master Walter, of the crimes with which he charges the the priest of Grandcure, who cohabited clergy is so monstrous that it is impos­ with his niece—“ we warned and threat­ sible, even “ in the obscurity of a learned ened them that if we found them again language,” as Gibbon said, to give an accused of similar misdeeds we would idea of their character. Dean Milman punish them severely.”1 And it would can only distantly refer to Peter Damiani’s not be right to suspect the archbishop “ odious book,” the Liber Gomorof a weak toleration of vice for acting so rheanus; and quotes the title of the leniently. The number of offenders was first chapter as an adequate indica­ so great that, if he had suspended or tion of its contents. Any modern must expelled them all, he would have had follow his example. It must suffice few or no priests left to serve the diocese. He probably did the best which the cir­ 1 “ Uni versis presentes litteras inspecturis, cumstances permitted; which was, on Radulphus rector ecclesiae de Sana Villa Rotho­ proof of repeated guilt, to obtain from magensis diocesis, salutem. Noverit universitas quod cum super the culprit a written promise of reform, vestra ut dicebatur, pro irregularitate commissa a me, eo quod, suspenses et together with an undertaking to leave excommunicatus, dicebar celebravisse divina: his church and the country in case of a item super crimine fornicationis et adulterii relapse into his former depravity. Rigaud quod dicebar commisisse cum Robina penildore has preserved for us a great number of de Nova-villa: item super eo quod dicebar lusor ad taxillos, et frequentator tabernarum : item these documents, signed, sealed, and super eo quod dicebar capellanum capellae de sworn to, by the penitents, and they are Rocherobiis vulnerasse graviter cum falcone in capite ; essem apud bonos et graves, et maxime extremely curious. In the first place, they show beyond doubt or cavil that apud reverendum patrem Odonem, Dei gratia, Rothomagensem archiepiscopum adeo diffamatus, the charges were true. Habemus confi- quod dictus pater, nolens dissimulare premissa, tentes reos. In the next place, the poor nolebat super premissis ad inquisitionem contra me procedere, et secundum inquisitionis exigenpriests seem heartily ashamed and sorry, and own without ambiguity, in often tiam me canonicae subicere ultioni. Tandem ego, queerens a dicto patre non judicium sed crude language, the faults they have veniam, promisi, sine vi, sine dolo dicto patri committed; though probably the draw­ spontaneus, quod praedictam ecclesiam meam ing up of these confessions was not resignabo, et habebo pro resignata, quandocunque entrusted to them, but confided to the dicto patri placuerit; volens et concedens quod idem pater possit me privare eadem . ecclesia sterner pens of the archbishop’s secre­ sine strepitu judicii et juris solemnitate in aliquo taries ; they acknowledge that if they non observata, quandocunque suae sederit volunfall again they will have nothing to say tati. Renunciavi autem spontaneus quoad pre­ exceptioni de vi et de metu et litteris a for themselves; that they will give up missaapostolica contra premissa concedendis seu sede their curacies without the noise or fuss etiam impetrandis, et omni auxilio juris canonici of a trial—sine strepitu judicii—and go vel civilis competenti seu competituro per quod away. This appears to have been a dictae resignatio et privatio impedin valeant great point, to get rid of them quietly; vel differi. Juravi praeterea spontaneus, tactis sacrosanctis evangeliis, me contra premissa vel 1 Regest. Visitationum Arch. Rothomagensis, p. 21. aliquod premissorum per me nec per aliurn non venturum” [^Regcst. Visitcitwivuni Arch. Rotho magensis, p. 658). �68 THE SERVICE OF MAN to say that nothing in Aristophanes, Athenaeus, or Petronius, gives a picture of more bestial depravity than the one drawn by a prince of the Church of the manners of his clerical contemporaries. It is “ unspeakable,” and with that remark we must leave the subject. But what about grace, what about belief in God, Christ, and the Bible ? What about the deterrent effect of the fear of hell, of the purifying effect of the hope of heaven? These are questions to which an answer were desirable. And now, what is the moral to be drawn from this unpleasant but necessary review? We have seen that not in one country nor in one age, but all through the Ages of Faith, the most flagrant breaches of the moral law are quite compatible with the most fervent and complete belief in God, in the Bible, and, in short, in Christianity. The usual answer to this objection is that these people may have had faith, but it was not living and saving faith. They believed like the devils, and perhaps did not always tremble like them as well. So let it be. Mere faith, unless it be of a partitular kind, is not enough. The heart must be touched by grace, as well as the mind disposed to assent to certain dogmatic propositions. But agnostics say no more and no less. The touching of the heart is everything, and assent to propositions next to nothing. It is abundantly plain that assent to Christian dogmas offers the slenderest guarantee that it will have the desired effect in touching the heart. There never was a moment, from the first teaching of Christianity till the present day, when sincere pastors have not deplored the condition of the greater part of their flocks. That the whole world lieth in wickedness is the constant burden of their complaint. Could better proof be required or given that the supposed connection between belief and morality is illusory ? And it is easy to see that this is not an accidental but a necessary result. By laying all the emphasis of its teaching on repen­ tance and the subjective attitude of the soul towards God, and not on good works performed to individuals and society, Christianity has not applied its force in the right direction for produc­ ing the maximum of morality. As this was not its aim, it cannot be censured for not having attained it. But it is open to us to point out that this misdirection of force largely accounts for the low morality of the past, and is one of the chief causes of the decline of theology in the present. It is proved by an experience of eighteen hundred years, that the tremendous sanctions which Christianity wields are inoperative on the majority of minds. They do not realise them; the threats are not heard, as it were, by the inward spirit. The immediate connection between wrong-doing and going to hell is not grasped. Hell is a long way off, is not visible, and its deterrent efficacy is weakest when the attraction of sinful pleasure is strongest. Only minds of a fine, imaginative power, and naturally tender consciences, seize the whole im­ port of the Christian message. This fact alone would put Christianity at a disadvantage in dealing with the bulk of mankind. Few persons care for remote dangers or evils ; they banish them from their minds, as suggesting gloomy thoughts, and trust to the chapter of accidents to escape them entirely. When preachers enlarge every Sunday on the peril of the unrepenting sinner’s condition, and tell him that he may at any moment be summoned before the dread tribunal of an angry God, the young and the strong and the giddy accord to them but a languid assent. They feel in robust health, sudden death by accident or disease is the great exception, and pleasure is very delightful, and within reach. It is a maxim of jurisprudence that prompt punishment for wrong-doing is vastly more efficacious than even severer penalties long delayed. Suppose ordinary crime were punished, not with the greatest dispatch compatible with justice, but at a remote period in after life, say, twenty or thirty years after �WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE 69 its commission, would not the deterrent lever to keep men in the right way. But effect of the criminal law be even less they were tied down by the terms of the than it is ? But this is by no means all. divine deed and testament, and forced In addition to this disadvantage, Chris­ to use very different language. The tian priests have one and all placed a lamentable doctrine of Original Sin, and greater one in their own way as teachers all that flowed from it, the washing away of morality, by their doctrine of repen­ of sins, flight from the wrath to come, tance and consequent salvation. When, forced them to show that, after all, like St. Alphonso de’ Liguori or Mr. heaven was open, if certain conditions Spurgeon, they teach that any amount were complied with—heartfelt repent­ of crime and sin can be expunged in a ance, turning to Jesus, confession of sins, moment by sincere contrition and turn­ receiving the sacrament; and that, in ing to God, even in the last hour, they that case, previous crime or virtue made remove from the cause of morality in no difference ; all men justly lay under this world all the force and urgency of the sentence of God’s wrath, and if He their exhortations, and transfer them to chose to pardon, it was only out of the celestial happiness beyond the grave. unspeakable riches of His grace. It If they had been able to preach that was not for man to make terms. So good works, and good works only, would that, by exaggerating human depravity take men to heaven, they would have and making all men worthy of hell, they occupied a relatively strong position. If came to admit very bad characters into they could have said to men, “It matters heaven. And quite rightly, from one point not how sorry you are for having done of view. Salvation was their object, not amiss, you must smart for it all the morality. They have not aimed at it, same,” they would have had a powerful and they have not attained it Chapter VII. WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE attempting to estimate the past, we are exposed to two opposite temptations, either of which may lead us into serious error. We may be so impressed by the recent advance of knowledge and the enlarged power of man over nature, the pomp and brilliancy of modern material progress, that we turn with disdain from the humbler science and perform­ ance of our ancestors, and, comparing their poverty with our own riches, com­ placently draw flattering conclusions to our own advantage. This disposition is a common mark of energetic but unedu­ cated minds, of people who have made their way in the world by force of In character, and who nourish a sort of grudge against learning and scholarship. On the other hand, it is a tone so repul­ sive to minds which have made them­ selves acquainted with the past that these are apt to fall into the opposite extreme, and to see with over-clearness the seamy side of the present. The wealth and noisy progress of the present do not impress persons of this type with much respect. They pronounce them to be vulgar and commonplace, and purchased at far too great a cost; nay, by the ruin of numerous lovely and precious things, which the present age does not miss, only because it is too �70 THE SERVICE OF MAR deeply buried in sordid cares and frivo­ lous pleasures to know anything about them. If one class points to the triumph of industry and the victories of steam, the other draws attention to the meanness of our Art, and the foul defacement of natural beauty, and even the polution of the air we breathe and the water we drink by factories, tall chimneys, and the ubiquitous screaming tyrant, the railroad. The admirers of the present look out upon the world, which it is their intention to subdue, as conquerors. They are always for “ opening up ” new countries, which they say conduces to trade and the spread of civilisation. The lovers of the past reply that the march of the so-called civilisation should rather be called the spread of ruin, vice, and disease ; that the traders look upon the world rather as buccaneers than as honest men, that they regard it as their oyster which they mean to open with a steam hammer. The interchange of taunts and reproaches goes on in amotbic response, as of peasants in an idyll, and no doubt will not readily be brought to a close. It is referred to here in order to exhibit the difficulty of a task which, at one time or another, we are nearly all of us compelled to undertake, to estimate and fairly judge the past, if for no other purpose than lighting up and enabling us to direct the present. A clear perception of the road we have travelled is one of the best indica­ tions of our probable course in the future, whether that course be a straight line or a curve. It is obvious, if society be an organism—and few nowadays would deny the fact—that, in order to understand it, we must study its life, behaviour, and habits, on the most extended scale. The present is a transi­ tory phase, which is as insufficient for this purpose as a day or an hour would be for the biological study of one of the higher animals. Both those who wish to break with the past and ignore its teaching as so much dross—the revolu­ tionists ; and those who on various grounds can think of nothing better than an impossible return to it—the reaction­ aries ; will find, and indeed have found already, though the extremes of neither party are very docile to the lessons of experience, that knowledge alone can throw light on our path, and that to take sentiment or passion as our guide is to court catastrophe. Revolutionists, who are too impatient and headstrong to wait for the slow but sure effects of evolution, and reactionaries, who are too selfish or stupid to admit the changes which evolution demands, are equal enemies to progress and human well­ being. Incessant and minute change is one of the conditions of life, but great and sudden change is disease, and no change at all is incipient death. One of the numerous misfortunes which afflict mankind is the difficulty of in­ culcating this truth; it appears to be profoundly offensive to the vulgar of all classes, the majority of the race. A salutary change, let us suppose, is obviously required ; it is announced and advised by a reflective individual or group here and there. If they are not too obscure and insignificant to fail wholly in attracting notice, a clamour arises against their monstrous and un­ heard-of opinions; for critical turningpoints occur in the speculative as well as the practical order; modes of thought and doctrines at times need reforming as much as institutions; they cannot be listened to, they are subversive, atheistic, destructive of man’s best interests, and so forth. The change does not take place, or oftener it is not overtly admitted as needed or salutary; it is kept down and arrested, as far as possible even ignored. But it is going on under­ ground, as it were; its partisans increase, and their anger also, till at last comes a time when the dammed-up current has accumulated an energy which overpowers all obstacles, and it dashes furiously forward, scattering devastation along its course. This is the abstract history of all revolutions in Church or State, in thought or practice. These considerations, even if they be �WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE deemed over-trite and obvious, are not out of place as introductory to the subject of. this chapter—an attempt to estimate the action of Christianity in the past. In the last chapter it was viewed in relation to its effect on morals; and facts were adduced which seemed to show that in that respect its operation had been far less salutary and decided than it is customary to assume. At the same time it was shown that morality was never the special objective of Chris­ tianity, and therefore any failure to foster morality could not justly be made a repwach against it. No system can be Dlamed for not accomplishing what it never attempted to do. Luther would have read the previous chapter without discomposure. He would have said: “ No doubt the object of Christianity is to save men’s souls in the next world, not to make them moral in this. And it does save. That is all I want.” On this ground his position is unassailable. Modern apologists have usually forsaken his inaccessible heights, and put in claims, which seem to be more than dis­ putable, for their religion as a guardian of morality. But this is only one side of a large sub­ ject. A doctrine so wide and powerful as the Christian has many other sides, and its energy as a social factor is not to be limited to one point of view. Chris­ tianity has had an immense influence on politics, literature, and philosophy; it has moulded the minds and characters of many of the most distinguished persons who have adorned the human race. But neither its blind friends nor its blind foes can be expected to do it justice, and possibly full justice will never be done to it till it has ceased to exist. Still, an estimate of its value as a social doctrine must ever appear as one of the most important problems presented by history, an at­ tempted solution of which is almost imposed on serious students who are sufficiently withdrawn from theological prepossessions to regard Christianity neither with love nor hatred, but with 7* that sympathy and respect justly due to one of the greatest phases of human evolution. In the learned and profound investi­ gations of continental scholars concern­ ing the origin of Christianity and the growth of the early Church, sufficient attention has not always been accorded to the precise time and place in the order of human evolution in which that religion arose. This is not intended as a reproach to such illustrious men as Strauss, F. C. Baur, Keim, Hausrath, and Renan. They had more immediate work of a specialist kind to do, and might well leave the placing of Chris­ tianity in world-history to others. But the point is of great importance. It may with reason be doubted, if the fact is as often remembered as it should be, that Christianity arose amid the corrup­ tion and decay of the greatest civilisation which the human race had seen, amid the death-throes of the ancient world. From the fact that the New Testament was written before that corruption and decay had assumed their final and fatal form, that St. Paul lived and preached in Antioch the Beautiful; visited Athens while its citizens still retained enough of the old inquiring spirit to “ spend their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear something new ”; and at last came to martyrdom in Rome while the deceptive bloom of imperial splendour still flushed the cheek of the dying mis­ tress of the world—it is often assumed that this proud heathenism and pagan glory were overthrown by the meek and unlearned disciples of the Galilean prophet of God. Nothing can be less true than this assumption. The soft autumnal calm, and purple tints as of an Indian summer, which lingered, up to the Antonines, over that wide expanse of empire, from the Persian Gulf to the Pillars of Hercules, and from the Nile to the Clyde, broken as it was by the year of Revolution of a.d. 69 and the black tyranny of Domitian’s reign, was only a misleading transition to that bitter winter which filled the half of the second and �TIIE SERVICE OF MAN the whole of the third century, to be soon followed by the abiding dark and cold of the Middle Ages. The Empire was moribund when Christianity arose. Indeed, Rome had practically slain the ancient world before the Empire replaced the effete Republic. The barbarous Roman soldier who killed Archimedes absorbed in a problem is but an instance and a type of what Rome had done always and everywhere by Greek art, civilisation, and science. The Empire lived upon and consumed the capital of preceding ages, which it did not replace. Population, production, knowledge, all declined and slowly died. The Christian apologists, headed by St. Augustine, were justly indignant at the pagan slander which attributed the fall of the Empire to the spread of Christianity. Their answer to the objection was complete, as we can see far better even than they did themselves. But what they could not be expected to see, and what we can see very well, is, that the fall of the Empire, including the loss and ruin of the old philosophy and knowledge, was an indispensable condition of the spread of Christianity. If the blood of the martyrs was truly said to be the seed of the Church, the decay of knowledge was an equally needed pre-requisite. It will not be denied that this decay of knowledge was present and startlingly rapid. After the silver age which ended nobly with Tacitus and the younger Pliny, Latin pagan literature almost ceases to exist; and the falling off in the form is not more striking than in the value and quality of the contents. All superstitions revived and flourished apace in the ever-waning light of know­ ledge. A shudder of religious awe ran through the Roman world, and grew more sombre and searching with the progressive gloom and calamities of the time. A spirit wholly different from the light-hearted scepticism of the Augustan age and later Republic stirred men’s hearts, and the strongest minds did not escape it. “ The pagans were not one TV.hit bphind the Christians as regards | belief in miracles and in a future life.”1 The sun of ancient science, which had risen in such splendour from Thales to Hipparchus, was now sinking rapidly to the horizon; and when it at last dis­ appeared, say in the fifth century, the long night of the Middle Ages began. But it was in this period of decaying knowledge and civilisation that the Chris­ tian religion was elaborated and consti­ tuted in the historical form which it practically still wears. The creeds and chief dogmas of the Church were worked out in the period which extends from the Council of Jerusalem to the Councils of Nice, Chalcedon, Alexandria, and Ephesus. No evolutionist would think of speaking in any but respectful terms of the great Churchmen who laid down the lines along which European thought was destined to travel for a thousand years. The sneering tone of sceptics in the last age is wholly out of place, and arose from pure ignorance of the laws which govern social and intellectual development. The Nicene Creed in the fourth century after Christ was as natural and legitimate a product of the conditions of the time as was the Socratic philosophy in the fourth century before Christ. What we have to note is, that the Nicene Creed was the product of an age of decay, of disaster, and ap­ proaching death, so far as civilisation and science were concerned. In every light, one of the most memorable, and in many respects one of the most noble, of human compositions, it yet, as it could not fail to do, bears the marks of its birth-time; and that time was one of extreme calamity, of growing gloom, ignorance, and misery. Within two centuries of its promulgation, the Graeco­ Roman world had descended into the great hollow which is roughly called the Middle Ages, extending from the fifth to the fifteenth century, a hollow in which many great, beautiful, and heroic things were done and created, but in 1 Hausrath, Neute$tani?ntliche Zeit^eschichte^ vol. iii. 489. �WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE which knowledge, as we understand it, and as Aristotle understood it, had no place. The revival of learning and the ; Renaissance are memorable as the first sturdy breasting by humanity of the hither slope of the great hollow which lies between us and the ancient world. The modern man, reformed and regene­ rated by knowledge, looks across it, and recognises on the opposite ridge, in the far-shining cities and stately porticoes, in the art, politics, and science of , • antiquity, many more ties of kinship and sympathy than in the mighty concave between, wherein dwell his Christian ancestry, in the dim light of scholas­ ticism and theology. The birth of Christianity being on this wise—viz., having taken place in an era of decay and death of art and philosophy, of knowledge, nf wealth, of population, of progress in every form— and the absence of these things having ! been one of the chief negative conditions of its growth and prosperity, we must look for the sources of its nourishment . in another direction than these; not in knowledge, or the eager questioning spirit which leads to knowledge, but in the humble spirit which believes and accepts on trust the word of authority; not in regulated industry, wrhich aims at constant increase and accumulation of wealth, but in the resigned poverty which, scorning this world, lays up riches in heaven; not in political freedom and I popular government, which aims at the progressive well-being of all, but in the stern rigour of arbitrary power, which coerces the vicious and refractory into a little order during their brief sojourn on earth. In the decline and fall of Rome, or, as it would be better to say, in the I final ruin of ancient civilisation, the con­ ditions favourable to this order of beliefs or doctrines spontaneously emerged. It is obvious that there could be no question of free institutions or settled industry in an age chastened by every scourge of war, pestilence, and famine; by arbitrary tyranny and military despotism. Know­ ledge, agai n, is ever; more sensitive than i i 73 capital to the influence of public and widespread calamities, inasmuch as the love of knowledge is rarer and feebler than the love of wealth in most minds. To a man of the fifth century on the lookrout for any sphere of activity for his energies no prospect presented itself in the least similar to what such a man would see now, or would have seen in Athens under Pericles, or in Rome under the Scipios. Public life existed as little as it does at this day in Russia. The pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake was out of place in a time when daily existence was not safe from the swords of successive barbarian hordes, or, failing these, from the more cruel onslaught of the merciless tax-collector. That is to say, all the outlets through which modem energy is chiefly expended were then closed; a man could not serve the state as a citizen, he could not serve knowledge as a man of science, he could not augment wealth as an artisan or master of industry. There was only one thing left for him to do—to serve God. The last and perhaps the most impor­ tant legacy left by the ancient philosophy to the world was the doctrine of mono­ theism, the belief in a single supreme God. The evolution of this capital idea has never yet been traced with the care it supremely deserves. The common notion that it was wholly derived from the Jews is quite unfounded. The germs of it may be found in Greece in the earliest speculations of the Ionic and Eleatic philosophers. It gradually made its way, by the force of its inherent rationality, against manifold opposition, and among the Stoics reached a dis­ tinctness and elevation little, if at all, inferior to the highest Jewish conception of Jehovah. The Christian deity was a union of the two monotheistic concep­ tions, the Greek and the Jewish. Each element was necessary for the concep­ tion to attain its full universality and power. The Jew never quite trans­ cended his notions of a tribal God, who had been in an exclusive way the God of �74 THE SERVICE OF MAN his fathers from the beginning; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in whom he had a sort of ancestral right of property, who was bound to him, and to whom he was bound, by covenant and mercies and promises, such as no other nation ever imagined. The Jew was, therefore, on a footing of familiarity and intimacy, so to speak, with his God, to which the metaphysical Greek, with his wide discourse of reason, never attained. To the Jew, God is the great companion, the profound and loving, yet terrible, friend of his inmost soul, with whom he holds communion in the sanctuary of his heart, to whom he turns, or should turn, in every hour of adversity or happiness. Hear the Psalmist: “ O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh also longeth after thee, in a barren and dry land where no water is. For thy lovingkindness is better than the life itself: my lips shall praise thee. Have I not remembered thee in my bed, and thought upon thee when I was waking ? Because thou hast been my helper, therefore under the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.”1 On the other hand, the very closeness and specialty of the Jew’s relation to Jehovah made his con­ ception of the deity unsuitable to the office of a cosmopolitan God. I venture to suggest that perhaps the opposition of Peter and the Judaizing Christians to the wider views of St. Paul arose as much from a reluctance to part with their national God as from the narrow, cere­ monial scruples to which it is ascribed. The Greek was as inferior to the Jew in the depth and intensity of his religious sentiment as he was superior in mental reach and philosophic power. For him God is the deity of the intellect rather . than of the heart; He is the symbol of “eternal law all-ruling,”2 and the Hel­ lene all but attained to the impersonal and unknowable reality behind pheno­ 1 Psalm lxiii. 1-4, 7, 8 (Prayer-book Version). 2 “...... iirel oilre ftporois ytpas <lXXo re /J-eifov oilre Oeols, ?) Koivbv ael v6p.ov tv 31kt) vfivetv.” CleanthisHymn., 37, 38. mena, which the last word of recent philosophy propounds as the only rational object of worship. When these two, each in its way powerful and stimulating notions of God, coalesced into one, as they did in the teaching of St. Paul, the effect on the moral and spiritual world was as that of a new force, a new centre of gravity to which all thoughts and feelings naturally tended with an irresistible attraction. The rationality of monotheism as com­ pared with polytheism, of the idea of one all-ruling deity, instead of the anarchy of a crowd of gods and god­ desses thwarting each other, recom­ mended the doctrine to all superior minds, as infinitely truer, simpler, and better. Knowledge had progressed far enough to make the uniformity of nature a credible result of the operations of an eternal mind; but it had not gone far enough to exclude the notions of miracle and of providential interference on the part of the deity with human affairs. Moreover, the God of the Jews had become, through St. Paul, the God of the universe, and the “Father of all; in every age, in every clime adored.” The influence of the combined ideas on contemporary minds, as it is shown in the writings of the Fathers, is very striking. A tone of exultation and radiant joy seems to possess them when they refer to the new-found central object of their worship, which contrasts not only with the sad, desponding tone of the pagans, but even with Israel’s delight in Jehovah, which is rarely without a touch of gloom and fore­ boding, and with the meek resignation of the Middle Ages, which tremble even more than they believe. Compare the Te Deum of St. Ambrose with the Dies Ir<z of Thomas of Alano. The two hymns are parallel, often nearly identical, in thought, but profoundly divergent in sentiment. The one bright, full of hope and trust in God; the other sombre and anxious and care-laden, almost to the verge of despair. Such was the difference between the fifth and the �WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE thirteenth centuries. The earlier Chris­ tians, reminded, no doubt, by the paganism which still survived, are never weary of setting forth the superior grandeur and consolation of their faith as compared to that of polytheism; and it is quite easy even for us to see how incalculably the religious sentiment must have been intensified when its scattered rays, dispersed among a crowd of deities, were all united in the barely tolerable splendour of one Almighty God and Lord. Nowhere does the passionate adoration, and flow of unbounded devotion, show itself with more fervour and power than in the Prayer for all Conditions of Men in the Alexandrian Liturgy. The original makes the frag­ ments of it which have survived in modern Liturgies appear very pale and tame. Here is a short specimen :— “ O King of Peace, give us thy peace, keep us in love and charity, be our God, for we know none beside thee: we call > upon thy name ; grant unto our souls the life of righteousness, that the death of sin may not prevail against us or any of thy people. Visit, O Lord, and heal those who are sick, according to thy pity and compassion; turn from them and from us all sickness and diseases ; restore them to and confirm them in their strength. Raise up those who have lingered under long and tedious indis­ positions ; succour those who are vexed with unclean spirits. Relieve those who are in prisons or in the mines, under accusations or condemnations, in exile or in slavery, or loaded with grievous tribute.”1 With these intense and absorbing feelings running in a deep but, after all, narrow channel, the Western European world turned to meet and advance into that dread and frightful time designated as the Fall of the Roman Empire. How a fragment or a germ of civilisation escaped destruction in that great catas­ trophe it is not easy to say. It is admitted on all hands that a great debt * Bunsen, Analecta Ante-Nicena, pp. 24, 109. 75 is owing to the Christian bishops of those days, who were the only officials clothed with authority and honour, who survived the wreck of the Roman bureaucracy. Although this fact re­ dounds rather to the credit of epis­ copacy than of Christianity, still a fair criticism must admit that as, without the previous dignity and prestige obtained by the Christian religion, bishops would not have been there, or in a position to discharge their functions, the final result must be credited to the new faith. It is the more incumbent upon us to acknow­ ledge and assert this as at a later date the part played by Christianity in politics was very nearly wholly evil. In attempt­ ing to estimate, as was proposed, the utility of Christianity in the past, it will simplify our task if we divide the subject under three heads, and consider its Political, Philosophical, and Spiritual action in the world. 1. The Political action of Christianity. Owing to well-known historical reasons, the natural and legitimate action of the politics suggested or approved in the New Testament was a long time in showing itself. The courtliness of the bishops who incensed Constantine and Theodosius was evidence that Christian prelates, as such, had no objection to arbitrary power. But that is hardly a reproach, when nothing but arbitrary power was possible. Under the Catholic feudal regime the Church was more often in an attitude of hostility to the secular power than in alliance with it. While the Church was the rival of the State, and bid high for supremacy, it could not coalesce with the State and support its despotic pretensions. But when, at the end of the Middle Ages, the monarchies of Europe definitively got the upper hand, and aimed straight at arbitrary power, the Church, so far from opposing, was only too ready to help them. A number of texts, which had been overlooked before, were cited to prove the absolute duty of every Christian man to yield passive obedience to kings and governors. It was one of the most critical turning �76 THE SERVICE OF MAN points in human evolution. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the battle of freedom was fought out. All the monarchies of Europe were moving with rapid strides towards despotism. Nothing can deprive the Dutch of the honour of having been the first to step into the breach and defend, against apparently overwhelming odds, the cause of liberty. The English followed them, nobly but somewhat tardily, under Cromwell. All through this bad time the Christian Church threw its whole weight on the side of oppression; and the point to be noticed is that it had the fullest scriptural warrant for its action, and could not conscientiously have done otherwise. We have all long ago for­ gotten the opposition of our Jacobites to freedom, and the narrow escape we had of falling under arbitrary power. The weak and worthless Stuarts, with their immense ambition and feeble faculties, were not the chief danger. That lay in the adherence to their pre­ tensions of such saintly men as Bishop Ken, and such noble champions of moral purity as Jeremy Collier. And these men, as they believed all scripture, believed also these texts: “ Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” “ Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake.” “ Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.” Professor Sewell, commenting on these passages, says with complete truth: “ It is idle, and worse than idle, to attempt to restrict and explain away this positive command. And the Christian Church has always upheld it in its full extent. With one uniform, unhesitating voice it has pro­ claimed the duty of passive obedience.”1 It may be objected that the Puritans and other Christian sects have taken a different view of their religious duties, and shown themselves brave champions 1 Christian Politics, p. iii. of civil freedom. To which it may be replied that the Puritans, when they were oppressed by Laud and Charles, showed the common human faculty of looking away from and ignoring incon­ venient facts which told against them and their cause ; they passed over these parts of Scripture. Even Locke, in his answer to Filmer, never attempted to expound these formidable texts in a sense favourable to his arguments ; like the able controversialist that he was, he felt that the, less said on that subject the better. But further, the Puritans, by their partiality for the Old Testament, became almost Jewish in sentiment, and imbibed a portion of the anti-monarchical spirit of the Hebrew prophets and priest­ hood. It was not one of these who would have said, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.” And yet, again, the Puritans, when they became supreme in America, showed that they could be as oppressive and intolerant as any Catholics or Anglicans in Europe. It is not necessary to expatiate at any length on the import and effect of this authentic Christian and scriptural teach­ ing. We can easily afford to let bygones be bygones. But when the most im­ modest and unfounded claims are put forward in behalf of Christianity as an unfailing and universal benefactor to mankind, we may certainly be allowed to point out that for two centuries it was a consistent and determined enemy of human liberty and welfare. It took the side of the Stuarts, Bourbons, and Hapsburgs against their subjects, and it was bound to do so by its own principles. An agnostic may pardon this, as one of those errors of which the past is full. But a Christian, who believes in the perennial value and beneficence of his doctrine, must, one would think, expe­ rience certain qualms in moments of retrospection. 2. The influence of Christianity on speculative thought has been far more salutary than it has been on politics, and this not from any accidental circumstance, �WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE but in consequence of essential qualities in the doctrine itself. It cannot be a mere accident that, of the three mono­ theistic religions, Christianity alone has produced elaborate systems of theology, which in depth and compass can com­ pare with any systems of philosophy, ancient or modern. The Jews and Mohammedans have each had their disputes and controversies inside their own confessions, from which the odium theologicum has not been wanting; but their puny differences cannot be com­ pared to the splendid, far-reaching dis­ cussions which have repeatedly filled the Christian Churches with the most vigorous and brilliant intellectual life. The sub­ ject cannot be treated adequately here. It will suffice to point to the intellectual revival which followed the spread of Christianity, and gave to the world the whole literature of the Fathers, Greek and Latin, in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, at the very time when pagan literature had fallen into sterility and decrepitude. Even Gibbon, no favour­ able witness, acknowledges this. Of all writers who have used Latin as their mother tongue, it is no exaggeration to say that St. Augustine is by far the most original, suggestive, and profound.' He is a genuine thinker, not a mere rhetori­ cian like Cicero, Seneca, and the rest. The controversies of the fourth century, which have given rise to much tasteless ridicule, notably the Arian controversy, and the witticism suggested that it was preposterous that the world should be divided into hostile camps by a diph­ thong, these controversies were mentally the most stimulating discussions, not only which the age admitted of, but which have ever occupied men’s minds. All the faculties of the reason and logical understanding were brought into play, subtlety the most acute, and discourse of reason the most lofty. When the western world sank into barbarism in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, theological controversy largely ceased; it was a sufficient task for the West to keep alive, and intellectual luxuries 77 had to be dispensed with. But the moment the warmth of reviving civilisa­ tion returned to the stiffened minds of the West, deep and searching controversies recommenced. It would be interesting to show how all this mental activity sprang immediately or remotely from the central Christian doctrine, the Divinity of Christ. A long struggle was needed, to establish that doctrine, but it was, worthy of a long struggle. The difference between “ homoousion ” and “ homoiousion ” is only that of a single letter,, but, as Emile Saisset well said, “ Probe the matter to the bottom; between. Jesus Christ, man, and Jesus Christ,. man-God, there is infinity; there is, if one may so speak, the whole thickness of Christianity.” The subsequent contro­ versies, the Monothelite, the Monophysite, and others, are obviously due to the same origin; and all through the follow­ ing ages, the Scholastic period, the Re­ formation, the Jansenist and Jesuit epoch, down to Strauss and Moehler, the same great doctrine has been, in a greater or lesser degree, a potent stimulus at once of philosophical inquiry and his­ torical research. 3. It is in the action of Christian doctrine on the human spirit that we see its power in the highest and most, characteristic form. Neutral or injuriousin politics, favourably stimulating in the region of speculative thought, its influ­ ence on the spiritual side of characters, naturally susceptible to its action, has been transcendent, overpowering, and un­ paralleled. The restriction to characters “ naturally susceptible ” will probably be resented, but it cannot be denied. The great mass of men have at all times been feebly sensitive to the higher _ spiritual influences of Christianity. It is a fact which all preachers of every denomination are for ever denouncing and lamenting. The true Christian saint is the rarest pro­ duct in every Christian Church. What is even more noteworthy is that the terrible menaces of God’s wrath and damnation, which, till quite recent times, have been universally believed by Christian men, �78 THE SERVICE OF MAN have been equally inoperative; and this to such a degree that the truly con­ verted and repentant sinners, those who have set about working out their salva­ tion in fear and trembling, have ever been lost in wonder and horror at the reckless folly of the bulk of mankind in leading the lives they did, coupled with their nominal beliefs. Convinced and earnest Christians are always compelled to regard it as madness, or a superlative proof of Satan’s power. Volumes of quotations could be given from the highest and best authorities in support of this, as every one conversant with religious literature will be aware. I will restrict myself to two, taken from the works of illustrious men, each in his own confession among the brightest examples of Christian virtue—Blaise Pascal and Richard Baxter. Pascal says :— “ Rien n’est si important a l’homme que son etat; rien ne lui est si redoubt­ able que l’eternite. Et ainsi, qu’il se trouve des hommes indifferents a la perte de leur etre, et au peril d’une eternite de miseres, cela n’est point naturel. Ils sont tout autres & l’egard de toutes les autres choses: ils craignent jusqu’aux plus legeres ; ils les pr^voient, ils les sentent; et ce meme homme qui passe tant de jours et de nuits dans la rage et dans le d^sespoir pour la perte d’une charge, ou pour quelque offense imaginaire a son honneur, c’est celui-R meme qui sait qu’il va tout perdre par la mort, sans inquietude et sans emotion. C’est une chose monstrueuse de voir dans un m£me coeur et en meme temps cette sensibilite pour les moindres choses, et cette etrange insensibilite pour les plus grandes. C’est un enchantement incomprehensible, et un assoupissement surnaturel, qui marque une force toute-puissante qui le cause.” (Pensees, chap, i.) Baxter says : “ Can you make so light of heaven and hell ? Your corpse will shortly lie in the dust, and angels or devils will shortly seize upon your souls, and every man or woman of you will shortly be among other company and in another case than you are now........ O what a place you will be in of joy or torment; O what a light will you shortly see in heaven or hell; O what thoughts will shortly fill your hearts with unspeak­ able joy or horror ! What work will you be employed in ? To praise the Lord with saints and angels, or cry out in the fire unquenchable with devils ? And should all this be forgotten? And all this will be endless and sealed up by an unchangeable decree. Eternity, eternity will be the measure of your joys or sorrows, and can this be forgotten ? And all this is true, sirs, most certainly true. When you have gone up and down a little longer, and slept and awaked a few times more, you will be dead and gone, and find all true that I now tell you; and yet you can now so much forget it. You shall then remem­ ber that you heard this sermon, and that this day, in this place, you were reminded of these things, and perceive these matters a thousand times greater than either you or I could here con­ ceive; and yet shall they be now so much forgotten?”1 That these are only fair samples of the tremendous -stimulants applied by preachers to awaken Christian sinners to a sense of their guilt and danger will be admitted, I suppose, on all hands; and yet it is equally admitted that they are practically of very slight effect. Baxter, a few pages before, had declared that “the most will be firebrands in hell for ever.” And no theologian with a character to lose, till quite recent times, would have had a doubt about it. On theological grounds the matter is sufficiently perplexing. True believers, like Pascal and Baxter, have at all times found that in this particular the con­ duct of men was hardly to be explained. If they believed God’s promises and threats, why were their lives such a practical denial of faith in them? The real answer, which divines could not be expected to give, was that the bulk of men had neither sufficient logic, 1 Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted. �WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE imagination, or tenderness of heart and conscience to assimilate the whole im­ portance and bearing of the Christian scheme. A strong head, which accepted the premises of the Christian doctrine, would not hesitate to work out the con­ clusions. But the majority of men have not strong heads. A powerful imagina­ tion, which realised the awful prospect of a future judgment, and the eternity of bliss or woe consequent upon it, would be only too much appalled by the thought; as cases of religious madness sufficiently show. The truly meek and tender-hearted, again, have a natural turn for piety; as we see by the negroes, who seem to obtain a saintly spirit of detachment and self-renunciation with far greater ease than the more energetic races of Western Europe. But when among the Western Europeans the saintly character, under the combined influences of education and natural endowment, is evolved, the result, as might be supposed, is far more striking, on account of their superior fibre and temperament and general brain-power. The true Christian saint, though a rare phenomenon, is one of the most wonder­ ful to be witnessed in the moral world; so lofty, so pure, so attractive, that he ravishes men’s souls into oblivion of the patent and general fact that he is an exception among thousands or millions of professing Christians. The saints have saved the Churches from neglect and disdain. The hope, even the asser­ tion, has always been that all men could be like them, if only—the con­ dition is not easily reduced to words, and cannot be stated in a manner generally satisfactory, but the implication always is that but for some fault in man, or the wiliness of Satan, sanctity might be universal. It would be as rational to say that the poetry of Shakespeare, the music of Beethoven, and the geometry of Lagrange were accessible to all men. The genuine saint is a moral genius of a peculiar kind ; he is born, not made; though, like all men of genius, he is sure, sooner or later, to acquire the best educa­ 79 tion and that most adapted to his powers. Saintliness is not confined to Christianity. There have been Pagan and Moham­ medan saints; and it would not be easy to find, even in the Christian Calendar, men more naturally saintly than Marcus Aurelius and Abu Beker. What needs admitting, or rather proclaiming, by agnostics who would be just is, that the Christian doctrine has a power of culti­ vating and developing saintliness which has had no equal in any other creed or philosophy. When it gets firm hold of a promising subject, one with a heart and a head warm and strong enough to grasp its full import and scope, then it strengthens the will, raises and purifies the affection, and finally achieves a con­ quest over the baser self in man, of which the result is a character none the less beautiful and soul-subduing because it is wholly beyond imitation by the less spiritually endowed. The “ blessed saints ” are artists who work with un­ earthly colours in the liquid and trans­ parent tints of a loftier sky than any accessible or visible to common mortals. Perhaps there is a certain rashness in attempting to illustrate these remarks by concrete instances of saintly detachment and self-renunciation. Hagiology is not a favourite form of literature nowadays; and it must be admitted that in the lives of many saints, especially of mediaeval times, unpleasant traits and circum­ stances connected with the superstitions of the age are often found in close neighbourhood with virtues the most beautiful and attractive. Equity de­ mands that we should make the same allowance for men’s erroneous concep­ tions of duty as we do for their erroneous conceptions of intellectual truth, in accordance with the standards and cul­ ture of the times. We do not think worse of a philosopher’s intellect, who lived in antiquity or the Middle Ages, because he held a number of absurd opinions and theories in astronomy, chemistry, and biology. Those who believe in the empirical origin of moral truth are bound to be consistent and �8o THE SERVICE OF MAN show the same charity in the one case as in the other. If we take the case of Saint Louis, King of France, we must admit that a man of a more saintly character never, perhaps, existed. If we consider the temptations to which his high position necessarily exposed him, and the completeness with which he surmounted every unholy and selfish thought or act, it is difficult not to regard him as the best man that ever lived. Yet it is obvious that in many instances his notions of duty were very wrong or perverted. But though his conscience may not have been always enlightened, his heart was ever right. His abortive and ruinous crusades were the cause of vast misery and harm ; but we cannot wonder that so devout a man strove to carry out one of the great religious ideas and duties of the time, and none the less so because symptoms were arising that the paramount nature of the duty was begin­ ning to be questioned. In his private life he saw sometimes amiss—saw duties where none existed. I refer to his ex­ aggerated submission to the imperious temper of his mother, his excessive and often repulsive self-mortifications. But, this being fully allowed, there remains a clear surplus of untarnished virtue rarely surpassed. There are few tests of a man’s spiritual condition more searching and decisive than the temper with which he bears unmerited insult and railing speech. I do not refer to mere self-command, to the self-respect which forbids an answer in kind, and imposes an external calmness of manner on a swelling indignation within. The man of the world, when it suits him, can attain to this much, which yet is not little, considering the common “ impotentia” of mankind. The question is not one of self-mastery under, but of superiority to, insult, which feels no anger or resentment at insolence or con­ tempt ; and this not from an abject and craven spirit, but from living in a plane of feeling up to which personal insult does not reach. This equanimity in no wise prejudges the question whether injurious language should not be reproved, and in some cases punished, as by a judge for a contempt of court. We are only concerned with that serenity of spirit which is not touched or wounded by opprobrious speech, and all will admit that it is a very rare gift. The following anecdote told of St. Louis shows the way in which he endured insult:— As he was sitting in the Court of Par­ liament, the highest tribunal in France, a woman named Sarrette, who was interested in a suit then being heard, and perhaps dissatisfied with the decision, exclaimed to the king : “ Fie, fie 1 a fine king of France you are; much better were it if another were king. You are only the king of the monks and friars, and the wonder is you are not turned out of the kingdom.” The ushers wanted to strike the woman, and expel her from the court. But Louis would not allow it, and said : “ What you say is very true, and I am not worthy to be king. It would have been much better had it pleased God that another had been put in my place, who knew better how to govern the kingdom and he ordered his chamberlains to give the woman money. In this last act most moralists would admit that Louis was mistaken. To reward a scold for unseemly conduct in a court of justice cannot be considered justifiable. A fine and imprisonment might have tarlght Sarrette a useful lesson; it is clear that she needed one. As a jurist the king was to blame. But the meekness of spirit, which could suggest such an answer to a king and judge, in reply to a gross insult, was surely very wonderful. Louis’s justice, temperance, and entire self-abnegation in every relation of life are too well known from one of the most charming of mediaeval chronicles,, the Mtmoires of Joinville, to make it needful to dwell upon the subject. But to the above-cited example of his humility, it may be well to add an equal proof of’ his firmness, and that in presence of that very priesthood to whom he was accused of being submissive. “ I saw hirm �IVHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE another time,” says Joinville, “at Paris, where all the bishops informed him that they wished to speak with him ; and the king went to the Palace—the law-courts —to hear them. There was Guy, Bishop of Auxerre, who spoke to him as follows, in the name of all the prelates: ‘Sire, the lords who are here, the archbishops and bishops, have charged me to tell you that the Christian faith is perishing in your hands/ The king made the sign of the cross, and said : ‘ But tell me how this comes to pass.’ ‘Sire,’ resumed the bishop, ‘ the reason is that people now­ adays think so lightly of excommunica­ tion that they allow themselves to die rather than be absolved, and will not give satisfaction to the Church. The bishops request you, sire, for the love of God, and because it is your duty, to give orders to provosts and bailiffs that all who have remained excom­ municated for a year and a day should be constrained, by the seizure of their goods, to receive absolution.’ To which the king replied, that he would willingly command it in those cases in which guilt was clearly proven. Where­ upon the bishop answered, that the bishops would not consent, at any price, to that condition, and that the royal power had no right to take cognisance of ecclesiastical causes. Then the king said that he would not interfere; and that it would be against God and reason to force people to obtain absolution when the clergy did them wrong. ‘ And I will give you an example of this,’ he went on to say—‘ the case of the Earl of Brittany, who pleaded in a state of excommunica­ tion for seven years against the prelates of his province, and with such effect that the Pope has condemned them all. If, therefore, I had compelled the Earl of Brittany to seek absolution in the first year, I should have sinned against God and him.’ And the prelates had to sub­ mit,” says Joinville; “and I never heard that the subject was brought up again.” There was no false humility here, but, on the contrary, rare strength, for all it was so softly spoken. Some years after 8i Louis published the famous Pragmatic Sanction, the French equivalent to our English Statute of Praemunire, which laid the foundation of the liberties of the Gallican Church in opposition to the See of Rome. I do not merely admit, but strongly maintain, that St. Louis was a man of such moral elevation and tenderness of nature that in whatever age of the world he might have lived, and whatever creed he had held, he would have been distin­ guished as just, upright, and self-sacri­ ficing in an unusual degree. But I think it equally certain that living when he did, at the brightest moment in the Ages of Faith, when the emotional effect of Christianity was at its height, and least disturbed by intellectual opposition, his spirituality was intensified by his creed, till he seems more like one of the angels who bow before the Great White Throne than a denizen of common earth. And this is the legitimate and consistent result of Christian training carried to its final perfection by lofty and heroic spirits; a complete transcending, not only of the sin and corruption of the world, but a passing away from and beyond the world, and human needs and relations, an upward ascent towards the City of God, even before the end of life. The highest crown the Christian can win is that of martyrdom, suffering death for the faith; by which no benefit is ever supposed to be conferred on men except, perhaps, the example left for imitation by others. The true Christian martyr does every­ thing for Christ. He forsakes all to follow Him, and goes to his doom re­ joicing that he has been found worthy to suffer for His name. The original mould in which Christianity was cast cannot be altered : that of a small congregation of meek and lowly men, exposed to the assaults of the “power of darkness,” which was allowed to prevail for a season. For them the world was no continuing city, for they sought one to come. In the “ tabernacle of this present life they did groan, being burdened,” and were “willing rather to be absent from the G �&2 THE SERVICE OF MAN body and to be present with the Lord.” The notion that the world can ever be a place of peace and virtuous happiness is never countenanced in the New Testa­ ment. The Christian is always considered as one in the midst of a hostile and evil society, from which he must keep apart; and, if only he is prepared, the sooner he can leave it the better. We find, accord­ ingly, martyrs almost without exception professing, no doubt sincerely, the utmost gratitude for being delivered from this mortal life. As Sir Thomas More said, “St. Cyprian, that famous bishop of Carthage, gave his executioner thirty pieces of gold, because he knew he should procure unto him an unspeakable good turn and More himself, when about to suffer, and the executioner asked him forgiveness, kissed him, and said : “Thou wilt do me this day a greater benefit than ever any mortal man can be able to give me.” Heroic constancy, even to death, is the note of the martyr, and indeed of every true Christian. And it is this transcendental character of Christian perfection which has ever made it at once such an imperfect fosterer of morality, and such a stimulator of spirituality and heroic passion. No vestige of self may be suffered to remain in the true con­ fessor’s heart, in which every human desire must be burnt up by love of the Redeemer. A man must “hate his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also,” to be a true disciple of Christ. How utterly unequal average human nature is to this trancendent pitch of self-sacrifice, the past and present record of Christianity sufficiently proves. But some have been equal to it, and the heroism of the saints has been illumi­ nated by a radiance which seemed to descend direct from heaven. At all times and in all sects, the blood of martyrs has been the seed of the Church. To men, constituted as they are, the voluntary and deliberate laying down of life by confessors for conscience’ sake is always the most impressive and soul­ subduing of spectacles, conquering even the cruelty of the persecutors who are consenting unto their deaths. The “face of an angel,” remarked in the protomartyr Stephen, is not to be for­ gotten, and works miracles of conver­ sion and remorse in the solitude of the conscience, when the ghastly scene of stoning without the city, or the burning in the market-place, returns to the memory in the silent watches of the night; and the faith and meekness of the sufferer rise up like accusers from the world of spirits. The meekness and docility of the victims are a cardinal point. All bravado and self-assertion dim the lustre of the martyr’s crown. “ It has been a reproach to the sufferers in the Marian persecution that, smitten on one cheek, they did not invariably turn the other cheek to the smiter and the remark is true. If we compare the carriage of Rowland Taylor with that of Sir Thomas More, we are sensible of the difference. There can be no question as to the single - hearted piety and selfdevotion of either. But More, partly ■ perhaps by reason of his superior culture and humanist sense of the “ becoming,” showed a sweet resignation which con­ trasts favourably with the boisterous humour and self-consciousness of Taylor. “ His degradation was performed by Bonner : the usual mode being to put the garments of a Roman Catholic priest on the clerk-convict, and then to strip them off. Taylor refused to put them on, and was forcibly robed by another; and then, when he was thoroughly fur­ nished therewith, he set his hands to his side, and said : ‘ How say you, my lord, am I not a goodly fool ? How say you, my masters, if I were in Cheap should I not have boys enough to laugh at these apish toys ?’ The final ceremony was for the bishop to give the heretic a blow on his breast with his staff. The bishop’s chaplain said : ‘ My lord, strike him not; for he will sure strike again.’ ‘ Yes, by St. Peter will I,” quoth Dr. Taylor. ‘ The cause is Christ’s, and I were no good Christian if I would not fight in my master’s quarrel.’ So the bishop �WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE laid his curse on him, and struck him not. When he went back to his fellow­ prisoner, Bradford, he told him how the chaplain had said he would strike again, and ‘by my troth,’ said he, rubbing his hands, ‘ I made him believe I would do so indeed !’ ” The saintly spirit would seem to be wanting here. Indeed, the temper which has fitted men for martyrdom has always been liable to the perversion of a fierce fanaticism and stubbornness, in which meek resignation is replaced by a savage combativeness regardless of conse­ quences. In his subsequent behaviour Taylor rose to a much higher strain. The scene on the February morning, by St. Botolph’s church, where his wife and children had waited for him, “suspecting that he might be carried away ”; the dialogue in the gloom, “for it was a very dark morning, and the one could not see the other,” reach the. extreme of tragic pathos. “His daughter Elizabeth cried, saying, ‘ O my dear father! Mother, mother, here is my father led away !’ Then cried his wife, ‘ Rowland, Rowland, where art thou?’ Dr. Taylor answered, ‘ I am here, dear wife,’ and stayed. The sheriff’s men would have led him forth, but the sheriff said, ‘ Stay a little, masters, I pray you, and let him speak to his wife.’ Then came she to him, and he took his daughter Mary in his arms, and he and his wife, and Elizabeth knelt down and said the Lord’s Prayer. At which sight the sheriff wept apace, and so did divers others of the company.” It is needless to repeat further one of the best-known scenes in English history. The point to be noticed is, that Taylor rose to the height of saintliness in pro­ portion as he laid aside his haughty carriage. His answer to the sheriff, who asked him, after his martyr’s ride through Essex to Suffolk, how he fared : “ Well, God be praised, master sheriff, never better; for now I know I am almost at home”; and his meek expos­ tulation to the miscreant who threw a fagot at him, “which brake his face, so that the blood ran down his visage 83 “ O friend, I have harm enough; what needed that ?” attain to the summit of Christian resignation. The death of Sir Thomas More has ever been regarded as one of the most sublime examples of Christian fortitude on record. His perfect sweetness and self-possession have melted all hearts. He did nothing to provoke his fate, but, on the contrary, everything that his con­ science allowed him in order to escape it. At no time was he aggressive or self­ asserting. When condemned, his car­ riage was at once meek and manly. “When Sir Thomas was come now to the Tower-Wharfe, his best-beloved childe, my aunte Rooper, desirous to see her father whome she feared she should never see in this world after, to have his last blessing, gave there attendance to meete him; whome as soone as she had espyed, after she had receaved upon her knees his fatherlie blessing, she ranne hastilie unto him; and without consideration or care of herselfe, passing through the midst of the throng and guarde of men who with billes and halberds compassed him round, there openly in the sight of them all embraced him, not able to say anie word, but : Oh, my father ; oh, my father! He liking well her most naturall and deare affection towards him, gave her his fatherlie blessing; telling her, that whatever he should suffer, though he were innocent, yet it was not without the will of God; and that she knew well enough all the secrets of his hart, coun­ selling her to accommodate her will to God’s blessed pleasure, and bade her be patient for her losse. She was no sooner parted from him and gonne ten steppes, when she, not satisfied with her former farewell, like one who had forgotte herselfe, ravished with the intire love of so worthie a father, having neither respect to herselfe nor to the presse of the people about him, suddenly turned back, and ranne hastilie to him, tooke him about the necke and diverse times togeather kissed: whereat he spoke not a word, but carrying still his gravity, tears fell also from his eyes; yea, there �84 THE SERVICE OF MAN were very few in all the troupe who could refrain thereat from weeping, no not the guards themselves.”1 To give one more instance of Chris­ tian martyrdom; none the less tragic because it was enacted, not amid the tumult and profanity of a public execu­ tion, but in the inner chamber of a man of genius. At thirty years of age, Blaise Pascal determined to “ give up the world,” and began that course of mortification and prayer which, there can hardly be a doubt, shortened his days. He forsook his scientific labours, by which he had won, as a youth, a foremost rank among the mathematicians of Europe, devoted himself to reading the Scriptures and meditating his great work on the Chris­ tian religion ; of which only fragments, in the form of the immortal “ Thoughts,” were ever achieved. The physical priva­ tions and pain to which he subjected his emaciated body are described at length by his sister, Madame Perier, in a bio­ graphy which for simple grace and pathos rivals the best of Walton’s “ Lives.” To avoid wandering and worldly thoughts when engaged in conversation, “ he took an iron girdle full of sharp points, which he placed next to his flesh; and when conscious of an impulse to vanity, or even a feeling of pleasure in the place where he happened to be, he struck the girdle with his elbow in order to increase the pain of the punctures.” He ate a certain regulated quantity of food, whether hungry or not, never exceeding it, however good his appetite, and never eating less, however great his loathing; and this, on the ground that taking food was a duty, which was never to be accompanied by any sensual pleasure. When his sufferings were acute, and his friends expressed commiseration, he would answer, “ Do not pity me; illness is the state natural to Christians, because it places us in the condition we ought ever to be in—suffering evils, deprived of all the pleasures of sense, freed from 1 Life of Sir Thomas More, Knt., by his greatgrandson, Thomas More, Esq.,p. 264, ed. 1726. all the passions which afflict us through­ out life, without ambition, without cupidity, in the continued expectation of death.” He mortified his affections not less than his body, and said that we should never allow any one to love us with fondness; in fostering such attach­ ments we occupied hearts which ought to be given solely to God; that it was robbing Him of that on which He set most store. “ It is not right that others should attach themselves to me. Even if they do it willingly and with pleasure, I should deceive those in whom I excited such a feeling. Am I not about to die ? —the object of their love then will perish. As I should warn people against believ­ ing a falsehood, however profitable to me, I should warn them not to attach themselves to me ; for their duty is to spend their lives in striving to please God, or in seeking Him.” At his death there was found sewn up inside the lining of his doublet two small pieces of parch­ ment and paper, on which were written in identical words a series of brief sen­ tences, of which the meaning was mis­ conceived by Condorcet, who first pub­ lished them. The supposition was, that it was a “ mystic amulet,” which Pascal had worn next his person out of super­ stitious motives. Its real character is perfectly clear: a solemn record of the hour and date of his conversion to God and to a life of asceticism :— The year of grace, 1654. Monday, 23rd of November, St. Clement’s Day, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology. Eve of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others. From about half-past ten at night, till half an hour past midnight. Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob; not of philosophers and learned men. Certitude, certitude. Feeling, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. Deum meum es Deum vestrum. Thy God shall be my God----Oblivion of the world and everything save God. He is only to be found by the way taught in the Gospel. Greatness of the human soul. Righteous Father, the world has not known thee, but I have known thee. Joy, joy, joy 1 tears of joy. �WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE have left him---------------------------- - ----------Dereliquerunt me fontem aquae vivae. My God, wilt thou forsake me ?__-----------------May I not be separated from him for ever. This is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. Jesus Christ----------------------------- --------------- — Jesus Christ------------------------ ------------------ ;— I have left him : I have fled from him, denied him, crucified him. May I never be separated from him. He can only be kept by the way taught by the Gospel. Renunciation entire and sweet. Entire submission to Jesus Christ and to my director. Eternal joy for one day’s suffering on earth. Non obliviscar sermones tuos. Amen. “ What a noble mind is here o’erthrown will probably be the thought of many readers. And yet, why should that thought arise ? Doctrinal differences apart, can there be a doubt in any candid mind that Pascal strove with all the force and sincerity of his powerful mind and passionate nature to attain Christian holiness, and that he threw himself at the foot of the cross as com­ pletely and unreservedly as a human being could? Are his austerities and mortifications objected to ? The form of his asceticism may be questioned by different schools of theology; but no earnest, thorough-going Christian exists who does not deny himself one way or another, and admit asceticism in prin­ ciple. Indeed, asceticism represents a tendency in human nature far wider than Christianity, and, though liable to frightful perversions, is one of the noblest qualities possessed by man. It is one of the higher forms of courage, which not only endures or disdains suffering, but posi­ tively courts it, and finds a passionate and fiery joy in the sharp sting of pain. If man had instinctively the universal horror of pain which some moralists suppose him to have, he would never have been a hunter or a warrior. The delight of self-mastery in some natures easily gets the upper hand, and leads, according to circumstances, to the volun­ tary search for danger and suffering, or to the stern refusal of sensuous pleasure. 85 “ Quae major voluptas quam fastidium omnis voluptatis ?” asks Tertullian. The spirit of self-sacrifice is just as much a factor of human nature as the spirit of self-indulgence, though, like all the higher gifts, less common. The deplorable thing is that the precious gift should be wasted and thrown away on useless objects. The hero who suffers to save others contributes a direct and tangible good to the world by his action, and even a higher good indirectly by his example. The ascetic who tortures him­ self to please a cruel god does equal harm in both ways, to himself and others. Even the old Hebrew saw this when he wrote that his Lord “would have mercy, and not sacrifice.” As regards Christian asceticism, especially in the grosser forms of physical, self-inflicted torture, it is a subject which has not received, it would seem, the attention it deserves from Church historians. It arose early in the Church, which, like the austerer philosophic sects, the Stoics and Cynics, was led, by the calamities of the decaying Roman Empire, to take a gloomy and despondent view of the moral government of the universe, and to see the finger of an angry God in the in­ cessant woes with which mankind were then scourged. And? indeed, it is not easy to see, on Christian principles, how voluntary and unmerited suffering can be supposed to be displeasing to God. The whole scheme of Redemption supposes that God was so pleased with the suffer­ ings of the innocent Christ that, in con­ sideration for them, He forgave guilty man. The sufferings of Jesus were entirely voluntary ; His buffetings, scourgings, crucifixion, were all endured to expiate man’s sin; the ransom for his dis­ obedience, the precious blood-shedding which obtained innumerable benefits. If Christians would imitate Christ, should they not do so in this particular, the most characteristic of His office ? . If agony unspeakable, born by the Divine Son, the Lamb without blemish, was well-pleasing to His father, why should it be otherwise in sin-stained man ? �86 THE SERVICE OF MAN Protestant notions on this subject may be more rational, but they are far less scriptural. The whole idea of Chris­ tianity, as given in the New Testament, is steeped in suffering. “ Blessed are they that mourn”; “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” Why? Because “great is their reward in heaven.” The worship of the Man of Sorrows was not intended for the tender and the comfortable. “Who­ soever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.” Those who assume a tone of sneering and contempt, for the mortifications of the Catholic saints, show that they are true heretics in the primitive sense of the word, inasmuch as they choose and select those words and parts of Scripture only which suit their preconceived views. Let us be rationalists by all means ; but let us be consistent rationalists, and consider the Bible as an interesting fragment of ancient Semitic literature. Those who profess to regard it as the Word of God, and yet ignore and neglect some of its clearest precepts, are not consistent. Any vitality which the Catholic revival of these latter years may have had in Europe or America is clearly traceable to its superior deference to the para­ mount and universal authority of those Scriptures which all Christians admit as binding in the last court of appeal. To return, however, to our more immediate subject—the spirituality of mind stimulated by Christianity, in the higher types of the Christian character. Within quite recent times three women have died, who, for complete detachment and recollection, for pro­ found sincerity and devotion to the Cross, may justly be regarded as the equals of any of the saints of old. I do not for a moment pretend to say that there have not been others equally devoted and sincere. Probably there have been many, to me unknown. But these are incontestably eminent enough in Christian virtue to serve as types of that spirituality which is the most characteristic result of profound Christian belief consistently carried out. The result is in many ways touching, and beautiful in the extreme. It is such flowers of exquisite perfume and beauty, grown in the garden of the soul, which still arrest the attention of a rationalistic age. And nothing can show how far the modern world has drifted away from the old Christian point of view than the fact that these three sweet saints have made so slight an impression upon it. Had they lived and worked as they did, in the Ages of Faith, their tombs would already have become sacred shrines, to which troops of pious pilgrims would be crowding to kneel and pray. Sister Agnes Jones, Mother Margaret Hallahan, and Sister Dora Pattison are the three pious women to whom I refer. Their lives have been written by loving hands; and, in the long series of religious biographies, more touching and graceful portraits would not easily be found. Amid many points of difference as to theological opinion, social position, and character, they yet had striking points of likeness. The passionate love and affection with which they inspired all who came within their influence show what warm-hearted, generous natures they possessed. Language seems to fail their biographers in attempting to render the devotion with which they were regarded. A dying pauper in the Liverpool workhouse said he thought he was in heaven when Agnes came to his bedside. A patient of Sister Dora stood “ up and reverently pulled his forelock as if he had pronounced the name of a saint or angel,” every time he mentioned her. Of Margaret it is written: “What struck me most in our dearest mother was her largeness of heart, and the total absence of self in all her words and actions.” A common trait of these remarkable women was a splendid physique and immense bodily strength. Agnes, the least distinguished �WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE in this respect, was yet capable of enduring extraordinary bodily fatigue. “ After a whole night on duty in St. Thomas’s Hospital, she thinks it lazy to go to bed, and spends the day in walking and paying visits.”1 Of Dora, the surgeon of the Epidemic Hospital said : “ Sister Dora could set up all night and work all day with little or no rest; and, as far as I could judge, she was neither physically nor mentally the worse for it. Her strength was superhuman. I never saw such a woman.” And this will not appear an over-statement in the light of the following anecdote : “A delirious patient, a tall, heavy man, in the worst stage of confluent small-pox, threw him­ self out of bed in the dead of night, and with a loud yell rushed to the door before she could stop him. She had no time for hesitation, but at once grappled with him, all covered as he was with the loathsome disease. Her combined strength and determination prevailed, and she got him back into bed, and held him there by main force until the doctor arrived in the morning.”2 Margaret, if possible, was still stronger. Her biographer says: “ Possessed of extraordinary muscular power, she was rather proud of hearing herself called as strong as Samson; and when about seventeen years of age, seeing some men hesitate to lift a great iron stove, she thought to put them to shame, and carried it unassisted to the top of the house.” All three were brave, but Dora was lion-hearted beyond compare, and would face drunken ruffians in the slums of Walsall, into which the police would only venture with caution. All had powerful minds, though in no one of them had education been carried very far. Indeed, Margaret was wholly illiterate, and never mastered ortho­ graphy, geography, or arithmetic. Agnes had the usual education of a young lady of family and position forty years ago. Dora probably was the best trained of 1 Life, by her sister, p. 160. 2 Life, by Miss Lonsdale, p. 159. 87 the three. But native vigour of mind supplied all defects, and each showed a great faculty of government and organi­ sation, though in different degrees. Agnes, who died young, had not time to show her full power; but the last three years of her life, in charge of the Liverpool workhouse, with its fifteen hundred inmates, testified to her gifts in that direction. Dora was a lovely, fascinating despot, bending all hearts and wills by her supreme charm and force. Margaret was a born ruler, with thoroughly imperial qualities, who could have governed a state in perilous times as well as she governed her convents. If one might venture, in short, to imitate the nomenclature applied to the great Scholastics, we might call Agnes the Soror Angelica, so ineffably meek, resigned, and nunlike she was, for all her Protestant training; Dora the Sotor Practica, with her unequalled power of achieving work, whatever it might be; Margaret the Soror Dominatrix, by reason of her grand and imposing mind and character, which, in spite of her low birth and want of culture, made her more than the equal of the scholars, nobles, and ecclesiastics of her own Catholic Church. Now, is it not evident that all these women were simply women of extraor­ dinary genius ? Dora’s conversation was bewitching ; her alternate humour and pathos were the delight and solace of her nurses and patients, and made an ob­ server say that it was easy to see that she might have been a great novelist, if she had not chosen to be something greater and better. Margaret, though she could not spell the simplest words, showed, in her incessant correspondence, great powers of style. Agnes, though inferior to either in these respects, always writes with a simple, clear, and direct vigour which proves what a calm, strong brain she had. No one of them gave a thought to literature, but one sees that literature was easily within their reach, if they had aimed at it. Their distinction was founded on character, the supreme quality; warm, fearless �88 THE SERVICE OF MAN hearts, exquisite tenderness of con­ science, passionate self-sacrifice, and devotion to duty. Christians by training and inclination, they realised in their fervent hearts the meaning and purport of the gospel. According to the terms of their belief, “ they forsook all and followed ” Christ in their several ways— the Evangelical Agnes, the High-Church Dora, the Catholic Margaret. But even their pious biographers admit that, apart from the gifts of grace, which they were not likely to undervalue, their natural powers and endowments were extra­ ordinary. Of Margaret it is said that even at the first meeting the most prominent features of her character could not escape notice; “ the firm will, the clear and rapid judgment, the boundless power of sympathy, which won her the title of ‘ everybody’s mother.’” Miss Lonsdale tells us how “ a hard, sarcastic Scotchman,” who was a professed unbeliever, remarked of Dora, whose patient he had been: “ She’s a noble woman, but she’d have been that without her Christianity.” That is just the simple fact of the matter. Such heads and hearts as these are the property of no creed; they are the choice products of that maligned human nature which theologians tell us is cursed and lost unless it believes this or that article of faith. If the saintliness of these holy women depended upon their creed, why do not the thousands and millions who hold the same creed exhibit a like saintliness ? “ God did not give them the grace ” is the theolo­ gical answer ; and some are still satisfied with it. But the answer is evidently becoming unreal and meaningless. The doctrine of heredity and variation has deprived it of all weight. Strong minds and fervent hearts, like strong bodies, depend upon organisation; on the con­ stitution and quality of the brain. But brains “ are begotten, not made,” and grace never made a weak brain strong. The contemplation of these remarkable women suggests one or two more interest­ ing points of view. i. An experience of some eighteen centuries may be considered conclusive as to the limited hold which Christianity is capable of taking on mankind at large. From the days of St. Paul to the present time, the apathy and worldliness of the great mass of men and women calling themselves Christians has been the constant lamentation of all sincere preachers. Indeed, the parable of the Sower clearly announces that the fact was to be expected. The seed falls in four different places, and only in one does it bear fruit—where it fell on good ground. The Wicked one, the want of root, the cares of this world, and de­ ceitfulness of riches prevent its growth in the other places, which are evidently supposed to cover by far the larger area; and the parable of the Marriage of the King’s Son, with its conclusion, “ Many are called but few are chosen,” leaves no doubt on the matter. The obvious deduction is, that Christianity is only adapted to a very limited number of minds; that, for one reason or another, the many, called as they may be, will not “ hear the word and understand it.” And this is exactly what has happened with­ out interruption for nearly two thousand years; Christendom has never been evangelised, nor near being evangelised. Even the smallest and most select com­ munities of religious persons have their backsliders and formalists, who are, to use Mr. Spurgeon’s words, as religious as the seats they sit on. The high Calvin­ ists boldly face the difficulty, and say : “ No doubt the great mass of mankind are predestined from all eternity to damnation; it is only the elect who are really Christians, and go to heaven.” Calvinism is out of fashion now, and re­ proached with suggesting very unpleasant notions as to the moral character of the Deity ; but it is consistent and scriptural; I do not say sensible or orthodox. So far from Christianity being the universal religion it is affirmed to be, it is not even adapted to the majority of its own believers. You must have a very fine and peculiar organisation to be a true �WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE Christian; a special genius, which gene­ rally declares itself in early life, as special genius is apt to do. A Sister Agnes or Mother Margaret takes to vital religion with the spontaneous affinity that Mozart took to music, Newton to mathematics, and Keats to poetry. Religious genius, in its highest form, is as rare, perhaps more rare, than genius in any other form ; and exalted piety is as unattainable to the common herd as exalted poetry. Bishop Ullathorne, who must have had large opportunities of seeing nuns and others who aimed with special earnestness at a religious life, yet declares of Margaret that she was distinguished from every other holy soul that he had been acquainted with, by three extraordinary gifts, which he mentions : her peculiar love of God ; the pain it cost her to turn from Him to self-introspection ; and her angelic purity. “Rare as suns,” he says, “are those souls which seem to act on other souls like a sacramental power, shedding the rays of their own inward sense of God and vital warmth of spirit into the souls that come within the sphere of their action.”1 And similar testi­ mony as to the rarity of the endow­ ments of Sisters Dora and Agnes are forthcoming from those who have had wide experience of religious persons. Yet, good as these pious women were, I suppose no priest or theologian would say that they had attained the furthest limit of Christian perfection. They all thought in their humility that they had fallen far short of it. What hope, then, is there for souls less richly endowed ? And let us observe how this pursuit of a spirituality utterly beyond attainment by ordinary mortals, beautiful as it is when attained, operates injuriously on the morality of average men and women. The standard proposed is so exalted that, instead of attracting the ordinary person to aim at reaching it, it discourages and repels him. He is inwardly conscious that he cannot possibly reach it, even if he tries ever so much. His preacher * Preface to Life of Mother Margaret. 89 will probably tell him that, if he trusts in his own strength, he can do nothing; but that, if he will only put all his trust in God and Christ, the end will be attained. But that is just what he is unable to do. He is exhorted to exert a spirituality of mind which, by the hypothesis, he has not got. It is like telling a man that, if he will only fly, he will reach great altitudes. He has not the wings. Even the saints have generally had long periods of pro­ bation and wrestlings with God before they could attain to that detachment, spirituality, and perfect faith which enabled them to perform the act of com­ plete self-renunciation required. Yet it is recommended to the common multitude, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. And what is the result? Setting apart the openly profane and wicked, who do not give a thought to the sub­ ject ; and, without denying it, simply ignore Christianity ; the bulk of worldly, unconverted believers pass their time in a middle state between sin and repent­ ance ; believers, but not doers, of the Word; wishing they could embrace their religion with entire earnestness, but too well aware that, constituted as they are, they are unable to do so. Of course, reference is made only to the true-hearted, honest folk who transgress from weakness, and not to the spiritually dead Pharisee who has no doubt about his righteousness. Such are, on all hands, admitted to be worse than the publicans and harlots. But the mass of common-place people who go to church or chapel, who are neither very good nor very bad, neither exceptionally clever nor stupid, the enormous middle-class of mediocrities, fairly just, conscientious, and kind-hearted, can it be denied that they are constantly deterred from em­ bracing a serious view of life’s duties, just because a standard of such exalted perfection is proposed to them that they know it is no use attempting to reach it ? They perhaps try, and fail, and they are more disheartened than before. They �9° THE SERVICE OE MAN then live with a mildly evil conscience, knowing that they ought to do better. But they are at once told that that is not enough; that they must do their best; that they must be perfect, as their Father which is in heaven is perfect. Then they do less than they could, out of sheer, weary dejection. In what other art or science do teachers begin by placing the most arduous problems before their pupils ? Young mathematicians are not set to work on the Differential Calculus in their first lessons; young artists are not expected to draw like Andrea, and colour like Titian. But the young catechumen is told that the first thing he must do “ is to renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh.” For the first precept of the first lesson, this must be admitted to be rather hard. How many saints, after a long life’s progress in holiness, have been equal to it ? To renounce the devil and all his works cannot be easy, if all that we are told of Satan’s power be true. But the “ good child ” is told that he must do this at once. By a subsequent after-thought on the part of the compiler, the learner is warned that he cannot do this and a great many other things of himself} he needs God’s special grace, “which he must learn to call for by diligent prayer.” Probably, to nine children out of ten “ diligent prayer,” commanded in this way, appears even more obscure and meaningless than renouncing the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. How cruel and heedless to place the last stage of spiritual evolution at the threshold of the neophyte’s progress. The whole Catechism and the larger part of sermons and Christian teaching are pervaded by the double error of supposing that the highest religious emotions are attainable by all, and that they may be inculcated at the earliest period of life. “ My duty towards God is to believe in him, to fear him, and to love him with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and 'with all my strengths Perhaps the most prompt and certain way of checking an emotion in others is to tell them that it is their duty to feel it. Tell any one he ought to feel grateful, and you will probably make him ten times more ungrateful than he was before. We may be sure that no one ever loved God for being told that it was his duty to love him. Wise and good mothers, by gentle and indirect precept and very direct example, have led their little ones to piety; but then they used the subtle language of the heart. The unreality and inefficacy of sermons chiefly depend on the transcendent disproportion be­ tween the doctrine preached and the capacity to receive it by the audience addressed. A mixed congregation, con­ sisting of men whose thoughts are absorbed in business and women occu­ pied with dress and frivolities, are spoken to in language which would not be inadequate to the spiritual needs of angels. The result is a discrepancy between faith and practice which the profane are not slow to tax with hypo­ crisy. Neither religion nor morals gain by such exaggerations ; only the scoffers at all goodness, who delight in pointing out that so-called religious people are no better than their neighbours. To get the best you can out of men you must not ask more than they can give. But if you ask for that in the proper way, nearly all but the thoroughly bad will respond. By asking for the impossible, you get little or nothing, or worse than nothing; a conviction that religion is grimace, and a disbelief in the possibility of virtue. And now let us contemplate these three saints from another side : that of the value of their work, its usefulness in this world, and its power of diminishing human suffering. Before I go further I shall be met with a refusal to allow the question to be stated in this way. It will be said that these ladies considered far more the souls than the bodies of their patients, pupils, nurses, or nuns, as the case may be; that, although they strove earnestly �WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE to heal the sick, none more so, yet their real and main object was to win souls to Christ. I am not inclined to deny so obvious a fact; but it is one with which I cannot deal, because, as regards the result of their labours in that direction, I can form no opinion. It is wholly beyond my power to verify any statement on that head. Of the numbers who died in their presence, soothed and com­ forted beyond doubt, by their assured faith, their fervent prayers, and “tranquil regardent faces,” I cannot tell whether any or none ever passed “to where beyond these voices there is peace.” The point must be left undecided, to say the least, for want of evidence of an objective kind, as distinguished from evidence of a subjective kind, reposing entirely on faith. Believers must be satisfied with their own belief until they can advance arguments far more cogent than any which they have hitherto produced in support of it. Agnostics cannot be expected to argue on principles which they reject. But this does not wholly remove a common ground on which discussion can take place. The temporal work of these good women is offered to us as a proof of what the divine spirit can do when it finds fitting channels. Now, I will vie with any one in celebrating the unselfish devotion, the self-sacrifice, the warm love and sym­ pathy, which they all showed in assuaging human suffering, bodily or mental. I cannot read their lives without tears, and the admiration I feel for them may be truly called passionate. I regard them as inexpressibly lovely and attractive human souls, who, led on by their own warm women’s hearts, nearly, if not entirely, conquered self, and became like the beautiful alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very costly and precious, which, when poured out, filled the house with the odour of the ointment. But this profession does not preclude me from pointing out that, if the question is of diminishing human suffering, these pious workers did not take up the problem with any full sense of its magnitude; 9i did not begin high enough up in their efforts to stop the stream of evil and pain. While the value of good nursing can hardly be exaggerated, it can never be more than an adjunct of practical medicine. It is in biological and patho­ logical research, with the object of discovering and destroying the germs and origin of disease, that science now justly rests its main hope of serving humanity. And is there not already ample reason for looking on this hope as well-founded? The anecdote, quoted a few pages back, of Sister Dora grappling with the delirious patient in his loathsome condition from confluent small-pox, presents a graphic and even sensational picture of self-devotion for the welfare of a fellow-creature. The deed was heroic and admirable, whether the sufferer’s life was ultimately saved or not. But now, regard the method of science in encountering disease, and this particular malady of small-pox. A man of genius, with his eyes open, observes that milkmaids inoculated with cow-pox are not susceptible to the graver con­ tagion, and Jenner, after careful and elaborate experiments, announces the discovery of vaccination. There is nothing to appeal to the dramatic sym­ pathies in this, nothing to stir emotion in the ordinary spectator. On the con­ trary, at the time it was considered to afford material for ridicule as a sample of scientific absurdity. But which method has been most profitable to humanity ? Have all the self-sacrifices of all the Doras and Sisters of Mercy in the world spared mankind a tithe of the suffering which has been pre­ vented by vaccination? The epidemic of small - pox at Walsall, in which Sister Dora played so noble a part, appears formidable and shocking to us, with our modern ideas of the subject. But, in the last century, before Jenner, it would, in the dimensions it had, have been considered beneath notice. Half the population might have been swept away without attracting par­ ticular attention. That was the way �92 THE SERVICE OF MAN likened the temper excited in some with small-pox, and people were resigned. portions of the clerical world by the It was the finger or the wrath of God, recent growth of physical science to the chastening men for their sins. Now, as one might expect in these anger and alarm with which the savage biographies, in no one instance is scien­ views the progress of an eclipse; and tific inquiry ever mentioned as a duty of that the comparison was just these the slightest importance or value. It sentiments of Mother Margaret suffi­ would be simple indeed to look for any­ ciently show. It is a favourite theme thing of the kind in such a quarter. with theologians to maintain that the The point of view is wholly different. love of God leads to the loftiest and God present everywhere, doing or per­ purest love of man, and 1 John iv. 20 mitting all that happens, is the invariable is quoted with effect. But a long experi­ presumption. Sister Dora on one occa­ ence has shown that a verse of the sion offered to pay a visit to a friend. Psalms is often a truer statement of the “But,” she added, “of course, if the actual fact. “ Shall I not hate them, O Master comes and calls for me, and Lord, that hate thee ?” Can we doubt sends us in more cases, I cannot come.” that Mother Margaret, who, for all her The “ Master,” of course, is God; and warm-heartedness, could rejoice in so the cases were cases of small-pox, which dreadful a thing as shipwrecks, just he was supposed to send on the one because, in her narrow bigotry, she hand, and to call Dora to nurse on the thought they were a rebuke to men of other. This is the prevailing tone. But science, could also have assisted at an in neither of the Protestant lives is there Auto da Fe without compunction, if told any direct railing at science. In the it was required by the interests of her Catholic life it is very different. There creed ? we meet the flash of anger and hatred The particular case we have been for science, characteristic of the theolo­ considering is significant enough in itself, gian who fears that his God is in danger. as typical of the different methods of Considering her entire want of scientific theology and science, in their contention or philosophical culture, Mother Mar­ against human suffering. But it sug­ garet showed great penetration in her gests much wider issues: the whole remark on this subject. When she first question of the great campaign against caught sight of the Britannia Bridge she vice, evil, and misery. The principle exclaimed : “ Oh, how wonderful ! But of Christian charity is to palliate and if men do such things as these, they assuage physical and social evils in will begin to think they have no their last and extreme form. If you need of God.” And her biographers meet a beggar, give him alms; if you tell us she felt a certain satisfaction have no money, divide your cloak when some of the wonderful modern with him, as did St. Martin. Feed the discoveries came to nought. She was hungry, clothe the naked. In a word, glad to hear that the laying of the run with prompt love and sympathy to first Atlantic cable had failed; and, succour every case of mortal distress what is still worse, and is a stain on her that comes within your reach. Do this memory, she was even pleased that, “ in in remembrance of Christ, and be spite of storm-signals and meteorological blessed. He would be a cold and theories, the wrecks on the English coast shallow student of history who ventured increased, instead of diminishing in to speak of this spontaneous movement number.”1 “ I like these learned gentle­ of the heart with disrespect. The Chris­ men to know,” she would say, “ that tian care for the sick and infirm was God is master.” Professor Huxley once unknown to the pagan world. It was the best and only thing to do under the circumstances. Science was not; and 1 Life, p. 231. �WHA T CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE relief, such relief as could be given by poor, uninstructed fellow-men, was all that could be had. But science has slowly and gradually discovered and proved that social and physical evil and pain may not only be soothed, but anticipated and prevented. Not that it neglects palliatives of suffering; on the contrary, it applies them with an efficacy and power utterly beyond the conception of former ages. But it does more; it nips evil in the bud, or rather in the seed, and does not wait for its full efflorescence before it attacks it. Physical, social, and moral evil, disease and sin, it regards as so many pathological con­ ditions, which we may reasonably hope to correct, modify, and ultimately to suppress. As regards physical disease, this position would hardly be questioned even by the most orthodox. Several of the most formidable afflictions to which human and animal bodies are subject have already been got under control. Small-pox and typhoid fever are, we may say, understood and practically mastered; that is, they are not allowed to spread and devastate as they formerly did. A number of other maladies with which it once seemed hopeless to contend are even now passing into the class of the controllable disorders, as consumption, rabies, and cholera. Similarly with regard to pauperism and other social disorders. The prompt and easy narcotic of charity is not to be universally proscribed as uniformly evil, but it is ascertained to be of dangerous application, and liable to aggravate the evil it pretends to cure. Pauperism can only be combated with success by that knowledge of social and economic laws which corresponds to the knowledge of biological laws in the neighbouring science. It may be proper 93 and wise, in a given case, to divide your coat with a beggar; the only thing that a humane man would or could do. But it is vastly more important to ascertain the social and economic causes of the beggar’s existence; and, if he be a common phenomenon, to correct those breaches of the laws of social health which make his emergence possible. Again, with regard to ethics. Moral evil, or sin, can only be successfully corrected by such an investigation and knowledge of man’s mental, emotional, and physical constitution, that that part of conduct which is concerned with morals may be directed in a way that conduces to the highest individual and social happiness and well-being. In a word, the Christian principle is to act from spontaneous charity and bene­ volence with such means as are imme­ diately to hand: to regard evil, pain, and disease as trials sent by God for his own wise ends; chastisements, meant for our rebuke or guidance, to make us turn to him, and leave off caring for a temporal, wicked, and miserable world. The principle of science is directly contrary. It has already pre­ vented numberless evils in a way which would have appeared to our forefathers quite miraculous. Admitting that there will, perhaps, be always a residue of unconquerable evils which science cannot hope to remove, it is maintained that the resignation produced by a clear view of the impossible and inevitable is more complete than that which never wholly renounces the hope of divine aid. Mother Margaret was quite right in her fears; “but if men do such things as these, they will begin to think that they can do without God.” That thought is rapidly spreading over the civilised world. �94 THE SERVICE OF MAN Chapter VIII. THE SERVICE OF MAN The results of the previous inquiry would seem to be as follows :— 1. That a widespread tendency exists in this, and still more in other countries, to give up a belief in Christianity. And that the scepticism of the present day is very far more serious and scientific than was the deism of the last century. 2. That the supposed consolations of Christianity have been much exaggerated. And that it may be questioned whether that religion does not often produce as much anxiety and mental distress as it does of joy, gladness, and content. 3. That by the great doctrine of forgive­ ness of sins consequent on repentance, even in the last moment of life, Chris­ tianity often favours spirituality and salva­ tion at the expense of morals. 4. That the morality of the Ages of Faith was very low ; and that the further we go back into times when belief was strongest, the worse it is found to be. 5. That Christianity has a very limited influence on the world at large ; but a most powerful effect on certain hightoned natures, who, by becoming true saints, produce an immense impression on public opinion, and give that religion much of the honour which it enjoys. 6. That, although the self-devotion of saints is not only beyond question, but supremely beautiful and attractive, yet, as a means of relieving human suffering and serving man in the widest sense, it is not to be compared for efficiency with science. It is sufficiently obvious that, unless the tendencies which we have been con­ sidering meet with a strange and unex­ pected arrest, the result, in a not distant future, must be a general disappearance of Christianity from among the more advanced populations of the globe. In making this statement, one naturally I recalls the grave irony of the Advertise­ ment prefixed to the first edition of Butler’s Analogy, which is often cited as affording a good example of the way in which the hopes of unbelievers may be deceived. “ It is come, I know not how,” says Butler, “to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Chris­ tianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is, at length, now discovered to be fictitious. And accord­ ingly they treat it, as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment; and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.” The “people of discernment,” it is pointed out, were very much mistaken in their assumption that Christianity was discovered to be fictitious. The Analogy was written nearly a hundred and fifty years ago; and, for a fictitious system, Christianity still shows con­ siderable vitality. The number of new churches and chapels built, the zeal and activity of the clergy and missionaries, the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts, and similar facts, are adduced, not without a certain tone of triumph, as sufficient evidence of how groundless and shallow the hopes of the “ sceptic ” have proved to be in this particular case. Both the original text of Butler and the modern commentaries upon it rather show how remote is the scientific and historical point of view from the religious, and what a far-off stage of thought Butler’s expressions represent. The word “ fictitious ” alone, as applied to an ancient and widespread religion, jars upon the ear. As if great phases of human thought and feeling could be invented, like a stage play, or concocted �THE SERVICE OF MAN by designing priests for the sake of gain.' That this really was the current deistical opinion is certain, and it was crudely expressed in the famous silly verses :— “ Natural Religion was easy, first, and plain; Tales made it mystery, offerings made it gain ; Sacrifices and shows were at length prepared, The priests ate roast meat, and the people stared.” A wider knowledge of human nature, past and present, has made such trivial conceptions impossible. No form of the religious sentiment is now regarded as fictitious; but, on the contrary, as the serious and solid result of the stage of evolution in which it appears. Similarly with regard to making Christianity a subject of mirth and ridicule. No one with a reputation to lose would think of speaking with levity of the Christian or any religion. Nothing would be con­ sidered better proof of incompetence to handle such subjects than such a tone. The world is older and sadder, and on the whole wiser, than it was in Butler’s day. The alleged interruption of the pleasures of the world by Christianity is open to question as a matter of fact. Pleasures in abundance, and of a sufficiently coarse kind, were indulged in without difficulty in the Ages of Faith. The “ eat, drink, and be merry ” temper is generally discountenanced in theory; and, even in practice, is less rife than it was among our forefathers. In fact, the result of historical specula­ tion has been, with regard to Christianity, the same as the result of biological speculation has been with regard to man. Both have been taken from the isolation and independence in which they were supposed to exist, with reference to other members of the same order; and have been included in the larger classifi­ cation which places man at the head of vertebrate animals and Christianity at the head of supernatural religions. The biological view has prevailed, one may say, with surprising rapidity, considering the amount of prejudice which had to be overcome. The historical view has 95 naturally triumphed less completely, in­ asmuch as scientific history is a much younger science than biology. But the end will be the same. Christianity is already classed, by a large and growing number of the most competent historical inquirers, simply as the last and finest specimen of a group of beliefs, which, in one form or another, are co-extensive with humanity and history. If this view should prove to be slower in gaining acceptance than the biological view of the descent of man, the reason will, probably, be not wholly referable to the position of history in the order of the sciences. Distasteful as it was to human vanity to prove that man had descended from an anthropoid ape, which again had descended from a bird or a reptile, the idea still is one which can be put aside, which ordinary folk need not think of in daily life, and which involves no imme­ diate practical consequences to them­ selves. The final admission, that Chris­ tianity is not fictitious, indeed, in Butler’s phrase, but simply a form of thought unsuited to a scientific age, and therefore no longer tenable by an educated population, is attended by far greater difficulties. Very obvious practical consequences are involved in such a conclusion, which cannot readily be ignored. If the belief in God, Christ, and the other articles of the Christian faith must rationally be relin­ quished, people ask : What are you going to put in their place ? What rule of life do you propose to substitute for the one removed ? What is the successor to Christianity as a religion? Or will it have no successor ? And some even go so far as to inquire what is to become of those spiritual and religious instincts which have hitherto found their exercise and satisfaction in a religion now pro­ nounced to be incompatible with the new knowledge. Natural instincts are not to be suppressed by the theories of savants, however scientific; and it is argued that the religious sentiment is as much a per­ manent factor of human nature as the logical intellect, and must, necessarily, �9& THE SERVICE OF MAN survive its endlessly varied and often un­ stable conclusions. The religious sentiment, or that group of emotions so-called, is one thing, and the Christian or any particular religion is another. The religious sentiment has, during the course of ages, assumed many divergent forms, and at this day is repre­ sented in the most dissimilar and diver­ sified beliefs and ceremonies. The original elements of human nature are all capable of morphological develop­ ment and change in their manifestations, although they remain fundamentally the same. Nothing could well be a more permanent constituent of human nature than the instinct which leads to marriage; but few things have varied more than the institution of marriage. From marriage by capture, through polygamy, polyandry, down to the monogamy of modern States, which still show great differences of detail in their laws on the subject, the legal relations of the sexes have varied with the knowledge, culture, and civilisa­ tion of the times. It is the same with regard to government and civil institu­ tions, with regard to war and its usages, with regard to the notions of right and wrong. What reason can be given to lead us to suppose that the religious sen­ timent alone should remain fixed and crystallised in one form, and that a recent one, which supervened in historical times, and was preceded by a great variety of previous forms ? Obviously none. When, therefore, we are asked what religion we propose to substitute in place of the old one, now threatened with ex­ tinction, the answer is that no such pre­ tension is entertained for a moment. Religions are organic growths, and are no more capable of fabrication than animals or plants. The notion that indi­ vidual men can found religions—that is, invent them out of their own heads, and set them going, is on a par with the notion that men can found States and create policies which last for ages. Both notions were prevalent, and not irrational once, when neither man nor, society was conceived as subject to natural laws. So it was really believed that Lycurgus founded the Spartan State, and Romulus the Roman; that Moses founded Juda­ ism, and Mohammed, Islam. No mis­ conception could be greater, and none is more certain to disappear. That longprepared changes are often suddenly accomplished, under the inspiring leader­ ship of a great man, is beyond question; and it is quite natural that the great man’s name should be associated with the change in which he took a prominent part. But he did not make the change, in the sense of founding or beginning something new, which would not have existed without him. His function, and it was great indeed, was to have intellect enough to see the need of change, and courage and will enough to help it for­ ward, to direct forces which were already at hand. All great changes in Church or State exemplify this truth, in propor­ tion as we are able to observe them with accuracy of detail. Nothing is more certain than that, in one sense, Julius Caesar overthrew the Republic, and founded the Empire of Rome. But how long had such a revolution been pre­ paring ? From the days of the Scipios, or of Sulla and Marius. Or might it not be dated from the earliest con­ stitution of Rome, which rendered a municipal form of government inade­ quate, and finally impossible, for a wide Empire? All great social revolutions result from long precedent, although, perhaps, occult growth, as parturition, in the body physical, pre-supposes em­ bryonic growth. Similarly with regard to the Reformation. Luther, in vulgar Catholic or Protestant opinion, is credited with the whole glory, or infamy, of the revolt from Rome. But from the days of Wicliffe and Huss the entire Church had been seething with projects of reform; and Luther can only claim the honour of having, in the fulness of time, given the critical impulse which liberated forces accumulated during hun­ dreds of previous years. There can be no question, therefore, �THE SERVICE OF MAN of making and offering a New Religion to the world at the present juncture. Our first task must be to try and dis­ cover what is the spontaneous tendency of thought and sentiment on this matter. What is the direction which evolution may be expected to take ? If that can be ascertained, a great point will be gained. Three courses are always open to men called upon to deal with great social and moral tendencies. They may be blindly resisted ; they may be blindly stimulated and hastened; they may, by careful study and observation of their a nature, be largely controlled and directed; J that is to say, they may be dealt with in a spirit of reaction, or in a spirit of revo' lution, or in a spirit of orderly and con­ scious progress. Reaction, when con­ ducted on a large scale with unflinching vigour, by no means always fails. The Moslem Obscurantists in Spain suc­ ceeded in crushing Arab philosophy.1 The Catholic Church has several times ex­ tirpated opinions, by the efficient method of killing those who held them. In Spain, Bohemia, Italy, and Belgium, Protestantism was stamped out, like the rinderpest, by prompt and persevering slaughter. It is a method difficult of prolonged application; and it is gene­ rally avenged. The state of religion in Catholic countries, and the animosity felt towards it by large numbers of the proletariat, are not encouraging examples. The Protestants have not been behind r the Catholics in their willingness to prosecute, but they have seldom had equal power. In Ireland, however, they nearly reached the highest level of per­ formance in that line. With what disaster to all of us is now only too apparent. How evil, on the other hand, the revo­ lutionary spirit can be has been well shown by France in the eighteenth cen­ tury—first in speculation, and afterwards in politics. The precipitate conclusions of the philosophes, although proceeding on principles fundamentally sound, as ’ See Renan, Averroes. 97 subsequent results have p’roved, were yet marked by a heat and haste which led to the romantic reaction, and the Idealist and Transcendental Philosophies which nearly suspended rational speculation for half a century. It is unnecessary to dwell on the indelible harm done to orderly progress by the violence of the Revolution, which to this day supplies reactionaries with some of their best weapons against a large and generous liberalism. Perhaps the sober, prudent, middle course we have mentioned, which, while frankly accepting and using the new lights obtained, does not exaggerate their illuminating power, is destined in this age to avoid the dangers associated with either of the two extremes. The essence of practical religion at all times has been Sacrifice. However the origin of religion is to be explained—and anthropologists in later times seem to have elucidated the subject with much success by ancestor worship, the ghost, and other theories—propitiatory sacrifice has been the unfailing mark and memo­ rial of religious belief. It is unnecessary to produce evidence of a statement so redundantly supported. "What chiefly deserves notice in this connection is the progressive change in the character of the sacrifice, corresponding with mental evo­ lution. In earlier' times human sacri­ fices were, probably, everywhere regarded as the most pleasing and powerful with the deities. Every form of possession valued by primitive people was readily lavished on the altar of the gods, either to avert their wuath or to secure their favour; cattle, first-fruits especially, as at once the most costly to the worshipper and the most acceptable to the Divinity. In time this gross form of propitiation was transcended, and even the later Jewish prophets speak of it with disdain. As the conceptions of the moral cha­ racter of the gods grew loftier, the notion of the sacrifices calculated to please them rose in proportion. As men attained to worthier ideas of moral excellence, they recognised that sacrifice of their own baser instincts was likely to be the most H �98 THE SERVICE OF MAN pleasing offering to a moral deity. “ A wise man,” says a passage in the Insti­ tutes of Menu, “should constantly dis­ charge all the moral duties, though he perform not constantly the ceremonies of religion, since he falls low if while he performs ceremonial acts only, he dis­ charges not his moral duties.”* And the same law prescribes “content, returning good for evil, resistance to sensual appe­ tites, abstinence from illicit gain, purifi­ cation, coercion of the organs....... veracity, and freedom from wrath.”23 Yet the cruelty and obscenity of the early Hindu religion are beyond doubt. The frank indecencies and immoralities of primitive creeds are in time explained away by mystical allegories of the most spiritual purity. “ The lascivious form of a naked Venus,” says Gibbon, refer­ ring to the fancies of the Neo-Platonists, “ was tortured into the discovery of some moral precept or some physical truth, and the castration of Atys explained the revolution of the sun between the tropics, or the separation of the human soul from vice and error.”3 The primitive meaning of the phallus in India, according to Mr. Wilson, is entirely forgotten. “ The form under which the Lingam is wor­ shipped, that of a column, suggests no impure ideas, and few of the uneducated Hindus attach any other idea to it than it is Siva; they are not aware of its typical character.”4 The next point is that primitive reli­ gion had little or no connection with human welfare, apart from the action of supernatural beings. Its chief or only object was to guard the worshipper from injuries which came from the spirit­ world, or to procure him benefits from the same origin. From a natural, mun­ dane point of view, primitive religion was oftener evil than good. It sacrificed human life and property on the imaginary propitiation of fictitious deities. It is highly probable, indeed, that even the 1 2 3 4 Mill's History of India, Book II., cap. 6. Ibid., Book II., cap. 6. Decline and Fall, c. xxiii. Note to Mill’s India, loc. cit. most horrid primitive cults were indi­ rectly beneficial, as means of discipline, and of adapting to social conditions the semi-brutal instincts of prehistoric man. In that respect primitive religion re­ sembled war, which, destructive as it was in one sense, is still recognised as one of the most educational phases which humanity has passed through. But, just as the antagonism between sacrifice and morality was gradually overcome, so the hostility of primitive religion to human welfare was in time replaced by an approximation to concord between them. The angle of divergence became pro­ gressively less. Worship of the gods tended more and more to coincide with the welfare of man. The humanisation of the various polytheistic religions of the world has been very unequal, both in degree and rapidity, depending, as it necessarily must, on the unequal progress in knowledge and civilisation. The Hindus in three thousand years have made less progress in purging their primitive beliefs of their cruelty and grossness than the Romans did in five hundred years. But the general rule holds good, that a progressive people, even without foreign help from more advanced populations, tends to outlive the primitively barbarous and noxious elements of its creed, and to retain those which harmonise with general utility.1 The Christian religion has been no exception to this rule; in fact, it would not be easy to mention a religion which has profited more by the general growth of knowledge and civilisation than the Christian. It has been claimed, not without a show of reason, that it is a peculiar and exceptional merit of Chris­ tianity that it has been able to adapt itself to most unequal and divergent stages of culture, and that it has met the wants of barbarous and civilised races with equal success. Though the time is obviously approaching, if it 1 Polybius’s testimony to the value of the Roman religion, as enforcing honesty, is too well known to need quoting (lib. vi., cap. 56). �THE SERVICE OF MAN has not been already reached, when its alleged adequacy to the needs of civilised society becomes more and more questionable, it may be frankly ad­ mitted that Christianity has surpassed all other religions in its power of keeping up with human evolution. The fact is, no doubt, owing to the large element of Greek philosophy grafted on Christianity by the Greek and Latin fathers, and even by St. Paul. The religion would probably not have survived into modern times unless it had possessed this elas­ ticity and capacity of modification, which have allowed it to exist side by side with the most divergent beliefs on other subjects. A Catholic Christian of the fifth and one of the nineteenth century would, if they could meet in the flesh, agree in reference to the Creeds of the Church, but they would be able to agree in little besides. If we could have a conversation with the great St. Augustine, we should soon fail to find common ground for argument, whether as to matters of fact, principles of reasoning, or even as to the interpreta­ tion of Scripture; and it may even be doubted if the present able and accom­ plished Pope, who has so deep a venera­ tion for St. Thomas Aquinas, would not find a prolonged discussion on things in general difficult to maintain with the Angel of the Schools. Yet St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Leo XIII., must be admitted to be thoroughly orthodox and authentic Christians. But this flexibility and adaptability of Christianity on the intellectual side are not the qualities with which we are chiefly concerned at this moment. The point I would bring out' is the incomparably greater em­ phasis laid by modern Christians on all that concerns human well-being than was usually done by their predecessors. In the old days the Faith, holy living, and especially holy dying, were the great themes of Christian preachers. The true Faith was literally all-important, as, without it, you were hopelessly lost, whatever else you might do or be. Hence, the Faith was to be fought for 99 and suffered for at any cost. Wars, massacres, burnings, tortures, were trivial considerations compared with the one thing needful, which alone could lead to heaven. And we know that these plagues were scattered through many centuries without stint or remorse. After the true Faith was gained, the next chief thing was to make a good use of it, and. by a holy life and a repentant death to. save your soul. Earthly miseries, famines,, pestilences, ignorance, chronic poverty, were lamentable, no doubt; but the famines and the pestilences were espe­ cially so, as manifestations of God’s wrath, who was thus chastising a wicked world. Their proper and only antidote was prayer, and repentance, and humilia­ tion before God, who might thereby be induced to stay his hand. Such afflic­ tions were incidental to the lot of man, the appropriate retribution for sin, to be borne with resignation. As for combating them by human means and knowledge,, with a view to suppressing them, if such an idea could have emerged, it would have been unquestionably pronounced impious and shocking. The only recog­ nised form of relief was charity : the rich must give of their abundance to the poor, and they would be repaid in heaven. The Church of Rome gave practical effect to this view by the admi­ rable and useful institution of, first, the Freres de la Charite, founded by the Portuguese Johann Ciudad, 1497, and afterwards of the Filles de la Misericorde, the work of the saintly Vincent of Paul, 1634. Every form of praise and honour is due to those good men and women who devoted themselves without stint to the relief of human misery, regardless of the more profitable pursuits of Church politics and theological controversy. But the very foundation of these institutions showed that they supplied a great want which had not been furnished by the Church before ; and they were, after all, only a small and subordinate section of the vast hierarchy which had shared the dominion of the world with the temporal power. St. Vincent of Paul met in the �IOO THE SERVICE OF MAN ranks of the secular clergy with some of his most stubborn opponents.1 A Now, it is hardly too much to say that in recent times the whole attitude of the clergy in all countries has been changed with regard to social questions. Nearly every form of relief now, in greater or lesser degree, passes through their hands. The improvement of the condition of the poor seems very often to be the chief occupation of many a hard-worked parish priest. To rescue •children from vice and temptation, to inform their minds with virtuous prin­ ciples, to clothe and feed their bodies, •to ameliorate the dwellings of their parents, and admit a ray of light and brightness into the squalor of their daily lives—these and similar objects occupy the time and minds of Christian ministers to a degree which was never even remotely approached in the past. In other words, Christian doctrine, or, at least, Christian practice, has been gradually brought into harmony with human and terrestrial wants, so as almost to run parallel with them. The world has much changed. The cessation of religious controversy is a surprising phenomenon. In place of the storm .and fury with which polemics formerly filled the air, we have now a great calm. The small sputter of theological disputes still occasionally heard is as the explo­ sion of squibs and crackers compared to that of the heavy ordnance in the mighty controversies of old. Thus we find two permanent factors running through the religions of the past in all their changes of outward presenta­ tion : sacrifices on the part of the wor­ shipper ; and a gradual approximation of the service of the gods to the service of man. Neither of these factors is the exclusive property of any one religion; and both of them in some degree, perhaps, may belong to all. They are quite capable of detachment and isola­ tion from the surroundings with which they are usually associated in theological 1 See Feillet, La Misire an Temps de la Fronde. creeds. Sacrifice admits of almost in­ finite degrees both in quality and quan­ tity, from an offering of a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons up to a hundred oxen; from the most partial control of the coarsest passions up to saintly abnegation of every impure or selfish desire. And the spirit of sacrifice, the postponing of self to others, the giving up what the natural man loves and values, whether possessions or cherished lusts, is so little restricted to the worshippers of a God or gods that it may be said in its highest form to be unattainable by them. The worshipper of a god never quite transcends the hope of a recompense for his devotion—not from men, but from “ his Father which seeth in secret,” and who shall reward him openly. And this feeling springs inevitably from the very conception of a deity, especially if he be God Almighty. A creature can be on no terms of recipro­ city with his Creator; he can only be a recipient from God, never a Tenderer back of good. The very thought of performing an act of kindness or sym­ pathy to God is absurd. The infinite disparity between the. two beings, man and his Maker, has as a consequence that “ every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.” Only to his fellows can man be completely altruistic, “hoping for nothing again.” That numbers of men and women among the higher races are capable of acts of unalloyed altruism, in which there is not a vestige of after­ thought tending to self-advantage, will only be denied by the naturally cynical, or by those educated in an evil religious or philosophic system. The mother who tends her sick child and scorns any counsels to spare her health and strength ; the rough miner who bids his mate seize the one chance of escape up the shaft, as he has a wife and children, whereas the speaker is a bachelor; the surgeon who sucks diphtheric poison from a dying child’s throat and dies himself in consequence—are examples of the love and sacrifice even now to be found in the nobler hearts. And it is �THE SERVICE OF MAN denying evolution in fact and theory to question the certainty that they will become less exceptional than they now are. But in this capacity of sacrifice regardless of self we have the purest essence of the best religions—a human quality which exists, which has been evolved in the long travail of the world, but which may be cultivated with pros­ pects of vastly greater increase now that its supreme beauty and price are per­ ceived and valued. When the mental and moral qualities of man are regarded as subject, in common with other forms of life, to the law of heredity and variation, their cultivation and improvement will be conducted on the scientific basis which has already produced such sur­ prising results in other parts of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The plasticity of human nature is even yet but little appreciated, though what the Spartans, the Stoics, and the Jesuits succeeded in doing with their imperfect empirical methods is suggestive enough. But these, or the two latter at least, only contemplated the education of the individual. What is wanted is the con­ scious cultivation, enlightened by science, of society as a whole. As regards the end to which religions have in an unconscious way more or less tended—the general well-being—there will probably be little difficulty in admit­ ting that it is an object which civilised man has proved himself capable of attaining in a considerable measure already. The superiority of the modern nations, not only to savages, but even to their own not very remote ancestors, is beyond dispute; and this not only in reference to physical well-being, but to all the higher sentiments and endow­ ments of man. Imperfect as our social state still is, heartrending as the condi­ tion of the poor in town and country must be pronounced to be, it is, never­ theless, vastly in advance of previous con­ ditions, and our own sensitiveness and shame on the subject, though we are not yet sensitive and ashamed enough, are in themselves evidence of improvement. ioi Arduous as the social problem is acknow­ ledged to be, and sore as the suffering is likely to be before it is finally solved, few can deny that it is capable of solu­ tion, and that by human means. The abolition of laws which favour the rich and strong, and sacrifice the poor and weak, has, in a small way, begun, and we may depend that in a democracy it will not easily be arrested. A better distri­ bution and a moralisation of wealth are approaching with a rapidity which is not exaggerated by the panic fears of the amazed Few, who hear with astonish­ ment and horror that the world is-no longer made for idlers only. The period of social revolution into which we are about to enter will probably be marked by many mistakes, and not a few crimes. Man’s capacity for blunder is very great. He smarts for his blunders, and in time corrects them. But the point to be noted is that the social revolution will be ac­ complished on secular principles, that this province of practical life is once forall severed from any theological inter­ ference. The proletariat of Europe is resolved to have its fair share of the banquet of life, quite regardless of the good or bad things in store for it in the next world.1 It comes, therefore, to this, that the spirit of sacrifice evolved in the theologicaL 1 See the Times (which seldom outruns public­ opinion), November 18th, 1884. In the third leading article it is said, speaking of the East London Mission:—“The great enemy which has to be met in dealing with this class [the poor] is not active hostility, but total and almost impenetrable indifference. Hostility to the clergy, as such, cannot be said to be widespread in London...... The London artisan looks on the clergyman as at worst a man who is engaged in a work with which he individually has little or no concern; he does not interfere with the parson, and he hopes that the parson will not interfere with him.......Taken in the mass, the lower classes in London are too much occupied in the struggle for existence, and in the attempt to make their lives endurable, to give many thoughts to the other world.” The writer con­ trasts the very different temper of the Parisian ouvrier, who “regards the priest as a monster”; but he admits that there is an element of active hostility to the clergy in our midst. �102 THE SERVICE OF MAN stage is now severed from and inde­ pendent of its parent. Its office is no longer the same. Sacrifice to invisible godo, with prayer sent up to the immor­ tals, imploring pardon, or peace, or some earthly good, have afforded hope and consolation to the sons of men in the long, dark centuries when knowledge was not, when visible man and nature were so hostile that faith and trust in the unseen seemed the only refuge, that only “beyond the veil” was a sure friend to be found. A bitter experience has at last taught us that the immortals are deaf, that no prayers, however passionate, are heard, save by the care-laden hearts which utter them. Thus, the worship of deities has passed into the “ Service of Man.” Instead of Theolatry, we have Anthropolatry. The divine service has become human ser­ vice. The accumulated experience of mankind is beginning to bear fruit. Two things have been ascertained with suffi­ cient exactness to serve as guides, both in practice and theory. First, the kind of conduct needed by a social condition such as ours—that is to say, the outlines ■of a progressive morality suited to the present age, are fairly settled. Secondly, the kind of social condition desired, and ■already partially in view, which shall supersede the present inferior one, is also in its main features apprehended. The two factors work together to one result, “complete life carried on under social conditions.”1 The Service of Man consists in furthering both. The higher moralisation of the individuals composing the social group will raise the quality of the social group itself, and the improved group will react upon individuals and enable them to lead higher lives. In a word, we are now in a position to pursue human well-being as a conscious aim, with good prospect of success. We know fairly well the road along which we intend to travel, and we know the kind of human co-operation needed to enable 1 Herbert Spencer’s Data of Ethics, p. 130. us to do so; the type of character and disposition needed to render social help. And we know, further, that society possesses now, in a degree it never possessed before, the means of exact­ ing conformity to this type. Public opinion, as it used to be called, but for which a better expression would be the “collective conscience,” is already able to impose a standard of public and private morals, and to punish, with penalties keenly felt, a manifest infe­ riority to it. Even in the political world singleness of purpose, a true public and social spirit, are valued more than great talent and eloquence without them. A life of selfish ease and indulgence is pardoned to great wealth and position with less readiness than formerly; and, with the growth of democracy, such a temper must necessarily spread, both in extent and intensity. The remainder of our subject will, therefore, be considered under the two aspects just indicated : (1) the improve­ ment of the individual, and (2) the im­ provement of society. We can serve men firstly, and perhaps chiefly, by im­ proving ourselves, and this in all respects, physically, mentally, morally. Without a high standard of health, duties become difficult or impossible to perform, and our whole efficiency is lessened. In these days of increased knowledge, when so much of youth, and even of manhood, is taken up with preparatory study and training, the longevity of its worthier members is a distinct gain to society. A vigorous old age is able to accomplish out of all proportion more than several careers, however brilliant, cut short in youth. Few, or none, are now likely to question the value of mental improve­ ment. It remains true, all the same, that our notions of education are lamentably inadequate, and that the higher forms of it are not even conceived as possible or desirable in our so-called universities. As regards moral training, finally, , no one will dispute its paramount necessity; but the subject is obscured and the result vitiated by the emphasis laid by �ON THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE the religious public, not on morals, but on repentance ; not on the vigorous and constant performance of social duty throughout life, but on making our peace with God, some time, it signifies not how short a time, before life closes. What humanity needs is not people who lead unsocial and wicked lives, and are very sorry when about to die—when, by the nature of the case, they can do no more harm nor good ; but people who, at an early period, begin to render valu­ able service to the good cause, and con­ tinue rendering more valuable service as they advance in years. We cannot take regrets and repentance in lieu of work; performance only avails. To prevent I 103 misconception, even for a moment, it may be added that, by performance, advance in spiritual life is by no means excluded; and that the contemplative life is not placed below the active life, but contrariwise, as will be seen further on. The improvement of society, again, is an object to which nearly all persons will declare themselves favourable. But many prejudices and passions, largely incompatible with any serious improve­ ment, will need to be overcome before our advance in that direction can become as rapid and assured as is desirable. There will be no want of work for those who wish to engage in the Service of Man. Chapter IX. ON THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE For this service to be efficient, it is obvious that men must be adequately trained for it. From time immemorial, education for some object or other has been practised by mankind. The young savage is taught to hunt, fish, and shoot with persevering assiduity. Every kind of war implies discipline and drill, how­ ever rude. Political life, wherever it exists, inevitably leads to an education fitting men for the treatment of public affairs. Besides these partial ends, religion, in all societies above the lowest, is charged with the general and para­ mount end of training men in the worship and service of the invisible but all-powerful Being or Beings, who are supposed to dispose of human happiness in this world and the next. This has ever rightly been regarded as the most important of all training, because it concerns every one, and incomparably more momentous interests are involved in its efficient carrying out. The culti­ vation of human nature, in some degree or direction, is as old as humanity. But the partiality and imperfection of this cultivation are equally old. The daily acquisition of food occupies the whole life of the savage, almost as com­ pletely as it does the lives of the birds and animals which he snares and kills. With the growth of knowledge and wealth, wider objects engage man’s atten­ tion, and exact a corresponding culture to secure their attainment. But these ends, though wider than those of savage life, are still very narrow, consisting in success in petty warfare with neighbour­ ing States, or in party struggles within the primitive city. Even the worship of the gods is stiffly exclusive and partial, and confined to local or tribal divinities, who are “jealous” in the extreme of any rivals in popular reverence. This imperfection of culture has con­ tinued to modern times, though, with every stride in civilisation, it has been �104 THE SERVICE OF MAN lessened, and replaced by something better and larger. Yet, it is still obvi­ ously local, partial, and imperfect. No­ where yet does the aim exist to produce the best human being possible ; to train all the faculties of the body, the mind, and the heart, with the sole object of making the most of them. Men are still trained for special trades and pro­ fessions, for special countries, and, above all, for special religions. And, in the present low development of the human mind and civilisation, it cannot be other­ wise, or at least, much otherwise. But there can be no doubt that one of the most assured and practical means of improving society is to improve the individual men and women who com­ pose it. This is strongly but vaguely expressed in the cry for education; though one is often tempted to think that none needs education more than the popular clamourer for it. Still, a great advance has been made in the mere recognition that the cultivation of individuals, however imperfect, is a matter of primary importance to the general welfare. Deeper views on the subject will come in time. For the purpose of this essay, we need not regard the subject from this wide and public point of view. We may limit ourselves to the consideration—ample enough—of the change in the theory of human cultivation, likely to follow the substitution of the service of man for the service of God ; and we will do so under the three heads—(i) the body, (2) the mind, and (3) the heart of man. 1. On the first we need not dwell long. Medical science has nearly solved the problem of health. The amount of exercise and nourishment, the kinds and qualities of foods and drinks, the limits of work and relaxation, the salubrity of sites and dwellings and clothing—these and similar topics connected with the health of the body physical are so fairly well understood that anyone with a moderately strong constitution, amenable to good advice, may keep in satisfactory health. Many of the worst diseases have been almost disarmed, though a few, like cancer, are said to be on the increase ; and there is a great set-off in the fact that the very success of medical skill and science has produced serious harm by saving numbers of weak and bad con­ stitutions, which would formerly have perished, but which now survive to pro­ pagate an unhealthy stock—an evil which will probably be diminished or removed by stricter views of marriage and the pro­ creation of children. The paramount importance of health for the adequate discharge of public and private duties can escape no one. It is probable that in a reformed public opinion of the future a breakdown in health, when obviously caused by excess or impru­ dence, or culpable ignorance, will be regarded as a species of bankruptcy and severely judged. A servant of Humanity has’ no right to be unable to perform his duties to her. 2. Neither need we dwell long on the cultivation of the mind, interesting as is the subject, and much as there would be to say about it in another connection. The utility of knowledge is now obvious to everybody, and nearly all departments are fairly well-cultivated, some of them with splendid results. Science now is quite able to take care of itself, and we have no reason to fear that it will not be equal to the task. The great danger is specialism, which cultivates one small segment of the vast circle of knowledge, and remains contentedly ignorant of the rest. Specialism cannot be spared, if only for the reason that he who is not a specialist in some one thing is likely to be a sciolist in all things. But, next to the sciolist, the pure specialist is, perhaps, the least efficient servant of man. 3. I now come to the third, and in­ comparably the most important, of all the forms of human cultivation—the cultivation of the heart and feelings. I have already, in a previous chapter, attempted to show that, as a support of morality, Christian doctrine and practice were inherently defective; inasmuch as that the true end of Christianity was not �ON THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE morality in this world, but salvation in the next. My object must now be to show that a cultivation of human nature on positive and human principles will have a different result; first, because of the different end; secondly, because of the different means and theories adopted with a view to that end. The cultivation of nature, vegetable or animal, since it has become scientific, has proceeded on the assumption of a universal law of causation, on which were based experiment and proof. The agriculturist and the grazier, aided by the chemist, have discovered the most propitious conditions, foods, soils, stocks, etc., for their special objects in view, and after great time and pains they have fairly mastered the problem. The only part of it which they have not mastered is the meteorological part; but in other respects their success has been eminently satisfactory. Even pestilences in the animal and vegetable world are stopped, and prevented from spreading, if not from appearing; as the extirpation of the rinder-pest, the silkworm disease, and perhaps, most remarkable of all, the destruction of locusts in Cyprus, suffi­ ciently show. It was different even in the Augustan age of Rome— “...... alitur vitium, vivitque tegendo, Dum medicas adhibere mantis ad volnera pastor Abnegat, aut meliora deos sedet omina.poscensT1 Epidemic diseases were regarded by Jew and Gentile as special proofs of the anger of the Deity; whom men sought by prayer and sacrifice to propitiate that the plague might be stayed. . “Help us, O Lares ! help us, Lares, help us! And thou, O Marmar, suffer not Fell plague and ruin’s rot Our folk to devastate.”2 In these cases we now look for help to the sanitary inspector or the veterinary surgeon. Now, the scientific cultivation of human nature needs the adoption of the same method and principles as have 1 Verg., Georg., iii. 454. 2 Song of the Arvai Brothers. i°5 been so fruitful of good results in other departments. We must cease to believe in miracle and divine aid ; and, proceed­ ing on the firm ground of cause and effect, not expect to reap except where and when we have ploughed and sown. The theological doctrine of grace, and the metaphysical doctrine of the freedom of the will, are alike fatal to a steady cultivation of human nature from a moral point of view. Both presuppose an unknown factor, whose presence or absence cannot be foreseen, and whose action cannot be measured. “It is here, it is there, it is gone,” and no one can tell why. It at once upsets prevision of the future, and cancels all record of and inference from the past. An authorised expounder1 of Catholic doctrine remarks : “Nothing, absolutely nothing, neither little nor much, can be done without the grace of God. We cannot do a good action, nor produce any good fruit conducive to salvation, without the grace of God.” “ St. Augustine,” remarks Canon Liddon, “ says there is no reason, apart from the grace of God, why the highest saint should not be the worst criminal.”2 In an instant, therefore, a criminal may be­ come a saint, or a saint may become a criminal, according to the good pleasure of God, “ who hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.” If we assume, as we surely may, that the saintly character is marked by rare and precious qualities, we are made to see, on this theory, by what a frail and uncertain tenure they exist. It is hardly necessary to point out that this doctrine must induce an indifference, almost a recklessness, as to the culti­ vation of human nature, so far as the heart and feelings are concerned. We cannot be sure for twenty-four hours together whether we shall belong to the diabolically wicked or the angelically good. The analogy between the theological 1 Power, Catechism, vol. ii., p. 33. 2 “ Oxford Sermons,” VI. �io6 THE SERVICE OF MAN doctrine of grace and the metaphysical tenet of free-will is obvious. They both appeared prominently together in the controversy between Pelagius and St. Augustine. Free-will is a sort of secular correlative of theological grace. It delivers over man, not the arbitrary inspiration of divine grace given or with­ held, but to the arbitrary autocracy of his own power of volition; which can do with him what he pleases, if it pleases. “ According to the doctrine of free-will, there is an ultimate power of choice in the human will, which, how­ ever strongly it may be drawn, or tempted, or attracted to decide one way or another by external appeals or motives, is not ruled and decided by such motives, but by the will itself only.”12 Again : “ While there is life there is hope and there is fear. The most inveterate habits of vice still leave a power of self­ recovery in the man if he will but exert it; the most confirmed habits of virtue still leave the liability to a fall.”3 The close analogy, almost amounting to identity, between the doctrines of free­ will and grace, is here very clearly shown. By encouraging the idea that the most inveterate habits of vice can be reformed by an act of will, the para­ mount importance of habit is masked or even implicitly denied ; that is to say, that one of the most important and widely dominant laws of biology is denied, or the moral nature of man is withdrawn from its dominion. If the most confirmed habits of virtue are no guarantee against a “ fall ” (that means, can be destroyed by an exertion of the wicked will), it is obvious that patient and protracted efforts towards self-disci­ pline and the higher life is so much labour lost. The subjugation of self and evil desires carried on for years may end in a “ fall,” and gratification of our most depraved instincts. And, contrariwise, “inveterate habits of vice ” 1 Mozley, Augustinian Doctrine of Predesti­ nation, p. 217. 2 Ibid , p. 247. are not the serious danger one might suppose, as the power of self-recovery is always present and capable of throwing them off, if the man will but exert it. While there is life there is hope and fear; and up to the last the criminal may become a saint, and the saint a criminal, as St. Augustine said. It is evident that the doctrine of the freedom of the will supposes the phe­ nomena of the mind to be exempt from the laws and conditions which regulate the rest of nature; and the more courageous metaphysicians do not hesi­ tate to make this assumption. “ Can the knowledge of Nature,” asks the late Professor Green, “ be itself a part of Nature, in that sense of Nature in which it is said to be an object of knowledge P”1 It is not easy to see why the subject which cognises the object should be less Nature than the object cognised. The image of an object in the mirror which reflects is as much Nature as the object reflected. Hojyever, it is not necessary for the purpose in hand to make a flight into the fine aether of Kantian meta­ physics. If we consult fact instead of fiction, we shall conclude that moral qualities are, to say the least, as per­ manent and durable as any biological phenomena. The digestive functions, the circulation of the blood, and the secretions of the body are not more periodic and permanent than the passions of the mind. Indeed, the latter are the more lasting and persistent of the two groups. The liver of a miser is more likely to break down in the course of his life than his passion for gold. The muscular heart of the benevolent man may, and often does, fail before the spiritual heart which makes him un­ wearied in doing deeds of mercy. The common sense of mankind has always, when not perverted by the necessities of a theory, recognised the permanence of moral qualities, not only in the indi­ vidual, but in the race— “ Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis ; 1 Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 11. �ON THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE Est in juvencis, est in equis patrum Virtus, neque inbellem feroces Progenerant aquilm columbam.”1 107 not attend the sacraments, religious ser­ vices which, at other times, he would not have neglected for the world. Report, however, said that he and his associates passed their time in alternate scenes of the exercises of religion and debauchery; spending their day in meetings for prayer and pious conversation, and their nights in lewdness and revelling. Some men are of opinion that they could not be equally sincere in both. I am apt to think that they were....... There is no doubt of the profligacy; and I have frequently seen them drowned in tears during the whole of a sacramental Sunday; when, so far as my observation could reach, they could have no rational object to act a part. The Marquis of Lothian of that day, whom I have seen attending the sacrament at Prestonpans with Lord Grange, and whom no man suspected of plots or hypocrisy, was much addicted to debauchery. The natural casuistry of the passions grants dispensations with more facility than the Church of Rome.”1 There are strong rumours that such contradictions between faith and practice were not unknown in Scotland in a more recent past. Now let us take the milder, but not less instructive, case of Dr. Johnson. Few men have had more devout faith in God’s grace, and more firm belief in free-will, than Samuel Johnson. He was, in intention at least, highly conscien­ tious. In practice, as he was the first to admit, he often fell short of his standard of duty. We can hardly imagine more fervent prayers and determined resolves than he made with a view to breaking off bad habits and turning over a new leaf. Yet the success was very small, as we learn from the frequent repentances and renewed resolves published by Boswell, That the two doctrines just referred to, of grace and of free-will, have fre­ quently operated to the injury of morality is proved by examples too numerous to quote. Louis XV., one of the most profligate men in history, was punctilious in his religious exercises ; and, as Carlyle says, used to catechise the inmates of his harem in the Parc aux Cerfs, “that they might retain their orthodoxy.” But the doctrine of grace, which he had no doubt thoroughly grasped, allowed him to feel that he could at any time repent, and that when he did he would be freed from his sins. In one of the finest historical pictures ever drawn, even by Carlyle, we are admitted to the side of the “ sinner’s death-bed,” to see his anxiety for the sacraments, and how he made the amende honorable to God. If it be objected that this is only a sample of Popish superstition, we will take from a sect the most opposed to Catholicism, that of the Scotch Presby­ terians, the case of the famous James Erskine of Grange. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, in his amusing autobiography, speaks as follows of this Protestant worthy. Referring to his father’s inti­ macy with Lord Grange (Dr. Carlyle’s father, like himself, was a minister of the Church of Scotland), and to their frequent meetings for prayer, he says : “After these meetings for private prayer, however, in which they passed several hours before supper, praying alternately, they did not part without wine. Not­ withstanding this intimacy, there were periods of half a year at a time when there was no intercourse between them at all. My father’s conjecture was that at those times Lord Grange was engaged in a course of debauchery at Edinburgh, and interrupted his religious exercises. For in those intervals he not only neglected my father’s company, but absented himself from church, and did “ I have now spent fifty-five years in resolving; having, from the earliest time, almost, that I can remember, been forming schemes of a better life. I have done nothing........ O God, grant me to 1 Hor. iv. 4. 29. 1 Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle, p. 13. �THE SERVICE OF MAN io8 resolve aright, and to keep my resolu­ tions, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.”1 The chief faults with which Johnson reproached himself were waste of time, procrastination, and a torpid laziness which made early rising almost an im­ possibility to him. Against these faults he perpetually made resolutions, and prayed fervently for divine help to keep them. He resolved and prayed in vain ; as we know, not only from his own confession, but from abundant other testimony. Boswell is delighted with Johnson’s tenderness of conscience and “ fervent desire of improvement.” It did not occur to Boswell that he had given, in other parts of his work, ample reasons which accounted for Johnson’s failure on this head. Johnson’s habits were wholly incompatible with health of mind or body, and they were peculiarly adverse to the alertness of spirit of which he was always lamenting his deficiency. How could a man get up early who always sat up at night as long as he could find any one to keep him company ? How could a man retain a prompt and clear energy of mind, ready for all demands, who never scrupled to gorge himself to reple­ tion whenever he had an opportunity? “ I never knew,”said Boswell, “any man who relished good eating more than he did. When at table, he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment; his looks seem riveted to his plate; nor would he, unless in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others, till he had satisfied his appetite—-which was so fierce, and indulged with such intense­ ness, that while in the act of eating, the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible.”2 How much of Johnson’s physical suffering and moral deficiencies were owing to his habitual gross feeding could perhaps only be determined by a physician who had carefully examined the patient; but that his obesity and shortness of breath, his low spirits and choleric temper, were largely attributable to his self-indulgence there can hardly be a doubt. If Johnson had been a determinist, and cultivated his nature on rational principles, he would have known that while he retained his usual habits he could not overcome his sloth. A light but nutritious diet, sufficient exercise in the fresh air to induce a pleasant fatigue, frequent cold baths, moderation in all liquors, especially tea, and early hours of going to bed, would probably, in a few months, have enabled him to throw off his lethargy. The doctrine of determinism is now so generally accepted that it will not be needful to dwell upon it at any length here. The cumulative argument in its favour, says Mr. Sidgwick, is so strong as almost to amount to complete proof. But its immense importance for the right cultivation of human nature seems still to be overlooked, even by its most illustrious advocates. Even Mr. Sidg­ wick is of opinion that the decision of the “ metaphysical question at issue in this free-will controversy ”z does not involve any point of general practical importance. I am unable to accept this view. It appears to me to be one of those cases in which right theory is all-important, as guiding to right practice. If we admit that “ From the universal law that, other things equal, the cohesion of psychical states is proportionate to the frequency with which they have followed one another in experience ; it is an inevitable corollary, that all actions whatever must be determined by those psychical connections which experience has generated, either in the life of the individual or in that general antecedent life of which the accumulated results are organised in his constitution,”2 we must further admit that any theory which tends to discredit or underrate “ habit,” 1 Boswell, anno 1764. 2 Boswell, anno 1763. 1 Methods of Ethics, cap. v. 2 Herbert Spencer, Psychology, vol. i., p. 500. �ON THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE tends to make human action uncertain and vacillating, tends therefore to weaken the automatic performance of good actions, which is what the well­ being of society demands. The free­ will theory openly challenges “ habit ” and encourages the belief that the most inveterate habit may be broken by an act of volition. The attention is therefore directed to the wrong side of the prob­ lem. Instead of vigilantly watching against the slow, insidious growth of evil habits, the failure to carry out good resolutions, the frequent indulgence of vicious tastes ; the mind is lulled into a false security by the belief in free-will, imagining himself independent and sovereign, when and while it is being reduced into servitude. The “cohesion of psychical states ” is so established by their frequent succession that it becomes organic. If not absolutely inseparable, their cohesion is so strong that only a violent contrary passion or motive is equal to breaking it. The most hard­ ened lie-a-bed, whom neither duty nor interest can rouse from his slumbers, would promptly sally forth if informed that the house was on fire. It is this fact—viz., that even an inveterate habit may be broken by a gust of passion, or a permanent mood of profound emotion, which has given a semblance of ration­ ality to the doctrine of free-will. No determinist ignores or underrates it. A passion of pure love has often saved a man from a swarm of minor vices. All the famous and sudden religious con­ versions from evil-living to righteousness may be traced to the same principle. Ardent love, gratitude, and veneration for Christ, when kindled, are able to snap the chains of habit, and sometimes to prevent their being welded together again. But it is rash, not to say reckless, to trust to a random cyclone of the nobler passions to save us from our sins. It is of the nature of cyclones to be violent, but of short duration. They may never come; they are apt to be transitory. And then the old cohesion of psychical states reappears, the vicious 109 habit returns, probably more virulent and domineering for its temporary exile, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. It is obvious, as already remarked, that the free-will doctrine turns the atten­ tion away from the essential and real side of moral cultivation, and directs it to an unreal side. It resembles Sir Kenelm Digby’s famous sympathetic powder for the cure of wounds. Digby professed that he would be very sorry not to do his uttermost to make it clear how the powder “(which they commonly call the powder of sympathy) doth, naturally and without any magick, cure wounds without touching them, yea, without seeing of the patient and he set forth how the cure “ is performed by applying the remedy to the blade of a sword which has wounded a body; so the sword be not too much heated by the fire; for that will make all the spirits of the blood to evaporate ; and conse­ quently the sword will contribute but little to the cure. Now, the reason why the sword may be dressed in order to the cure is, because the subtile spirits of the blood penetrate the substance of the blade, as far as it went into the body of the wounded party; and there keep their residence, unless the fire, as I said before, chase them away.” Now, the sympathetic powder is hardly more irrational in surgery than the free-will doctrine is in morals. In both cases the attention is directed to the wrong object, and diverted from the right one. While Digby was applying his remedy to the blade of a sword which had caused a wound, he was giving but little care and attention to the wound itself. Indeed, he says that neither the wound nor even the patient need ever be seen. There would have been little hope of the triumphs of modern surgery if this method of treating wounds had pre­ vailed. The real phenomena needing elucidation would not have been studied, and a fiction would have engrossed the attention of the faculty. The believers in free-will have studied ethics and the �I IO THE SERVICE OF MAN cultivation of human nature, as Digby to persons who have no power to distin­ studied surgery and the cure of wounds. guish one note from another, nor teach Their doctrine is the correlative of the painting to the colour blind, nor mathe­ sympathetic powder applied to the blade matics to those arrested by the Ass’s of the sword. The real facts which it Bridge. In other words, cultivation is behoved them to investigate they have only rationally applied where there is original quality capable of receiving it. neglected. Certainly, the moral nature of man Experience shows that moral or im­ moral action depends upon the previous does not vary less widely than the other training and character of the mind? as parts of his nature. There are men much as healthy or morbid secretions whose quality is to manifest, from their depend upon the previous habits and earliest years, a bias to vicious and malig­ constitution of the body. A man with nant crime; who have no good instincts a criminal nature and education, under on which a moral teacher can work; who given circumstances of temptation, can pursue their own selfish gratification at no more help committing crime than he any cost to others. There are also men could help having a headache under whose bias is in the contrary direction; certain conditions of brain and stomach. who, without teaching, or in spite of evil Both the crime and the headache result. teaching, show a generous, upright, un­ from a series of antecedent causes cul­ selfish spirit in all their dealings. And minating in these effects. An unhealthy these differences are congenital: such mode of living and, perhaps, a bad con­ persons differ as much as a cachectic stitution lead inevitably to the one; an constitution differs from a healthy one. evil training and, perhaps, a vicious Without saying that in the one case, character combined lead to the other. therapeutics, and in the other case, In neither case can the Will operate moral training, would be quite without directly to suppress either crime or head­ effect, we may be sure that neither thera­ ache at the moment. The physical peutics nor moral training will ever turn ailment may be removed or mitigated by the bad into the good, the evil constitu­ drugs or reformed habits of living, and tion or character into the vigorous and the moral evil also may be diminished or moral. Before drawing our practical deduc­ removed by a complete change in the ethical surroundings of the patient. But tions from these facts, let us consider neither result is certain; and depends some of these implications. Nature knows nothing of merit or on numerous circumstances—the age of the individual, the inveteracy of the desert, but only of qualities : “Alike to her the better, the worse, disease, the constitution or character in The glowing angel, the outcast corse.” either case. All. cultivation presupposes, in the But for the well-being of man and society vegetable, animal, or human subject, certain qualities in things, animals, and original qualities which justify even an men are precious in the extreme, as cer­ attempt to improve them. There are tain other qualities are pernicious. We soils which no farmer in his senses cultivate the one and discard, or even, would think of ploughing, manuring, and if possible, suppress, the other. No sowing. There are kinds of vegetables qualities are so valuable to men in society and stocks of cattle which are recognised as the moral qualities in each other’s as unfit for profitable culture. They are hearts. On nothing does happiness so left alone, either to die out or to survive much depend, both immediately and in a state of nature. In the same way remotely, as upon the good or bad in­ with human. qualities ; some original stincts of the fellow-men by whom we quality is needed to begin upon. We do are surrounded. Within certain and not give an elaborate musical education not very narrow limits these instincts �ON THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE admit of cultivation; but unless origi­ nally present in some degree they cannot be cultivated. Their presence or absence in the individual is no merit or fault of his. Nothing is more certain than that no one makes his own character. That is done for him by his parents and an­ cestors. The hero was born with his noble and fearless heart; the saint came into the world with his spontaneous apti­ tude for good works and lofty feeling; and the moral monster, the cowardly, selfish, unscrupulous criminal, was born with his evil passions inherited from pro­ genitors, near or remote. No merit or demerit attaches to the saint or the sinner in the metaphysical and mystic sense of the word. Their good or evil qualities were none of their making. A man in­ herits his brain as much as he inherits his estate. The strong nature, the vivid imagination, the tender conscience, the firm will, all come by inheritance, as much as money in the funds, or a noble demesne of broad acres. The theo­ logical doctrine that there is no such thing as merit in the sight of God, that all we have has been received as a free gift, admits of a plainly scientific ex­ pression, as a matter of fact.1 It will perhaps be said that this view does away with moral responsibility; that those who hold it cannot con­ sistently blame any crime or resent any injury; that we should not on this hypothesis reproach a garrotter who half murders us ; he is a machine, not a man 1 On this point St. Thomas uses almost Posi­ tivist expressions :— “ Et ideo meritum hominis apud Deum esse non potest nisi secundum prmsuppositionem divines ordinationis ; ita scilicet ut id homo consequatur a Deo per suam opcrationem, quasi mercedem, ad quod Deus ei virtutem operandi deputavit, sicut etiam res naturales hoc conseqietintur per proprios motus et operationes, ad quod a Deo sunt ordinal ee ; differenter tamen, quia creatura rationalis seipsum movet ad agendum per liberum arbitrium, unde sua actio habet rationem meriti; quod non est in aliis creaturis.”—Summa Theologica, Prima Secundre, Quaestio cxiv. art. prim. But for the arbitrary exception in favour of free-will, this view would coincide with mine. hi with free-will, capable of doing and for­ bearing according to the moral law. It is no more rational to blame him than it would be to blame a runaway locomotive which knocks you down, and mangles or kills you. To which the answer is, that the sooner the idea of moral responsibility is got rid of, the better it will be for society and moral education. The sooner it is perceived that bad men will be bad, do what we will—though, of course, they may be made less bad—the sooner shall we come to the conclusion that the -welfare of society demands the suppression or elimination of bad men, and the careful cultivation of the good only. This is what we do in every other department. We do not cultivate curs and screws and low breeds of cattle. On the contrary, we keep them down as much as we can. What do we gain by this fine language as to moral responsibility ? The right to blame, and so forth. Bad men are not touched by it. The bad man has no conscience; he acts after his malignant nature. The fear of sharp punishment may deter him from evil-doing, and quell his selfish appetites; but he will not be converted to virtue by our telling him he has moral responsibility, that he is a free agent to choose good or evil, and that he ought to choose the good. His mind is made up to choose the bad. But society, knowing its own interests, has a right to exclude him from its fellowship; not only to prevent and punish his evil actions, but to suppress him in some effectual way, and, above all, prevent his leaving a posterity as wicked as himself.1 Society requires good in1 So Aristotle {Ethics, lib. x. c. 9) says that some think that legislators ought “ direldovo-t. oe ral dcfjveffrtpois odcri KoXdcreis re Kai n/auplas e7riTL0^ai, tovs 8’ dviarovs 6'Xws e^vpi^ccv.” Mr. Herbert Spencer, arguing against the modern tendency to promote the “survival of the unfittest,” remarks : “ It rarely happens that the amount of evil caused by fostering the vicious and good-for-nothing can be estimated. But in America, at a meeting of the States Charities Aid Association, held on Dec. 18th, 1874, a startling instance was given in detail by Dr. Harris, It �112 THE SERVICE OF MAN stincts and good actions. It does not want even alternate sins and repentance; it wants performance. The soldier who deserts in presence of the enemy is deservedly shot. In civil life there are forms of criminality which are worse than desertions ; they are open hostilities to the best interests of humanity. Nothing is gained by disguising the fact that there is no remedy for a bad heart, and no substitute for a good one. Only on good, unselfish instincts can a trustworthy morality repose. “ There are many cases,” says Mr. Bain, “ where a man’s social obedience, the fulfilment of his bargains, his justice, veracity, respect to other men’s rights, costs him a sacri­ fice with no return, while the omission leads to penalty. Simple prudence would at such a moment suggest the criminal course.”1 And Mr. Herbert Spencer says : “The true moral deterrent from murder is not constituted by a representation of hanging as a conse­ quence, or by a representation of tortures in Hell as a consequence, or by a repre­ sentation of the horror and hatred excited in fellow-men; but by a representation of the necessary natural results—the inflic­ tion of death-agony on the victim, the destruction of all his possibilities of happiness, the entailed sufferings to his belongings. Neither the thought of im­ prisonment, nor of divine anger, nor of social disgrace, is that which constitutes the moral check on theft; but the thought of injury to the person robbed, joined with a vague consciousness of the was furnished by a county on the Upper Hudson, remarkable for the ratio of crime and poverty to population. Generations ago there had existed a certain ‘ gutter-child,’ as she would here be called, known as ‘ Margaret,’ who proved to be the prolific mother of a prolific race. Besides great numbers of idiots, imbeciles, drunkards, lunatics, paupers, and prostitutes, ‘ the county records show two hundred of her descendants who have been criminals.’ Was it kindness or cruelty which, generation after generation, enabled them to multiply and become an increas­ ing curse to the society around them ?” [Man versus the State, p. 69). 1 The Emotions and the Will, chap, x., p. 530; i§59- general evils caused by disregard of pro­ prietary rights. Those who reprobate the adulterer on moral grounds have their minds filled, not with ideas of an action for damages, or of future punish­ ment following the breach of a com­ mandment, or of loss of reputation ; but they are occupied with ideas of unhappi­ ness entailed on the aggrieved wife or husband, the damaged lives of children, and the diffused mischiefs which go along with disregard of the marriage tie. Conversely, the man who is moved by a moral feeling to help another in difficulty does not picture to himself any reward here or hereafter, but pictures only the betterconditionheis trying to bringabout. One who is morally prompted to fight against a social evil has neither material benefit nor popular applause before his mind, but only the mischiefs he seeks to remove, and the increased well-being which will follow their removal.”1 Nothing can be more clearly put. The feeling, sympathetic, generous heart, which recognises the rights and claims of others, which is pained by their suffering and rejoices in their joy, is declared to be the only trustworthy source of that social morality on which general well­ being depends. In this respect moral conduct, regarded as an art, as it is indeed incomparably the finest of the fine arts, does not differ from its inferior congeners. No one expects fine pictures or statues from persons devoid of all Aesthetic taste, nor oratorios and operas from those deficient in musical ear. If the interest of society requires a due pro­ portion of altruistic sentiment in each of its members, we can only expect them in those individuals who are correspond­ ingly organised. While all the emotions can be cultivated, none can be implanted or directly infused. In this, as in other cases, we can only cultivate the good sorts, the good stock, and eliminate and discourage, as far as possible, the bad. This view will very probably be regarded by some as giving up the cause 1 Data of Ethies, pp. 120, 121. �ON THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE of morality altogether. If we cannot preach the categorical imperative of right action to every creature, and assume and expect that every one is capable of per­ forming it, if he chooses to exert his free-will, our preaching is supposed to be vain ; an insincere make-believe, itself immoral. This is very probable ; and the foolishness of preaching, as often practised, is perhaps only too evident. But it may be remarked that the cause of music is not given up because a master counsels a pupil without an ear for music to cease attempting to sing. We may preach morality as we choose, but we shall only be successful with the apt scholars, those who have a founda­ tion of good instincts on which to work. It is, no doubt, much simpler to assume that all are equally competent; and that, if they do not receive our teaching, it is not because they cannot, but because they will not. Then we arrogate a right to upbraid them, to punish them for their wicked will. They can, if they choose, be quite virtuous and moral. It is an obvious view, recommended by a blunt straightforwardness gratifying to many minds which are disposed to resent and even deny the complexity of nature. The determinist is not less but more resolute in teaching morality than his free-will opponent. But he demands pupils who can learn. What shall be done with those who cannot learn belongs to another branch of inquiry, and con­ cerns politics rather than morals. But much is gained by discarding the hope of impossibilities, of ceasing to expect grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles. The extirpation of thorns and thistles, in the literal or metaphorical sense, has its diffi­ culties ; which we have no ground, how­ ever, to regard as insuperable. The object to be obtained is good men with good instincts ; not the establishment of a metaphysical theory that all men may be good if they would only choose. So little do we need free-will and deliberate choice between good and evil that we want a prompt, unreflecting bias towards good. The option between virtue and 113 vice cannot be left an open question. As we see good dogs chasser de race, so we need citizens whose leanings are to virtue’s side. And we are likely to get them in proportion as we recognise that good men, like poets, are born, not made, and only in a minor degree the product of training ; albeit that training, in its own sphere, is of paramount importance. But training is not often entirely over­ looked in practice, even by the partisans of the doctrine of free-will—a fact more creditable to their common sense than their logic. The centre of the problem lies in the question, how can a deter­ minist cultivate virtue or good impulses, seeing that by his principles he cannot choose his desires ? How can he culti­ vate a sense of duty, if duty depends on altruistic sentiments, of which he is perhaps devoid ? It would be regarded as a truism rather than a paradox to say that a man cannot cultivate athletics without muscles. Some amount of muscle must be present on which to begin a course of muscular development. In the same way, some amount of congenital altruism—the tap­ root of social morality—must be present, or the cultivation of good impulses, moral sentiments, or the sense of duty, cannot be even attempted. We should be in­ formed what manner of man the deter­ minist is who is asked how he can culti­ vate virtue on his principles. If he is a base-hearted man, but sufficiently versed in psychology to grasp the full import of the question, he would answer that it was obviously impossible. He would ac­ knowledge a conscious absence of good impulses, and that his only principle of action was the gratification of self. If the determinist, on the other hand, were a man of generous nature, full of meek­ ness, courage, and love, he would reply that cultivation, or the satisfaction of those impulses, was the greatest joy he knew; that though often, through slack­ ness of will, infirmity, and selfishness, he failed in his duty (of which he was only too conscious), yet he never felt inward 1 �114 THE SERVICE OF MAN peace, except when cultivating the garden of his soul, following the passionate ideal of his heart in all benign works for others, in all purifying discipline of the spirit within him. Both these men would answer truly; and the successful cultiva­ tion of human nature demands that we should bear in mind the answers of both. The abstract science of morals needs completing and correcting for the culti­ vation of human nature by empirical observation of the peculiarities of indivi­ dual men. “Duty” and “debt” are the same word differently written, and both mean that which is “owed.” I “ought” is the preterite of I “ owe.” The French “ devoir ” is applied to pecuniary debt and moral duty. In Greek o^etXco and show the same association of ideas. Now, what do we mean by a sense of duty, except a recognition of the claims of others, of neighbour, family, society, or God ? In no respect do men differ more than in this sense of duty, because in no respect are men more unlike than in their endowment of egoistic and altruistic impulses. In some persons all sense of the claims of others seems left out from the first. They never seem to regard themselves as owing anything to anybody; but, contrariwise, they consider others always as owing them a great deal. Even borrowed money they repay with pain and regret, and often require the threat or the action of the law to bring them to repayment. This type of character is humorously exemplified in the alleged remark of a spendthrift, who said of a friend less hardened than himself: “ He wasted his money in paying his debts the use of money being only excusable, it would appear, when no credit was to be obtained. On the other hand, we have natures who not only are prompt in acknowledging claims upon them, who would fast and starve rather than with­ hold payment when due, but who perceive debts and duties which neither society nor individuals exact from them; who willingly offend the world, and, with open eyes, face its anger and resentment, so they may render it a service which no other is ready to offer. The saints, martyrs, and heroes have been of this type. Resistance to passion or strong temptation can only be rationally ex­ pected from a mind which combines a habit of postponing self-gratification to the interests and welfare of others, with an ample endowment of generous and benevolent impulses. The wave of egoistic passion is met by a counter-wave of altruistic emotion, and according to the character and training one or the other prevails. The characteristic feeling of remorse for breach of duty, or gross­ gratification of selfish desire, is evidence of this. Genuine remorse, contrition as distinguished from attrition, always arises from a pain of the altruistic feelings, at having returned evil for good) for having injured a loving heart which deserved different treatment at our hands. Remorse is the note of tender and passionate, but ill-governed, natures. There is no anguish like it; but it is an anguish of which the cold and the selfish are incapable. So little does it fear or wish to evade punish­ ment that it seeks it and implores it. The grief over our own hard-heartedness is too acute to be assuaged except by sacrifice and penance ; and only in bitter expiation is a slight relief derived for transgression. In religious minds the reason often gives way when they have been made conscious that they have sinned against and been ungrateful to Christ their Lord, who for them hung upon the tree, was pierced with wounds, reviled, buffeted, and spat upon. Like St. Peter, when they think thereon they weep. In the naturally generous and tender-hearted it soon appears and developes with the added years. Educa­ tion can do much to aid or check its growth. The selfishness of children can be cultivated to any extent. A habit of regard for others may likewise be nurtured. The proverbial selfishness of princes largely depends on this fact. Recognition of the “ claims ” of others, arising from a sympathetic nature, is the �ON THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE root of duty, but by no means the fullgrown tree. The size to which the tree will grow depends upon the mental power, upon the grasp of ideas, which reveals an almost infinite variety of “ claimants.” A kind heart coupled with • a narrow mind cannot conceive the higher forms of duty to the State, to humanity, to unpopular causes. Culture and mental force combined regulate the quality of the duty paid. The difference between abject superstition and lofty piety depends on the intellect, not on the heart of the worshipper. In all societies, even the most savage, some duties are inculcated on the young by parents and elders; and certain acts are forbidden or punished, others are applauded and rewarded. The public opinion of society carries on the process. The teaching in childhood, youth, and manhood is assimilated according to the quality of the learner. The meek, the modest, the kindly, receive in loving trust the word of their elders. They are told they ought to do Z/zA, that they ought not to do that, and they accept the obligation without hesitation or scruple. The mala frohibita become to them mala in se, and an infraction of the rule laid down appears to them monstrous and profane. In Christian countries duty to God is naturally much insisted on; and if it does not appear to be always attended with the desired success, the reason is not only in the hardness of men’s hearts, but also in the intel­ lectual difficulties involved in theism. But whether the paramount duty be paid to God, to the State, to humanity, to great ideas, or any thing or being beyond self, the germ of it always lies in the unselfish readiness to pay a debt, supposed to be owing to another or others. And it often happens that the supposition is wholly false; that the debt is not owed; that it is imaginary, not real. But the sense of obligation is not concerned with the matter of a given duty, but only with the form. Conscience alone is a deceitful guide; like justice, it is blind ; it will do evil as i IS readily as good. Its one pre-occupation is to go out of self and pay its debt, duty, reverence, to object, thing, or being whom it wishes to serve. And this is so true that the sense of duty in its intense forms is not content with simple disregard of self; it insists on hostility to self, on self-mutilation, mortification;., as in the severer forms of asceticism. Passion is by no means the worst: enemy to duty; as a strong sense of duty is itself a passion. The passionate ■ natures can often become the most bound by it: witness St. Augustine. The cold heart is the undutiful heart, the heart of stone, which loves neither God nor man. New duties. The man who recognises new duties above those he has been taught to observe; who sees, beyond the circle of conventional obligation, the. dim forms of new claimants on his heart and service, is a moral inventor, am enlarger of human life. Those who sawthe claims of the slave were such ; thosewho see the claims of animals are the same. How many more such have still to be seen I Reward of virtue. The highest con­ science has ever felt that the expectation of reward for virtue was unjustified, and almost incompatible with the idea of virtue: “Not unto us, not unto us.” “ We are unprofitable servants ; we havedone that which was our duty to do.” These and similar utterances are the natural and wholesome expressions of the devout heart. And the instinct isright which inspires them. The moment we consider duty as a debt which we owe, we feel it does not admit of reward. Is a man to be paid for paying his debts ? How does this view of duty account for resistance to strong temptation ? The moment we recognise that we can be in the position of owing something to some one person, cause, or idea, it matters not what form the payment may take ; from coin of the realm up to giving away one’s life, it is all one; meeting an obligation which we have recognised we are under. How we came by the sense of this or that particular obligation �116 THE SERVICE OF MAN is immaterial. It may come through many channels; religion, public opinion, esprit de corps, or what not. Its fulness and intensity depend far more on the constitution of our minds than on any external influence and teaching. If we are wholly selfish, no teaching will per­ suade us; if we are generous, loving, and heroic, we move towards self-sacrifice by a natural gravitation. And the point to be especially noticed by those who make virtue to consist in the choice of the better part, after a conflict of motives, is that the greater the virtue the less there is of conscious self-sacrifice. The egoist who will not sacrifice the meanest of his own pleasures or passions for the greatest need of others, and the hero who gives his life for the “sheep,” are the opposite poles of humanity. And so little true is it that virtue only exists after it has gained a victory over base temptation, that the very presence or possibility of temptation stains its purity. In ordinary, civilised life this is so. 'What should we think of a friend or acquaintance who we knew passed his time in hard struggles to conquer the sins forbidden in the sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments? Yet, according to the doctrine of some moralists, the man who dines with us, and has not had a temptation to steal our spoons, and overcome it, is not virtuous; if he has not lusted after the women of our house­ hold and subdued his impurity, he is not chaste; if he has not been touched by an impulse to murder us, finally put down, he is not a moral person. Now, as regards resisting temptation, it is obvious that, in proportion as we are tempted to the commission of selfish sin, our character, and, in a minor degree, our education, are at fault. We have started with an overplus of egoistic senti­ ment, or we have had, by ill-education, the egoistic sentiment unduly cultivated. We shall behave under temptations according to our character. The doc­ trines we hold will have little weight in the final result, though they will have some. If we experience strong prompt­ ings to murder, rape, or theft, the chances are, whether we believe in Hell or Utilitarianism, we shall gratify our passions. If the altruistic element in us is fairly represented, we shall hesitate, or alternately fall into sin and repentance. If self has been “annulled,” we shall pass by the temptations with more or less complete unconsciousness.1 Moralists have been at great pains to show that through virtue lay the only road to final and complete happiness; that, on the other hand, crime and sin inevitably led to pain and misery. It was feared that, if any doubt were allowed to rest on the fact that virtue was its own reward, sensible people would refuse so obviously bad a bargain. As Mr. Leslie Stephen eloquently says : “ Here we come to one of the multiform and profound problems which has tor­ tured men in all ages. Virtue—no one denies it—does good to somebody, but how often to the agent? A belief in justice, as regulating the universe, has been held to imply (I do not ask whether rightly held) that happiness should somehow go along with virtue. To give up the belief in such a supreme regula­ tion seemed, again, to be an admission that virtue was folly. Yet how can this doctrine be reconciled to the plainest facts of experience ? The lightning strikes the good and the bad; the hero dies in the ruin of his cause; the highest self-denial is repaid by the blackest ingratitude; the keenest sympathy with our fellows implies the greatest liability to suffering; the cold, the sensual, and the systematically selfish often seem to have the pleasantest lots in life. Great men in despair have pronounced virtue to be but a name; philosophers have. evaded the difficulty by a verbal denial of the plainest truths ; theologians have tried to console their disciples by con­ structing ideal worlds, which have served 1 So again St. Thomas: “ Magis est non posse peccare quam non peccare. Theologies, Prima Secundre, Qurestio cxiv. art. prim. �ON THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE 117 for little more than a recognition of the unsatisfactory state of the actual world. The problem so often attacked will per­ haps be solved when we know the origin of evil. Meanwhile we have only to consider in what way it is related to ethical theories.”1 This suggestive passage shows very plainly how imperfectly the older specu­ lators grasped the problem with which they had to deal. If virtue depend on a number of good instincts or qualities in the agent’s mind or heart—benevolence, sympathy, courage, and resolution—it would seem obvious that no one could be benefited by these precious endow­ ments more than the fortunate owner of them himself. Who derives so much enjoyment from a fine ear for music as the musician who has one ? Who profits by an exquisite sense of colour so much as the artist whom land, sea, and cloud keep in an ecstasy of delight? Much more, would one say, must the generous and passionate emotions of the heart supply an inward fountain of happiness to the richly endowed natures which possess them. To ask if virtue answers, or “ pays,” is like asking if fine health and bodily strength pay. Probably no one would be without them if he could help it. And yet there can be no doubt that great strength and fine health often lead their possessor into pain, and even death, by tempting him to overtax his powers. It may be said of all the higher qualities and gifts, that under certain conditions they are capable of causing as much pain as pleasure to their owners ; but these owners do not wish, therefore, to be rid of them. The musician who is tortured by an organ out of tune would never think of purchasing peace by the loss or destruction of his musical ear. It is the same with regard to Friendship and Love. Their betrayal probably produces anguish as keen as any known to the human heart. But no one capable of either would ever regret his capacity for love and friendship. Those who doubt their value, or, with Napoleon, hold that they are “ foolish infatuations,” are out of court, as they have no personal knowledge of qualities they despise. We need not to be told what manner of man he was who declared that the secret of happiness consisted in a good digestion and a bad heart. And the querist, “Why should I do anything for posterity, seeing that posterity never did anything for me ?” receives even now this answer from society, and will receive it with greater emphasis in the future: “ From you, sir, we expect nothing; but you may expect that your shameless con­ fession of selfishness will not go un­ punished.” The “unsatisfactory state of the actual world,” as Mr. Stephen says, was no doubt a great hindrance in former times to a recognition of the coercive power for good which society can bring to bear on the selfish and the wicked. But the Christian scheme of rewards and punishments also contributed to the con­ viction that only by fear of retribution could men be deterred from evil, and by the hope of recompense be bribed to/7 doing good. A man who did not believe in hell, it was thought, even by good men, had no inducement to practise any virtue or refrain from any vice. Dr. Johnson said he would not believe that Hume’s apparent equanimity when dying, was sincere, because, on his (Hume’s) principles, he had no motive to speak the truth. Dr. Young, in his Night Thoughts, gave utterance probably to the common sentiment, crude and revolting as it sounds :— 1 Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 398. 1 Seventh Night, 1169-1182. “ ‘ Has Virtue charms ?’ I grant her heavenlyfair ; But if unportioned, all will Interest wed. ***** A Deity believed will nought avail; Rewards and punishments make God adored •, And hopes and fears give Conscience all her power. ***** Who tells me he denies his soul immortal, Whate’er his boast, has told me he’s a knave. His duty ’ tis to love himself alone ; Nor care though mankind perish, if he smiles.”1 �Ii8 THE SERVICE OF MAN only consider the agent, without reference The line between “portioned virtue” and “ interest ” does not appear here to to the reaction of society upon him, it is be very clearly drawn, and virtue, it is obvious that no one course of conduct intimated, can only be chosen for a valu­ can be assumed a priori as certain or able consideration. But we must admit likely in itself to produce happiness. all the same that in this respect the theo­ Virtue may, and probably will, bring logians had the best of the argument, happiness to the virtuous man ; but to till the conception of society as an the criminal and the selfish, virtue will organism had arisen in speculation, with be probably the most distasteful or even the momentous consequences which that painful thing in their experience, while involves. The health of an organism vice will give them unmitigated pleasure. depends on the health and efficiency of This view, as Mr. Stephen says, “is calcu­ its parts; and the conduct and morals of lated to shock many respectable people”; the individual are now seen to be no but that is not a sufficient reason for longer the private concern of himself rejecting it if it be otherwise supported. Now, what is a general feature common only, but very much also of the society of which he is a member. His vice to all forms of happiness, whether injures and his virtue benefits the body vicious or virtuous ? Who are the people , politic, as far as either influence extends. who visibly enjoy themselves; who are And this is now so well seen that per­ never or rarely at a loss as to what they haps the danger is, as Mr. Mill feared, shall do with their time ? Is it not those that society and public opinion are tend­ persons who have one or more tastes, ing to be too coercive and despotic, to . inclinations, or passions, so strongly the injury of that liberty and individuality marked that they are always ready or - -which are needed for full and vigorous ever thirsting for their gratification, which well-being. We may certainly venture to never comes amiss ? Even the most say this much, that society is now able sensual and repellent vices may so fill a to make knaves, whether they believe mind with intense relish and pleasure their souls to be immortal or not, feel that the sensualist is conscious of nothing that crime is connected with misery but one long draught of voluptuous enjoy­ rather than happiness, and that virtue, ment. Satiety may no doubt be rapidly perhaps not of the highest, but yet of a produced, and health ruined by excess; fairly high standard, tends directly to the and then the sensualist has a bad time of it; but that is because he has been agent’s own comfort and peace of mind. Now, as touching the problem which deprived of his pleasures, and he has Mr. Stephen says has tortured mankind nothing to fall back on when his vices for ages, the connection between virtue have left him. But that fact does not and happiness, its solution would seem invalidate the statement just made, that to require a little more precising of what a passionate pursuit of some one thing, is meant by happiness than is customary whatever its character, is the primary in ethical discussions. Obviously, happi­ condition of that glow of pleasurable ness varies as much as men vary; and feeling which we call happiness. The what constitutes the happiness of one gambler sitting down to the card-table, man makes the misery of another. The the gourmand to his dinner, the book­ healthy and the strong have different collector buying choice and rare editions, sources of happiness from the sickly and the artist creating types of beauty, the the weak. The same man at different man of science working out momentous periods of life has very different forms problems, the philanthropist seeking and of happiness. In other words, happiness relieving the wretched, though all enjoying is a subjective phenomenon, depending very different kinds of happiness, have upon the conditions and character of this factor in common—that they are the individual. This being so, if we pursuing with keen appetite the object �ON THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE they desire. They are free from the aching languor of ennui; they escape the hopeless and helpless nausea of the blase mind, which is impotent even to desire. Strong desires or passions, capable of frequent and lasting gratifica­ tion, are the only materials of happiness. We have next to notice that the grati­ fication of all the passions is more or less attended with pain. Indeed, it would seem that all intense pleasures need to be tipped with a sharp point of pain to give them their full zest. The fatigue and danger of most manly sports constitute a large portion of their attrac­ tiveness. As, gamblers mostly end by losing all their money, their vice must give them more pain than pleasure ; but the fact does not deter them from gratifying it. The pains of the drunkard, of the opium eater, the gourmand, are notorious, but are not often alone suffi­ cient to deter from indulgence in their respective vices. And to this law the higher and nobler passions offer no exception. The ambitious man, say a Napoleon, is always exposed to bitter disappointment and mishaps. The agony of a few nights at Fontainebleau, just before his abdication, had so changed Napoleon’s countenance that his inti­ mates were shocked by it. Yet the experience was thrown away upon him, and he was ready to recommence the game of ambition, as soon as opportunity offered, by his escape from Elba. Even the peaceful pursuits of literature and science have their acute crises of vexation and frustrated hope. Hume, the most even-tempered of men, was so mortified by the failure of the first volume of his history that he would have gone abroad, changed his name, and renounced author­ ship, had not war broken out between England and France. And, to complete the survey, it must be added, that not even the passionate pursuit of holiness itself is without occasional sharp pain ; in proof of which it is sufficient to cite the “Acta Sanctorum,”passim. A passion for virtue, therefore, is not found to be at any disadvantage, as 119 compared with other passions, in the occasional pain which its gratification involves. If “il faut souffrir pour etre belle,” it is also true, “ il faut souffrir pour etre bon ”; and it is difficult to see what is gained by attempting to disguise the fact. Moralists have been so set upon edification that they have been over-anxious to persuade men of the desirability of virtue, by expatiating on the sweetness of its pleasures; that virtuous people had an ample quid pro quo for their virtue. And so they have at times, and in one sense always; but they also have dark and bitter moments in which they are ready to faint; doubts within and dangers without, yea, even death itself in isolated desolation, when “ all ” forsake them and flee ; w’hen the hero has nothing to turn to but his own heroic heart. Individuals, if left to themselves, will follow “their own pecu­ liar bent” in their choice of pleasures, whether they be virtuous or vicious, sel­ fish or self-denying, voluptuous or ascetic. But there can be no doubt which class society, in its own interests, will prefer that its members should choose—viz., the virtuous, the self-denying, and ascetic. Indeed, the most depraved and selfish of men, whatever his own practice, will wish his neighbours to be virtuous. Though he may be unjust and cruel to others, he will resent injustice and cruelty to him­ self; though a libertine himself, he will probably insist on chastity in his wife, wfith much emphasis. Thus even the bad are interested on the side of virtue, as far as the conduct of others is con­ cerned. It only needs a little more improvement in society for this to be generally recognised, as it is already par­ tially recognised, for the disfavour of public opinion to be sharply shown to selfish pursuits and passions, and a steady, persistent encouragement of the unselfish and social enjoyments of civic life and duty. A love of good may be cultivated to almost any extent where the original foundation of an altruistic nature exists. A passionate ideal of excellence can so fill the mind that no �120 THE SERVICE OF MAN pleasure is felt in anything but in efforts to realise it. “ The susceptibility to ideal inflammation is a peculiarity of our nature, varying with constitutions, and affected by various circumstances.”1 All the desires and passions in characters of 1 Bain, The Emotions and the Will, p. 49^- normal vigour can, in the proper con­ ditions, be thus inflamed,, as they can also be starved by systematic discourage­ ment. An ideal society would be one in which an ideal education habitually stimulated and inflamed the good pas­ sions, while it starved and discouraged the bad. No. io of the R. P. A. Cheap Reprints will be LECTURES AND ESSAYS {selected), by Professor Tyndall, with Biographical Sketch of the Author. � 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 &amp; 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 The service of man : an essay towards the religion of the future Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: xxvii, 234 p. ; 20 cm. Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Annotations in pencil. Inscription in pencil on t.p. following title: as demonstrated by C.J. [i.e. Campbell Jenkins?] to E.S. 1907. First published 1887. Inscription in pencil on leaf following front flyleaf: Campbell Jenkins, United University Club, Suffolk St., Pall Mall, London. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Morison, James Cotter, 1832-1888 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1892 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd. Subject The topic of the resource Religion Social problems 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 (The service of man : an essay towards the religion of the future), 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> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N495 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English NSS Positivism Rationalism Religion Social Problems https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/61bd9db1c0684ecafb96efe430eb41b4.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=YZgwwbAmNcbgBJbN3AitVIxOX%7Ek79FzqWy1Jqe6T3zbaaBAfhRUzxhbbd1Hr88u4Tm-s3Yam2aGt8B8tzQMaHuuXS2AgbOFTxtf17Yks1GcK9P3E87TUpbtbxAkrWJahUTYLZ1Enrww9PiXUa0UgWkHcEdAOxKkNfrJ7SeB5jpntnscC%7EnXiW6KGfsexld02M6qb2mzwMJShE3kaSUzKbd%7EuJjJ2j1tgsOW2-HrZgvWB1kwsGCHrH90xCOjREKQsX-yEIVtLr%7EIz8%7ET1G%7Ei2wFbwEQuxFj8nq3SmuAmDcVnq5Q10Gcwyu%7EM-XfFKzhonvRWmFnj5MldKBoUrQC1u9A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 1ff77dfe4169d8d2879335e5e7079e2c PDF Text Text POSITIVE RELIGION: ITS BASIS AND CHABACTEBIST1CS. LECTURE IV. BY THE LATE REV. JAMES ORANBROOK, EDINBURGH. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. Price Threepence. ��POSITIVE RELIGION—ITS BASIS AND CHARACTERISTICS. E are to travel together to-night over a region where VY you will require patient thought; not so much because the subject is especially difficult or recondite, as because it is one not very generally familiar. The result, however, will repay, I think, any amount of attention you may expend, as it will show us the possi­ bility of worship even under the stringent conditions imposed by the phenomenal philosophy. We must begin by recognising a curious faculty or tendency common to our human nature, but much more active amongst some individuals and some races than others. I mean the faculty or tendency which leads us to objectively represent, and indeed to vitalise and give a personal existence, or, at all events, personal relations, to our general and abstract ideas. Under its impulse the mind becomes impatient of base and pure thought, simple ideas collected in classes and bound together by a common or general name, and by the instrumentality of fancy hastens to represent them in concrete forms, and to give them some personal relation to itself. Indeed, the tendency is not confined to the sphere of ideas alone, in the strict sense of the term; it leads us also, in some states of culture, to ascribe vitality to the inanimate objects of nature, and to place them in personal relations to ourselves. And thus, where it predominates, the whole universe �4 Positive Religion: becomes living, and man’s affections or personal feel­ ings are elicited by every object around him. But the activity of the tendency greatly varies in different races, at different periods, under different temperaments, and with different degrees of culture. It is predominantly active in childhood. The feelings the child experiences within itself are promptly trans­ ferred to whatever it comes into contact with, and hence its passions reciprocate the supposed intentions of all the objects around it according as these objects become to it the source of pleasure or pain. The tendency is also generally very active amongst people in a low and barbarous state. They infuse their own personality into all the great objects and all the powerful forces of nature, and seem, therefore, to themselves, constantly living in the presence of wills as active as their own. More extended observation sets limits upon, and in a measure corrects, its action. The distinction between things animate and inanimate are more accurately discerned, and the predication of will is withdrawn from the inanimate objects and forces themselves and is transferred to some being or beings standing outside and directing them. This limitation of the tendency necessitates an im­ portant change in the religious conceptions. So long as it is unrestrained, and every object is vitalised, fetishism is possible and natural. Immediately a distinction is drawn between things animate and inanimate, the fetishism passes into polytheism or monotheism. A god or gods directing the forces of nature, and not the forces themselves, become the objects of worship. The limitation, however, is not the destruction of the tendency. It often continues as active as ever, but in new conditions. There is the same impatience with abstract ideas; the same effort to embody them in a concrete form; the same yearning after personal relations to the objects. Hence, in religion, the god �Its Basis and Characteristics. 5 or gods are realised as vividly as ever, and are recog­ nised and addressed as intimately and personally present. More than this, the mere mental conception of them is a cross the soul becomes impatient to bear, and therefore the fancy strives to embody the concep­ tion in some outward form. It is at this point (I wish you especially to observe, because of its subsequent application) that this ten­ dency gives rise to art. The inward impulses urge to an outward objective representation of the ideas and feelings. Efforts are made to realise them by means of sculpture, music, and poetry, architecture, and painting. None of the arts were introduced to accom­ plish a purpose. They were, and are still, when genuine, the single, pure, and spontaneous products of this impulse or tendency towards objective repre­ sentation. Whoever had attempted to accomplish some secondary end by them has always failed in the art. He who has painted a picture or wrought a piece of sculpture to gain a pound has never done anything worth the pound he has gained. Those who compose a song, or a piece to be played on an instru­ ment, in order to make music, will be sure to com­ pose what will deserve to be hissed out of creation. That does not of course refer to singing or playing what others have composed, much less to learn the manual art, but to the origination of the work itself. All art work must be from irresistible impulsion of the spirit—sculpture, because the spirit is burdened until it can embody its idea in substantial form; music, because the spirit cannot restrain the har­ monious emotions from uttering themselves ; painting, because the spirit must proclaim what nature and life are to it; poetry, because the frenzied love of the beautiful would cause one to die if it could not find a rhythmical expression. Accordingly, that which has ever called forth the most urgent ideas and emotions has from the beginning constituted the primary �6 Positive Religion: materials of art. And so tlie history of genuine art has been scarcely anything but the history of religious ideas and emotions striving to embody themselves in an objective form. This has led some critics to call religion the parent of art. What I have said will show you the appellation is incorrect, and that it was merely the strength and urgency of the religious ideas and emotions above others which compelled the ten­ dency to objective representation to make them the first objects of its representing efforts; for the ten­ dency must needs manifest itself according to the character of the ideas or emotions most occupying and burdening the soul, and in all the great eras of art these ideas and emotions were religious. Hence art has become the clearest and most distinct record of a nation’s religious life—the conceptions and sentiments upon which it was founded. It is not in Thucydides and Heroditus—not in Plato and Aristotle even, but in Homer, JEschylus, and Sophocles, in the Apollo Belvedere, the Venus de Medici and de Milo, the Laocoon and the Niobe—that the real inner life of the ancient Greeks is revealed to us and to their profound religious ideas. In strict keeping with this too is the fact that the most artistic nations have ever been the most given to what is called idolatry, and to elaborateness of religious forms and ceremonies. The Hebrews and Persians, the most strict of monotheists, and to whom abstract ideas were least oppressive, had no idols in their advanced period, and were nearly destitute of the artistic faculty. The Egyptians, Hin­ doos, and Greeks multiplied their idols and brought art to perfection. The same contrasts exist between the northern and southern races of Europe, of which you may take Scotland and Italy as the extreme types. In Scotland the religion is embodied in the abstract notions of the Confession of Faith and the Longer and Shorter Catechisms; in Italy it is embodied in the mass and Mariolatry; Scotland lias erected Free kirks at so �Its Basis and Characteristics. 7 many pence per foot; has given birth to Burns and killed him ; has of late years produced some men who could paint a little, and sent them to get their living in London. Italy has erected St. Mark’s and St. Peter’s (amongst others), has given birth to Dante, Tasso, and Petrarch: has nurtured Titian, Pra An­ gelico, Raphael, and I know not how many others of the same sort, and claims as her own Palestrina and Mozart. If religion were the parent of art this con­ trast would prove the religion of the Italians to be stronger, more fervent, more productive than that of the Scotch. But religion is not the parent. As we have seen, art is the consequence of an impatience with abstract ideas and feelings, giving rise to a tendency to seek for them any kind of outward impression and embodiment; and in the case of the Italians it assumed the particular forms we have alluded to in virtue of the special culture of the times. But now, it is important to observe, the force of this tendency to objective expression seems directly con­ nected with the depth and intensity of our sense emotions, i.e., of those emotions or feelings which are directly excited through our various senses ; and also, the perfection of the expression depends primarily upon their purity, adequateness, and full culture. The ancient Hindoos and Egyptians would both fur­ nish us with convincing illustrations of this truth. But I refer now to the Greeks alone because they are better known. In them the culture of the senses was carried to its utmost perfection—-their whole nature was in complete harmony. They were the most ra­ tional and the most sensuous race that ever lived. No people have surpassed them—I would scarcely say any have equalled them—in intellect; and no people have had such eyes to see, such deep emotions to feel, the beauty and sensuous glory of all nature. In gigantic stature of intellect no human being that ever lived came up to Aristotle by the whole head and shoulders ; �8 Positive Religion: and yet no other people ever seem to have dreamed of such exquisite forms as those of the Apollo and the Venus. In everything they did and said you see the depth and intensity, the purity and culture of their sensuous emotions. Accordingly, in keeping with the principle I have asserted, no people were ever more impatient of unembodied, unrepresented, abstract ideas and feelings. They were always striving after objec­ tivity; their philosophy no less than all their other works proves this—Plato, the idealist, no less than Aristotle, the realistic. Their method of philosophical inquiry was purely subjective; but the subjective crea­ tions to which it led were instantaneously projected upon the outward world of sense, and existed for them not as abstractions of the fancy, but as realities of nature. In religion this comes out still more pal­ pably. In their inmost thought and feeling the Greeks were always pantheistic. The gods of their polytheism were the mere offspring of their impatience to embody the pantheistic conception in form. Over them all, over all the universe, was that awful, terrible, incom­ prehensible power they called Fate or Destiny. This was their real, their universal god. It gave birth to all things, gods and men not less than the physical forces of nature, and yet against it both gods and men had to maintain a perpetual struggle, and to them the struggle seemed most awful. With the thought of Zeus they could toy; but the thought of this mys­ terious, all-creating, all-determining Fate caused thenwhole being to melt with the most intense and profound emotion. Impatient of the mere thought, however, they embodied it in everything. It is the sublime idea which inspires the tragedies, and moves us so deeply in the representations of Hecuba, Medea, Electra, and the rest. And it is this which most of all we feel in the statues of the gods, in whose coun­ tenance and form the individualities of the character are subdued by that sublime calmness and indifference �Its Basis and Characteristics. 9 which can only come from a nature at one and in haimony with destiny. Why has the world never since seen such perfection in Art 1 Because never since has it possessed a race with ideals of humanity so lofty, and at the same time with the senses and the sense emotions so refined, so developed, and so richly cul­ tured. The only approach ever made to the perfection of Grecian religious art was by the Italianised-Gothic people of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth cen­ turies. But their intense sensuousness was tainted by the Christian notions of asceticism, and therefore never attained to that full culture which alone could have brought their art to a level with the Grecian.. But, enticing as the theme is, these observations must suffice us now in illustration of the principle I have been endeavouring to establish. I trust enough has been said, however, to show you that there is in men a tendency to embody their abstract ideas and feelings in outward forms and expression, through this embodiment, and to bring all things into personal lelations to themselves; that this tendency gives rise to art in its various departments, and some religious ideas and feelings have hitherto been the most predominant and so the most urgent for outward embodiment. Art has hitherto in all its great eras been mainly con­ cerned with the expression of religious ideas and feel­ ings; and finally, that the urgency and strength of this tendency to objective expression, and the per­ fection of the art, by means of which the expression is made, seem mainly to depend upon the intensity, fulness, development, and perfect culture of the senses and the sense emotions. Now, these principles being, in my judgment, clearly and irrefutably established by an analysis of our human nature, and by the history of all people in the past, I think they furnish us with data from which we may derive some tolerably accurate conclusions with regard to the possibilities and conditions of worship under �IO Positive Religion: that form of religion determined by the phenomenal philosophy. At present, no doubt, the tendency amongst those who have embraced the philosophy is to abandon all kinds of worship. The old forms are felt to be perfectly incompatible with the new con­ ditions of thought. And in itself, at first sight, it may well appear that the worship of what is unknown and unknowable is an absurdity and a superstition. Hence the majority either give up all idea of worship whatso­ ever, or attempt to substitute for the old something which possesses none of the characteristics of worship excepting the name. At this, however, those will not be surprised who remember that, until the system of philosophy has been generally diffused, and it has become a form of national life, its full, permanent tendencies cannot be known (excepting by inference), and a great deal will seem to result from it which are only peculiarities of the individuals adopting it under their isolated circumstances. I cannot stay to illus­ trate this remark now; but it will be found applicable to all systems of religion and philosophy in the early and struggling periods of their history, and fully explains why phenomenalists so generally abjure all worship, and yet without making it necessary to suppose they must continue to do so. On the other hand, the principles I have expounded to-night justify the assertion that worship will be found as inevitable under the influences of pheno­ menalism as under every other form of thought. For worship is nothing but an attempt to objectively embody or express the religious ideas and feelings. Unless, therefore, it could be shown that the pheno­ menal philosophy destroys all such ideas and feelings, or else destroys the tendency to objective expression, worship must be as inevitable under its forms of thought as under every other. Now, that it does not destroy the religious ideas and feelings, I think I clearly showed in the last lecture. It rather deepens �Its Basis and Characteristics. 11 them, and gives them a sublimer reality. When it proves to us that we have no faculties to penetrate the great mystery of existence and to know God, it deepens and intensifies our sense of that mystery ; and in the awe, reverence, and conscious littleness which spring up within us, we have the essence of all religion. We cannot but believe in a something which is the determined condition of the universe j that we cannot know it only makes us realise the thought more vividly, and feel its mystery and awfulness more deeply. And this is religion, in its truest, inmost sense. The phenomenal philosophy, therefore, does not destroy, but fosters, religion. But now, seeing it does not destroy religion, the primary element in worship, the ideas and feelings working in the mind, let us ask if it destroy the second element, that tendency to embody or express our ideas and feelings in all objective form, the nature of which I have endeavoured to explain. Clearly it cannot, if that tendency arise out of a primary law of our nature, as I think every one must own that it does, seeing it is common to all people, although in different degrees, and manifesting itself under different conditions. Nay, if it be conceded that I am correct in those assertions I have made respecting the connec­ tion between the culture of our senses and sense emotions and the strength and intensity of the tendency, then most assuredly the phenomenal philosophy must have the direct effect of greatly intensifying the ten­ dency. And the reason of this appears in the fact that the philosophy must necessarily lead to a culture of our whole physical nature, and so of our senses and sense emotions to a degree. and in a rational manner which has not been known since the times of the ancient Greeks. Indeed, you already see this conse­ quence of it in active operation. Biological studies, which have done so much to foster the phenomenal philosophy, and which, on the other hand, are almost �12 Positive Religion: entirely due to the influence of its spirit, have already revealed facts connected with sense and sense emotions which not only show their importance in our system, but the absolute necessity to our full development of their culture upon rational principles. Accordingly, attention on every hand is awakening up to this subject, and even those still bound to the old orthodox and metaphysical doctrines cannot escape the influence, And hence, in keeping with the principles I have expounded, there is also a great awakening in the taste or love for art, and especially in those nations most coming under the phenomenal spirit. Every­ where music, painting, sculpture, architecture, are more sought after; everywhere true poetry is better appreciated. If Art be yet wavering, uncertain, and unsatisfactory, and we have still to go back to the older springs to slake our thirst for poetry, the fact arises out of circumstances I may at some future time explain. But the revival of the taste, the longing after such things, comes to us as proof of the intensifying of the tendency to objectivity, and to that the extending influence of the phenomenal philosophy is operating in favour of that tendency. I think, then, that these considerations, amongst others, serve to prove that worship will still be neces­ sary to us in the new era of thought upon which we are entering, and that the phenomenal philosophy strengthens and intensifies both the elements of which it is constituted, £.e., the deep, religious emotion, and the tendency to give that emotion an outward, objec­ tive expression. But you will recollect that I have already pointed out that the precise form the outward expression assumes must depend upon the general culture. Or perhaps I should say rather, that the general culture or method of thought will necessarily influence the ideas and conceptions; these ideas and conceptions will modify the character of the emotions; and thus �Its Basis and Characteristics. 13 the objective expression of them will, in proportion to its truthfulness, vary with the ideas and conceptions. Accordingly, when the state of culture allowed men to think every object around them possessed a will like their own, the emotions each object called forth weie expressed in the form of fetish worship. Wlien theii culture allowed them to suppose the conceptions of their fancies possessed a substantive existence, and their religion in consequence became polytheistic, then, as amongst the Greeks, it became possible to worship these fanciful conceptions by prayer and songs, to represent them in statues, and consecrate to them the services of Art. When men came under the Christian culture, the ideas of God in a bodily form were pro­ scribed, and consequently all material representations were excluded from the worship j but the ideas of God as possessing mental and moral qualities were allowed ; the corresponding emotions reciprocating the divine affections were cherished, and the worship became an expression of this mental conception accordingly. It would considerably help my exposition, and be exceed­ ingly interesting, if I had time for it, to point out how the introduction of the metaphysical and yet material­ ising doctrine of transubstantiation necessitated a gorgeous ceremonial, and how the Protestant-attempted recurrence to the purely mental idea of God necessi­ tated the bald forms of Presbyterian and Congrega­ tional worship. But I trust you will follow out the clue I have given you to the explanation for your­ selves. Upon the principles thus far explained, it will at once be seen how the phenomenal philosophy must still more than Christian monotheism limit these objective expressions of worship. For, limiting the ideas to the phenomenal, and declaring that God is in Himself unknown and unknowable, merely the con­ ceived something to which the phenomena of the uni­ verse is referred as its unascertainable antecedent, the �r4 Positive Religion: emotions excited by them can have in their character nothing of the affections called forth by human beings and therefore all the direct expressions of them objec­ tively can be nothing else than the pure outpouring of the feelings of wonder, awe, and reverence, which the sense of the great mystery calls forth. Now, even if there were nothing else possible, since in these feelings the essence and primary elements of all religions are contained, the outward worship would be as real as in any other religions. Nor would the objective expres­ sion be confined to one form. Not only poetry and song, but sculpture, painting, and, above all, architectuie, might be used as freely as under the Grecian conceptions, and much more freely than is consistent with Christian monotheism. But of this I shall speak again. But observe this is not all. I have shown that this great mystery is not only spread over the universe as a whole, but encompasses every particular particle and every particular force. Each aspect of nature thus becomes identified with it, and moves our emotions according to the relations which under its deter­ mination thus become evolved. The emotions thus awakened also seek their objective expression and mingle in the worship of the one great mystery. The expression thus becomes a glorification and adoration of the mystical in the powers of universal nature and may even assume the forms of trust, longing, and desire, according to the relations those powers sustain. And I take it, it was the perception of this truth which led a certain metaphysical school in Germany, approaching the subject under pantheistic forms, to propose, a few years since, the restoration of the Grecian Cultus as the only possible religion for the cultivated. The phenomenal philosophy could not do so. Its method excludes the conception of all fancied beings whose existence cannot be proved; but it takes up into its knowledge those forces of nature, the �Its Basis and Characteristics. 15 Greeks personified and deified ; it views them in their relations to man and in their relation to the great mysteryit could not and would not check those natural emotions they inspire, and thus the worship of all that is great, beautiful, and good becomes in­ evitable. And when Nature, the Universe, God, is viewed under these aspects, another source of emotion is speedily opened. The mystery which enshrouds all things we still 1 ong to penetrate. The longing quickens our thirst for the knowledge of the laws and succes­ sions within our horizon. Especially we long to be­ come so conformed with these laws that we may move in harmony with that destiny which determines all things, and so have the blessedness of a free and indif­ ferent life. Now, in worship, these longings take the form of aspiration—aspiration after the fuller and a perfect knowledge ; aspiration after complete conform­ ity with the highest laws of our being ; aspiration after the free, indifferent, blissful life of humanity in repose with destiny. The aspiration creates for itself a lyrical expression. The deepest, purest, noblest worship is in the lyrics it creates. Nor is it necessary to worship of this kind that an auditor should be assumed. The true lyric is often inspired in absolute solitude. It pours itself forth in overwhelming feeling like the mountain spring, freely and without reflection. Its essence is not in address, but in utterance. Like the Hebrew lyrist, who ex­ claimed, “ Whilst I was musing the fire burned, then spake I with my tongue,” so all such utterances, when real, well up irresistibly and impulsively from the depths of feeling within, and flow forth independently of all outward circumstances. In these later sentences I have spoken I may have seemed to be thinking only of the worship which makes use of words for its utterance. But I have already expounded to you principles which will warn you that such could not be the case. Still more than �i6 Positive Religion. other religions the religion founded on phenomenalism will be sure to appropriate to its use everything true in thought, lofty in aspiration, noble and glorious in life, beautiful and lovely in form ; for to it every such thing in nature becomes an inspiration, and every such thing becomes to it a symbol of its deepest emotions. It must needs therefore lay an embargo upon all nature and all art and make them subservient to its purposes. It is therefore that I anticipate an era which, because of its truer knowledge and method, shall surpass the most golden period of Grecian culture—when religion freed from superstition shall once more, not in phrase merely but in very deed, consecrate all nature as a sacred temple, and everything noble and beautiful and good, whether in humanity or the physical world, as an object before which one may bow down to invoke his adoration and love; and when Art, no longer raising a feeble hand in wearying mutation, inspired with a new life, shall consecrate her genius to the glorification of the great All-in-all, that Power we cannot comprehend, but which not the less we wor­ ship from the inmost depths of our being. TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. � 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 &amp; 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. 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Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1874?] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5512 Subject The topic of the resource Positivism 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 (Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture IV), 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 The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Positivism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/013df9b90309957a1160a9edeeddf80c.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=ITMkmpRAyOPgSzCIH1OIw6RCfzLZUju5ZLRXb%7EJpYV4cmzdW5y0h6-VAMsoHGr0d0oRU8mAMRzZJbvoRCL1UCC4xZKjEGMLENslQcVoF5OWioDQC45LW112ErDhK2a0zDhf19AHAqtGQOQQRa0og8UelYF-219-gF%7EOikEXh1kf3FtZS8%7EBeUBnR8oX-P%7EnE9Y9Vwlj3yQ69hhJovMskX771lYJ6w8TlQb8Jmfx-mzRlamWogJ-1Kt8XXKblW95Vqd1d4eBVp7vsGlBvbKBfwD6lyEV0xePgI2UFowX0ap1S35uK9axtl5CmnBoVUvPWHD6%7E-iReJetqOf6q5lpdqQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 806d784e4d19c2db56207f09150f53b1 PDF Text Text WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. Positivism, or the Religion, of Humanity, is the name given by the French philosopher, Auguste Comte, to the system of thought and conduct founded by him, and signifies that it rests on a basis of demonstrable, or “posi­ tive”, science. The name has been objected to in some quarters as being ungainly, and in others as suggesting the idea of dogmatism. To the first of these objections, although, perhaps, superficially true, it may be replied that every system has a fair claim to be recognized by the appellation bestowed on it by its founder; and this ia especially the case where a man like Comte is concerned. The other objection, expressing the idea that Positivism leans towards intellectual autocracy, can be maintained only so long as ignorance of its real nature prevails. In addition to the qualities of reality, utility, certainty, and precision, which are connected in ordinary language with the term positive, Comte points out that, when science was applied to the study of social phenomena, it at once as­ sumed an organic character, and that, being organic, it necessarily became relative. It could not, however, become relative without becoming also sympathetic, and it is this last quality which, although usually regarded as having no connection with science, Comte declares to be specially typical of Positivism. In his famous Law of Intellectual Progress, without a reference to which even the briefest account of Positivism would be imperfect, Comte asserts that every theoretical conception framed by the human mind passes through three stages ; the first being the Theological, or fictitious; �4 WHAT POSITIVISM MEAN’S. the second, the Metaphysical, or abstract; the third, the Positive, or scientific. The first of these stages is always provisional, the second simply transitional, the third alone definitive. It is not intended to discuss here at any length the truth of this law, which can be adequately appreciated only after a study of Comte’s Philosophy of History ; but it may be mentioned that it has been accepted by various thinkers of eminence, and notably by John Stuart Mill. Considering, however, its importance, as furnishing the foundation from which the whole Positivist system springs, it will, perhaps, be well to give a very brief explanation of its meaning, which is this:—Prom the earliest epoch at which we can conceive man to have become possessed of even the smallest amount of speculative power, he must spontaneously have been led to theorize, although in a very crude way, on the origin and meaning of the multi­ tudinous facts of the world around him, and must, for his own satisfaction, have endeavoured to frame some explana­ tion which might account for their existence. Of real knowledge he could have but little, and his means of acquiring it were very slender. He was, therefore, neces­ sarily thrown back upon imagination and hypothesis; and the simplest and readiest hypothesis which could, under the circumstances, present itself to him was, that the endless motion and variety he found pervading the world were the products of intelligence of some kind, resembling that which he himself was conscious of possessing, although, of course, infinitely more powerful. This assumption lies at the root of all theological philosophy, whatever the precise shape of the doctrines which, from age to age, have been built upon it. It is, however, a mental process which, according to Comte, is itself also susceptible of .analysis into three stages. In the first of these, primitive man, knowing nothing of the distinction which, with the progress of science, has been drawn between organic and inorganic nature, incapable of realizing the ultimate dif­ ference between life and death, supposes all matter to be animated, and assumes that the intelligences, to which he ascribes the changes he sees, dwell in and form part of the objects with whose existence his senses make hirn, acquainted. The lion roars, the fish swims, the eagle soars, because it is alive and possessed of an intelligence similar to his own. And so the river flows, the cloud �WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. 5 moves, th© lightning flashes, because, so far as he knows, it, too, is alive, and endowed with intelligence. This mode of explanation, which Comte denominated Fetichism, was regarded by him as the inevitable startingpoint of man’s intellectual activity. With the increase of . knowledge, however, and the advance of reasoning-power, it was eventually found to be insufficient. The hypothesis ■ < of universal, all-permeating life and will was discovered t 1 to be irreconcilable with the facts furnished by ever­ widening experience, and it had accordingly to be modified. The world was still assumed to be governed by intelli­ gence, but that quality was no longer attributed to inanimate bodies, upon which man had, by degrees, learned to exercise, within certain limits, an unquestioned power. It was now supposed to reside in certain supernatural beings, having no corporeal existence, and dwelling apart from matter, although continuing to preside over different groups of phenomena manifested by matter—beings which were accessible to the prayers of man, and susceptible of being propitiated by his sacrifices. With this form of philosophy, known as Polytheism, the reign of theology, properly speaking, began. But this enormous effort of abstraction once accom­ plished, by which the attributes of Life and Will were detached from the countless objects of inanimate nature, and bestowed on a comparatively restricted number of purely mythical gods and goddesses, it was inevitable that this theory should have a much less stable existence than that which preceded it. A gradual process of concentrartion in the number of deities, to which, from the outset, the system was necessarily exposed, could eventually have but one logical termination. This was the establish­ ment of Monotheism, and the recognition of a single god as the legitimate heir to the government of the universe. Every Polytheistic system must, in the nature of things, come to this in the end. So long, however, as theological methods were pursued, SO long, that is to say, as men persisted in inquiring into the causes of phenomena, the answers obtained were more and more doomed to be regarded as unsatisfactory and delusive. Men vt*fere, however—as they still are—reluctant to frankly abandon the search for causes; but, growing mistrustful of purely theological solutions, the habit was/ �6 WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. by degrees, formed of silently ignoring them, and seeking the desired explanation in various abstract principles, quite as much the creation of their own minds as theology, and quite as unreal: of which tendency a familiar illustration is afforded in the case of Moliere’s aspirant to medical honours, who, amidst the applause of the Court of Ex­ aminers, explains the narcotic properties of opium, not by the soothing intervention of the god of sleep, but by the assumption that it is possessed of a certain “ dormitive virtue ”. This method marks what Comte calls the Meta­ physical stage, and is regarded by him as a mere transition from the Theological search into causes to the final, scien­ tific, Positive stage, in which all hope of ever learning the real nature of causes is definitively abandoned, and men are contented to voluntarily restrict themselves to the study of the laws of phenomena—a study which has, in fact, been going on all the time concurrently with the other inquiry ; has been the basis on which the whole of man’s practical activity has rested; and the chief agent in discrediting supernaturalism, and gradually narrowing its domain. Supposing the Law of the Three Stages to be true, it involves, ultimately, the universal abandonment of every form of theological belief—that is to say, the disappear­ ance of every religion resting on a supernatural foundation. Religion, however, as suggested by its etymological deriva­ tion, is the binding force of all human society, and by no writer has this been more clearly recognized than by Comte. It is religion which, under one form or another, holds society together. In order, therefore, that the social fabric may not, as a result of intellectual progress, be dissolved, and anarchy supervene, it is necessary to discover some substitute for theological religion. Science must become religious. Positivism, then, professes to be such a religion. It is ostensibly based on science, and, in Comte’s view, is— in its general principles at least, if not in all its details— destined ultimately to become universal. The fundamental problem of human life, as stated by Comte, is how to subordinate Egoism to Altruism—or, to put it in a perhaps simpler, though certainly less compact form, how to give continually-increasing predominance to the higher over the lower side of man’s nature, so that his activity, which originally was inspired by necessarily in­ dividualist motives, may become ever more and more social �WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. 7 in its character. This is a problem which, it is almost needless to say, has been empirically dealt with, although not explicitly recognized, by every religion in its turn, and, in some cases, with remarkable success; but, owing to what Positivism regards as the fatal want of reality in the doctrines of all previously-existing religions, it was impos­ sible that the success could be other than temporary. Those creeds, whatever their differences in dogmatic details, all inculcated in man’s mind a spirit of reverence and sub­ mission to some supernatural power or powers, which he supposed to exercise absolute dominion over his destiny, and from which he derived all that he possessed. As a collateral and subordinate result they also, through the wisdom of their teachers, the spiritual leaders of the race, fostered the sense of duty and desire for union among those whose lives were subject to the same conditions, and who acknowledged allegiance to the same Divine Power. At first, no doubt, this was done in a very rudimentary and imperfect way; but every fresh religious develop­ ment, while becoming simpler in its supernatural aspect, strengthened the social ties, until Christianity, by its doctrine that all men were children of one Father, and consequently brethren, carried the conviction of the unity of the race to a point which had never before been reached, thereby approximating more closely than any previous creed to a solution of the problem. Assuming, however, the truth of the Positivist hypothesis as to the disappearance of theological belief, a substitute will eventually be required for the supernatural Power which has so long served, not merely as the rallying-point of man’s intellectual conceptions, but as the source of inspiration of his social sympathies. This substitute Positivism finds in Humanity, which, following out a suggestion of Pascal, it personifies as an immense and eternal Being, to whose immeasurable services we are indebted for all the blessings we enjoy, and whose existence, apart altogether from disputed theological legends of origin, is, at all events, an indisputable fact. It is not unusual to speak of Positivism as if it were a mere a priori emanation from Comte’s brain; as if he had under­ taken the task of reconstructing society in such a fashion as merely to give it a shape which should correspond with his own prejudices and conceptions; and he has accord­ �8 WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. ingly been, taxed with arrogance and presumption. But to regard Positivism in this fight is to mistake its character and its aims. It is, in theory, a scientific construction, framed in accordance with what Comte regarded as per­ manent and incontrovertible laws governing the world and man, and cannot, therefore, justly be condemned as a mere arbitrary scheme for which Comte alone is responsible. How far its claim in this respect is well-founded is, of course, open to question, and no one was more sensible than Comte of the difficulties which lay in the way of its general acceptance. He was fully aware of the tentative nature of his task, but, while acknowledging the possi­ bility that shortcomings might ultimately be detected in his doctrines, he insisted strenuously on the virtue of his method. “ In all inquiries,” he said, “but especially in the study of social questions, the method is more important than the doctrine ” ; and in more than one passage of his fundamental work, the Philosophic Positive, he admitted, in a spirit of modesty widely separated from the arrogance laid to his charge, that different conclusions from his own might be arrived at by “more fortunate successors”, employing his method, but possessed of later, and there­ fore more accurate, information. The tendency to agree with him that social, like all other, phenomena, are subject to the action of natural law, is certainly increasing. Whether the system he built up on this assumption will ultimately secure the adhesion of mankind, is a question which only the future can decide. Although, however, Positivism puts forward these scien­ tific pretensions, it has by no means the dry, cold character with which it is sometimes reproached, and which is popu­ larly attributed to all science. Its cardinal principle is the supremacy of feeling over intellect, and this principle is fostered in every way by the conception of Humanity, by the cultivation of a sense of gratitude to the past, by a touching attitude of reverence towards the dead, by insist­ ing on the sacredness of family ties, by exalting the func­ tions of woman as a wife and a mother, and by the most elaborate provisions for what Comte called Cuite — a French word which has, perhaps, no adequate equivalent in English, but is more or less imperfectly rendered by the word “worship ”, and which, as employed by Comte, has for its object to enforce the idea, not merely of the solidarity, �WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. > 9 but—what is far more important—the conimu/ty of the human race: an idea which lay at the root of Carlyle’s Hero Worship. “The History of the World”, said Car­ lyle, “is the Biography of Great Men”, and he declared that he knew of “no nobler feeling ” than “the transcen­ dent admiration of a Great Man”, to which he gave the name of worship. Comte—with whom, not merely on this but on some other points, Carlyle had much in common— gave a more universal and systematic form to this con­ ception by his remarkable compilation of the “Positivist Calendar ”, which, with the double view of cultivating a knowledge of the history of the past, and stimulating our gratitude for the legacy it has bequeathed to us, devotes each day in the year to the memory of some bene­ factor of the race: some great man who, whether as priest or warrior, poet or statesman, thinker or worker, aided, by his efforts, the great cause of human progress. Carlyle justifies hero-worship by asking whether every “true man” does not feel “that he is, himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him ” ; and this question is some index to the spirit which animates Posi­ tivism. It urges its adherents to endeavour to understand the past, as a means of raising their own characters. It seeks to repress the tendency, so widely manifest in the present generation, to glorify itself at the expense of its ancestors, and to substitute for it a spirit of humility, springing from a more thorough knowledge of the extent of our obligations; in reference to which, indeed, it affirms, in one of its most characteristic axioms, that, with the lapse of time, the living become ever more and more subject to the dominion of the dead, and that, therefore, in adopting an attitude of irreverence towards the past, we are vainly striving to escape from an inevitable destiny. As a further means of subordinating the individual to the community, and therefore to Humanity, Positivism seeks to break down the barrier which now exists between private and public life, by means of a series of social cere­ monies, to which Comte gave the name of Sacraments, and which are intended to remind each member of a community that, in all the important epochs of his career— e.g., birth, marriage, death—his interests are not exclusive, but that he forms part of a greater whole which is also concerned. This view of life, although expressed under �10 WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. theological forms, has been, sanctioned by all previous creeds, and Positivism merely continues the tradition. By these and similar means it endeavours to assert the supremacy of feeling over intellect, and to stimulate the sentiment of social duty—duty to Humanity. But according to the wise phrase of Tacitus, which has been so often repeated, the difficulty is not merely to do our duty, but to know what is our duty ; and here the assistance of the intellect is necessary. Such knowledge is to be obtained only by education directed to social ends ; and perhaps the most important part of Comte’s work is his comprehensive scheme for the reform of education, which, if carried out, would mean a veritable revolution, not merely in the methods of teaching, but in social habits and modes of life. It would be superfluous at the present moment to enter into the details of this scheme, but the magnitude of the changes it contemplates is faintly indicated by the pro­ vision that schools, as now understood, would be abolished, all children being left in their mother’s care till the age of fourteen, and receiving from her the rudiments of educa­ tion which they are now taught at school. This, however, is merely a preliminary process, it being proposed that, at the age of fourteen, the children of all classes, and both sexes, shall commence an encyclopaedic training (occupying seven years, and founded on Comte’s Classification of the Sciences), which is intended to give them a general acquaintance with the whole field of human knowledge, beginning with mathematics, passing afterwards in suc­ cession through astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology, and terminating with morals. This education is to be imparted by an organized body of teachers, whom Comte designates by the name of a priesthood—a term which, especially in Protestant countries, is invested with certain sinister associations, and the employment of which accounts, no doubt, for the suspicion with which many people view Positivism, under the impression that, if once established, it would be dangerous to liberty. Of the existence of this feeling Comte was quite aware, but his survey of history led him to the conclusion, which, ignoring current preju­ dices, he formulates as a definite sociological theory—that no society can exist, and be developed, without a priesthood in some form or other. “All men”, he said, “stand in need of education and counsel ”, and wherever any institution �WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. 11 is found to exercise these functions, there, under whatever name it is known, exists what is in essence a priesthood. In this sense the germ of a Positivist priesthood has already made its appearance, although in a very imperfect form. The science teacher, the physician, the journalist, each in his own way, performs these functions, and may conse­ quently, within his own limits, be regarded as a priest. Comte, however, desired that what is now done in a spontaneous, informal way, with too often no guarantee of either capacity or integrity, should be done by a carefully selected body of men, trained for the purpose, devoting their whole lives to the work, and voluntarily abandoning all competition for wealth or exalted position. But education, in the Positivist sense, must not be re­ garded as limited to mere book-learning. Its object, as already stated, is to inculcate principles of civic duty—to make men not merely scholars, but citizens; the education which allows any member of the community to stand aloof from the political and social movements of his time, how­ ever elaborate it may be from the intellectual stand-point, being, in Comte’s view, utterly unworthy of the name. Obviously, however, the character of civic duty is governed by the conception which exists as to the nature and func­ tions of the State; and here, again, Positivism sets forth an ideal which, if established, would effect a revolution. With the decay of theology, it regards as inevitable the decline of the hereditary principle in government, the institution of birth being directly dependent on theology. On this hypothesis, the ultimate form of government will be republican. War also, being regarded as another ally of theology, it is assumed will disappear. If, in fact, the Positivist estimate be correct, there are spontaneous ten­ dencies now at work, by which society will ultimately be transformed—which will, by degrees, abolish the theolo­ gical, monarchical, and military character it still possesses, and render it instead scientific, republican, and pacific­ industrial. Abandoning, as Positivism does, all idea of a future life, and of consolation in another world for the misfortunes of this, it considers the highest duty of the human race to be that of developing, by collective efforts, the resources of the earth, its only dwelling-place, so that, by the labours of each succeeding generation, the happiness of its inhabitants may be increased. With the acceptance �12 WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. of this view, many of the special classes identified with, and supported by, existing institutions will gradually become extinct, and society, in the main, will assume a purely industrial aspect, the bulk of it consisting of workmen, labouring as now, only under vastly improved conditions, and with more avowedly social aims, in association with, a comparatively small body of capitalists, regarded as trustees of the wealth of the community, under the intel­ lectual and moral' guidance of the priesthood, and in­ spired and consoled by the companionship and sympathy of women. Industry, however, being the basis of the society to which Positivism looks forward, and peace being ever more and more firmly established, Comte predicts that the. communities into which mankind is now distributed will, by degrees, undergo a process of re-arrangement. Thereare, in his view, three normal forms of human association —three social aggregates which call out man’s affection, and inspire him with a sense of duty—the Family, the State, and Humanity. Of these, the spirit of union is most intense in the case of the first, and most general in thecase of the last; the State serving as a connecting link between the two—appealing to man’s sympathy and ener­ gies on behalf of something nobler than the interests of . the narrow family group, and so helping to raise him to a consciousnesss of his duty to Humanity. In order, how­ ever, that this process should be effective, the idea of Country should be real and tangible. Patriotism, in the proper sense of the term, Comte holds to be impossible in the case of such enormous societies as those now con­ stituting the principal states of the world. They are toolarge to inspire a genuine sentiment of affection and de­ votion, and he regards it, therefore, as certain, that, sooneror later, a movement of decomposition will set in, which will reduce them within narrower limits. The ideal Posi­ tivist State, the State destined to become universal, is represented by a city with its surrounding territory; and Comte anticipates that, under the influence of this view,. Europe will in time break up into a number of small republics of the size of Belgium or Tuscany, in which, as a result of the restraining discipline of the new universal spiritual power which Positivism will establish, civic­ duty, now too often a synonym for mere vulgar Chauvin­ �WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. 13 ism, will become a reality, modified, restricted, and en­ nobled by subordination to the still loftier sentiment of ■duty to Humanity. It will be seen that the aims of Positivism are large, and it is consequently regarded with hostility by many who are ignorant of its teaching, or who shrink from its conclusions. It is sometimes classed indiscriminately with Atheism, Communism, and other theories of a purely revolutionary character ; and if attention be directed only to the results which it proclaims as inevitable, and for which it seeks to prepare the way, this comparison is, perhaps, not unnatural. Between Positivism, however, and other so-called “progressive” schools, there is a pro­ found difference in method, which is too often overlooked. While they mostly look to political changes, either peace­ ful. or violent, as a means of achieving their ends, Positivism relies solely on moral means. It insists that a reformation in ideas must precede any alteration in institutions. One of the most pregnant and luminous political maxims with which Comte has enriched the world consists in this—that progress is but the development of order ; from which maxim the conclusion is inevitable that, unless based upon order, progress of any permanent character is impossible. Al­ though, therefore, the intellectual, moral, and political aspects of society will, in the course of time, if the Posi­ tivist ideal be reached, undergo modifications of which the most advanced reformers now scarcely dream, yet it is assumed that they will be effected gradually and spon­ taneously, as the result of previous convictions arrived at by means of Positivist education. Briefly, the method of Positivism may be described as that of evolution as opposed to revolution. . Whether the Eeligion of Humanity be destined to justify its title, time alone can show. Its success, or its failure can matter nothing to its founder. The philosopher to whose genius it is due, who passed his life in poverty and obscurity, , gaining a precarious subsistence as a teacher of ' mathematics, now sleeps peacefully, indifferent alike to praise or blame, in a quiet hollow of Père-Lachaise. It is however, a significant testimony to the force of his doc­ trines, that, in various parts of the world, they have succeeded in. attracting groups of devoted adherents, of different nationalities, who carry on a systematic propa­ �14 WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. ganda. The influence of his teaching, moreover, cannot De measured by the number of those who call themselves Positivists. In Comte’s phrase, Positivism is “systema­ tized common sense”, and, as such, it acts, naturally enough, in different ways on different minds, influencing them to an extent which it is quite impossible to gauge. Persons of the most widely varying pursuits, although unable to accept it as a whole, and even rejecting its leading principles, have acknowledged their obligations to it on points connected with their own special ex­ perience. The centre of the Positivist movement is at No. 10, Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, Paris, where M. Pierre Laffitte, the friend and disciple of Auguste Comte, assisted by a body of younger co-religionists, carries on the work of scientific and historical teaching essential to the progress of the cause, and where also a Positivist magazine, La Revue Occidentale, is published every two months. There are also groups in Havre, Rouen, and other French cities. Positi­ vism was introduced into England by Dr. Richard Con­ greve, another disciple of Comte, and there are now three organized bodies in London, the best known, perhaps, of which has its head-quarters at Newton Hall, Fleur-de-lis Court, Fetter Lane. The movement has of late years spread to Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and other British cities. It has branches also in Sweden, the United States, Chili, Brazil, India, etc. The organization is not very strict, and there are differences of opinion as to the opportuneness of giving prominence to certain aspects of the system; but, by common consent, an agreement exists on fundamental points of doctrine. All the groups cherish the same ideal, although some of them differ as to the means of arriving at it. Comte’s principal work, La Politique Positive, instituting the Religion of Humanity, has been translated into English, and published in four volumes by Longmans, but is now out of print. Comparatively few people, how­ ever, have sufficient time, and perhaps still fewer the inchnation, to study, as it requires and deserves, so large and important a philosophical work. Those who wish to make acquaintance with the system, without so serious an expenditure of energy, will do well to read Comte’s smaller works, two of which, the General View of Positivism, and �WHAT POSITIVISM MEANS. 15 the Catechism of Positive Religion, are published in English in a convenient form, price half-a-crown each. The former, translated by Dr. Bridges, and published by Messrs. Beeves and Turner, 196, Strand, is an admirable exposition of general principles, and, as such, is perhaps the more suitable for a person approaching the subject for the first time. It begins with a most remarkable chapter on the intellectual character of Positivism, the first reading of which, to any one not previously familiar with philosophical problems, is in itself a veritable education. In the suc­ ceeding chapters, it deals with such subjects as the nature and uses of wealth (in connexion with which it includes a profound criticism of the ordinary Economic and Socialist theories), the position and duties of the workman in a properly-organized society, the social functions of woman, the human theory of marriage, the relation of Positivism to Art, the meaning of the conception of “ Humanity ” as a central object of religion, etc., etc. But, for the purpose of learning the nature of the institutions by which it is proposed to give effect to these principles, and to form an idea of what society, organized in accordance with them, would belike, the reading of the General View should be supplemented by that of the Catechism, a translation of which, by Dr. Congreve, is published by Messrs. Triibner and Co., Ludgate Hill. The original appeared in 1852, four years later than the General View, and as a conse­ quence, Comte’s views having become more matured, the religious conception of Positivism is brought forward more distinctly. In it are found the list of books, known as the Positivist Library, which Comte recommended for habitual reading by those whose leisure is limited, and who are, therefore, under the necessity of making a selection from the enormous mass of literature by which they are sur­ rounded ; a copy of the Positivist Calendar; and sundry other tables, the knowledge of which is essential in order to thoroughly realize the nature of Positivism, not merely as a philosophical creed conducing to sound and tranquil­ lizing convictions, but as a large-hearted effort to reor­ ganize society, to stimulate material and moral progress, and to increase the sum of human happiness. An English abridgment, by Miss Martineau, of the Philosophic Positive is published by Triibner in two volumes. An appreciative memoir of Comte, with some account of the system, will �16 WIIAT POSITIVISM MEANS. be found ill the second volume of Lewes’s History of Philo­ sophy. * A fuller and more synthetic view, however, is given in the Notice sur V Œuvre et sur la Vie P Auguste Comte, by Dr. Bobinet, his friend and physician. Any one wishing for further information as to the organiza­ tion in England, or the methods of propaganda, is requested to apply to the Secretary of the English Positivist Com­ mittee, Newton Hall, Fleur-de-lis Court, Fetter Lane, London, E.C. � 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 &amp; 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 What positivism means Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ellis, Henry English Positivist Committee Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Publication details from KVK. 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 [18--] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G2815 Subject The topic of the resource Positivism 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 (What positivism means), 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 The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Positivism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d868816dc7f799dda9cfc03f3beb7528.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=O2K3IplmUfTeLpYjZUGIQroVsnNxkrxt-M5JYB9fQ1hnKNwU-Gmixp3qyPEjIfpAyF3Ru0wFpxD-7ziSoCMdgFzbRhgQF-KYhHMf7jgFGJI5XEhUWaOEvE97oIX1SxsjxOIO-m8r6YO9GhmS6RsiJf4fCsFFWLw3S0Ic98MHTdmTVS3rWvbt1YZbyUWSp%7EqQMY5PCKuyCm54lsj3NdHCQVAP-fyAuxU3x%7ETjAtBI-i0gLxllW0A6Z1jvK-z1h7rAQXGrWgkaan6YWOguuFPhLnoM6uYY6z6jOlg2r0QLPcjPGFqD3ELul2lloRo5386zdgFA64wvFaV%7E2GChO4lI%7EQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2247ded444d94f042bbaa41f1ea3c602 PDF Text Text WHAT WE BELIEVE. A DIALOGUE BETWEEN AN INQUIRER AND AN “INCOMPLETE” POSITIVIST. I NQUIRER. I understand you do not believe in a Personal God 01 great First Cause. Positivist. We neither deny nor affirm respecting either. There may be a God such as Christians and Mohammedans gen­ erally accept as existing, but they no more than we can demonstrate the fact, if it be a fact. Inquirer. Then your religion does not recognize any God at all. Positivist. Oh yes, it does. John Stuart Mill has done us grievous injury in saying that August Comte propounded a religion without a God or a future state; whereas we, with Comte, believe in both, if allowed to define what we mean. Our Supreme Being is Humanity, whom we love and serve. We say the only God man can know, or whose existence can be- demonstrated, is the collective Man—the sum of all human personalities, past, present, and future. Inquirer. This strikes me as vague. How can you make a Thing or a Person out of what is clearly an abstract conception ? Positivist. But the human mind does very readily personify abstract conceptions. The Town, the State, the Nation, the Church are no more actual things or entities than is Humanity; yet they are—they convey a definite impression to the rudest intelligence. Now Human­ ity clearly exists as a subjective conception no less than an objective phenomenon. Inquirer. But how about the Creator? How do you account for the origin of the universe ? Positivist. We know nothing of the beginning of things. It is be­ yond our ken. So far as we know, matter and force are eternal. Science proves this in that no atom of matter can be destroyed or any force wasted. Each can take a different form, but the precise quantity or energy of the one or the other always exists in the same definite pro­ portions. Hence to the human scientific mind there never was a be­ ginning—there never can be an end. Eternity with us is a circle; in other words, the old Hindoo symbol —the serpent with his tail in his mouth. The ordinary conception is that of a straight line with a be­ ginning and end. �/ WHAT WE BELIEVE. 149 Inquirer. When you discriminate between matter and force, do you mean that there is any real difference between them ? Positivist. Oh, I speak in a popular way of course. We want what Mr. Lincoln called the “plain people” to understand us. We know of matter only through force; that is, through its changes—by the im­ pression it makes upon us; but this conception, which is simple enough to you or me, is too subtile for common comprehension, and hence we speak of matter and force as two distinct entities. Inquirer. But the ordinary conception of God must have some valid basis. Positivist. So it has. All gods are idealizations of man himself. They are man-made. Every attribute, with two important exceptions, which the human race in its past history have ascribed to its gods, is purely human. Thus love, justice, wisdom, mercy, as well as revenge­ fulness, vanity, and lust—in short, all the emotions and passions which have been attributed to Deity, are purely human. To these have been added conceptions of the Infinite and Absolute, which are extra-human. The elements which compose the popular notion of God vary with every age. The Jewish Jehovah was stern, revengeful, jealous, vain; the Christian God is a tender, loving Father; the more human or man­ like the God, the better he is—hence the noblest Deity of all is the man Christ-Jesus. In short, this brief and imperfect analysis shows us that Humanity is, after all, the only pure metal in this alloy of gods. Let us consecrate all our energies to the service of the only Supreme Being we can ever know—Humanity. There may be in addition an Infinite and Absolute Deity; we do not say there is not; but we hold with Sir William Hamilton, Prof. Mansell, and Herbert Spencer, that from the laws of our being we can never know or understand Him; He is out of all relation with us. Unlike Herbert Spencer, we regard the worship of an unknowable God as a rank absurdity. His ways cannot be as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts. He is for us as if he were not. Such is the verdict of modern Philosophy and Science. * Inquirer. How about Immortality? If a man die, shall he live again ? Positivist. We know we live upon this earth. We do not know that we shall continue our personal consciousness after death. It may be so, but we cannot demonstrate .it by any scientific proof. If the phenomenon of Spiritualism so-called could be proven, all would be plain sailing; but it resists scientific tests. There is, however, a real immortality which we are scientifically sure of. We know that the materials of which we are composed are indestructible. Every atom which has formed a part of this body of mine from birth to death will exist forever. And so too of the forces I generate; they cannot be lost or wasted. “ The good I do lives after me.” I live in my children—in the work I do—in what I hand down from those who came before to �150 WETA T WE BELIEVE. those who will follow me. The machine becomes unusable and decays, but the forces to which it gave birth live forever. Inquirer. But does not life lose much of its interest and glory by being confined to this earth, and the few, the very few years we spend upon it ? Positivist. We must take things as they are, and not as we would like them to be. No doubt the hope of a personal, conscious immor­ tality has done much in times past to soften and brighten the harsh lot of myriads of human beings who else would have been given over to despair from the wretchedness of their material surroundings; but notwithstanding the comfort men have got from this and other pleasant illusions, we Positivists decline countenancing the dogma of conscious immortality until it is proven. So far it has no basis of fact to rest upon. If it ever should be demonstrated, we should believe in it; but we do not think this possible. Inquirer. Do I understand you to wish to unsettle the faith of the mass of mankind in a Personal Creator of the universe and a Personal Immortality ? Positivist. By no means. The prevalent disbelief and scepticism is to us a worse symptom of the times than the current theological illu­ sions. Any religion, even the most baseless, is better than the bald atheism and materialism which is gaining such hold upon the age. We want to build up a religion to supply the -spiritual needs of man­ kind, and one which is based upon the facts of nature. The old faiths rest upon supernatural authority and revelation; the new, upon dem­ onstrated facts — in other words, upon science. The priest of the Past appealed to the Unknown; the priest of the Future will be the expounder, or rather the declarer, of the Known. Inquirer. Does the belief in a future state do any harm ? Positivist. Yes; it attracts the best and purest minds of the race away from the solution of practical problems involving human well­ being, to the consideration of insoluble questions. Now what is needed is that all the energies of the race shall hereafter be devoted to making this earth the fabled heaven. Human effort should be confined to human improvement, and to making the earth more habitable. � 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 &amp; 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 What we believe: a dialogue between an inquirer and an "incomplete" positivist Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [New York] Collation: [148]-150 p. ; 26 cm. Notes: From Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [American News Company] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1870] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5419 Subject The topic of the resource Positivism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (What we believe: a dialogue between an inquirer and an "incomplete" positivist), identified by <span style="color:#0000ff;"><span lang="zxx"><u>Humanist Library and Archives</u></span></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Unknown] Conway Tracts Positivism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/74bbd6ad552f27359ec6671f83c4287b.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=M3-O6%7EYoQXhHjobCCBK6y3FGCTY4tv8H9KnlTTqr70b0Guf-rxvYuOsj91u92GbqeEW6g01uKA2B7qm3LTshMIi0O940oLZpYVs7S0Ax%7E2dL-Dcf5Gj0YslucY-pdMHNlc9QuCEfKOQeOqWu9LCHlt5xe%7E59RzB8USk9-oB4GiNdXXZDoa-O5-BHYCBlQbtTZGdx1Dtu%7EBquBbga7LWP5Z9BzokZbRlIpBYENgtxs9qqRXk-0yIIbGUrDT-U2FGbfxoNwsR4PoH%7EOiuXi6a7mNbvX%7EaWfiPmjjHCquNguQ%7EC3nE9uDpeYYyC9j0oGwuyQOPtparo3xJjML8W0kLOtw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM acbce89ed869dbf74c892c2ee27ba5c4 PDF Text Text POSITIVE RELIGION: ITS BASIS AND CHARACTERISTICS. LECTURE II. BY THE LATE REV. JAMES CRANBROOK, EDINBURGH. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11, THE TERRACE, EARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. Price Threepence. ��LECTURE II. HE term “force” enters very largely into modern science, and in philosophy seems very much to occupy the position which “ secondary cause ” once did. Thus, we are constantly hearing of the mechani­ cal forces, chemical forces, electrical forces, vital forces, the force of gravity, and so on. The word is a very convenient one, and it would be hard if physicists had to give it up; yet I sometimes fear that through the misuse that is already being made of it, they will have to do so. As the word is used by natural philosophers, it simply denotes those conditions upon which certain changes are effected in a substance. But, as the word is taken up by a certain class of writers and as it is used by the public it means very much more than this, viz., a power, energy, or cause, which, by the possession of certain inherent properties, is able to compel the substance it acts upon, independently of all circumstances, to undergo a certain indefinite change. This metaphysical use of the word arises out of the same experiences as those which led to the misuse of the word “ cause.” Men transfer the sensations or feelings arising within themselves when they perform an action to external nature, and hence suppose there are the same effort to produce and the same resistance to undergo change that they find in relation to them­ selves. Hence these forces seem to them energies, powers, a something constraining the substances they act upon to undergo change in spite of themselves. The phenomena of human will gets transferred to the T �4 Positive Religion. physical circumstances which condition every change ; and hence the notion arises that there is something corresponding to the human will amongst those con­ ditioning physical circumstances. Formerly men would have looked for that something in the force itself, or, as it would then have been called, the cause. Now, such metaphysical entities are given up, hut it is supposed to reside in one absolute, efficient cause, pervading all nature. And out of the supposition an argument is constructed, intended to prove the divine, personal existence. The argument may be stated thus: Everything, every moment of time, is passing out of one state of being into another, and all the phenomena by which we are surrounded, are subject to constant changes. These changes do not take place at hap-hazard and by irregular order: constancy and law regulate them all. The same antecedent is always followed by the same consequent; the same conditions, without the shadow of variableness, issue in the same results. Now, in contemplating these facts, the question arises—Why does the same consequent always follow the same antecedent, or the same results the same conditions ? It would be no answer to refer to some still higher or more general physical process which explains the lower, for what is asked for is the reason, cause, or efficient condition of each step in the process. A stone falls, e.g., to the earth. Why ? Because of the force of gravity. What is the force of gravity ? That which causes all bodies to tend to the centre of the earth, according to a given law. What is that? We know not. But although we know not, it is said that we have a feeling, a conviction that there is a force, a power, a something which causes or determines that tendency. And so of every connection between all phenomena, we ask after something more than physical antecedents, we have a feeling that there is a some­ thing more • we have the feeling or conviction that �Lecture 11. 5 there is an efficient force, a power, a something which determines absolutely each special antecedent to be followed by its special consequent. Now this efficient force, in virtue of which every event takes place and every antecedent is followed by its own proper con­ sequent, is God. God, the efficient force, the deter­ mining power of the universe, are synonymous terms. And out of the phenomenal, one’s belief in the Divine existence emerges. I will not detain you by describing the process through which from these elements his personality and conscious intelligence are eliminated, because my objection goes to the base of the argument, and therefore criticism upon the superstructure would he superfluous. My objection, then, is this : it is constructed by a transference, as I have already intimated, of the sensa­ tions we experience in action to the phenomena of outward nature, and that we are entirely unwarranted in doing. As I showed you in the course of lectures I recently delivered,* the idea of efficient force is purely and simply derived from the sensation of muscular resistance we experience whenever we act. Hence the notion of striving, using energy or force, comes to be associated with all the changes produced by such acts, and we are apt to suppose the striving or energizing an essential condition of the change. But we have no ground whatsoever to transfer our experiences to out­ ward nature, and infer there must be an equivalent to the same striving or energizing in the changes we witness going on around us. We know nothing but the phenomena, i.e., the succession of events, the order and constancy in antecedents and consequents, and all supposed to exist besides, is due to a pure and gratui­ tous assumption, and is the simple creation of our own fancy. Nor can I allow the plea which is sometimes put in, * See “The Founders of Christianity,’’ p. 77- Triibner & Co., London. �6 Positive Religion. viz., that although the existence of an efficient force cannot he logically proved yet that the feeling or con­ viction of its existence almost universally springs up when we look upon the processes of nature. For, in the first place, the explanation I have given accounts for the feeling and shews it arises out of a illicit pro­ cess ; and secondly the feeling disappears as soon as you begin to analyse what are the actual phenomena presented by nature, for then you can discover nothing but base facts, and their relations of co-existence and succession. I do not think therefore this argument from an efficient force any more valuable than those from design and intuition; not one of the three is logically tenable. Belief in the divine existence cannot ration­ ally come through them, and unless we can find some other basis for it religion becomes impossible. Having cleared the ground for our inquiries let us now proceed to ascertain what of real, rational basis there is. And I must begin by drawing your attention to some facts of experience, which although they are probably familiar to you I must, because of their importance to the subject, dwell upon with some detail. Amongst the first of these I wish you to notice, because they will enable you to understand some of the rest better, are the feelings which arise when one is in the midst of grand and sublime scenery. I presume you and I are alike in that respect; besides the sense of grandeur and sublimity a feeling of wonder springs up, a wonder at the grandeur and sublimity, a wonder at its power of affecting us as it does, a wonder at its origin and what we do not understand about it. And this wonder is not the less although we may have a theory about the sublime which seems to explain the other feelings excited; but the more full the explanation the deeper the wonder grows. There is so much the theory does not explain, so much which lies beyond all explanation, nature as thus presenting �Lecture II. 7 herself to us stands out so far beyond and above us that we cannot but wonder and feel awed. The same feeling arises when we gaze upon very beautiful scenery. Beyond that sense of the beautiful and the unspeakable happiness and joy it creates there is also this feeling of wonder and mystery about it. I have a theory of my own about the physical con­ ditions (causes) of the sense of the beautiful which would be regarded as of a very materialistic character if I were now to explain it to you, but this theory does not in the least degree prevent that feeling of wonder at the surpassing beauty nature sometimes reveals to me—nay it deepens it when I think of it at the same time, for then I wonder at the existence of those conditions there and at the peculiar effect they are able to produce. The same effect takes place when I look up at the stars or upon the ocean in a contemplative mood, and allow them to make what impression they can upon my feelings. And the teachings of astronomy and of physical geography when they expound to me the order and constancy, the motions, and the causes of the motions, the immense spaces and times and such like things, make them seem more wonderful still and have sometimes made me thrill with awe, at the sense of the mystery lying all round about them. But the object need not be upon a grand scale to excite this feeling, or these feelings rather; what is little and minute has the same effect. The other day I was looking at the tiny flower of a small sprig of heath. The exquisite beauty of its petals filled me with an inexpressible sense of enjoyment. I began to think of the process of its formation and the laws which had determined its existence there in such loveliness. But over all these thoughts and all those feelings spread my sense of wonder—a wonder intensified greatly by the recollection of the physio­ logical laws and processes, and as I gazed upon the �8 Positive Religion. flower it became to me full of the deepest mystery. And I suppose every one of you would have felt the same. Nor, as I have intimated, is it the pure objects of nature alone which excite these feelings, but more deeply still the expositions and revelations of science. Science seems to me to extend and deepen the mystery and the feeling of wonder, nature calls forth, instead of diminishing it. The simplicity of the processes, the unity of the methods, the constancy and order are more mysterious, more wonderful to me than the bare phenomena, however grand and imposing these latter may be ; and that very phenomenal philosophy which forbids an attempt to penetrate to the noumenon and the infinite conducts me to the confines which separate them where I find myself overwhelmed with awe as I gaze into the darkness. Thus, e.g., science tells me that the revolution of the planets around the sun is produced by the two forces termed the centripetal and the centrifugal. I ask an explanation and am informed that it is found that when a body upon earth revolves around another it has two tendencies, one to rush in a straight line towards the centre of that around which it revolves, and the other to go off each moment of time in a straight line from the point of the circle it occupies into a direction which would be away from that centre. Now by the supposition of these same tendencies or directions of motion acting in the planets the form of their orbit is explained. Well, although this supposition is established by most unquestionable facts, and we all believe it to be true, the explanation it gives is more wonderful than the motion of the planets themselves. How wonderful, how mysterious it is that a planet as well as a stone set in motion should tend towards the centre of some other body with a definite momentum. How strange, how won­ derful that it should tend to move on in the same straight line for ever ! How unspeakably strange and �Lecture II. 9 wonderful that the course of the planets in their orbits should be determined by the combination of two such simple laws. Surely you cannot but feel as I do that science makes this wondrous, mysterious universe more wondrous and mysterious still! Here, too, come in the various fitnesses, harmonies and organizations, upon which has been built the argument from design. Science points out to us how all the great results in nature are obtained by the combination of a few simple principles or processes. The eye by means of a lens, a few muscles, and a nerve or two, becomes capable of vision. The ear by con­ struction upon the same principle as a musical instrument for the reception and propagation of sound becomes capable of hearing. Each organ of the body is exactly fitted to perform its special function. Wherever we turn, indeed, we find these fitnesses, congruities, what some call adaptations and marks of design. Now, we have seen that they afford no argument by which we can prove the existence of an intelligent, designing creator; but on that very account they become the more wonderful and mysterious. There they are, patent to every observer but unac­ counted for, unexplained: suggesting ten thousand speculations about their origin and determining causes, but for ever by their silence mocking our curiosity. How little, ignorant, and blind, they make us feel ourselves to be ! How mysterious, great, and supreme, they make us feel nature is ! With all our advancing knowledge we can do nothing before such final facts, but wonder and bow down in reverence. Hitherto, I have principally referred to external nature as the source of these feelings; but man himself under some conditions, excites them equally within us. Great and heroic actions, extraordinary virtue and excellency, or indeed, the manifestation of great individual power, and especially of great individual mental power, will frequently call them forth. Extra­ �io Positive Religion. ordinary beauty in a woman, which of course, as opposed to mere prettiness depends upon intellectual, aesthetical and moral qualities, and extraordinary nobleness in a man will do it. Such persons excite great wonder, reverence and a sense of mysteriousness in us. I must confess, however, that I do not attribute so much influence to objects of this kind as some writers are disposed to do. The habit of analys­ ing every thing which one acquires in the present day leads to the perception of too many imperfections even in the highest and best, to allow of the possibility of unrestrained hero worship. On the other hand, however, the more rigidly the formation of character is brought under the operation of law, the more deeply wonder at the powers of nature is excited, and the more marvellous one feels her to be. But it is when human beings are contemplated in their history that these feelings of mystery, wonder, and awe, are the most powerfully called into activity. For it is then that we see that human life is not merely an aggregation of individual existences thrown together at haphazard upon this earth, but that it is a con­ nected, organized whole, each part of which affects the destiny of the rest Take any of the great epochs in history and you will find illustrations of this fact. Thus, e.g. in modern times, movements in Central Asia led to the ascendency of the Saracens in the Moslem empire, and the oppression of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. The oppression aroused the romantic, superstitious spirit of Europe, and organised the crusades. The crusades brought the ignorant barbar­ ous people of the west into contact with Arabian, and other oriental scholars, and reintroduced the study of Aristotle into the west. The study of Aristotle reawakened the scientific spirit, and gave rise to the controversies between the realists and the nomenalists. The spirit of free inquiry thus revived, became greatly intensified by the taking of Constantinople by �Lecture II. 11 the Turks in the 15th century, and the dispersion of its classical scholars over Europe.* This spirit of free inquiry of nomalism and of science influenced the theological thinking, especially of the Teutonic nations, and gave origin to the Reformation in the beginning of the 16th century. Now, here is a strange combina­ tion of independent events, determined by most remote causes and yet leading to definite results affecting the condition of the whole civilized world. No explanation seems to offer itself but that of an overruling intelligent power; and yet when you come to examine such an explanation, you are not only encountered by the logical difficulties, but the real mystery remains un­ touched and the feelings of wonder and awe keep possession of the mind. Here then is the basis upon which I rest my religion. I have enumerated a number of cases in which the feelings of wonder, awe, and mystery are originated by the objects presented in nature. The enumerated cases are not exhaustive of the whole, but only specimens of the rest. Whenever or under whatever aspects nature is gazed upon in a contemplative mood, these feelings are awakened. Pick up a common stone off the road, look at it, examine it, ask about its con­ struction, the conditions or laws under which it came to exist as you have found it, and the same feelings of marvellousness, mystery, and awe, will be forced upon you. If all nature do not encompass us with a sense of its mystery and bow us down with feelings of profoundest wonder, it is because we have not thought sufficiently upon the facts it presents. I have said, it is upon these feelings I base my religion; I may add, it is upon the feelings thus * The same original movements in Asia too, had led to the establishment of the Moors in Spain, and through them to an introduction of the study of Aristotle and of various sciences from a different quarter, but all tending to augment the same influences which came directly from the East. �12 Positive Religion. excited, all the theologies of the world have been con­ structed. When men have been moved by nature in this way, they have been aroused to ask for the explanation of the mystery. Not content with knowing that phenomena are as they are, they want to know the cause of their being so, and to convert the feeling of wonder they excite into the complacency which arises from competent knowledge. Never doubting of their power to transcend the phenomenal and ascertain the noumenal cause, they have boldly speculated upon the questions the feelings have aroused and arrived at answers determined in all cases by the character of their culture. Accordingly we find them passing through all the grades of fetishism, polytheism, monotheism, pantheism, and atheism—projecting the shadow of their own thoughts and feelings upon the object they superinduced to explain the mysteries of nature. Amongst these various methods of explanation, the monotheistic seems the only one which in any measure meets the demands of the case. Pantheism only puts the mystery and the questions one step further back; or rather, I should say, Pantheism, in its usually accepted sense, does so, for a force which only becomes conscious and intelligent in such manifestations and embodiments as man, seems itself to require to be accounted for, and leaves the mystery of existence as dark as ever. On the other hand, the Monotheistic theory will account for the facts, if one be capable of forming the conceptions the theory requires. But there is the difficulty—a difficulty, if I mistake not, becoming greater every day. And the principal, although not the only cause of this increasing difficulty, must be attributed to the progress of biological science. That science daily more and more conclusively proves that the phenomena of thought and feeling, as known to us, arise entirely out of the processes of our nervous organization ■ so that those who, are thoroughly �Lecture II. l3 abreast of the science find it no more possible to con­ ceive of thought and feeling apart from such organiza­ tion than an electrician could conceive of electricity in a homogeneous substance of equal structure and tem­ perature, or than a natural philosopher could conceive of the existence of the prismatic colours apart from rays of light. There is therefore no fact out of which one can construct the Monotheistic theory, no basis of any kind upon which one could form the con­ ception of a Being possessing thought, feeling, and will independent of organization; the conception is the product of a fancy as wild and as worthless as ever was created in our dreams. But some will say, The formation of a hypothesis to account for facts is perfectly legitimate; and if it account for all the facts, it may be held as presumably true until it is disproved. Thus, e.g., the hypothesis that Nature abhors a vacuum to account for the rising of water in a well, and the compression of the sides of a cavern, &c., was as legitimate, until it was disproved, as Newton’s theory of gravitation—the only difference being, that in the latter case increased knowledge con­ firmed it, and in the former case increased knowledge proved it to be untrue. So in like manner we may form and hold the hypothesis upon which Monotheism is built until it is disproved. The illustration, how­ ever, is founded upon a mistake. That Nature abhors a vacuum was never a legitimate hypothesis, for there never was any evidence that Nature possesses that class of feelings of which abhorrence is one. To assume it as a method of accounting for certain facts, was therefore a wanton act of fancy, altogether un­ known to the scientific method. When Newton applied his theory of gravitation to account for the movements of the heavenly bodies, he was merely using known facts as the probable explanation of other facts. He had found bodies upon earth moving according to certain laws. He said, “Suppose the �14. Positive Religion. same laws to regulate the heavenly bodies, it will account for their movements.” “ Ah, but then,” said some objectors, “such and such things would also happen, and that is absurd.” “ Would they ? ” said Newton’s disciples; “let us see then if they do.” They examined, and found that they did. And every discovery since has proved the truth of Newton’s supposition. Now, that is the only way of forming hypothesis science can allow. It does not suffer you to weave fancies at will, and then suppose their actual existence. Your hypothesis must consist of some acknowledged fact or law, which, when applied to the subject, accounts also for its facts. But the theologians have no such known and accepted facts to form the Monotheistic hypothesis upon. They have nothing but a fancy as wild as that of Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum. Whether it account for all the facts or not, therefore, it can never be allowed to do more than amuse the idle hours of the intellect. It seems to me, then, that none of the theological methods of accounting for the facts I have referred to, and answering the questions they suggest, are tenable; they are all founded on erroneous conceptions and mere fancies. We cannot accept of what does not rest upon certain knowledge. And equally, I think, you will see that the religious system of A. Comte fails to meet the wants of the case. It ignores the greater part of the facts alto­ gether, and only offers to satisfy the feelings which arise from the contemplation of man under a few special aspects. It has nothing to say to that wonder and deep sense of mystery all nature calls forth ; nothing to say even to those feelings as called forth by the contemplation of the history of man; it merely encourages reverence and worship for humanity, as ennobled in some few of the elect of its children ; for although it is professedly humanity as a whole, the �Lecture II. 15 great, the sublime Existence which it worships, it is to special forms of it, men and women who have done great and loving deeds to whom the homage is paid. But religion must be wider, truer, more com­ plete than that. It must take up into itself all the mystery around us, all the wonder and awe in our­ selves from whatever source they spring. It must allow our feelings free play, whilst it satisfies every demand of the intellect. What form it must take to do this I next proceed to show ; but I will not do tlie injustice to myself or system of giving you a part of my doctrine to-night and the rest next Sunday. You must have the whole before you before you can judge of the parts. I there­ fore shall delay until next Sunday the exposition of the form I consider religion must adopt in the present day. TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. �� 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 &amp; 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. 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Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [n.d.] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA1600 G5747 Subject The topic of the resource Positivism 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 (Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture II), 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 The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Positivism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/b261ab9da4ed3b99771ed93605df0bb5.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=EBFsO46rrML4VCCVkBeaPw7mnjNmMWzqrA2i7BWdQtQaJ0i29t9HqSfhL0KZygFDfcLr0IljlQw4toPPKraS8mqVazLy2aud4f7IaFbpF%7EE%7Eck5UskByAm85J60M1d0q3PW8SSmYrBHTKox9GQpbXm54sSOJuo2HOo7HcGU7epwYOnc4qttHe9iHUuKj-0w9Ikf-4FTUG1SrnAhLSjTqFN2zZHVVNYyl72ipcY73qeq1HxlYjOkvfhCCD9ILd3YA8Ql487HIqNPB8vbu2DtXTgkF7--rHDJ-V834NwQpX6F9EU0phpMLgq9VvzmXT94aWGu6C%7EgWm3RCNehwKY-RQw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7c8344386fa4cbb9db07ca29248fa06a PDF Text Text POSITIVE RELIGION: ITS BASIS AND CHARACTERISTICS. LECTURE I. BY THE LATE REV. JAMES CRANBBOOK, EDINBURGH. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. Price Threepence. ��LECTURE I. N entering upon a course of lectures upon the basis and characteristics of the only religion I conceive to be possible for those partaking of the spirit of the present day, I must bespeak your patient and very candid attention. For I shall have many things to say which I fear it will be very difficult for those who do not approach the subject from my own point of view, not to misunderstand and misrepresent. I will. endeavour, however, to be as explicit and as clear as I can, and I have no doubt, you in return, recognising the importance of the subject, will endeavour to exclude from my words all ideas they do not in themselves ex­ press. For this, I apprehend, will constitute your prin­ cipal difficulty in comprehending what I have to say— the intrusion of other ideas into the words than those which I mean to convey. Whenever an old subject has to be re-discussed this difficulty is sure to arise. People import into it the loose popular ideas that have become associated with it j the mind listlessly allows these ideas to interweave themselves with the new forms of thought: and thus, an interpretation is often given to these new forms of thought which is quite foreign to them. I must ask you, therefore, not to suppose that. I mean anything more than I say; and I, upon my part, will promise to do my best to say all I mean. In attempting to lay a basis for a religion compatible with the culture of the present day, I think it is necessary to begin with a distinct recognition of what I �4 Positive Religion. is somewhat unfortunately called the positive philo­ sophy. I think it is unfortunately so called, because there is an ambiguity about the word positive which affords weak witlings an opportunity to make them­ selves facetious in their small way over the negations of the philosophy; and also because the term has become so closely connected in the vulgar-literary mind with the name of M. Comte that it is very hard for one, avowing that he adopts the method of the philosophy, to make people believe he does not also adopt that great man’s entire system. Now, of course, if the term were a necessary or even a particularly descriptive one in itself, these would not be sufficient reasons for giving it up. But the word positive itself suggests a better. As it is used by the scientific school it simply means that which can be affirmed ; the positive philosophy concerns itself only with objects concerning which one can make affirmations. Now, all such objects are phenomenal. What is noumenal lies beyond us, we can only make guesses, from fancies, or constant hypothetical inferences, about it; and consequently all affirmations concerning it are out of the question. The positive philosophy is therefore the phenomenal philosophy, and to call it so would be at once to describe the limits of its enquiries and its aims. Whenever therefore I have to refer to the philosophy distinctively in the course of these lectures I shall call it, not the positive, but the phenomenal philosophy. And I especially hope that by so doing I shall at once guard you against supposing that the system of religion I advocate has any direct relation or resemblance to that of M. Comte. I say this, not because I at all shrink from sharing in the stupid odium attached to his name, but because I think his religious system is so fanciful in its substance, and so entirely French in its form, that it can never obtain but the smallest acceptance with the Anglo-Saxon race. �Lecture I. :> Well, then, all attempts at ascertaining a basis for the only religion possible in the present day must, as I said, begin by recognising the phenomenal philosophy. And I say so because I everywhere find this philosophy becoming predominant over men’s thoughts. Even those who eschew it in words, come unconsciously more or less under its influence, and the most thorough­ going metaphysician is seen wriggling and turning in every direction to meet its demands. I believe the time is coming when it will have become universal; therefore no religion can become permanent which does not recognise its claims. Now this philosophy is distinguished from others by two essential characteristics. The first is the one already referred to and which I have embodied in its name, i.e. it limits the objects of its enquiries to the phenomenal. It distinctly avows itself incapable of searching out and knowing anything but phenomena, in their relations of coexistence and succession. It declares that Being, substance, noumenon in itself, lies utterly beyond the reach of the human faculties, and therefore, must ever be utterly unknown. The second characteristic is its method. Confining itself to ascertaining the coexistences and successions of phenomena it rigidly insists that every fact asserted, every inference deduced, every hypothesis formed in explanation, shall be tested, analysed, brought under the laws of experience, and so, thoroughly verified, before it shall be accepted as true. No assumed facts, however plausible ; no process of reasoning however logical; no theory, however fully accounting for all the known phenomena of a particular subject of enquiry are allowed for one moment to become the substitute for verification; knowledge consists of what has been verified ; all else lies beyond in the regions of plausi­ bility, conjecture, hypothesis, fancy and faith. Now, in recognising this phenomenal philosophy thus characterized as true, I think I am doing what both �6 Positive Religion. my knowledge of the character and strength of my own faculties and the history of all attempts to obtain knowledge through all the past ages compel me to do ; for, in the first place, when I examine myself, I find that I have no means of knowing anything but what comes within the range of my outward senses, such as seeing, hearing, &c., and what affects my inner sense, such as objects remembered, pain, pleasure, and so on. And all these objects so known are phenomenal merely. They are the appearances of things, of substances, not the substances themselves. At least I only know them as- appearances,—I only know them as of a certain colour, a certain form, a certain hardness and resist­ ance, as producing a certain sensation of heat, &c.—all else is hidden from me. And so, in like manner, I only know the inner objects as appearances to my inner sense; I only know objects in my memory as of the same though fainter colour, form, &c., as they had in my outer senses, or I know them as combined in new arrangements, and shewing new relations. But the body, the substance, the noumenon in which these appear­ ances, both inner and outer, are supposed to inhere, I know not, and have no faculty for knowing. Nor do I suppose myself poorer than the rest of my fellowmen in this respect, for when I look back upon the whole history of the race, I find all attempts to discover and know anything more than phenomena ending in contradiction, confusion, fanciful absurdities, and an empty jingle of words. Nothing is presented but a constant succession of philosophers one after the other, the latter only arising to declare the former in error, himself to be denounced in turn by the next coming after him. And the authentic history of these futile attempts, leaving out of consideration those of the Orientals, extends from the 636th year before our era downwards over a space of more than 2500 years. Surely, after such an unquestionable failure as this, one is justified in pronouncing that their attempts were mis­ �Lecture I. 7 directed, and the objects they sought beyond their reach. Their failure warns us off the ground they occupied. It teaches us that the knowledge of which we are capable is limited to the coexistence and suc­ cession of phenomena alone. But now, the acceptance of the phenomenal philo­ sophy as the only possible and true one, at once causes a convulsion in our religious beliefs; for all these beliefs are founded upon the supposed knowledge of substance, being in itself God, the being of all beings, the substance of all substances, the one and the all. If we cannot know anything but phenomena, then we cannot know God who transcends all phenomena; and thus religion seems to become impossible. Nor is there any possible escape from this conclusion. Ac­ cordingly, it is admitted by all who adopt the philo­ sophy, and is even tacitly admitted by those who come only indirectly under its influence. Thus, e.g., many who are quite orthodox in their religious opinions, acknowledge that they cannot know God in himself, but only through his works, and that revelation they suppose he has given of himself in Jesus Christ. This, however, you will observe, is not, strictly speaking, a knowledge of God at all; it is only a knowledge of certain phenomena which are supposed to represent God. All which, in virtue of such representations, is affirmed about God, is derived by a process of infer­ ential reasoning, and expresses merely a conviction or belief. There are, however, many convictions or beliefs which are just as powerful, and have just as much practical hold of us as our knowledge has ; we must not, therefore, disparage these convictions or beliefs men have about God merely because they are such, but must enquire into their validity by examining the processes of reasoning through which they have been obtained. To this examination I now therefore invite your attention. �8 Positive Religion. And first of all, let us notice that which is so popular in the present day—I mean the argument based upon our asserted intuitions or religious instincts. It is said that as soon as certain phenomena, or any pheno­ mena, are presented to the mind, the idea of God, the Infinite and Absolute, instantaneously springs up in or flashes upon it also, and that the universality and invari­ ableness of the idea prove its truthfulness and validity. Now, there would be some force in this, if it could be shown that this idea did thus invariably, universally, and purely spontaneously, arise upon such occasions. Indeed, all further discussion of the subject would be at an end, because, upon the conditions supposed, those who argued against would be as necessarily the subjects of the idea as those who argued for it. But, unfortunately, when we come to examine the facts, every one of these supposed conditions is want­ ing. First, it cannot be shown that the idea is ever purely spontaneous. Those in whom it arises have always been instructed in it. We have no case of a human being, who had never been told of God, for the first time gazing on phenomena and the idea instantaneously springing up in his mind. That in any case it would do so is therefore a gratuitous assumption. For all we can tell, in every case the idea may be the simple result of education, and its apparent spontaneity the consequence of the strong association of ideas. Then, secondly, this so-called intuition, instinct or law of the mind, is wanting in the essential character of all instincts, invariableness. Its utterances differ in different ages, and amongst different races. The idea of God it presents is always changing. This is not the case with real instincts. A bee always in all countries and ages forms the honey-comb in the same way. Young mammals always obtain their food by the same movements. And the same may be said of every other instinct. How then can we call that an �Lecture I. 9 instinct, and class it with the rest, which differs in such an essential ? Nor do I see that this difficulty is in the least degree obviated by calling it a necessary law of the mind instead of an instinct; for a necessary —i.e., an inevitable—law must be as invariable as an instinct. If it be subject to modifications and con­ ditions, it is not inevitable or necessary, and its products therefore become subject to the laws of evidence, to which the products of all other laws are subject. We can never, simply from its deliverances, establish the truth of any conviction. I do not, however, dwell upon this, for there is the want to this so-called necessary law or instinct of a yet more necessary characteristic still,—universality. It is quite untrue that phenomena spontaneously call forth the idea of God in all minds; for, on the one end of the scale of civilization, there are whole tribes without any notion of God; and on the other, there are numbers of cultivated people who reject the idea and declare that it is never suggested to them by nature. I know that this has been disputed so far as the non-belief of savage tribes is concerned ; but there is no justifiable pretence whatsoever for doing so. I have heard, both publicly and privately, Mr Moffat, a Missionary who had resided for upwards of twenty years amongst some of the tribes of South Africa, declare that they had no idea whatsoever of God, and no word in their language by which it could be expressed. And this is the testimony not of a traveller merely passing through the country in a few months, but of one who had become so naturalised amongst them that he had learned to think entirely in their language, and when he made a speech in English had to translate it to himself as he proceeded out of the Bechuana tongue. Here then is a clearly proved case of a people without the idea of God; and upon this case, I deny the universality of the idea, and so show the invalidity of the argument based upon it. The �io Positive Religion. idea is not spontaneous, for here it has never sprung up at all; neither is it invariable and universal. It is therefore the result of conditions and not of an original, necessary law. But if so, the conviction or belief which rests upon it must seek some other basis before it can be received as a ruling principle of our life. Turning then from this argument we meet with another which, although not so fashionable as once it was, is still considered of great force by some, and has received recently the apparent sanction of one of the greatest thinkers of the age. Mr John Stuart Mill has written thus :—“ It has been remarked, with truth, that there is not one of the received arguments in support of either natural religion or revelation a formal condemnation of which might not be extracted from the writings of sincerely religious thinkers................ But looking at the question as one of prudence, it would be wise in them, whatever else they give up, not to part company with the design argument. For, in the first place, it is the best; and besides, it is by far the most persuasive. It would be difficult to find a stronger argument in favour of Theism than that the eye must be made by one that sees, and the ear by one who hears.” Now, it has been alleged to me that this does not necessarily commit Mr Mill to the validity of the argument from Design ; for, it is said, it may be the best of arguments none of which are good, and the most persuasive where none can persuade. But if Mr Mill merely meant that, he is very censur­ able for a loose use of words. An argument is not good, and not rationally persuasive at all, unless it be logically correct.* To say therefore that it is the best * “ One circumstance which has misled some persons into the notion that there may be reasoning that is not substantially syllogistic, is this ; that in a syllogism we see the conclusion following certainly (or necessarily') from the premises ; and again, in any apparent syllogism which on �Lecture J. 11 and the most persuasive is to admit its logical correct­ ness, unless it were meant it is the best to persuade illogical, unwary, unreasoning minds. But Mr Mill’s argument throughout the paragraph would not allow one to suppose he meant that, and therefore we must conclude, he gives his sanction to the argument of one design. It becomes us therefore to consider the subject very thoroughly before we venture to question its validity. Notwithstanding this great authority, however, I must confess that the more I think of it, the more clearly I see the fallacy the argument involves. It seems to me a pure petitio principii-—an assumption in the premises of that which has to be proved. A very few words will make this plain. Reducing it to the syllogistical form the argument is stated thus : What­ ever has marks of design must have had an intelligent designer ; but the world has marks of design ; there­ fore the world must have had an intelligent designer. Now, what is meant by the word design ? Is it not planning something by the mind to be wrought out in deed 1 Is not mind an essential ingredient of it 1 In the new edition of Johnson’s Dictionary by Dr Latham, the following are the only definitions given of it :—“ 1st. Intention ; purpose ; scheme ; plan of action. 2nd. Scheme formed to the detriment of another. 3rd. Idea which an artist endeavours to execute or express.” Each of these, you will see, examination is found to be not a real one, the conclusion does not follow at all. And yet we often hear of arguments which have some weight, and yet are not quite decisive ; of conclusions which are rendered probable, but not absolutely certain, &c. And hence some are apt to imagine that the conclusiveness of an argument admits of degrees ; and that sometimes a conclusion may probably and partially, though not certainly and completely, follow from its premises. [This mistake arises from men’s forgetting that the premises them­ selves will very often be doubtful; and then the conclusions also will be doubtful.”—Whatley's Logic, Book II., Ch. IH., §i.J �12 Positive Religion. directly involves the idea of mind. When therefore the argument in its major premise says, whatever has marks of design must have had an intelligent designer, it merely affirms a truism ; and when it affirms in the minor premise that the world has marks of design; it quietly assumes all that has to be proved. For the question is whether the world had a creator possessing mind in our sense of the term mind, and to say that it has marks of design is to affirm that it has marks of such a mind’s operations since the term design necessarily involves it. This therefore is to assume the whole question in dispute and not to prove it. Nor would anything be gained by changing the term marks of design for “ indications of adaptation ” or anything of that kind. They would all fall into the same paralogism of assuming the conclusion in the premises, and could not advance the cause one step. But if in order to avoid this you simply assert the facts, you form no basis whatsoever from which you can rise to the truth one wishes to reach. You say, e.g., the form and conditions of the eye enable it to see, the form and conditions of the ear enable it to hear. Well, and what then? What does that prove? Absolutely nothing. It leaves perfectly untouched the question, How came the eye into this state in which it can see, and the ear into this state in which it can hear ? If any one reply by saying that it is impossible to suppose, imagine, or conceive of such a thing as the eye being able to see unless it had been made by a wise, intelligent mind for the purpose of seeing, that would be only affirming under another form the question at issue. Why is it impossible to conceive otherwise ? What is required of one making an asser­ tion of that kind is to prove the impossibility. But that no one could do, for there are many who conceive otherwise. They think of the universe under different modes from those of a creation. So that it is not true, �Lecture 1. L3 and can be no argument, to say that it is impossible to suppose, imagine, or conceive of the universe except as created by an intelligent mind. Besides, I should like to know how any one can realize to himself a self­ existing first cause, existing in the solitudes of his being through all the past eternity, any more distinctly than he can realize an eternally existing universe 1 The one conception is quite as impossible as the other. Mr Mill seems indeed to countenance this argument when in the passage I have quoted from him he says : “ It would be difficult to find a stronger argument in favour of theism, than that the eye must have been made by one that sees, and the ear by one who hears.” But why mustl He does not tell us; and I can imagine no other necessity than that which is supposed to arise from this assumed powerlessness in thinking or conceiving otherwise. Yet I feel sure Mr Mill does not mean this, for there is no one who has so thoroughly exposed the worthlessness of such an argument. To me it seems most egregious presumption to argue upon either side from the possibilities of our knowledge, conceptions or imagination, there must be an infinitely deal more in the universe than we can form the remotest notion or fancy of. To say, there­ fore, that such a thing must be so and not otherwise, because we cannot conceive of it but as so is to be guilty of the egregious folly and presumption of making our ignorance the measure of all possible fact. Men ought long before this to have learned the worthlessness of such arguments ; for, the possibilities of our thoughts are continually being modified. Things once possible, in thought, have become impossible; and things once impossible have become necessary conceptions. If you had told an ancient philosopher that bodies put into motion will move on for ever in the same straight line, if there be nothing to interrupt their course he would have laughed at you as a fool. The thing not only would have contradicted his �14 Positive Religion. senses, but would have been absurd in its conception. Now it has become a fundamental law in mechanics. And many other things of the same kind might be named. What, then, I say, is the power we have of conceiving of this thing or that, of imagining this or the other to be an explanation necessary and absolutely imposed by the laws of thought, depends very much upon our culture and can never be brought forward as a proof that the thing is as we conceive it to be. So that when theologians argue that because the world exists in such and such a manner, and we cannot conceive of its so existing unless by the creative act of an intelligent, conscious mind, they are assuming what it is great pre­ sumption to assume, i.e. that the conceptions of their minds are to be taken as the standard of truth. And I feel this argument from design all the more fallacious as it is based entirely upon the analogies of human experience. Paley opens his treatise with such an analogy : “ If we find a watch we know there must have been a watchmaker, if we find a world with admirable fitnesses and appliances, we, in like manner, infer an intelligent world-maker.” But why, in the first case, do we infer a watchmaker ? Simply because the watch is an instrument whose whole construction has come under our observation. Paley says, if we had never seen a watch made we should still infer a watchmaker. But upon what ground should we infer it ? Simply because we have a large experience of what the undirected forces of nature alone produce, and of what it requires the additional aid and direction of man to produce, and the watch belongs to the latter class of productions. But we have no such experience with regard to the making of worlds. We are there­ fore extending our experiences beyond the rational limits, when we apply the analogies of watchmaking to the explanation of worldmaking. Por all we know, the application of such analogies may be a direct reversal of the truth. Nay, that expression concedes �Lecture I. J5 too much. The application of such analogies must be a falsifying of the facts, for, granting the act of creation by an intelligent mind, the act must be altogether unlike the mechanical working of man. The difference in the nature and modes of the existence of the divine and human creators, and the difference of their relations to the materials would determine that. So that the analogies are essentially false at least in one direction, and all arguments based upon them necessarily fall to the ground. I repeat, therefore, the statement with which I set out respecting this argument from design. As a proof, it utterly fails to establish the doctrine of the Divine existence. It begs the whole question at issue in its very terms. It is founded upon presumptuous assump­ tions concernings the powers of our knowledge. It is constructed by the unwarranted application of analogies derived from limited human experiences, and some of which we know must, upon the principles of those who contend for the argument, be false. If, indeed, you can arrive at the belief in the Divine existence by other means, then all the wonderful apparent fitnesses and harmonious combinations we find in the world may give strength by the appearance they have of purposed adaptation and design to our convic­ tions of God’s creative wisdom and power. For it is one thing to say, these things prove that there is a Creator, and quite another to say, they are all best accounted for by the belief I have already received that there is an infinitely wise and powerful intelligent Creator, and therefore they confirm me in that belief. I must, however, once more remind you that even if these two arguments which I have criticised were valid, they could not do more than establish grounds of belief, of presumption, of hypothesis with those who hold the phenomenal philosophy; they would not help us to real knowledge. The method of that philosophy would insist that the conclusions should be verified : �16 Positive Religion. and that, from the nature of the case, they could never be. They would be regarded, therefore, merely as establishing a hypothesis more or less probable. The argument might seem so strong that the hypothesis would possess the highest degree of probability, and require us to act upon the assumption of its truth. But still it would not be knowledge, and the feeling would remain that any day it might possibly be proved to be false. There is one other fallacious argument I shall have to call your attention to before I endeavour to lay the basis of the religion I think to be possible ; but I must reserve that for the commencement of the next lecture. TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. � 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 &amp; 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. 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Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1874 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA1599 G5746 Subject The topic of the resource Positivism 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 (Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture I), 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 The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Positivism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/679c637a5a2d0813bcde98a3a4bbae28.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=DzJsH9HBU58YHoc7auzqbOYYf1NNpV9ZYubiQKMnYjLbXlaT%7ELoVadqbXMMk9EBiRfJ6dQ8OGpE2BkJVNzKbjb6Iu1LRo-IPm33OXMQjw2bsiBGaJftelMKigRBh7XV37Aj0KDsYTVebhPuSZ4YJUI3ZmG70W8OLB1WKrtVFV78W93g-hbuDOnqyWE-vQlI6sd-RxWL6Lv%7EPiB7%7EVCdNOkdgKasmaAYQRmHatv3zFY8ipl0UoWq-ATOXOyyueFHDCpDqwrJe96Ep3cqtUdmWoZb3w-f1AxVl0H085jtVPQ2eETM6olWdEJOcYgEOQo9lZnFLLtfWDJO77ydutQfmkw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 0243bc6bf1d71e89bea706628bc36933 PDF Text Text un L i7 What is the Religion of Humanity ? A DISCOURSE p AT SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, MAY i 6th, 1880, BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. LONDON : SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY. PRICE TWOPENCE, i Mcfi 2.9 2. �LONDON : Waterlow & Sons Limited, LONDON WALL. �WHAT IS THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY? ^JpHE phrase Religion of Humanity has been much and vaguely used; and best phrases so used are liable to degenerate into cant. There is some­ thing pleasant to everybody in the word “Humanity”; no doubt all sects would claim that theirs is the religion of humanity. Even sects with creeds based upon a curse on human nature would declare their religion adapted to, and revealed to save, humanity, therefore the religion of humanity. Among more liberal people we sometimes hear the word ‘ humanitarian ’ used for a believer in the religion of humanity. ‘ Humanitarian ’ was coined to represent the doctrine that the nature of Jesus was human as distinguished from divine or angelic : it is a good sign when such theological disputes are so far past that their phrases are put to more substantial work. And this other phrase, the Religion of Humanity, which I believe came from the mint of Positivism, also shows a tendency to do various duty. To the majority it probably means a �( 4 ) religion which believes in the perfectibility of mankind; it would include the idea of human progress, also the sentiment of charity, of sympathy with mankind, and a spirit of benevolent reform. No doubt underneath the humanitarian hypothesis of the nature of Jesus there was at work a faith in human nature; and under any conception of a religion of humanity there would be found the spirit of love to man, the feeling of fraternity, and belief in a happy destiny for all mankind. These high feelings will, however, be reinforced in proportion as it can be made clear to our minds whether there is any sense in which that group of sentiments in us which relate to humanity can be defined as a religion; if so, in what sense it is a religion distinct from other so-called religions; and whether it is one which is fully credible to us,— whether, that is, it represents the facts and phenomena regarded by the religious sentiment. That which we call ‘ Humanity ’ is the totality of all that is moral in nature ; all that distinguishes and chooses, which discriminates right from wrong, good from evil, where all nature not human is unmoral— gives equal support to good and bad, All history is the history of the war of mankind against external nature ; when we go beyond history to tradition, and behind tradition to mythology, we �( 5 ) we find this and only this—man combating Arctic frost and torrid heat, tempest and flood, the barren­ ness, the ferocities of the earth, the pitiless cruelties of the pestilential and the rainless atmosphere. That siege of man against nature has never been relaxed ; it goes on still; and in that time man has learned that his own nature represents all that is moral in the universe he can comprehend. I say represents : for certain animals seem capable of love and mutual service; but they possess this in the ratio of their approach to human nature, and of their association with it. Therefore they are man’s humble constituency; their feebler minds and affections are represented by him as against the inorganic universe, their common enemy. Now, this ancient interminable war between man and inanimate nature has not been one of sentiment, but of necessity. To wage it has always been the condition of human existence on the planet; all the animals that could not wage it to some extent have become fossil; and man would have followed them into extinction if he had not steadily resisted his hostile environment. But during all this war man’s sentiments were on the side of his great adversary. He sang hymns to the sun which consumed him, to the storm which beat upon him; evoked a vast array of �( 6 ) deities out of the elements, and prostrating himself before them in one moment, in the next arose to fight and conquer their cruelty. Primitive man ascribed to the gods as their particular realm all the elements and regions of nature which he himself could not control. His own empire was built up in practical hostility to this elemental empire of the gods. It was the necessity of the humanised world that it should ever be encroaching on the gods’ world, turning the chaos they had created to order and use. Thus there was no love lost between the two. Man’s attitude towards the gods was fear; and that of the gods towards man was deemed to be jealousy, sometimes fear also, lest he might build a tower high enough to besiege heaven, or seize on the apples of immortality. There resulted a divorce between man’s practical life and his theology. That set of beliefs, and diplomatic ceremonials to the sky which were called religion, had nothing , to do with man’s humanity, which was necessarily devoted to constant revision and correction of that nature supposed to be the creation of the gods. All of which may seem very childish notions. Yet the so-called religions of the world have been generally cast in the same mould; and that is the shape they bear to this day. �( 7 )' The wild powers of nature are translated by theology and catalogued in the creeds. Where do you find the doctrine of satisfaction or expiation? Where do you find any basis for the doctrine that no deity can forgive an offence except the penalty be suffered and the law satisfied? You find it in every creed, but you do not find it in the heart and life of humanity. People do not so exact from others rigid legal satisfaction. The parent who worships a god demanding satisfaction, forgives the child daily without any satisfaction. Humanity could not have survived if it had practised the theology of invariable expiation. But you will find that dogma a reflection of the unswerving course of natural objects, the unvarying sun and seasons, the ever-recurring remorseless powers that now freeze, now bring famine, and listen to no entreaties. Where will you find the doctrine of vicarious suffering? Not in the voluntary life of humanity. The judge or the parent may worship a deity satisfied by the suffering of the just for the unjust, but he would be shocked at any suggestion in the court or the home that the innocent should, be made to suffer for the guilty. And in the house­ hold or in society, who would deliberately visit the sin of a father upon his children ? Where then, do the creeds get these notions ? From the �( 8 ) hard forces of nature, which punish transgressions of natural law even though they be virtuous deeds, secure the good of one by sacrifice of another; now make the mother victim of the child, next the child heir of the parent’s infirmities. We might indeed go through the whole list of dogmas that make up what is called religion, and we should find them to be a rough translation of nature’s roughness; not religion at all, because confusing good and evil; unrelated to the moral sentiment; a crude primitive science, or attempt at a scientific theory of nature. Those which were anciently deities personifying the inorganic aspects of nature, are now abstract dogmas reflecting the same thing; and as when they were deities or demons, so now when they have become dogmas, they represent precisely all that part of nature which it is the business of humanity to resist, restrain, or even exterminate. We must, indeed, never forget that human . beings are much better than their creeds; that inside their stony dogmatic walls are cultured spots of humane feeling; that they speak and act gently while they worship wrath, and deal justly while worshipping an unjust deity. There is a blessed necessity which exterminates from the practical life anti-social principles; and while it �( 9 ) allows tongues to recite what creeds they please, holds heart and hand to their need and duty with an iron grip. Nevertheless mankind are not passing unharmed through this opposition between their dogmas and their humanity. It is a very serious thing that men should throw the sanctions of sentiment and piety around deified reflections of that inorganic world which it were man’s real religion to master, and make into his own human image and likeness. These ancient ‘ religions ’ have adopted many humane sentiments, some of them even patronise human life and its joys; but they never make humanity the main thing, the great religous force and director: all that immense power of piety, devotion, enthusiasm, which to­ gether make religion, are still on the side of the inorganic universe and its traditional phantasms. We may then answer our question, ‘ What is the Religion of Humanity,’ by saying, it is a religion which transfers to the moral and intellectual forces which are mastering nature all the piety that now worships personifications of the ob­ structions mastered. There is need that our sentiment and our work should be on the same side in this great struggle of humanity with mountain and desert, volcano and flood. It is a grievous anomaly to worship the mountain-god �( IO ) while we tunnel the mountain, and praise the lightning-god while we raise a rod to divert his bolt. That kind of homage and praise are due to skill and to science, and hard-handed labour; not to the wild powers they are levelling and curbing for us. It may be said that such adorations of natural forces do no harm; they are directed to powers that cannot hear or heed them. But there is harm done when the finest seed are sown on clouds, instead of in a soil where they might bear fruit. We can little dream what a reinforcement of the human work of the world it would be if all the devotion and wealth lavished on deities and dogmas were directed to aid and animate man in his tremendous task of humanising his world. But, it may be asked, and it is the anxious question of many hearts, is there no God of nature, no God in nature? Is there no power above our­ selves—or power not ourselves—that makes for righteousness? And, if there be none, are we not orphans? Are we not robbed of all heart and hope in our struggle with earthly evil, having no certainty of ultimate success ? The Religion of Humanity answers, Yes, there is a God in nature, a God and ruler of nature; but that divine parent is nowhere discoverable except in �( II ) the spirit of humanity. You may cry for help to glowing suns and circling stars, to gravitation and electricity, to ocean and sky, or to all of them together; but no help or ray of pity will you get until you have turned to lean on the heart and arm of human love and strength. For these are the answers of the universe to your cry. The proof of love in nature outside you is a loving heart inside you. Nature has laboured through untold ages to give you that heart to rest upon, that hand to clasp yours. We must credit nature with -what has come out of it. Wild as are the forces around us, terrible as is this vast machinery roaring around us,—amid which we move like wondering children, or at some misstep of ignorance are caught up and crushed, we may still say that out of it all was evolved the thinker to warn us, the man of skill to devise good for us, the man of science to show us the safe path, the physician to heal us, the artist to beguile us on the way, the poet to cheer us; the friend, the lover, the father, the mother, who try to guard us, or, if we are wounded, seek to heal our wounds. All these were evolved out of nature. They show us nature pointing us to humanity,—to humanity, the crown and hope of nature’s own self, the power which nature has created for its own deliverance,—in distrusting which we distrust the only God in nature, the God manifest within us, and in the sweet humanities around us. �( 12 ) Therefore must we love nature. As we go froth to contend against its inorganic forces, we recognise that our contest with nature is a friendly contest, for deliverance of that inanimate world itself which suffers the pains of labour until now, awaiting its adoption into the liberty of the sons of God : it is the steadfast transfiguration of nature in a light higher than any dawn, a grandeur which its beauties but faintly hint and symbolize. In these days when, under the fierce light that beats upon the throne of superstition, the ancient images are falling from many household shrines,— images which, however low their origin, have been hallowed by the tender pieties and associations twining around them,—there is a pathetic cry on the air. The fine gold has waxed dim! the white statues are crumbling ! ‘ Give us back our gods ! ’ cried the pagans of old when the Christians shattered the fair idols of Europe; ‘Give us back our Saints, our Blessed Mother,’ cried the Catholics when Protestantism broke up the altars; ‘Give us back our Faith, our divine Lord,’ cry Protestant hearts in turn. But know they not why these perished and can never return? They could not do the work of humanity; they could not hear, they could not heed the cry of hearts that needed something more than statues, pictures, or sentimental beliefs. �( !3 ) The other day we heard of the Holy Virgin appearing in Ireland. The press even sent reporters who gathered detailed information about the light that was seen, and Mary, Joseph and John in the midst. But in their descent these heavenly beings did not bring bread to save one starving Irish family. That was left to Saint America who came over with a loaded ship, and is now doing for poor human beings what the Virgin Mary does only for her own altars and priests. The heretic is not heartless because he cannot be silenced by the piteous appeal of piety that its idols and illusions shall be spared. He is listening to a more sorrowful cry than that; it comes from the great deeps of human agony, want, evil, despair; it is a cry ever burthening the air, but never heeded by the idols which have neither eye, ear, heart, nor hand. How sweet those idols seem to those who decorate them, cover them with devotion, heap on them their gold, their love, and bathe them with their tears; even so cruel they seem to one who knows that it is for want of just that devotion that millions of human beings find this world a hell. Poor Humanity, how is it tortured even by those abstract dogmas, which inheriting the sway of demons, have power to pervert the human heart; to make it �( i4 ) act cruelly, unrelentingly, like the brutal elements they embody in words and images ! I picture Humanity as poor Juliet in her agony. There she is, the beautiful soul, the perfect heart, the supremest thing in nature ! Around her an environment of persons who represent the wild elements. The vin­ dictive feud of Montague and Capulet, cruel as venom of serpents; parents who have taken pea­ cock pomp into their breast instead of hearts; a silly ignorant nurse. They all represent the inorganic elements surviving in human nature, pride, ignorance, vengeance; these not hidden there as shameful things but consecrated as duty and dignity: this is the lot with which that heaven, to which Juilet has prayed all her life, has surrounded her gentle soul in its sore need 1 Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, That sees into the Lottom of my grief ? O, sweet my mother, cast me not away ! But the mother, slave of her lord, has gone. Then once more to the clouds Juliet cries, ‘ O God ! ’ No answer. The poor ignorant nurse alone is left her. O nurse! how shall this be prevented ? My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven ; How shall that faith return again to earth, Unless that husband send it me from heaven By leaving earth ? —comfort me, counsel me.— Alack, alack, that Heaven should practice stratagems Upon so soft a subject as myself! �( *5 ) Alas, Juliet finds that heaven is against her. She thinks how different it would be if Romeo were only able to leave earth and be god for a time. She meets religion presently: the sympathetic, helpful friar, is a disguise for the Religion of Humanity. For this friar is a true holy father where the lordly father had failed ; he does not point Juliet or Romeo to heaven nor bid them pray, sing, or confess. When Romeo has slain one in his desperation, the friar gets him off to a safe place. He has drugs, and secret schemes, by which he tries hard to outwit the inorganic tempers that are crushing the lovers. He fails in the end ; but that torch he holds over the dead faces of those he sought to save, is the torch of the true Religion, burning through a midnight of tragedies on to the hour that shall raise its light to be a flaming dawn. Do you ask what tidings more glad can the Religion of Humanity bring to hearts in their agony, the agony caused by the discord, pride, ungentleness of spirit in men and women ? Why, it brings hope of a time when hearts will not be proud and harsh, because religion will have concentrated all its power of renovation upon them. Religion will recall its protecting forces from the nature-gods and gather them all around human beings, to love them, help them, save them; so that when Juliet cries ‘O God! her father shall be at hand, her mother shall serve her �( 16 ) as if Juliet were the one Holy Virgin, so that no human being shall ever be brought up to fancy that there is any higher religion than to promote human happiness, purity, and wisdom. The religion of humanity thus has its meaning and promise for the individual heart, for the soul with its own grief, in that it brings back piety from its wanderings to seek out and love the divine in every heart; but it also holds out to the world at large a hope unknown to any theology, the promise of a perfectly developed Humanity implying a perfect world. For this religion shows mankind to be the creator, and a loving creator ; whose eternal design is not the salvation of certain elect ones, of those only after they are dead, and from evils that do not exist, but the salvation of all, of the living, from actual evils. It reveals to each generation that it is not only the heir of all the ages, but the incarnation of their summed-up powers; that this trust bequeathed from all preceding generations, represents not only man in the past, but all that preceded man; every bird that ever sang to its mate, every tiger that ever defended its young; nay, every atom that ever clung to its fellow-atom amid the star-mist, in the first throb of that spirit of life which has climbed on to the splendour of reason and glory of a heart, beside which the sun and moon are mere sparks. �This is the Holy Mother. This is the ever-blessed unwearied Madonna bearing the man-child in her arms. A legend runs that when Mary was travelling in Egypt, and her arm failed from long bearing her babe, a third hand grew out to sustain Jesus : even so is it with the maternal spirit which is caring for the world, watching over human hearts, bearing it onward. Does the old support fail ? Io, another ! Already our dear Mother is many-handed. Wherever are love, thought, sympathy, and a devotion to truth and right, there are her sustaining arms. Her unwearied watch is with the student seeking truth and wisdom, with the reformer, the philanthropist, the physician, the man of science, the poet, the artist. Wherever there is one who is contriving a new benefit for the earth, some relief from evil, some mitigation of pain, some beauty which shall soothe and delight earth’s wayworn pilgrims, some sweet song to beguile sorrow and pain into self-forgetfulness, win hearts from vain regrets, cast a sunbeam into the darkened breast of guilt, proffer a draught of Lethe to the lips of Despair and Death, there is our divine Father, and there our heavenly Mother, majestic and beautiful: nature is glorified in them : with them are the sign and seal by which all nature, however wild, is for ever bound to follow and obey their eternal attraction. This Religion of Humanity therefore has not the �( i8 ) disadvantages of some new sect or new idea: it not only exists already, but it has existed for ages. I believe it to be the only religion that does really exist, and that alone which the great teachers have taught. It is a very common experience with those who abandon an established church, sect, or creed, that they never cease to honour the great teacher said to have founded that church or creed. Most free­ thinkers feel that they love Christ much more genuinely than Christians. The same phenomenon appears throughout the world. Wherever there is a protestant movement we hear the cries, ‘Not Buddhism but Buddha!’ ‘Not Confucianism but Confucius!’ ‘Not Christianity but Christ!’ It is not difficult to see why we love the teacher while opposing the system named after him. The teacher represented the religion of humanity. No matter what he taught, he was another step; he sought to remove some evil or error, and added something to the growing life of the world. But the system which has borrowed his good name is invariably one based on that which he resisted. Every socalled religion is a new edition of the old nature­ worship : it is a system trying to sanction its power with the prestige of a breaker of systems. But such power can never be built up except by reversing �the freedom and humanity of the system-breaker, because it must rule by bribe and menace. There never was a prophet who did not teach love, forgiveness, gentleness; there never was a system which did not make its prophet teach wrath, expiation, satisfaction. ‘ Love your 'enemies,’ says the prophet as he was; £ Depart into fire,’ says the prophet as the system makes him. As time goes on this anomaly is seen. The human religion is at work; people grow ashamed of their dogmas; they more and more dwell on the sweet parables, the kindly deeds, the human side of their prophet; they try to hide and forget the awful character which the system assigns him. But it is impossible : that awful character is an old role in the drama of the gods; Jehovah had to play it, and Jove, and Jesus; every successful name has to be put to that part if a creed is to survive after it is unloved and unbelieved. So, steadily, as know­ ledge and liberty advance must such systems crumble and their idols follow them; when their supernatural terrors have become grotesque and their celestial promises antiquated, there are left only the vulgar fears and interests to which an existing order appeals, and from that moment the familiar face of selfishness is seen beneath the mask of piety. Such is the process now going on; �( 20 ) by it true and faithul hearts are hourly set free; and there is fair prospect of seeing a swiftly-growing and expanding spiritual union among the really religious, though the discovery that what each sincerely loves in his prophet his seeming opponent loves equally; and what he discards is that which none can love, though it may be tolerated. No man loves Jesus for his miracles: no heart responds to his curse on a figtree; none rejoices in his formula for cursing the goats at the last day. The Jesus beloved is he who spoke of the forgiven prodigal, who wept tears over his dead friend, knew the scripture of the lilies and the waving corn, promised peace, and gave men rest in the faith that even as they forgave the trespasses of men all the more would the divine love forgive them. That is the Jesus really beloved by the sincere and lowly hearts that are not concerned in Christianity as a politic system; and they do not love him more than those called ‘infidels.’ There is one belief concerning Christ in which all sects, churches, Secularists, Theists, Atheists agree: they all agree that he was a man. Some believe he was a God-man, others a miraculous man; all agree that he was a man. That then is the only doctrine that can be pronounced literally Catholic, that is universal. And as the definition of a man grows �( 21 ) truer, and as more and more mankind come to feel how dependent they are for all advancement upon the fidelity and wisdom of great and good men, it will not be thought derogatory to Jesus that he should be called a man. But it will be found derogatory to connect him with the thundergods of primitive ages. It will be resented more and more as a lowering of his goodness and greatness to call him the incarnation of Jehovah, whose biblical record is one of wrath, injustice and cruelty. As Jove and Jehovah have died of inhumanity, so will the Doomsday Christ pass out of human love and belief. It will be realised that the whole thought and work of Jesus was to abolish that system of belief which Jehovah repre­ sented, and all the gods like unto him. Those personifications of crude, cruel nature, and Jesus representing the love and morality which soften and subdue nature, are practically opposite principles, and their necessary combat makes all the serious contro­ versies of our time. When the orthodox talk of God becoming man, we have only to say,—Let him be a real man and we can believe on him. Remove from him the theologic costume of miracle, of unforgiving last day wrath, of ceremonial and ritual preserved from' the ancient worship of the elements by cowed and terrified barbarians; give us the great heart and brain, the real �( 22 ) man as he was, ally him with the grand work of humanity on earth, unite him with his true brothers, his peers of every age and race, and be sure there will be no heart on earth which shall fail to surround him with love and homage ! Already there are signs that this is the way Christianity is tending. The character of its defence has completely changed. We no longer hear its defenders resting it upon miracles or upon Judaic history, but upon the morality and the humanities they believe bound up with it. They plead for the social and domestic virtues, and say that to the masses these rest upon Christianity. That is a good sign. It is necessary to prove to them that Christianity does not come into this moral tribunal with clean hands; that it carries into innumerable homes a book containing cruelties and obscenities, as God’s word; that it propagates superstition, and teaches man to rest for safety upon metaphysical dogmas rather than righteousness : but, while main­ taining this, we may gladly recognise the happy change by which the dogmas are being steadily overlaid by considerations of practical virtue. This I believe will go on until out of these transitional controversies shall emerge the full-formed religion of Humanity, to be loved and honoured of all, and to include all races in a fraternal competition �( 23 ) to promote the health, happiness, and virtue of the family of man. Christian apostles felt and foresaw this. ‘ Be not deceived,’ cried one, ‘ he who doeth righteousness is righteous.’ Said another, ‘ Pure religion and undefiled is to visit the widow and the fatherless in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted by the world.’ A third added, ‘ Love is the fulfilling of the Law.’ Equally was this the testimony of Zoroaster, of Buddha, of Confucius. In this religion have the prophets and sages lived and died ; and this will remain for ever the religion of the faithful and true, the helpful and the just, when all our controversies have died away. When the dogmatic systems have taken their place among other relics of antiquated philosophy, there will still be growing and expanding in the earth the religion of humanity,—the hatred of pain, which superstition worshipped; hatred of all sacrifice of human welfare; passionate horror of all evil, and that which inflicts suffering; passionate love of all that promotes welfare; concentration of all powers within and without to the humanisation of man and his world; and the immortal hope that Humanity will survive for ever, conquer all evil, attain perfect know­ ledge and joy. .This religion will flourish over the graves of all idols and creeds,—and this is the Religion of Humanity. �SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL. WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY. BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A. The Sacred Anthology: a Book of Ethnical s. d. Scriptures........................................... .... 10 0 The Earthward Pilgrimage................................. 5 0 Do. do.......................................... 2 6 Republican Superstitions ................................. 2 6 Christianity ....................... ............. ... 1 6 Human Sacrifices in England ....................... 1 0 Sterling and Maurice........................................... 0 2 Intellectual Suicide........................................... 0 2 The First Love again........................................... 0 2 Our Cause and its Accusers................................. 0 1 Alcestis in England...................... 0 2 Unbelief : its nature, cause, and cure ............. 0 2 Entering Society ........................................... 0 2 The Religion of Children................................. 0 2 What is Religion ? 0 2 Atheism: a Spectre........................................... 0 2 The Criminal’s Ascension................................. 0 2 Idols and Ideals (including the Essay on Chris­ tianity ), 350 pages ................................. 6 0 Members of the Congregation can obtain this Work in the Library at 5s. BY A. J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.S., &c., &c. Salvation ...................................................... Truth ................................................................ Speculation ...................................................... Duty ................................................................ The Dyer’s Hand ........................................... 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 2 2 2 New Work by Mr. Conway—“A Necklace of Stories,” illustrated by W. J. Hennessy, is now ready. Price 6s. Mr. ALEXANDER J. Ellis’s Discourses:—“ Salvation:” “Truth:” “Speculation:” “Duty:” and “The Dyer’s Hand. Bound in 1 Vol., price Is. Mr. Conway’s “ Demonology and Devil-lore.” Second edition, revised and enlarged, 2 vols, illustrated. 28 s. Members of the Congregation may obtain this work in the Library at 23 s. 4 d. � 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 &amp; 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 What is the religion of humanity?: a discourse at South Place Chapel, May 16th 1880 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 15 cm. Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. With a list of works to be obtained in the Library of South Place Chapel at end of pamphlet. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [South Place Chapel] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1880] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3347 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Ethics Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (What is the religion of humanity?: a discourse at South Place Chapel, May 16th 1880), 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> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Free Thought God-Attributes Human Nature Humanism Moral Theology Morality Morris Tracts Positivism Religion and Ethics https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/7b95d3d0e333951a347317403976b045.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=XrJwEfJFGjbrijGZ64Ur2xm5rhf2QF16g8AKktL3gAdcFM%7EYEhMllAiqBPI7D0EX%7Ew5BzYE2402FhwBFkKCc-ppWvbmxVKLcQIDtKetvDDMdD4XDpDmXHkXRNLtx3LukKUHIEoMNr8Qdt59sJYeLkQ%7EMyX5xiPFEfTrPCKtVTbLWqpn1IGgWRS%7Ea8LLiI5xBIWjwKDQ9fP%7EBY2heTbUW9ELkwGVE9xz70-3sxw1iFOjyW%7EAVdDI0k29CNW84bxylSsP0t5vk-1HEDFl8Jc3CLHzwaEBftxsdrTsk-cG%7E5jZTAB2NzEx37EzL60BwHZGUBZTai5ih9Ffiw0rMLi9BaA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 92010ab9453a4dadd81d97c8a2e0c0b8 PDF Text Text POSITIVE RELIGION: ITS BASIS AND CHARACTERISTICS. LECTURE III. BY THE LATE REV. JAMES CRANBROOK, EDINBURGH. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. Price Threepence. �■ �LECTURE III. N the last Lecture, I directed your attention to certain feelings which arise within us whenever we come face to face with nature. They are common to the cultivated and the uncultivated alike, hut, I think, are greatly intensified by the larger knowledge of the cultivated obtained through the revelations of science. The feelings are those of wonder, awe, and the sense of the mysterious arising out of the perception of the order and constancy, the adaptation and fitnesses, the beauty and beneficence of the whole universe. The smallest object as well as the most sublime tends to excite them, and the more fully we comprehend the processes by which all the changes in nature are effected the more deeply they excite our wonder and awe, and the more intensely they make us feel how mysterious every thing around is. Now, as we have also seen, it is not natural for man to stand before this mystery with these feelings of wonder and awe without his curiosity being excited, and his being led to investigate the origin and causes of the objects which so move him. He must ask himself, How came this universe into existence ? What is it that determines the order and constancy with which each antecedent is followed only by its own consequent ? Who or what arranges those organizations by means of which such admirable results are obtained? What controls the course of human actions so that they become not merely an accumulation of events but a I �4 Positive Religion. history ? And the answer in almost every case which has hitherto been given has laid the basis of man’s doctrine of God. For, failing to find any response from without to his questioning, each man has been content to project upon the phenomena his own image, and in it to find the cause. As he has gazed upon his own thought reflected upon the universe, in delight at his discovery he has exclaimed, Behold the solution of the mystery! See the Creator of the universe revealed in the midst of his works ! But now, what are we to do who have been con­ vinced of the truth of the phenomenal philosophy ? who deny that it is in the power of man by any means to transcend the phenomenal? Such explanations as others resort to are proscribed to us. We may neither affirm nor deny anything which rests on conjecture merely, however seemingly plausible an explanation of the facts it may be. We are bound down to that which can be verified, and can only admit -of hypotheses as the temporary guides of our tentative inquiries. To us therefore the theories of Polytheism, Monotheism, Pantheism, and Atheism are alike idle fancies making affirmations about that of which we can know nothing. And yet in us nature moves these feelings of wonder, awe, and mystery as deeply as in others, and we not less than they intensely long to penetrate the great secret of the universe. Yes, in some of us I believe these feelings swell with a power, an intensity, a consuming fervour others never experi­ ence ; and that because we know the questions they originate can never be answered. What then must we do ? Are we alone of all mankind doomed to live without a religion ? Has our culture come to this, that nothing is left for us to worship ? Now let us be calm and look at the facts. And, first, this is clear, the mystery is insoluble; God is unknowable; we can affirm nothing whatsoever of his existence. The orthodox no less than we constantly �Lecture 111. 5 say this. Mr Mansel says it; Sir William Hamilton said it; the whole School of Locke has always said it; and indeed all modern philosophers bnt the Cartesians. Only most of them endeavour by means of a special revelation or of some specious argument to take back what they thus have clearly admitted. We however abide firmly by that admission. We cannot transcend, we cannot know anything but phenomena and the relations in which they exist, and therefore we can neither know God in himself nor explain the mysteries of the universe. However intense therefore the feelings which nature inspires within us, however deep and ardent the longing to explain these mysteries we have in common with others, we own our inability and never attempt to satisfy the longing. But are we therefore worse off than those around us? We are better off. They in explanation of the mysteries of the universe create by their fancies an object they call God, and then fall down and worship it. We knowing the worthlessness of fancy abstain from such creations and content ourselves without the explanation. They in their ignorance glory in their knowledge. We in our knowledge confess our ignorance. At least we have learned this, not to walk where there is no light to lead. But I meant more than this when I said that we are better off than they who delude themselves with the creations of their own fancy. I meant that the unknowable, the mystery of the universe, is truer, more real to us, than it is to them, is more present and has greater and a grander, purer influence over our feelings. The very fact that we do not play with it and transmute it into fanciful forms, but accept it as it is, determines this. I must however explain what I mean more fully from another point of view. We meet, then, with mystery on every side. Directly we begin to enquire we come upon ultimate facts we cannot explain. If by means of science we can trace any �6 Positive Religion. particular process to the operation of some general law, not only the general law hut the reason why that general law gives rise to that process is unknown. The interpreta­ tions and revelations of science only multiply the inexplic­ able facts. Now, the law of our mind compels us to look in every case for an explanation, an antecedent to what we observe. The law has arisen out of our experience, probably, and depends upon the association of ideas; but it is not the less imperative and insisting than an original law of the mind. We cannot escape from it, and therefore are always asking, how or why these primary facts exist, and what that is which determines them to be. We cannot but look for that something ; we cannot think of them coming to be without it; and yet we cannot find it; we learn from experience, it lies and must ever lie beyond our knowledge. But then this discovery only makes the law more urgent and the mystery more insistent. At all events, here we are with the mystery ever before us, ever pressing upon us, meeting us at every step, in every movement, the most real, most unquestionable, the truest thing in life. Speculative philosophers may raise doubts about our own substantive existence, they may raise doubts about the correspondence between the outer world and our own sense presentations of it, every thing in the universe may be made a subject of doubt, but this one, the mystery of existence, the unknowableness of the antecedent of all things, our ignorance of the determin­ ing condition or cause of all conditions and causes. The very doubts which men raise concerning other things, bring this fact more urgently before us and leave it an unquestionable reality. And observe, it is not a mere negative fact, that is thus urged upon us. It is not merely that we do not know; but that there is a something we do not know, viz., the antecedent, determining condition, cause, or source of these facts, of this universe so mysterious to us. In assuming its existence we are not transcending our experience j we �Lecture 111. 7 are merely doing what every natural philosopher, and indeed what every man or woman does when asking after the antecedent conditions of any ordinary phenomenon. We never suppose any phenomenon comes into existence under any given form without some pre-existing, determining conditions or cause. In proportion to the activity of our intellect in every case we enquire what were these pre-existing, determining conditions or cause, and in asking of course assuming the fact of their existence. We are only doing the' same thing when we assume that there is a something which determines the existence of the whole universe, and each of its primary facts and consequents, although we confess that something can never be known to us. Now, this mysterious, unknown, unknowable some­ thing, the antecedent of all consequents, the primary condition of the existence of all objects and their relations, not only thus seems to us the truest and most real of all things which occupy our thoughts, but it fills us with that awe which has ever been considered the very first element in religion, as nothing else in the universe can do. All other things, however great and sublime, however recondite and complicated, we can hope by patient thought eventually to comprehend and master. There is not a phenomenal power in the universe but which we may ultimately comprehend, and through the comprehension make subservient to our purpose. But here, before the great mystery, we are helpless : here is what we can never know, and before which we must ever subserviently bow down; here is the limit of both our understanding and our activity, our knowledge and our action. We are surrounded with its wonders, and can only exist as we can conform ourselves to the conditions it has imposed. How little, how insignificant, we feel before it 1 We are filled with awe, with reverence, with wonder. Spon­ taneously we humble ourselves and worship. What �8 Positive Religion. then, shall we call this unknown and unknowable, determining condition of all existence? this hidden, mysterious source of the universe ? this all-pervading, all-comprehending, all-determining something, which, we know must be, and yet ever eludes our grasp? Call it! What signifies the name ? No term can name it. God ! — Fate! —Causa-causarum ! — the All-in-All! — every word has been abused; and every word therefore fails to describe the awfulness, the reality of this ever­ present mystery. But then, name it we must, and since all names are insufficient, but some have been rendered sacred by the use of ages, we will keep to the sacred names, and call this unknown and unknowable condition of the universe God and Lord. But more important than to inquire after names, is it for us to note that in those deep feelings already so often enumerated, we have the exercise of the religion appropriate to such an object of worship. That which is unknown can in itself possibly call forth no other feelings than those of wonder, awe, and the sense of mystery; whatever else in any case is mingled with these, must come from other and adventitious sources. Accordingly, as I have before intimated, these feelings are at the base of all the religions which have ever existed in the world. Whatever has been superadded to them, the great mystery of the universe, which has originated all religions, has inspired only these. This is very distinctly taught in F. W. Newman’s book called “ The Soul,” where principles very different from mine are inculcated. Mr Newman thinks we have a distinct faculty which he calls the soul, whereby we immediately apprehend God. In its rudest and most uncultivated state it simply apprehends him as a mysterious power which calls forth its wonder and awe. As it learns more of nature, it rises gradually to the perception of his wisdom, goodness, love, and holiness, calling forth the feelings also of admiration, gratitude, trust, the sense of sin and adoration. And those who �Lecture 111. 9 are more orthodox than Mr Newman follow very nearly the same order in their supposed development of the religions of Jews and Christians through the special revelations of God. By the side of these matured sys­ tems, the simple feelings which constitute the whole basis of the religion of the Unknowable must appear very meagre and deficient. But a closer examination will show us that those other feelings of admiration, gratitude, trust, the sense of sin and adoration, arise only by attributing to the object of worship qualities, the knowledge of which is derived from his works. Contemplating these works, they discern the order, beauty, adaptation, and the beneficent results which arise from them; and by the study of the nature and history of man discern the moral character of the system by which he is governed. All that is thus dis­ cerned is then transferred to the object of worship, as expressive of his nature and character, and the feelings which are excited by it are directed towards him as the embodiment and source of all which calls them forth. Now, I do not deny that upon their principles this process is allowable ; and I freely own that when you have by such a process constructed a God, it must have an immense influence over your life. The conception of such a Being, when realized to the feelings, must wholly control them and overwhelm the influence of every other object. But, as we have seen, the principles or method by which this process is conducted is altogether false. It is purely subjective. It has no basis of fact to rest upon. The object of worship is the pure creation of the fancy. It is an idol in all the bad senses of the word “idol.” Nor, when we come to examine into the matter closely, can we allow that the influence which such an object has over the feelings and life is wholly good. This we might, a prion, have expected, from the fact that the object of worship is an idol. All error contains within itself the germs of evil in some form. And there �io Positive Religion. are several evils to which this error gives rise—1st, There is the false trust a sense of personal relationship to one so infinitely wise and good calls forth, leading to a childish dependence upon his care, and diverting the attention from, the study of the laws of Nature, and from the self-government which is the duty and highest prerogative of man; 2dly, There are the spurious affec­ tions excited by the contemplation of such an object, giving a transcendental tone to the whole character, and making one’s nature, so far as they are operative, false to itself and to all the real objects around it; and 3dly, There are the efforts aroused to render oneself pleasing and acceptable to so great a Being, which, being regu­ lated by no rational principle, tend to become of a frenzied and fanatical character, leading to an indiffer­ ence towards the ordinary and proper duties and enjoy­ ments of everyday life. I might mention other evils ; but probably they all could be summed up in these, which so obviously arise out of the belief in question, that I need not stay to prove the fact. But now, when we restrain our fancy and refuse to follow those around us into these creations of an object for worship, we not only avoid these evils but we do not lose any of the real good, any of the solid comfort, of the healthful stimulus to feeling which they suppose themselves to find. For, as we have seen, they derive their knowledge of the supposed qualities which call forth the trust, love, and adoration, &c., from the study of the works of nature. So that it is, in fact, not the qualities considered abstractedly, but the works of nature which elicit the feelings. Accordingly we find that the pure and simple study of nature produces the same feelings in us. But then there is this; difference. They transferring the facts to their idol, and investing him with them as attributes, they dare not afterwards question their infinite perfection. We regarding them simply as facts of nature, are at liberty to note all the modifications and counteractions, and �Lecture III. 11 regulate our feelings accordingly. Thus e.g., a study of nature as a whole leads us to the perception of her beneficent tendencies. Happiness and good are the predominating results of her operations, and this perception calls forth our trust and confidence in the general issues of life and enables us to repose without agitating care upon the general course of events. So far then we are upon the same ground as those who amuse themselves with the conception of an idol who brings about these results in consequence of his personal relationship to themselves. But from this point we diverge. They are bound by the nature of their conception of this idol to implicit and universal trust. We, on the other hand, recognising merely the order of phenomena, soon discern that there are many contra­ dictions to this seeming beneficence. We observe in the midst of the general good and happiness not a little evil and suffering. We learn that the good and happiness depend upon conditions which often are not realized. We do not place, therefore, implicit trust in the course of events, nor expect with absolute certainty the issue of good. We anticipate the possi­ bility of evil; our trust is associated with watchfulness; we calculate on contingencies that will require resistance and efforts of a painful character to surmount; we prepare ourselves to meet possible sorrows, that when they come they may not overwhelm us. Now, surely everybody must own that it is better thus to moderate our trust and confidence, since the real facts of life require it, than to blindly confide in a power and find in the issue our confidence misplaced. But again, the contemplation of nature leads us to the perception of its beauty, loveliness, and fitnesses; and the contemplation of human nature especially presents to us its moral and spiritual excellences and beauty. This perception calls forth towards the whole, feelings of complacency, delight, and admiring, adoring affection; whilst towards human nature the more �12 Positive Religion. tender affections of appreciation, approbation, and sympathising love flow forth. And in the exercise of these feelings there are both joy and stimulus to our higher sensibilities and powers. Now, I own these feelings differ much in their character from those of persons who embody the excellences and beauty of nature in a personal being. But the difference is wholly in favour of those who abj ure all but the actual facts. For in their case the feelings are entirely real, whilst in the other they are given to a fancied object which, by the confused and conflicting elements that are made to enter into its composition, and the mingling of the infinite and finite, entirely falsifies them, and gives them a fanatical bias. The love, the adoration, and the joy in nature of a pure phenomenalist, ennoble no less than they gladden his whole being; the love, the adoration, and joy felt by the supernaturalist for his idol are not indeed without spiritualizing excellences, but in their highest condition are always based upon a falsehood, and therefore must necessarily tend to a degradation of the worshipper. I think, then, it will appear from these considerations that nothing is gained when theists proceed to add on to the pure and ever-present mystery of the universe which calls forth our wonder and awe, other qualities of a personal character which call forth the more personal feelings of trust, confidence, love, adoration, and such like. On the contrary, by keeping ourselves to the pure and rigid facts we are saved from an other­ wise inevitable fanaticism, and the influence of our religion in every respect becomes more ennobling and purifying. But this does not mean that we must not associate all the processes of nature, all the facts, issues, and tendencies we observe in her with that mysterious unknown before which we adore. On the contrary, they are necessarily associated with it. For, as I have explained, and I presume, as we all feel, it is not alone �Lecture III. J3 the most generalized facts which suggest this sense of mystery, but also each individual succession of phe­ nomena. We not only feel unable to account for the universe as a whole, but for each particular connection between two events. The fire, e. g., burns my flesh and causes pain. Upon enquiry, I find the following phenomena explanatory of the fact:—The heat consists of the motion of the infinitely small particles of the atmosphere. These striking my flesh with an amazing although calculable rapidity, like cannon balls striking a wall, destroy the fine tissues of the skin, and by exciting the nerves spread over them cause the pain. Very well; this is the physical explanation so far as we can carry it. But now, why do those infinitely small particles cannonading the skin destroy its tissue 1 Why does the destruction so move the nerves as to cause pain ? We are absolutely ignorant. You observe, then, it is not merely that we cannot compre­ hend these facts under more general ones, but each particular fact, each succession of phenomena in itself is incomprehensible and full of mystery, and so brings us into the presence of that unknown something we call God. In this way all the facts of existence, and of co-relation, all the processes and laws of the universe, so far as known to us, are associated with that unknown condition or cause, and are derivable from it as consequents. Whatever of order and organization, whatever of beauty, and beneficence nature discovers must ultimately be referred and ascribed to it. Nor is there a single object that comes under our contempla­ tion which does not immediately suggest it. And thus we own, even with a fuller and more consistent mean­ ing than the orthodox, that all things are related to, and dependent upon God ; but we dare not follow them in their rash inferences of what God must there­ fore be. When, e.g., they and we contemplate the complicated and yet beautiful conditions upon which the eye is capable of seeing, we both refer them to God, �14 Positive Religion. the unknown antecedent of these existent conditions. But then, they, taking as their guide the analogies of human nature, proceed to attribute to their God the human faculty of wisdom and will, in bringing these conditions about; we, on the other hand, adhering to our principle that we only can know phenomena, dare not follow them in such inferences. We own that if God be like men the organization of the eye would prove his wisdom or skill in contrivance ; but then we do not know that he is like men; we do not know that any of his qualities are like human qualities at all. We, therefore, would not be so presumptuous as to infer he possesses anything like human wisdom. We merely content ourselves with bowing down in wonder, awe, and reverence, before the unknowable cause of that wonderful work, the eye and its power of vision. For all we know that cause may possess personality and all the mental qualities possessed by man. But also, for all we know, its qualities or modes, of existence may be absolutely unlike ours. To attribute human qualities to it may be as absurd as to attribute them to the planets or the trees. Surely, therefore, it becomes us to abstain from such attribution and simply to bow down and adore. But now, I know that to uncultivated persons this abstinence from fancying qualities and modes of existence to fill up the gaps in our ignorance will be next to impossible. The undisciplined mind is the most impatient of uncertainty and doubt. Where it has not facts to constitute knowledge or to form a judgment upon, it always precipitately creates them in its fancy. It is only the cultured, the disciplined, the matured mind that is capable of suspending its judg­ ments, refraining from the formation of opinions, and confessing its ignorance until it has before it sufficient facts to justify its proceeding to a conclusion. And then, in this special case respecting the mode of the divine existence, the sentiments associated �Lecture III. *5 with it are apt to make men more impatient still. They have so long been accustomed to indulge their fancies without restraint, and have associated with them so many of their dearest affections and the whole system of their morality, that to renounce these fancies and to own their ignorance, seems like rooting up all that they esteem precious and good. And then, too, certain supposed consequences frighten them into pre­ cipitancy. “ If,” say they, “ God should after all possess the same mental characteristics as man, only in infinite perfection, what a fearful condition they will be in, who have not recognised and owned them.’’ As if a being even with human qualities in infinite perfection could ever be displeased with his creatures for not recognising what he has given them no faculty to discern ; or as if he could be pleased by our stumbling upon truth even, by the exaltation of our fancy over our reason, when the constitution he has given us expressly requires that reason should be supreme and that we should only accept as true, what it can justify. But however difficult the acquisition of the habit of restraining our fancy and suspending our judgments may be, every cultivated and disciplined mind will neces­ sarily make the strongest efforts to acquire it. It is essential to a rational life. By it alone can we escape those superstitions which, based upon ignorance, are constantly springing up into existence and carrying away multitudes of deluded victims. And surely, of all subjects that can solicit our judgment, none can require such deliberation, such caution, such restraint of fancy, such sober and solemn adherence to fact, as that which concerns the existence of God. I call upon you, therefore, as rational beings to ponder upon and accurately examine the real facts of this great question. Let neither intellectual impatience nor a maudlin superstitious fear precipitate your conclusions or prevent you from that calm and logical investigation which it requires. Follow the truth and nothing but �16 Positive Religion. the truth; whithersoever it leads follow it, and that, in the firm persuasion it can lead to nothing but good. The positive principles I have set before you, have been necessarily so mingled with references to other doctrines that I will conclude by re-stating them in a brief summary. We are limited by our faculties to the knowledge of phenomena in their relations of co-existence and succes­ sion. In the study of these phenomena, however, we instantly come to ultimate facts for which we cannot account. This incapability fills us with wonder, awe, and a sense of mystery. But although we cannot account for them, we are persuaded there is a something which accounts for them. We could no more suppose them without an antecedent, a cause which accounts for them, than any other fact. This unknown and un­ knowable antecedent or cause is what we call God. It pervades the whole universe, and is related to every individual object inasmuch as the same mystery, the same impotency, is developed in the whole and in every object. But although this cause, condition, or ante­ cedent is connected with every object, we can infer nothing respecting its nature or attributes, excepting the one attribute of anteceding or conditioning. In itself it is unknown and unknowable excepting as the unknown. The only devout feelings therefore appro­ priate to it are those already named, wonder, awe, and the sense of mystery. How worship, and especially public worship, emerges out of this I shall show in the next lecture. TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. � 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 &amp; 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 Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture III Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cranbrook, James Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [n.d.] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA1601 G5748 Subject The topic of the resource Positivism 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 (Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture III), 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 The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Positivism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/32ec916ad42036f04a9aa7ab0399f8d4.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=PtQ5estlkVA2vXOXNxAcNM%7EE4p1oh4IMqiFpHc%7EiOJeeztMVsJBgAI0LMRRWfTFNS72zXSWTbBll3O7KMbH-PuY6eQd2gdRyNGo8m9vHGQj2EYByjI0Q-fBtI94gP6u2pRgO%7ExYPoK7uTFz74WH19jL74CU-tiCUsjtCYipJ6A2bBQWl55UIXKsOGTsKd4ntZswxPHqYgsk%7E%7E-tlnH5yxbe0L6UZBYwA75rO6l2o9zfwRwWQPPhvswbBvuNEDnf1SqVusF6LxifAHl-UGn5XUY1ZVQ3y-xwaJyEs3Sw%7EptAeh%7EW3Ec6vB98EoFC7HRIBD1%7EzntX8royo2ZQktOR95w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e1ab9c718c291a63ada2f728be1ec21f PDF Text Text �������� 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 &amp; 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 Egotisms Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goodman, D. Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [s.l.] Collation: [1]-8 p. ; 25 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Modern Thinker, July 1870. 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 1870 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5728 Subject The topic of the resource Positivism 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 (Egotisms), 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 The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Positivism Reason https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/5016ad7a0fdc744766b573701db430d5.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=B07NKo0pW6xcQrJC1SbtJcPS6tU-wwk9zbj8SWTXfIb8%7El0jk9%7ER18oyM3kXfcOxU9Dmxz9rVvvE9rZxgG6NGoJNuSjOe7huvjCaKh-7gBnNpx0rZxi1OAgVDwzQIXDU9VOXIJ3bfRFkpaE%7EwYrObnrj9qvj47OTEBNtgVNsV%7E1veMYqjYU-QevvzW0sDacEeQvop9mzvvtcGyGiWKnemGTNZSeaXyl3uVHV8qVswtc9mhYXM1xJW3MOLNvBLbgUSEa5ectonUbNVXo6mVh2bIMKod4V4RX5p9v8WJYjyZmR4nhniFc1Ohuxa%7E1I2NWKbog2lyotBLVBUNabvnv5FQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 5d615b8add7e4334443f79c054e75cae PDF Text Text THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY, O R THE WANING AND THE RISING FAITH. An Essay from the Standpoint of the POSITIVE PHY, By COURTLANDT PALMER. Read before the Society of Humanity, Sunday, March 3d, 1878, With subsequent Revisions and Additions. PUBLISHED FOR THE SOCIETY OF HUMANITY, 141 Eighth Street, NEW YORK. Copyright 1879, by Cortlandt Palmer. ��PREFATORY LETTER. T. B. Wakeman, Esq., JZy Dear Friend: Many indulgent hearers who have kindly listened to the reading of this Essay have requested me to publish it. In doing so allow me to dedicate it to you ; for I feel that to you, more than to any one individual, I owe not only deliverance from the superstitions of the old theology, but a firm and abiding sense of salvation in the new faith of Science. I make, for this paper, little or no claim to original­ ity. My object has been to present a summarized state­ ment of my faith as it is held and expounded by the Society of Humanity. I have tried to tell “ a plain, un­ varnished tale,” “ to naught extenuate, nor set down aught in malice,” and to do this in a way so simple “ that he who runs may read.” As is the inevitable fate of anyone who departs from the commonly received religious belief, my opinions have been subjected to all sorts of misrepresentations. The appelatious Spiritualist, Communist, and other epithets still more objectionable, have been unhesita­ tingly applied to me, none of which, it should be need­ less for me to say, serve at all to explain my position. We positivists must expect to be misunderstood in re­ gard not only to our doctrines but also in respect to our conduct and our aim. I believe that I personally, sup­ ported as I feel myself by the nobleness of our philoso­ phy and the rectitude of my own endeavor, am quite in­ �8 different to these uncharitable misconstructions, nor would any motives of mere egotistical explanation ever induce me to appear in print. I mean that were it a question of myself alone, I should prefer to remain silent, to quietly live my life and be judged by the fruits thereof; but for the sake of my family and of many friends who are interested in knowing what I really think, I have been moved to write out this compendium of my views. In this attempt, wherever I have found the language of another which I thought would serve to express my meaning better than my own pool* words could do, I have not hesitated to quote it. I may per­ haps rather say that it has delighted me to call in the aid of such powerful auxilaries, prominent among whom are Comte and Spencer, to say nothing of yourself. In two instances I have been unable to put these ex­ tracts in quotation marks for the reason that they have been so adapted, altered and inwrought into my text that even their own authors would hardly recognize their off­ spring. One case of this kind is the description of doc­ trinal Christianity which I found in reading “ the Pil­ grim and the Shrine;” the other is my statement of Morality in which Mr. F. E. Abbott’s “ Fifty Affirma­ tions ” partially assisted me. I here render to these writers my acknowledgment. That the few readers I may chance to have may not labor under any misunderstanding as to my meaning of the terms “ Positivism ” and “ The Religion of Human­ ity,” I wish here to state distinctly that I agree with you in the propriety of dissociating them in due measure from the system of Comte. I gladly accord to that most noble and most able man the first place in this connec­ tion, but, as you so well said in your last address before the Free Religious Association: “ we agree with the “ rest of the world in thinking that the true philosophy 4‘ and religion of our race is not, and cannot be, the pen- �9 “ dant of any personality, however great; but that the “ personality must be regarded as a pendant or incident “ of the religion.” Thus not only Comte but Spencer, not only Decartes but Plato, not only Jesus, but Con­ fucius, Buddha and Mahomet; in truth all great think­ ers, scientists and prophets, ancient and modern, are gladly adopted as our guides. Paul may plant and Appolos water ; it is Humanity alone that giveth the in­ crease. Although my Essay has extended itself far beyond the limits of an evening lecture, 1 have still thought it best to have it in its original form of an address before an audience. Trusting that my feeble effort may be instrumental in helping some few strugglers who are toiling to work their way towards the light of truth, and that thus they may be saved some of the mental agony I underwent in my transition from the Religion of Christ to the Religion of Humanity, I remain, Sincerely Your Friend, CoURTLANDT PALMER. �10 “ Where thou findest a lie that is oppressing thee, ex­ tinguish it. Lies exist there only to be extinguished; they wait and cry earnestly for extinction. Think well, meanwhile, in what spirit thou wilt do it: not with ha­ tred, with headlong selfish violence ; but in clearness of heart, with holy zeal, gently, almost with pity.” — Thomas Carlyle. “ To destroy, you must replace,” “ Ou ne detruit que ce qu'on remplace ”—Comte. “ Unceasingly strive From the half life to wean ourselves; And in the whole, the good, the beautiful, Resolutely to live.”—Goethe. Faire le bien, Connaitre le vrai. To do the good, know the true.—Motto of Diderst. “ The world is my country; to do good is my relig­ ion.”—Thomas Paine. Those who can read the signs of the times, read in them that the kingdom of man is at hand.—Professor Clifford. �THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY. Ladies and Gentlemen : Did I need any apology for presenting this essay to the attention of my audience, I should find it in the fol­ lowing words which I adapt from Herbert Spencer, where he says : ££ whoever hesitates to utter that which “ he thinks to be the highest truth, lest it should be too *£ much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by “ looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view. “ Let him duly realize the fact that opinion constitutes “ the general power which works our social changes, and 4£ he will perceive that he may properly give full utter•“ ance to his innermost conviction, leaving it to produce “ what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he has ££ in him these sympathies with some principles and re££ pugnance to others. He with all his capacities and ££ aspirations and beliefs, is not an accident but a prot£ duct of the time. He must remember that while he is ££ a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future; ££ and that his thoughts are as children born to him, ££ ■which he may not carelessly let die. Not as adven<c titious therefore will the wise man regard the faith ,££ which is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter ; knowing that, let what may come of �12 “ it, he is thus playing his right part in the world— “ knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at, “ well: if not—well also ; though not so well.” This eloquent language is a sufficient justification for anyone to speak his thought when he feels that his thought is worth the speaking. Christ of old was cal­ led the Way, the Truth and the Life. I feel that to us of the modern era a new way, a truer truth, and a larger life is opened. Old things are passing away and all things are becoming new. Our times are pealing forth the trumpet tones of mighty change. Vast questions are pending in politics, art, and industry. The new wine can no longer be kept in the old bottles. Every breeze that sweeps the ocean sings a new deliverance for man, or wafts as from an Aeolian harp the pleasing notes of advancing science. The press is filled with the unrest of disturbed con­ victions. Every week and month journal and magazine deal trenchant blows against the strongholds of theology, oi’ build up brick by brick the beauteous temple of Hu­ manity. Phoenix-like from the ashes of the old faith we behold arising the world-wide pinions of the new. The pulpit itself is wavering. With each passing fortnight comes the report that this clergyman is leading a reformed movement in his church, or that that one withdraws entirely from his flock. Of the broad church of England, under the leadership of Dean Stanley, it may not, perhaps, be speaking too strongly to say that they are casting out devils in the name of the Religion of Humanity. Repeating the words of the great Nazarene we can say that he that is not against us is for us, and he that gathereth not with us scattereth abroad. A general view of the situation cannot fail to impress us with the conviction that the creeds of Christendom are becoming hard of assimulaticn even for those trained to their digestion. Church is contending against church �13 sect against sect is waging deadly warfare: and although the cathedral of theology still points its spire to the sky, although the dim religious light of ages steals through Gothic windows painted with the rarest art, bathing in its softened rays pillar, aisle and dome; although priests kneel in spotless surplice, and worshippers bow with adoring knee, there still is wanting one great presence, The once true God is no longer there ! The edifice so fair in form is weak at the foundation. Its worn-out beams are sinking under the dry-rot of doubts, which the church can no longer meet nor overcome. Most of us have heard that noted lecturer, Col. Robert G-. Ingersoll, who is carrying throughout this land his onslaught against superstition. He is not a professed believer in the Religion of Humanity, but still, as a grand pioneer, he is one of the van-guard of the army of progress whose office it is to destroy and clear away in order that riper constructives may come in and pos­ sess the land that he has conquered. From the lips of this valiant champion I heard on one occasion the fol­ lowing remark ; he said: “I occupy this platform by reason of the infidelity of the churches. And so it was, for no further back than ten years ago he would have been persecuted, or perhaps, even stoned for the expression of such radical utterances. All these and many other signs show beyond perad­ venture that our age is the age of a great transition, the greatest as yet witnessed in the history of our race. The handwriting is plainly seen upon the wall. The fiat has gone forth. With trembling knees the Belshazzar of superstition beholds the “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,” which forewarns him that the power of ignorance is doomed, and that emancipation is dawning for man­ kind ; while, on the other hand, the pilgrim, toiling up the steep and narrow way of progress, beholds’the salva­ tion of the race in the universal reign of law. �14 For evolution rules the world of man as surely as gravitation dominates the world of matter. Under the resistless sway of law the stars revolve in their deter­ mined course, and man is hurried on to progress. The mighty car of change sweeps on, an engine of destruc­ tion to those who would resist it, but to those who ac­ cept its protection, it becomes at once a palladium of safety, and a vehicle that bears them to a higher life. Still, advance comes only at the price of effort and conflict. It will not do to rest supinely on our backs and lay the pleasing unction to our souls that the spon­ taneous movement of the race will attain the end desired. As Comte says: “ In order to complete the laws, there “ is need of our wills.” Evolution therefore is not to be taken as a moral sedative, or excuse for idleness, but rather as an incitement to action and enthusiasm. It is we who are the factors of the problem. On us depends the coming era. It is for us, therefore, not only to re­ ceive the rich legacies of the past, but to transmit them improved and brightened to the future. To effect this, the soldiers of Humanity must not fear to buckle on their armor and defend their convictions to the utter­ most. The smallness of their numbers is no real cause of fear: one man in the right is a majority against a million, and, as conservative liberals, they can cherish the assured hope that in the end their opinions must sur vive, not only because they are the fittest, but because they are the best. The parties to this conflict are and can be only two. On the one side, the myriad hosts of supernaturalism launch their thunders from behind “ the baseless fabrics of their visions,” while, on the other side, the little army of science stand entrenched within the impenetrable breastworks of our solid earth. Against this inexpug­ nable rampart fall alike harmless the anathema of pope, and the frenzied rage of ignorance ; while every shot �15 sent forth from the camp of true knowledge, pierces the frail defences of theology, scattering terror through its midst. And so of necessity must it be ; for it is the war of new weapons against old weapons, of the Sharpe rille against the bow of the savage, of new intellectual re­ sources against old intellectual resources. I earnestly hope in criticising Christianity that I may not seem to do so in the spirit of blind hatred. I well remember it as the earnest faith of my own childhood taught me at my mother’s knee, a mother to whom it was the comfort and stay of life, as it still is to millions like her. And even now I recognize and freely allow that the Religion of Jesus, on its heart or human side, has taught mankind the noblest lessons of love and duty. On these grounds, I shake hands with the theologians, and am glad to call them brethren, but when they turn to the head or doctrinal side of their creed and attempt to teach us the misleading and immoral tenets of the Fall of Man, Vicarious Atonement, Election and Hell, against these pious lies (to be more fully considered here­ after^ I maintain that any honest thinking man should enter his earnest protest; and I feel that such an one might well be pardoned if in his wrath against these dwarfing dogmas we found him uttering as his own that famous malediction of Voltaire when, a century ago he flung in the teeth of the priesthood and of all Europe those memorable -words “ Ecrasez 1’ infame,” (crush the infamous thing), for that great hero felt, as all should feel, that on the denial of these dismal falsehoods hangs the welfare of mankind. The difference at bottom between the two parties is a difference of method. Both the Religion of Christ and the Religion of Humanity uphold beneficence virtue, love, self-sacrifice, sympathy, and every other noble attainment. But one employs theological or �16 supernatural means and methods, while the other resorts only to scientific and human means or methods, the deep signification of which is that Christianity de­ pends on imaginative and fictitious expedients which can only serve to defeat its own most cherished pur­ poses, while Positivism takes no steps except those which in the light of science facilitate its high endeav­ ors, and establish truth and virtue. I have said that the parties to this conflict are and can be only two ; viz., the theologians and the philosophers of science. Many clergymen, to be sure, as previously remarked, show progressive tendencies, and some even desire to be ranked among the liberals. It may be that such men, placed as they are midway in this great tran­ sition, are performing a most effective service. They administer milk to their religious babes, and help to guide their feeble steps by the leading strings of modern thought; but theologians they are and theologians they remain. Like men riding backward in a railroad car, either their gaze is turned towards heaven, or, if they cast their eyes to earth, ’tis but to see the landscape they have passed. The great onward destiny of man they dimly see and only half appreciate. These are the men who preach the reconciliation of science and religion, unknowing that science and religion need no reconcilia­ tion, that they are in their essential nature one . Not therefore till in place of the words “ Religion and science, they can speak the words, “ The Religion of Science,” can such men be entitled to a place in the lib­ eral ranks. We welcome all signs of advance, and therefore we bless the priest who extols Science to his congregation, not, however, because he really adheres to the new ideal, but because his teachings, like the boomerang, return to destroy the false parts of his creed. Such preachers having committed themselves to ra­ �17 tional Science are obliged to maintain for the sake of consistency that their religion also is rational. Unfor­ tunate dilemma !! Much to be pitied men, while with doubting hands they offer their Evidences of Christian­ ity and claim that there can be such a thing as a Natu­ ral Theology, or a Science of Theology—Natural Supernaturalism ; a science or knowing of the Z7h-knowable! Why, for the sake of their own side and their own con­ sistency, can they not drop at once and forever all ap­ peal to reason and support themselves on what ordinary mortals, from their standpoint, would deem all sufficient, viz., an infallible God, who in an infallible bible, tells the infallible truth. To the weakness of the Positivistic mind it does really seem as if the Christian’s appeal to reason means the surrender of his doughtiest strong­ hold. Where the need thereof ? Is not the word of God sufficient of itself ? — No! No! No! Let me con­ jure both Christian and Liberal thinkers that they de­ ceive not themselves. Between science and doctrinal theology there can be no truce. As men of large char­ ity and students of the philosophy of history, we may recognize whatever services the various creeds have in past times rendered to humanity; still, we cannot fail to perceive that, as the case stands to-day, they are both striving for the same places, and are contrary the one to the other; and those, therefore, who endeavor to float the banner of evolution in the name of God are only acting at once in opposition to their own belief and ours. Infallible revelations can never for long adapt themselves to changing environments, and therefore it seems to me that for such Christians there is only one of two con­ sistent courses, viz., either to content themselves with their own iron-bound revelation, and to bow before their chosen God, with whom is neither variableness nor shadow of turning; or else, to renounce their idolatrous �18 adherence to a bible, which, by its assumption of com­ pleteness leaves no place for the idea of progress. I have alluded to the unrestful religious feeling that broods over our century. I have also described the contending parties of advance and retrogression. I now approach my main topic. THE CAUSE CF HUMANITY. What is it ? Before describing what it is, it will not, perhaps, be amiss to describe what it is not; since a negative defi­ nition will render the affirmative one clearer. Our cause, then, is not the cause of doctrinal theloogy, which represents a tyrant God, who created his children, placed them in an Eden of forbidden delights, and then required of them an obedience which by the deification of Christ (who alone was able to fulfil the law) could not be rendered by any earthly man however perfect, and when they yielded a little to the first temp­ tation in the garden, this heavenly ruler condemned them and their unborn offspring to unspeakable tor­ tures forevermore; all of which is simply saying that the cause of Humanity is not the cause of a God who made men finite and imperfect, and then condemned them for not being infinite and perfect, and who would only be propitiated towards them by the blood and agony of the only innocent one who had never offended Him, and that one his only-begotten son. No human father requires a compensation or sacrifice before he can pardon a repentant child, so I ask the Christians, Is man more tender than their God, and is the thing made an unfaithful index to the character of its maker ? If their God be so infinitely pure as to detest sin, how came he to admit its defilement into his work ? If so infinitely just how came he to make men (the work of his own hands) responsible for the flaws in their con­ �19 struction ? If so infinitely merciful and lo/ing, why so averse to pardon his erring children ? If so infinitely powerful why allow an evil demon to devastate the fair domain of his creation ? Why ! such doctrine deposes their God from his high place, and makes. their Devil triumphant to all eternity! Evangelical Christianity simply means Devil worship !! “ You preach Him to me to be just, And this is His realm you say, While the good are dying of hunger, And the bad gorge every day. You say that He loveth mercy, And the famine is not yet gone, That He hateth the shedder of blood, And He slayeth us every one.” To sum up in a word, the theologic conception of God is to the human mind and heart an inexplicable bundle of riddles and immoralities. Such, it is needless to say is not the cause of Humanity. What, then, is it ? In the place of these stultifying contradictions I af­ firm that THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY IS THE CAUSE OF TRUTH. Arid Pilate said, What is Truth ? and his question has been echoed and re-echoed by the ages. How simple at last is the answer! Truth is human knowledge, that which man does or can know. But, here comes in the real enquiry, What can man know ? 'What are the limits of human knowledge f Can we, as the theologians claim, grasp such a conception as that of the infinite? Can the mind, in other words, force itself outside of its con­ ditions, and soar in the thin ether of the unconditioned? “ Can the finite the infinite search ?” “ Did the blind discover the stars ?” �20 No ! no! let us away with such vain imaginings, which modern philosophy declares to be utterly un­ thinkable ; for its teaching tells us that to think at all, we must have a thing to think of, and that that thing can only be known by its likeness or unlikeness to ano­ ther thing. In other words, a thing to be known must be defined, and to be defined it must be compared. By this test, the infinite becomes simply the unknow­ able. No one can even attempt to realize the infinite (the illimitable) except by defining it, and the moment he does that he immediately imposes limits upon it, and makes it the finite and no longer the infinite. He limits or attempts to limit the illimitable. In like manner, all enquiries into first and final causes are foreign to science, and perfectly fruitless. How, for instance, can the mind rest in the conception of an uncaused first cause ? Why not just as well an un­ caused world as an uncaused God ? The human soul, likewise, as an immaterial entity, separate from and independent of the body, is, in the same manner, swept away by the besom of this law of thought. I say nothing of the probable denial which anatomy and physiology present to this conception, but I ask as before, What is the soul or what is it not, what like or what unlike ? And echo answers, what ? Thus we find that the theological definitions of God, and also of the human soul, are utterly misleading. All these conceptions are undefinable, and unverifiable. For the real purposes of life, such words must either have attached to them some true and scientific meaning, or else we must affirm, that what they attempt to repre­ sent are mere non-existences. The principle thA has thus been stated in these con­ densed terms is the famous doctrine of the Relativity of Human Knowledge, which simply means, as before shown, that our minds, by their very constitution, are �' 21 forced to consider things in their likeness or unlikeness to each other, ?. e., in their relations. This law is the basis of all human truth. It is as much a condition of thought, as breathing is a condition of life; and it forms the great wall of partition between the true and the imagined, between the knowable and the unknowa­ ble, between theology and science. It says to the mind that thus far it may go but no further, and that here must its proud waves be stayed. It tells us that while we may cling to the relative (that is, to the known and the knowable) beyond as ever stretches the irrelative (the infinite, the illimitable) there to remain forever a terra incognita, a No-mans land. We show by this law that the Cause of Humanity is that of Truth. “But,” I hear the theologian cry, “you take away my God, you take away my soul !! What, what do you leave me ?” “ Take away your God” I answer, “ take away your soul! No ! no ! What we banish are but the specters of the mind ! We only take away your GHOSTS ! We lift from the ages the incubus of a mighty night-mare.” And what do we leave you ? Here comes in the important question the Christians have a perfect right to ask. What are we positivists to provide as a substitute for the “ Waning Faith ?” To this I reply as follows: Firstly: We give you if nothing else EMANCIPATION. We award you deliverance from the debasing supersti­ tions of a vain imagination, we free you from the worst of all hells, the hell of doubt. We liberate you from that worst of all responsibilities, the responsibility of a soul to save or lose. We bid you stand forth, like the slave freed from his fetters, in all the conscious dignity of manhood. �22 But more, much more than this we give you, for Secondly: The cause of Humanity is the cause not only of Emancipation, but also of FRUITFUL TRUTH, AS EXPRESSED SCIENCE. IX I have spoken a few pages back of the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge as the cause of truth : so indeed it is, for it is the invaluable doctrine which points out clearly to us the inevitable boundaries between the knowable and the unknowable, but by itself alone it is totally insufficient, and science, fruitful science becomes the real creed of the new faith. Demonstration not Revelation is our watchword. As some one has beautifully said, “ Our belief is one with the falling rain and the growing corn.” I do not propose, Ingersoll-like, to merely preach in place of the dying faith the gospel of the railroad, telegraph and postoffice. We positivists are no worship­ pers of a bald materialism, though we are free to say that even this view is not undeserving of attention, for science since the sixteenth century has transformed the features of the globe, and re-created the substantial well-being of the race. Comparing our new era with the middle age we find, for example, that a real medical art has supplanted shrine cure, that comparative health and comfort bloom where pestilence then trampled millions into noisome graves ; we find good roads and lands redeemed, where formerly the wayfarer struggled through pitfalls or fell a victim to miasmatic poison. And thus we might go on reciting by the hour these ma­ terial benefactions of science, for their name is Legion; but it is aside from our object. We wish here only to recall those larger generalizations which form the great intellectual treasures of the race,—the philosophy of science, from which fall the 'material discoveries and �• uz 23 arts, as do ripening fruits from the tree that bears them. I would first allude to the great law of The Correla­ tion of Force and Matter. This is an affirmative truth astonishing in its reach and results. It proves to us that matter is indestructible, and that force is ever persistent, that all change expresses itself in these two terms, and that all phenomena are but re-distributions of these factors. In the light of this law life itself is seen as “bottled sunshine,” and the very words I am now using had their source in the charges of light and heat of our great luminary. We discover in this law of correlation the final unity of objective science; for by it the organic and inor­ ganic world, mind and matter, are brought into a know­ able relation as parts of this wondrous cosmical order. This fundamental truth can only be consistently held by the new faith, for by it all duality of conception, such as God as opposed to Man, Heaven as contrasted with Earth, a spiritual life in contradistinction to a worldly life, must be forever discarded, and, in their place, we obtain the grand monistic conception of the unity of force and matter ; wherein all things, organic and inorganic, appear but asparts of one stupendous whole.” This new conception as opposed to the old is well pre­ sented to the mind in the symbol of a circle as contrast­ ed with a straight line. The old idea was the straight line with God at one end, man and the world at the other; but the circle, without beginning or end, can alone picture the grandeur of the everlasting flow of phenomena as now we know them. Turn we now for another illustration of the same gene­ ral topic to the teachings of Astronomy and Geology. The old faith presents such astonishing cosmical revela- �24 tions as the following : “ Again the devil taketh Jesus “ up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him “ all the kingdoms of the 'world, and the glory of them.” Matt, iv—8. “ And it came to pass while he blessed them he was « parted from them and carried up into heaven.” Luke xxiv—51. These two texts,'though doubtless possessing allegori­ cal value, display complete unaccjuaintance with the facts of the rotundity of the earth and its revolution on its axis. No miracle could make us believe that Jesus saw the antipodes, and in the continual motion of the earth there can be no such conception as up to heaven since what is up one hour is down another. Thus these two texts form excellent illustrations of the old geological and astronomical notions. The earth, under this, (at the time, natural) illusion, was be­ lieved to be a flat, extended, stationary plane, all the kingdoms of which could be seen from a high eleva­ tion. Heaven was just a little way above it, at most not more than a mile or so, and its floor was the crys­ talline dome of the sky. Here was distinctly located the realm of the blessed. Here the eternal harpers dis­ coursed their ecstatic strains. Here the angels, for oc­ cupation, bore onwards during the night not only the moon whereby to illumine the earth, but also other “ lesser lights,” like Jupiter, Neptune and Sirius. A somewhat larger lamp they kindly held aloft pioducing daylight. The celestial architect, inhabiting this supernal re­ gion, conceived the idea some six thousand years ago of making an earth. He completed the task in six days, and then feeling tired rested on the seventh. Silly as this primitive cosmogeny now appears, the old faith, in reality, is nothing without it, for on it de­ pended the localization of heaven and hell, the one �25 placed above, the other below the earth; but how piti­ ful, how sadly childish it appears in view of the real re­ velations of science, which prove that this earth is not the recent creation of a divine mechanic, but a planet which for inconceivable time has revolved around its central sun. Vast transformations have occurred upon its surface. Continents have risen and fallen. Great systems of life have followed one upon another, mark­ ing their birthdays not by years but by centuries. And this little earth, so hoary with age, so venerable with change, is itself but a tiny speck amid the starpeopled fields of space. From the great nebula of Orion it would be indiscernible even with the aid of the most powerful telescope. Could we in imagination take the wings of the morning and fly to the outermost parts of our astronomical system, still beyond us would stretch space and stars, space and stars, till the sense is dazed and the mind benumbed in the contemplation.— The telescope has pierced the infinite depths, revealing orbs whose lightning-speeding rays consume millenia in reaching us, but the telescope reveals—no heaven— There is a curious little book called Erehwon, the letters of which being re-transposed, read “ Nowhere.” Sci­ ence has transformed Heaven into Erehwon. God, if he exists, is a homeless wanderer in the Infinite. But I fancy I hear the old question of Napoleon, “ Whence came all these stars ?” I could reply by giving you the nebular-hypothesis or the aggregation theory, and so present a proximate explanation, but I am content to answer in all humility “ I know not.” Nor do we need to know. Any fact of science traced to its ultimatum, brings us face to face with facts which are impenetrable to any human capacity. We have, how­ ever, no warrant to invoke the pseudo mystery theolo­ gians call God to solve the real mystery that surround us. We, as positivists, are content to take our mysteries �26 at first hand, and do not presume to measure the infi­ nite by the little foot-rule of human experience. But if Astronomy has deprived the theologian of his heaven, it has certainly shown him what the posi­ tion of his earth is in the universe. If rightly inter­ preted it tells him that on this contracted isle in the ocean of the infinite is to be wrought out his destiny and that of the race of which he is a member. It tells him that the celestial spheres have departed, that the old false world is gone, but that his true home is here on earth, and that he must now turn, not to the angelic hosts, but to his fellow-man for aid and comfort. Since this is so ; since, in other words, we must now look to Humanity instead of God, it becomes of para­ mount importance to know the laws not only of the inorganic, but also of the organic world. We there­ fore shut the leaves of the old fable, and open the new book of Genesis, which reveals the law of evolution, as exemplified in the studies of Biology and Sociology; the former being the science of plant and animal life 5 the latter, the science of society. Geologists are well agreed that there was a time when no life existed on this planet. We also know that all living substances are composed, of protoplasmic cells. Life must, therefore, have first appeared in the form of this colloid substance, which lias been analyzed and found to consist of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, a little sulphur and pliosporus. Such is the physical basis of life, and, under the law of correlation, the alternative seems to be inevitably thrust upon us that from the combination of these elements resulted that con­ dition of matter, whose organic action we call life, the definition of life being the interplay between an or­ ganism and its environment, and thought the miiror that reflects them. �Protoplasm is therefore the bridge between the or­ ganic and the inorganic worlds. The peculiarity of this substance is its wonderful quality of increment and growth. By means of this peculiarity, and by adaptation and re-adaptation to its environment, by the survival of the the fittest in the struggle for existence, by the transmission through inheritance of acquired superiorities, came that vast development of animal life, recorded in the unalterable history of the rocks, and kept concealed in those rough pages till the wand of science, with its “ open sesame,” revealed these miracles of nature. Well, this process of advancing life went on till the higher animals were developed, and with them man. If anyone still entertains a doubt of the descent of man from some form of the anthopoid ape, let him visit some museum of natural history and study the appearance, manners and formation of the Gibbon and Chimpanzee. One look will be worth a hundred arguments, and the distant relationship will appear two plain to be honestly disowned. To-day even there are savages existing far nearer the condition of the highest ape than they are to civilized man. “ Shocking” cries our objector, and we also seem to hear him say, “ I do not wish to believe it even if it is true;” to which we rejoin that we rejoice in it, because it makes our life at one with the great life of this globe. It protects our being by placing it in the lap of law. It shows to us our destiny. It tells us whence we came and whither we are going. Better the developing ape than the degraded angel. The ape progressive opens boundless vistas for the Future of the Race ; the angel fallen tolls the knell of human hope, These ^primeval ancestors of anthropoid origin were the completest possible contradiction to those Paradi­ saical creatures into whom the Almighty is fabled to �28 have breathed the breath of life, creating them, so says the legend, in his own image. They were, as a matter of fact and science, but a grade above the beasts, and it was only when they first began to associate, for of­ fence, defence, or other purpose, that they laid thefoundation of Society and Manhood, for, “ man is not man, but in Society Man means Society.” Co-evally with that association doubtless came the first dull glimmerings of language, the sine qua non to social advancement. The savage learned also to make a fire ; another great step in human progress. TribaL union came. The untutored intellect began to ask itself the great questions of the whence, the where, and the whither. It looked around on nature. It saw the grasses grow, the leaves waving in the breeze, the brook­ lets dancing in the sunshine, and the stars pursuing their silent courses. All nature seemed in motion.” “ Whence these motions ? asked the savage. Must not “ these objects move just as I move ? My will directs “ my motion. Wills, therefore, must also direct theirs.” Thus came the first great stage of religion—Fetichism, in which all nature seemed alive, in which all things that moved, whether animate or inanimate, were inter­ preted as being actuated by wills. By this incipient philosophy, rude and primitive as it now appears, the human mind was saved-from chaos. In the absence of science no other theory was possible. All nature was alive, actually alive. To the fetichist there were literally books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and God in everything. He was the most complete of theologians the world has ever, or ever will behold, for he always lived in the midst of a constant communion with his surrounding deities. But the savage had other experiences. , He saw visions and dreamt dreams. In the watches of the night appeared to him his friend or enemy, nay even. �29 his own self. These apparitions to him were realities. To each man, therefore, the savage reasoned, belonged a second self, a veritable alter ego, which was a spirit or ghost, the belief in which was confirmed by such strange phenomena as the breath appearing and fading away, or the shadow following in snch silent mystery. Herein we discover the historical origin of the human soul, considered as an entity. As an illusion it arose and as such is fast fading away. Nor is this all. If these strange appearances could live separate from the body during life, why not after death ? So a place had to be prepared for departed spirits, located sometimes on a mountain, sometimes in a cave; sometimes above, sometimes below the earth. Thus, also, do we find the historical foundations of heaven and hell, a doctrine natural to and consistent with that old savage theory of things, but an utter ano­ maly in the state of our present knowledge. Still, social advance went on. The original nomadic life became changed to that of agriculture and the care of flocks. Men found a settled abode in the great river valleys, like the Tigris and Euphrates. It was the be­ ginning of home life. There was now more time for contemplation. The care of harvests and cattle led the people to watch the skies. The lesser fetiches began to fade in interest be­ fore the sun and stars, and astrolatry set in. The great Gods were thus seen as further off, and the mind be­ came prepared to separate the wills, deities and spirits from the objects they inhabited. Then came the next great religious stage Polytheism. For men had begun to notice uniformities in nature. The gods of each tree, for example, were condensed into the God of the Forest. The great divisions of the universe, Earth,. Hades (or Hell) and Heaven were assigned to their re­ spective rulers. �30 But still along the ages the process continued of the weeding out of the deities, for completer observations of nature and larger scientific conceptions were forcing the minds of men towards a larger unity, (especially under the influence of the great amalgamation of the Roman Empire,) and Monotheism was the result. Idol worship was the first stage, Fetichism. Idol worship was the second stage, Polytheism. And idol worship is the third stage (their direct successor) Mono­ theism. What matters it whether the idol be one carved by the hand or created by the mind ? Has not Comte well described the God of Christianity by applying to it the term “La Grand Fetiche?” But observe the process. With the advance of real knowledge, the Gods of false knowledge have been ex­ terminated one by one, or relegated to a greater dis­ tance ; and thus through the ages has the great war gone on between science and theology. Every advance meant fewer gods, or the same god attenuated or driven fur­ ther off; and the course of human history show’s that this earth can never stand redeemed till God and Satan, angels and demons, ghosts and spirits, are forever driven and consigned to their appropriate limbo of fiction and mythology. 'But pari passu with this destructive theological disso­ lution was ever occurring a constructive scientific evolu­ tion. We have said that men became men by virtue of their primal association. These associations at first were small, consisting, probably, of the family. The family grew to the tribe, the tribe increased to the city, or combined with other tribes to form the nation; until now in these latter days, as Tennyson says, “ The Indi­ vidual withers, but the Race is more and more,” and we have dawming upon us, at last, the grandest of all the revelations of science the great conception of tlie Im­ mortal Individual, Humanity as an Organism. This �31 Humanity, as defined by my friend, Mr. T. B. Wakeman, tlie author of that admirable little work called “ An Epitome of the Positive Religion and Philosophy,” is to be regarded as the “ whole of human beings past, pre­ sent and future,” or again, as “ the voluntary conver­ gence of all the sentient beings on our planet, the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the world.” “ This,” he says, “ has been especially manifest since the “ French Revolution in the inciease of diplomatic, “ scientific, commercial and social intercourse, all of “ which has strengthened the conviction that all are but “ parts of one great earthly family, whose interests are “ in a thousand ways indissolubly interwoven. Both the “ French and American revolutions, in the appreciation “ they displayed of the brotherhood aud the rights of “ man, were a grand admonition that the word Humanity “ had come to stand for the deepest sentiment and the “ highest interest of Mankind, whereby each finds that “ he has a place, a right and a duty as part of the grand “ Organic Social Being of our planet.” Under my fifth head, wherein I shall endeavor to show that our cause is the Cause of Religion, I shall adduce further evidence to prove that Humanity is a Being or Organism; but fearing that the impression which my scientific outline has thus far left upon the minds of my hearers, in spite of my previous protest, is that of the identity of Positivism with Materialism, I wish at once to correct any such misunderstanding in case it exists. Beginning with Chaos I have described the occurrence of Phenomena under the laws of corre­ lation and evolution, and have stated that those pheno­ mena culminated in man himself. We have been consi­ dering these things objectively, just as if we were disinterested observers poised somewhere in space and watching how matters took place on earth. In this ob­ �32 jective view Positivism is, we are ready to confess, mate­ rialistic. But the great point to notice is that we are not such disinterested observers in space. We are our­ selves part and parcel of the Cosmos. Its laws are only laws as they appear so to our minds. “ The everlast­ ing laws are parts of ourselves.” In this therefore which is the subjective view, the idea or idealism is the uppermost consideration. The two conceptions, put together, form the counterpart one of the other. If on the objective side we seem purely materialistic, on the subjective side we seem purely idealistic, and the one view is as scientific as the other. If the out-and-out ma­ terialist states that we cannot know mind except in terms of matter we shall not contradict him, but we shall put in our rejoinder to the effect, neither can matter be known except in terms of mind, that, in fact, the final synthesis of science must be a subjective one or one based on the consciousness of impressions made on the mind by its environment. The environment may be called material, the effect of it is ideal. The mind (subjective) is the reflector of the world (objective). They are but two aspects of the same shield. In their ensemble they constitute, in truth, the grand reconcilation of materialism with spiritualism, using the latter term not in the sense of Ghostism, but in its proper human meaning. But the individual, in this subjective or human view, is totally inexplicable except when considered in his re lation to the race. The theologian right here with jus­ tice urges his intuitional philosophy against the ma­ terialist, asking him whence come all these aspirations and longings, these fine imaginations, this soaring of the soul for something higher and better, unless from the divine intentions implanted from the source of all per­ fections, God. Before this question pure materialism has to stand abashed. Holiness of life and striv- �33 fngs after righteousness could not be entirely inter­ preted by the attempt of physiology to resolve them into so much expenditure of nervous and vital force. To account for these phenomena scien­ tifically a missing link had to be found, which is the the link that Positivism presents to view, viz., the race idea, or Humanity. Says Comte “ Entre nous et le monde il faut V Ilumanite.” ' (Between us and the world there is, and there is need of Humanity). Only in the continuity and solidarity,(that is, by investigation ot the past and present,) of this greater organ­ ism can we know ourselves as individuals at all, but now we are sure that law, science, intellect, morality, all we have and are, are the accomplishments of the generations dead and gone transmitted to us through heredity. Thus everything is accounted for, even the tenderest pleadings of the heart, the lover’s sigh, or the child’s sweet glance of confidence. Distasteful as I know these discriminations between the objective and the subjective to be, I yet linger for a few moments upon them to consider the much vexed question of the freedom of the will, for I feel that in the distinction between the objective and subjective lies the only approach to a solution of this puzzle. As has before been intimated, the subjective synthesis is nothing more nor less than the classified impressions of the world around tis. Having received and thus arranged these impressions, the mind naturally asks itself, “ What are you going to do about it ? Are you going to rest quiet and take no action in the premises, or will you at­ tempt to modify these phenomena and turn them to the well being of man ?” To put the question differently, Have we freedom of the will ? Are we the creatures of a blind fatality or can we regulate circumstance, and become to ourselves a practical providence ? To the question then, Have we freedom of the will, I an­ �34 swer no and yes. In the objective sense, no; in the sub­ jective sense, yes. Objectively we see that all things . are under the sway of immutable law from the move­ ment of the planets to the finest action of the brain and the strongest decisions of our nature. This is the position of the materialistic fatalist, and as far as he goes he is right and consistent. Kismet is its watch­ word. It is the philosophy of laisser abler and of consequent indifferentism. It bids its disciples to quietly sail along with the sluggish stream of time, picking up on their way whatever driftwood they can find of pleasure or of gain. In its morality it is profoundly selfish. It seeks only for number one. But, turning to the subjective aspect of this hard problem, a new light bursts upon it. While we must acknowledge that under the sway of objective law our wills simply follow the lines of least resistance, and are consequently noth­ ing but a force the resultant of other forces ; still it is at once apparent that this line of least resistance is re­ sultant from influences far beyond the mental powTer of man to calculate, and hence the will of man is, for all practical purposes, left perfectly free. I mean that the resolutions a man is each moment taking are undoubt­ edly because of a countless number of influences, astronomical, metereological, biological, socialogical and moral, which in their ensemble no earthly power can either control or stop to calculate. But his will, the resultant of all these influences, any man is most dis­ tinctly conscious of, and can with reason proceed to act upon it as an original and basic force, and as if it were not the consequent of other forces at all. This position may be, perhaps, dimly illustrated by the attitude of children in a household. In many respects such chil­ dren feel themselves perfectly free in their wills. They laugh and play, rise and sleep, pretty much to please themselves, totally thoughtless that their parents have �35 woven around them a net-work of physical and moral bands that bind them with most powerful hold. The children feel that they are free, and act so. The parents know that they are not. Just so it is, only in a much greater degree, that the minds and wills of adults are free. The inextricable combinations of the external and internal worlds are incalculable, and thus leave man an independent agent. This is shown by our everyday attitude towards our environment. The astronomical world around us is unmodifiable. No effort of the will can change the course of the stars, but as we approach the regions of physics and chemistry we find that we can effect vast transformations in nature to the use of man, and coming to the social and moral life of man himself, here, of all regions, are the places where he can change and alter the most, and in these fields it is that the hope of human redemption lies as they are most of all under intelligent direction and con­ trol. If this explanation is not entirely satisfactory to all, I can maintain at any rate that it is a vastly better one than theology could ever offer in consideration of the okl difficulty that always existed under the attempt to reconcile man’s free agency with the predestinations of an all-wise and overruling God. There was here, in fact, no reconciliation possible. But it certainly strikes me that in the objective and subjective aspects of the antagonism between fate and free-will we have a rela­ tive, if not an absolute explanation, which is sufficient for all the real purposes of life. As long as science, thus transmitted through race in­ heritance, was confined to the inorganic world, a cold and selfish, one-sided and exclusive materialism was the result, but now that she has extended her sway over the organic departments, we find ourselves so linked by law to our fellows, that only by unselfishness can we fulfil the laws. �36 I wish, at this point, to offer a suggestion concerning the question of theology and science, which, at the first blush, may seem to contradict my previous statements. I have maintained that between these two ideas or methods there is an irrepressible conflict. And this is strictly true. Yet it is not only fair, but it will throw much light on the topic to remember that until real de­ monstrated science came in, the theological interpreta­ tion of the Universe was regarded as the Scientific one. It was the ignorant man’s science. Science (from scioire) is what we know. The savage 'knew that a nightly vision was a reality, for he saw it with his very eyes. He knew that the earth was flat and stationery. He knew that the sun moved around it, and not it around the sun. The astrologer believed religiously in his horoscope ; the alchemist in his alembic. The search of Ponce de Leon for the fountain of youth was just as much a scientific expedition to him as a few years ago was that of her Majesty’s ship “ Challenger ” in its deep sea soundings. Only little by little has real science dis­ placed false science. The process has involved, through many centuries, the conflict between these two interpre­ tations of the universe, the one pseudo-scientific, the other really scientific. Any one who has read Dr. John W. Draper’s History of the Conflict between Sci­ ence and Religion has seen, as in a grand epic, the por­ trayal of what I allude to. The God idea and the man idea have ever been contending because they are both endeavors to construe the universe and the destiny of Humanity with reference thereto.* The one has had its basis on the conception of the will of a God or Gods, the other on the conception of Law. Both methods have been upheld as scientific, but in every case demon­ stration has held its own against revelation. In Astron* They both attempt to tell man what he is, where he is, whence he is, and whither he is tending. �37 -omy, Physics and Chemistry no appeal to deity is now even thought of to explain their phenomena. In these departments the would-be science of divine interpreta­ tion has completely yielded to the proven science of rational interpretation. In individual and social life recourse is still had to the old methods to explain man in his relations to the world and to his fellows, but the application of the laws of Biology and Sociology must as inevitably remove the resort to a celestial governance, as has been the case in the other regions of demonstrated fact. “ When I was a child, I thought as a child, I felt as a child, I spoke as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” This text clearly illustrates the manner in which we emerge from our worn out opinions. We lay them aside as we do a shabby garment, or as a Crustacean does the shell he has out­ grown. The same text also shows how in most cases those in a lower stage of civilization should be treated, as against the educated classes; but one ground is tenable, and that is the utter unfitness of Christian doctrine to guide the thought of the future, but concerning those in lower stages of culture, we should, in the light of evolution, apply to such only a relative remedy. In the case of the African tribes, for instance, their adoption of Moham­ medanism would be a long step in advance, and prob­ ably the best one, as well as the only one practicable. And with regard to our own ignorant masses under the rule of the Romish Church, any sudden extrication from their priestly censorship would undoubtedly prove an evil. Religiously speaking, they are children, and as such they must be treated. It is to be hoped that the Catholic priesthood may become sufficiently enlarged to apply to their charges a Kindergarten method in religion which will, without violence, acquaint the masses piece­ meal with the new truth. Unless some such plan of �38 gradual amelioration can be effected, another (and hap­ pily the last) great conflict between theology and science is inevitable. The thinking, reading world will range itself on one side, ignorance and Pharisaism on the other, and sad will be the clash. In this connection the following words of John Mor­ ley, taken from the Contemporary Review, may not seem out of place: addressing the clergy, he says: “ The growth of bright ideals and a nobler purpose will go on, leaving ever and ever further behind them your dwarfed finality and leaden, moveless stereotype. We shall pass you on your flank ; your fiercest darts will only spend themselves upon air. We will not attack you as Voltaire did ; we will not exterminate you ; we shall explain you. History will place each dogma in its class, above or below a hundred competing dogmas, ex­ actly as the naturalist classifies his species. From being a conviction, it will sink to a curiosity ; from being the guide to millions of human lives it will dwindle down to a chapter in a book. As history explains your dogma, so science will dry it up ; the conception of law will silently make the conception of the daily miracle of your altars seem impossible ’ the mental climate will , gradually deprive your symbols of their nourishment, and men will leave your system, not because they have confuted it, but because, like witchcraft or astrology, it has ceased to interest them.” I conclude the present head of my discourse by saying that the above, in brief, are the lessons of science which show to man his place in nature. As the result and out­ come of all these forces (organic and inorganic) stands the civilization of to-day. That civilization can only be expressed in the term Humanity, and in that Humanity we all live and move and have our being. Just as the individual organism is made up of living cells, which �39 only exist as they are related to and connected with the body, so is each one of us in our dependence on Human­ ity. Outside of man has neither meaning nor exist­ ence. Humanity is our Providence. Its toils and agonies have been the stepping stones to bear us to a higher life; its benificent protection holds us in the hollow of its hand. Having thus far endeavored to show that science an* swers (as far as they are answerable) the great questions of the whence, the where and the whither, our subject leads us to another grand point, in which the new re­ ligion of Truth brings to us the idea of the Beautiful. So I affirm, THIRDLY—THAT THE CAUSE OF HUMAN­ ITY IS THE CAUSE OF ART. Much as I have dwelt on science, art is as truly and fundamentally an inspiration of the new faith : art, not in its narrow meaning, but art in its larger sense, in the sense implied in Goethe’s splendid aphorism, wffiere he says, “We know no world except in relation to man ; we wish no art except as an expression of that relation.” Rising at once above the domain of the mechanical arts, art, in its highest sense, becomes the idealization, the apotheosis of the real. Its aim is to ennoble and beau­ tify humanity. Art is Beauty. Its masterpieces in poetry, sculpture, painting, music and architecture, have always been the accompaniments of great concrete civ­ ilizations. This explains why art has been called the handmaid of religion, since no civilization of any mo­ ment has existed in the world unless based upon and accompanied by a controlling faith. Art accomplished marvels under Polytheistic and Christian theology, not �40 because of the divinity of those religions, but because they both possessed a strong human side, and this side it is that art has given us in its delineations. If chained completely to the trammels of superstition, she would starve for want of sustenance, for she must find her nourishment in the actual. It is science that lays the deeply dug foundations, and there she is content to leave them buried ; but on these solid blocks of truth art will rear her dwellings and her temples for the future of men. All the skill of archi­ tecture, all the resources of sculpture, all the devices of ’ painting, she will apply to their adornment. Fairer women and braver men will dwell and worship therein, and will echo their sense of the sublime and beautiful through the harmony of music and the synthetic inarch of poetry. Art is the child of nature; yes, Her darling child, in whom we trace The features of the mother’s face, Her aspect and her attitude, All her majestic loveliness Chastened and softened and subdued Into a more attractive grace, And with a human sense imbued,—He is the greatest artist then, Whether of pencil or of pen, Who follows nature,—Never man, As artist or as artizan, Pursuing his own fantasies, Can touch the human heart, or please, Or satisfy our noble needs, As he who sets his willing feet In nature’s footprints, light and fleet, And follows fearless where she leads. �41 Art’s greatest effort under the old faith has been to idealize this world in order to enable us to realize an­ other. The new faith cherishes the ideal at least in equal degree; all that is lovely and of good report, all that is beautiful, all that is grand, all that is true and estimable in the world of nature or the world of man, will be the office of art to symbolize ; and then the heaven which men have so vainly sought in another sphere will be realized on earth. Quoting Goethe’s words, in their largest sense, may we not almost say with him ? “ Who science has and art Has also religion. Who neither of them has Let him have religion.” I would gladly dwell longei’ on this most attractive phase of positivism, but the limitations of space, already. too much transgressed, compel me to desist. Having shown thus far that our synthesis embraces the regions of science and art, I am next led to de­ monstrate that the cause of Humanity is now prepared to cope with Christianity in its last stronghold, and that hence FOURTHLY.—OUR CAUSE IS THE CAUSE OF MORALITY. We claim that Humanity is the sole basis of morals. Therefore, in discussing this portion of our subject we must, at the outset, distinguish between the human and divine morality ; or the morality of Naturalism and the morality of Supernaturalism. The former may be called the ethics of one world at a time, the latter the ethics of two worlds at a tune. �42 Some skilled equestrians in the hippodrome are able to ride two steeds simultaneously. Even they, however, find it a tiresome and risky operation. But for the mul­ titude sueli a feat is an impossibility; yet this is the attempt which for ages civilization has been trying to accomplish, and many have been the falls and greatthe disaster which has resulted. When I speak of Supernaturalism in this essay, I limit myself to Christian Supernaturalism, and here, as before, I draw the line between the head side and the heart side of the religion of Jesus. On the heart side (within the brotherhood of the Christian confession) noble traditions of sympathy, charity and self-sacrifice have become the inheritance of the race. Contracted within the limits of the Boman Catholic civilization this heait side has given us much that is human and humane. But when we turn to the head side (the doctrinal side) of Christianity, how sadly the picture changes ! We there have the vengeful God, who created man in his own image by making him totally depraved, and who still further showed the cruelty and despotic favoritism of his nature by slaying his own son to the end that cer­ tain sti ay sinners might inherit life eternal. Heaven and hell were presented to lure the selfish and intimi­ date the weak, and a priesthood was established as the ministers plenipotentiary of their Celestial Tyrant. These same points have been before dwelt upon, but we now restate them to show their bearing upon morality. Would you know the meaning of these Christian dog­ mas ? I will tell you. They mean the organized despair of man. They mean the slave cringing before a power he cannot control. They mean the perpetuation of ignorance and fear. They mean the denial of our own manhood, the shirking of our own responsibility through the wretched doctrine of the atonement, the cowardly and degrading assumption of another’s merits to stand in 1 �( 43 place of our own. They mean a personal salvation gained at the price of almost universal damnation. . They mean a human fellowship confined to the narrow range of the Christian confession, excluding all others. And, worst of all, they mean the denial of human freedom, the sub­ jection of the race to an absolute foreign despot, who has vested his unalterable authority in Priest, King or Bible. Such is the picture of Christian morality, a picture of stagnation and misery set against the dark background, and within the sombre frame-work of the middle ages. But in the sixteenth century two twin giants leapt forth, full-armed, like Minerva from the head of Jove, whose double office it was to reverse this dreary pic­ ture. Their names were Protestantism and Science. Protestantism, with its dogma of the right of private judgment, shouted revolt against authority, the destruc­ tion of idol-worship, the overthrow of all false Gods; while Science prophesied the establishment of a higher truth, the construction of a new ideal, the conformity of the soul of man, not to the laws of God, but to the laws of nature. Both of these twin Saviours appealed to humanity in the name of liberty. The former demanded, and is still de­ manding, liberty from the trammels of the old; the lat­ ter, liberty to lay down the strong foundation of the new. They both tell us that the law of freedom means freedom to obey law. For three centuries have these great forces been work­ ing in society, and under their holy influence what a vast change do we see in the civilization of the nine­ teenth century, so falsely called a Christian civiliza­ tion ! How differently we can now describe the morality of the representative man of the modern epoch ! No longer bowed with face in the dust, pros­ trate at the feet of Jesus, we see him standing erect in �44 the nobility of his own manhood. Instead of Faith in Christ, we see him living by his Faith in Human Na­ ture. The brotherhood of the Christian Confession has given way to the Republic of the World, the Common­ wealth of Man. In place of self-suppression we have self-development. Doubt is no longer sin, nor disbelief damnation. Organized Faith in man has become the substitute for the organized Despair of man. All this has been accomplished for human morality in the sacred names of Science and of Liberty. Reverence for freedom has increased as reverence for authority has decreased, and even Christianity (which I have thus strongly assailed) has so expanded under the freedom wrested from itself, that it has proved fruitful of many blessings. I wish to give it all the credit possible, but after every allowance it is evident that much, very much, remains to be done. Under the doctrine of elec­ tion, for example, theology created an elect in heaven, which has been aptly imitated by an overbearing aristo­ cracy on earth. In directing contrite submission to the will of God, by saying that the powers that be are or­ dained of God, that the poor you have always with you, &c. it basin past times justified masters in grinding down their slaves, feudal lords in trampling on their vassals, and to-day sanctions capital in its oppression of labor. If Christianity does go down into the pit to help the poor, it first is determined to keep them there ; witness how it advocates the present false competitive method of trade, that Darwinism in business, wherein every man’s hand is against every other man’s, and must of necessity be while the system lasts. The priest is the natural ally of the capitalist. They both represent one­ sided, selfish power. I here wish to answer an anticipated objection, which is that I am fighting against the windmills, that I have been setting up straw figures merely �45 to knock them down, or, in other words, that these dogmas which I have been reprobating have be­ come, in the light of the nineteenth century, practically obsolete. To which I would reply, that this is not true. There is not a single orthodox sect in Christendom in whose printed articles of faith these incubi will not be found, and I venture the assertion that week by week thousands of ingenuous children in our Sunday-schools are having their consciences warped, and their little minds polluted with the debasing teaching that they are (in the words of Brown’s old Catechism) “ Enemies of God, children of Satan and heirs of hell.” They are taught on Sunday, under the holy sanction of the church, that the world was created in six days; on Monday they learn in their day-school that its con­ struction consumed millenia of time. The childish mind sees there is a lie somewhere, and most unhappily, as my witty friend James Parton once said, the young hopeful’s natural inference is, . “ Go it while you’re young.” The conflict of secular and religious teaching deprives him of his standard of morality. And even in the more liberal churches, those which have reached out beyond the pale of orthodoxy, I main­ tain that the same flavor pervades their tenets. Re­ moulding an old rhyme, I would say : “ You may break, you may shiver the jar, if you will, “ The stench of the garbage will cling round it still.” For, as long as these doctrines exist (even in their most attenuated form), they tend on the side of that spirit which makes for ignorance, hatred and slavery, and which sets itself at variance with freedom, science and humanity. These liberal churches are a strange anom­ aly. Christianity, to be Christianity at all, it seems to me, must, by the force of its own logic, hold to the doc­ �46 trines we have been considering, or else become no longer Christianity. For the dogmas of the Fall, Atonement and Salvation, form one consistent whole ; the abstraction of any one of them being the removal of a link that breaks the whole chain. Unless men were fallen, what the need of a Saviour, unless doomed to hell, what the use of atonement; if possessed of merits of their own, what the need of another’s merits ? Consid­ eration will thus show that all these conceptions must be construed together. Still, only in direct proportion as Christians cut loose from such belief do they work out from the genius of the twelfth into the genius of the nineteenth century, and from the narrow morality of superstition into the large morality of science and free­ dom. The retention even of an iota of Christian doc­ trine is so much premium on selfishness and wrong. Yet it may be there is one class of Christians (if Christians they can be called) whom hitherto I have not described in this essay, and to whom I have not done justice. They are a set of men who are symbolizing away their old faith. To them no longer is God a person, but the name signifies the great unknowable, unnameable power underlying the cosmos. Christ is to such the type of self-sacrifice, the highest embodiment of manhood, the symbol of reconciliation ; and the chief idea they attach to immortality is the glory of the conscious performance of well-doing throughout eternity. Canon Farrar is perhaps an example of such believers. He denies en­ tirely the orthodox interpretation of the atonement. With regard to such Christians, it might not be im­ proper to again quote their own Scripture by saying, “ He that is not against us is for us.” The truth, however, about such seems to be that they are simply stopping in a half-way house. Their First of May, their moving day, must soon come. Between Roman Catholicism and the Religion of Humanity there �47 is no fixed resting place. The men I am now describ­ ing necessarily cling to their old notion of Duality. This must unfix their foundation.. It bases their hopes wrongly, and to that extent debases them. I know a gentleman who once bought a beautiful place on the sea-shore. He found it so thickly surrounded with ever­ greens—the type of immortality—that the beautiful view of the ocean was quite excluded. "With his ax he struck them down right and left. The evergreens were gone, but the loveliest panorama was opened, having the grand old ocean for its background, with men and wo­ men rambling by the roadside, and children playing in the fields. And thus will it ever prove. This life will become more and more just as the other life becomes less and less, and not till our hopes are no longer fixed on an objective personal immortality ; not till this and other false aspirations are removed, can Humanity reach to the full attainment of its high capability. The heaven men would gain must be sought for here. Did this last most advanced type of Christians but know it, there is only one step trom their belief to Posi­ tivism. Perhaps no better definition of the latter on its religious side could be found than to call it thus, viz, developed Christianity, minus its theology. In this view all superstition would be discarded. The term Force would take the place of God, and the noble ideal of Humanity would supplant, without displacing, that of the Christ. And we who embrace these modern views know whereof we speak. Having tasted of this new tree of life, we have found the fruition of our religious hopes. To use an expression of Frederic Harrison’s, “we find ourselves again in the old lines of religious rest.” Each one, be he high or low, rich or poor, again finds himself of use in the world. He sees again the purpose and the joy of life. �48 “ Poor indeed thou must be, if around thee “ Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw; “ If no silken cord o.f love hath bound thee “ To some little world through weal or woe. “ If no dear eyes thy fond love can brighten, “No fond voices answer to thine own ; “ If no brother’s sorrow thou cans’t lighten “ By tender sympathy and gentle tone. “ Not by deeds that win the crowd’s applause; “ Not by works that give the world renown ; “ Not by martyrdom or vaunted crosses “ Canst thou win and wear the immortal crown. “ Daily struggling, though unloved and lonely, “ Every day a rich reward will give ; “ Thou wilt find by hearty striving only “ And truly loving thou canst truly live.” Returning from this side path into -which I have been led for the purpose of describing the Christians of the most liberal type, I return to the high-road of my sub­ ject, and proceed to say that in spite of every allowance to be made for the generally received opinions, too much of the middle-age spirit still remains. Protestanism was an advance upon Romanism in the line of freedom, as Unitarianism is upon Protestantism, but, after all, it is undeniable that the Christian Church, as such, both in its constitution and history, has been the sworn foe of science and of liberty. I say both in her constitution and history. In her constitution, be­ cause a perfect revelation from a perfect God admits of no improvement, needs no science; obedience to the divine will allows of no liberty. In her history, as wit­ ness Copernicus, Galileo, Giordan Bruno, the Inquisi­ tion, St. Bartholomew, to say nothing of the Puritan’s persecution of witchcraft, and numberless other instances of religious cruelty. �49 * To state the matter in one single phrase, doctrinal Christianity means absolute despotism. It represents the rule of an overbearing God, and is the very anti­ type of Republicanism. Heaven has certainly never been represented as a democracy. In that summer-land nothing prevails but meekness and obedience in the presence of a potentate. A government of the angels, for the angels, by the angels, with a new president re­ elected every four years, would certainly be an anomaly. This unavoidable antagonism between the ideal heavenly life and the ideal earthly life leads us to say further that the fundamental difficulty with Christians, in these tran­ sition times, is that, consciously or unconsciously, they are sailing under two flags. Each individual believer represents in his own nature a conflict of authority, the conflict between despotism and republicanism. In his spiritual and religious nature his life is passed in a dream of Oriental Tyranny ; in his earthly life, he is a member of our glorious commonwealth. History helps us to an explanation of this, since it shows to us that of old the idea of government, both human and divine, was based on theology. Christians have outgrown the one conception and not the other. Theological government remains in the church, but has passed away in the state. Government to our fore­ fathers was deemed a royal appanage, founded on the divine right of kings ; while government now is regarded as the prerogative of the people only, growing out of their natural right of self-rule. The American Declaration of Independence human­ ized or socialized politics. What we now want is a Declaration of Independence which will humanize religion. The one equally with the other must be secular and re­ publican. Real religion can no more exist under the rule of God than popular government can under the sway of a Caesar. Political liberty we have already ob­ �50 tained. The next great issue, underlying and including all others, is the attainment of religious liberty, which, in the high sense that I refer to, means, and can only mean, that this toiling, groaning, suffering race of men and women must summon God before the bar of human justice, there to have him tried for the deeds done in the spirit during the long six thousand years of his misrule, and when found guilty to depose him from his high estate and in his stead enthrone Humanity, whose scep­ tre he has so long usurped. The abolition of the divine right of kings is the pro­ phecy of the abolition of the divine right of God. De­ livered from the false authority of both king and God, of earthly and heavenly tyrant, society will then be free to submit itself to the only true authority, the authority of Law. When freed from the mirage of supernaturalism true morality is seen to be purely a social growth. From the attrition through the ages of human experiences, the sense of right has been evolved, and has become in­ grained into the human system as the sum and substance of social utilities. The old morality is founded on the God idea, and places its reliance on a divine providence; the new morality is based entirely on the man idea, and trusts implicitly in a human providence. The one is theological, the other sociological. Beginning with low conditions, the conscience has been augmented, and ever transmitted and re-transmitted, till it has come to be regarded as an instinct, an intuition, or a separate entity. That the moral sense, however, is really the result of an evolution is shown by comparing present customs with those of the savage, who, in perfect accord­ ance with his barbarous code, kills off the aged, murders or enslaves his prisoners of war, tortures his enemy, and �51 feasts on human flesh. Ethically defective, as is our present age, it certainly represents a vast improvement on such practices, and we cannot fail to see on a com­ parison of savage with civilized times, that conscience, like the intellect, grows through the ages, and is a purely relative and human acquisition. A not unfamiliar example might be found in the Ser­ mon on the Mount (Matt, v., 38-41), wherein Christ himself becomes the unconscious witness of the evolu­ tion of morality by his contrast of the old with the new. “Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an “ eye, and a tooth for a tooth: “ But I say unto you, that you resist not evil; but “ whosoever small smite thee on the right cheek, turn to “ him the other also. “ And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take “ away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. “ And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go “ with him twain. “ Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that “ would borrow of thee, turn not thou away. “ Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt “ love thy neighbor and hate thy enemy. “ But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them “ that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and “pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute “ you.” But, in spite of the advance effected by Christianity, and notwithstanding its many excellent precepts, the insuperable trouble with theology still remains, viz.: that it has always placed morality upon a selfish and individual basis; we may, perhaps, say selfish, because individual basis. Before each believer was placed Par­ adise and the Judgment for him or her alone to gain or lose. The earth was a vale of tears, the heavenly Jeru­ salem the all in all. As the Christian song recites it, �52 “ I’m but a pilgrim here, Heaven is my home; Earth’s but a desert drear, Heaven is my home.” This world and all that pertains thereto were reckoned but as dross, and the one thing needful was for each to save his own immortal soul; (“ for what profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?”) the whole scheme differing in this respect most un­ favorably from he Chinese Fo worship, in the liturgy of which occurs the following remarkable expression : “ Never will I seek to receive private individual salva­ tion, never enter final peace alone, but forever and everywhere will I live and strive for the universal re^ demption of every creature throughout all worlds. Un­ til all are delivered, never will I leave the world of sin, sorrow and struggle, but will remain where I am.” Thus, this Heaven-and-Hell, or look-out-for-numberone doctrine, inevitably resulted “ in weakening the affections by unlimited desires, or in degrading the character by servile terror.” It is a selfish, unsocial „ individual, and hence immoral religion, a transfer of' this world’s egoism into another, though imaginary sphere. Just as in the fierce competition of modern life in the terrific race for wealth we see the rule exem­ plified of “ each for himself,” so is it in this Christian theory, the one, in fact, being the counterpart of the other. What is sought on earth is the selfish attainment of ease and power. What is sought in the after-life is practically the continued enjoyment of the same thing. While the heavenly ideal is the representative of the earthly selfishness, the earthly selfishness, in turn, is sanctioned by the heavenly ideal. To save our own souls we are obliged, on the Christian theory, to do our duty towards God, and subordinate ourselves to His �53 almighty will, the performance of duty and self-salva­ tion thus becoming interchangeable terms; and morality, which can only be truly defined as unselfishness, and which should be entirely dissociated from the idea of rewards and punishments, becomes divorced from social surroundings and indissolubly connected with a sel­ fish hope of heaven and a debasing fear of hell. Under the old dispensation the one unpardonable sin was blas­ phemy against the Holy Ghost. Under the new regime that one sin is egoism. No matter how reputable a man’s life may seem; no matter how brilliant a women’s career may be; nay, let the highest attainment of science and culture be their object, still them life is wrongly directed unless its motives and its aims are sanctified by the heart. The intellect, at best, is fitted only for a guide. Beason must never master the affec­ tion. If it does, the life so governed must be largely a life of selfishness, and to that extent a life of wasted power ; as Longfellow puts it: “ A millstone and the human heart Are driven ever round ; If they have nothing else to grind, They must themselves be ground.” Tho subordination of egoism to altruism is thus not only the path of duty but the path of the highest happi­ ness also. St. Paul has expressed it inimitably in that greatest chapter in the whole of religious literature, his chapter on charity in the first epistle to the Corinthians. The standard thus held up, though the happiest, is ■undoubtedly the hardest to follow. To oppose the gen­ eral opinions of one’s age, to swim eternally against the •current, is no holiday sport. It only brings its compen­ sation in the sense of duty done and convictions adhered to. It leaves the feeling that our children will have one �54 stone or two less to turn in the path of their progress,, and that mankind generally are at least one little whit the better for our having been here and breasted out our little struggles. For it is inevitable that those who succeed these times must face a new environment, and they are the blessed ones who thus prepare the way of Man and make his path straight. Such will be the real second coming of the Christ. I have criticised unsparingly the creeds of Christen­ dom, but, happily, Christians for the most part are bet­ ter than their creeds; and why they are so we positivists well know, for right living and right thinking do not have their foundations in the sky, but in the here and now. It is the social influences that form the basis of all the faiths, and morality is stronger than any creed, and has outlived all religions. Theology is to Morality what the old man of the sea was to Sinbad the Sailor, merely a weight to drag him down; but, under the new conception, where society is regarded as an organism, man discovers that only in the good of all can he find his own good ; he sees, under the influence of the new faith, that it is only by others that he can exist, and that thus the noble motto of Positiv­ ism, “ Live for others,” comes to supplant the golden rule of Confucius and the Gospels. “ Dans le bonh&ur d'autruije cherche monbonli&urf says Corneille. “In the happiness of others my happiness I seek.” It is not meant that each one’s personal identity is to be lost in this sense of universal love. On the contrary, the individual becomes more and more important and exalted. We find, for example, in regard to a complete human body that perfect organs are needful to make it so. Foi’ the wholeness and harmony of its structure, arms and legs moved by powerful muscles are required; also a heart to propel the blood, and a brain to preside over and crown the whole, to say nothing of the thous­ �55 * and and one functions by which each and all of the many organs perform their lesser parts. And thus it is in that larger and more wonderful or­ ganism, Humanity. For the perfection of the whole, the individual organs of which it is composed must be perfect; and cleanliness, observances of hygiene, and physical and intellectual improvement become bounden duties. A quotation from Comte applies aptly here where he says: “ All human societies and individuals are regarded as the organs of this Great Being, Humanity, having their work and duties determined by their relation to it, and finding their welfare, happiness and life motive in their cheerful and faithful service.” Positivism has been criticised as insisting so strongly on the conception of duty, as practically to deny the conception of rights. But this is not just. Bights are but the obverse estimate of duties, the opposite view of the same shield. What is A’s duty to B, B has the right to demand of A. Did A and B both do their duty, no insistance on the rights of either would ever be required. Thus the doctrine of human duty will, in the end, swallow up the doctrine of human rights and man will learn that the highest, nay, the only right he needs, is the right to do his duty. In one word, to live for parents, live for children, live for country, live for mankind, or, to express it in the noble phrase before used, to “ Live for others,” becomes the whole duty of man. Space forbids mention of much of Positivistic Ethics that should not be omitted. I merely allude, for example, to its glorious motto, “ vivre au grand jour” “live in the light of day,” or, “live without conceal­ ment.” What a world of value it contains, admonishing us ever to act as if the eye of all mankind were upon us! �56 Again, in passing, it would be an absolute remissness not to recall the image under which this philosophy sym­ bolizes tlie application of all our powers and the per­ formance of all our duty to the generations past and gone, the image, namely, of a trust, by which it insists that we come into this world largely in debt, that all our capacities are the gift of Humanity, and to Humanity must be devoted; that wealth, for instance, being social in its origin, should be socialized in its use, and that its claim as a purely individual acquisition, is a crime against our fellows. This same notion of respon­ sibility clings to any human endowment we possess, be it a genius for the highest art cr but the humblest apti­ tude for manual service. Under such and analagous conceptions and motives, there must arise, in time, a new order of chivalry in the world, wherein the strong on earth, as Knights of Hu­ manity, under the impulse and inspiration of an emanci­ pated womanhood, will go forth conquering and to con­ quer, devoting their powers to the rescue of the weak, the deliverance of the enthralled, and the common wel­ fare of the whole. Fascinating as such points are, they must be hur­ ried by to enable us to reach and treat the last head of our discourse, and therefore Ibeg permission of my theological friends to leave this topic with one * concluding thought. I ask them to imagine that Death, the Christian King of Terrors, has subjected Heaven to his sway, and has sent forth his devouring Plague, under whose deadly arrows have fallen prostrate not only all the Angelic hosts, but God Himself. Jehovah is dead! Heaven is no more I Our old earth, however, with all the inhabitants thereof, still moves on in its accus­ tomed way, protected in the lap of everlasting law. God has gone, but Fatlier and Mother still remain. Heaven is a barren waste, but our country still is left us. Must �57 ♦ family love die out ? Must patriotism perish ? Must virtue exist no longer ? Shall we not rather say that since Jerusalem the Golden is abolished we will cling with increased tenderness to this our native sphere ? Shall we not rather affirm that since the Almighty is no more, we will hold parents in kindlier reverence, and that since the angels above have disappeared, we will cherish with deeper affection those earthly angels who, as friends and relatives, afford the solace of our lives ? No, my Christian brothers and sisters, our higher natures need not die with the decay of Supernaturalism. In­ stead thereof it will be found that under a system of purely secular morals, humanity, rid of its old clogs, will attain Jits! heights and develop capabilities which heretofore have been but dreams. We have thus far shown the Cause of Humanity to be the Cause of Science, Art and Morality; the good, the true, the beautiful. We are now naturally led to our last point, wherein we maintain, FIFTHLY—THAT THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY IS THE CAUSE OF .RELIGION. > We find an easy transition from the subject of Moral­ ity to the subject of Religion in Matthew Arnold’s de­ finition of the latter wherein he says: u Religion is Morality touched with Emotion.” The writer of “ Ecce Homo” has also beautifully called Religion the “ En­ thusiasm of Humanity,” but the meaning of the word may, perhaps, best be seen in its derivation from the Latin words re and ligo, “ to bind back” or “ tie back.” To quote again the words of the Epitome before refer­ red to: “ Religion is the tie by which man’s feelings “ and thoughts within and his actions without are co•“ ordinated into health and harmony with each other, �58 “ with society and the world, with the past and the fu“ ture. What is holy. That it is that Many souls together hinds, Binds them ever so lightly, As a rush thread the wreath.” What is the holiest ? That which To-day and ever on Deeper and deeper felt, souls More and more together binds.”—Goethe. All theological definitions made earth “ the battlefield of religions.” Each one “ true” God had to be up­ held and defended : as Christ said : “ I come not to bring peace but a sword.” “ But (still quoting from the Epitome) in the newer, “ that is the human or scientific sense, the word religion “ has come to mean ‘ the convergence’ or unity of peo“ pie or of peoples, that has resulted or may result from “ any common belief or sentiment, whether springing “ from a belief in a God or otherwise. In this sense, “ the unity, integration, or binding together, under the “ influence of a common conviction, is the substance of “ the meaning of which the gods are but the variable “ incidents. Thus, in the march of history, each god, in “ his turn, falls into insignificance, but the social unity “ the collective man, is more and more., In this view “ the lesson of history is clear, ^%iman progress “ must be arrested, or man must, in this newer sense, “ become more and more religious, and yet, at the same “ time, less and less theological.” Man has always created his gods or god in his own image. The have been and are mere anthropomorphic (man-imitated) embodiments. The great spirit of the �59 Indians, for example, is a majestic brave, and the gods of Greek mythology were the perfect men and beauteous women of the Greek ideal. The whole history of theology has exemplified this, and nowhere has it been better expressed than in the following humorous lines from the old Greek poet Xenophanes: If sheep and swine and lions strong, And all the bovine crew, Could paint with cunning hands and do What clever mortals do. Depend upon it every pig, With snout so broad and blunt, Would make a Jove that like himself Would thunder with a grunt. And every lion’s God would roar And every bull’s would bellow, And every sheep’s would give a “ baa” And each his worshipped fellow^ Would find in the immortal form, And naught exist divine, But had the gait of lion, sheep, Oi’ ox or grunting swine. In other and more serious words, underneath all the superstitions of the creeds, men have ever been striving to attain to a more and more ennobled human ideal, and before that ideal they have fallen down and worshipped. Guided by this perception, as Richard Congreve says: “ the Positivist reviews the different religion of man. “ He accepts them all as in their time, useful. But he “ finds in their decay a proof that they are none of them “ final, and that some definitive and comprehensive solution is yet required. To his view the religions disap- �60 “ pear; religion remains. That which is human in “ them alone is imperishable. They have in their variety “ had one common aim. They have each in its measure “ given an account to man of his existence, his existence “ in relation to other men and to himself. They have “ aimed at the harmony of all his faculties; they have “ sought to unite him with a smaller or larger portion of “ his fellow men. “ Positivism accepts the same problem, offers to man “ an account of his existence, gives him an object of “ faith, explains the conditions under which he lives, “ and makes him lovingly accept them, unites him in “ himself by love, and binds him to his fellow men in “ the three-fold communion of faith, of worship, and of “ action.” In one word, the God whom thus far men have so ignorantly worshipped, have so longingly yearned for, and have represented to themselves under so many symbols, is the God whom we announce, Humanity, the Supreme Being on this planet, the one science-revealed God. Here at once I perceive that 1 shall be asked the ques­ tion, How do you know that Humanity is a being of any kind, much less a Supreme Being, and I may be reminded of the witty reply of the Oxford student who on being sent to investigate and report on the Positivist meetings in London, brought back word that he found “ three persons, but no God I” In the theological sense we certainly have no God. But have we no Supreme Being ? For my 'answer to this most proper enquiry, I turn to Herbert Spencer’s Sociology where he gives his reasons for believing Society to be an organism. I present a partial summary of his statement. What is a Society ? It is a mere aggregate of separ­ ate individuals, which, like an audience in a theatre, dis­ �61 4 perses when, the play is over, and exists no longer, or is it not rather like the bricks, beams and mortar of a house which combine together to make a result quite distinct from the parts which compose it ? The latter is the conception of Sociology; though the material simile of the building presents but a very im­ perfect analogy, since we cannot reason from the inor­ ganic to the organic, from dead to living matter. A better illustration will be found in the science of Biology. How do we know for example that man himself is a being or organism ? We know it, among many other reasons: 1st. because he grows ; 2d. because he increases both in structure and function; 3d, because the different parts of his body are dependent upon the whole body, and the whole body upon the different parts. In much the same way we know a society to be an organism. 1st, because it grows: our own U. S. with its century of increase in population is sufficient evidence of this. One hundred years ago we numbered three millions, now we count our forty five millions. 2d. Because while increasing in size society increases in structure and function. We find in animal evolution that at first an organism all stomach develops into a creature with lungs, heart, &c., &c., further and further differentiations causing greater and greater unlikenesses among the organs, all of which perform their multiform functions. So in the development of a society. Divis­ ions and subdivisions occur and recur. Another glance, for example, at our own country will show us how much greater diversity of structure there is to-day in com­ merce, the arts, manufactures, religions, education and all the departments of life, than existed a hundred years ago ; also how, the unlike portions having thus become marked off, vast divisions of labor ensue, producing un­ like duties through all the mass of the community, and �62 making up in their entirety that complex thing we call modern civilization. 3d. Because as in the human, so in the social organ­ ism nothing is more strongly marked thant he mutuality of dependence between the parts. The necessity of all the organs in the animal frame to form the complete being is paralleled in society by the dependence of the parts upon each other and the whole, and the whole upon the parts. For instance when society is rudiment­ ary, every man is his own warrior, merchant and farmer, but when It becomes highly developed, the warrior class, the merchant class, the farmer class, and, in fact, all the thousands of classes become unified and interdependent till, as Carlyle says, an Indian can’t quarrel with his squaw on Lake Winnepeg without causing a rise in the price of furs in London. Co-ordinately with this differentiation of the parts of society and their mutual dependence on each other we find an integration (or the action of the whole upon the parts) formulating itself in the shape of religion and government. But enough of this dry reasoning to prove that society is an organism or heing. Popular acceptance alone is sufficient to prove it so, as is shown by the conceptions attached to such words as home and country. The home, for example, is never thought of as a place enclosed in bare walls where parents and children meet merely to eat, and separate simply to sleep. Around the sacred name cling a thousand associations recalling tender ideas of father and mother, brother and sister. We regard it as the seat of our affections, the abode of our rest. We love to think of its honorable ancestry. We hope to establish a still nobler posterity. In this sense, is not a family, with its kindred idea of home, a being or or­ ganism ? �63 So with our commonly received notion of “ country,” which is to us a distinct conception, though by no possi­ bility can we represent to ourselves even in imagination the vast numbers which compose it. We speak of the life of a nation as we do of the life of a person. The blood-disks in a man’s arteries die, but the life of the man goes on. So, the individuals of a country disappear but the life of the nation continues. In the one case as the other we formulate to our minds the idea both of the man and the nation as an existence, entity, organism or 3ezmg. Speaking thus instinctively of the life and growth of a nation, in a larger, fuller sense, Humanity also may be said to have its life, not only in the present, but extend­ ing through the past and future, a life in which even the eras of national existence are but as wavelets on a shore­ less sea. Pascal’s seer-like instinct dimly grasped this great conception long ago when he said : “ the entire succession of men through the whole course of the ages must be regarded as one man, always living and inces­ santly learning.” “ In this light,” says Comte, “ the human race, past, present and future, constitutes a vast and eternal social unit, whose different organs, individual and national, concur in their various modes and degrees in the evolution of Humanity.” Again says Comte, “ this Humanity, this object of Positivist worship, is not like that of theological be­ lievers, an absolute, isolated, incomprehensible being, whose existence admits of no demonstration or compari­ son with anything real. The evidence of this Being is shrouded in no mysticism, since by means of history we know her laws. Though not claiming perfection for Humanity, she is ever growing towards it, and we know that of all organisms she is the supreme one on this planet.” �64 But again we hear our objector entering his caveat: “ A very pretty God,” he exclaims, “ is this Humanity “ of yours, a most adorable God ! Hero fiddling over “ burning Rome and making torch-lights out of “ Christians, is a sweetly attractive saint; Torquemada “ amusing himself with the application of the thumb“ screw and the rack, is a most worshipful man; “ Jeffreys persecuting and condemning his luckless vic“ tims, is a deeply religious spectacle, and Wm. M. “ Tweed will answer, I presume, as well for a deity as he “ will for a “ boss !” Or, taking Humanity outside of its “ individual aspect, what a lofty contemplation do we “ not discover for example, in the eternal reign of desola“ ing carnage ! The path of history is red with the “ blood of battle-fields! And if we turn from the achievements of glorious war to the pursuits of “ ‘ piping peace,’ what then do we find ? The great “ struggle of men for the ‘ almighty dollar,’ wherein to “ gain the paltry prize, human rights are trampled down, “ human duties disregarded, and the higher life is “ crushed beneath the iron heel of selfishness! Whether “ in war or peace, therefore, man’s record is that of “ Cain, his hand against every man, and every man’s “ hand against him, or, to quote the oft-repeated phrase, “ i Man’s inhumanity to man, makes countless thousands “ mourn.’ Such is your God, Humanity; and if Posit“ ivism cannot present us with some better Supreme “ Being, my advice to it would be to go into liquidation “ on the God-making business, and adopt some other “ trade ! ” The answer to our theological sceptic is two-fold. 1st. The perhaps non-logical, but always effective, “ you’re another” argument. For the criticism he makes �65 against Humanity holds with ten-fold power against his biblical deity. Unlike theology, Positivism makes no claim of omnipotence for its Supreme Being. It only says that Humanity is the highest organism known to man. But the Christian’s claim for their God endows him with omniscience. CVwC. Omniscience, omnipotence ! Posessed of these great attributes it needed but a single stroke of such Almighty Power to make of Earth an Eden, and of Life a Joy ; but instead thereof we find in their God the primal source of all life’s evils, be they devils or mosquitoes, wars or warts, the black vomit, the itch, or any other ill that flesh is heir to. Consistent reasoning regarding this allpowerful deity leaves no alternative except the conclu­ sion that his infliction of misery upon his children, through time and eternity, was from deep design and de­ liberate choice. Unattractive as is the picture our or­ thodox unbeliever has drawn of Humanity, it is beatific compared to that of his fiendish God. The evil in the one is relative, and the result of environment and cir­ cumstance; it is evil that can be understood and recon­ ciled, because it can be taken as the simple fact. It is evil that can be patiently borne because hope is left to soften it. But the evil in the other is sin self-chosen as it is self-damning, and totally at variance with a benefi­ cent omnipotence an&4^By^cjgee. But 2d: The real reply to our atheistic retrograde (for he is the truest atheist who denies the highest good) is to be found in a sufficiently comprehensive definition of Humanity as the Supreme Being, and this can only be obtained by a proper discrimination between the ob­ jective and subjective view of man’s Life on Earth. We have previously dwelt (page 31) on these two phases �66 of thought. In the light of that explanation let us now considei’ Humanity ul dor this double aspect. First, in the objective view: In this view it is un­ deniable that the history of mankind is a recital of a vast intermixture of the evil with the good; or, more correctly speaking, of the endeavor of Humanity to adapt herself to her environment. We see her ever baffled and thwarted, yet ever striving, and on the whole gaining ground. She might be likened to a child born amid low surroundings, subject to physical pollution from the slums wherein it dwells, and liable to moral degradation from debauched companionship, “ An infant crying in the night, “ An infant crying for the light,” with all life’s odds apparently against it. We see it, however advancing from childhood to youth, from youth to age, ever struggling on, sinking into pitfalls only to rise the stronger, yielding to one temptation only to present more fierce resistance to the next. Little by little it progresses from a low culture to a high one, from beasthood to manhood. Such a sight is a sublimity and such, in miniature, is the story of Humanity. De­ graded in her early stages, the slave of fear, and the victim of imagination, we see her emergent in the grand march of time, ever redeeming herself and her children, ever conquering and to conquer. And it is a matter of congratulation, in this new age, that many causes are working under the conscious use of the law of evolution towards a favorable end, causes that are grounds of improvement and of hope. As an example, nothing promises more fairly for the supremacy of the humane over the inhumane than the application �67 of the doctrine of heredity: and when this doctrine is scientifically availed of, it is believed that the good will more and more overcome the evil by arresting the trouble at its source, viz., by the checking of a badlyborn population; by preventing from being born those who, when born, must inherit physical, mental or moral stain. This remedy working in connection with a higher religious sentiment and a better morality (especially in reference to the distribution of wealth) must have an immense effect in circumscribing pauperism and crime. The pressure of population on food will be diminished and less temptation to crime engendered. Equally also with the influence of this law of heredity on the non creation of evilly disposed beings will it show its benefi­ cent results in the wider production of more highly born characters. Just as by care and by the study of points and pedigrees, high breeds of animals are produced on our best stock farms, so, under a comprehension of this law in relation to man, a nobler race of beings will be “ selected,” to whom can rightfully be entrusted the management of this planet. Many other combined causes are tending towards the disenthralment of the race, but without stopping to ' ex­ amine these further, I may say that the picture I have been thus seeking to paint is a general objective pre­ sentation of our earthly career in history which, while it concedes the evil in Humanity, shows at the same time her constant conquest and reduction of it, a view which explains our retardations through the past and our encouragement for the future. Better, a thousand times better even such a Supreme Being than the dread unapproachable God of Christianity, who exerts his om­ nipotence to curse men here and doom them to hell hereafter. If no choice remains but between this hu­ man conception and the theological one let us by all means adopt the human. �68 Second : In the subjective view ; turning to the sub­ jective side, we here meet one of the foundational doc­ trines of Positivism, to wit, that no subjective concep­ tion can be true unless based on an objective fact. There­ fore in strict science, the subjective cognition of Hu­ manity must correspond to the objective actual Human­ ity. As is the real Humanity so is our conception of it. In fact, one of the strongest charges Positivism brings against theology is that it is purely subjective, having nothing outside of the human imagination to confirm it in its assumed data. We have just recognized in the objective Humanity a mingling of the good and bad, and it must here also at once be conceded that in the sternly scientific subjective view,, we are obliged to re­ cognize this great organism just as it is, full of strength yet full of weakness, replete with energy yet often tot­ tering, losing one day yet more than gaining the next. I trust that I have shown that even this apprehension of Humanity, ever triumphing over herself, is no real bar to the inspiration of a religious enthusiasm, but this does nut by any means include the whole picture; it merely gives the view, as it were, from the base of the moun­ tain, wherein the vision, in a small horizon, is confined to the stern outlines of subjective science in its severest aspects, wherein it merely endeavors to represent the cold and naked truth ; but as we ascend the heights, we find from our new standpoint that the landscape of ex­ istence stretches vastly wider, softly mellowed and sub­ dued through depth of atmosphere. Thus there is a subjective view that includes something more than mere science. In fact, there may be said to be two subjective views, one the strictly scientific subjective, which we have just given ; the other, the ideal or reZz’yw-subjective, which now remains to be described. This ideal conception, while ever reposing on facts for �G9 its base, points way beyond these towards the airy realm of Fancy, wherein dwell Art and Love. The old scrip­ tures enjoins: “ be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect;” it tells us to “ approve those things which are excellent, to seek those things which are above where Christ dwelleth at the right hand of God.” Now this sublime perfection can only be thought of whether in a theological or strictly human faith by means of the ideal faculty in man, for man to be truly great must have a high purpose inspired by a lofty spiritual aim. He must have that which is outside of, better than and beyond himself. He must have some Arcadia towards which in hope at least he can steer his bark. The ideal alone is the source of this; the ideal alone is the constructor of Utopias. The ideal alone it is which kindles anew on the altar the fires of enthusiasm, and becomes, when personified, the true highpriestess of Religion, in whom we find the transmuta­ tion of the evil, the divination of the highest good. Anyone who has been among the mining districts has seen the long narrow troughs divided up into sections formed by small cross pieces fastened to the wooden sluice to catch the ore as it sinks in the flowing water. The pounded and broken mineral all mixed with dirt and rubbish is thrown in at the upper end of the receptacle; the heavier pieces fall in the first section clear and clean; the lighter particles in the next compartment, and so on till in the last one the finest ore dust is deposited bright and shining, while the water flows away carrying off every vestige of impurity. In this mamer it is, through the blessed aid of the imagination, that we are enabled to appreciate the ideal and to escape from even the appearance of evil in our Supreme Being, for this idealized Humanity represents only tlie beings in the past, present and future who con­ �.70 verge. None but the good can converge. Inhumanity has no convergence. The good only exercise upon each other and posterity the power of a moral cohesion. From such a conception all the Neros, Torquemadas, Jeffreys and Tweeds must be excluded, and in place of these non­ human men can be counted those noble animals (more truly good than many self-styledly more exalted beings) such as the horse, without whose aid civilization could not have been, and the dog, the synonym of fidelity, who has been to man such a devoted friend and servant. Beckoned forward by this uplifting inspiration can we not be justified in dreaming that this world will become a paradise, an earthly heaven, where there will be no more war nor any distraction of contentious trade, an Eden of Peace, where the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and a little child shall lead them; where the rough shall be made smooth and the crooked straight ? We must think thus or hope must bid farewell to life. Humanity nnder this idealization may perhaps best be symbolized, as Comte pictured Her to himself, under the figure, namely, of the Virgin Mother and Child, adopted from the Roman Catholic Church. In the mother we have the Past; in the child and mother to­ gether, the Present; in the child alone, the Future. This group expressed Comte’s highest soaring toward perfection as best embodying beauty, both in form, fea­ ture and character, and was his idealized representation of Humanity. In like manner all of us, to aid ourselves may, if we choose, adopt this or some similar dream wherewith to fill our longings. In the light of this Examination of Humanity as the Supreme Being, we may claim, not without reason, to have found the Holy Spirit of the New Religion, and a real Trinity in Unity. The Father may be called the GreatUnknowable Power or Force, underlying all things; �71 the Son, the Redeemer, may be thought of as this Grand Objective Human Organism,ever striving to reconcile itself unto the world, and the world unto itself; while the Holy Spirit may be pictured in the ideally subjective view we have attempted to portray, which quickens the conscience of man and says to his soul: “ Peace, be still, for all things are for the best, and are working together for good 1 Better times are coming, hope cheers us on, and Paradise lies not in the past, but in the future!” The voices of spirits Are calling from yonder, The voices of masters : Neglect not to ponder The Powers of the Good. In silence eternal Here are a-weaving, Crowns that with fulness The strong are achieving! We bid thee to hope ! Goethe. In further development of this same strain of thought are added the following eloquent words of Frederic Har­ rison, in eulogy of Humanity as embodied in civilization: “ Does not our imagination stir when 'we think of its <£ immensity ? Does not our intelligence ‘triumph in its “achievements? Do not our souls melt to remember “ its heroisms and its sufferings ? Are we not dust in “ comparison with that myriad-legioned world of human “ lives, which made us what we are ? Every thinker <£ who ever wore out his life, like Simon, on his lonely ££ column of thought, was dreaming for us. Every ££ prophet and king who raised up a new step in the ££ stage of human advance raised the pyramid on which �72 “ we stand. Every artist who ever lifted himself into “ the beautiful lifted us also. Nor was ever mother who “ loved her child in toil, tears and pain, but was wrung “ for us. Each drop of sweat that ever fell from the il brow of a worker has fattened the earth which we en“ joy. Martyrs, heroes, poets, teachers, toilers—all con“ tribute their share. The priests in the churches would “ rest our whole religion upon the legend of pity on “ Calvary. They dwarf and narrow the range of our “ compassion. There were Nazarenes in many ages and “ in many climes, and Calvaries have been the land“ marks of each succeeding phase of human story. “ Moses, Bouddha, Confucius, St. Paul, Mahomet, the “ ideals and authors of every creed, have been but some “ of the Messiahs of the human race. The history of “ every religion is but an episode in the history of hu“ manity. Nor has any creed its noblp army of martyrs “ which can compare with that of man.” Think of the vast dependence each of us has upon this organism. Whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, we rely on this Humanity. The fields and gardens of the world minister to every repast of which we par­ take. Longfellow touches this note of human unity in his beautiful poem of “ The Building of the Ship :” “ Ah ! what a wondrous thing it is, “ To note how many wheels of toil, “ One thought, one word can set in motion I There’s not a ship that sails the ocean, “ But every climate, every soil “ Must bring its tribute great or small, “ And help to build the wooden wall.” And so the work goes on. For each of us the labor of the world is toiling. Trace out this idea in all its �73 details, and it becomes at once apparent that but for this human providence we could not live a day. Thus, as with the Fetichist, every act of life was a re­ ligious one in the theological sense, so, with the Posit­ ivist, every act becomes a religious one in the scientific sense, and living becomes one great hymn of human worship. “From Humanity we have received all; to “ Her we owe all; we are Her servants and Her organs; “ we live by Her and so should live for Her.” Humanity has created all the Gods, so is greater than any God. She has written all the bibles, so is greater than any bible. She has founded all religions, so is greater than any religion. She has discovered all sci­ ence, so is greater than any science. She is the Supreme Being on this planet. In this new faith, head and heart are finally united, for Humanity, like all phenomena, is under the govern­ ance of law, and yet by our relation to her we are com­ pelled towards love and duty. Thus, with us most liter­ ally, love becomes the fulfilling of the law ; and thus our atonement (at-one-ment) is at least completed—for we are at one with the great external order of inorganic na­ ture, by obedience to its laws, and we become at one with our fellow men in love, in service, and in duty. In the oneness of the cosmos we find no place for the dis­ tractions of another world. Earth and Humanity be­ come our all in all, and “ human life at last attains that “ state of perfect harmony, which has been so long “ sought for in vain, and which consists in the direction “ of all our faculties to one common purpose, under the “ supremacy of affection” (Comte). Liberty is our con­ dition, Love is our principle, Order is our basis, Progress is our end. Incorporated with Humanity we Positivists do not await salvation ; we are saved. We do not sigh for im­ �74 mortality; we are immortal. True it is u That low in the dust our mouldering frames may lie, But that which warmed them once can never die.” A. modern poet, still unknown to fame, strikes the same conception when he says, Man— Who, being dead, is buried and consumed, By the unseemly fingers of decay, His sad remainder setting forth a feast For the same guests as an interred dog; Yet, being thus, the unrecorded brute, Sans life his equal and, when dead, both dumb, His voice is heard through all the rear of time, In mighty diapason loud and long, And magic chords of sweet entuned rnyme, That echo and will echo to the doom. And Victor Hugo emphasises the same sentiment most nobly in his funeral eulogy of George Sand : “ I weep for the dead and I salute the immortal. “ I have loved her; I have admired her; I have “ venerated her; to-day in the presence of the august “ serenity of death, I contemplate her. “ I felicitate her, because what she has done is great, “ and I thank her because what she has done is good. I “ remember that one day I wrote to her : ‘ I thank you “ c for being so great a soul.’ “ Have we lost her ? No. These lofty figures dis“ appear, but they do not vanish. Far from it, one can “ almost say that they are realized. By becoming in“ visible under one form, they become visible under an“ other. A sublime transfiguration. “ The human form is an occultation.. It masks the “ real and divine usage, which is the idea. George * �“ Sand was an idea: she escaped from the flesh, and be“ hold she is free: she is dead, and behold she is liv“ ing.” It may be said that this sort of Immortality may prove an inspiration for those raised by genius above their fel­ lows, “ but how about the many common toilers who constitute the rank and file of life ?” For these also the same sentiment amply suffices. I cannot express this better than does the following anonymous bit of poetry I have chanced upon. WORDS AND ACTS. Not a mind but has its mission— Power of working woe or weal; So degraded none’s condition, But the world his weight may feel, Words of kindness we have spoken, May, when we have passed away, Heal, perhaps, some spirit broken, Guide a brother led astray. Thus our very thoughts are living, Even when we are not here ; Joy and consolation given To the friends we hold so dear. Not an act but is recorded, Not a word but has its weight; Every virtue is rewarded, Outrage punished, soon or late. Let no being, then, be rated As a thing of little worth Every soul that is created Has its part to play on earth. Tn this sense it is, the sense of the Immortality of In­ �76 fluence that we abide, the sense of the immortality of that which is best and noblest in us, quite content to leave to the Christians the selfish materialism of an after life, which, contrary to all reason and all morality, they seek to transfer to another and impossible sphere. Are not the Christians aware that there is absolutely no demonstration of a personal existence beyond the grave ; that at the best it is but a hope which no more proves their case than the desire for earthly wealth proves its possession ? Do they not also know that the widest spread religion on the earth finds the acme of its longing in the very opposite of this Christian doctrine, in the Buddhist dream, viz. of Nirvana, wherein the sense of eternal rest is sighed for through the total and eternal absorption of the individual into the universal all? Why, also, do not the theologians dwell on the pre­ natal as well as the post-mortuary immortality ? Cer­ tainly an undying soul lives as much before birth as after death. Yet this point is never even alluded to. “ You say that the soul is immortal, “ That the spirit can never die ; “ If God was content when I was not, “ Why not when I have passed by ?” Still, with all said, if people insist on clinging to this last remnant of superstition, the position taken by Positivism is, that it denies nothing. It simply affirms that to the human ken all knowledge of the hereafter is impossible, and that ample inspiration, ample solace and ample hope can be found in the substitute, the wholly unselfish substitute, which it proposes. • ; And mark how beneficent in practical action our re­ ligion becomes. Capital and labor under this enthusi­ asm will each appear servitors under the impulse of a �common love, and their united action will constitute the material providence of the race. The philosopher, scientist and artist will become the priests of the new re­ ligion. Woman, the mother and queen, will be wor­ shipped as the moral ideal. But these are all subjects for separate essays, involving as they do the organiza­ tion of society under the new regime. So I can only ask in conclusion, who is the true in­ fidel, the Christian or the Positivist; he who believes in legend, or he who believes in law, he who enlarges art, or he who dwarfs it, he who foundmmorality in the here* or he who basis it on heaven and hell, he whose aim is a scramble for his individual salvation, or he who religi­ ously “ lives for othersin a word, he who adores God or he who clings to Humanity ? I leave to yon the answer. � 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 &amp; 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 The cause of humanity, or the waning and the rising faith: an essay from the standpoint of the positive philosophy ... read before the Society of Humanity, Sunday, March 3d,1878, with subsequent revisions and additions Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Palmer, Courtlandt Description An account of the resource Place of publication: New York Collation: 77 p. ; 21 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Society of Humanity Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1879 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5215 Subject The topic of the resource Positivism 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 (The cause of humanity, or the waning and the rising faith: an essay from the standpoint of the positive philosophy ... read before the Society of Humanity, Sunday, March 3d,1878, with subsequent revisions and additions), 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 The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Humanity Positivism