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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
GOD AND REVELATION.
�PRINTED BY
ARTHUR BONNER, 34, BOU/VERIE STREET,
�PREFACE
The writer of the following pages does not for a moment
suppose that he has brought forward any fresh arguments
tending to throw doubts on the existence of a God who
loves and governs, or to discredit the belief in dogmatic
Christianity.
All that he has aimed at accomplishing is to set forth
in plain and unmistakable language the objections enter
tained to the popular creed by those who recognise in
nature not a supremely benevolent Creator, but rather a
Spartan mother, whose purposes may in the main be good,
but who seems to attain her ends by merciless means,
regardless of the sufferings of her children; and in revela
tion, the progressive thoughts of man in his strivings to
attain a knowledge of the infinite.
Nothing, assuredly, would give him greater satisfaction
than to be convinced of the existence of a Being who “in
perfect wisdom, perfect love, is working for the best”; but
after much anxious thought on the subj ect he is driven to
the conclusion that however much there may be in nature
which fosters and supports this view, there is much more
which discountenances and conflicts with it.
He is not, however, prepared to say that he would hail
with equal satisfaction the proof of the truth of the
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PREFACE.
Christian revelation as enunciated from so-called orthodox
pulpits, or as taught in church creeds, or Westminster con
fessions of faith. And why ? Because it seems to him
that if it indeed be true that “ strait is the gate, and
narrow the way that leadeth to life eternal, and few there
be that find it”, then the prospect—and what a prospect!—
before all but a small minority is truly appalling: i.e., if
the popular theology be true.
Still it must be acknowledged that the question is not
one of liking or disliking, but one of fact to be determined
by the evidence available in the case. The second part of this
essay is therefore devoted to the consideration of the question
whether there are reasonable grounds for concluding that
the Christian revelation, as generally understood and inter
preted, is a direct and stereotyped revelation from Almighty
God; and if not, whether those are to be condemned, who,
disregarding the moral law, act on the aphorism “Let us
eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die
�GOD AND REVELATION.
It is impossible for those who study the religious problems
of the day to avoid recognising the fact that, not only is
there an ever-increasing number whose views on religious
subjects widely diverge from our Church creeds—that
dogma is losing its hold on the educated class—but that the
very existence of the Deity is being called in question by
many highly-cultivated and thoughtful minds.
It seems to be generally recognised that the old Deistical view of the last century is no longer tenable, and that,
as a matter of fact, there is no logical halting-ground
between an infallible Church or book, on the one hand,
and complete—I won’t say Atheism, but—confession of
ignorance—on the other.
No doubt the existence of the Deity is strenuously denied
in some quarters—that is, the Deity of the popular theology.
The late Lord Eedesdale, not many years ago, in view to
the prevention of the admission of Atheists into Parlia
ment, strove to introduce a Bill, the preamble of which
ran as follows : 1 ‘ Whereas it is expedient that provision
should be made against Atheists taking part in the legis
lation of the country, be it enacted as follows : That from
and after the passing of this Act, every peer and every mem
ber of the House of Commons in taking his seat in Parlia
ment shall, before taking the oath of allegiance and subscrib
ing the same, in accordance with the provisions of the Act
of Parliament of 1866, make and subscribe the following
declaration, viz.: ‘I do solemnly and sincerely declare and
affirm that I believe in Almighty Cod’.” The Bill was very
properly rejected without a division, the then Bishop of
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GOD AND IlDVELATION.
London deprecating its introduction on the rather strange
ground that it would exclude Agnostics, whom he did not
wish to exclude, as well as Atheists, whom he did. And
the only interest the subject now evokes is that it affords
a curious illustration of the loose and inaccurate way in
which people sometimes express their thoughts. It does
not appear to have occurred to the author of the Bill that
any definition of the term was required, or that any possible
doubt could arise in anyone’s mind as to what he was
called upon to subscribe to.
“ I believe in an Almighty God.” These are momentous
and solemn words; but words are, after all, but intellectual
counters, and by no means invariably convey the same
meaning to all who hear them. What would an Agnostic
say to them ? Could he conscientiously make such a
declaration ? He might—the Bishop of London notwith
standing—for an Agnostic does not, so far as I am aware,
deny the existence of a Supreme Being. Though he may
say he does not know, he assuredly recognises some power
or force in the universe, to which in his ignorance he may,
if he be so inclined, apply the term “Almighty God”.
Nevertheless, a conscientious thinker not in accord with the
popular theology, if pressed for an answer, would probably
ask for an explanation of the sense in which the words
are used. He might fairly rejoin that people’s views differ
considerably as to the meaning of the term, and enquire
whether he was called upon to subscribe to a belief in the
God of the Old Testament; or in Matthew Arnold’s “power
which makes for righteousness” ; or merely in some un
known and inscrutable power which has proved adequate
to the production of all phenomena; or in the Deity
of Professor Plint, viz., a self-existent eternal Being,
infinite in wisdom, power, and holiness, righteous and
benevolent, the maker of heaven and earth, and all things
therein.
For the purpose I have in view, I shall assume that this
last definition describes the nature and attributes of the
Deity intended, and shall therefore now proceed to enquire
what evidence nature affords for the existence of such a
Being.
I must, however, start on my enquiry with an assump
tion, which, I suppose, no one. with whom I have dis
cussed these subjects will care to dispute, viz., that
�GOD AND REVELATION.
7
there is a power behind phenomena, by which all things
are sustained and governed. (Whether this power forms
part of the universe, or whether it is distinct from and stands
outside of it, as it were, and governs the universe, I do. not
know, nor do I think it would be profitable to enquire.)
This being granted, I shall at once proceed to the considera
tion of the question whether this power is intelligent, as we
understand the term, or merely mechanical or uncon
scious. The argument for intelligence or mind is briefly
this : We see and know that mind exists ; our own minds
and the minds of others with whom we are brought into
contact excludes the possibility of doubting the fact; hence
it may be fairly argued that as nothing but mind or in
telligence could have produced mind, the cause of our
known minds must have been an antecedent mind; or, to
put it in other words, “intelligent beings.now exist, but
as intelligent beings did not always exist, intelligence
began to be, but as nothing from nothing can come, as
intelligence cannot come out of non-intelligence, the cause
of intelligence or mind must itself have been intelligent ”.
Endeavors have been made to answer this in various
ways. Mr. Mill says: “If the existence of the human
mind is supposed to require as a necessary antecedent
another mind, greater or more powerful, the difficulty is
not removed by going back a step. The creating mind
stands as much in need of another mind to be the source of
its existence as the created mind. An eternal mind is simply
an hypothesis to account for the minds which we know to
exist. Now it is essential to a true hypothesis that it
should remove the difficulty and account for the facts, but
this it does not do.” And again, it has been argued that
we don’t know, or at any rate are not justified in dogmati
cally asserting, that nothing but mind could possibly pro
duce mind. Where is the proof, it is asked, that nothing
can have produced a mind excepting another mind, or that
intelligence must spring from pre-existing intelligence?
It has also been suggested that there may be, for aught we
know to the contrary, a power in the universe as much
transcending mind, as mind transcends mechanical force or
motion. Although we are totally unable to conceive such
a power, nevertheless we are told it may exist. The re
joinder is this: It is not intended to explain mind in the
abstract, much less to explain the existence of an eternal
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GOD AND REVELATION.
mind j what I have to account for is the existence of my
own individual mind, which I know to have had a begin
ning in time, and, though it may possibly be true that
mind, may be due to some other cause than mind, and
that intelligence may in some way or other have sprung
from non-intelligence, I have no right, by all the rules
of sound logic, to. resort to a remote or improbable hypo
thesis for a solution of the difficulty when a nearer and
more probable one is close at hand, viz., the hypothesis
that the human mind has been caused by some other mind
more powerful than its own; nor is the argument vitiated
because I can form no conception how the original mind
was formed, or whether it was even formed at all. While
admitting that it is not possible to demonstrate the exist
ence of an eternal mind, I yet hold that, looking at all
the. facts which come under our observation, it is much
easier to think, of the power which has given rise to all
phenomena as intelligent, than to think of it as non-intelligent, or as possessing some power superior to intelligence.
A power superior to and excluding intelligence is an un
thinkable hypothesis, and to assert the possibility of the
existence of something to account for a fact which we
know, that something being in itself unthinkable, is, it
seems to me, unnecessarily travelling out of our way to
encounter a difficulty.
. The argument for the existence of an intelligent power
is further supplemented by the argument from the exist
ence of life on this planet of ours. It is admitted, by all
who are competent to pronounce an opinion, that a time
was when life did not exist on our earth. Whence came
it then? As nothing from nothing can come, as life cannot
spring out of non-life, life must have been produced by
some pre-existing intelligent power. The whole force of
the argument depends on the truth of the premiss that life
requires, for its explanation, antecedent life; whether, in
short, nothing but life could have produced life.
That life has arisen out of dead matter has never yet
been proved. Bastian thought he had demonstrated the
fact, but his proofs were shown by Professor Tyndall to
be. fallacious. Tyndall, however, and other eminent phy
sicists do not deny that life may have arisen at some time
or other out of non-living matter. Nature’s laboratory is
very different from the chemist’s. The earth was at one
�GOD AND REVELATION.
9
time undergoing chemical processes which have no parallel
in the present day. Professor Huxley says somewhere:
** If it were given me to look back through the abyss of
time geological I should expect to see the evolution of
living from non-living matter.” And Tyndall writes:
** Evolution in its complete form postulates the necessity of
Ufe springing out of non-life, but the proofs of this
are still wanting.” Still however it is pretty clear that
Tyndall is himself a thorough evolutionist, believing not
only in the possibility of life springing out of dead matter,
but in the certainty of its having done so. Both these
distinguished professors with many others who think with
them may be wrong in holding such opinions; nevertheless
in the face of such authority we are not justified in dog
matically asserting that fife could not by any possibifity
have sprung out of non-life. Virchow, the great German
physiologist, even when rebuking Heeckel for his extreme
materiafistic utterances never ventured to assert the impossibihty of fife proceeding from non-living matter: . all
that he presumed to assert was that the proof of its having
done so is still wanting.
As pertinent to the present inquiry it may be asked
**h,ow did smallpox and other cognate diseases arise?”.
In the present day, and as far as our experience carries us
back, we know that they require for their development the
pre-existing germ, but how came this pre-existing germ ?
If you reply, it was latent in matter from the very commence
ment of things from the time the earth began to cool, and to
become fit for the abode of living creatures; then I rejoin,
life too may have been latent in inorganic substances, only re
quiring favorable conditions to bring it forth. One hypothesis
is about as difficult to grasp as the other. Bishop Temple,
in his Bampton lecture for 1884, says : 11 Then came a time
when the earth became ready for life to exist upon it; and
the life came, and no laws of inorganic matter can account
for its coming. As it stands this is a great miracle.” Here,
it appears to me, is an assumption without a particle of
proof; in other words our ignorance is employed to play
the part of knowledge. Because we do not know dis
tinctly, or even remotely, how an alleged transaction has
taken place, it is assumed that some miraculous agency
must have been at work to produce it! But this by the
way.
�10
GOD AND REVELATION.
If, then, it be admitted that life may have originated in
some other way than by creative intelligence, or by what
we call a miracle, the existence of life on the globe at the
present time does not materially strengthen the argument,
for the existence of a creative mind. Should it be re
plied that, admitting for the sake of argument, life did
spring far back in the world’s history from non-living
matter, a supreme power must have endowed non-living
matter with the power to develop the germ of life, I reply :
“ Certainly there must have been some power or force at
work to enable it to do so; ” and it seems difficult to avoid
the conclusion that this power possessed intelligence.
The next argument which may be adduced on behalf of
the existence of an intelligent creative power is the wellknown argument from design which Paley has so effectively
used. Whichever way we look, to the infinitely great or
the infinitely small, we may define the whole as of judicious
contrivance or design. Now design, argues Paley, predi
cates a designer, and shows that he who contrived or
designed things had consciousness or intelligence. Th®
answer is that in case of human contrivance or design, such
as the manufacture of a watch or a telescope, no doubt a
designer is predicated. But why is this ? Because we
have a prior knowledge that watches and telescopes are
made by. man. When the African traveller Campbell
shewed his watch to a group of savages, they started back
in alarm, conjecturing from the sound and motion of the
works that it was a living and supernatural thing. Like
the poor children of the desert, we, her more civilised sons,
attempt to explain the unknown by the known. We
have some experience, at any rate, of the laws which
preside over the action of physical forces, but we have no
corresponding knowledge of the relations existing between
a supreme Being and effects of nature of which we can
take cognisance.
Paley remarks : “I know of no better method of intro
ducing so large a subject than that of comparing a single
thing with a single thing: an eye, for example, with a
telescope. As far as the examination of the instrument
goes, there, is precisely the same proof that the eye was
made for vision as there is that the telescope was made for
assisting it. They are both made on the same principle,
both being adjusted to the laws by which the transmission
�GOD AND REVELATION.
11
and refraction of rays of light are regulated.. For in
stance, it is necessary that the rays of light, in passing
through water into the eye, should be refracted by a more
convex surface than when it passes out of air into the eye.
Accordingly we find that the eye of a fish, in that part of it
called the crystalline lens, is much rounder than the eye of
a terrestrial animal.” “ What plainer manifestation of de
sign can there be”, asks Paley, “ than this dissimilai’ity ?
Paley, of course, attributes the difference of structure be
tween the eye of a fish and that of a man to the immediate
action of the Deity, manifested in special creation, whilst, as
the author of “ A Candid Examination of Theism” points out,
we in the present day are able to ascribe it to the agency of
certain laws, to wit, inheritance and variation, survival of
the fittest, and probably of other laws as yet undiscovered.
Again, Paley alludes, as evidence of design in nature, to the
ingenious mechanism of the venomous snake. Take the
cobra, for instance. The fang of the cobra is a perforated
tooth, loose at the root; in its quiescent state lying down
flat on the jaw, but furnished with a muscle which enables
the reptile to erect it. Ender the root of the tooth lies a
small venom-bag, the contents of which are replenished from
time to time. (How the poison is secreted is not known.)
When the tooth is in an erect position, and the animal is
ready to strike, the root of the tooth presses against the
bag, and the force of the compression expels the poisonous
fluid with a jerk through the hollow tooth into the minute
puncture made by its point. This is all exceedingly clever
and ingenious, no doubt; and if cobras had been created
with the deadly contrivance as we now see it, there would
have been some force in Paley’s, argument. But I sup
pose no naturalist would maintain this. Snakes and
creeping things, like everything else, have followed the
laws of evolution, and the ingenious mechanism which we
admire is the result of those laws. The truth is that the
theory of evolution, unknown or but dimly discerned, in
Paley’s day, has much weakened the force of the design
argument. It may, however, be remarked in passing that
although the evolution theory was then unknown, Paley
alludes to a system (apparently maintained by some in his
day) which he terms “Appetencies
A short description
of this system is that pieces of soft ductile matter, being
endowed with propensities or appetencies for particular
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GOD AND REVELATION.
actions, would, by continued endeavors carried on through
long series of generations, work themselves gradually into
suitable forms, and at length acquire, though perhaps by
obscure and almost imperceptible improvements, an organi
sation fitted to the action which their respective propen
sities led them to exert.
Paley, of course, makes short work of this theory, and,
anticipating the line of argument adopted by theologians
. our ownremarks: ‘ ‘ This theory coincides
with, the * Atheistic system, viz., in doing away with
the necessity for final causes”; just what was sa-id of
Darwin s theory about a quarter of a century ago.
Recently, however, it has been discovered (see Bishop
Temple’s Bampton Lectures for 1884) that the doctrine of
evolution redounds more to the honor and glory of the
Creator than its opposite—the special creation theory.
What would Paley have said to this, had a contemporary
of his own so spoken of the system of appetencies ? But
we are learning to know better, or rather the evidence for
the truth of evolution being too strong to be ignored,
theologians are beginning to discover that it is not only a
highly religious doctrine, but, most surprising of all, in
harmony with revealed religion. But this by the way.
The truth appears to be, that, if it could be shown that the
special creation theory were the true one, e.ff., that man,
with all his wonderful organisation, was specially created
as he now is, some six, or even 60,000 years ago (the time
matters not), then I think we must admit the force of
the design argument; but if, on the other hand, the
evolution theory in its extreme form be the true one, viz.,
that man has been evolved through countless ages from non
living matter, or even from a very low form of life, the
design argument is much attenuated, if not deprived of
all cogency. It seems to me, however, that when all is
said that can be said in favor of evolution, intelligence
must have, been at work in the beginning to set things
going, as it were. Take the case of the human eye for
instance. . It seems inconceivable how so delicate a struc
ture as this organ could have come into existence without
intelligence as its primal cause. Admitting that the eye
was. developed through countless ages by rays of light
impinging on the most sensitive part of the original
organism from which it sprung—or in any other way that
�GOB AND REVELATION.
13
evolutionists consider the feat was accomplished, the
question still remains, “ By what power or process was
the first impetus given?”. It is all very well to say, Given
force, matter and the law of gravitation everything must
have happened that has happened. But why must ? Who
gave the law of gravitation ? Does not a law point to a
law giver ? For my part, I think it much easier to think
of intelligence at the bottom of things than to think of
everything having arisen by unconscious mechanical law.
Probably Bacon was right when he said, “ I had rather
believe all the fables of the Talmud and the Alcoran than
that this universal frame was without a mind”; but there
is an immense leap from this admission to the conclusion to
which Paley seems to arrive in his 23rd chapter, when he
says, “ Contrivance, if established, appears to me to prove
everything which we wish to prove, amongst other things
it proves the personality of the Deity, as distinguished from
What is called nature, and sometimes a principle.” What
has been proved—or, rather, rendered highly probable—
is that the universe which includes and surrounds us is
th© life-dwelling of an Eternal mind; but when we proceed
to clothe this wondrous power with certain attributes,
which, we think, must necessarily belong to it, e.g., omni
science, omnipotence, perfect benevolence, holiness, and
the like, and invest it with a personality, then I assert that
the statement is not borne out by the facts coming within
our cognisance; but this point will be discussed further
on. In any case, if my argument hitherto has been falla
cious, it is of no great consequence as far as the purpose I
have in view in writing this essay is concerned; it is a matter
of speculative interest to me whether the world we inhabit
owes its existence to intelligence and contrivance, or to
certain forces or laws which are non-intelligent or uncon
scious.
What really concerns me to know is this: Whether a
Being exists with whom lamin any way enrapport-, whether,
in short, there exists an all-wise, all-powerful, benevolent,
and moral governor of the universe, who takes an intelli
gent and loving interest in the creatures He has brought
into existence. A Being such as this is generally postu
lated by theologians (though a judicial character is usually
assigned as well), and we are moreover told to think of
him, as a personal God. But it may be fairly asked, prior
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GOD AND REVELATION.
to discussing the evidence for the existence of a Being
possessing the attributes just enunciated, What is meant
by a personal God ? Press theologians on the point and
they give an uncertain sound. Many, doubtless, think of
God as a person—that is to say, a person with bodily parts
and organs like ourselves, and with a mental organisation
akin to our own—and I have no doubt that the earlier
Biblical writers so thought and spoke of God, and that
many so think of him even in the present day seems hardly
open to question; nevertheless, the educated portion of
mankind shrink from thus materialising the Deity, and yet
if you ask them what .they mean by a personal God the
answer is by no means clear. They may, and generally
do, define a personal God as a being without bodily orga
nisation, in whom cognitions reside and in whom volitions
flow; in other words, a Being who possesses a mental
organisation differing in degree from our own—one, in short,
who thinks, wills, and acts—but as we know or can know
nothing of mind apart from bodily organisation, the definition fails to enlighten us much. The fact is, when we
consider the matter closely it is by no means easy to think
of a personal God without thinking of him as a person.
We know nothing of personality apart from bodily organi
sation, and nothing is gained by defining a thing unless
you make it more comprehensible by the process. A defi
nition is not an explanation. I therefore hold that the use
of the term “personal God” is a misnomer. But setting this
aside as of no moment, what we want to know, as I have
said before, is whether the power by which all things
exist possesses any of the attributes I have enumerated^
whether it is possible to think of it, or Him, as in any way
caring for what He has brought into existence. This is
the real question at issue, in which I take a lively interest;
and I wish in the first instance to consider it apart from
any question of revelation, and to ask myself the question
—and if possible find an answer to it—whether nature
affords any evidence, and if so, what evidence for the
existence of such a Being.
The evidence generally adduced in support of the exis
tence of a moral being, or governor of the universe, is the
evidence afforded by the moral nature of man. It is said
that a cause cannot be less than its effects, and it is argued
that if a moral nature exists in man, it must have been
�GOD AND REVELATION.
15 .
implanted by a power higher than man, and the
Being who implanted it must also be moral. Now if it
be true, as it probably is, that all the moral feelings have
been evolved from the simple feelings of pleasure and
pain, inherent I presume in the lowest living organism, then
logically it is not necessary to credit an intelligent Being
—the author of all things—with possessing moral feelings
akin to our own, any more than it is to credit Him with
our vices. A cause need not be like its effect. It may be
as well in this connexion to quote J. S. Mill, and Professor
Huxley. The former says “there is not an idea, feeling, or
power in the human mind, which requires to be accounted
for on any other theory than that of experience”.
Huxley says “ with respect to the development of the
moral sense out of the simple feelings of pleasure and
pain, liking and disliking, with which the animals are pro
vided, I can find nothing in the arguments of those who
deny this to be so which have not been satisfactorily met ”.
I am not therefore prepared to admit that the moral nature
©f man proves the existence of a Being possessing analogous
feelings. There may, however, be a parentage for morals,
and it may consist in the endowment of every sentient
creature with the simple feelings of pleasure and pain, out
of which our moral feelings have been gradually evolved.
The moral nature of man and conscience are, if not inter
changeable terms, so closely allied, that the present question
will be elucidated by the consideration of what conscience
really is, and how far it is a reliable guide to our actions
in life.
Conscience is spoken of as the voice of God, in the soul
of man. Theodore Parker tells us that there is a small
voice within us, which if we obey will always guide us aright.
(The italics are mine.) Another writer, Mr. Armstrong,
says “ Let me tell you how it seems to me how I have made
acquaintance with God. I find that at certain moments
of my life there is that within me which I can best describe
as a voice—though it is but a metaphor—addressing me,
and largely influencing my conduct. I call the source of
that voice which I fancy speaks to me ‘ God ’. I call
the source of all those monitions and warnings which rise
within me ‘God’. I find when my mind is bewildered
and in doubt that somehow or other when I address that
Being there comes to my soul a clear, shining light, and
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GOD AND REVELATION.
I see things plainer and more beautiful than before. I
apply to him in pain and in sorrow, and the pain and
sorrow become light, and I am instantly assured that God
is there to comfort and console. I pray to him in weakness
when my strength fails, and what is the result: a new
strength comes to me.”
_ Now so far from denying the reality of these impres
sions, I am the first to admit their genuineness ; but I
believe they are the result of the reflex action of prayer on
the mind. A Roman Catholic prays to the Virgin Mary
(see Crown hymn-book) as well as invokes the saints, and
a new strength comes to him. The curate of Ars (whose
biography is one of the most interesting ever published)
was in the habit of spending hours on his knees invoking
his favorite saint, St. Philomine, and a new strength cam®
to him too. I have seen a Mahomedan criminal ascend
the scaffold, supplicating his prophet in his hour of ex
tremity, and assuredly a new strength came to him also,
and who can doubt that pious Hindus derive consolation
from invoking one or more of the persons of the Hindu
trinity ? This being so, I fail to see that Mr. Armstrong’s
argument is of much weight.
As regards what Theodore Parker says about the con
science, I observe that it may prick us when we act
contrary to what we believe to be right ; but unfortunately
it does not supply us with an index to what is right. It
may, and often does, lamentably err. A South Sea
Islander feels no qualms of conscience in killing and
afterwards eating his victim, nor a Thug in strangling his.
It is or was part of his religion to do so. Should tho
latter’s conscience prick him at all, it would be if, in a
moment of weakness, he allowed his victim to escape. As
Mr. Lecky has well observed, “ Phillip II. and Ferdinand
and Isabella of Spain—zealous Roman Catholics—inflicted
more suffering in obedience to their consciences than Nero
or Domitian did in obedience to their lusts.” One man’s
conscience leads him to Rome, and another’s to Geneva.
Calvin’s led him to burn Servetus, and the early Pilgrim
Fathers committed the most abominable cruelties in
obedience to their consciences, especially in the way they
dealt with reputed cases of witchcraft. Mrs. Gaskell’s
story of Loué the Witch is a true account of the horrible
atrocities that can be committed by upright and honorable
�GOJD AND REVELATION.
17
men. for conscience sake. In short, it seems a mere waste
of time to adduce arguments to show that conscience is an
uncertain and sometimes erroneous guide. It is a product
of the evolution of the human mind, and expands and
grows with knowledge and experience. We merely attribute
it to the still small voice to God because we already believe
j® a God. Those who have been brought up without any
Such belief have, of course, no feelings of the kind. As
the late G. H. Lewis remarked, “could we suppose a man
born with inherited aptitudes, left solitary on an island
before having had access to any of the stores of knowledge
accumulated by his race, he might acquire a rudimentary
knowledge of cosmical relations, although, without lan
guage or any access to the store of the experience of others
on which to proceed, there would necessarily be little in
him above that of an animal. Of mere intelligence there
Would not be a trace.” To such a person as here described
there would be neither moral intelligence or any conception
of a divine Being. To my mind the fact that conscience
is often a blind and misleading guide is a strong argument
against it being the voice of God speaking to us, as many
have declared it to be. Just conceive for instance, what
a tremendously powerful support for the existence of a
moral law-giver would be afforded if conscience were in
deed an infallible guide. If by simply inquiring within
we could ascertain the right or wrong of things, we should
then be able triumphantly to appeal without fear of con
tradiction to this circumstance as an irrefragable argument
for the existence of a moral law-giver.
It appears to me that the conscience argument, to prove
the existence of amoral Being with moral feelings differing
in degree only from our own, is not only of no moment, but
actually tells with some force against those who use it.
There are hundreds and thousands of people in the world
whose consciences are always pricking them for acts of
omission and commission of a most trivial character, in
which others of a more robust mental organisation see no
harm whatever. I repeat again, at the risk of being
accused of wearisome reiteration, that a certain line of
conduct, or mode of action, is considered right or wrong
according to one’s preconceived beliefs, arrived at partly
by inheritance and partly by education.
Mr. Armstrong remarks: “Conscience is simply the voice of
�18
GOD AND REVELATION.
God, which says, ‘ Do the right, do not do the wrong
It does not in any way say what is right and what is
wrong. That which I call the right, is the gradual develop
ment and evolution of history, and is largely dependent on
climate and other external surroundings. The idea of
right and wrong is purifying and clarifying in the course of
history. The conception of what is right and wrong is
better now than what it was a hundred years ago. Many
of the things then considered laudable are now considered
base, and vice versa.” Quite so. But why, then, persist in
calling it (conscience) the voice of God in the soul of man ?
Is it not rather the re-echo of our own beliefs, partly in
herited and partly acquired ?
It has been suggested to me that if the Ruler of the
Universe had made conscience an infallible guide in all
cases—alike to the ignorant savage and to the educated
man—this would have been to make him as it were a
God, knowing good and evil. As to this I cannot say;
but given a God—a moral Governor and Ruler of the
universe—who wishes to impress his law upon his
creatures, I see nothing absurd or contrary to reason in the
idea of his making conscience a true and infallible guide in
all circumstances, and in all our relations in lif e, alike to the
savage as well as to the civilized man. Under this view of the
case knowledge might be, as it now is, progressive, without
clashing with the prerogative of conscience. A savage
might be endowed with the innate idea that it was wrong
to steal or murder, without interfering with his capacity
for gradually acquiring a knowledge of the arts and
sciences. He might be left to his own devices in regard to
so small a matter as the preliminary knowledge required
for striking a light, and yet be intuitively aware that it is
wrong to scalp his neighbor.
So far, then, I have endeavored to show that conscience
is the result of several factors working together, and that
its prickings are not due to the working of God’s spirit in
the mind of man, but to natural causes, easily explainable,
and that invariably to follow its dictates may, and does
often, lead to grievous error.
Do I seem then to say that we are to turn a deaf ear to
the voice of conscience, when it tells us not to steal, or He,
or slander our neighbor ? By no means. Conscience is a
real thing, whatever may be its parentage. At any rate,
�GOD AND REVELATION.
19
W® know that amongst civilized, races there is not only
nowadays a tolerable unanimity of opinion that certain
acts are wrong and hurtful, but the higher minds amongst
us know that they are not only hurtful to the community,
but also to those who are guilty of them. This is true
whether we accept the utilitarian or intuitive theory of
morals. In a properly instructed and cultivated mind,
B violated moral instinct avenges itself in regret and
remorse. Is conscience to be treated as of no account
because we occasionally hear of startling individual aber
rations, or because when the race was in its infancy, or
more ignorant than it is at present, it (conscience) led men
to commit acts which we now look upon with horror? Cer
tainly not. The law of evolution holds good in morals as
in other things, and the conscience grows and expands in
the individual as it does in the race. But to pursue this
question further would carry me beyond the scope of this
essay; all I have endeavoured to show is that conscience
is not the direct voice of God in the soul of man, but the
product of the evolution of the human mind, and that the
existence of moral feelings in man is no proof of the
existence of similar feelings in the mind of the Deity.
The next, and to my mind most important, stage in the
discussion is, whether the intelligent power whose existence
we have shown to be highly probable possesses attributes,
such as perfect love, perfect wisdom, and unlimited power.
If he has not all three, the outlook for us poor mortals is
Hot very promising. If he possesses the two former without
the latter, however much he may have the will, he may
not have the power to help us; and if he possesses the last
only, without the two former, the case seems even worse
still. The subject is a very large, and, even amongst
orthodox theologians, a confessedly difficult, one to deal
with. The problem of course is how to reconcile the moral
and physical evil we see in the world with the existence of
a Being of perfect wisdom, perfect love, and perfect power;
Though the contributions to apologetic literature under
this head have been enormous, and would fill libraries, the
problem remains nearly as dark as ever, and the more
candid of the writers are obliged to acknowledge that it is so.
Curiously enough, Professor Rogers, with a very different
obj ectinview, permitshimself to write as follows in his answer
to Newman’s Phases: “He (God) sends his pestilence, and
�20
GOD AND REVELATION.
produces horrors on which the imagination dares not dwell,
not only physical, but indirectly moral, often transforming
man into something like the fiend, so many say he can
never become. He sends his pestilence and thousands
perish—men, women, and the child that knows not its
right hand from its left, in prolonged and frightful agonies.
He opens the mouths of volcanoes and lakes; and.boils
and fries the population of a whole city in torrents of
burning lava.” Professor Rogers, himself a Theist of the
orthodox type, supposes himself to be addressing Theists,
and his object is not of course, to disprove the existence
of an allwise and loving God (for that he takes for granted),
but to show that nature’s difficulties are just as great as
those of revelation. He argues, in fact, on the lines of
Bishop Butler and his school, that nothing in the Christian
revelation appearing to reflect on the goodness of the
Creator can really do so, while nature itself presents the
same if not greater difficulties. In other words, if a Being
of infinite love and infinite power can boil and fry a whole
population in burning lava, where is the difficulty in
believing that he will boil and fry thousands and millions
for ever and ever in hell fire. John Henry Newman also
asks, “ How can we believe in a good God when the
world is what we see ? ”, and yet he answers the question
somehow in the affirmative. It has been well said,
that such writers adopt a very dangerous course, and sug
gest more doubts than they solve. Admitting their
premises, it is not easy to deny their conclusions. If the
God of nature can be called very good, there is no reason
for denying that quality to the God of revelation, although
the vast majority of mankind will be tormented in hell for
ever. But does the world we inhabit afford satisfactory
evidence of goodness, as we understand the word? I am
by no means blind to the many harmonies and beneficent
arrangements to be found in nature. The sun rejoices
us with her light and warmth,1 the trees bear fruit for our
Use. The streams refresh us with their sparkling waters;
1 The earth receives but the 2,170 millionth part of the sun’s heat.
A little more, or a little less, would be fatal to the existence of life on
the planet. Were the sun’s heat doubled to-morrow we should be
exposed to a temperature of over 500 degrees; that is to say a heat
sufficient to melt lead, and to convert all the waters on the earth’s
surface into steam.
�GOD AND REVELATION.
21
thousands of forms of colors and sounds are blended into
combinations, which, varying for ever, are for ever beautiful.
The planet which we inhabit moves in regular course round
the sun at the rate of 1140 miles a minute, and this goes on
year after year, and yet no collision takes place. And so all
things proceed, as if a master’s hand were at work; but
look on the reverse side of the medal. I confess that I
recognise with something of the Pessimist’s view the
discordancies and malevolencies of nature. Appeal, if
you will, to the experiences of a city missionary, or medical
officer in a poor London dis .rict, and ask him what he has to
say to the miseries which come under his daily observation.
Multiply his experiences a hundredfold, and you will then
have but a faint idea of the sin, misery and wretchedness
existing in London during the short space of twenty-four
hours ; and London is after all but a very small portion of
the habitable globe. I have been reading an article called
il Poverty, Clean and Squalid ”, by Archibald Brown, an
East End clergyman, which makes one almost sick with
sorrow that such things should be. Here are a few extracts.
* ‘ Have you ever thought, reader, what it must be to wake of
a morning, not only without a shilling in the house, but without
an idea where to find one? To start the day without breakfast,
to tramp miles to find work, and then tramp miles back without
having got any—to see the wife take some of her scanty under
clothing to the pawn shop to get something for the children—
to battle with hunger until chairs, tables, blankets, and beds
have all gone in the conflict ? Have you ever grasped the idea
of the anguish suffered through those weary days ? and yet all
this and much more is being endured by thousands as I write.
Squalid poverty”—the writer adds—“is a revolting picture.
.... The blunting process has been complete. Hope has
died out, self-respect has been starved to death, and the man
and woman sink to the level of their surroundings. Whole
districts seem socially damned. The people corrupt one another
and drag one another down. My visits to such places are
generally made at night, with a box of wax vestas to find
where the stairs are, and light me into these dens, for I find it
better to visit them at night. But, oh, the squalor ! Dirt on
the floor, dirt on the walls, dirty rags on dirty people, and one
indescribable collection of filthy sacks and rotting rugs for the
Shake down or bed. Do you wonder if the people who reside
in such dens, live morally dirty lives and die squalid in soul
as well as body ? Under the coverlet of night what a ferment
ing butt of misery and muck lies simmering in London, A
�22
GOD AND REVELATION.
stunted moral and physical manhood is inevitably the result of
certain conditions of existence; so writes a scientist. His words
are true, and we have named the conditions. And to all this
misery must be added the slow starvation process which
thousands are undergoing, owing to want of the common
necessaries of life—food and fuel—augmented by the present
severe weather, which has now lasted more than a fortnight.
January, 1886.”
This is the actual experience of an East End minister,
remember, who has no object in exaggerating matters.
I would ask you to reflect for a moment on the amount
of misery which an all-powerful Being standing in the
relation of a father to his people might remove if he had
the desire to do so. Take the Indian famine of 1878-79
as an illustration. This was probably attended with a
greater amount of suffering than any other single event of
history. It is computed that four millions of souls perished
during its continuance. It was not only, it must be remem
bered, the mere physical pain of slow starvation that had
to be endured, but the more grievous mental torture in
volved in witnessing the sufferings of others—wives and
little children, tender babes at their mothers’ breasts, all
perishing day by day, and their natural protectors unable
to help them. And mark this: all this suffering might
have been prevented by a few seasonable showers of rain,
which came not, though prayers were offered up for them
week after week in all the churches throughout the length
and breadth of the land. Then try to realise in imagina
tion the sufferings of the early Christians under Nero, the
far more grievous tortures inflicted by the high priests of
religion on reputed heretics,1 the judicial burnings, hangings, and disembowellings that were committed for many
centuries in Europe alone—nay, the sufferings of the pre
sent day. I read the following in to-day’s newspaper:
“The snowstorm is making itself felt in more ways than
one. Not merely are our streets in a condition dangerous
1 Torquemada’s victims alone amounted to 114,401, and of these
10,220 were roasted to death. Spain’s total of victims done to death
hy the Inquisition amounted to 323,362. In addition, 3,000,000 of
Jews and Moors were expelled from her soil, and many thousands of
them died of privation. In the ninth century the Empress Theodora
put to death 100.000 heretics. 14,000 Huguenots at least were slain
in the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572.
�GOD AND REVELATION.
23
to life, "but there is in our midst a constant amount of
semi-destitution, to the miseries of which the snow must
be perfectly appalling...............At the present moment there
are, it is said, no fewer than 5,000,000 of men, women,
and children who are absolutely starving.’’—Jan., 1886.
But, after all, what is this compared with the sum-total
of suffering now existing in the world ? Beckoning the
population of the world at 1,200,000,000, it would be no
exaggeration to say that at the present moment, whilst I am
writing these lines, there are at least 10,000 human beings
undergoing the extremest amount of suffering that the
human body is capable of sustaining, longing for the
death that is so long in. coming, and many hundreds of
thousands, more probably, whose condition is not much
better. Why is all this suffering permitted, if a God of
infinite love and tender pity really reigns on high ?
Should I be told that the Almighty, having endowed man
with free will, is not responsible for the result, I reply, in
the first place I am not so sure of this. If the Almighty
is omniscient, it seems to me He is responsible; besides,
we haVe high authority for saying he is the author of evil
as well as good. In the second place, I rejoin that even
if I concede the point and admit that God is not bound in
justice to interfere in man’s inhumanities to man, how are
we to reconcile the great catastrophes of nature,, every
year claiming their hecatombs of victims, with the existence
of a God of love and mercy.
I have already instanced the Indian famine—one out of
many. I would cite the great Bengal cyclone of 1876—
and there have been several minor ones since—which
claimed its hundreds of thousands of victims.
Mr. Voysey instances the fire at Santiago., in Chili, in
1864, where a church was struck by lightning and des
troyed, containing 2,000 human beings in the very act of
prayer, most of whom perished by suffocation or were
burnt alive. Then, in 1881, an earthquake occurred at
Chio, in Asiatic Turkey, when in the town itself only fifty
houses were left standing, whole lines of streets having
disappeared. On all sides, we are told, from the ruins
were heard cries of distress, voices supplicating assistance,
which in most cases were in vain, the buried victims being
left to perish. In short, as a recent writer puts it, “Nature
impales men, breaks them on the wheel, casts them to be
�24
GOD AND REVELATION.
devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes
them with stones, starves them with hunger, freezes them
with cold, poisons them by quick or slow venom of her
exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in
reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nero or a
Domitian never surpassed. All this Nature does with the
most supercilious disregard of mercy and justice.”
This thought has often occurred to me. If, indeed,
there is a. God who has a mind akin to our own, and
mercy and justice signify the same things with him as they
do with us, how is he able to bear the shrieks of thousands
of men, women, and childrenthat daily and hourly, from all
quarters of the world, ascend to the “mercy seat on high”,
and will continue to ascend as long as life endures ? Does
he experience any of the feelings that would arise in the
heart, of a .man ? If so, they must, humanly speaking,
exercise a disturbing influence on his mind. But to ask such
a question is to answer it. To imagine such a thing is to
introduce an anthropomorphic conception of the Deity which
is impossible to entertain. If, on the other hand, Dean
Hansel is right in asserting that with the Deity justice,
mercy, and goodness differ not only in degree, but in kind,
from the realities which go by these names amongst men,
then how can we possibly feel that we have a father in
heaven who is touched by our infirmities ? The problem
is insoluble from whichever side we view it, and we can
but echo back the poet’s mournful cry—we are but
“ Children crying in the night,
Crying for the light,
With no language but a cry
If we turn, to the brute creation, do we find a happier
state of things ? I trow not. Beneficent arrangements
are to be found no doubt, but what of the malevolences ?
Nature—as some writer puts it—has most elaborately
adapted the teeth, of the shark, the talons of the eagle,
the claws of the tiger, the poison-fang of the serpent, to
strike, to torture, and to destroy. Theologians have, of
course, made many attempts to justify the ways of God to
man as well as to the brute creation, and if they fail in
their efforts it is for no lack of ability in marshalling
their facts, but from the inherent weakness of the cause
they are defending.
�GOD. AND REVELATION.
The arguments generally adduced in explanation of the
evils of life are those I am about to consider. I am not
aware that there are others, though many of them, in the
hands of a skilful apologist, are capable of considerable
amplification, and may be made to look more plausible
than in the guise I am able to present them.
First, then, it is said :
(a) Pain is necessary for our protection and safety;
our very lives depend on our susceptibility to pain—e.y., if
falling down were not painful children would never learn
to walk upright; if contact with fire did not cause pain
a person might lose his life before even he knew that he
was being burned.
(¿) All our knowledge has sprung out of our pain ; our
sufferings have been a perpetual stimulus to our minds
to acquire knowledge. We should never have made so
much progress in the arts and sciences if we had not
experienced many tumbles in climbing the ascent leading
to knowledge.
(c) If there were no pain, there would be no pleasure.
None of us can compute how much of actual pleasure
is derived from contrast with pain. To enjoy pleasure
at all there must be alternations of pain. For instance,
a man after recovering from a severe attack of gout ex
periences by contrast a greater amount of pleasure than he
did before the attack commenced.
(rf) Pain enlarges our sympathies, and teaches us
patience; it excites some of the noblest faculties of the
human mind; there would be no sympathy and love were
it not for sorrow and suffering which called them forth.
(N.B.—This argument is susceptible of great amplifica
tion.)
(0) Pain and death are often the results of our own vices
and imprudences, and we have no right to expect the Cre
ator to intervene, for that would be to tamper with man’s
free will.
(/) Pain is much exaggerated; pain occupies a compara
tively small portion of a man’s life : the greater portion of
human existence is passed in painlessness, or in actual en
joyment; even in exceptional cases of a long life of pain,
the time after all is as nothing compared with eternity.
(y) Pain and suffering may be for our good, though we
�26
GOD AND REVELATION.
know it not. How many things which at one time were
thought to he evil, have turned out blessings ? It may be
argued that as human beings, full of tenderness and
compassion, especially parents, find themselves compelled
to inflict pain and sorrow on those they love; similarly,
our heavenly father may find it necessary to inflict pain on
those whom he loves, for their good.
(A) Pain or death is, after all, only the pain or death of
the individual: the mere fact of many hundreds or even
thousands being overwhelmed in the same calamity does
not increase the actual quantity of pain endured by each
individual. We have therefore no right to appeal to the
evidence afforded by a catastrophe like an Indian famine
or cyclone as an evidence of want of love, any more than
we have to a catastrophe in which one life only is involved.
On the contrary, it has been argued that a body of men
collectively meet death much more philosophically than a
single individual does.
(¿) Death after all may be nothing more than a change
of life under different conditions, and may prove a blessing
instead of a misfortune.
(/) Catastrophes, like a famine, or an earthquake, or a
pestilence, are in the long run beneficial to the human race,
as they decrease the population, which would otherwise
inconveniently increase, or they may serve other useful
ends, although we may be unable to discern them.
(&) Pain, as regards the animal world, is not so exces
sive as we imagine ; and in the case of animals it may be
intended to serve some good purpose. Paley says “it (mean
ing the destruction of animals by one another) is rather a
merciful arrangement than otherwise, as if the beasts
were left to die of old age, the world would be filled with
drooping, superannuated, half-starved animals, who would
linger and die after all a more painful death than if killed
by other animals ”.
Now, in considering the foregoing, it appears to me that
most of them are quite beside the mark. I am not pre
pared to argue that the existence of some pain in the
world is incompatible with the belief in divine beneficence.
We will take the case of a boy who, when climbing a tree,
misses his hold, tumbles to the ground, and sustains a com
pound fracture of his leg. This is very painful to him, no
doubt. But is the accident any impeachment of the divine
�GOD AND REVELATION.
27
love ? It is true that the law of gravitation might have
been altered in the boy’s behalf, or his bones might have
been made impervious to the shock, or he might have been
endowed with the foreknowledge of what was going to
happen, and so have been prevented from climbing the
tree. But because none of these things were done, shall
we impute a want of beneficence to the Deity ? Similarly
if I build my house over a cesspool, or sleep in the wind,
or do any other foolish act, have I a right to complain if
I suffer in consequence ? I think not. Experience will
teach me that nature’s laws cannot be defied with impunity,
and I shall if I am wise abstain from such acts in future.
Can, however, such horrors as the Indian mutiny, or the
seething mass of human misery that exists in every large
town all over the world, be disposed of by a similar line of
argument ? Not altogether. The innocent child when
tossed on the point of the bayonet of the mutinous siphaee,
before its mother’s eyes, was guilty of neither ignorance
nor folly. Similarly, the condition of many of our London
poor is owing to no fault of their own. An article by
Cardinal Manning, headed “ The Child of the English
Savage,” reveals a depth of cruelty to children which
Would be incredible were it not vouched for on the best
authority.
Charles Kingsley, writing of the Indian mutiny, says :—
“ I can think of nothing but these Indian massacres; the
moral problems they involve make me half wild. Night and
day the heaven seems black to me, though I never was so
prosperous and blest in my life as I am now. I can hardly
bear to look at woman or child. They raise some horrible
images from which I can’t escape. What does it all mean ?
Christ is king, nevertheless! I tell my people so. I should
do, I dare not think what—if I did not believe so. But I sorely
want someone to tell me that he believes it too.”
He may well ask the question, “ What does it all mean ? ”
if an omnipotent and benevolent Being rules the Universe!
Should I be told that man having been endowed with
free will, God cannot interfere to frustrate that free will,
though indescribable miseries may result from his non
interference, I reply, “ Suppose I admit the justness of
the argument—which I do not—there still remains the
great catastrophes of nature to be accounted for, which
have nothing to do with man’s free will. I see a column
�28
GOD AND REVELATION.
in this morning’s newspaper headed with the words
“ Disastrous floods; great destruction of life and property
all over Europe ”. Who is reponsible for these floods
and the miseries they have caused ? The details in some
cases are too harrowing. How are these things to be
reconciled with the existence of a God of love ? Man here
is passive. It is nature that is actively at work to
mutilate and destroy, and is not nature’s God responsible
for the result ? The argument adduced in (y) is quite inap
plicable to such cases of apparently ruthless barbarity. Pain
in certain cases may be beneficial, though in others it hardens.
But what has this to do with the wholesale slaughterings
of nature ? Again, the parallelism—even in the case of
ordinary every-day suffering—drawn between the acts
of an earthly and heavenly parent will not hold good.
It may be necessary for the former to inflict pain on his
children. But why ? Because he has, or thinks he has, no
other means of effecting his object. If he had, I should
maintain his mode was a cruel one. It is with him but a
choice between two evils. The case, however, is different
with a Being of unlimited power and with full choice of
means; and, therefore, to my mind, the one case affords
no analogy to the other.
The argument in (A) does not appear to me to be of
much cogency. We are rot considering the case of the
sufferer so much as the Being who caused the suffering. A
case of suffering where millions are involved, seems to me
to make the indictment all the heavier against the Being
who caused or permitted the suffering, than if one single
death only resulted.
In reply to (¿), I would remark that the explanation
put forward is purely hypothetical; such evidence as we
possess is insufficient to make it even probable. In the
first place, even if true, it fails to account for the difficulty,
for happiness conferred hereafter is not a sufficient justifi
cation for the infliction of torture here. If all deaths were
natural deaths, without pain and without suffering either
to oneself or to one’s belongings, there might be some
thing in the argument; and if it be indeed for a man’s
good to be removed to another world, why should it be
necessary, in the felicitous words of Professor Rogers,
to fry him first in red hot lava, or scald him to death in
boiling water, or to torture him by withholding the means
�GOD AND REVELATION,
29
of sustenance till he ¿Lies from exhaustion ? Besides,
looking at the case from another point of view, what
grounds have we for supposing that the sufferer’s condition
will be improved in the next world ? The teachings of our
orthodox pulpits point to a very different conclusion.
Should you reply, that we are not tied down to the ortho
dox view, and that you believe that “ good shall somehow
be the final gaol of ill”, I rejoin: “I cannot prove that
your optimist view is wrong, but judging from what goes
on here you are very unlikely to be right
After all, this
is only another phase of the blessings in disguise argu
ment. Mr. Voysey writes in this connection: “Though
the facts are beyond dispute, there is not a tittle of evidence
to prove any malicious, merciless, or cruel design, or any
criminal carelessness, on the part of the great destroyer;
on the contrary, there is everything to prove that since
death is a blessing to every individual as well as to the race [the
italics are mine], the slaughter of many thousands at one
time by the periodic or exceptional convulsions of nature
is a sign rather of benificence than of malignity ”, Every
thing to prove that death is a blessing! Well, in a sense
it may be. It may be better for those overwhelmed by
the calamities of life, to sink as Byron has it, into the
barren womb of nothingness, than to live out a life of
misery here; but this is not the sense intended by the
writer. He speaks of death as God’s messenger, sent to
call us to our home above. If it is so, where is the proof ?
And supposing for argument’s sake that it is so, is this
a sufficient justification for the infliction of ruthless cruel
ties here? The slaughter of many thousands a sign of
beneficence? The slow slaughter of 4,000,000 in the great
Indian famine a sign of beneficence! I will believe it
when the earth’s motion is reversed, or the stars fall from
heaven, but not before !
As regards (j). Here again we have an appeal to our
ignorance. Admitting that some ultimate benefit to the
race does come out of a catastrophe like the great Indian
famine of 1858-1859: is this an adequate excuse for its
infliction? Such lame and inadequate explanations are
to me simply exasperating. Surely we have a right to
expect a merciful and all-powerful Being to gain the desired
©nd by some less revolting means. It cannot surely be neces
sary to boil and fry or starve to death thousands of human
�30
GOD AND REVELATION.
beings in order that some good may result to the survivors'
Besides, why should nature require patching and mend
ing at all ? Does not this imply a defect in the artificer ?
Consider once more the immense amount of suffering
caused by the existence of venomous reptiles—snakes,
scorpions, centipedes, and the like—not only to man, but
to animals. Paley endeavors to make light of the afflic
tion. He says, in effect, that the bite of the rattlesnake
(he probably had not heard of the cobra) is not often fatal;
that they (venomous reptiles) are seldom found in places
or countries inhabited or frequented by man, and that if
man invades their territories, he must take the conse
quences. Of course this is utter rubbish. Around almost
every native village in India hundreds of venomous reptiles
abound, which invade the dwellings of the inhabitants and
cause much havoc amongst them. What would Paley
have said had he known that there are annually 20,000
deaths reported from snake-bite in India alone, and pro
bably many more unreported ! After this it were bathos
to say anything about the number of cattle, sheep, etc.,
destroyed by similar means. Is the existence of these
things in a world where man has not too much room for
his own needs, no impeachment of the divine love ? Do
they not rather make us question the beneficent arrange
ments in nature which theologians are so fond of parading
for our benefit ?
As regards the reply given in (¿), I observe that it
is miserably inadequate and untrue. It is not a fact,
within my experience, that animals suffer little pain in
their lives, or that their deaths are generally painless ones.
A pack of wild dogs only obey their natural instincts when
they hunt down a sombhur to death. A cat instinctively
tortures a mouse to death. The boa-constrictor often
paralyses his victim with fear before he embraces him
in his deadly coil. A hunting cheta commits terrible
havoc amongst deer and other ruminants. Rabbits
suffer greatly from the stoat and weasel tribe. It was
only this morning that, hearing a great cry (almost human
it seemed to me) as of an animal in pain in the plantation
behind my house, I went to see what occasioned it, and
found a stoat hanging on to the back of the head of a
young rabbit, the latter making frantic but unsuccessful
efforts to shake off its assailant.
�GOD AND REVELATION.
31
I have more than once witnessed, in India, a crow
pheasant manipulating a frog of the largest size, merely
tearing out and eating its entrails, the agonising croak
of the animal during the operation being horrible—far
worse than when in ordinary course, a frog is slowly
disappearing down the throat of a snake, or even a larger
frog. It was always a source of wonder to me that
nature should be so needlessly cruel. A dog takes a
positive pleasure in hunting down a hare. Cattle, both
in their domesticated and wild condition, suffer tortures
from the foot and mouth disease; numbers of animals
undergo lingering deaths from attacks of parasites; in
fact, wherever we look, we see more or less of suffering
in the animal world. I shall be told in reply that the
pain is more apparent than real. I see a writer in one
of the quarterly reviews cites several instances in support
of this view, asserting, that a leech may be divided in the
middle while it is sucking blood, and be so little dis
turbed by the operation that it will continue to suck for
some minutes afterwards ; that the dragon-fly will devour
its own tail and fly away afterwards as briskly as ever;
that insects impaled with a pin will eat with as much
avidity as when free and unhurt. It is stated that on one
occasion a scientific collector impaled a carnivorous beetle
with a pin, that it somehow managed to get loose, and, in
spite of the pin in its body, devoured all the other speci
mens in the case. The story of Dr. Livingtone and the
lion is pressed into the service of natural theologians.
That distinguished traveller relates that when he was
seized by the lion he felt no particular pain; that the
shock produced a stupor similar to that felt by a mouse
after the first shake of the cat. How Dr. Livingstone
could have been aware of the mouse’s sensations it is
difficult to say; but most people will, in spite of the
learned doctor, still continue to think that the mouse has
a very bad quarter of an hour indeed, after being seized
by a cat.
How far the other instances given by the quarterly re
viewer are correct I am unable to say; but no one doubts
that where there is feeble brain organisation and little or
no nervous system, there is correspondingly little pain ;
but all warm-blooded animals must and do feel acutely’
and the higher we ascend in the scale, the more suscepti
�32
GOD AND REVELATION.
bility to pain do we find. It is impossible for apologists to
deny all physical suffering in the animal creation, but they
try to minimize the amount as much as possible, asserting
that the pains are a trifle as compared with the pleasures
and enjoyments of life. This is a question which every
one must answer for himself—for my part, I am unable to
agree with the apologists, or to admit that, even if the
assertion be true, it is a sufficient explanation of the suffer
ings which none can deny. In short, let theologians argue
as they will, there is no denying the fact, as Physicus points
out, “that we stand in the midst of a wonderful and beauti
ful, but also of a terrible and cruel, world, and a world more
over inwhich pain and cruelty, the slaughter of the weak by
the strong, and their decay and death by their own imperfect
organization, are not accidental defects, but are of the
very essence of the development of life on the globe, and
go back ages before man’s appearance on its surface. So
far as life and the improvement of life are the outcome of
the struggle for existence, the organic world seems to have
its roots in suffering. In such a view evil is no longer to
be dismissed as a temporary incident, but as a tremendous
reality, bound up with the very constitution of things ”
I may be told that it is exceedingly presumptuous of me to
presume to sit in judgment on the acts of the Almighty,
and that I am not a competent judge in the matter. To
this I reply that I am not sure they are the acts of the
Almighty—certainly not of the Deity of Professor Flint—
besides, I am asked to pronounce an opinion, when the facts
of nature are favorable, and exhibit beneficent design (for
this is the whole scope and purport of writers of natural
theology), but when they appear unfavorable, or male
volent, I am told I am presumptuous if I dare to pro
nounce an opinion upon them. I am also informed that I
have not the necessary knowledge—and that if I were
behind the scenes—I should judge very differently. To
which I reply, that I am competent,—as far as my know
ledge extends,—to form an opinion on what goes on before
my very eyes, and to doubt my own competency in this
respect is like doubting the multiplication table because
I am ignorant of the differential calculus. Is it a mark
of reverence to say that black is white when black it
appears to me to be ? Besides, the argument, as an argu
ment, appears to be worthless, because it might be, with
�GOD AND REVELATION.
33
equal cogency, pressed into the service of a believer in one
of the Pagan Deities in justification of an act (which
appeared to us cruel or immoral) popularly assigned to that
Deity.
The author of “A Candid Examination of Theism ”
says :—
‘ ‘ If natural selection has played any large share in the
process of organic evolution, it is evident that animal enjoy
ment being an important factor in the natural cause must
always have been furthered to the extent in which it was
necessary for the adaptation of organisms to their environment,
and such we invariably find to be the limits within which all
enjoyments are confined. On the other hand, so long as the
adaptations in question are not complete, so long must there be
more or less suffering. Thus, whether we look to animal
pleasures or animal pains, the result is just what we should
expect to find on the supposition of those pleasures or pains
having been due to necessary and physical, as distinguished
from intelligent and moral, antecedents ; for how different is
that which is, from that which might have been. Not only
might beneficient selection have eliminated the countless species
of parasites which now destroy the health and happiness of the
higher organisms ; not only might survival of the fittest, in a
moral sense, have determined that rapacious and carnivorous
animals should yield their places to harmless and gentle ones ;
not only might life have been without sickness, and death
without pain ; but how might the exigencies and the welfare
of species have been consulted by the structures and habits of
One another.”
t
Is it any explanation of the mystery to be told in reply
that our knowledge is partial, and could we but see the
whole, the objections would probably disappear?; or is
the difficulty minimised by the contention that we are
looking at a work which is not yet finished, and that the
imperfections we see may be a necessary part of a large
but yet only partially carried out design? I think not.
The argumentum ad ignorantiam is a favorite one with theo
logians ; but it convinces no one. Besides, the great catas
trophes of Nature can hardly be called imperfections.
Furthermore, supposing that the miseries of life do possess
an occult quality of promoting good in the far off future :
what then ? Does the end, according to our moral code,
justify the means ? Hidden good often conies out of
human misdeeds and crimes, but that does not prevent
�¡4
GOD AND REVELATION.
them from remaining misdeeds and crimes ; and, in like
manner, if in the order of nature good comes out of the
mass of misery and injustice with which the world teems,
that does not lessen the significance of the fact that the
method by which the supposed good is attained is a method
of misery and injustice.
Should I be told, as I have been told before now, that
all the misery which surrounds us, physical and moral,
is the result of the transgression of our first parents, I
reply that the difficulty is only removed one step farther
back. The Creator of the Universe, supposing him to be
all-powerful and possessing all knowledge, is equally
responsible for the result. Besides, as regards the brute
creation at any rate, the earth has yielded up her secrets,
and we know that animals existed, preyed upon one
another, and died, under much the same conditions as
they now live and die, ages before man’s appearance on
the globe.
In concluding this part of my essay, I would quote the
words of a living Roman Catholic writer, not because they
by any means afford a satisfactory explanation of the diffi
culties I have been considering, but because the writer
sees, as clearly as I do, the malevolences of Nature, and
because also his explanation is largely imbued with the
merciful spirit of the age, which seems to find expression
in the words of Lord Tennyson :—
“ Behold we know not anything ;
We can but hope that good shall fall
At last far off—at last—to all,
And ever winter turn to spring.”
The writer referred to says :
“ I can no more reconcile the evil and misery in the world
with the existence of a bénéficient creator than you can.
It is one of those overwhelming and heart-piercing mys
teries that encumber human life. But is not the Christian
explanation upon the face of it more reasonable than any other ?
Sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and does not the
teaching of all religions echo back the eternal law ? Here of
course we all throw back upon another of those unsolved and
insoluble mysteries that surround men on all sides—the mystery
of free will, as to which I do not see how we can get further
back than St. Augustine’s teaching ; that a world m which a
moral order or period of probation was established, wherein
�GOD AND REVELATION.
35
rational creatures should work out their own eternal destiny by
their own merit, is more excellent than one containing no such
order, and that the existence of the moral order implies liberty
to sin, as a concomitant of liberty to do right.”
And, adds the writer—
“ of this I am confident, and it seems blasphemous to doubt it,
that the eventual condition of every soul will be such as is best
for that soul—the best that is possible for it, as being what it
is, and what it has made itself to be. This is the larger hope,
which we may not only faintly trust but assuredly believe—the
one ray of light in the great darkness.”
This is all very well as far as it goes, and is a remark
able admission, as coming from a Roman Catholic,1 but
the mystery of free will affords little assistance to the mind
overwhelmed by the great catastrophies of nature, or aghast
at the apparently needless sufferings of the brute creation.
In truth, the mystery is, as Mr. Lilly himself admits, in
soluble.
The conclusion of the whole matter appears to be
this. To one who, on independent grounds, say on the
dictum of an infallible church, or an infallible record, be
lieves in spite of indications in nature to the contrary, in
an all-wise, all-powerful, and all-merciful Deity, it may be
possible to avoid facing the dilemma, and to rest content
with the assumption that the two horns of the dilemma
may be made to meet, in some inconceivable way ; but in
the absence of such grounds, and should he care to exercise
his reasoning faculties at all on the subject (a task he is
invited to undertake by the numerous writers on natural
theology from Paley downwards), he can hardly avoid the
conclusion that the power which the universe manifests to
him is non-infinite in its resources, or non-beneficent in
its designs.
1 Very different from the view taken by the Rev. Father Furness
(a Roman Catholic writer), who speaks of hell being paved with the
skulls of infants only a foot long.
�PART II.
I have said, it may be possible for one who on indepen
dent grounds, believes in the existence of an all-powerful,
all-wise, and all-inerciful Deity, to avoid facing the
dilemma, etc. ; but, on carefully considering the matter,
it seems questionable whether any authority whatsoever
would suffice to win our intellectual assent to a proposition
which is, as I believe, contradicted by the evidence of our
senses.
Moral and physical evil confront us on every side—much
of it probably remediable—but much more entirely beyond
our control, for which the Creator of the Universe is
directly responsible. Nevertheless, in spite of this fact,
if we are satisfied that He has made a revelation to man,
we must believe that in some way or other He cares for
the creatures He has brought into existence (else why
would He make a revelation at all?). He may not be allpowerful, or He may be deficient in benevolence ; never-.
theless we may be sure that He exists, and we are bound
to accept what He has been pleased to reveal to us—and
reject it at our peril—provided always that we are satis
fied that it emanates from a Being who governs the world.
There are some who assert that they know intuitively
that God exists (as Theodore Parker expresses it, the
voice of God in the soul of man), but they only arrive
at this conclusion because they have imbibed the idea
at some period or other of their lives. If a child of
Christian parents were taken away from its home when
only a few months old, and brought up by a race who had
no ideas of God, or a future state, the child would remain
as ignorant as its foster parents of these beliefs. It has
been said that no races or tribes exist whose minds are a
complete blank in regard to the existence of a Supreme'
(36)
�GOD AND REVELATION.
37
Being. Be this as it may, it is beyond dispute that the
Ordinary savage’s religion (if such it can be called) consists
merely in a belief in a Fetish or Devil of some kind,
whom he seeks to propitiate by offerings and sacrifices,
but this is a very different thing from a belief in. an
intelligent Personal Governor of the Universe—-a conscious
Supreme Power with whom we can enter into personal
relations.
Further, some of the acutest minds of this or any other
age, lack any such intuitive knowledge. They, it is true,
acknowledge some power or force in the universe—an
eternal energy from which all things proceed—but confess
their utter ignorance of its attributes. I think, therefore,
we must dismiss the idea that God has intuitively revealed
himself to mankind.
As regards the evidence afforded by nature for the
existence of a Supreme Being, I have already discussed
the question in the first part of this essay, the conclusion
arrived at being that there is reasonable evidence to. esta
blish the existence of an intelligent Power, but that is all.
We must therefore turn to revelation, and examine the
evidence on which it rests, in view to ascertaining whether
it affords us reasonable grounds for believing that it
emanated from a Being who rules the universe, who is
also all-powerful, wise, and good. Although history.records
more revelations than one, I shall content myself with con
sidering the Christian revelation, being willing to accept
Paley’s dictum, that if the Christian religion (that is the
revelation of the Christian religion) be not credible, no
one with whom we have to do will support the pretensions
of any other.
Paley, after supposing or assuming more than he has
any right to assume, asks, “Under these circumstances, is
it improbable that a revelation should be made ? Suppose
God to design for mankind a future state, is it unlikely that
he should acquaint him with the fact ? ” To which I
reply, By no means; but then I deny the premiss on which
the whole argument is based. We have no right to assume
certain alleged facts, viz., the existence of a Moral Governor
and Ruler of the Universe, who designs a future state for
man, and then to argue from these facts for the probability
of a revelation. I conceive the more legitimate way of
dealing with the question, if we are to argue at all on
�38
GOD AND REVELATION.
probabilities, is to take the Christian revelation as it
stands, and then ask ourselves the question, Is it probable ?
What, then, is this Christian revelation ? or of what does
it consist ? If I read my Bible correctly, we are told that
some six or seven thousand years ago (the time is of no
great consequence) the Almighty planted a garden in Eden
(wherever that may have been); and there caused a fullgrown man suddenly to rise out of the ground, endowed with
intellect, speech and conscience ; that this man being cast
into a deep sleep, an incision was made in his side, from
which a woman was formed; that after a time the woman
—in spite of God’s injunction to the contrary—beguiled by
a serpent, partook of the fruit of a particular tree, and
persuaded the man to do so too, m consequence of which
act of disobedience, they (the man and the woman) were
driven out of the Garden of Eden, and made to work for
their daily bread. That Adam lived for 930 years, and
begat children,1 but his descendants become so hopelessly
bad, that God regretted that he had made man, and deter
mined to destroy both man and beast from the face of the
earth, excepting Noah and his children, and their wives
and families; and this intention the Almighty carried out
by means of a flood, which covered the whole earth—that
is to say, all the high hills that were under the whole
heaven—and so all life was destroyed except Noah and his
family, and the beasts that he had taken with him into
the ark. Nevertheless, this wholesale purification failed
to improve the moral character of man, for the race lapsed
into wickedness again, till at length, after some thousands
of years, God, according to a purpose which he had formed
before the foundation of the world, incarnated himself in
the person of Jesus Christ, the second person of the
Trinity, who, after a ministry of about three years (query:
was it one?) on the earth, was crucified by the Roman
1 Charles Bray says :—“ For God to make a Paradise out of which
he knew his new-made creatures would be very shortly driven, was a
mockery, a delusion, and a snare. But it may be said that Eve must
have been left free or there would have been no virtue in resisting-.
What, left free to destroy herself and all her race ? Surely no such
fatal gift could be safely entrusted to so frail a creature, particularly
as God knew perfectly well how it would all end. And then, again,
if on the day of her disobedience she had surely died according to
promise, no great harm would have been done, for she would not then
have brought a curse on her whole posterity.”
�GOD AND REVELATION.
39
Power, at the instigation of the Jewish nation, but with
the foreknowledge and consent of God the Father, m
order that he (Jesus Christ) might be a propitiation
for the sins of the whole world; in other words, that the
first person of the Trinity might consistently, with his
attribute of justice, forgive the sinner, who accepted the
second person of the Trinity as his Saviour. As Milton
says:—
“ Man losing all,
To expiate his treason had nought left
But to destruction, sacred and devote,
He with his whole posterity must die;
Die he, or justice must,
Unless some other able and as willing pay.
The rigid satisfaction death for death.”
This, or something very like it, is the revelation which
we are called upon to believe. I ask is it prima facie
probable? I am not denying that it possibly may be
true; all I say is, that it is not the sort,of story that
commends itself to our intelligence. Tertullian says of it:
** Credo quia incredibile,” that is, u I believe it because it
is too improbable for anyone to have invented it.” At any
rate, it is not too much to say that the whole story of the
creation of man, the deluge, and the ark, conflicts not only
with the scientific knowledge of the present day, but the
doctrine of the atonement (softened down though it
may be by modern apologists) with our sense, of right
and wrong; for how, it may be asked, can it consist
with justice to allow guilt to be transferred from the
guilty to the innocent ? I do not say it is all impossible;
all I do say is, that before we give in our adhesion to the
story, we are entitled to demand the strongest possible
evidence that God has really revealed it. Paley sajs .
“ I remember hearing an unbeliever say that if God, had
given a revelation He would have written it on the skies.
Allowing for metaphorical language, I think He would.
'Were an earthly potentate to send a messenger to his
subjects charged with a message improbable in itself, but
of paramount importance; the contents of which, if ueglected, would entail utter ruin upon them, and their
descendants, we are entitled to say that it would be
incumbent upon him so to accredit his messenger, that no
reasonable doubt be left in the minds of any of his
�40
GOD AND REVELATION.
subjects as to his (the messengers) authority and mission.
Similarly, I think we are entitled to expect an equally explicit attestation of the heavenly message.
Paley observes that if the evidences of revelation were
overpowenngly strong, it would have the effect of restrain
ing our voluntary powers too much, and would call for no
exercise of humility and faith. It would be no trial or
thanks, he says, to the most sensual wretch to forbear
sinning if heaven and hell were open to his sight The
same line of argument has only to be used in the hypo
thetical case I have cited above, to show what nonsense it
amounts to The fact is, not only is faith magnified above
its deserts, but it is put m the wrong place. If God has
unquestionably spoken, reason is silenced. It is super
seded by faith.
But the question is whether God has
spoken, and until that question is decided, there is no
legitimate scope for the exercise of faith. To do so before
would be to make faith and credulity interchangeable
terms. Take the incarnation of the Supreme Being This
is a mystery which my intellect cannot fathom, but I
rightly accept it on faith, if I am sure that it has been
revealed Similarly, as regards the Romish doctrine of
transubstantiation, my intellect may be quite unable to
fathom. the mystery of the transformation of the bread
and wine into the body and blood of Christ, but if I
believe the doctrine to be taught by divine authority, then
1 am bound to accept it on faith; and so again a Mussulman
is morally bound to accept the Koran as his rule of faith,
in spite of its inherent improbabilities, if he is satisfied that
it has.been written by the inspiration of the Almighty •
but it is too much to ask him or anyone else to exercise faith
th\mAssage 'before he is satisfied that God has spoken
through Mahomed, in the pages of the Koran. And so it
X T/eRrd to the Christian revelation. If I am sure
i d-iG0™8 ®poken either through the medium of an In
fallible Church, or in the pages of the Bible, I bow my
head, and accept the revelation he has been pleased to
make; but I must know first of all that he has really
spoken, or else I shall only be guilty of credulity in
accepting it.
As I shall probably be told that sufficient evidence
does exist to convince any reasonable person that the
Christian revelation is a direct revelation from Almighty
�GOD AND REVELATION.
41
God, I shall now proceed to consider the question, as
'briefly as I can.
First of all, the Roman Catholic Church claims not only
to be the true Church of God, the infallible interpreter of
God’s revelation to man, “ but the depository of a mass of
unwritten tradition handed down in unbroken succession
from the time of St. Peter (the alleged first Bishop of
Rome) to the present day, which it is incumbent on its
followers to believe. It is also very exclusive, for it teaches
that none beyond its pale can be saved.
Admitting that it was within the compass of divine
power to have communioated to the world the certitude
that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true and
infallible Church ; as a matter of fact, such a communica
tion has not been made. The Roman Catholic Church may
claim to be the mouthpiece of Almighty God, and the
Pope, his vice-regent on earth, but when we ask for her
credentials, she has none to show. She may appeal to the
Bible and tradition, but it is obvious, that to those who
believe neither in the infallibility of the one, or the truth
of the other, this is no proof at all. If we meditate upon
her past history, we shall hardly be tempted to take her
word for her assumptions. Her previous character is too
bad. It is impossible to deny that she is directly respon
sible for the horrors of the inquisition which claimed their
hundreds of thousands of victims. She, or rather the head
of the Church, ordered a medal to be struck in commemo
ration of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. M. Bouzique
writes :—
“Of all the persecutions which the Roman Catholic Church
has carried on against religious liberty in France, none has a
more odious character than that which followed the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. The crusades against the Albigenses,
the slaughter of the Vaudois, the massacre of St. Bartholomew
itself, may in part be referred to the barbarousness of the time,
but the Dragonades surpasses them all in horror.”
The history of French Protestantism, from the end of
the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth,
presents one long history of bloodshed and horror. The
same writer remarks :—
“ The Protestants of every condition, age, and sex, given up
as a prey to the violence of a fanatical soldiery, to the hateful
�42
GOD AND REVELATION.
passions of the Roman Catholic clergy, had to suffer all the
afflictions and tortures, all the horrors and infamies that could
be devised by the grossest brutality, united to a cruelty the
most exquisite.”
The whole of this system of robbery, brutality, and
murder, which ancient paganism cannot parallel or ap
proach, Jiad its source in three base authorities—Louis
XIV., Pere la Chaize, his confessor, and Pope Innocent XT.
The latter, instead of interposing his1 authority to put a
stop to these horrors, writes to his obedient son, Louis XIV.,
on the subject of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, as
follows :—
“Our very Dear Brother in Jesus Christ,—Among all the
illustrious proofs that your Majesty has given of your natural
piety, there is none more striking than the truly worthy zeal of
the.most Christian King, which has led him to revoke all the
ordinances rendered in favour of the heretics of his kingdom,
and the provision he has made by very wise edicts for the pro
pagation of the orthodox faith; as we have learnt from our
very dear son, the Duke d’Astrees, your ambassador at our
Court. We have thought it our duty to write to you this letter,
in order to. give an authentic and durable testimony of the
eulogies which we bestow on the fine religious sentiments which
your spirit manifests ; and to congratulate you on the load of
immortal commendations which, by this last act, you have
added to all those which, down to this time, render your life so
glorious. The Catholic Church will not forget to mark in its
annals so great a proof of your devotion to it. I will never
cease to praise your name. But, above all, you may safely
expect from the divine goodness the reward of so fine a resolu
tion, and to be assured that for that result we shall continually
put up the most ardent prayers to that same goodness. Our
venerable brother the Archbishop of Fano will say to you the
rest, and in cordial earnestness we give your Majesty our
apostolical benediction.
“ Given at Rome the 13th November, 1685.”
And this from a man who professed to be a follower of
Jesus Christ, and the head of God’s infallible Church on
earth!
. At the time when the act of revocation was issued, the
king was living in adultery with Madame Maintenon, who
had not long succeeded her predecessor in adultery,
Madame Montensan. A worthy son of the Church
indeed!!
�GOD AND REVELATION.
43
The sale of indulgences, under the authority of Leo X.,
was a disgrace to any church, and was one, if not the chief
cause, that brought about the reformation. A certain
dealer in indulgences (Bernardin Sampson) unblushingly
declared he could forgive all sins, and that, heaven and
hell were subject to his power. He maintained that he
could sell the merits of Christ to anyone who could buy
them for ready money. He boasted of having levied
enormous sums from the poor as well as the rich. Did the
Pope take any steps to stop this blasphemy ? No; he
directly encouraged it, in order that the money so levied
might replenish his exhausted coffers. A worthy follower
of Christ indeed !!
In 1493 Pope Alexander VI. issued a bull laying down
the axiom that the earth was fiat. In the 13th century
Pope Boniface VIII. interdicted dissection as sacrilege..
The Church burnt Giordano Bruno for promulgating
the opinion that the earth revolved round the sun. Galileo
narrowly escaped the same fate, after being harried and
worried to death’s door, and made to recant his so-called
errors.
Not only have many of the Popes been grossly
immoral in their lives—some of them, for instance the
Borgias, monsters of iniquity—but they have been the
determined enemies of all progress, as well as of civil and
religious liberty; even so recently as the reign of the last
Pope (Pius IX.) a syllabus was issued, the 78th
and 80th propositions of which declare, “ Cursed be he
who holds that in Catholic countries the free exercise of
other religions may laudably be allowed, or that the
Roman Pontiff may, or ought to come to terms with
progress, liberalism, and modern civilisation.”
For my part I share the opinion of those who hold that
the Roman Church only lacks the power to be as great a
tyrant over the liberties and consciences of the people
as she has been in the days of the past; and that were
the Roman Catholic religion predominant over the
length and breadth of the land, real progress would be
impossible.
As Dr. Beard says, in answer to the Bishop of Salford,
‘1 You bring a bad character with you. You revive memories
most adverse to your claims. You speak as a lamb now,
but if you gain power, you will resume your inborn pro
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GOD AND REVELATION.
penalties, and become the very wolf we expelled from
England many years ago.” Does anyone donbt that this
would be so ?
Again, the Church prides herself on her unchangeable
ness ; she declares that her teachings have been the same
yesterday, to-day, and will be the same for ever. But this
is not true. As Dr. Beard says, “Without denying the
fundamental truths of Christianity, she disfigured and
mutilated them so as to render them scarcely recognisable.
The unchangeable Church changed every century, until
she had transmuted the simple and sublime religion of Christ
into a complicated mass of unparalleled absurdities.”
Boman Catholics would probably deny this, but I ask
them, Was not the Bible a sealed book which laymen were
forbidden to read ? Is it, or is it not true, as Dean Stanley
says, that the Eucharist was up to the 13th century ad
ministered to infants in the Roman Catholic Church, and that
total immersion was also practised by the same Church up to
the same period ” ? If true, does the practice exist now ?
Recently we have had the doctrine of the Infallibility of
the Pope added to the list of beliefs which the Roman
Catholic Church imposes on the consciences of its followers,
to say nothing of the immaculate conception of the Virgin
Mary.
If it be asked how it is that the Roman Catholic Church
has satisfied the consciences and claimed the allegiance
of such men as Newman and Manning, who were once
aliens from its fold, I reply, “ I cannot say, further than
this, that there is no accounting for religious beliefs ”.
With Newman, I suppose his logical mind saw the necessity
for an infallible interpreter of God’s word. If I understand
his. writings correctly, he seems to say that there is no
logical halting place between Atheism on the one hand and
an infallible Church on the other. I do not dispute his
immense learning and his dialectical skill, but what is it
all worth when he is ready to surrender his intelligence
and judgment to a belief in such an absurdity as the
miracle of the liquifaction of St. Januarius’ blood ? I have
not his “Apologia” by me to refer to, but I distinctly
remember when reading his controversy with Charles
Kingsley, that while admitting that any Roman Catholic
was justified in rejecting the miracle if he chose, he
(Newman) thought it rather more likely to be genuine
�GOD AND REVELATION.
45
than otherwise I1 Putting Newman aside, why do the
Popes permit such a jugglery as this to take place
year after year if they really are what they claim
to be ?
Others there are again, who, tormented with doubt, seek
rest for their souls in the arms of an infallible Church.
They allow their intellects to go to sleep, that their hearts
may have food, and comfort, and rest. Once make the
final plunge, and everything else is so easy! The Romanist
points to the 140 sects into which Protestantism is divided,
and asks triumphantly, “ Can the truth be here ? ”. The
Church invites its hearers to come to it, and promises
them a solution of all their difficulties. If only you can
believe in the one infallible Church, your difficulties may
be made to vanish. How much depends on that little
word “ if ” !
I have referred to the lives and teachings of the
Popes as evidence against the claims of the Church.
I think this is important, because we must not forget
they are selected by the whole body of the Cardinals after
solemn prayer that their choice may be guided aright. Is
it credible that if the Almighty had really established a
visible church on earth, he would have permitted the election
of such creatures for his viceregents as many of the Popes
have been, e.g., Paul II., Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII.,
Alexander VI., and Julius II.—some of them steeped
in every form of vice known to the most depraved
imagination?
I have said that the Roman Catholic Church appeals to
the Bible and tradition in support of its claims. But
allowing, for the sake of argument, that the Bible is
inspired, can the Church’s claim to be the head of Christ’s
Church on earth be made out from it ? Mr. Spurgeon,
than whom, I suppose, no one has a better textual
acquaintance with the Bible, evidently thinks not, for he
1 Since writing the above, I see from an extract from the British
and Foreign Evangelical Review that Newman says, “ I think it impos
sible to withstand the evidence which is broughtforward for the liquefac
tion of the blood of St. Januarius, and for motion of the eyes of the
Madonna. I firmly believe that portions of the true cross are at Rome
and elsewhere. I firmly believe that relics of the saints are doing
innumerable miracles daily. I firmly believe that the saints in their
lifetime have before now raised the dead to life.”
�46
GOD AND REVELATION.
permits himself to write as follows of the Roman Catholic
Church:
“We think too much of God’s foes, and talk of them with too
much respect. Who is this Pope of Rome ? His Holiness ?
Call him not so, but call him his blasphemy, his profanity,
his impudence I What are he and his cardinals and his legates
but the image and incarnation of Anti-Christ, to be in due
time cast with the beast and the false prophet into the lake of
fire?”
Mr. Spurgeon may not be a competent authority on the
claims of the Roman Catholic Church, but no man
knows the Bible better than he does, and he certainly
fails to find any support for the Church’s claim in its
pages. Besides, he is not exactly alone in his opinion,
though the use of such forcible language may be quite
exceptional.
What, then, is an individual of average intelligence
to do who is in search of a belief ? To embrace the
Roman Catholic religion; to cast in his lot with Mr.
Spurgeon, or any other of the numerous dissenting bodies;
to join the English Established Church as by law esta
blished ; or to associate himself with Mr. Voysey’s Free
Church; or with the Unitarian body? It were hard to say,
i.e., if he insists on having a definite creed of some kind.
Excepting the Romanists and the Theists (in which I
include the Unitarians), most churches hold that the Bible
contains the sole rule of faith. I shall therefore proceed
to consider the claims that it has to be considered the
infallible word of God. Before doing so, however, it may
■be as well to notice some, at any rate, of the different
theories that have been formulated from time to time in
regard to the inspiration of the Bible. In my younger
days one, and only one theory was generally admissible,
viz., that the writers of the several books of the Bible
were mere amanuenses, writing at the dictation of the
Holy Ghost, and that no mistakes were possible; in other
words, the theory maintained was that of the verbal and
plenary inspiration of the Bible. You hear it still in
almost every orthodox dissenting chapel in England ; it is
the doctrine taught by evangelists of the Moody and
Sankey type; it is held by the Salvation Army, but it is
losing its hold on the educated portion of our orthodox
divines.
�GOD AND REVELATION.
47
The late Dr. Baylee, one of the first Hebrew scholars of
his day, and a man of very considerable intellectual
ability, whom I had the pleasure of meeting when he
filled the office of Principal of the Birkenhead Theological
—Training College, says in a manual written for the use of
his students :
“ The Bible cannot be less than verbally inspired—every word,
every syllable, every letter, is just what it would be had God
spoken from Heaven, without any human intervention. Every
scientific statement is infallibly accurate—all its history and
narratives of every kind are without any inaccuracy.”
The late Bishop of Lincoln, when Canon Wordsworth,
used almost identical language, but I have not his book to
refer to. Burgin writes, “ The Bible is none other than the
voice of him that sitteth upon the throne. Every book of
it—every chapter of it—every syllable of it—every letter of
it, is the direct utterance of the Most High ” ; and scores
of other writers might be quoted who use almost identi
cally the same language.
The uneducated masses who believe in the Bible at aH
hold this view, but of late years the ground has shifted a
little, and educated and cultivated minds, influenced un
consciously perhaps by the liberalism of the age no less
than by the advancing tide of knowledge, have to some
extent broken away from the old moorings. We hear less
nowadays of verbal and dynamical inspiration of the Bible,
and more of the human element it contains.
The view taken by Dr. Harold Brown, Bishop of Win
chester, is this : '
“ The inspiration claimed for the Bible is infallible so far as
it relates to things pertaining to God, and fallible in matters of
history and daily life. Thus, some portions of the Bible are
given by organic inspiration, God Himself speaking through
the medium of man’s organism; other portions are simply the
expression of the author’s own sentiments, it may be under the
influence of a general inspiration, or by the exaltation of his
natural faculties.”
The difficulty, adds the Bishop, of enunciating a definite
theory of inspiration, consists exactly in this—in assigning
the true weight respectively to the Divine and human
elements. And a difficulty it remains, for the learned
Bishop does nothing to clear it up ; he leaves us with a
Bible containing a mixture of fallible and infallible state
�48
GOD AND REVELATION.
merits, and tells us that those statements which refer to
God—which are just those we have no power to test the
truth of—are the words of Almighty God himself; and
that those statements referring to natural phenomena, of
which we are capable of judging (at all events, to some
extent) are simply the opinions of the writers, and there
fore fallible. The conclusions of such men as Cardinals
Newman and Manning are logical. The believer in a
special infallible revelation, if he be rational and logical,
is driven to find an infallible interpreter for his infallible
book.
The Rev. M. F. Sadler, Prebendary of Wells and Rector
of Honiton, (belonging to the Evangelical School) writes:
“There are undoubtedly great difficulties attending the enun
ciation of any clearly defined theory of inspiration—as, for
instance, whether it is verbal, plenary, or dynamic; whether
all the various books of the Bible were written with equal
divine assistance. Whether all parts of it have the same
authority for all purposes, as, for instance, whether all its state
ments may be quoted with equal confidence on matters of
doctrine, matters of fact, matters pertaining to civil history or
natural science. Again, the question of inspiration is practically
allied with considerations respecting the present state of the
text of the original—its translation and its interpretation.”
He goes on to say:
“ God must have exercised such a superintendence both over
the minds and pens of the Evangelists that they are to be
implicitly relied upon for the account they give of Christ.
The exact nature of the superintendence we may be unable to
define, but that it was of such a sort as to enable the children
of God to exercise unbounded faith in the narrative, as giving
them a reliable view of the person, work, power, and pretensions
of Christ seems beyond doubt. What we are as sure of as our
own existence is that if there be any Holy Ghost, he was in the
four men (the Evangelists) cognisant of, and taking into account
every sentence they wrote, superintending and controlling
every plan they formed, recalling to the memory of two, if not
three, the partially forgotten words, or their source ; so ordeiing
that the Church should have need of all of them, and not be
able to dispense with any one of them, and, what is more, not
be able to weave the fourfold story into one, but each must be
read separately, one by one, one after another, so that each
child of the kingdom may have the more deeply engravened
on his heart every divine lineament of the features of the king
in his beauty. In order to do this, the inspiring divine intelli
�GOD AND REVELATION.
49
gence in the Evangelists so order matters that they are not
exempt from mistake of time, and place, and arrangement. Even
if they are so exempt, that exemption is to us as if it were not,
for we cannot reconcile their seeming discrepancies, and never
shall in this world. But these very discrepancies, and diver
gencies are under the cognisance of the Holy Spirit, distinctly
permitted by him, inasmuch as they were not corrected, but
allowed for manifold purposes, as, for instance, in avast number
of cases, to assure us that we have the true meaning—one report
supplying the comment to the other; in other cases allowed, I
believe, for the express purpose of preventing our weaving the
four narratives into one, and so cheating our souls of that
multifold realisation of Christ s personal life which is in the
sight of God of such moment to our spiritual life.”
This seems to me great rubbish; but the writer at any
rate recognises and admits very freely the human element
in the Bible, but his mode of accounting for its being there
is truly wonderful.
Mallock, the author of “ Is Life worth Living ? writes
as follows :
” What then has modern criticism accomplished on the
Bible ? The biblical account of the creation has been shown
to be, in its literal sense, an impossible fable. Stories that were
accepted with a solemn reverence seem childish, ridiculous,
grotesque, and not unfrequently barbarous; or if we are hardly
prepared to admit so much as this—this much at least has been
established firmly—that the Bible, if it does not give the lie
itself to the astonishing claims that have been made for it,
contains nothing in itself, at any rate, that can of itself be
sufficient to support them. This applies to the New Testament
just as much as to the Old, and the consequences here are
much more momentous. Weighed as mere human testimony,
the value of the Gospels becomes doubtful or insignificant. For
the miracles of Christ, and for his superhuman nature, they
contain little evidence that tends to be satisfactory and even
his (Christ’s) daily words and actions it seems probable may
have been inaccurately reported, in some cases perhaps invented,
and in others supplied by a deceiving memory. When we pass
from the Gospels to the Epistles, a kindred sight presents
itself; we discern in them the writings of men not inspired
from above, but with many disagreements amongst themselves,
and influenced by a variety of existing views, and doubtful
which of them to assimilate. We discern in them, as we do in
other writers, the products of their age and circumstances; and
if we follow the Church’s history further, and examine the
appearance and growth of her great subsequent dogmas, we
�50
GOD AND REVELATION.
can trace all of them to a natural and non-Christian origin.
Two centuries before the birth of Christ, Buddha is said to have
been born without a human father. Angels sang in heaven to
announce his advent; an aged hermit blessed him in his
pother’s arms ; a monarch was advised—though he refused—to
destroy the child, who, it was predicted, should be a universal
ruler. It is told how he was once lost and found again in the
temple, and how his young wisdom astonished all the doctors.
His prophetic career began when he was about thirty years
old, and one of the most solemn events of it is his temptation
in solitude by the evil one. And thus the fatal inference is drawn
that all religions have sprung from a common and earthly
root.”
J
And these reflections emanate from sincere believers in
Christianity, the last only being a Boman Catholic, whose
aim and purpose are doubtless to exalt authority at the
expense of the Bible ; nevertheless, in my opinion, there is
much truth in his contention.
In this connection Mr. Gladstone remarks :
“ It is perfectly conceivable that a document penned by the
human hand, and transmitted by human means, may contain
matters questionable, uncertain, or even mistaken, and yet may
by its contents as a whole, present such moral proofs of truth
divinely imparted, as ought to command our assent and govern
our practice.”
This is, of course, quite possible, but the question is whether
it is true; and if true, how are we to ascertain where the
human elem ent ends and the divine begins ?
I will now pass on to consider what claim the Bible has
to be regarded as divinely inspired.
Let us consider the Old Testament writings, in the first
instance.
We have in the first and second chapters of Genesis an
account of the creation, which, if true, would no doubt go
far to convince us that the writer of that portion of it, at
any rate, was under the inspiration of the Almighty when
he wrote it. Now nothing in polemical writing has struck
me more forcibly than the discussion between Mr. Gladstone
and Professor Huxley on the cosmogony of Moses, which
has lately appeared in the Nineteenth Century. Does any
human being gifted even with a minimum of ratiocinative
power, doubt for a moment on which side the victory lies?
Is not Professor Huxley’s last reply perfectly crushing?
�GOD AND REVELATION.
51
For my part I was under the impression that the question
‘1 whether the cosmogony was or was not opposed to the
conclusions of science ” had been definitely settled nearly a
quarter of a century ago by one of the writers of that now
almost forgotten book, “Essays and reviews,” but it
appears I was mistaken, for of late the question has cropped
up again, but I believe only to result in the further dis
comfiture of the reconcilers.
A Dr. Einns has during the last year or two been lec
turing and writing on Genesis. His book fell into my hands
some little time back, and the impression it left on my
mind was that though it contained some interesting facts in
natural history, it utterly failed in its purpose, which was
to shew that the Mosaic record of the creation was scien
tifically correct. Judge therefore of my surprise on reading
some rem arks of the Lord Chancellor at the conclusion
of a lecture on Genesis, delivered by Dr. Kinns.
Lord Halsbury said:
“ It was a matter of congratulation that a man like Dr. Kinns
should be able to show that the Bible and the words of science
had in them the same inspiration. Philosophaters—for they
could not be called philosophers—spoke of Dr. Kinns as having
no right to speak on such subjects as science; but all the first
men of science were with him.’’
Is this so; or, rather, is it not absolutely false ?
Professor Huxley in his later article remarks :
“ My belief is, and long has been, that the Pentateuchal story of
the creation is simply a myth. I suppose it to be an hypothesis
respecting the origin of the Universe which some ancient thinker
found himself able to reconcile with his knowledge of the
nature of things, and therefore assumed to be true.”
And is not this opinion endorsed by the vast majority of
scientific thinkers ?’
Professor Drummond, the author of “Natural Law in
the Spiritual World,” and orthodox, I believe, as ortho
doxy goes, says :
“ That the championship of a position (by Mr. Gladstone), which
many earnest students of modern religious questions have seen
1 I see that Professor Dana, the American geologist, states it to be
his opinion that the first chapter of Genesis and science are in accord.
It would be satisfactory if he informed us how he arrived at this
conclusion.
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GOD AND REVELATION.
reason wholly to abandon, cannot but excite misgiving’s of a
serious kind,”
°
and adds:
“ To theological science the whole underlying theory of the
reconcilers is as exploded as Bathybius.”
The present Bishop of London takes somewhat different
ground in his Bampton lectures for 1884. He says:
“It is quite certain that the purpose of revelation is not
to teach science at all. Where the creation is mentioned,
there is clearly no intention to say by what process [what!] it
was effected, or how long it took [what!] to work out the
process.”
The obvious reply is, that although the purpose of reve
lation may not have been to teach science, nevertheless we
should expect facts—whether intended to teach science
or not—when stated in an inspired record, to be cor
rectly stated, if mentioned at all—not for instance,
that grasses, herbs, and fruit trees were created, or
brought into existence, before there was any sun by
which their life might be vivified and supported. Later
on the Bishop speaks of the narrative as an allegory,
though he is careful to add that there is nothing in the
allegory that crosses the path of science. If this means
that. the statements put forth are scientifically correct,
nothing can well be more inaccurate, and the Bishop must
feel that this is so, or else why should he emphasise the
fact that the purpose of revelation is not to teach science ?
Dr. Temple apparently does not feel himself able to
deny the truth of the theory of evolution, even in regard
to man, for he says :
“His (man s body) may have been developed according to the
theory of evolution, but at any rate it branched off from other
animals at a very early point in the descent of animal life,”
and adds, in conclusion,
We cannot find that science, in teaching evolution, has yet
asserted anything that is inconsistent with revelation, unless we
assume that revelation was intended not to teach spiritual truth, but
physical truth also. [The italics are mine.J
I would ask, what is the use of adding this note of caution
if the evolution theory is not opposed to scriptural teach
ing as regards the creation of man and animals ?
�GOD AND REVELATION.
53
Surely this sort of argument is worse than useless. The
question is whether the Bible states fact or fiction.
Apologetic Christian writers nowadays for the most part
turn their attention to the task of showing that the
Darwinian theory (which is now too well established for
them to put on one side) is not Atheistic ; they argue in
fact that this theory redounds more to the honor and
glory of the Creator than does the older theory of special
creation. A recent writer observes :
“The attitude of orthodoxy towards the new discoveries in
science goes through three stages. First we are told that they
are false and damnable (this is exactly what we were told of
the Darwinian theory of descent some 20 or 25 years ago);
next that they are deserving of cautious examination; lastly,
that they are, and always have been, matters of general
notoriety, and are without any bearing whatever on religion
or morality.”
The theory of evolution is rapidly passing into the third
stage.
But apologists forget that the question isn’t whether this
(the Darwinian) theory does away with the necessity for
a first cause, but whether it is not vitally opposed to
the revelation of the Bible. Dr. Temple thinks not, on
the ground apparently that revelation was not intended to
teach physical truths. Not intended to teach physical
truths indeed! But this is not the question. It is whether
the story of the creation of man and animals, as narrated
in Genesis, is opposed to what we now know to be true.
As Mr. Laing observes :
“ It is absolutely certain that portions of the Bible, and those
important portions relating to the creation of the world and of
man, are not true, and therefore not inspired. It is certain that
the sun, moon, and stars, and earth were not created as the
author of Genesis supposes them to have been created.”
And as regards man, we have good reason for believing
that he has progressed from a state of the rudest savagery
towards civilisation and morality, and that his existence
dates back probably to the last glacial period—probably
200,000 years. This being so, how can these facts be
reconciled with the theory of Adam’s fall, which is the
foundation of the whole superstructure of redemption and
regeneration ?
�54
GOD AND REVELATION.
If, however, anyone should deny, as possibly he fairly
may, that man’s great antiquity has not been proved, I
would ask him to turn to the first chapter of Genesis, and
see whether it be possible to square the theory of the evo
lution of man, and animals with the statement of their
mode of creation in Genesis. If he can do this, he will
have performed little short of a miracle.
It is all very well for Dr. Temple to remind us that the
object of the Bible is not to teach us science, and that
where the creation of man is mentioned, there is clearly no
intention to say by what process this creation was effected.
As I have already pointed out, when questions involving
science are touched on in an inspired narrative, we should
expect them to be correctly stated; and that when we read
that man was created a living soul about 6,000 or 8,000
years ago, endowed with speech and intellect; that state
ment does not mean, and cannot mean (unless words have no
meaning at all) that he was, countless ages back, evolved from
some lower form of life, and gradually progressed from the
rudest savagery to his present comparatively high state of
civilisation. The special creation theory, or the evolution
theory (either the one or the other), may conceivably be
true, but it is only trifling with language to maintain that
they are not fundamentally opposed to one another; and
to assert that the Biblical account of the creation is in har
mony with the Darwinian theory is, in my opinion, to talk
nonsense.
Mr. Gladstone does not even touch on the question as to
whether the creation of man, as stated in Genesis, is in
accordance with scientific knowledge of the present day :
all he attempts to show is that the fourfold division of
animated creation, as stated in Genesis, viz.:
1. Water population ;
2. Air population;
3. Land population of animals ;
4. Man;
is substantially correct.
But Professor Huxley shows that this is not even the
case.
It is not, however, merely in regard to the story of the
creation alone that we are unable to signify our assent.
There are many Biblical stories which, while they cannot .
be demonstrated to be false (like the story of the creation,
�GOD AND REVELATION.
55
for instance), are almost more incredible, e.g., the story of the
universal deluge and the ark, and the many impossibilities
the narrative involves. Also such stories as the following.
(1) The plagues of Egypt (Exodus iv.). Moses casts
his rod on the ground, and its becomes a serpent; on
seizing it by the tail, it becomes a rod again.. The repe
tition of the miracle before Pharaoh and his servants;
and, most strange of all, the ability of Pharaoh s .magi
cians to perform the same wonder ; and then the climax :
Moses’ rod (serpent, I presume.) swallows up all the others.
(2) The extreme improbability, not to say impossibility,
in its physical results, of the story narrated in Genesis xix.,
33 to 36.
.
(3) Samson catches 300 foxes and ties their tails to
gether, with a firebrand between each (Judges xv., 4), and
sends them amongst the Philistines’ corn, to destroy it.
(4) His slaughter of a thousand men with the jawbone
of an ass (Judges xv., 15).
(5) The raising up of Samuel by the witch of Endor
(1 Sam. xxviii.).
(6) The cursing in the name of the Lord by Elisha of
mocking little children who knew no better, and the
destruction of forty-two of them by bears in consequence
(2 Kings ii., 24).
(7) The story of the building of the tower of Babel, and
the reason assigned for the confusion of tongues.
The list might be extended almost indefinitely, but cm bono?
If these miracles are credible, others of the same nature
are so too; if not, it is only a waste of time to add to
their number.
It is not that I deny the possibility of divine inter
ference in the affairs of men, but many of the miracles
of the Old Testament have an air of grotesqueness
about them, that stamps them as mythical. Is any
thing gained by calling them parables, as Mr. Laing
apparently does ? or allegories, as they are termed by the
New Jerusalem Church ? One can at any rate understand
the utility of some of the New Testament miracles as a
manifestation of God’s power, and as evidence of the
divine mission of the person who performed them ; but
this explanation will not hold good with regard to many,
at any rate, of those related in the Old Testament. .
Whatever else may be true—whatever theory of inspira
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tion we may hold—we know that these wonderful narra
tives did not and could not have happened as related ;
and. ah the persuasive eloquence of the most eminent of
Christian apologists will hardly persuade us that they did.
But do they believe them themselves ? I can hardly credit
it, though it is difficult to say what a man may not believe
if he gives his mmd to it—Cardinal Newman being an
instance in point. Then, again, does any human being
not tied hand and foot to traditional modes of
thought .believe that the Almighty held those long
conversations with Moses related in the 25th and
following chapters of Exodus, or that he was turned
from his purpose (Numbers xiv., 12) because of the
arguments of Moses (verses 13 to 16 of the same chapter) ?
I know it is the fashion to say, ‘ ‘ Oh, these words don’t
mean that: they mean something else ” ; but if words have
any meaning at all, they mean here exactly what they say.
The very idea is inconceivable ! How are we to explain
it. all ? Will Dr. Harold Brown’s theory meet the case,
viz., that the Bible is infallible as far as it relates to God,
but fallible in matters of history and daily life ?
There is another difficulty in regard to accepting the Old
Testament as the word of God, and that is the difficulty of
recognising parts of its moral teaching as having emanated
from a God of holiness and purity. I have by me the
Rev. J. H. Titcomb’s lecture on this subject, published at
the request of the Christian Evidence Society. He says:—
‘‘No one can possibly shrink more than I do from these
divine injunctions which the Old Testament records concerning
the massacre of whole cities and peoples. I stand in imagina
tion amidst those scenes of terrific slaughter, and as I listen to
the shrieks of helpless women and children, mercilessly sabred
and speared, I lift up my eyes to heaven, and exclaim, ‘ Can
this be thy work, O merciful Father ? Surely, oh surely, these
murderers have mistaken their self-barbarity for a divine
commission I ’ ”
‘ ‘ Such, I suppose, ’’ the writer adds, 1 ‘ are the first instincts of
every feeling heart in this day of nineteenth century civilisa
tion.” Well, how does he get over the difficulty? In this way.
The nations thus given over to slaughter were hopelessly
conupt (an assumption which I notice all Biblical apolo
gists make, without much evidence to support it), and
therefore it was the most merciful course to annihilate •
�GOD AND REVELATION.
57
them, with their women and children, because, argues the
writer, these children if spared would certainly have grown
up like their parents, and perpetuated the same contagion.
The case must be desperate indeed if it be necessary to
resort to such an apology as this, and yet it admits of no
other, excepting, probably, the true one, viz., that the
writers fell into the error of attributing to God the bar
barities of man. Is not this explanation, on the face of it,
a thousand times more probable than that a benevolent
Being—a moral Governor of the Universe—ordered the
slaughter of women and little children by the thousand!
As regards the treatment of the Midianites, when Moses
ordered the slaughter of all of them—save the virgins, whom
the Israelites were permitted to keep for their own depraved
purposes. The apologists explanation is, that Moses, in
this instance, acted on his own responsibility : that Moses
was inspired to record it, but not necessarily to give the
order. It is true that the Bible does not say that the
Almighty ordered it, but He certainly does not condemn
it, and if we read the 31st chapter of Numbers, verse 25,
to 30, it will be seen that the historian makes the Almighty
not only tacitly acquiesce in the arrangement, but issue
explicit instructions as to the distribution of the booty
taken from the Midianites, of which the 32,000 virgins
formed a part (see verse 35). A canon of criticism which
Dr. Titcomb lays down a little later on may meet the diffi
culty. It is “that the Jewish writers were frequently in
the habit of attributing to God himself the evils which He
permitted in his providence ”; but, on the other hand, it
creates another, and we naturally ask : “ How are we to
know when the biblical writers are giving us their own
views, or writing under the guidance of Gods holy spirit ? ”.
To me the difficulties of accepting the whole of the Old
Testament as genuine history are simply insurmountable.
For my own part, I feel as satisfied as I do of my own ex
istence that many of the stories therein related are not
true. If, however, we admit one half of the Bishop of
Winchester’s canon of criticism, viz., that the writers are
fallible in matters of history and daily life, the task of the
reconciler ought to be at an end; as to the other half,
there is no proof whatever that it is true.
But, after all, it has been urged that we need not trouble
ourselves about Old Testament history: what specially
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concerns us is the New. Let us therefore turn to it, and
see what grounds there are for accepting it as the in
spired word of God, written for our instruction and guidance
in all matters relating to our spiritual well-being.
First of all, it is not known with any degree of certainty
when or by whom the four Gospels were written. The
three, first are manifestly not independent narratives, but
compiled from a common source. Froude thinks, that
though the synoptics may have had no communication with
each other, they were supplementing from other sources of
information a central narrative which they all had before
them. As regards Matthew, there can be no doubt he
wrote primarily for the Jews, and actually makes Christ
say: “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house
of Israel.” The question as to the time he wrote hardly
admits of a definite answer, because of the way the work
originated. Matthew wrote the substance of his gospel in
Aramcean, probably before the destruction of Jerusalem.
It was afterwards translated into Greek; but the date of
our present gospel Dr. Samuel Davidson assigns to about
the year a.d. 105; Luke’s to the year 110; Mark’s to about
120, and John’s to about a.d. 150 ; but in no case have we
sufficient evidence to show that any one of the gospels con
tains the evidence of an eye witness.
St. John may or may not have written the gospel which
bears his name. Volumes have been written on this subj ect alone; but the general consensus of opinion is against
him. At any rate, it is certain that the latter presents a
marvellous contrast to the clear addresses to be found in
the Synoptics. If Jesus spoke in the simple way described
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is almost impossible to
conceive of his having uttered the long metaphorical dis
courses contained in the 4th. But this is not a point I
wish to press. Even if St. John be the author of the
4th Gospel, the difficulties which encumber our path will
not be removed one hair’s breadth.
What I wish to consider is this: Whether the in
ternal evidence of the four Gospels is of such a
nature as to incline . us to accept the statements of
the writers as true statements. As I have said be
fore, the theory of the verbal inspiration of the Bible
has nearly died out, but still it may be not amiss to note,
a few of the verbal inaccuracies to be found in the New
�GOD AND REVELATION.
59
Testament, showing at any rate that whatever other ideas
about inspiration may be true, the verbal and mechanical
theory will not stand the test of criticism.
(1) Purification of the Temple.—Did it occur shortly before
the crucifixion (see Matt, xxi., 12), or was it
at the commencement of the ministry of Jesus
(John ii., 13).
(2) Recognition of Jesus as the Messiah.—Was Jesus at once
i.e., at the commencement of his ministry, recog
nised as the Messiah by John the Baptist (John
i., 29, 39-45), by Andrew, Simon, Peter,
Philip, and Nathaniel, or are the synoptics correct
in saying that none of the disciples (not even
John the Baptist) arrived at that conviction till
a comparatively late period of Jesus’s ministry
(see Matt, xi., 2, 3, also xvi., 14—17).
(3.) The anointing of the feet of Jesus.—When was it done
and where. Luke says (Luke vii., 11 and 37) it
occurred early in the ministry of Jesus in the
house of a Pharisee in Nain; that the anointer
was a sinner—that is, a woman of immoral
character. Matthew says (Matt, xxvi., 6) the
scene took place in Bethany, in the house of
Simon the leper. John says (John xi., 2;
xii., 1) that it occurred in Bethany six days
before the Passover; he does not actually
say in whose house it took place, but the reader
is entitled to infer from the context that the event
took place in the house of Lazarus, for we are
told that Martha served, and that the anointer
was Mary, the sister of Lazarus, who was certainly
not a sinner in the sense intended to be conveyed
by St. Luke.
The last Supper.—Was it the Passover feast, or was it
not ? The Synoptics positively assert the former.
St. John the latter. (Matt, xxvi., 19 ; Luke xxii.,
15 ; John xviii., 28 ; xix., 31).
Crucifixion of Jesus.—Was Jesus crucified at the third
hour (9 a.m.), and gave up the ghost at the ninth
hour (3 p.m.)—(Matt, xxvii., 46 ; Mark xv., 23),
or is John right in asserting that at 12 noon
Jesus was still before Pilate?
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The thieves on the Cross.—Did one only, or both, the
thieves, revile Jesus. Matthew says both did;
Luke only one. (Matt, xxviii., 44; Luke xxiv., 43.V1
The hearing of the Cross.—Did Jesus himself bear the
cross to the place of execution (John xix., 17),
or was it carried for him by one Simon (Matt’,
xxvii., 32).
No advantage is likely to accrue by extending the list of
contradictions that are to be found in the New Testament ;
but for those who wish to see all that can be said in this
connection, Thomas Scott’s “ English life of Jesus ” affords
the necessary medium—a work below that of Strauss in
erudition; but what it loses in this respect is more than
made up by incisiveness and clearness of style—a work, I
may add, which though written 14 years ago, has never yet
been answered in spite of challenges to the Christian Evi
dence Society to undertake the task.
Of course, answers have been found to these and other
contradictions by so-called orthodox theologians, but
these harmonisers of the text of the Bible have, in
my opinion, . made matters worse than they found
them, and simply injured the cause they have at
heart by the obvious weakness of their arguments,2
. 1 Canon Farrar says: “ Here we might suppose that there was an
irreconcileable contradiction. But though the Evangelists sometimes
seem on the very verge of mutual contradiction, no single instance of
a positive contradiction can be adduced from their independent pages.
The reason of this is partly that they wrote under divine guidance,
and partly that they wrote the simple truth. The first two synoptics
tell us that both the robbers during the early part of the hours of the
crucifixion reproached Jesus ; but we learn from St. Luke that only
one of them used injurious and insulting language to Him ”
Now I have a great respect for Canon Farrar’s bearing and acumen,
but what are they all worth when he condescends to the use of
language like this ? What meaning does it convey to anyone’s mind
when read in conjunction with the biblical texts bearing on the
subject ? The 1st Evangelist says the thieves cast the same in His
teeth ; Mark, that they that were crucified with Him reviled Him.
Luke, on the other hand, that one of the thieves only did so, and that
the other rebuked, his fellow malefactor for his presumption, The
discrepancy js hardly worth mentioning, but Canon Farrar’s attempt
at harmonising the two accounts is truly wonderful. It simply shows
how utterly untrustworthy are those as guides to others, who have a
preconceived theory to support.
- Origen held that there were three anointings, as others have held
�GOD AND REVELATION.
61
It would surely be better—in the interests of Chris
tianity I mean—to abandon untenable positions and
concentrate one’s whole strength in defending the main
fortress. A Christian may regret that he has not an in
fallible record to refer to, and argue that the proba
bilities are all in favor of the infallibility of a book
revelation which proceeds from God, but if he has not got
it he had better accept with a good grace what Mr. Glad
stone says may be conceivable, viz., that the Bible may
contain matter questionable, uncertain, or even mistaken,
and yet as a whole present such moral proofs of its divine
origin as to command our assent. Whether it does so
will be considered further on.
We come now to consider questions involving something
more than mere mistakes of time and place, that is, state
ments of events which, if they did not occur, go far to
impeach the credit of the writers who narrate them as
faithful—though not necessarily dishonest—historians.
(1) Matthew records the flight of Joseph and Mary with
the infant Jesus into Egypt almost immediately after his
birth, where they remained, we are told, till after Herod’s
death. Luke, on the other hand, not only makes no mention
of the fact, but informs us of the birth and the circum
cision on the eighth day, followed by the presentation in
the temple at Jerusalem, where, after a peaceable per
formance of all things ordered in the law of the Lord, they
(the parents and the young child) depart from Jerusalem
and return to their own city, Nazareth. It is not only
that there is no mention of the flight in Luke, but Luke’s
account appears to exclude it. The two narratives must be
read together to appreciate the force of this.
Again, the account given in Matthew of the massacre of
all the young children in Bethlehem under two years of
age is not only not alluded to by Luke, but is extremely
improbable in itself. Herod no doubt committed many
acts of cruelty during his reign, which Josephus narrates
with no intention of sparing his character; and yet the
Jewish historian makes no allusion to the massacre of the
there were two purifications; but acts and words do not repeat them
selves. The same objections in each case to the work of the woman
would not be raised by the lookers on ; nor is it possible that Jesus
would defend the act in each case by the same arguments.
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young children. The event is not absolutely impossible,
but it is so improbable as to entitle us to refuse our
assent to it, when we reflect that it rests on the authority
of a writer who misquotes prophecy in order apparently
to enhance the credibility of the narrative. It need hardly
be pointed out that the prophecy in Jeremiah (xxxi., 15)
refers not to children slaughtered at Bethlehem hundreds
of years after the prophet’s death, but to persons taken
captive at Rama, near the tomb of Rachel, who is repre
sented in the prophecy as weeping for her children ; but
these, Jeremiah adds, shall return, and her sorrow shall
be turned into joy. How, then, can it possibly be made
to refer to Jesus of Nazareth? (See Matt, ii., 17.)
Similarly in regard to the temptation of Jesus. The
narratives of the Synoptics spread it over a period of forty
days, and inform us that Jesus was taken by the devil
through the air and placed on a pinnacle of the temple.
The story is extremely difficult to credit from whatever
point of view we regard it. Thomas Aquinas, I think it is,
who refers to this wonder in support of the then prevailing
belief in witchcraft. He says : “ If the devil had the power
of transporting Jesus through the air, why deny him the
power of transporting an old woman through the air on a
broomstick?” So improbable does the event seem that
many orthodox commentators have enunciated the theory,
that the occurrence was merely subjective, and had no
real existence in actual fact. But why I especially allude to
this narrative is that the fourth gospei not only makes no
mention of it, but leaves no room for it. Within a week
after his baptism, Jesus is described as surrounded by dis
ciples in Galilee, while according to the Synoptics he is
fasting in the wilderness, not having yet gained a single
disciple.
Casting out of devils.—Many instances of this are given
in the Synoptics, but the case referred to in Matthew viii.
28, et seq., makes more demands on our faith than the
others.
In the first place we read that devils, inhabiting human
frames, address Jesus and deprecate their being cast out
at all; but if it must be so, then they ask permission to be
allowed to go into the bodies of a herd of swine; and we
know the fate that attended the latter in consequence of the
request being acceded to. The story to my mind is simply
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63
incredible and impossible. It indicates either that Jesus
shared the common opinions of his day in regard to demon
iacal possession, or that the New Testament writers have
made him responsible for their own views on the subject.
It has been said by apologists that Jesus only accommodated
himself to the understanding of his audience: that per
sonally he did not believe in demoniacal possession. But
how is this to be reconciled with the statement of his that
“this kind only goeth out by prayer and fasting”? There
are some people I know who, even at the present day,
maintain that demons inhabit the human body. With such
persons I cannot argue. Let them hold their opinions if
they like, but they must not expect me to listen to them.
The extraordinary prohibition of Jesus to his twelve
apostles (Matt, x., 5) not to go into the way of the Gentiles
or into any of the Samaritan cities, but rather to the Jews
—a most improbable order to have emanated from Jesus
himself; especially in view of the fact (John iv.) that Jesus
himself was in an early period of his ministry hospitably
entertained by the Samaritans, and dwelt two days in
their city, receiving their acknowledgement—or at any rate
of some of them—of his Messiahship. In the 23rd verse of
the former chapter we read that Jesus informs his disciples
that they shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till
the son of man be come. Surely this is an anachronism.
Jesus, at the time he is reported to have said this, had not
even informed his disciples of his death. Any allusion to
his second coming would have been unintelligible to them.
It seems to me certain that the words were attributed to
him, long after his death, by a writer who failed to see the
incongruity of the speech. Another anachronism is to be
found in the words : “ From the days of John the Baptist
until now ”. If the Baptist had been dead some years the
remark would have been intelligible, but seeing that he
was in prison at the time, we must conclude that the speech
was put into Jesus’s mouth long after the Baptist’s death.
A third is to be found in Matt, xxiii., 35, Baruch, or
Barachias, was not slain till thirty-five years after Christ.
The miracle of the reduplication of the loaves and fishes.—
If the miracle recorded in the 14th of chapter of Matthew
really occurred, it seems incredible that the disciples should
have replied when their Master observed that he could not
send the multitude away fasting (Matt. 15), “Whence
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should we have so much bread in the wilderness as to fill so
great a multitude?”—rather would they not have entreated
Jesus to do again what he had shown himself already able
to perform ?
The miracle at the pool of Bethesda (John v.). This I take
it to be one of the most extraordinary and improbable
narratives in the New Testament. The account seems to
me to involve the belief (1) that there was a certain pool
of water in the populous city of Jerusalem which had some
miraculous power imparted to it through the instru
mentality of an angel, by which arrangement the first
person (and the first person only of the multitudes who were
congregated on its brink) who managed to struggle into it
was cured of any infirmity he might happen to be suffering
from; (2) that the troubling the water was a periodic
affair ; that is to say, we are given to understand that an
angel was in the habit of coming down from heaven from
time to time to impart miraculous restorative power to the
water of the pool.
If the writer had informed us that Jesus imparted the
power for a particular purpose, and on a particular occasion,
the narrative would have been neither more or less impro
bable than many others of the miracles attributed to him ;
but the periodic performance of the miracle by an angelic
visitor, with all its concomitant improbabilities, is really
too great a tax on our faith. Visits of angels to
men were so common before and even after the Christian
era, that they appear to have excited no surprise. But
can we in the 19th century take the same view ? Can we
in the least realise the possibility of multitudes of sick
people anxiously waiting in the porch for the coming of
an angel, who was to impart certain restorative power to
the water of the pool ? Positively, I cannot. In short, it
makes miracles íhe normal condition of things, and as such
they were regarded by those who lived and wrote in the
first century of our era. Of course there are people living
in the latter end of the 19th century who see nothing in
congruous in the fact of an angel visiting this earth and
interfering in its affairs ; but such people seem to me to
live in a different atmosphere of thought altogether from
ordinary mortals, and anything you may say opposed to
the traditional view seems to have no effect on them.
The cursing of the barren fig-tree.—This is the only puni-
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65
tive miracle ascribed to Jesus, and has certainly exercised
tbe judgment and divided the opinions of even orthodox
commentators. Is it credible, I ask, that Jesus should cause
a fig-tree to wither up because it had no fruit upon it
out of season (Mark says “the time of figs was not yet ”) ;
or is it likely that Jesus should have expected to find figs
upon it at an unseasonable time of the year ?
Many explanations have been offered for this apparent
anomaly. It has been said that the act was simply a
symbolical one, designed to impress on the minds of
the disciples that every tree which brought not forth
good fruit shall be hewn down and cast into the fire;
others, again, have considered it as symbolical of the
Jewish nation. But there are no grounds for either
assumption. The remarks of Jesus after the event have
no reference to anything of a symbolical character, but
refer altogether to the power of faith which, if they
possess, would enable the disciples to do a far greater
wonder than the cursing and withering up of the fig-tree.
The miraculous event immediately after the crucifixion of
/ms.—Mark and Luke tell us that there was darkness
over the whole land for the space of three hours, and that
the veil of the temple was rent in twain, but Matthew
(xxvi. 51) goes further, and says, “The graves were
opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
and came out of their graves after his resurrection, and
Went into the city and appeared unto many
It positively takes one’s breath away when such a
phenomenon as this is gravely propounded for our accept
ance ! What even are orthodox believers to make of it ?
In respect to this stupendous event Canon Farrar remarks:
“ It is quite possible that the darkness was local gloom which
hung densely over the guilty city and its immediate neighbour
hood, and as an earthquake shook the city, and split the rocks,
and as it rolled away from their places the great stones which
closed the cavern sepulchres of the Jews, so it seemed to the
imagination of many [the italics are mine] to have disimprisoned
the spirits of the dead, and to have filled the air with ghostly
visitants who, after Christ had risen, appeared to linger in the
holy city.”
This explanation may be better than insisting on the
literal performance of the miracle, but it has its dangers
too, for if wo apply a similar canon of criticism to almost
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any other of the miracles—even to the crowning miracle of
all, that of the resurrection—it will evaporate into thin
air, leaving nothing behind but the theory of a subjective
vision, which is, I think, all that Paulus and writers of the
rationalistic school ever contended for.
The resurrection of Lazarus.—This, perhaps the most
marvellous and certainly the most circumstantially detailed
event of any recorded in the New Testament, is not even
alluded to by any of the synoptics. We have only John’s
word for it. How are we to explain the silence of the
synoptics, if the event really occurred ? They wrote much
nearer in point of time to the alleged miracle than did the
author of the 4th Gospel, and yet they say nothing about
it, although—mark this I—it is represented as the point on
which the subsequent catastrophe turned! It brought
about the secret meeting of the Sanhedrim; it led that body
to plot and scheme for Christ’s apprehension ; it must have
been more talked of and generally known (had it occurred)
than any other event in the history of Jesus; it ultimately
led to his arrest; and yet the synoptics are wholly silent
about the matter!
Many absurd and far-fetched explanations have been
offered for their silence, one being that the event was
too well-known to everyone to need any record—an
argument, as Scott observes, which would apply equally
to the narrative of the crucifixion. The fact is, their
silence cannot be explained on any reasonable hypo
thesis. I know there are some minds on whom such an
omission made no impression, so tied down are they to
traditional ideas; but to me their silence is almost con
clusive as to the non-performance of the miracle, for I
cannot on any other ground account for their failure to
mention it.
In addition to the foregoing, there is another difficulty
which has to be explained. I allude to the apparent omni
science of the Evangelists. On the theory that they were
merely amanuenses, writing down events at the dictation of
the Holy Ghost, the difficulty vanishes. But we know
that they were nothing of the kind. How then are we to
suppose they came by the knowledge of events which
happened when they could by no possibility have been
present: for instance, how did they get their knowledge of
what transpired between Jesus and the devil during the
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revelation.
67
temptation; or the angel Gabriel’s speech to Mary, and her
reply to him; or Mary’s hymn, commencing, “ My soul
doth magnify the Lord ” ; or the speech of Pilate’s wife to
her husband about Jesus; or the conversation that passed
between Herod and the daughter of Herodias concerning
John the Baptist; or Jesus’ prayer in the garden of
Gethsemane when his disciples were asleep ?
As it is by no means my intention to give a complete list
of the difficulties which stand in the way of accepting the
theory of the infallibility, or even the inspiration of the
Bible, I will now pass on to the consideration of the famous
speech of Jesus in Matt xxiv., and its counterpart in Mark
xiii. and Luke xxi. After describing the destruction of the
Holy City, and the woe that shall come upon the people, he
goes on to say, “ Immediately after the tribulation of those
days shall the sun be darkened .... and they shall see
the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power
and great glory; and he shall send his angels with the
sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect,
&c., &c.,” adding (in Matt, xxiv., 24), “Verily I say unto you,
this generation shall not pass away till all these things be
fulfilled ” ; and again, in the 44th verse, “ Therefore be ye
also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of
Man cometh”. This discourse, as given in Matthew and
Mark, is to all appearance as plain as any statement can be :
it asserts positively not only that the temple and city should
be destroyed within a very short time, but that the world
should come to an end, and the final judgment of all man
kind be completed within the lifetime of that generation,
all that was uncertain being the exact day and hour. More
than 18 centuries have passed away, and Christ’s second
coming is still delayed. All sorts of desperate attempts
have been made to explain away these statements, but they
have failed ignominously. Either one or the other alter
native must be accepted: either Jesus uttered the prophecy
or ho did not. If he did, subsequent history has falsified
the prediction ; if he did not, we have another instance of
the Evangelists making their Master responsible for words
he never uttered.
Mr. Hatton, an orthodox commentator (one of the very
few who look difficulties fairly in the face), says: “ That the
prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem is greatly confused
with the vision of spiritual judgment of all things is clear
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GOD AND REVELATION.
enough, and it is remarkable that two quite distinct state
ments as to time are jumbled up together in the oddest con
fusion. It is impossible that two such statements could have
been made in the closest juxtaposition without a clear dis
tinction between the provisions to which they refer. The
gathering of the armies, the slaughter, the famine, and the
destruction of the city—all this is to take place within that
generation; but the final judgment with which the disciples
certainly confused it, was, apparently almost within the
same breath, declared to be absolutely indeterminate and
reserved by God amongst the eternal secrets.” That is to
say, Mr.Hatton thinks the disciples misunderstood Jesus;
but if they misunderstand him here, they must have misunderstood him on other occasions too; for there are other
texts which go to show that Christ prophesied as to his
speedy second coming, and these are in no way mixed up
with the destruction of Jerusalem, e.g., “Verily, verily, I
say unto you, there be some standing here which shall not
taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his
kingdom.” “Ye shall not have gone over all the cities of
Israel until the Son of Man be come.” “ If I will that ye
tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” “ Hereafter sb all
ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power,
and coming in the clouds of heaven.” That Christ’s disciples
all confidently entertained the erroneous expectation of
Christ’s speedy second coming, and entertained it on the
supposed authority of their Master, there can be doubt
whatever, says Greg; and this I think is as certain as
anything can be, short of mathematical demonstration.
Professor Plumptre, the Dean of Wells, comments on
the prophecy as follows :—
“ How are we to explain the fact that already more than 18
centuries have rolled away, and the promise of his coming is
still unfulfilled ? It is a partial answer to the question to say
that God’s measurements of time are not as ours, but that
which may seem the boldest is also the truest and most
reverential. Of that day and hour knoweth no man, not even
the Son, but the Father; and therefore He (Christ) as truly
man, and as having therefore vouchsafed to accept the limita
tion of knowledge incident to man’s nature, speaks of the two
events, as poets and prophets speak of the far-off future.”
The learned dean also seems to think that “ the words
received a symbolical and therefore a partial and gormanent
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69
accomplishment in the manifestation of the power of the
Son of Man at and after the destruction of Jerusalem, but
await their complete fulfilment till the final advent
What good can there possibly be in telling us that God’s
measurements of time are not as ours, in explanation of the
words of Christ that the existing order of things should
come to an end in that generation, and that many standing
before him should not die till he came in the clouds of
heaven with power and great glory to judge the world ?
And it seems to me equally useless to say that the prophecy
received partial accomplishment at the destruction of
Jerusalem, because Christianity then began to make way
in the world. What is gained either in speaking of Christ’s
limitation of knowledge in connection with prophetical
language? If the dean had said boldly, “ Christ’s know
ledge was limited, and therefore he spoke under a misapprehension as to the time of his second coming” ; or if
he had said he (Christ) “spoke with the licence of a
poet ” and therefore we must not take his words literally,
one could have at any rate understood either half of the
proposition; but bracketed together they appear to me to
make nonsense. The fact is no explanation is possible,
except, of course, that the Evangelists were mistaken,
or that Jesus spoke under limitations of knowledge, and
therefore erroneously.
If the foregoing considerations do not altogether dis
prove Mr. Gladstone’s theory, viz., “ That although the
Bible may contain matters questionable, uncertain, and
even mistaken, yet it may by its contents as a whole present
such moral proofs as ought to command our assent, etc. ”,
they at any rate detract from its probability to a very
considerable extent, for we naturally ask, If the writers
were mistaken on so many points, and shared the common
errors of their day, what ground have we for supposing
that they were exempt from error in matters relating to
things of the unseen world, or even spoke under inspiration
at all ? It has been argued that if we think the evidence
sufficient to establish the two great cardinal doctrines
on which Christianity rests, viz., the incarnation and the
resurrection of Christ, why trouble ourselves about minor
matters ? What can it possibly signify, for instance,
whether certain demoniacs were permitted to go into a
herd of swine; or whether an angel came down periodically
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to impart certain restorative power to the water of the
pool of Bethesda, or whether 5,000 men were fed with
five loaves and two fishes, so long as we have an
assurance that Christ rose from the dead. If he did,
says a well-known writer, “this miracle alone would
prove that Christianity is a divine revelation ”. True, but
the evidence on the point must be thoroughly convincing,
in view of the fact that it is found recorded in a book which
contains numerous errors and inaccuracies on matters of
daily life and history.
Of course it is open to anyone to deny that this is so,
but surely it is better, even in the interests of Christianity,
to admit the fact, as so many Christian writers have done,
than to resort to the extravagant hypotheses of the
harmonists, who have, in my opinion, done more harm to
the cause they have at heart than all the assaults of the
unbelievers put together.
The Bishop of Carlyle remarks that the Apostles’ Creed
speaks of two miraculous circumstances of our Lord’s earthly
history, and two only: the coming into the world and the
going out of it..“ He came amongst us ”, says the Bishop,
“by an extraordinary birth. He left us by an extraordinary
exit, involving a triumph over death. On these two great
facts, each Christian expresses belief as a condition of
baptism.” Although the Bishop does not say so in so many
words, I infer from his remarks that a belief in these
two occurrences is, in his opinion, alone necessary to
salvation. Let us then first consider what grounds we
have for belief in the former. It will be noted that the
evidence for it rests entirely on certain statements made in
Matthew and Luke. Are we prepared to accept so mar
vellous an event on the ipse dixit of writers who have been
shown to be untrustworthy in so many matters of detail,
especially when we remember that the idea of a virgin
birth was by no means new ? (Buddha was credited with a
similar miraculous birth, so were many of the ancients—
Pythagoras and Plato, for instance.) Matthew weakens
the credit that might otherwise possibly attach to his narra
tive by quoting the occurrence as a fulfilment of prophecy.
He says: “ Now all this was done that it might be fulfill cd
which, was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying:
Behold a virgin shall be with child, etc., etc.” Matthew
Arnold remarks: “It becomes certain that in these words
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71
read on. Christmas Day, the Prophet Isaiah (from which
Matthew quotes) was not meaning to speak of Jesus Christ,
but of a Prince of Judah, to be born in a year or two’s
time.” Similarly the Evangelist misquotes, or rather
misapplies prophecies, in three other cases in the same
chapter. Now, how does the Bishop explain this ? Whilst
admitting the misquotations, he says: “St. Matthew,
apparently looking from a Jewish point of view, did not
see things with exactly the same eyes as his English
namesake ” (meaning Matthew Arnold). In order, the
Bishop says, “ to enter into St. Matthew’s mind, we must
remember the education to which the J ewish Church and
nation had been subjected. . . . . Consequently, when a
Jewish disciple came to write the history of the life and
ministry of his Lord, whom he entirely believed to be the
Messiah, he could naturally find up and down the pro
phetical books, references—some direct and some oblique,
to Him for whose coming these books had unquestionably
made preparation. Is it wonderful then that St. Matthew
should see in the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ the fulfil
ment of these magnificent words of prophecy, ‘ Behold &
virgin shall conceive, etc.’ ?” The reply isBy no. means
wonderful, but just what we could expect, if we view the
Evangelist as an ordinary Jewish writer not exempt from
the beliefs and prejudices of his age and country; but very
wonderful indeed if we look upon him as an inspired his
torian, writing under the guidance of the spirit of God.
Such an explanation is to me no explanation at all.
There remains, then, St. Luke’s account for considera
tion. The Bishop sets a great store on St. Luke’s testimony.
He credits him with being (probably correctly so) the
author of the acts of the apostles. He says that
“ This narrative gives us unsurpassed opportunities of testing
the honesty, the intelligence, and the power of observation
appertaining to the author”. The Bishop refers to the
story of the voyage of St. Paul from Palestine to Italy,
and his (Paul’s) shipwreck on the coast of Malta, and in
doing so says: “We must be impressed by a strong belief
that St. Luke was a man possessing in a high degree the
habit of careful observation which his medical profession
demanded and fostered, and also that he had in eminent
abundance the valuable faculty of setting down accurately and
clearly the things which he observed”.
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GOD AND REVELATION.
I would observe that, in this history of the very voyage that
the Bishop refers to, St. Luke tells us of a viper coin i ng
out of the fire, and fastening on Paul’s hand. Now
surely this was not an anecdote that would have emanated
from a physician, highly skilled, and a careful observer of
facts as distinguished from fictions ? The belief in such
reptiles as salamanders (fabulous monsters supposed to
live in fire) does not, I think, bear out the character
assigned to Luke by the Bishop, especially if we remember
that he was supposed to be writing as an eye-witness.
Besides, if there is any truth in my previous criticism, Luke
was by no means exempt from the mistakes and delusions
of the other Biblical writers. In this view, we are not at
all likely to accept the story of the incarnation as historical
because we find it recorded in St. Luke’s Gospel.
In regard to the second miracle, viz., the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead. Here we have the very keystone
of the Christian position. Take it away, and the whole fabric
collapses. As St. Paul says, “ If Christ be not risen, then is
our preaching vain, and.your faith also is in vain ”. It will
be noted that the event is related with more or less circum
stantially by all four Evangelists; but unfortunately it is
impossible to weave their several accounts into one
harmonious whole, and none of them harmonise, in my
opinion, with that given in the Acts of the Apostles. It is
not, however, my intention to give chapter and verse for
this assertion. Anyone can satisfy himself on this point
by carefully perusing the Gospel narratives themselves. I
will merely refer to one single instance. Jesus tells his
disciples (Matt, xxvi., 32) that after he was risen again, he
could go beyond them into Galilee; the angel repeats the
injunction to Mary Magdalene (Matt, xxviii., 7); and we
read that Jesus himself (Matt, xxviii., 10) on the first day
of the week very early in the morning appeared unto the
two Mary’s, and enjoined them to “ Tell my brethren that
they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me”.
Accordingly the eleven disciples went into Galilee to a
mountain, as Jesus had appointed, and there he appeared
unto them (Matt, xxviii., 16); but in the 24th chapter of
Luke, we have a totally different account, viz., “ That the
eleven disciples were gathered together at Jerusalem on the
first day of the week (1st and 33rd verses), and Jesus stood
in their midst ” (36th verse). It seems certain that if the
�GOD AND REVELATION.
73
eleven, journeyod into Galilee and saw Jesus on a mountain
they did not at the same time remain in Jerusalem and see
him there too.
There is this, however, to be said, that while the Gospel
writers contradict one another in detail, they all agree in
the main point, viz., that Christ rose from the dead; but,
considering the magnitude of the event, the many points
on which they conflict, and that in no single case, not even
in that of the writer of the 4th Gospel, can we be sure that
we have the testimony of an eye witness, all I am disposed
to allow from their unanimity of statement on this par
ticular point is, that at the time the Gospels were written
the belief in the resurrection was a well-established fact
amongst the Christian community. But we derive this
information in a much more dependable form from St. Paul’s
epistles. He wrote at a much earlier date. He stands
prominently forward as a true historical character, and we
know something about him, which is more than can be
said in respect to the four Evangelistic writers.
Here we must pause for consideration. No one, I think,
who reads the letters of the great apostle to the Gentiles, can
fail to be deeply impressed with the writer’s earnestness and
truthfulness of character. From a fanatical persecutor of
the despised sect of the Nazarenes, he became their firmest
supporter. His whole subsequent career was devoted to
the cause of the Master he loved so well. “I count all
things loss”, he says, “ for the knowledge of the excellence
of Christ Jesus my Lord ”.
We feel certain that St. Paul is speaking the truth as far
as he discerns it, and we know that his four most important
letters, viz., one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, and
one to the Galatians, are genuine, whatever the others may
be. At the same time, 1 do not think this excludes the possi
bility of interpolations in the text at a later date. From these
letters we learn St. Paul’s whole mind towards Christianity.
He was, after his conversion, it is unnecessary to say, a firm
believer in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
He goes so far as to say that if Christ be not risen,
Christianity is a delusion, and “ we are of all men the most
miserable.” He claims to have seen Christ, for he says,
“Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?” (1 Cor., 9); and
again, “Last of all he was seen of me, also as of one born
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GOD AND REVELATION.
out of due time” (1 Cor. xv., 8); and we may be quite suro
that he meant what he said.
Further, we have St. Peter’s testimony (see his first
epistle, which, however, we are not sure is genuine)
where he says, “Blessed be the Lord, and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant
mercy, has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’’—that is,
“ who. hath restored us from the state of temporary despaii*
in which we were after his death to a renewed hope by his
resurrection ’; and, again, the author of the Acts (supposed
to be Luke) makes Peter say that it was essential in filling
up the place of Judas “ to choose one who had accompanied
with the apostles all the time that the Lord Jesus went in
and out amongst us, beginning from the baptism of John
unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must
one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.'1'
1
Besides the testimony of St. Paul and St. Peter (if the
latter’s epistle is genuine) and the writer of the Acts, we
have the fact, as Mr. Hatton points out, that although all
was confusion and dismay on the morrow of the Crucifixion,
yet within two months after the death of Christ the Church
at Jerusalem was increasing at a rate at which we have no
reason to suppose the numbei' of Christ’s disciples ever
increased during his lifetime. Mr. Hatton asks :
“ How could the blasted hopes of the apostles revive without
some great substantial and even physical stimulus? If the
person of our Lord was admitted by all to have reappeared
amongst them, no doubt these hopes would have revived, but
not otherwise. For my part I cannot doubt that the best
explanation is that which is alleged to have been, viz., that
Christ himself returned to his apostles after his death, and
that it was his directing mind which gave them a new and
powerful impulse.”
There is no doubt much plausibility in this con
tention, and if resurrections from the dead were in the
nature of ordinary occurrences, or even if we had but one
previous well authenticated instance of a resurrection of a
dead person, we might perhaps accept Mr. Hatton’s ex
planation as the easiest solution of the difficulty: but
have we ?
The late W. R. Greg seems to think we may account
for the belief by supposing that Christ never really
�GOD AND REVELATION.
75
died, but rose from the grave only.
The circum
stance of his being taken down from the. cross much
earlier than was customary—he was only six hours on
the cross; according to St. John only three—coupled
with the fact that Josephus narrates an instance of resusci
tation after crucifixion, which came under his own observa
tion, lends some support to this hypothesis. Nevertheless,
there are so many difficulties in the way of accepting it
that, without pronouncing it absolutely impossible, I think
it cannot be admitted as a solution of the problem.
How, then, did the report arise that Christ had risen from
the dead if he did not come to life again and appear cor
poreally to His disciples after the crucifixion? It by
no means follows that because we are unable to give a
satisfactory answer, the resurrection story must be his
torically true. Events are happening every. day that
are quite inexplicable to us on any hypothesis we can
frame, but that is no reason why we should refer them to
a supernatural origin. How can we account for the belief in
the -miráeles worked by the Curate of Ars, who only died
somewhere about the middle of the present century ?
His miracles, especially those of healing, were vouched for
by half a dozen credible witnesses—doctors of medicine
amongst their number—some of whom may possibly be
alive at the present day. He made more converts than
St. Paul probably did, and gave up his whole life to the
service of the Church he loved so well.
It is best, I think, to acknowledge that at this
distance of time, and with much that is obscure and
hidden from our view, we must be content to leave the
question as to how the belief in the resurrection first
arose, in conjecture, not forgetting that in those days it
was no difficult matter to induce a belief in the resurrec
tion of a dead person. Matthew Arnold points out that
the resurrection of the just was in St. Paul’s time a ruling
idea of a Jewish mind. Herod at once, and without
difficulty, supposed that John the Baptist had risen from
the dead, and in telling the story of the crucifixion, the
writer of the first Gospel added, quite naturally, that when
it was con summ ated many bodies of the saints which slept
arose and appeared unto many. Renan thinks that it is
to Mary Magdalene’s impressionable mind that we owe
the first report of the resurrection. Who can tell ? All
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GOD AND REVELATION.
we know is that in a very short time the belief in their
Masters resurrection spread amongst his followers and
that it was this belief, coupled with an assurance of his
speedy return to judge the world, which made the estab
lishment of Christianity a possibility.
St. Paul’s testimony is of a later date. He doos not
appear on the scene till eight or ten years after the cruci
fixion, and his most important epistles were not written for
certainly ten or fifteen years after that. Nevertheless he
distinctly affirms that he had seen Christ. But, we may
ask, when, and under what circumstances ? Was it on that
celebrated journey of his to Damascus ? He does not say
so m any of his Epistles, but from the narrative in the
Acts it would appear likely. At any rate, we have his
testimony to the fact. But the question is, what is it
worth without the test of cross-examination ?
Dr. Carpenter, speaking of alleged supernatural or non
natural occurrences, says:
“ Granting that the narrators write what they firmly believe
to be true,, as having themselves seen, or thought they had
seen, is their belief sufficient justification for ours ? What is
the extent of allowance which we are to make for prepossession
(1) as to modifying their conception of an occurrence at the
time; and (2) as modifying their subsequent remembrance of
it. . .. . . The result of my enquiries into curious phenomena
is such as to force upon me the conviction that as to all which
concerns the supernatural, the allowance that has to be made
for prepossession is so large as practically to destroy the validity
of any testimony which is not submitted to the severest scrutiny.”
If this be true in regard to events happening towards the
close of the nineteenth century, how much more so in the
first century, when supernatural events were looked upon
in the light of ordinary occurrences! It must be remem
bered, that the history of religious enthusiasm in all ages
supplies us with abundant illustrations of men who have
identified the overpowering impressions of their own ■mind
with divine communication, or have taken subjective
visions for real appearances of divine persons. (The case
of Emanuel Swedenborg is a noted instance in point.)
AV© know that before his conversion St. Paul signalised
himself by the persecution of the early Christian converts,
and that he took a part in the stoning of Stephen. Is it
not conceivable that the dying words of the proto-martyr
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77
may have sunk deeply into his soul, and given him grave
cause for reflection ? When setting out on that journey of
his to Damascus, cannot wo imagino his asking himself
the question : “ Is it not possible that these despised Nazarenes, who so cheerfully sacrifice their lives and their
possessions for the sake of their master, may be right after
all ? If so, then mine must be devil’s work.” Possibly
agitated with thoughts something like these, and overcome
with the fatigues of the journey, is there anything impro
bable in conceiving that cerebral disturbances were induced
which led Paul to see visions and hear voices ? Such
occurrences are by no means uncommon. In this view
there need be nothing miraculous in his sudden conversion.
Once led to see the error of his ways, he would naturally
become as enthusiastic in his efforts on behalf of Christi
anity, as he previously had been in his opposition to it; in
short, Saul the persecutor would become Paul the apostle.
As Renan observes, “Violent and impulsive natures,
inclined to proselytism, only change the object of their
passion. As ardent for the new faith as he had been for
the old, St. Paul, like Oomar, in one day dropped his part
of persecutor for that of an apostle.”
If I remember rightly, the conversion of Ignatius Loyola
approximated somewhat closely to that of St. Paul. Dif
ferences there were, but we read in his life that the Virgin
Mary appeared to him with the infant Jesus in her arms,
and from that hour to the day of his death, his conversion
was as true and genuine as that of St. Paul.
Colonel Gardiner saw Jesus Christ on the cross, sus
pended in the air, and this was the turning-point in his
life.
Samson Stainforth, a Methodist soldier of Cromwell’s
army, thus relates his conversion : “ From twelve at night
till two it was my turn to stand sentinel at a dangerous post.
I had a fellow-sentinel, but I desired him to go away, which
he willingly did. No sooner was I alone than I knelt down,
determined not to rise until the Lord had mercy upon me.
How long I was in this agony I cannot tell, but as I
looked up to heaven I saw the clouds Open and Jesus
hanging on the cross; at the same moment I heard the
words, ‘ Thy sins are forgiven thee
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, before publishing his deistical
work, “ De Veritate,” hoard a similar voice from heaven.
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GOD AND REVELATION.
History abounds with instances of persons mistaking
subjective visions for real appearances. Eoman Catholic
literature is full of them, even at thepresent day. To Eo
man Catholics they are real; why must we assume that the
appearances to St. Paul were of a fundamentally different
«character ? Should you reply, 111 think your explanation
ef St. Paul’s conversion very improbable ”, “Very well,”
I rejoin, “formulate one for yourself”. All I contend
for is that it is not necessary to resort to a supernatural
hypothesis in St. Paul’s case, and to say that the appear
ances to him differed in kind from many we read of in
history, and which we know were merely the result of dis
turbed cerebral action.
I havo been told that Paul was not at all the sort of
person to see visions. Why? He tells us himself he was
weak in body, of presence contemptible, and suffered from
a thorn in the flesh, whatever that may have been. He
speaks of himself (at least it is presumed he is narrating
his own experiences) as having been caught up to the
seventh heaven, and there having seen unspeakable things.
And yet, however unable we may be to accept his visions
as objective facts, how our hearts go along with him
when we read the account of his labours, his love and
sympathy for his fellow-men, and the entire consecration
of his whole life to his master’s cause. Can we wonder that
he had the rare gift of attracting men towards him. Savanarola, Whitefield, Wesley, and many others who might
be named, possessed a similar gift. All thoroughly earnest
men who have an intense conviction of the truth of their
mission have it more or less. We are hardly, then,
surprised, when Agrippa says to St. Paul, “Almost thou
pcrsuadest me to be a Christian”. St. Paul’s earnest
ness and eloquence in pleading on behalf of Christianity
nearly turned the scale in the king’s mind—that is, if we
are to believe the account given in the “Acts ”.
The Eev. C. A. Eowe, in his ‘ ‘ Historical evidence for the
Eesurrection ”, asserts that there were more than 250 persons
living who believed that they had seen Christ alive after
his crucifixion. I call this a monstrous overstatement. It
rests, of course, upon the 6th verse of the 15th Corinthians;
but St. Paul could only have known of the appearance to
the 500, from hearsay. Such evidence at the best, is only
second-hand. What seems probable is, that a year or two
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79
after the crucifixion, a report gained credence, from small
beginnings, that Christ had appeared to a number of
persons at once ; and that in the course of a few years, say
within 10 or 15 years afterwards, the legend had assumed
a more definite form, and had reached the number of 500.
Did St. Paul when speaking of the appearance of the 500
allude to the ascension ? If so, Luke’s account of it does
not accord with the statement, as we are led to infer from
what he says, that the ascension took place in the presence
of the 11 apostles only.
St. Paul says Jesus appeared to James, and then to all
the apostles; but this is only second-hand testimony. They
don’t say so for themselves. St. Peter in his first epistle
speaks of the resurrection as a well-recognised fact, but
he nowhere says, like St. Paul, “ I myself saw Christ after
his resurrection” ; besides there is some doubt as to the
genuineness of the epistle. Dr. Samuel Davidson, a dis
tinguished Biblical critic, assigns it to the year 113. The
testimony of the writer of the Acts is not that of an eye
witness (as to the resurrection I mean), and there are two
instances, if not more, in that work, in which the writer
appears to have drawn upon his imagination. One instance
I refer to, is that of the slaughter of Ananias and Sapphira—a most improbable incident,—as Sir Eichard Han
son in his life of St. Paul justly points out.
However loth we may be at times to reject Paul’s
testimony as to the resurrection, we must remember that it
is almost, impossible to isolate it from the other events
narrated in a book which purports to be an inspired record
conveying a divine message from God to fallen man. Such
a record can hardly contain errors and contradictions on
material points without affecting the credit of the whole.
Dor instance, if we are told that an angel was in the
habit of periodically coming down from heaven to impart
healing properties to the water of Bethesda, or that Jesus
Christ foretold the end of the then existing dispensation
and his second coming in the clouds of heaven to judge the
world during the lifetime of the generation then living
(a statement fully accepted by St. Paul and other Christian
converts), and a few pages afterwards we read that Christ
rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples in a bodily
form, we naturally ask ourselves the question, “If the story
of the angel is incredible, or if the statement as to Christ’s
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GOD AND REVELATION.
second coming has boon falsified by the eflux of time, why
should wo credit the latter, resting as it does on the
evidence of writers about whom we know little—whose
writings may have been interpolated, who certainly shared
the common errors of their day, who were mistaken on
other points bearing on the Christian revelation, and who
were just as likely to mistake subjective visions for
objective ones, as any of the persons I have referred
to?”.
We cannot pick and choose as we like. It is all very
well to say if the evidence is sufficient to establish the fact
of the resurrection, that will carry all else with it. Very
good. But is the evidence sufficient ? I have endeavoured
to show that it is not; and I further maintain that the
evidence, such as it is, is considerably weakened by being
found in close connection with narratives of events which
wo feel satisfied never happened, and sayings which were
never uttered ; or, if uttered, were erroneous. Just remem
ber how easy it would have been to establish the fact of
Christ’s resurrection once, and for all time. Had he shown
himself, as the author of “ Supernatural Religion ” points
out, after his resurrection to the chief priests and elders, and
confounded the Pharisees with the vision of him whom they
had so cruelly nailed to the cross, how might not the future
of his followers have been smoothed, and the faith of many
made strong.
Cardinal Newman seems to think that we cannot account
for the establishment of Christianity excepting on a super
natural basis. He asks, “ Is it conceivable that a rival
power to Ceesar should have started out of so obscure and
ignorant a spot as Galilee, and have prevailed without
some extraordinary and divine gifts ?”.
A writer on Christian evidences also observes that the
great Roman Empire crumbled to pieces before the power
of the Gospel, and the last Pagan emperor when dying
exclaimed in accents of despair, “ Oh, Galilean, thou hast
conquered! ”. Julian (the emperor referred to) said nothing
of the kind. Professor Rendall, in his Hulsem lectures
for the year 1876, after eulogising the character of the
Emperor, adds : “ The Christians fabled how Julian, after
receiving the fatal javelin wound, cried out, ‘ Vicisti
Galilaoe ’
I fear this is not the only story invented by the
early Christians. As regards, however, the decline and fall
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81
of the Roman Empire, and the establishment of Christianity
on its.ruins, I would remark that it was falling to pieces
from its own inherent decay, before Christianity came
in contact with it; and with respect to its conversion to
Christianity, there was, no doubt, that in the new religion
which adapted itself to the wants and circumstances of the
people with whom it came in contact. Lecky says :
“We can be at no loss to discover the cause of its (Christianity’s)
triumph. No religion, under such circumstances, had ever
combined so many distinct elements of power and attraction.
It proclaimed the universal brotherhood of man. It taught
the supreme sanctity of love. It was the religion of the suffering
and the oppressed. The chief cause of its success was the
congruity of its teaching with the spiritual nature of man.”
Wo may extend the list, and say that one of its chief if
not its greatest attraction—to the suffering and oppressed
at any rate—was the overpowering boliof in the speedy
second coming of Christ to judge the world, and reign with
his saints on earth for 1,000 years.
To say that the conversion of the Roman Empire
was as literally supernatural as the raising of the
dead, is to talk, nonsense; but this has been said by
Christian apologists. Just as Christianity adapted itself
to the needs of the people of Palestine, and afterwards
swayed the Roman world, so did Buddhism adapt itself to
the wants of the Aryan races with which it came in contact.
When the question is asked, “IIow is it possible to explain
the success of Christianity without miraculous and divine
assistance
I would retort: How can you explain the
success of Buddhism without similar divine assistance?
1 he latter would be the more difficult task of the two for
what Gautama preached was a gospel of pure human ethics,
divorced not only from a future individual life, but even
from the existence of a God; and yet Buddhism can
boast of . a larger number of followers to-day than
Christianity can—even if we give the latter the benefit of all
her nominal adherents. Who can explain this? and vet
it is- a fact.
J
It has been argued that Christianity has sufficed to satisfy
N® Fritinal A6*? Of ? Bacon’ a Shakespeare, and I
Newton, that it has subdued and tamed the most savage
natures, reclaimed the drunkard and the thief, and proved
a blessing and a consolation to thousands of pious souls
�82
GOD AND REVELATION.
borne down by the sorrows and calamities of life. Hence
the inference is drawn that it must be divine.
That Christianity has claimed the allegiance of some of
the greatest minds of this or any age, I am not in a position
to deny. But it must not be overlooked that in the age of
Bacon and Shakespeare miraculous Christianity did not pre
sent the same difficulties as it does to us. A well-educated
schoolboy is, in certain branches of knowledge, ahead of
the greatest _ sages of antiquity. Sir Matthew Hale was
not inferior in intellect to a modern chief justice, because
he believed in witchcraft. As a well-known writer says,
“ The more enlightened modern who drops the errors of
his forefathers by help of that mass of experience which
his forefathers aided in accumulating, may often be,
according to the well-known saying, ‘ a dwarf on grant’s
shoulders
But as to the opinions of our leading men of the pre
sent day. In considering them as a guide to our own
beliefs, I would eliminate the views of all professional
theologians and teachers like Bishops Lightfoot and
Magee, because, although gifted with great intellectual
powers, they write and argue with preconceived views.
The whole force of their great intellect is used in support
of the beliefs they have been educated in, and for the
dofence of which they hold a brief. They write in all
honesty, but under a prepossession.
As regards the religious opinions of our leading
scientific men, they, it is well known, are opposed to any
view based on supernaturalism. But it is extremely difficult to get at the opinions of men whose opinions are
worth having. For the most part, they keep them to
themselves. It would be ’ extremely interesting to know
the religious views of, say, 100 of our leading statesmen,
men of science, philosophers, poets, and historians, etc.
The Pall Mall Gazette, who is always interviewing some one
or other, and eliciting opinions on divers subjects of
interest, might possibly help us here. Amongst the
mighty dead, who have rejected supernatural Christianity,
I would mention the names of Gibbon, Hume, Adam
Smith, Condorcet, Von Humboldt, Goethe, Thomas
Carlyle, George Eliot, and J. S. Mill.
The latter
points out that it would surprise us if we knew the
religious opinions of some of our leading men. For my
�GOD AND REVELATION.
83
own part, I have known at least two who have
conformed to the religious rites of the Church, and
yet have held “ sceptical views ” on religious subjects.
In respect to what are called strictly orthodox views, I
doubt whether one educated and thoughtful mind amongst
fifty holds them. Who amongst us can truthfully say that
he believes all that is embodied in our Church creeds?
When we hear one of our Church’s dignitaries saying
that he derives the greatest comfort and consolation from
the Athanasian Creed, what are we to think of his habit
of mind ? Is not this a very prostitution of the rational
faculty ?
That the teaching of Christianity has been the
support and mainstay of thousands; that it has in
fluenced the conduct, and altered the lives of thou
sands more, I should be the last to deny. There is
that in Christianity, quite apart from its miracles, which
satisfies the aspirations, and adapts itself to the wants and
circumstances of those brought under its influence. If true
Christianity consists, not in the acceptance of certain
metaphysical dogmas about the person and work of
Christ, and the nature of the Deity, but in the cultivation
of that spirit of self-sacrificing love which was the distin
guishing characteristic of Jesus of Nazareth, then we need
wonder at its claiming the allegiance of our
highest and most cultivated minds—and if (as is generally
the case) the belief in a future state of never-ending hap
piness,, as a reward for certain beliefs and lines of conduct
here, influences the lives of thousands, converting the
drunkard, and reclaiming the harlot and the thief, can we
Wonder at it ? Who denies that Christianity has been
an intense agency for good ? But we must not forget that
there is a reverse side to the picture—a religion based on
the Westminster confession of faith, and the shorter
catechism, has driven thousands to the lunatic asylum.
P1 our own day, the doctrine of hell fire is not quite
exploded. Father Ignatius, not long ago, preaching in a
friend s church, created the greatest excitement and terror
(as well he might) amongst his audience by bellowing
ioith. in a voice of thunder the following :
,
J lo?k /’ut into the churchyard I see the graves of
hundreds of thousands of former villagers who have gone
away. Where have they gone to ? Where ? Where, I ask ?
�84
GOD AND REVELATION.
To hell or to heaven ? Which ? To heaven ? Not half of them.
Your father is in hell! your mother is in hell! My dear people,
added the preacher, you are not accustomed to be spoken to
plainly, and in a matter-of-fact business-like way about your
souls. You are talked to as if religion were a sentimental
namby-pamby kind of thing.”
And Mr. Spurgeon is not far behind Jonathan Edwards1 in
his viows of the state of the lost. He says :
“ What will you think when the last day comes to hear Christ
say, ‘ Depart ye cursed, etc.’, and there will be a voice behind
him saying, ‘ Amen and as you enquire whence came that
voice, you will find it was your mother. Oh, young woman,
when thou art cast away into utter darkness, what will you
think to hear a voice saying ‘ Amen ’—and as you look, there
sits your father, his lips still moving with the solemn curse.”
Is not this another and a lamentable instance of
how men’s minds may become positively perverted, not
to say depraved, by adopting and teaching Calvinistic
theories of belief ? Oh, the pity of it! And yet, I
suppose, Mr. Spurgeon is not less humane naturally than
his unconverted brethren.
But to all this it may very fairly bo replied, “We
have nothing to do with certain individual opinions—
what does revelation teach?”. Well, that is a diffi
cult question to answer. If by revelation is meant the
teaching of the Bible, all I can say is, that it is very
diverse in its teaching, and this diversity is more clearly
seen the more it is submitted to the test of candid exami
nation. I maintain that no single phase of Christianity,
High Anglicanism or Evangelicalism, Trinitarianism or
Unitarianism—eternal torment or universalism—or con
ditional immortality—derives exclusive support from the
whole of the Bible. Each particular phase will find toxts
to support it. How is it that the common saying is literally
true—that we can prove almost anything from the Bible ?
How is it that sects the most opposite in doctrine and
belief do appeal to the Bible for their diverse beliefs ? How
is it that men go on fighting, apparently for ever, the
battle of the texts ? The simple and, I fancy, true expla
nation is that the Bible is written by men writing as
1 J. Edwards says: “However the saints in heaven may have
loved the damned whilst here, their eternal damnation will only serve
to increase a relish for their own enjoyments ”,
�GOD AND REVELATION.
85-
fallible human beings to the best of their judgment and
belief, but holding diverse views, and not always holding
the same views at all periods of their lives.
It is hard to say whether the doctrine of eternal torment is
or is not taught in the Bible. In some places it appears to be,
and in others not. St. Paul seems to me on the whole to
have held the view of the total annihilation of the wicked,
while Jesus Christ (at first sight, at any rate) appears to
have taught the doctrine of everlasting torment; but it
may well be, as Matthew Arnold points out, that all th©
expressions about hell and judgment and eternal fire, used
by him, were quotations from the book of Enoch; that he
found the texts, ready at hand, which his hearers under
stood, and employed the ready-made notions of heaven
and hell and judgment, just as Socrates talked of the rivers
of Tartarus.
In contradistinction to the views of Mr. Spurgeon and
others, it is only fair to quote the Rev. H. Allon, a wellknown Congregational minister. In his lecture on the
moral teaching of the New Testament (published at the
request of the Christian Evidence Society), he says,
“Whatever perplexity our minds may feel about the
possible meaning (possible indeed!) of New Testament
threatenings, we may surely trust his love, that it will bo
nothing from which our human love would shrink
If
this be so, we may at once discard the doctrine of
eternal punishment, for we may be quite sure that
no earthly father, however brutal his instincts may
be, would condemn even the worst of sons to an
eternity of torment, though it should consist only of
mental torment.
But is Mr. Allon’s teaching Biblical ? I doubt it.
The editor of the Christian is very wrath with those
who assert the universal Fatherhood of God.
He
says: “We protest solemnly against this doctrine; first,
because it cannot be found or proved from the Bible;
secondly, because, like all other errors, it subverts the
truth, and also because it does away with the necessity for
the substitutionary work of Christ, for no true father needs
expiation, and only a judge or a ruler demands satisfaction
tor the law broken, and is bound by absoluto justice to
exact punishment; but not so a father, he is ever ready to
forgive ”. There is a good deal of unconscious irony in
�86
GOD AND REVELATION.
all this, but bow far it accords with Biblical tomchiny it
is difficult to say.
For my own part, I am inclined to think that the New
Testament, on the whole, teaches the eternity of punish
ment (if not of physical torment), although a believer in
conditional immortality, or a universalist, will find much
in its pages to support either view. At any rate, when we
find men like Canon Farrar and Professor Plumptre deny
ing that the doctrine of eternal punishment is taught
in the Bible; and others, like the late Dr. Pusey and
the late Bishop of Lincoln (no whit behind the other
two in scholarship) declaring that it is, we begin to
realise the impossibility of arriving at any decision on
the point.
But supposing the Bible does teach the doctrine of
eternal punishment; what then ? Must we believe it ? Not
unless we are also prepared to believe in demoniacal posses
sion and witchcraft. John "Wesley was^ not far wrong,
when he said that to give up a belief in witchcraft was
tantamount to giving up a belief in the Bible.
It has, however, been suggested to me that, admitting
the fallibility of the Church, and the non-inspiration of the
Bible (inspiration is here referred to in the sense generally
understood by Christian apologists), is it not possible that
there may have been a gradual unfolding of revelation.
For instance, in the physical world, secrets of the highest
importance to the race to know—discoveries in medicine,
in chemistry, in electricity, in sanitation, etc.—have been
hidden for thousands of years, and are now only as it were’
coming to light and benefitting the race (we may even yet
be only in the vestibule of knowledge). Is it not possible
that a similar law may hold good in the moral world ?
The planet we inhabit was not fashioned in a day. If the
Deity works by slowly evolving processes in one depart
ment of the universe, may He not do so in another ? Who
shall undertake to deny that he is not now, and ever has
been, slowly but surely preparing the world for the recep
tion of spiritual truths, and bringing it to a knowledge of
Himself. May not all religions that have claimed the
allegiance of mankind contain some truths or adumbra
tions of the truth ? and, amongst all the greatest religious
teachers the world has ever seen, may not the prophet of
Nazareth have received the largest measure of inspiration
�GOD AND REVELATION.
87
of them all, and yet not have been divine in the sense in
which Christians generally understand the term ?
Granting the existence of a Being who desires to make a
revelation to mankind^ I see nothing antecedently improbable
in the • idea. Judging by analogy, it seems to me more
likely to be true than the dogma of a final and stereotyped
revelation (as contended for by Paley) delivered once for
all to an ignorant and barbarous nation, residing in a small
corner of the globe, to the exclusion of other nations, which
were, to say the least of it, in quite as forward a state of
civilisation, and therefore as fit to be the recipients of a
revelation as the nation to which it is declared to have
been especially vouchsafed; but however this may be, the
idea of a gradual unfolding of revelation seems to me, at
present at any. rate, incapable of verification, and must,
therefore, remain an hypothesis at the best.
What, then, is the conclusion to which we have come ?
This. (1) That nature affords no satisfactory evidence of
the existence of a supreme, omnipotent, righteous, and
benevolent Being, who is distinct from and independent of
what. He has created (such evidence as there is rather
pointing to. the existence of an intelligent Being, who is
either wanting in benevolence or wanting in power); (2)
that nature failing us, when we turn to the Christian
revelation whether conveyed through the medium of an
infallible or inspired Church, or book, or both—for evidence
of what we seek, we find it, too, fails to support the desired
conclusion.
This may seem to be a melancholy result at which to
arrive, and the question may be asked, “What then
remains if we have no sure ground of faith—nothing
certain and tangible to reply upon ? ” Are we to eat,
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die, and are no
more seen ? If such a line of conduct yielded the highest
form of happiness, I should be inclined to answer the
question in the affirmative. For intelligent and rational
human beings, however, we know that it does not. But for
those who are not intelligent and rational, what then?
How are we to make it plain to the brutal savage, or even
j r Palely selfish nature, that virtue is better than vice
and honesty better than dishonesty ? Plainly we cannot do
so, the world being constituted as it is at present. As a
thoughtful writer points out: “It is impossible to construct
�88
GOD AND REVELATION.
a chain, of reasoning which shall recommend the grand
principle of morality, apart from any question of rewards
and punishments hereafter, to beings whose only thought
it is to fill their bellies and gratify their lusts.” Upon such
natures the fear of consequences exercises a wholesome re
straint (the fear of hell, as Burns has it, is a hangman’s whip
to h’aud the wretch in order); but because we cannot do so,
does this.afford any justification, to those who know better,
for leading a life of self-indulgence, regardless of the
wants, the rights, and privileges of others, and indifferent
as to whether their conduct affects their neighbours
injuriously or not ? Certainly not. But the question of
“ why must I do what is right when it apparently conflicts
with my own interests to do so ” is one which is foreign
to the scope and purport of this essay. All that I would
remark in this connection is, that it seems tome quite possible
to reject dogma, and to believe that much in the Old and
New Testament (especially the Old) is unhistorical; and
yet to look to Christ as our highest exemplar, and to
acknowledge that the ethics of the sermon on the mount
will hold good for all time, and that the closer we follow
its teaching, the better will it be, not only for our individual
interests, but for those of the community of which we
form but an infinitesimal part.
As to the question of a future state of existence, by
which I mean the continuance in a future fife of the
individual ego, I should bo sorry to dogmatise; but I must
say, the difficulties of imagining anything of the kind are
enormous. That any fool or idiot (as Charles Bray says)
can have the powei’ to bring into existence a dozen beings
that shall bo immortal, and whose condition may ultimately
bo one of everlasting misery, is truly a wonderful and
horrible conception; besides, if wo grant a future life to
a Newton and a Shakespeare, must we not do so too to the
uncultured savage, whoso moral ideas are nil, and whose
language is not much above the clacking of hens, or the
twittering of birds ?
As we stand by the death-bed of one inexpressibly
dear to us, it seems impossible to realise the fact that
wo are parting for ever; but if we reflect a little, it
may occur to us that after the lapse of years our whole
habits and thoughts so change, that a reunion may not be
so desirable as it at one time appeared. The child loses
�GOD AND REVELATION.
89
its mother; the child grows into an adult, forms other
ties, and becomes in time a grey-headed old man ; he has
almost, forgotten his mother, at any rate has ceased to
look forward with rapturous delight to a reunion with her.
Similarly the mother, if in another world, has also pre
sumably formed fresh ties and associations, and would fail
to recognise her son in the old man, whose mind has
presumably changed as much as his body.
As for the argument that without a future state it is
impossible to justify the ways of God to man, it has no
weight with those, of course, who are not Theists, and
even for those who are, the argument seems to be a poor
one. Mr. Voysey writes: “I would leave the Atheist far
behind in my maledictions against the gross and unspeak
able cruelty and immorality of the course of this world, if
there were no future state ” ; and Paracelsus says :
‘ ‘ Truly there needs another life to come !
If this be all----And other life awaits us not—for one
I say ’tis a poor cheat, a stupid bungle,
A wretched failure. I, for one, protest
Against it, and hurl it back with scorn
But it seems to me that if God’s dealings with man cannot
be justified here, they are not likely to be justified here
after.
Macaulay observes:
“Tn truth all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who
have attempted without the help of revelation to prove the
immortality of man, appear to have failed deplorably.”
And Professor Huxley says :
“ Our sole means of knowing anything is the reasoning
faculty which God has given us, and that reasoning faculty
not only denies any conception of a future state, but fails to
furnish a single valid argument in favour of the belief that the
mind will endure after the dissolution of the body.”
Nevertheless, it may. At any rate, whether there is a
future life or not, it is plainly for our advantage (I mean
for those who are civilised human beings) to improve our
condition here, and to cultivate those moral instincts, which,
whatever may be their origin, have become part and parcel
of our nature, to the best of our ability—confident that in
so doing we shall be playing our right part in the world,
�90
GOD AND REVELATION.
and at the same time best fitting ourselves for any future state
that may possibly be in store for us, and should none await
us, then this world’s advantages, in their highest sense,
will at least have been secured to us.
���
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR
NATURAL REASON
DIVINE REVELATION:
AN
APPEAL FOR FREETHOUGHT.
By JULIAN.
EDITED BY ROBERT LEWINS, M.D.
“ Yet let us ponder boldly—’tis a base
Abandonment of reason to resign
Our Right qoThought—our last and only place
Of refuge ;^this, at least, shall still be mine ;
Though from our birth the faculty divine
Is chained and tortured—cabined, cribbed, confined,
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine
Too brightly on the unprepared mind,
The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.”
*
Byron.
"Philosophy, Wisdom, and Liberty support each other; he who will
not reason is a bigot ; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a
slave. ”—Academical Questions.
“ Post mortem nihil est, ipsa que mors nihil.”
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH,
28, STONECUTTER STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�Hl-?
M4-20
PREFACE.
K
The following tract embodies an argument for the reason
ableness and all-sufficiency of Naturism, and the nullity of
Supernaturalism, as recorded by pretended divine revela
tion, in the constitution of the organic and inorganic world.
It has been written at my request, and on data of my
suggestion, by the same profound scholar and divine with
whom I was associated some years ago, in “ Replies to the
•Lectures of the Christian Evidence Society,” which lectures
obtained a wide circulation under the title “ Modern
Scepticism,” and in a-series of pamphlets “Biology versus
Theology,” in which we laboured to controvert the dominant
theology of Christendom, nowhere so fatuously rampant,
in our day, as in this country.
The theses on which is based, on this occasion, the
refutation of all spiritual superstition are twofold—ist, the
identity of thought and cerebration, or function of the brain,
•and 2nd, the identity of all vital or physiological function
—including, of course, sensation and thought, with the
-ordinary cosmical operations of the entire external universe
•—a unity attributable to the identity of the physical force
active in sentient life and inorganic motion. These theses
have been adequately elaborated in two papers I published
in 1869 and 1873, entitled “ The Identity of the Vital and
Cosmical Principle,” and “ Life and Mind on the Basis
•of Materialism,” in which I endeavoured to place on exact
�4
PREFACE.
scientific data the sublime fact that sensation and thought
have, for their production, no special spiritual factor, but
depend entirely on the same physical agency we find operative
throughout the cosmos in light, heat, and motion. I need
not, therefore, at present refer further to the subject.
Nothing can possibly be simpler or more intelligible, even
to the least-instructed mind, than the rationale of the
following pages, resolving, as it does, all objective pheno
mena, all “ the choir of heaven and furniture of earth—in a
word, all those appearances which compose the mighty
frame of the world”—to quote Bishop Berkeley in his
“Principles of Human Knowledge,” into mere subjective
or personal perception. We thus can regard everything
outside ourselves as parts, of a mighty phantom, the
actuality of which may or may not be real, and get rid of ex
perimental physics and all specialism, striking out a short and
direct path—the path of common sense and healthy feeling,
from which all self or world analysis, the habitual and
persistent attitude of scientific research, widely diverges—to
the one essential science—viz., self-knowledge, on which
alone can be based the true theory and rational, practical
conduct of human existence. In this manner we reconcile
the apparent antitheses between object and subject, the ego
and non-ego, between the microcosm of the living body
and the universe of phenomena lying beyond, or outside
that mirror and re-duplication in parvo of the macrocosm.
To repeat, in other words, the above statement, it seems
surely a self-evident proposition, as formulated more or less
clearly by early Greek philosophers, and emphatically by
Protagoras, that “ man can think nothing except himself,
and which self and its anthropomorphism must be therefore
to humanity, the sole measure and standard of all existing
and non-existing or imaginary things.” This standpoint
makes thus everything virtually ideal or anthropological,
�PREFACE.
5
nothing being tangible, perceptible, cognisable by the five
senses or by thought, except ordinary exoteric sensations or
perceptions, and those more complex, occult, esoteric ones
which we term ideas or ideation, the latter clearly recog
nisable as the special or peculiar sensations or perceptions
of what is termed in modern physiology the hemispherical
ganglia of that very complex congeries of organs, within the
head, popularly comprehended’ as one viscus, under the
name cerebrum or brain.
As, therefore, we can be only sensible of our own percep
tions, exoteric and esoteric—the first the mere reflection of
the outer world, and the latter, or ideation, the specific
function of the brain (vulgarly speaking) itself, both of
which can be ultimately traced to the cellular grey substance
of the central nervous apparatus—it is perfectly manifest
that the source of all perception and ideation is located in
the material organism of the body, and that all divine
worship and religion is a mere form of mental and moral
confusion and transparent delusion, being necessarily solely
Self-idolatry—the prostration of one portion of our feelings
and faculties before another portion—-seeing that beyond
ourselves it is, in the nature of things, impossible for our
feelings and faculties to range. Were man a dual being,
compounded of matter and spirit, as stated in our Bible and
in other records of the supernatural genesis of our race, it
is perfectly patent that Pantheism must be the rational
solution of all vital and cosmical problems.
For on the
supposition that matter is supernaturally vivified, all things
must be an emanation or efflatus of the divine spirit or
breath—one and indivisible—a position entirely reversed, and
Materialism substituted for that ancient and sublime onto
logy, as soon as we become illuminated by the conviction
that all things and all nothings, alike abstract and concrete—
in one word, all consciousness of our own personality and
�6
PREFACE.
our surroundings, including transcendental idealism and theDivine Idea itself, can be traced to the direct natural
operation of a special portion of our anatomical structure—
a structure, the functions of which are amenable, just as.
much as those of all other corporeal organs, to ordinary
natural law.
From this vantage ground, therefore, natural reason is.
seen to be the supreme judge and arbiter of all conceivable
objects, relegating all Supernaturalism and Revelation into
the realm of the imaginary and irrational, thus realizing the:
truth of the Laureate’s verse :
“ I take possession of man’s mind and deed,
I care not what the sect may bawl;
I sit as God, holding no form of creed,
But neutralizing all.”
Robert Lewins.
London, March, 1879.
�CONTENTS.
PAGE
SECTION I.
.....
BELIEF AND INFIDELITY
9
SECTION II.
ALL RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS ARE MUCH ALIKE.
.
.
.
II
SECTION III.
EVERY RELIGIOUS SYSTEM CLAIMS TO BE DIVINE .
.
14
SECTION IV.
TRUTH DESIRABLE
..
.
.
•
. •
•
21
.
23
.
2$
SECTION-v.
WE BELIEVE MANY THINGS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND
SECTION VI.
WHAT MAN CAN AND WHAT HE CANNOT KNOW
.
SECTION VII.
MAN
A
MATERIAL
OBJECTS
BEING
SURROUNDED
BY
MATERIAL
......
30
SECTION VIII’.
SENSIBILITY A PROPERTY OF ORGANISED MATTER .
.
31
�8
CONTENTS.
PAGE'
SECTION IX.
BRAIN
AND
BRAINWORK
ALSO
DUE
TO
MATERIAL
ORGANISM
33-
SECTION X.
MAN
CAN
THINK
OF ETERNITY,
AND
THEREFORE
IS
ETERNAL—THIS STATEMENT CONFUTED
36-
SECTION XI.
MAN IN NOWISE DIFFERENT FROM OTHER ANIMALS, EXCEPT
SO FAR AS THE ORGANIC STRUCTURE OF ONE ANIMAL
MAY DIFFER FROM ANOTHER .
38
SECTION XII.
IF MAN IS NOT A DUAL BEING, COMPOUNDED OF SOUL AND
BODY, THERE CAN HAVE BEEN NO REVELATION
40-
�NATURAL REASON DIVINE
REVELATION.
“ Deliver not the tasks of might
To weakness, neither hide the ray
From those, not blind who want for day,
Though sitting girt with doubtful light.”
Tennyson.
SECTION I.
BELIEF AND INFIDELITY.
Tees world is now, and ever has been, divided into two great
parties—-those who think for themselves, and those who credu
lously accept what they are told to believe. Reformers and
infidels are the thinkers ; the orthodox and laissez aIler party
are those who believe on the authority of others, and ask no
questions. The latter are too lazy, or too interested, or too
ignorant to wish for progress; the former is the salt of the
earth, and would go from bad to good, from good to better,'
and from better to best, regardless of all interests but those
of fact and truth. The orthodox never think for them
selves, they only “think” to understand what they are told
to believe. They are the mere exponents of a routine
system consecrated by custom, which they feel themselves,
bound to support. The infidel, on the other hand, takes,
nothing upon trust, nothing on the ipse- dixit of others, and
holds nothing to be sacred which his own conviction does,
not approve. The former deify tradition, the latter would
“ prove all things, and hold fast [only] that which is good.”
If any descrepancy between reason and dogma occurs tothe orthodox, he gives up reason, experience, nature, and
clings to dogma; but the infidel pays no reverence to any
thing which stultifies his reason, contradicts general experi
ence, and does violence to the laws of nature. The one
thinks it would be better to sink with the time-honoured
ship ; the other would save his life, and persuade others to
do so likewise.
St. Paul was an infidel in Judea, so was the “ man Christ
Jesus.” It was as much for their infidelity and exposure of
priestcraft as for sedition that Jesus and his disciples were
opposed by the orthodox hierarchy, scourged, imprisoned,.
�IO
NATURAL REASON versus
and in some cases put to death. The Mahometans call
all Christians giaours—that is, infidels—because unbelievers,
in Mahomet and the Koran. In a word, a believer is not
one who believes truth, but one who slavishly pins his faith
to a creed, whether true or false.
Take our own nation, for example. There was a time:
when the Druids were the great teachers, and if any private
or public individual disobeyed their decrees, or attempted,
to question their authority, he was excommunicated and ex
cluded from the right of sacrifice. The Romans came
next, displaced the oak-worshippers, put flamens and
augurs in their sees, and Polytheism became the orthodox
creed of the land. Again the scene shifted, and the Saxons,
lorded it over England. Neither Druidism nor the Roman
mythology suited the new-comers, so Odinism was set
up, and the down-trodden islanders were told to look
forward after death to a “ feast of skulls ”; and those who
doubted or disbelieved were threatened, not. with everlasting
fire, so terrible to the dwellers in the hot east, but with am
ever-living death in thick-ribbed ice. Truth is one, it
changes not, it is wholly regardless of what men like or
loathe, believe or disbelieve; but orthodoxy, like the
chameleon, is white or black, blue or green, according to>
circumstances. In one place it is Brahmanism, in another
Buddhism, in a third Polytheism, in a fourth MumboJumboism. In England it was once the worship of oaks,
then the worship of Jupiter, then of Odin, for falsehood
can have no stability. While still the Saxons were in.
power, a band of missionaries came from Rome with censer
and crucifix, chasuble and crosier, under whose teaching
the ignorant and unlettered islanders abandoned Teutonic,
for Roman Catholic orthodoxy ; so the trinity of Odin was.
changed for the trinity of Galilee, and the old orthodoxy
became the new heterodoxy. Kings were the nursing;
fathers and queens the nursing mothers of the new faith,,
till infidelity, in the form of “ Protestantism,” taught men tobe dissatisfied with the faith and legends of the prevailing
creed, and Anglicanism was established as “ the way, the
truth, and the life.” Since then education has been at
work, and now more than ever men are beginning to think
for themselves, and to ask their own judgments if the hour
for a new departure has not struck. The infidel is always,
the movement party, which, as St. Paul says, “ forgetting
those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto.
�DIVINE REVELATION.
II
those things which are before, press towards the mark of
the [only] prize” worth attaining—that is, truth. They are
the thinking minority—always a small party, because the
multitude, as a multitude, is a mere capui mortuum—always.
Unpopular, because they pay no more heed to legends, tra
dition, and creeds than to sounding brass and tinkling,
cymbals.
SECTION II.
ALL RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS ARE MUCH ALIKE.
There is a wonderful family likeness in all the religious
systems of the past and present. The general programmeir a self-existing Eternal Being and three working deities—a.
period of darkness and water—a creation—a golden age—
a degeneracy—and a general flood. It matters little to
what part of the world we turn, whether India or China,,
Scandinavia or Greece, America, Africa, or European.
Christendom.
It might be • difficult to account for this similarity in a
satisfactory manner,* but it would be preposterous to
suppose that all these traditions are more or less mutilated
versions of the Mosaic original, inasmuch as many of the
nations could not have known even the name of the Jewish
lawgiver, and others would know as much about him as.
Aristotle did of Britain, or Virgil of Thule, where, Ptolemy
tells us, “the days are twenty-four hours long at the
[spring] equinoxes” [w?].
What is the Hindu story ? Like the Jewish, it presupposes,
a self-existing Eternal Unit, invisible, all-potent, soul of all
created life, from whom all spring, to whom all will return,
the Altogether-all before creation, the All-in-all during
creation, and the All-of-all at the consummation.
No doubt there is great vagueness in both the Hindu
and Jewish notions of Deity, nor is the Jewish perplexity at
all relieved by the Christian dogma. All speak of the One
Eternal, but all employ in the business of creation a divinetri'ad. Thus, in the first chapter of Genesis we areintroduced to Elohim, the Logos or Word, and the spirit
* To me no difficulty whatever exists, the substantial unity of thehuman mind exhibiting itself everywhere independently in similar
forms.—R. L.
�12
NATURAL REASON versus
that moved on the face of the deep; and that there may be
no doubt on the matter, St. John tells us the Word or
Logos, which was “at the beginning,” was the Creator of all
things, and the very Deity which was “ made flesh and
dwelt among us.” So the Hindus are taught to believe in
One Only Everlasting Potentate, and yet in the trimurti, or
three operative deities, called Brahma, Vishnu, and Sheva.
The incarnations or avatars of the second person of the
Hindu triad cannot fail to bring forcibly to mind the
avatar or incarnation of the second person of the Christian
Trinity.
Going back to the cosmogony, according to Indian
mythology, we read that before creation the Eternal called
into being the sacred triad, that Brahma was the father of
spirit, that “all things were made by him, and without him
was not anything made which is made.
In him was
light, and the light was the life of man.” So Manu speaks
of Brahma, and so St. John has spoken of Jesus. Having
created the elements, Brahma next called into being the
whole animal world, together with angels and demons, the
seas, the clouds, and the host of heaven. When all was
finished, the Eternal gave Brahma the sacred volume called
the Rig-Veda, of which the Shasta is a targum. The
volume was God’s revelation to man, and contains not only
a history of creation, a code of duties, and a series of
prophecies, but also sets forth what feasts and fasts, what
rites and ceremonies, the faithful are expected to observe.
The Guebres, or ancient Persians, presupposed a One
Eternal, but they also had their working triad, Oromasdes
the principle of good, Arimanes the principle of evil, and
Mithras, the principle of beauty. Zoroaster tells us that
Oromasdes, in the character of creator, took six unequal
periods to complete his work of creation : In the ist period
he made the heavens; in the 2nd, the water; in the 3rd, dry
land; in the 4th, grass, the herb yielding seed, and the trees
after their kind whose seed is in itself; in the 5th, the fish
of the waters, the birds of the air, and the cattle of the field ;
and in the 6th, man.
The Aztecs, or ancient Mexicans, have a legend wonder
fully like that told by Moses. They say that God created a
man and a woman out of the dust of the earth, but their
offspring became so wicked that a flood destroyed the
whole race except a priest named Tezpi, with his wife and
family, who were preserved in a huge ark. In this ark
�DIVINE REVELATION.
13
Tezpi saved a vast number of animals and much seed.
When he fancied the waters were subsiding, he sent forth a
bird, called Aura, but the bird never returned; he then sent
forth others, but one only, the smallest of them all, came
back to the ark, bearing an olive-twig in its beak.
The old Virginian tribes had a mythology equally striking.
According to this legend, there is a great eternal and- two
lesser deities. Water was the first created element, and
woman was taken out of man.
• The Chipionyans, another large tribe of American
Indians, assert that at one time water covered the face of
the whole earth, but a bird (the spirit of Jewish mythology),
brooding over the water, caused dry land to appear from the
great brilliancy of its eyes, after which the same bird made
all the different parts of creation one after the other. In
the process of time the race of man became so rebellious,
that a great flood swept every living thing away. The
Hurons have a legend that there was once a time when
there was only a single man on the earth, and feeling
very desolate, he went to heaven to look for a companion.
The Eternal gave him Atahentsik as a helpmeet, and in
time the woman had two sons, who killed each other.
It would be easy to multiply these legends, but we shall
add only one more, that of the ancient Romans. Of this we
have the fullest detail in Ovid’s “ Metamorphoses,” so that
he who runs may read it. The poet tells us there was once
a time when heaven, and earth, and sea were all mixed to
gether in a.chaotic mass; there was no sun at that time, no
moon, no dry land. The Creator wished, and immediately
the heavens were lifted from the earth ; and the waters being
gathered into their bed, dry land appeared. Again the
Creator wished, and the earth was rolled into a globe, the
atmosphere separated the clouds from the earth, and the
starry host shone forth in the vault of heaven. Again the
■ Eternal wished, and the air, the sea, and the dry land were
stocked with living organisms. Last of all, man was made,
“of a larger understanding but, says the poet, “ whether
from an immediate divine germ, or whether the earth, being
fresh from the hands of God, retained a certain divine
quality, we • know not; all we know is, that Japetus
fashioned man in the image of deity, and gave him
dominion over all the earth. For a long period the newcreated race enjoyed a golden age, an Eden of innocence
and delight; but a change came over the earth, and the
�14
NATURAL REASON versus
golden age lapsed into the silver, the silver into the brazen,
■and the brazen into the age of iron. From time to time
-deity pleaded with man, but wickedness at length grew
rampant, a flood swept over the whole earth, and a new
race arose from the one pair which was alone saved.”
We are so accustomed from early childhood to regard
the Bible as an inspired book, wholly sui generis and
■entirely unique, so unlike every other book, that we are
overwhelmed with amazement when the truth first dawns
upon us that the legends and traditions there on record are
■common to every quarter of the globe, and it needed no
more inspiration for Moses to bring them together than for
the Hindus, the Guebres, the Aztecs, the North American
savages, and the hundreds of other nations or tribes which
have from time immemorial repeated them in their legendary
lore.
SECTION III.
EVERY RELIGIOUS SYSTEM CLAIMS TO BE DIVINE.
The Jews assert that their Scriptures were given by direct
inspiration, but it is by no means certain what they meant
by their Scriptures before the Babylonish captivity, pro
bably the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses. It seems,
however, that no great reverence was paid to these Books,
or care taken of them, at least in the reigns of the latter
kings. It surely must strike every one as most strange that
the High Priest should not know where to find so precious
and sacred a volume, yet it is quite certain that the Book
was mislaid or lost when Josiah succeeded to the crown.
This young king began his reign with great activity and
zeal, which diffused itself into the priesthood, for Hilkiah,
•after diligent search or some lucky accident, stumbled on
the sacred volume, and said to Shaphan, the scribe, “ I
have found the Book, the Law. I found it in the Lord’s
house.” This intelligence was thought so surprising that
:Shaphan went forthwith to the King and told him, saying,
“Hilkiah, the priest, has found the Book of the Law.”
(2 Chr. xxxiv., 14-16). How marvellous does this sound!
Here was a Book said to be inspired, said to be sacred,
said to be guarded by the Jews as the most precious of
-relics, actually lost and found. Hilkiah, although the High
�DIVINE REVELATION.
15
Priest, did not even know of its existence. It was so
unexpectedly discovered that it was told to the King as a
matter of national congratulation. Moses is said to have
-commanded that it should be kept, with Aaron’s rod and a
pot of manna, in the ark of the covenant; and had this
injunction been obeyed, the High Priest would have known
in a moment where to look for it; but, like Aaron’s rod
and the pot of manna, so little care was taken of these
. relics that all three were lost. The rod and the manna
were never found, but Hilkiah did happen to discover the
lost volume of the law. When Nebuchadnezzar destroyed
the Temple, and took the Jews into captivity, the Book of the
Law was destroyed; and during the seventy years’ captivity
there seem to have been no Scripture writings at all. Some
fifty or sixty years afterwards Ezra and Nehemiah, with
three or four others, set about hunting up all fragments,
traditions, and MSS. which could be found, and these
detached pieces were collated and edited on the judgment
Of the compilers; but these compilers never thought it
worth, their while to preserve the originals, so that no one
can compare the new editions with the old. It seems
almost incredible that men like Nehemiah and Ezra should
have taken the pains to hunt up the MSS., and yet should
have taken none to preserve them. One would think they
would have guarded them with the utmost jealousy, and
taken every possible precaution to transmit them to pos
terity ; but no, Ezra’s version was thought enough, and
the originals, like the Ossian of Macpherson, the Book of
Mormon, and Rowley’s Poems, “ edited ” by Chatterton,
no one ever saw. It is now a general belief among exegists
that they never existed of an older date, or in any other
form than that in which we now possess them. All this,
however, is very different from what we are taught to believe,
that the Jews, before the captivity, always preserved their
Scriptures with such sacred and jealous care that not a letter
or point could be changed without instant detection. The
very contrary seems to have been the fact; they paid so
little heed to them, if indeed they were in existence at all,
that they were sometimes wholly lost, and that till Ezra
edited the stray MSS., and pieced them together, no authentic
copy of the whole volume anywhere existed—certainly neither
Ezra nor Nehemiah knew of one.
All that has been
said of the Old Testament applies with equal force to the
New. Assuming that our present compilation which passes
�i6
NATURAL REASON versus
under that name is the original volume, it must not be for
gotten that this canon was not established till the year 494,
which would be the same as if ten or twelve gentlemen of
the present day sat in judgment on certain writings issued
in the reign of Edward III., by authors of whom nothing is
known, and whose very names in many cases are doubtful—
these works, be it remembered, not being works of taste,
but professed records of miracles and “ historic facts,” said
to have taken place some 500 years ago.
Let us take an actual example from the reign of Edward I.
It is recorded in full in Rymer’s “Fcedera,” Vol. I., Part II.,
p. 771, Edward I. laid claim to Scotland, and preferred his
claim before a regular synod of bishops, abbots, legates,
and barons. His chief plea was that God had confirmed his
title by special miracle ; and this he made good from a book
entitled “The Life and Miracles of St. John of Beverley.”
The tenour of this extract is as follows: In the reign of
Adelstan the Scots invaded England, and committed great
devastation. Adelstan went to drive them back, and on.
reaching the Tyne, found that the foe had retreated. At
midnight St. John of Beverley appeared to the King, and
bade him cross the river at daybreak, for he “ would surely
discomfit the foe.” Adelstan obeyed the heavenly mes
senger, and reduced the whole kingdom to submission.
On reaching Dunbar on his return march, Adelstan prayed
that some sign might be vouchsafed to him to satisfy all
future ages that God, “ by the intercession of St. John of
Beverley, had given to England the kingdom of Scotland.”
Then struck he with his sword the basaltic rocks near the
■coast, and lo ! the blade sank into the solid flint (to use the
exact words) “ as if it had been butter,” cleaving it asunder
for “ an ell or more.” And the cleft remains to the present
hour, in testimony of the miracle. The wise men of the
two nations were convinced by this legend, and as the
fissure was there they could not disbelieve their eyes, so
judgment was given in favour of King Edward, and Scot
land was declared a fief of England. This miracle was
said to have been performed some 500 years before. The
wisest King of England so firmly believed it that he urges
it as an undoubted fact; and the wisest men of two realms
allowed the claim to be incontrovertible. What is the
obvious inference ? What can it be but this ? The convoca
tion called in 494 was not wiser nor more serious than the
convocation assembled by Edward I. in 1291 > both assem-
�DIVINE REVELATION.
17
blies saw no difficulty in the miraculous stories on which
they had to arbitrate, quite the reverse. The miracles
were proof with them, strong as any natural fact, and both
decided that “ no men can do such works, except God be
with them.” If a king or queen tried the same plea now,
if France laid claim to England, or England to France, on
the authority of some miracle performed 500 years ago,
and testified by a Devil’s Dyke or rock of Calpe, the
pleaders of such “ old wives’ fables ” would be thought fit
inmates for Earlswood or Colney Hatch. That a conclave
of acute lawyers, most learned prelates, calm-judging barons,
and the elite of two nations decided the miracle at Dunbar
was an undoubted fact, would not weigh a straw in any
court of justice in the present century; and that a number
of scholars, wise, honest, and discreet, accepted the
miraculous records which they thought proper to endorse
as worthy of credit, can really have no more weight with
men of unprejudiced judgment. Both synods were honest
after their lights, both judged righteous judgment according
to their conviction ; but if the cases were tried again in our
own days, no man can doubt that the sentences would be
reversed,
Allowing, however, for the sake of argument, that the
canon was wisely selected in 494, we have very little evi
dence that the compilation now called the New Testament
was the one approved of. Dr. Davidson, in his “Introduction
to the New Testament,” tells us that the fourth Gospel, like
the First Epistle of John, is notoriously doubtful. Indeed,
so doubtful is it that though the Christian Evidence Society,
in 1871, selected the then most learned Churchman toplead
for it in their course of lectures delivered in St. George’s Hall,
neither the Society nor its author, the present Bishop of Dur
ham, Dr. Lightfoot, would venture to print the lecture. In the
Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, held at West
minster, February 10th, 1870, the Bishop of Winchester
moved for a revision of the New Testament, “for everybody
knew there were in the present version parts which did not
really belong to the canonical Scriptures.” The Bishop of
Gloucester and Bristol seconded the proposal, and instanced
the truth of the remark by “ the early part of St. Matthew’s
Gospel, the Book of Revelation, the Epistle to the Hebrews,
and some of the Pastoral Epistles.” He next pointed out
the doxologies of Matthew and Mark in proof of the trinity
as doubtful. The Bishop of St. David’s spoke next, and
�18
NATURAL REASON versus
said that some of the prophecies pressed into the Christiancause were certainly no prophecies at all, as, for example,
the desire of all nations” applied to Christ, the “ Lord our
Righteousness,” and so on. The Bishop of Llandaff followed
m the same strain, and said the Second Epistle of Peter was
confessedly spurious, and the Epistle of James was marked
as supposititious by Eusebius and Jerome.
,we have Parts
the Gospels of Matthew
and Mark, all the Gospel of John, the Book of Revelation,
the Epistle to the Hebrews, the First Epistle of John, the
Second of Peter, and the Epistle of James, all pronounced
to be forgeries—-this, be it remembered, not by foes, but
friends—-not by infidels, but prelates—so late as the year1870. Must it not force itself upon the conviction of every
one that a compilation so confessedly dishonest is wholly
worthless as an authority ? Is it not palpable that the
Church which would knowingly palm off false documents,
as true might readily tamper with genuine and authentic
books if it served their purpose ? Must it not be evident
that these prelates and scholars, when they repeat that “ all
Scripture is given by -inspiration of God,” are saying
what m their hearts they know to be false, and are with
■
6^eS °Pen deluding the people ? Orthodoxy, indeed f'
Why the very prelates of the Church are infidels of their
own Scriptures 1
Having disposed of the inspired character of our own
Scriptures, it will be an easy task to show how other religious
institutions have laid claim to a similar divine origin. Re
ference has been made already to the Vedas of Brahmanism.
Probably the oldest book in the world, older even than the
Pentateuch supposing it to be coeval with the settlement
of the Hebrews in Palestine—is the Rig-veda, reduced into
writing by Vyasa, but existing in an oral or traditional
form from the foundation of the world,” if we may trust
the statement of the Brahmans. It is divided into two parts,,
the first being prayers and hymns to be used in sacrificial
o enngs, the second being of a more diffusive characters.
Three other Vedas are based on the Rig-veda, and the wholeresemble in character the Jewish Scriptures, inasmuch as
they contain psalms, prophecies, history, together with di
rections for religious rites and ceremonies. The last of the
Vedas has incantations also, charms, and exorcisms. They
-all claim a divine origin and immemorial antiquity.
Every one read in Roman history will remember that:
�DIVINE REVELATION.
19
Numa, when he wished to organise a religious system for
the new Roman State, used to retire to the sacred grove;
and as he promulgated a law, or instituted a religious rite,
he gave out publicly that he had received instruction from
the nymph Egeria, a prophetic divinity. He knew enough
of human weakness to feel assured that the name of Egeria
would outweigh in authority a whole multitude of mere
mortals like himself. The history of Romulus his. mira
culous origin from a vestal virgin and God, his translation to
heaven in a storm of thunder and lightning in presence of
the whole Roman people, and his subsequent appearance in
a glorified form as the god Quirinus—finds an exact parallel
in the case of Christ. Mahomet adopted a similar device.
He retired from the sight of man, and the people were
taught to believe that Gabriel, the archangel, had descended
in visible shape to make a revelation. Mahomet dictated
the revelation to a scribe, it was then read to the people,
and the MS. thrown into a box. For twenty-three years
revelation after revelation was brought from heaven, and
when any moot point was to be decided, the archangel went
to the “lowest heaven” to consult the original document,
which was “ written by the rays of the sun,” and kept in a
coffer studded with inestimable jewels. Occasionally, on a
great emergency, God himself or the Holy Ghost would
resolve a doubt ; but the main body of the Koran was
revealed from time to time by Gabriel, and taken from the
sacred book, “eternal as God himself.”
The book of the “ Latter-day Saints ” is no exception to
the general rule. Joseph Smith asserts it was revealed to
him by an angel, as the Koran was revealed to Mahomet by
Gabriel. Smith says on Sept. 21st, 1823, he was in secret
prayer, when the whole house seemed to be “ one vast
consuming fire ”while he gazed in consternation at the
fire, like that of the burning bush, there came out of the
midst thereof “a personage” with a face like lightning,
who announced himself an angel sent from God. “ Thy
prayers are heard,” said the heavenly apparition, “ and God
hath chosen thee to.be a vessel unto great honour, to carry
out his divine purposes, and bring in the millenium which is
at hand.” He then gave him a roll, containing a brief sketch
of the aborigines of America. Having so done, he told
Smith where certain sacred plates were deposited. It was
on the west side of a hill about four miles from Palmyra,
Ontario. Five years rolled on from this time before Smith
�20
NATURAL REASON versus
was allowed to have the plates in his own keeping although
he was permitted occasionally to look on them. InSeptembfr
1827 the angel told him he was then sufficiently holy to be’
tested with the sacred documents, and theTecord was
P aced in his hands. The plates were eight inches bv
ZXTnXTthii? “ Shee? ? tin; the "hole "madeI
pne six inches m thickness, and they were strung on three
nngs. running through the whole of them The wrHnn
th? ch^rac™redaEm?tIan’f”anCl “ SmithcouId notdeciphe?
“ Urim end L P
»of lnlerPretlng spectacles, ciled
“m ”utodJ»Ur?m,?’”,WaS g,''Cn him' The record thus
iraculously revealed contained a history of America
“"I 0:
Mmroon"”
d Ofh lt bbel’- rtl the command Pof pta
“ ”God
till the fi]lnec.eAlP;-42IlbhBtabuned hy“ bg
ill the fulness of time had come. Smith, by the aid of his
interpreting glasses, read the plates to Oliver Cowdery who
InTci Xted " Haa‘i0”’ a"d, “ 1830 the "^“tilted
7' HavinS no longer need of the original the
trelsufy of God7
and dePosited them in’ the
rboiu 7 ? • v ’ -Of course this marvellous tale was
allenged in these infidel days, when men will not always
Se ‘ 0Bo?kSrfMno m,rac“lous s,tories ’ and “
found that
the Book of Mormon was almost a verbal copy of a MS
romance wruten m l8l6 by Solomon Spaldingflut ne^
be wearisome t0 pursue this subject further nor
would it answer any good end. If these examples do’ not
suffice to prove our point, the mere addition of twenty oJ
thirty similar ones would not avail to do so. Jew and
Soth and
beT
the worshiPPer of the sacred
Ind Cuelc tn m er.rn th£ pr°phet Mormon’ Moslem
and 41 -bu’dl affirm.their sacred laws were revealed bv
the Almighty and their Scriptures were inspired records
eternal m God s purposes, infallible, and indispensable for
treasT
Wdfa7 of “ank“d> “>
"Meh is
treason to the majesty of heaven, and the greatest crime
possible of which apostate mortality can be guilty.
�DIVINE REVELATION.
21
SECTION IV.
TRUTH DESIRABLE.
truth is desirable may seem at first sight a self-evident
■statement, but if self-evident it is rarely accepted, and still
more rarely acted on. The rule is not truth, but fashion,
prestige, the stamp of society—not what is true, but what
popular opinion and the influential part of the community
choose to countenance. Few would blush to do or think
*cvil provided they followed the multitude in so doing, but
many would blush to think or do what society pronounces
to be unconventional and of bad ton.
Truth is for the infidel, the reformer, whose conscience
revolts at untruth; the “good, easy world” runs with the
■stream. Those who think for themselves are generally con
sidered dangerous members of the community, as Julius
Caesar held Cassius, and all. who think or act differently to
the accepted formula for the time being are looked on as
mischievous and wrong-headed.
Truth has always to fight its way, and to fight hard, be
cause It is the few against the many, conviction against pre
judice, the rebellion of novelty against established custom.
It is always unpopular, because it has no direct and imme
diate rewards in its gift; neither place nor ribbon, honour
nor emolument. These prizes belong to the dominant party,
and are bestowed not on those who are most faithful to
truth, but on those who best uphold the prestige of those in
power. Truth is slow of growth, and what is more, must
spring from sober self-knowledge, an honest heart and clear
thinking head. Kings cannot command it, priests cannot
claim it as a heritage; it must be searched for diligently,
and peer or peasant can find no favouritism there.
.
Yet is truth desirable, and must in time prevail. To it the
future belongs. It fears no curious, inquisitive eye, it courts
investigation. Try it as you may, it will bear the test; weigh
it, it will never be found wanting. It asks for no sacrifice of
fact, no compromise of reason ; it requires no blind assent,
it fearg no rival, it entrenches on no neighbour-truth. As the
walnut-tree is the more fertile for being beaten, and the aro
matic leaves of the warm south the more fragrant for being
bruised, SO truth is the more brilliant when being laid bare,
.and the most spotless when exposed to the most searching
light. It asks no patron to shore it up with the prestige of a
Twat
�22
NATURAL REASON 'versus
great name. It requires no inspiration to discover it ™
revelation to announce it as “past Andino-nm- ”
n°
superscription to give it value NothfooS
’ T° • amp Or
it; it is wholly indSependen it h t u hShT
U °r mar
nations, one and the same for ever
’
ChmatCS’ a11
Although it is not of the court and hierarchy nevertheless it
its SS captivity ?'e,Z t,.10U°hl to
ns aiscovenes. Every truth becomes an axiom and n
errn^T0? tO mOre trUth> Truth leads to truth, as surely as
and virtu? t0 Crr?r’ Nay’ m°re’ truth leads t0 sincerity
and ruin
“
7“
Ieads t0 deceP‘™> hypocrisy
Take an example; take the Polytheism of old Greece
Greeks and
“T’ Phenomenon ™> ascribed by the
the sea todwiTanS ? J°Ve,’ and CTeV Phenomenon of
the sea to Neptune. Instead, therefore, of investigating
recurrence of‘the
a"d lighnin«’ da>',i£,lt and dark, th!
recurrence of the seasons, the sources of the winds the
meteors,, the waves and tides, they were content to believe
that Jupiter or Neptune willed it so, and all further investiaa
tion was arrested. Even Socrate^ thought t profan?
investigate, the works of nature; it wls presumZous
mld^hv
dlV-n£ a-Cana' Hence the s™a11 Progress
.
? these nations in all the natural sciences Their
notions of nature were wholly erroneous, and all the r
interpretations of natural operations were iiere fable So
in modern times, so long as the Church waTthe prevailing
power and the overlord of kings, investigation and progresf
were rebellion and profanity. Every fresh truth developed
i? truth6’’foTTVn
reSJSted’ and instead of “rojoidng
I”
th? th 7 hai ed lt: Wlth suspicion and hatred. Thev
f^ted whatever did not coincide with their preconceptions^
they hated whatever threw doubt or discredit on their
supremacy, based on ignorance; they hated the cur ou
inquisitive eye which would not 'accept on the r unveXed
t
�DIVINE REVELATION.
23
■authority what they pronounced to be fact and truth.
Never was a darker age of gross ignorance, never a more
-vicious age of overbearing tyranny and social impurity,
never a more heartless age of cruelty and selfishness, than
the miserable Middle Age, when kings and kaisers lord
nnd People were alike enslaved to the infallibility of
■supernatural dogma and dogmatic orthodoxy. The. on y
freedom is the freedom of truth, the only civfl^eit is; the
power of truth. The true millemum is the diffusion . ot
■ truth that noble infidelity of creeds and systems which
-would lead reason captive to the mere^ctu^ XTafon^
and stagnant opinion and custom. That, and that alone,
■will be the millenium, when system is nothing, creeds are
nothing, dictatorial authority is nothing, the haut monde 3
nothing^ mere fashion ismothing, the prestige of name and
rank is nothing, but truth is the all and all, the only creed,
the only object of search, and reason is at last exalted above
^credulity and blind faith.
SECTION V.
WE BELIEVE MANY THINGS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
can form no judgment of anything beyond reason,
and it is plainly unreasonable to ask me to believe anything
teyo'nJ thPe region of human intelligence* It may be true
but I am not in a position to know it. Faith is a reason
able service, and belief in anything else is mere- credulity
.and imagination. Thus, if I am asked whether fairies
can change their state, and become men and women, I can
onlv answer, I do not know. I have never seen a.fairy,
.and know of no one who ever did; I know not whether
they are palpable or impalpable, flesh and blood like ou .selves or airy nothings—in. short, I know nothing about
them and can give no opinion on the subject.
_
h If ’now you demand of me to believe that a good fairy
did once lay aside its fairy nature., and take a human form,
and go in and out among men doing many wonderful thing ,
•till at ill-disposed rabble hunted and hounded it to death
all I can say is this : It may be so, I cannot tell. It is
wholly out of the pale of my experience, wholly beyond the
Man
* That is, beyond himself.—R-L.
�24
NATURAL REASON versus
limit of my intelligence; and if I once give up reason to
illusiOT.qUlt the narroff path Of truth forgthe hroad road of
“e "hether sPWt can exist indepenaently of matter, I can only answer, I do not know I
know nothing of disembodied spirit. I do not even know
whether there is such a thing, and if there is, wheto it h™
orm and feature, sensibility and motion, growth and decay
With nOthinS- 1 have nogdau to go upon'
about ? but
neither believKe nor disbelieve anything
absurd 7?
? aPPearS t0 ni£ beyond dispute, that it is
2 h on th'?1P?
auCC6pt a d°Sma’ as an ^ticle of
’ on the truth or falsehood of which it is impossible for
to bluXdJU1fmen\ ASWeU ask a blind -ntobe ieve
th?
7
yellow make green, or a deaf man to believe
that the tones of a chromatic scale are not all equal.
m?vSth-t6n UrgJd ln rei°inder that we do actually believe
many things we do not understand. Thus, we believe in
life, but no one knows what life is. We believe in identity
b, 1 ™ °ne can explam what constitutes it, or how a bodv
should be ever changing and yet remain the same. Agam
we believe that grass in the body of a sheep or ox turns
from vegetable to animal substance, and to whkh was
fZ?gHinAe 71 yeSt6rday beC0mes to-day bone of tor
bone and flesh of their flesh, but cannot explain how*
it isZ^r
Cases,are by no means parallel, and
it is a total confusion of ideas to suppose there is any
food0???
7 7 Life’ gr°Wth’ and the inversion of
sunset TammaJ substances are familiar to us as sunrise and
sunset. It is what we see every hour of our lives, and to
exner ?Ve T°n? be t0 ignore the universal observation and
experience of all men ; but to disbelieve what no one ever
7” Caf? fK-6’ What is wholly and substantially difTh 1 r?gs7e are .conversant with, is quite another
T
.i
.b® bje of an animal I see daily, its growth I see
FsiXshT h feedS °n graSS’ and grOWS> 1 canfot d°ubt it.’
Fairies I have never seen, no one has ever seen them.
Disembodied spirit I have never seen, nor any one else with
a sound mind m a sound body; and therefore I have
uotbmg to go upon, there is no evidence except the worthless
estimony of delirium, dream, or disordered imagination.
causes
4
�DIVINE REVELATION.
25
Because I have no knowledge of the composition of
water, is no reason why I should not believe in its existence ;
but because I believe what I see and do not understand, is
no reason why I should believe what I do not see, and what
contradicts everything of which I have any knowledge. Be
cause I believe in life, growth, and nutrition, although my
present knowledge cannot completely fathom the rationale
of those mysteries, is no reason why I should believe in
mysteries of a wholly different character, and wholly con
tradictory to the recorded experience of all mankind.
SECTION VI.
WHAT MAH CAM AND WHAT HE CANNOT KNOW.
We often talk of knowledge, but rarely ask ourselves what
we exactly mean by it In a strict sense man knows nothing,
or next to nothing. He cannot comprehend and explain the
very simplest question in the mighty scheme of nature—
What is matter ? how came it into being ? is it self-existing ?
what are its ultimate parts ? is it simple or compound ? how
does it move and act, how multiply, how communicate and
receive ? We know nothing of matter in the abstract; the
veriest dunce could puzzle the wisest man in such a field of
inquiry. But there is a range, and a pretty wide one too,
in which by constant or careful observation we know many
things; we know, for example, that certain changes are in
variably preceded by certain conditions, or in other words
that certain facts and phenomena are always preceded by
certain antecedents. Some persons call this sequence
** cause and effect,” but it is no more necessary for an
antecedent to be the cause of what immediately follows
than for A to be the cause of B inasmuch as it invariably
precedes it in the English and many other alphabets. The
.antecedent may or may not be the producer of the change
which follows, but it can in no wise be accepted as a general
rule; and in every case it is very dangerous ground to stand
on, dangerous especially for this reason, that future know
ledge may wholly upset many of our present conclusions,
and what we now think we know may be proved by
posterity to be radically and fundamentally wrong.
Take a very plain example : Suppose we had been living
in the days of the old Romans, we should have said with
�2.6
;|
;
I
;
NATURAL REASON versus
confidence that the cause of day and night is the motion of
the sun above or beneath our earth. When he goes to
sleep in the lap of the sea-goddess, it is night; but when he
drives in his chariot through the vault of heaven, it is day.
Plausible as this might seem to the sages of Greece and the
senators and people of Rome, we now believe that day and
night are due simply to the revolution of the earth round its
own axis.
Take another example: The ancients believed matter to
be “ absolutely inert,” hence, when material things showed
a disposition of activity or manifestations of life, this activity
or . vitality was ascribed to a spirit independent of matter,
living and growing with the material body, and using its
several organs as its instruments and slaves. Every active
■and living body was supposed to be made active and living
by this indwelling spirit. It was the wood-nymph in the
tree which made it a living plant, the water-nymph in the
river which made it flow, the rain-nymph in the clouds
which made them pour forth showers. The lakes had their
lake-nymphs, the meadows their meadow-nymphs, the hills
their oreads, and the glens their valley-goddesses. The
ocean was filled with its sea-deities, the winds and the storms,
the heavens and all the hosts thereof. It was the god in
fire which made it glow with heat; it was the god in Etna
or Vesuvius which made them active volcanoes ; it was the
■god in malaria which filled it with pestilence; it was a
nymph in the air which gave back echo, and a god that
acted on the “ spirit,” when life was to be restored.
Man, of course, was no exception to this universal rule.
The body was lifeless and motionless till the Spirit of Deity
came into it, and the living man had a dual nature. All
that is active in the brain and other organs of the body was
supposed to be energised by the divine spirit, and hence
St. Paul speaks of being “in” and “out” of the body, which
he elsewhere calls the temple of the living—z.e., actively in
terfering—God. Of course, the writers of the several Books
of the Old-and New Testaments were no wiser than the rest
of men in geology, astronomy, and other branches of natural
science. No theologian would maintain they were; indeed,
it is one of the most common apologies for the notorious
blunders of the “ sacred penmen ” that they accepted these
things as they found them, and spoke of them as they were
generally understood. They spoke of the earth as a solid,
immovable mass, of the clouds as an ocean of water similar
J
�DIVINE REVELATION.
27
to our seas, of the sun as moving round the earth, and. of
the living body as inert matter vivified by the indwelling
Spirit of Deity. Granted. How cpuld they do otherwise ?
No one pretends that they knew the Newtonian system, of
light and gravitation; no one pretends that they antici
pated the discoveries of Priestley and James Watt in air and
water; no one pretends they were wiser than their contem
poraries in any true theory of nature. But what then ?
Admit this, and the axe is laid to the root of the tree. Man
as man-god and man as material man are so widely diffe
rent, so entirely unlike, that the whole fabric of revelation
designed for the one is unsuited to the other. If the body
man is already the residence of an independent spirit,
there is no reason why it may not be the temple of two, and
the Holy Ghost may share with the divine soul the broken
tenement; but if the body is a material body only, there
Can be no indwelling of the third person of the divine
triad. Again, if the body is the temple of a “ vital spark
of heavenly flame,” the vital spark at least must be immortal;
but if not, the body must resolve into its simple elements to
recombine into other bodies, but can never be built up
again into the same individual.
We now know that matter is not “ absolutely inactive.”
We know that nerves can feel, that brain can think, that a
material- body can perform all the functions of the body,
and there is no need of a ruling spirit to give it energy and
life. Here, again, is an example of what was once assumed
to be Undeniable knowledge proved to be no more worthy of
belief than the sun-car of Apollo, or the day-god sleeping
3D the lap of Thetis.
But to return. We started with the observation that it is
always hazardous to call the immediate antecedent of a
change the “ cause ” of the new condition, inasmuch as
further knowledge may wholly upset our present notions. Of
real Cause and effect we know nothing, but careful observation
gives us a wide range of the knowledge of sequences. There
are many changes which have been observed to be preceded by
certain antecedents, and that so invariably that any one may,
with absolute certainty, calculate on the change when
cognisant of the antecedent condition. This is called an
invariable law of nature, and no conceivable power can
alter it.
How fatal is all this to the notion of cause and effect,
Cause and effect pushed back in unbroken series till we
�28
NATURAL REASON versus
come to the end of the line, and are then driven to rest in
the cause causeless ? he maintain that ordinal succession
may be and often is quite independent of cause and effect;
and if, .instead of supposing each series to be a straight line,
beginning with the last phenomenon and pushed back into
the “ cause causeless,” we conceive it working in a circle,
the difficulty no longer exists. Let us explain our meaning.
The air carries vapour to the clouds, the clouds drop rain
upon the earth, the earth from its water sheds fills the
rivers,, and rivers run into the sea, when the series begins
again in never-ending succession. This is a series working
in a circle, and needs no cause causeless to start from.
Again, animals die, and revert to their original elements;
these elements recombine into the food of animals, so that
animals turn to food and food to animals, and that in
never-ending succession also. Once more, plants absorb
carbonic acid gas, retain the carbon, and restore the oxygen
to the air; man appropriates the oxygen of the air, and
exhales with his breath the carbonic acid gas of which the
body has no need, so men feed the vegetable world, and the
vegetable the animal world, in a circular series, ever
changing, ever mixing, ever taking and giving, and never
•continuing in one stay.
. These smaller circles form parts of the series of larger
circles, and these in turn of others, enlarging and widening
till the whole universe is brought in, all being parts of every
other part, all being items in the one grand universal series,
rolling in ceaseless circles through infinite space, filling its
immensity, leaving no void, circling in mutual circles, ever
■changing, but preserving one unbroken series, the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
This, it will be perceived, is very different from the idea
of phenomena traced as it were in straight lines from effect
to cause, and each line ending in something wholly inde
pendent. The one is an infinite number of straight lines,
each having its special series, the other is a grand, sympa
thetic, universal, unbroken whole, including each minutest
item in the general scheme, and filling all space with its
eternal series. There is something unutterably sublime and
solemn in the idea that “all are but parts of one stupendous
whole,” the tiniest insect as well as the hugest mammoth,
The mole-hill no less than the planet, the daisy of the field
as well as the sun which warms it into bloom. All belong
to the great, the universal series, the dewdrop that hangs on
�DIVINE REVELATION.
29.
the leaf, as well as the thunder which shakes the mountain,
the Stars as they roll in their courses, man and his fellow
mite, the reed and the oak, the wren and the eagle, the
limpet and the whale—no matter what, no matter where, all
are essential and integral parts, all roll on in the eternal
series, each exists for each, all pass into each other,.'
circulate through the boundless universe, links in the same
endless chain as the blood in the animal body. None can.
' say, “ I have no need of thee.” Were one link broken, tenth
Or tenth thousand, no matter; not only all the system to.
which it specially belonged, “ but the whole, must fall.”
This is immortality ; this is life eternal.
Compare this with the gloomy isolation of man taught us
by the divine—man cut off from the rest of creation, sent
on the earth an exile and alien, in bondage under “ sin.” If'
he fails to fulfil certain arbitrary conditions, he is severed
for ever from the general universe by a deathless death; if'
not, he is taken from the world to which his nature is
adapted, and is placed in a sphere where he is an entire
stranger to his surroundings. Heaven is as much cut off
from the general universe as hell is. All is isolation.
Heaven is one isolation, hell another, earth another, every
Star and planet are others. Man on earth stands alone ; his
very nature is different to that of everything around. He
belongs as man neither to earth nor heaven; he is an exile,,
a bondman on his trial. Instead of all creation being linked
together in a chain of love and sympathy, each separate part
is isolated and stands alone; and when the end comes at the
great consummation, the earth is to be burnt up, and the
family of man, divided into the sheep and the goats, to be
severed by a blank, impassable gulf. All nature disorganised,,
all harmony destroyed, all systems thrown into confusion,,
nature herself assassinated, and her laws scattered to the
winds like the leaves of the ancient oracle of Dodona!
Look at this picture and at that, and tell me which is the.
more desolating and cheerless 1
�30
NATURAL REASON versus
SECTION VII.
MAN A' MATERIAL BEING SURROUNDED BY MATERIAL
OBJECTS.
Being material beings, living in' a material world, and
surrounded by material objects only, we are able to examine
only things that are material, and can know nothing else.
But it is asked, is it possible to explain a tithe of every
day phenomena without recourse to a supernatural Agent—
an Agent infinitely our superior in knowledge, power, and
forethought ? For example : Creation itself shows there
must have been a Creator, as plainly as a watch shows there
must have been a watchmaker. The preservation of nature
shows there must be a guiding and directing hand. The
mind of man, so capable of thinking above material objects,
so capable of soaring beyond the limits of time and space,
seems to demonstrate that there must be a Mind or Spirit
independent of matter.
Without doubt your knowledge and mine at present falls
short of many things. We cannot satisfy ourselves of the
why and how of a host of familiar objects. We have not
yet found the key to unlock many of the secrets of the
natural world. What then ? Is that a reason why we
should follow the example of clumsy playwrights, and bring
down a God to help us out of our difficulty ? Would it not
be wiser and more rational to wait ? Would it not be more
rational to say, probably a little patience and a little more
research may clear up these mysteries, as they have cleared
up many others ? Socrates was a wise man, pronounced by
the oracle to be the very wisest of his contemporaries; yet
Socrates believed the sun and moon to be gods, and accused
Anaxagoras of impiety, because he presumed to calculate
their motions and magnitudes. He thought it impious
madness to pry into the secrets of the material world, and
declared that the gods would be offended by such audacity.
Men, however, have dared to lift the veil which conceals the
secrets of the stars and the secrets of the earth, and have
discovered that the sun and moon are not gods, and that
light and heat are subject to fixed laws, as much so as the
impact of a Nasmyth’s hammer or the noise of a peal of
thunder. Should we not learn wisdom from all this, learn
�DIVINE REVELATION.
31
to wait with modesty and patience, to wait hopefully, that
many now occult phenomena may in time be explained, as
thou sands have already been which once were insoluble
mysteries? Surely it is only reasonable to say, I find, as far
as is known at present, laws in operation certain, constant,,
comprehensible to man; I find, since the days of Socrates,
the knowledge of these laws has very widely extended; I
find that phenomenon after phenomenon, at one timeattributed to the erratic will of some god, has been brought
into the general category of matter and motion, and there
fore it is only reasonable to suppose that all the other
secrets of nature will in time be cleared up also. Is it not
more rational, I say, to argue thus than to fly off into the
unknown, and suppose that because we cannot reduce
certain phenomena at present to known laws, they are
therefore inscrutable by reason, and must be the arbitrary
handiwork of some superhuman Agent who can make or
break his laws at pleasure, now conforming to a general
rule, and anon reversing it—now working in the unobtrusive
routine of every-day experience, and anon astounding the
world, and stultifying the patient observations of the careful
student of nature by miracles as purportless as they are
perplexing ? Such a pretended solution, I affirm, is babyish—
is more fit for a peevish schoolgirl than for men of mind,
and mature intellects.
SECTION VIII.
SENSIBILITY A PROPERTY OF ORGANISED MATTER.
Leaving the sun and moon, the tides and seasons, heat and.
light, and COming’tothe animal world, including man, we find
other energies in operation besides mechanical motion. We
find, for example, sensibility, we find moral feeling, we find,
motion directed by some ruling power within the body, or
under the control of that power, which is called the will.
Can these operations be performed by mere material
Organism also? In other words, can mere matter be so
organised that it not only moves mechanically, as a ball
struck by a bat, but can also choose to move or choose toremain at rest in obedience to a living will ? Surely choice?
must be the act of a ruling “spirit,” which controls the
material organs under its dominion, for it seems absurd to-
�32
NATURAL REASON versus
suppose that a pile of bricks should be able to choose for
themselves whether they will make a cottage or a palace, or
whether they will remain unemployed. If I stir the fire, I
make the poker obey my will; but if I use my hands or
feet, surely there must be a corresponding spiritual agent to
evoke the will, and exact obedience to its dictates. We can
conceive of a ball flying through the air either because it is
attracted towards some other object, or because it is im
pelled by blind external force; we can conceive of a flower
throwing off from itself those Subtle particles which we call
perfume, just as the ocean, under the power of the sun,
throws off vapour; but no power of choice is left to the
flower to smell sweet or withhold its odours, and none to
the wide sea either to evaporate or not, as it may think
proper.
To the unthinking mind all this may seem quite un
answerable, but to those who grasp adequately the elements
of the problem, it appears a perfect tangle of confusion.
No one credits a body constituted like a ball or brick, a
flower or. the ocean, with the power of choice. It is quite
impossible for such things to will, inasmuch as they have no
voluntary apparatus for the purpose. But tell me this : Is
it not folly to expect a common stone to smell like a rose ? Is
it not folly to expect an ordinary cricket-ball to skip like a
lamb or fly like an hawk ? And why ? Simply because
the stone has not the organs of the rose, nor the ball those
of the lamb or bird. Give them these organs, endow them
with the special apparatus, and it would be no more sur
prising for the flint to give forth a sweet odour than for the
flower, or the ball to skip or fly like the lamb and hawk.
Carry this idea one step further. No one pretends that
matter can think and will without a suitable apparatus, but
it is the veriest folly to assert that a thinking apparatus
cannot think, or a volitional apparatus perform the office
for which it was specially adapted. Given the apparatus,
and the work to be performed follows as a thing of course.
All, therefore, that remains is to show that animals which
possess the power of will have an apparatus suited to the
purpose. Rocks and seas, flowers and clay, cannot have a
will, because they have no voluntary apparatus, consequently
we ought to find in animals an apparatus which we do not
find in bodies that have no power of free choice. Just so,
and animals have this apparatus. They have what is called
a nerve-system, and this new organic machinery has of
•
�DIVINE REVELATION.
33
course its proper work. Inorganic bodies have no nerves
and inorganic bodies cannot perform the same duties. as
those which have. Surely this is reasonable. Bodies with
out nerves cannot do the work of bodies which have, and
bodies with a highly complicated nerve-system have func
tions to perform which are not expected from others that
have a less complex one, or no such apparatus at all.
Sensibility in every form, whether that called sight or that
called hearing, whether feeling or smell, is due wholly to
the nerves. Sensibility, in fact, is the mere impression of
external objects photographed on the organs of sense, or
communicated to them by actual contact. This can be proved
to demonstration. In nerveless bodies it does not exist, in
all bodies with a nerve-system it does. If a nerve is injured,
the corresponding function of that nerve is impaired also;
if all the system is sound and healthy, all the operations of
the system are carried on in a normal and healthy manner.
What further proof is required ? What further proof is even
possible ? We can see the nerves with our eyes, we can
handle them with our fingers, we can exalt or paralyse their
action by our drugs, we can repair them in many cases when
they are feeble or unsound. This is no hypothetical some
thing which is invisible and intangible, no mere shadowy
incorporeal indweller to help out a theory, no imaginary
spirit, but a visible and tangible reality. Nerve is as much
matter as wood or stone, and it is the possession of this
nerve apparatus which endows animal bodies with re
ceptive and operative powers wholly unknown to inorganic
substances.
He who sees not demonstration in all this is wholly
unable to form a correct judgment. He is not convinced
because he will not be so, not because the argument is
weak, but because he is inaccessible to argument of every
kind. With such no argument will prevail, and he must be
left to his own wilfulness. Like the deaf adder he cannot
or will not hear. He refuses to be charmed, not that the
charmer charms not well, but that he will not hearken
charm he never so wisely.
SECTION IX.
BRAIN AND BRAINWORK ALSO DUE TO MATERIAL ORGANISM.
Come we now to the brain.
This mass shut up in the
skull varies in different animals in size, shape, and texture.
�34
NATURAL REASON versus
Some of the inferior molluscs have only one ganglia, others
have two, while men may have from twenty to thirty. So
also in regard to the tubular convolutions, the brains of
fishes have none at all, those of birds only faint traces of
them, and in mammals there is a great difference in this
respect between the brain of a kangaroo and that of man.
It might, a priori, be supposed that this new organ would
have special duties to perform, and that as the brain varies so
greatly in different animals, we should discern a difference
in their brain-work. This is exactly what we find to be the
case. The brain of a common mollusc has only one
ganglia, and the intelligence of these animals corresponds;
the brain of marsupials has fewer ganglia than that of higher
animals, but the brain of man is familiarly known to be the
most powerful and complicated in structure of all the animal
creation. The intelligence of the animal is in every case en
rapport with the brain. Every slightest change in the com
position, the size, the convolutions, and the sensory ganglia of
the brain infers a corresponding difference in the work which
the brain is able to execute. It is not because Newton and
Shakespeare, Plato and Homer, had a separate genius or
Socratic demon in their heads that they were superior in
intelligence to the Hottentot, but that their brains had more
grey matter and more convolutions, and those convolutions
more distinctly pronounced.
We have already spoken of sensibility seated in the gan
glionic centres, and we now come to thought, emotion, and
consciousness, seated in the ganglia of the brain proper. We
have shown how sensibility is quickened and deadened,
destroyed and repaired, by agents applied to the nerve
tissues ; and we would now show how thought and memory,
emotion and consciousness, are perfect measures of the
state of the brain. In the first place, it is a familiar fact
that the wise man may be reduced to idiotcy, and the man
of most delicate feeling to moral insensibility, by simply
acting on the brain. By slicing away that grey matter,
stupidity and insensibility are induced, in exact proportion
to the quantity of grey matter removed. By slicing away
more or less of this brain-matter, the intelligence is more or
less impaired, the moral feelings more or less blunted, con
sciousness and judgment more or less destroyed. If we
find heat proceeding from burning fuel, and that heat
diminished or increased in exact proportion to the more or
less perfect state of the combustion, are we not justified in
�DIVINE REVELATION.
35
concluding that the heat proceeds from the burning fuel ?
If we find light issuing from a gas-jet, and find that light
more or less perfect according to the purity of the gas, are
we not justified in saying that the purity of the light dependson the purity of the burning gas ? If we find water reduced
to ice when the temperature is below 32 degrees (Fahren
heit), and gradually increasing in warmth as the temperature
is increased, till it ultimately expends itself in steam, are we
not justified in- believing that it is the increase or decrease
of temperature which is accountable for these phenomena ?
And so, by parity of argument, when we find intelligence and
judgment, consciousness and moral feeling, indicated exactly
by the state of the brain, are we not justified in concluding
that they are emanations from the brain, as much so as heat
from the glowing fuel, and light from the burning gas ? Are
we not justified in the conclusion that the grey matter of
the brain is the fount of thought and the palace of the
soul ?
...
So long as matter was thought to be passive and inert, it
was quite needful to suppose there must be some energising
agent to set it in motion and give it vitality; but now that
it has been demonstrated that matter, in the form of nerves
and brain, can feel and will, think and understand, judge
and feel conscious, remember and foresee, calculate and
analyse—do all, in fact, that was once attributed to soul—we
may eliminate the unknown power altogether, and pronounce,
with the certainty of a mathematical demonstration, that man
is not a dual animal of body and soul, but a material
animal only.
Need we go further? Need we show how cerebral disease
impairs the memory, impairs the intelligence, impairs the
judgment, impairs the just perception of things in general?
Need we show how cerebral disease may so far destroy the
mental and moral powers as to induce delirium or stupor,
madness or idiotcy? Need we show that in suspended
animation thought, conscience, judgment, memory,, will,
and every moral sense is suspended also, but by simply
acting on the tissues, by imparting increased circulation to
the blood, by restoring energy to the nerves and brain,
animation returns, and with it the intelligent and moral
faculties ? They come with returning energy, they go as the
activity of the bodily organs declines. They grow with our
growth, they strengthen with our strength. In the infant they
are infantine, in the child somewhat stronger, in the mature
�3^
NATURAL REASON versus
body in their greatest perfection; and though in declining
years the mental powers may outlast the physical, it only
confirms what has been proved by the results of death from
starvation, in which very little wasting of this structure is
found to take place, that the nerve-tissue is more indestruc
tible than other vital textures of the organism.
SECTION X.
OBJECTION : MAN CAN THINK OF ETERNITY, AND THERE
FORE IS ETERNAL.
“No man can think higher than himself,” or “higher than
himself can no man think.” Granted. As man can think
of eternity, eternity is not “ higher ” than man, and there
fore man is eternal. Nego majorem.
The “major” of this syllogism is false. It proves too
much in the first place, and is untrue in the second.
(*•) It proves too much. If because man can think of
eternity he is eternal, then is he omniscient, omnipresent,
and almighty, because he can think of these things in the
same way as he can think of eternity. And if thought is
the measure of man, then man is himself deity, because
there is no attribute ascribed to deity which man cannot
think.
(2.) But the statement is utterly false. Man can not think
either of eternity or of infinite space; that is, he can form
no clear conception of duration without beginning and
ending, or of space without limit. In fact, our ideas of
duration and space are extremely limited; and if they are
to be taken as the measure of man, nothing could better
prove that he is a finite mortal. Man, I say, can form no
definite idea either of eternity or of infinite space. This is
what he can do : Man has invented figures, and these
figures being employed to express the measure of time or
space, man can always add, or at least suppose, a higher
number than the one expressed. Thus, if 1,000 is deter
mined on as the limit, we can think of 1,001 ; if a million
we can think of numbers exceeding it; but that is a very
different thing indeed from forming a definite conception
of eternity or infinite space.
Let any one try to think of a straight line without begin-
�DIVINE REVELATION.
37
ning or end, and he will presently see how hopeless is the task.
His line, however far extended in his imagination, will
always be broken at both ends; and the more he tries to
lengthen it, the more he will feel convinced that his fancy
can extend it further. But so long as this can be done, his
line is neither without beginning nor without end.
This must be obvious to any thinking mind.. It.must be
obvious that eternity cannot be extended, that infinite space
is space beyond all limit j so long, therefore, as we can think
of extension to duration and space, we cannot form an idea
of duration or space which cannot be extended. It would
not be too bold to say that after a man has given the
fullest possible scope to his fancy, whether of duration or
space, when he has pushed them as far off as he is able, his
mind can always overleap the limit, and think of a beyond.
In truth, man’s idea of time and space, except when ex
pressed by figures, is extremely limited. He has the. most
vague conception of all high numbers, and when he .tries to
think of eternity or infinite space, his line of. duration and
his field of extent are wonderfully small. Think of William
the Conqueror ; he seems an immense way off, quite in
cloud-land. Think of the Flood; the distance between
William the Conqueror and the Flood is really pretty much
the same in our ideas. We know they are not; we know
that the spaces are nothing like equal; but our conception
is unable to measure the difference with any degree of
accuracy.
Take a series of unequal lengths—say the
Conquest, the Birth of Christ, the Flood, Creation, and
the several geological series. How they crowd one on the
other 1 How utterly is the mind unable to pace out with
accuracy their different lengths 1 It thinks of thern as a
series; but whether the distance between any two was
greater or less than between two others,, whether the
Devonian period was ten thousand or ten millions of years
in length, is pretty much the same.
So is it in regard to space. The moon, the sun, and
the fixed stars seem nearly equidistant to the eye, and even
to the imagination. We know they are not, but. the mind
cannot realise the different distances.
Practically, our
thought of duration is inseparable from our thought of
time. We cannot think of duration in the abstract. We
can think of sixty, seventy, or one hundred years; we can
think of years beyond any limit which figures can express;
but we cannot think of eternity. If therefore the thought
�38
NATURAL REASON verszts
of man is indeed his measure, he certainly is not for
eternity, for he cannot form the remotest idea of extent
which cannot be extended.
SECTION XI.
MAN
IN
NO
WISE
DIFFERENT
FROM
OTHER
EXCEPT SO FAR AS THE ORGANIC STRUCTURE
ANIMAL MAY DIFFER FROM ANOTHER.
ANIMALS,
OF
ONE
What, then, has been proved ? If anything, this, that
there is nothing supernatural in man—nothing but what is
attributable to organic structure. He is in perfect harmony
with his surroundings, and does not walk the earth as a
monster—part man, part god, but neither wholly of the
earth earthy, nor wholly of the heavens heavenly.
He
differs in no wise from the rest of the animal kingdom,
except so far as the organic structure of one animal or race
of animals may differ from another. If he has different
powers to inferior animals, it is only because his body is
more highly and elaborately organised. Trees are organised,
and they grow, flourish, and decay, each according to its
organic structure. ' Inferior animals have a more complex
arrangement, and being possessed of brain and nerve, they
have sensibility and volition, passion and desire. Man has
a still more complex brain, and his thoughts can be more
elaborate and complex; but from the primeval rock to man
there is a perfect unity, nothing to destroy the oneness,
nothing to remove one part from the rest. Special dif
ferences no doubt there are—such differences are the rule_
but the same general principle pervades the whole. It is
simply matter arranged in divers manners, each different
arrangement having its special character. There is no
new integer introduced from another sphere of being,
nothing from another world lent to man to supplement his
deficiency, nothing of the nature of soul, taken, like the fire
of Prometheus, from the high heavens to kindle life in the
clay image. The notion of a special loan of Deity to man,
alone and apart from the rest of creation, of a spark of the
divine essence shut up in man as a candle in a lantern, of
a breath breathed by the Eternal into the nostrils of a
mortal, is certainly the crowning delusion of visionary selfconceit. That Deity should lend man a piece of himself to
�DIVINE REVELATION.
39
help out his man-nature is a craze so absurd that it would
not be credible except we knew it to be believed.
If man really possessed this divine spirit shut up in his
body, is it likely that the anatomist would be able to cut it
away piecemeal when mutilating with his scalpel the cere
bral organ ? Is it likely it would be susceptible of inflam
mation and decay? Is it likely it could be affected by
drugs or aliment, and destroyed by poison ? Is it likely it
could be suspended by immersion in water, and restored by
friction ? Is it likely it would grow and change, strengthen
and decline, just as man’s health or age may affect his
material body ? How could a divine essence be subject to
the laws of matter ? If in the body it would not be of the
body, but would be wholly independent of matter however
organised.
Enthroned as spirit, no hand of man could
injure it; incorruptible as Deity, no vice could defile it;
unchangeable as perfection, it would shine with the same
brilliancy in sage and savage, the infant in its cradle, the
old man on his pallet, the king on his throne, and the
captive in his dungeon. What could education do to im
prove deity in man ? How could the vigilance of maternal
care guide and direct it ? How could the example of evil
companions vitiate and degrade it ? But so it is; we feel
it is so, whatever be our creed; we know it is so, however
we may strive to hide it from ourselves. We know that
every part of man is acted on alike, that every part of man
is amenable to the same laws. Man can exercise his power
on the brain as well as on the nerves. He can mutilate
and impair the thinking part as well as any other. He can
attack with his knife and with his drugs the reasoning part,
the moral part, the judging part, the conscience part, the
most subtle of the subtleties of human nature, .suspend
their operations or . restore them, play with them, or so
reduce them that the brain of a Newton shall be no more
capable than that of an idiot, and the finest conscience
shall be dulled as if it had been steeped in Lethe. But if
thought were really the product of a divine essence lent by
Deity to man, would this be possible ? Would man be
able mechanically to injure a divine essence ? Would he be
able to suspend its energies and restore them ? Would he
be able to impair and destroy the Deity in man ?
�40
SECTION xn.
IF MAN IS NOT A DUAL BEING, THERE CAN HAVE BEEN
NO REVELATION.
If body is all and all of man, as this body dies man dies,
and as it returns to its native elements, man ceases to be
man, and the notion of a resurrection or reconstruction of
the same body, after it has passed into other material forms,
is mere fable. This life is man’s be-all, and death is his
end-all, as far as his individuality is concerned. But if so,
the very notion of a revelation must be given up. There is
nothing to reveal, nothing that even Deity could tell which
would in the slightest degree affect the future of man. He
might tell him how the gases of the body would be dispersed,
how the vegetable world would banquet on the carbon and
nitrogen, how the phosphates would contribute to the bones
of other animals ; he might tell how the brain of the poet
may ultimately form a part of the nightingale, and the hand
of the painter help to arch the sky with a rainbow; he might
tell how the sulphur and hydrogen would be disposed of,
one gilding the coal with pyrites like gold, and the other
hanging as a dewdrop on the rose; this and much more
than this he might tell, and interest man intensely by re
vealing the changes of decay into the newness of fresh life,
but this is not revelation. Revelation presupposes a thou
sand absurdities, beginning in Eden and reaching into
eternity. It presupposes a man such as no man is, or ever
could be. It presupposes that God and man made a mutual
covenant together, and that each has a social interest of a
private and special nature with the other. It presupposes
that our bodies will be restored in their integrity, though
every part thereof has passed into other bodies—that they
will retain their identity, though the same identical body
contributes to the identity of a thousand others. It pre
supposes such a host of self-contradictory incoherences that
conjecture is lost in the hopeless maze, and poor bewildered
human nature is glad to seek rest in any falsehood as a refuge
from the hopeless confusion by which he is surrounded.
If this is revelation, give me the simplicity of right reason.
If this is orthodoxy, give me the logic of infidelity. If this
is the teaching of the Church, give me the teaching of
common sense. If this is the creed of the faithful, then
may the faithful few be ever few; such fidelity to dogma is
infidelity to truth, and infidelity to unreason is fidelity
to nature and to man.
-A
�
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Natural reason versus divine revelation : an appeal for freethought
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Julian
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Free Thought
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Text
THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY
ON
.
SCIENCE AND REVELATION.
A LETTER
By M.P.
*
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price, Sixpence.
�F
�THE DEAN OE CANTERBURY
ON
SCIENCE AND REVELATION.
Dear Mr Scott,—
"V OU are perhaps aware that there has been a SoJL ciety in existence for some time (I do not know
for how long a time), called the “ Christian Evidence
Society/’ Its object is stated to be “ to meet current
forms of unbelief among the educated classes.” In
the number of its accredited lecturers are to be found
an Archbishop, two Bishops, a Dean, a Canon, and a
Professor of Divinity, and of the remaining lecturers,
five are men of eminence in the Church of England,
and the sixth is, I believe, a distinguished ortho
dox Nonconformist. These twelve gentlemen may,
I suppose, be fairly taken to be the men “ put up ”—
to use House of Commons phraseology, by the intel
lectual part of the so-called religious world, to reply
to infidelity in its various forms.
Nothing can be more proper, or indeed advisable,
than that such a course should be adopted by the or
thodox leaders. And these gentlemen may be sure
that their views will meet with every attention from
their opponents, even although they should fail to
carry conviction. A slight preliminary objection
may indeed be taken to the form of these lectures;
which, however, would apply, with equal force, to
“ Essays and Reviews.” They are twelve in num
ber, they are the productions of men writing inde
pendently of each other, and applying themselves to
difficulties in the way of beliefwhich are of a somewhat
�4
The Dean of Canterbury
unconnected character, and they appear to be written
with a view to each of them occupying an hour, or
not much more than an hour, in delivery. It is not
easy, within such limits, to do full justice to a subject
such as that chosen by Professor Lightfoot, “ Internal
evidence of the Authenticity of St John’s Gospel,”
or to “ The alleged difficulties of the Old and NewTestament.” A like observation may be applied to
“ Science and Revelation ”, by the Dean of Canterbury,
on which, as being the only one of these lectures
which has as yet fallen into my hands, I propose,
with your permission, to make a few remarks.
Dean Smith professedly founds his argument upon
that of Butler. But I do not intend to discuss Bishop
Butler, and shall confine myself to Dean Smith. The
Dean starts by telling us that the duty imposed upon
him, is to show that a Revelation is not only possible,
“ but a necessary part of the system of the world,”
the word revelation being, of course, here and through
out the lecture, used in the strictly orthodox sense of
a miraculous communication from the Deity to man
kind. And he goes on to say, that as his programme
further joins science and revelation, he feels himself
debarred from offering any but a “ strictly scientific
proof.” This, it must be admitted, is a somewhat
ambitious opening. The Dean is not merely going
to demonstrate to us the antecedent probability of a
miraculous intervention on the part of the Deity in
the affairs of mankind, but its absolute necessity. It
would seem, from this, to be quite inconceivable that
God should have framed intelligent creatures with
faculties such as to enable them to arrive at a con
viction of his existence, and a knowledge of their
duties to each other, except through the medium of
*
miracles.
At any rate, men are not, and cannot be
such creatures. And the total untenableness of any
such view of God’s creation and man’s position on
* The Dean admits afterwards that this is “ conceivable.”
�on Science and Revelation.
5
this planet is about to be demonstrated to us by a
strictly scientific proof.
It is true, that a little further on, the lecturer,_ as
if somewhat embarrassed by the task lying before him,
seems to modify his programme. “ My business is
to show that a revelation was to be expected ; that it
was probable, or at all events possible, and, therefore,
that the evidences of Christianity have a claim upon
the consideration of every right thinking man.
And again, “Now the argument which I shall use as
my proof of the probability of a revelation is simply
this.” However, let this pass with the remark, that
if the Dean is arguing that a revelation is possible, I,
at any rate, have no lance to break with him.
*
But
we must take him to mean something more than this,
as proposing to fulfil “ the duty which has been im
posed upon him,” and which duty, as we have seen,
is to show—and that too by strictly scientific proofs
—that a world of men and women, without miracles
to help them, can be after all only a “ pestilential
congregation of vapours,” or, as he himself puts it
further on, that man, without a revelation, is a bungle,
a failure, and a mistake.
How does he proceed to show this ? His argument
is, I think, capable of condensation, and it may be set
forth, with scarcely a deviation from his own words,
in the following terms :—•
“ In the present system of things, we find no being
endowed with any faculties, without there being also
provided a proper field for their exercise, and a ne
cessity imposed upon that being of using those facul
ties. We are in a world in which there is a very
exact correspondence between the endowments and
faculties of every existent being, and the state of
* I am, of course, aware that there are those, who, like
the late Baden Powell, hold that “ no evidence can reach to
the miraculous.” The remark above made would not be ap
plicable to this school of thinkers.
B
�6
The Dean of Canterbury
things in which it happens to be : a world of apparent
cause and effect, full of infinitely varied forms of life,
fitted in every portion of it to find its own subsistence
and to propagate its species. If a plant is not suited
to its habitat, nature imposes upon it the severe
penalties, first of degradation and then of death.
Upon the animal world she imposes just the same
penalties : whatever she gives must be used, and in
point of fact, animals do use all their powers, and
have to use them all. Every living organization
fully possesses all those faculties which it needs, and
must use all its faculties on the penalty, first of de
gradation, and finally of extinction.
But man is a living organization, and must there
fore come under this law. The fact confirms this
deduction. In all the long line from the Ascidian up
to man, Nature has supplied none but physical wants;
when we come to man, we find these physical neces
sities equally well provided for. Man is provided
with the means of obtaining food, of providing for
his safety, &c., but he attains to these ends by the
use of his reason, which at once makes a strong diffe
rence between him and the animals below him, just
as their instincts are an advance upon the processes
of plants; and with the possession of reason there
also goes the possession of what we call mental
faculties. Not only can man, by the use of his rea
son obtain food, provide for his safety, and continue
his race, but higher ends are made possible for him,
to be attained by the use of this higher endowment.
But man has higher powers than physical and mental
powers. There is another broad distinction between
man and all the other inhabitants of this earth ; he
alone distinguishes between right and wrong. And
as he possesses this faculty, if Nature’s laws are uni
versal, he is bound to use it, will suffer from not
using it, and will have a proper field provided for its
use.
�on Science and Revelation.
7
Confessedly there is ample field for using it;
morning, noon, and night the question of right and
wrong perpetually arises, we cannot take a step in
life without conscience intervening. Struggle as we
may, the conclusion cannot be evaded, that we can
distinguish between right and wrong, that we ought
to do so, and that we must do so.”
So far, I suppose that you and I should agree gene
rally * with the lecturer, but without perhaps antici
pating whither our assent to his propositions is about
to lead us. For the Dean continues, “If so, what
follows 1 I answer, the necessity of religion, and
therefore of revelation.”
The chain of reasoning which leads us inevitably to
the conclusion that a revelation is necessary, is virtu
ally as follows:—“ If man is compelled to distinguish
between right and wrong, he is a responsible agent,
subject to penalties for the misuse, &c., of his moral
powers. He must be responsible to some one. That
some one must be omniscient and omnipotent (or little
less) in order to act as Judge of Humanity and to
mete out adequate rewards and punishments. As
these adequate rewards and punishments do not fol
low in this life, there must be a future state. If not,
there would exist in man a whole class of moral facul
ties which seem to find in this present state of things
an appropriate field for their exercise, but which man
is under no necessity of using.”
* I say, “generally,” because there are really one or two
places in which he either begs most important questions, or
else does not exactly express what he means, ex. gr., in the
last paragraph but one, “There is another broad distinction”
(besides reason) “ between man and all the other inhabitants
of this earth; he alone distinguishes between right and
wrong.” A whole school in philosophy would say that it is
reason, and reason alone, which enables a man to distinguish
between what is right and wrong. If the Dean means that
man feels bound to act in accordance with his convictions of
what is right and what is wrong (the moral faculty), and I
think we shall see directly that that is his meaning—he has
not expressed himself quite clearly.
�8
The Dean of Canterbury
Subject to some reservations, I should personally
be still disposed, so far, to yield a general assent to
the lecturer. It is true that there are some who would
not; but I take it that the majority of “educated
unbelievers,” for whose behoof these lectures are
specially intended, are believers in God and in a
future state. Their difficulty is with regard to a
miraculously communicated revelation on these
points. They admit the possibility of such a revela
tion being made; but they think the evidence, upon
the whole, strong against one ever having been made.
They think, moreover, they can see that man has been
endowed with faculties sufficient to enable him to
arrive, by slow and painful steps, at a conviction of
God—a knowledge of his duty, a belief in a future
state, and a consequent incentive for doing his duty,
and that such a modus operandi on the part of the
Deity is, in reality, far more in accordance with the
“analogy of nature” than the orthodox view of a
violent interference by the Great Artificer in the
orderly evolution of His design. This, at any rate,
is the particular difficulty which the lecturer has got
before him, and he disposes of it in a single page, or
rather in four words.
“ Now it is conceivable that God might have given
us this knowledge by means of the light of nature, as
it is called. But He has not. Confessedly natural
religion is neither clear enough, nor certain enough,
to affect powerfully the masses. Man’s nature is
fraught with the most dangerous passions. Reason
cannot control these passions. To take the lowest
ground: as nature has given us moral qualities, moral
excellence is a thing as necessarily to be attained to,
as physical and mental excellence. But while nature
has provided ample means for attaining to the two
last, she will not, without a revelation, have provided
sufficient means for the attainment of the first. By
the aid of religion about as many men attain to moral
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9
excellence as by other natural means attain to physical
and mental excellence. Without religion [query, Revelation1?] nature will have broken down.”
The rest of the lecture does not add to the argu
ment, and need not be noticed here. The argument
is simply this : Every being on this planet is endowed
with certain faculties, a necessity is imposed upon it
of using those faculties, and it is provided with a
proper field for the exercise of those faculties, by
natural means. The one exception is man. Man is
endowed with certain faculties for the exercise of
which no proper field has been furnished him by
natural means. Therefore, it requires a supernatural
interposition to provide him with one.
Such a statement as this requires, I think, careful
consideration before we shall be disposed to yield our
unfeigned assent to it. The lecturer himself would
allow that supernatural aid is not to be called in, in
the present state of our knowledge, unless an absolute
necessity for it is shown. In this case he undertakes
to show the necessity. Man, he says, would be the
only thing existing on the face of the earth that would
have been a bungle, a failure, and a mistake, if the
Almighty had not stepped in with miracles, and por
tents, and marvels, and every kind of suspension of
the ordinary laws of nature on his behalf. One would
have thought that man would have been a bungle and
a failure, if his introduction into the planet had ren
dered such contrivances unavoidable, if no adequate
field could have been found for his moral faculties
except through the violation, or, if you please, modi
fication on his behalf of laws which we notice, in all
other cases coming under our observation, to be un
changing and universal. And this impression would
not be weakened when we came to remark that all
man’s other faculties, even those which separate him
from the brute (the mental as distinguished from the
moral faculties, in the Dean’s classification), do find
�io
The Dean of Canterbury
an adequate field for their exercise in this world, and
that by means which are quite natural. Dr Payne
Smith, of course, admits this; indeed, it is part of his
argument. Take the case, he says, of those whose
faculties are most highly cultivated. “ Has nature
supplied a proper field for the exercise of the mental
powers, not merely of Fuegians, but ' of the most
highly developed man? You know that she has.”
And he instances the arts and sciences, music, paint
ing, eloquence, &c. Well, take any example at
random—that of music. We know that man has
been supplied with an ear capable of enjoying sweet
sounds; and it may be said, without exaggeration,
that, with some persons, music is a want, an absolute
necessity. The poet tells us that he who is not
moved by music is fit for treasons, stratagems, and
plots—he is inhuman, in short. Now it may not be
inopportune to our subject to consider how this divine
gift, among a thousand others, has been communicated
to man. Of course, there was a time when it was
supposed to have formed the subject of a revelation
from on high. Mercury comes down with his lyre
and Minerva with her flute, just as Ceres teaches
agriculture and Bacchus shows people how to plant
vines; interpositions from Heaven covering very
much larger ground in those days than they do now,
and not having been driven to their last stronghold
of the moral faculties. But probably no one will now
contend that the science of harmony has been learnt
by man by any other than a natural and a very
gradual process. There must have been a long period
of time during which the human ear, so exquisitely
adapted to take in and to transmit to the brain the
sounds of music, could have heard no such sounds.
Even at this day there are populations in the world
which have nothing worthy of the name of music. We
can picture to ourselves what a succession of ages it
must have taken to wring anything like a common
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11
tune out of an instrument capable of producing it.
Imagination may dwell on the first rude essay, made,
it may be, on the outstretched tendon of some
slaughtered animal, which, being accidentally struck
upon, was found to emit a sound not unpleasant to
the ear; or we may figure to ourselves a savage, blow
ing into a hollow bone with a hole in it, and his glee
at discovering that he could make different sorts of
noises by covering the hole more or less with his
fingers. What a step from this to the performance of
the best military band in Berlin or Vienna ! The
musicians who take part in those bands are the heirs
to all the discoveries and experiments in the way of
harmony of the ages which have preceded them.
Destroy the human race to-morrow and people the
earth with fresh Adams and Eves, and everything
will have to be gone over again; ages will elapse
before such a combination and concord of sweet
sounds will again be heard in this planet.
Well, then, seeing as we do, that all the other
faculties of man (the mental ones included) are pro
vided with an adequate field for their exercise by
natural means; and observing what may be called
the system of development in the case of mental
faculties, such as that just mentioned, I do not think
we shall be altogether satisfied with the Dean’s four
words. We shall not be prepared to summon
miracles to our aid, until we are quite sure that our
moral wants are not to be appeased in the same way
without them. And if it should turn out, on exami
nation, that the manner in which our moral know
ledge has been gradually accumulating, and the
faculties of the race in that direction have been
gradually sharpened, bears an exact resemblance to
what has taken place with regard to the rest of our
knowledge and our remaining faculties, I should
suppose that our disinclination to admit any but
natural causes will increase. Now if it be conceivable
�12
The Dean of Canterbury
(and Dr Smith admits that it is) that a field for our
moral faculties might be provided naturally, I should
conclude, judging a priori and from the analogy of
nature, that it would be provided, subject to the fol
lowing conditions. These are simply the conditions
which attach to the acquisition and diffusion of all
other kinds of knowledge—the Exact Sciences ex
cepted—which exercise in any serious degree the
reasoning powers of man ■, as, of course, from their
nature, moral questions must do. I should expect—1. That the moral truths to be learned would be
such as could be deduced from observation of the
ordinary phenomena of nature (which is only another
way of expressing “ by natural means ”).
2. That the truths so to be conveyed would not
always be capable of a mathematical demonstration,
being in many cases simply the solution which the
human mind could arrive at as the best possible one
of the moral difficulties by which it was confronted,
and the only solution which partially or completely
accounted for them. That what might be looked for
in such cases was man’s ultimately attaining to such
a reasonable conviction of them, as, if held on other
points, would be likely to influence him in the ordi
nary transactions of life • and that such a conviction
would, in point of fact, have a practical effect in de
termining his actions nearly as strong as a mathe
matical demonstration.
3. That the communication of this knowledge
would be extremely gradual. In other words, that
man being endowed with a capacity for grasping
certain great truths, would, nevertheless, have to
pass through a very long, laborious, and arduous
education before arriving at them ; in the course of
which education, he would commit the most frightful
mistakes, and fall into the most lamentable errors.
4. That these truths, or approximate truths, would
be conveyed, in the course of their gradual develop-
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13
ment, first of all to the highest minds and the most
advanced races, and would thus make their way
through great difficulties and opposition to the lower
minds, where, when once deposited, they would
assume the form of axioms.
.
5. That there would be an immense lapse of time
before they would be accepted by the whole world,
or more than a small portion of the world.
This, I say, is the only way in which moral truths
could be conveyed, if the order of nature is to be
observed. Now, the question is, Have they been so
conveyed ? But, first of all, what are the moral
truths we have to consider ? The Dean has included
them in the following propositions :—
1. Man is endowed with the faculty of distinguish
ing between what is right and what is wrong.
2. Being endowed with this faculty, he is bound
to use it, and will suffer for not using it..
3. A proper field will- be furnished him for using
it, and in order that there should be such a field there
must also be (a) a God (&) a future state.
Now as to (1) man being endowed with the faculty
of distinguishing between right and wrong. No one
disputes this : but the real question is, how does he
distinguish? I answer, unhesitatingly, by experience,
painfully and laboriously acquired; and conscience
is the product of such experience. A savage has not
the-remotest idea that it is wrong to kill his fellow
savage. A child has not the slightest notion that it
is wrong to steal his playmate’s toy, till he has been
whipped for the act; the whipping being an , argumentum ad puerum springing from the parent’s ex
perience. Nothing can, I think, be more clear than
that the ideas of its being wicked to kill your neigh
bour, or to rob him of his property, or set fire to his
house, or make an attempt on his wife, or to lie, or
to cheat, or to get drunk, spring necessarily from the
formation of bodies of men into settled communities.
�14
The Dean of Canterbury
They express the conditions under which alone such
communities can continue to exist.
*
In short, a
right action is an action such as, if generally practised,
would conduce to the general happiness; a wrong
action, one that would have an opposite result; and
acts were roughly distinguished by this method
before the method was pointed out, just as music
was played before it was understood what chords and
scales were, and buildings were erected before there
was a science of mechanics.f The Utilitarians and
their opponents are agreed in the main on this defi
nition of right and wrong : their fight is on another
point. It is indeed true that there are settled, and
very civilised communities in which deeds, at which
we should shudder, are permitted by law. Thus, the
Chinese kill their children. This is because they do
not perceive that such a course of action is conducive
to the general ill-being. We may be pretty sure that
the time will come when they will see this. The
conviction will, first of all, dawn on the more en
lightened minds among them ; and prohibitive laws
will be passed which will be for a long time fought
against by the vulgar. But at last the vulgar will
give in, and that infanticide is a crime will become a
maxim generally admitted, and not to be openly
violated. It is not necessary to add anything more
on this oft-discussed point of the origin of our notions
of right and wrong; more especially as I am half
inclined to think that so far Dr Smith would go with
me. His real difficulty will be considered further on.
But I would prefer, at present, to take my own order,
and to ask—
(2.) If (man being enabled, as I think, to judge
* I don’t want to cumber this paper with quotations.
Every scholar will recollect the beautiful account given by
the heathen poet of the foundation of human societies.—
Juvenal, Sat. xv., ad. fin.
t “ They builded better than they knew.”—Emerson.
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*5
between what is right and what is wrong, by natural
means), there is any reason for supposing that .he
could not, by the same means, arrive at a conviction
of a God and a future state ? It is necessary here to
be careful in the use of terms. The Dean, in more
places than one, uses the words “knowledge of God.”
And if by this is meant such a knowledge of God as
is capable of mathematical proof, then certainly man
has not got it, nor do I see very clearly how he could
acquire it. But the question arises, is this kind of
mathematical assurance necessary, is it even such as
might be expected from the analogy of natureD And
this really is one of the chief points round which the
controversy between Orthodoxy and Scepticism rages.
Now it is important, in considering this question, to
observe that revelation itself is not capable of any
such proof, nor are any of the great truths or precepts
which are most essential for the use of mankind.
You cannot prove that it is wrong to kill in the same
way that you can show that two and two are four.
You can only point to the bearing of human experi
ence on the subject, or if you please to take it in
another way, to the moral sense of mankind. Well,
then, in respect to this question of a God, the uni
versal human experience is that every effect has a
cause. But you cannot prove that every effect has a
cause. If you and I and a savage were to find a
watch in the middle of a desert (to use an old illus
tration), two of us would be immediately convinced
that the watch was the work of a being resembling
ourselves. The savage would not. He would very
likely take it for an animal. Even when satisfied
that it was not, his ideas of cause and effect are too
* Bishop Butler admits that it is not, and he makes this an
argument in favour of the Christian revelation. It may also
be made an argument for a revelation by natural means. But
I must again repeat, that I am not discussing “Butler’s
Analogy,” but Dr. Smith’s “ Science and Revelation.”
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The Dean of Canterbury
vague and undeveloped to render it apparent to him,
as it is to us, that the watch had a maker, the design
a designer. The world has passed—is in places still
passing—through this mental condition of the savage.
Now, “ that every effect has a cause ” leads inevitably,
but only through a variety of stages, such as Fetishism
and Polytheism, to the belief in one great First Cause,
one great original designer.
*
And it is idle to assert
that such a conviction cannot be arrived at by natural
means, when we know that Xenophanes, Socrates,
Plato, Cicero, Seneca, and a number of other persons
have thus arrived at it. But it will be said, These
were only a few, and the rest of the world was
plunged in idolatry, as a large portion is now. That
is just what I should have expected from the analogy
of nature. The rays of the sun strike, first of all,
upon the mountain tops ; so must truths dawn upon
the most advanced men and the most advanced races.
Bishop Butler has, on this head, unfortunately for his
followers, cut the ground from under their feet. For
it is part of his argument that the circumstance of a
revelation being known only to a very small portion
of mankind is no argument against its having been
made. This, he says, is in accordance with the
“analogy of nature.” And surely the same remark
must apply to the belief in a God acquired by natural
means. We should expect, as I have already inti
mated, that its progress would be slow and uncertain,
that it would pass through numerous phases, and meet
with countless obstacles, before being universally or
even generally accepted.
The conviction which many ancient philosophers
* This, it is true, is open to dispute, and I am afraid that
to maintain the position in the text would require a separate
essay. At present, I must content myself with saying that,
in my opinion, an observation of cause and effect will practi
cally land all but a few minds in the conception of a mysteri
ous First Cause, as being, at any rate, a solution preferable to
any other.
�on Science and Revelation.
17
entertained of the existence of a God was based on
reason and observation. Such a being was to them
the only possible solution of the phenomena which
they noticed within and around them. There is no
<£ royal road” to a knowledge of God, any more than
to any other kind of knowledge. The intense crav
ing of certain minds for absolute certainty on this
point—a certainty which is not to be acquired in any
other department of human enquiry—has, from our
point of view, produced revelations. But this craving
is becoming less and less as civilisation advances, and
hence, and from other causes, revelations are becom
ing slowly but surely discredited. It is beginning to
be seen dimly by the masses, that they are not only
out of harmony with everything else that comes
within our range of observation, but unnecessary.
We know that many men have believed in a God
without them. The time when the belief could spread
was not then. The soil was not ripe for the sower.
Wickliffe with his protests against Rome, Montaigne
with his protests against torture, Adam Smith, with his
free trade doctrine, the advocates of universal disarma
ment and international arbitration in the eighteen
hundred and seventy-first year of the Christian era
were not more utterly out of place, as immediate and
successful propagators of their ideas, than Socrates at
Athens, with his one God, and in this I see the
“ analogy of nature ” perfectly carried out. But
whenever the idea has taken hold of any body of
men sufficiently numerous to give them a status in
the world and cohesion among themselves, it has
never been dropped. Their moral sense has been
satisfied by it—a sure proof of its divine origin.
There is no instance of a race which has once held
Monotheism lapsing into any other belief. The fact
that Mahometans, under corrupting and adverse cir
cumstances, have never turned to idolatry, while
Christians have constantly fallen away, is mentioned
�18
The Dean of Canterbury
by Mr Lecky as among the most startling facts in
history. The reason is that Mahometans are Mono
theists and Christians are not exactly Monotheists.
The same remark applies to the Jews, who, although
in the . early days of their history, and before their
belief in one God was clearly defined, they lapsed
temporarily into the worship of strange Deities, have
now for near two thousand years adhered to one
great universal Divinity. The religions which have
sought to attract them are more or less polytheistic :
Protestantism with its three Gods in one; Catholicism
with its three gods and a goddess for the educated,
and a more extended polytheism, in the form of saints,
for the masses. These latter systems of belief are
altogether too elaborate for rude tribes. When in
stilled, or rather when attempted to be instilled into
them, they soon become, if these tribes be left to
themselves, something hardly to be recognised as
Christianity, as in the case of the Abyssinians.
When the human mind has once conceived the idea
of a God, it is compelled, by its very constitution, to
personify him and to endow him with attributes. You
can as easily conceive matter without substance, or
space without extension, as a God without attributes.
And they must be such as we have experience of.
This is only another way of saying that phenomenally
(i.e., for man) the Deity possesses certain human qua
lities. . When many Deities are believed in, there will
be a kind of division of parts among them, though even
then the tendency of the human mind will be to set up
one supreme God—as, for instance, Zeus. When a
more advanced stage of thought has been reached, man
will invest the one God with all those qualities—infinite
ly multiplied—-which he observes to be the most excel
lent and admirable in humanity, according to the vary
ing estimates of successive periods. He will be, above
all things, a Judge, a rewarder of what is held to be
good and a punisher of evil; and as it is observed that
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19
good actions are not adequately rewarded and bad
actions not adequately punished in this world (or at
least that they do not seem , to be) his judicial func
tions will be conceived as chiefly exercised m another
and a future state of being. And such a God, who
has so revealed himself, will ultimately exercise an
influence on the actions of men quite as powerful as,
nay much more powerful than, the Deity of the
world’s nursery tales.
And this brings me to say a word about a future
state of rewards and punishments. It will scarcely
be contended that a belief in such a state could
not have arisen in the world without a revelation j
for such an assertion would be directly contrary
to history. We know that a large portion, probably
a majority of mankind, have had a strong conviction
on this subject, quite independent of any revelation,
and founded on a natural and well-observed craving
of the human mind. A belief in the immortality of
the soul, in a heaven and a hell, is to be found not
only among the philosophers of antiquity, but, in .a
crude state, among the vulgar. I believe there is
hardly a race on the earth, however low in type, that
has not got it at the present day. And it is certainly
worthy of very special notice that a strong conviction
of a future state had made its way. into the world. by
natural means before any revelation on the subject
can be said to have been made. Greek sages held
the doctrine at a time when the only people on the
face of the earth, who are alleged by Christians to
have received a series of special communications from
the Almighty, were profoundly ignorant on this,
which one would imagine likely to form one of the
most prominent subjects of such communications.
Nay, there is strong reason to suppose that the Jews
(God’s own people) derived it from the heathen.
Of course, as in the case of God, so also in this
one, it will be said that without a revelation there
�20
The Dean of Canterbury
would be no certainty. In other words, we can’t prove
the existence of a future state. The remarks I have
before made will apply here with increased force. It
has been said that a belief in a future state has hardly
an appreciable effect upon a man who is determined
to sin. Without going so far as that, I will make
bold to say that a reasonable conviction that a future
lies before us (or say, apprehension that it may lie
before us), in which our condition will in some way
depend on our conduct here, is likely to have quite as
great an effect upon an individual as a certainty on
the subject. That a conviction of this kind has been,
and is to be found extensively in the world, apart
from miracles, is a matter of notoriety: its genesis is
clear, it is conformable not only to a natural want,
but to all that we can gather of the moral govern
ment of the universe. Stronger assurance than this
is not to be expected. Surely a miraculous revela
tion has no place here, even in the “Analogy of
Miracles,” if there be such a thing. Miracles, I
should suppose, are not usually perpetrated, except
to bring some truth into the minds of men which
could not otherwise have found its way there.
(3.) And now, to turn briefly to the question
of man being bound to exercise his faculty of distin
guishing between right and wrong. The Dean tells
us that unless there be a God and a future state, there
is no field for the exercise of man’s moral faculties.
What he means is, unless there be a knowledge of
God, &c., for God and futurity might conceivably
exist, without our having a suspicion of their exist
ence, in which case there would not be any such
field, or at any rate we should not know of any such
field. Well, he says, it is the knowledge of a God, &c.
which enables us to answer the question, “ Why am
I bound to do that which is right * ” “ Conscience never
?
asks whether a thing is a sin against society; it never
troubles about consequences, knows nothing about
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21
political economy, or political morality either. It
judges by a higher and absolute rule. . . . When
conscience condemns, it is because the thing is a sin
against God.” This is really a statement of the old
difficulty urged against the Utilitarian school, and
which Mr Lecky in his “European Morals” has
recently gone into at some length. I cannot put it
better than in Mr Mozley’s words. “ Bat supposing
this criterion of rightness in actions themselves to be
adopted, viz., their producing happiness, the .question
still remains, ‘Why must I perform these actions?
What have I to do with the happiness of others?”’
(Bampton Lecture, p. 322.) Several answers might
be made to this question, but in order to adhere
strictly to the Dean’s lines, I will give this one.
“ Because these actions appear to me to be conform
able to the will of God, and also because if I neglect
to do them, I shall very likely be punished in a future
world. I can’t prove these things mathematically,
but I am so convinced of their truth that I feel myself
bound to act upon them.” In short, if you substitute
for the Dean’s word “knowledge” the word “belief”
(and we know that such a belief can be acquired by
perfectly natural means), the man who “ believes” is
' furnished with a “ sufficient field for the exercise of his
moral faculties,” and the whole argument in favour of a
miraculous revelation crumbles immediately to pieces.
*
* The Dean’s reasoning may be put in the form of two
syllogisms: 1. Every being in nature is provided with a field
for the exercise of his faculties. 2. Man is a being. 3. There
fore man is provided with a field, &c. Syllogism two is
this- 1. In order that man should be provided with such a
field, he must have a knowledge (i.e. certain knowledge, or at
any rate a greater knowledge than he can possess by the light
of reason) of God and a future state. 2. Such a knowledge can
only be acquired by a revelation. 3. Therefore there has been
a revelation, Q. E. D. The error is, I think, in the major
premiss of the second syllogism, which begs the whole ques
tion at issue, and in support of which the Dean has only ad
vanced four words of assertion.
�The Dean of Canterbury
I have troubled you at too great length already,
but I cant help adding, m conclusion, that what has
misled the Dean and other amiable and intelligent
reasoners on the orthodox side, is simply this : They
have observed, or think they have observed, that only
a tew men, comparatively speaking, have as yet
arrived, by the light of nature, at such a belief in a
God and m a future state as I have indicated—a
belief strong enough to take the place of a demon
stration, and to influence their actions and their
thoughts. It is shocking to them to see a whole
world left for so many ages in darkness, with light
streaming in" only on the mountain tops,—“ One
Plato, surrounded by the mass leading the most
grossly sensual life,” exclaims the Dean. They
therefore, hail an intervention of the Deity to make
all these things quite sure and certain, failing alto
gether to take, into account the stupendous scale, as
to time, of the workings of the Great First Cause,
the marvellously gradual way in which all truths
burst from their sources, the appalling mental and
physical suffering which has been inflicted broadcast
on myriads of human beings—for purposes which the
*
Dean and you and I believe to be ultimately wise
*
ones.
And yet, with singular inconsistency, they
invoke this identical gradual dissemination of truth
as an argument when defending their own side of the
question, where it figures as a very weak argument
indeed. I have mentioned Bishop Butler in passing:
there is another Bishop, a lecturer in this series, whose
. * To take a familiar example, how many thousands of
innocent human beings have been tortured and killed as
witches, before it came to be known, first to the highest
minds, then to the bulk of the educated, last of all to the
vulgar—if yet indeed to the vulgar, even in England—that
there is not such a thing in the world as witchcraft ? And
yet there have been no miracles to enlighten mankind on this
point. The only recorded miracles have, unfortunately,
tended to keep up the delusion.
�on Science and Revelation.
23
contribution has only this moment met my eye. His
lecture is called “ The gradual development of revela
tion.” At page 22 he writes, “ The conclusions of
science, and even the guesses of scientific men,.. . tend
to make untenable any objections to the revelation of
God contained in Scripture, on the ground of the
gradual manner in which that revelation is alleged to
have been made.” And again, page 18, “ When we
look to nature it is impossible not to be struck by
this fact, namely, that gradualness of development
appears to be a universal law,” &c., &c. This argu
ment has to be pressed, because the awkward fact
has to be met, that probably not one-thpusandth part
of the human beings who have existed on this planet
have ever heard of the Revelation which is supposed
to have been made for the general benefit:—that is
to say, only an infinitesimal portion of mankind have
ever had “ a field furnished for the exercise of their
moral qualities,” ! Hence, revelations are represented
as being likely to follow the analogy of nature, in
being gradual. The answer to this, and td a good deal
of the two Bishops’ reasoning, seems to me to lie on
the surface. Revelations are, from their very charac
ter, outside all ordinary laws, and cannot be expected
to conform to those laws, of which they are, in point of
fact, a seeming violation. If they be part of a “ higher
law,” we, who know nothing of that higher law, cannot
predicate of it that it is gradual in its operations.
On the other hand, this “gradualness,” as the
Bishop calls it, may be made a real weapon in the
hands of the upholders of a natural development of
moral truths and moral knowledge. You would
expect such a development to follow natural laws,
and to be very gradual indeed. Hence the fact, that
as yet very few persons in the world have arrived at
a conviction of a God and a future state by natural
means, if such a fact can be shown, would be no
argument against these truths being capable of being
�24
Science and Revelation.
imparted by such natural means. It could only show
that the rate of progress- has been slo^r which we
admit.
■' •„
In short, I fail to see that the Dean has shown the
'necessity of a revelation—much less that he has shown
it by a “ strictly scientific proof.” And, if he has not
done this, if he has failed in his object, then, although
he has delivered a very interesting lecture, he cannot
be said to have advanced the cause of the Christian
Evidence Society.
'
"■ , ■
I send you this hfirried letter, written under a
press of other engagements, as my protest-against the
Dean’s assumptions. You are quite welcome to make
what use of it you like, if you should think it calcu
lated, in its rough state, to be of any use at alL
Believe me,
s,.
Yours sincerely,
- - ? .
.
M. P.
rd'
House of Commons’ Library,
•-June,, 1871.
>
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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The Dean of Canterbury on science and revelation: a letter
Creator
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Lewis, John Delaware [1828-1884]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 24 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. "By M.P." [Title page]. Dated House of Commons Library, June 1871. Pamphlet also held in Conway Tracts 31. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Final page dirty.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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[1871]
Identifier
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G5464
G5744
Subject
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Theology
Science
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The Dean of Canterbury on science and revelation: a letter), identified by <span><a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Christian Evidence Society
Revelation-Christianity
Robert Payne Smith
Science and Religion