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V,
Tlut^Js k^w?i> tX-| tvJ<Si>,
“IS IT REASONABLE
TO
WORSHIP GO D?”
VERBATIM REPORT
OF
TWO NIGHTS’ DEBATE AT NOTTINGHAM
BETWEEN
THE REV. R. A. ARMSTRONG
AND
CHARLES BRADLAUGH.
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,.
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1878.
I
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH
28, STONECUTTER STREET.
�PREFACE.
I have been invited to prefix a few sentences to this
debate in its published form, and I am glad to avail myself
of the opportunity so courteously accorded.
Many have criticised my conduct in consenting to meet
in public debate one whose teachings, both theological
(or anti-theological) and social, they and I alike regard as.
in many respects of pernicious tendency. My reply is, that
those teachings are influencing large numbers of men and
women; that to denounce them, is simply to intensify their
influence in some quarters; and that they must be met
face to face if their force is to be diminished. I regard oral
public discussion as one of the least efficient methods for
the discovery of truth; but I cannot blind myself to the
fact that it is almost the only method by which what I hold
to be true, can get the ear and the attention of some classes
of the community; and I perceive that if a man can trust
his temper and is also interested in his cause and not in
himself, he may in this way do some good which he can do
in no other. If it be given him to touch one heart or
enlighten one soul, it is a cheap price to pay, that a laugh
may go against him, or even that some good and sincere
persons may think he has acted wrongly.
The debate itself can only touch the edge of subjects so
stupendous as Theism and Worship. But some may be
�IV
PREFACE.
led by it to thought or to study, on which they would not
otherwise have entered.
I select three points in this debate for a further word or
two :
(i.) I said Mr. Bradlaugh could not “ conceive a better
world.” The expression is ambiguous. He and I both con
ceive and strive to promote a better state of things than that
now existing. But we can conceive no better constitution
for a world than that of a world so constituted as to evoke
the effort of mankind to advance its progress and improve
ment. The evil is not in itself good; it is only the
necessary condition of good. The moment you conceive
a world existing from first to last without evil, you conceive
a world destitute of the necessary conditions for the
evolution of noble character; and so, in eliminating the evil,
you eliminate a good which a thousand times outweighs
the evil.
(2.) “ Either,” argues Mr. Bradlaugh, in effect, “ God could
make a world without suffering, or he could not. If he could
and did not, he is not all-good. It he could not, he is not
all-powerful.” The reply is, What do you mean by allpowerful? If you mean having power to reconcile things
in themselves contradictory, we do not hold that God is
all-powerful. But a humanity, from the first enjoying
immunity from suffering, and yet possessed of nobility of
character, is a self-contradictory conception.
(3.) I have ventured upon alleging an Intelligent Cause
of the phenomena of the universe; in spite of the fact that
in several of his writings Mr. Bradlaugh has described
intelligence as implying limitations. But though intelli
gence, as known to us in man, is always hedged within
limits, there is no difficulty in conceiving each and every
limit as removed. In that case the essential conception of
�V
PREFACE.
intelligence remains the same precisely, although the change
of conditions revolutionises its mode of working.
The metaphysical argument for Theism, though I hold
it in the last resort to be unanswerable, can never be the
real basis of personal religion. That must rest on the facts
of consciousness verified by the results in character flowing
from the candid recognition of those facts. It is useless, as
well as unscientific, for the Atheist either to deny or to
ignore those facts. The hopeless task that lies before him,
ere Theism can be overturned, is to prove that experiences
which to many a Theist are more real and more unquestion
able than the deliverances of sight, of hearing, or of touch,
are mere phantasies of the brain.
I addressed the following letter to the Editor of the
National Reformer after the debate.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ NATIONAL REFORMER.”
Sir,—Some of those who heard or may read the recent discussion
between Mr. Bradlaugh, and myself may be willing to pursue the
positive argument for Theism and Worship which I adopted—-as distin
guished from and supplementary to the ordinary metaphysical argument
—at greater length than the limits of time permitted me to expound it in
the debate. Will you allow me to recommend to such persons three
works which will specially serve their purpose ? These are—Theodore
Parker’s “Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion” (eighteenpence, British and Foreign Unitarian Association, 37, Norfolk Street,
Strand) ; F. W. Newman’s “ Hebrew Theism ” (half-a-crown, Triibner);
and the Rev. Charles Voysey’s “Mystery of Pain, Death, and Sin”
(Williams & Norgate, 1878). I would gladly add to these Professor
Blackie’s “ Natural History of Atheism ”—a book of much intellectual
force—were it not that he indulges too often in a strain of superior
contempt with which I have no sympathy.—I am, &c.,
Richard A. Armstrong.
Nottingham,
Sept, <pth, 1878.
�vi
PREFACE.
I only now further desire to refer the reader to Mr. Brown
low Maitland’s “Theismor Agnosticism” (eighteen-pencer
Christian Knowledge Society, 1878).
Tennyson shall utter. for me my last plea with the
doubter to throw himself upon the bosom of God in
prayer:—
“Speak to him, thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit can.
meet,—
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.”
R. A. Armstrong.
Nottingham,
Sept. 23rd, 1878.
�Is it Reasonable to Worship God?”
The first of two nights’ debate in the Co-operative Hall,
Nottingham, between the Rev. R. A. Armstrong and Mr.
Charles Bradlaugh; G. B. Rothera, Esq., in the chair.
The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen,—I have had
the pleasure, during the last few weeks, of spending a very
pleasant holiday on the heather-covered mountains of
Scotland. On reaching Edinburgh on my way homeward,
I received a letter from my friend, Mr. Armstrong, inform
ing me of the arrangements for to-night’s debate, and
of the wish that was felt that I should preside. Though a
private communication, yet as it contains the grounds
upon which the request was made, and in part also
those upon which I was induced to comply, I shall
be glad if Mr. Armstrong will kindly give me per
mission to read that letter to you. It is as follows :—“ My Dear Sir,—I have obtained your address from your
son, and you must blame him for enabling me to molest you
with my importunities in the midst of your holiday.
“ Circumstances have led to my receiving an invitation from
the local branch of the National Secular Society, and from Mr.
Bradlaugh, to debate with the latter on the reasonableness of
religious worship. At first strongly disposed to decline, I have
been led, together with the friends whom I have consulted, to
believe that it was my duty to accept the task, and, however
distasteful, I am now in for it.
“ It is to take place at the Co-operative Hall, on two consecu
tive nights, Thursday and Friday, September 5 and 6, and we
are most anxious to secure the services—which I hope will be
chiefly formal—of a competent chairman who will possess the
respect of both parties. My own friends and the Secularists
independently suggested your name, and we all feel that we
should be deeply indebted to you if you would preside over us
on the two nights. My earnest desire is to throw such a tone
into the meetings as shall make them really helpful to genuine
�8
truth-seekers, and I have good ground for believing that manysuch will be present.
■ “ I sincerely hope you will do us all this favour. I do not
know where else to turn for a chairman that will be so acceptable
to all concerned. Your speedy and favourable reply will be very
welcome to yours truly,
R. A. Armstrong.
“Burns Street, Nottingham, Aug. 24, 1878.
“ G. B. Rothera, Esq.”
Now, ladies and gentlemen, on receiving that letter my
first impulse was, I think naturally, to decline, and that
for two reasons—first, I find that as one gets on in life there
is a stronger and stronger disposition to avoid the excite
ment of public meetings, to seek more and more the ease
of one’s own arm-chair, and to enjoy that best of all society,
our books (hear). Beyond this I had real misgivings as to
my ability to fill, as I ought, the duties sought to be put upon
me. Nevertheless, on slight reflection, these difficulties
vanished. I felt that there were occasions, of which this,
probably, was one, when it becomes us to lay aside con
siderations of personal ease and convenience in the hope to
meet the wishes of, and to be useful to, one’s neighbours
and friends. Now, in occupying this position I must not
be considered to identify myself with either the one party
or the other (hear). I may agree with either, or with
neither. I am here, as I believe you are here, interested in
a question of the gravest concern to all of us, as an earnest
inquirer, anxious to learn and not afraid to hear (applause).
My position, I take it, is very much akin to that of the
Speaker of the House of Commons. I have simply to
regulate the order of debate, and to ask at your hands
—what I am sure I shall receive—such orderly and consis
tent behaviour as will become an assembly of English gentle
men. Now,in those who have charged themselves with the
responsibility of this debate we have men of acknowledged
ability and high culture (applause)—men who, I am sure
will know well how to reconcile the duties of courtesy with
the earnestness of debate. In addressing themselves to the
present question, it must, I think, be clearly understood
that the question, as it appears upon the paper, is not to be
narrowed to a simple inquiry whether it is reasonable that
we should worship God. A much wider issue must be
covered by the debate, if it is to satisfy the expectations
of this audience. The question is one, I take, it between
�9
Theism and Atheism. It is not enough to postulate a Deity,
and then ask whether it is reasonable or not to worship him.
What I think we have a right to ask is, tfyat the gentle
man charged with the affirmative of the proposition
shall adduce such evidence as will establish satisfactorily
the conclusion that there is a Deity to worship.
The
position of the Atheist, I take it, is not one of disbelief,
but of simple unbelief.
He does not say that God
is not, but he affirms the lack of evidence for the
position that God is (hear). He does not even say
that there may not be a God. What he does say is that
if there is a God he has failed to manifest himself, either by
the utterance of his voice, in audible revelation, or by the
impression of his hand upon visible nature. I take it, there
fore, and think Mr. Armstrong will be prepared to
accept the position, that it will be incumbent upon him, at
the outset of the discussion, to address himself to a con
sideration of the proofs in favour of the position that there
is a God to worship. If he succeed in this, then, I
think, there will be a very difficult and trying ordeal before
Mr. Bradlaugh to prove that, God, being existent, is not
entitled to the reasonable worship of his creatures (applause).
Pardon me these remarks by way of introduction. Before
calling on Mr. Armstrong to open the debate, I may just say
that, by arrangement between them, Mr. Armstrong, upon
whom the affirmative rests, is to be allowed half-an-hour
to open the discussion; Mr. Bradlaugh half-an-hour in
reply ; that then the next hour will be divided into quarters,
each speaker having a quarter of an hour alternately
(applause). The result of this arrangement will be that
Mr. Armstrong will open the debate to-night, which will
be closed by Mr. Bradlaugh, while to-morrow night Mr.
Bradlaugh will open the debate and Mr. Armstrong will
■close it. This, I think, you will regard as a satisfactory
arrangement, and a liberal one, inasmuch as Mr. Bradlaugh
concedes to Mr. Armstrong the advantage of the last word
(applause).
Mr. Armstrong, who was cordially received, said : Mr.
Chairman and friends—I wish to say two or three words at
the outset of this debate as to its origin. You are many of
you aware that a short time ago Mr. Bradlaugh visited this
town, and gave a lecture in defence of Atheism, from this plat
form, in answer to Professor Max Muller’s Hibbert lectures.
I was led to be present then, and I offered some remarks
�IO
at the close. Mr. Bradlaugh rejoined, and in the course of
his rejoinder threw out, in a courteous manner, a challenge
for me to meet him and discuss these weighty matters at fur
ther length. I thought no more of it then, not conceiving it
to be my duty to take up that challenge. A few days after
wards, however, I received a letter from the Secretary of
the Nottingham branch of the National Secular Society
stating that many persons had been much interested in the
words that fell from me, and that they would consider it an
obligation conferred upon them, and others earnestly in pur
suit of truth, if I consented to meet Mr. Bradlaugh in this
manner. I replied, that for my own part, I was but little
sanguine of any good effects, or a balance of good effects,
resulting from such a meeting; but that the invitation being
couched in such courteous and earnest terms, I would con
sult with friends on whose judgment I placed reliance, before
finally replying. I consulted these friends, and at the same time
thought the matter over further; and I came to the conclusion
that, though it has undoubtedly happened that on too many
occasions theological debates have been the root of bitter
ness and strife, yet, nevertheless, two men really in earnest
about what they have to say, and speaking to persons also
in earnest, who have come neither for amusement nor ex
citement—-I came to the conclusion that a debate, con
ducted with tact and temper on both sides, might (may I
say by the blessing of God ?) conduce rather to good than
to evil (applause). Under these circumstances, I accepted
the challenge. I did so, though, as I said in my letter to
the chairman, it is distasteful to me, because if I make any
thing of this occasion it can only be by exhibiting to you
my inmost heart. We are not going to talk in a superficial
manner—we are not going to bandy compliments, nor, I
hope, exchange rebukes; but, each of us is going to search
his inner consciousness, and try to express to the audience
that which he finds therein. It is, perhaps, more distasteful
to me on this occasion than to Mr. Bradlaugh, since I find,
or believe myself to find, in my inner consciousness certain
facts which Mr. Bradlaugh will no doubt tell you he does
not find in his inner consciousness. These facts are to me
of the most solemn and sacred nature conceivable, and to
expose them before a large and public audience is a thing
very like a sort of martyrdom. If I were not confident
that, however little you may sympathise with what I say,
you will treat it with respect or consideration, I woul
�11
never consent to drag the sacred thoughts of my soul before
you to hold them up as an exhibition (hear). I am to
maintain to-night—not to demonstrate (as you will see
if you look at the bills)—the proposition that it is
reasonable to worship God. Mr. Bradlaugh has not
necessarily to disprove, but to impugn, that proposition.
Now, all I have any hope of doing to-night is this—to
show that it is reasonable for me and for others conscious of
mental phenomena in themselves more or less akin to those
of which I am conscious, to worship God. Would that I
could touch you with the beauty and the sweetness
of this belief—would that I could hold up before you, in all
its glory and sublimity, in all its strength and holiness, the
beauty and the sweetness of the worship of God. Could
I succeed in doing so, I should take your imaginations
captive. I think I should get the suffrage of your reason.
It is as though, sir, to-night, I had been called upon to
prove that my dearest friend is worthy to be loved—ay,
•even that my dearest friend exists; for, if God is aught to
us, he is our dearest, nearest friend—present when all
others are taken from us, a sure refuge in every moment of
temptation and of woe ; the very highest and most intimate
reality of which the mind can conceive—the sum and sub
stance of all existence. Well, now, how do I know this
God ? Who is this God of whom I speak ? Let me try to
tell you how it seems to me that I have made acquaintance
with him. I find that at certain moments of my life there
is that which I can best describe aS a voice—though it is a
metaphor—addressed to me, influencing largely my conduct.
I find that there are in me, as in all men, strong instincts,
strong desires, strong self-interests—some lower, some
higher, some less worthy, some more worthy, than others.
I find that but for this voice of which I speak I should be
entirely swayed thereby, as, so far as I can see, the brutes
of the field and the forest are swayed thereby. But I find
that sometimes, at moments when these instincts are the
very strongest within me, and when I am about to throw
myself into their realisation and give them expression in
■fact—I find, sometimes, at these moments that there comes
to me somewhat which, so far as my consciousness delivers,
is not myself. There comes to me somewhat stopping me
from indulging these instincts and bidding me to curb them.
Ifindatothertimesthatmyinstinctsof self-preservation, of self
regard, of pleasure-loving, and so forth—my appetites—
�12
would lead me to hold back from a certain course of action.
So far as I can judge, looking into my own mind, myself is
against that course of action. It appears to my reasoning
powers and inclinations that I had better keep out of it.
But there comes now somewhat which comes from outside,,
and which is no part of myself, which says, “ Go and do it.”
That was so when I received the invitation to this debate.
Again, I find that on certain occasions—alas! that I should
have to say it—I have defied this monitor, I have done that
which it told me not to do, or not done that which it bade
me to do. I find then that there enter into me from some
where—I know not from whence—pangs of remorse keener
than ever came from any personal sorrow, more biting than
ever came from any physical pain. There have been times,
however—let me thank God I can say so !—when I have
obeyed this voice, followed its dictates in spite of all myself
seeming to drag me from it; and my experience is that on
these occasions there has entered my soul, from whence I
cannot tell you, a peace surpassing that given us in any
other circumstances—a peace in the light of which the
sorrows that at other times might cut me to the heart seem
light and small, a peace in the beauty and holiness of which
these'sorrows seem wonderfully diminished. I will tell you what
I call the source of that voice which I fancy speaks to me
in that fourfold manner. I call the source of that voice
“ God,” and that is the first thing I mean by God. I call the
source of all these monitions and admonitions, these ex
hortations and rebukes, this voice of reproval and of
approval, the voice of God; because I must give it some
name, and that seems to me the simplest and the truest name
I can give it. I might, perhaps, be inclined to doubt
whether all this was not fancy (though I hardly think I
should) if, so far as I could gather, it were an unique experi
ence of my own; but I find that it is not so. I find that
this voice is recognised by every true man and woman I
meet. They may obey it or not, but they recognise it, and
allow that it is there. I behold the picture by Millais
of the day before the awful massacre of St. Bartho
lomew. I see the maiden leaning on her lover’s bosom
whilst he looks down upon her with looks of love and
tenderness, and she strives to tie around his arm a scarf.
She knows of the impending massacre, that all Protestants
are to be slaughtered, and she would fain put this badge
upon his arm as a secret signal to preserve him from the
�13
sword. Does he accept this method of escape ? Although
his inclination is to remain with his beloved, the strength of
his right hand is given to tear the badge from his arm, and
he faces death, not with joy, but with an exceeding bitter
sorrow for the moment—he faces death in simple loyalty
and obedience to the voice which has spoken to his heart.
That is an experience which you will all recognise—one
which, in less or in greater force, we have all had. What
ever explanation may be given—and, doubtless, Mr. Brad’
laugh has an explanation of his own—this voice of con
science is to me one of the primary evidences of the exist
ence of God. Nay, I will not call it an evidence; it
is God speaking to me (applause). This conscience
has been described by Mr. Voysey, in his recentlypublished sermons in refutation of Atheism, as fol
lows : “ The collision is so complete between the higher
voice and the impelling instinct, that one can only feel that
the two are radically different in nature, and. must have had
a different source. . . .To have the power of doing
intentionally what one shrinks from doing, and to
deny one’s self the pleasure which is so fascinating,
and which one longs to do, is to prove the immense superi
ority of our inner selves over the visible universe.”
To have the power, as that man, that Huguenot, must have
had it, to deny one’s self the pleasure which is so fascinating,
and for which one longs, is to prove the immense superiority
of our inner selves when hearing the voice of God over the
visible universe. Again, speaking of conscience, Voysey says :
“The conscience which makes us mortify our flesh with its
affections and lusts, and which often mars our happiness and
embitters our pleasure, upbraids us with reproaches and
stings us with remorse, that voice which hushes our cry for
happiness, which will not endure a single selfish plea, but
demands unquestioning obedience, and bids us fall down in
the very dust before the Majesty of Duty—we all, in our
secret hearts, revere this power, whether or not we obey it
as we should. At least, we pay to it the homage of our inmost
souls, and feel how great and grand it is to be its slave.”
Now, sir, I desire to pass on to another method, by which it
seems to me that I apprehend this being. Having made the
acquaintance with this awful voice—and the philosopher
Kant said two things filled him with awe, the starry
heavens and the moral nature in man—I pass on to another
matter. Behold the starry heaven itself. I know not how
�14
it is with you, but I will tell you my experience—and we are
told by scientific men that we must bring everything to the test
of experience. Sometimes when I have been out oftemper—as I
am sometimes, like other people—sometimes, when I have been
much distracted with cares, when troubles and pains have
been thick upon me, it falls to my lot to go out beneath the
starry heaven. What is it that I experience in my soul ? I
go through no process of metaphysical reasoning, I do not
argue with myself, but I simply feel that there is a Divine
presence there, in whose hand are all these stars and all
these worlds—a great voice singing, “ I am strong and I am
good, and you are safe nestling in my hand.” I know not
if that corresponds with the experience of all here,
but that it corresponds with the experience of many, I
feel sure ; and let me ask such not to drive away these
holy feelings, but to trust them as the assurance which
God gives of his presence. It may be that in those lakes
and mountains which you, sir, have seen of late, you
may have heard a message whispering to your soul of a
peace beyond the peace of earth—of a presence before
which all things are well. In others, not so sensitive per
haps to the beauties of natural scenery, such experience
comes in the tones of music—in some grand symphony or
some sweet song; and they feel lifted away from the things
of earth,' and they feel lifted into some presence in which it
is a joy to be, and which fills their soul with peace. That
presence I call, having no other name for it, the presence of
God. Observe, that in this I am not philosophising about
the cause—I am not saying that God is the cause and so
on; I am only relating the experience of my consciousness,
reported to you as faithfully and truly as I can read it. Let
me read what Professor Blackie wrote the other day:
“ Many things can be known only by being felt, all vital
forces are fundamentally unknowable.” And, says Francis
Newman, that arch-heretic : “ The astronomer is ever aware
of the presence of gravitation and the electrician sees all
things pervaded by electricity—powers descried by the mind,
unwitnessed by any sense, long unknown to the wise, still
unknown or undiscerned by the vulgar j yet this percep
tion of things hidden is not esteemed cloudy.” Now,
having made some acquaintance with this awful, inscrutable
something, to which I venture to give the name of God, I
venture to lift up to it the voice of my soul, and strive
to throw myself towards that Being. And what is my
�i5
experience ? Let us go to experience again: I find
when my mind is bewildered and in doubt, when it
is all involved with difficulties, that somehow, when I
address that Being, there comes to my soul . “ clear
shining,” and I see things plainer and more beautiful than
before. I appeal to him in pain and sorrow—not with the
coward’s prayer, but simply asking that I may feel his pre
sence, to endure it j and the pain and sorrow have become
light on the instant assurance that God is there to comfort
and console. I pray to him in weakness, when my strength
fails, and what is the result? That a new manhood
comes to me, and I feel that wondrous power which
over-arches all the worlds, and I feel that I have in me
also somewhat of his strength. I appeal to him, last of all,
in temptation, when the wrong deed presses closely on my
inclinations, and what do I find ? That strength is given
me to stand up against temptation, and he answers
according to the immemorial prayer of Christendom:
deliver us from temptation, This is experience, or I fancy
it is. It is not theory. Again, I am in gladness. When
is my gladness greatest, and when is it richest? Why,
when it flows up and out, in thankfulness and adoration, to
the source to which I trace it. Then my gladness seems to
receive an influence which lifts it up above. No gladness
is the true gladness without that. Let me conclude this
half-hour by reading a very short extract from Professor
Newman. Speaking of the instincts of mankind, he says:—
And the instinct of Religion is the noblest of them all,
The bravest, the most enduring, the most fruitful in mighty
deeds,
The source of earliest grandeur, unitress of scattered tribes ;
Even in the crudeness of its infancy,when unpurified by science,
Yet teeming with civilisation, with statesmanship, with letters.
Mistress of all high art, and parent of glorious martyrs.
And if from it have come wars, and bigotries, and cruelties,
Through infantine hot-headedness and unripeness of mind,
We take your aid, O Sceptics ! to purge it from all such evils,
And kindly honour we pay to you for your battles against super
stition ;
Yet the very evils ye deplore, prove Religion’s mighty energy,
And the grasp deeply seated which she has within human
hearts.”
(Loud applause.)
Mr. Bradlaugh : Thanking you, sir, for acceding to the
request which I would have gladly joined in had I had any
�right of acquaintance to entitle me to make it; thanking you
for undertaking what is always a troublesome duty, however
well a debate may be conducted, of presiding over a dis
cussion, permit me to say one word only as to the opening
which fell from your lips. There is only one phrase in that
which I desire to note, so as to save myself from the possi
bility of misapprehension. I quite agree with the view you
put of the position the Atheist takes, except that if Dualism
be affirmed, if more than Monism be affirmed, if more than
one existence be affirmed, and if it be the beyond of that one
existence which is called God, then the Atheist does not
say there may be one, but says there cannot be one; and
that is the only distinction I wish to put as against the very
kind words with which you introduced the speakers this
evening The question for our debate is : “ Is it reasonable
to worship God ?” and to determine this question it is
necessary to define the words “worship” and “God,”and next
to decide whether belief in God is reasonable or unreason
able ; and, secondly, whether worship is, under any, and
if any, what,. circumstances, reasonable or unreasonable.
And I am afraid I must here except that, in the speech to
which I have just listened, and which, from its tone and
kindly style, is perfectly unexceptionable, there is not one
word at present—it may possibly come later on—which may
fairly be taken as approaching a definition either of the word
“ God ” or the word “ worship. ” By worship I mean act of rever
ence, respect, adoration, homage, offered to some person.
According to this definition, worship cannot be offered to the
impersonal, and according to this definition it would be
unreasonable to advocate worship to be offered to the im
personal. Under the term “worship” I include prayer—which
is, evidently, from the opening, also included in the term
“worship” by the rev. gentleman who maintains the opposite
position to myself—praise, sacrifice, offerings, solemn ser
vices, adoration, personal prostration. For the word “God,”
not having a definition of my own, I take—not having yet
gathered, in what has fallen from Mr. Armstrong, enough to
enable me to say that I understand what he means by it—I
take the definition of “ God” given in Professor Flint’s Baird
lectures ; not meaning by that that Mr. Armstrong is bound
by that definition, but asking him to be kind enough to note
where he thinks that definition is incorrect, and to kindly tell
me so, for my guidance in the latter portions of the debate.
By “ God,” for the purpose of this debate, I shall mean a self-
�i7
existent, eternal being, infinite in power and in wisdom, and
perfect in holiness and goodness ; the maker of heaven
and earth. And by “self-existent" I mean, that, the con
ception of which does not require the conception of
antecedent to it. For example, this glass is phenomenal,
conceived, as all phenomena must be conceived, by the
characteristics or qualities which enable you to think
and identify it in your mind, but which cannot be con
ceived except as that of which there is possible ante
cedent and consequent, and which, therefore, cannot be
considered as self-existent according to my definition. By
“eternal”and by “infinite” I only mean illimitable, indefinite,
tome—applying the term “eternal ” to duration, and the word
“ infinite ” to extension. I take Professor Flint, or whoever
may hold the definition I have given of God, by “ maker ”
to mean originator; and then I am in the difficulty that the
word “ creator,” in the sense of origin, is, to me, a word
without meaning. I only know creation as change ; origin
of phenomena, not of existence; origin of condition, not
origin of substance. The words “ creation ” and “ de
struction ” are both words which have no other
meaning to my mind than the meaning of change.
I will now try to address myself to some of the argu
ments that were put forward by Mr. Armstrong. He
said that to him the notion of entering into this debate was
distasteful to him, and he addressed somewhat of an in
quiry as to my own feeling on the matter. No ! the dis
cussion of no one subject more than any other is distasteful
to me, unless it be of a personal character, in which it might
involve my having to say things upon which I should not like
to mislead and upon which it would be painful to me to
state the facts. Then a discussion would be distasteful to
me; but such a discussion as this is not any more distaste
ful to me than the discussion of an astronomical or geolo
gical problem; and I will urge to those who go even further
and say, that not only is such a matter distasteful, but that the
discussion of Theism is really immoral, to such I would read
from a recent volume entitled “ A Candid Examination of
Theism”:—“If there is no God, where can be the harm
in our examining the spurious evidence of his existence ?
If there is a God,- surely our first duty towards him must
be to exert to our utmost, in our attempts to find him, the
most noble faculty with which he has endowed us—as care
fully to investigate the evidence which he has seen fit to
�furnish of his own existence, as we investigate the evidence
of inferior things in his dependent creation. To say that
there is one rule or method for ascertaining truth in the
latter case which it is not legitimate to apply in the former
case, is merely a covert way of saying that the Deity—if
he exists—has not supplied us with rational evidence of
his existence.” Now, that is the position I am going to
put to you; and there ought to be nothing distasteful
to anyone in proving most thoroughly the whole of the
evidence upon which his supposed belief in God’s existence
rests. The grounds of his belief ought to be clear to him
self, or they are no sufficient grounds for his belief, even to
himself. If they are clear to himself they ought to be
clearly stateable to others; because, if not, they lie under
the suspicion of not being clear to himself. That which is
sufficient to him to convince him, is either capable of being
clearly stated—although it may not carry conviction to
another—or it is not. If it is not capable of being clearly
stated, I would suggest it is because it does not clearly exist
in his own mind. Now Mr. Armstrong says that he feels as if
called upon to prove that his dearest friend ought to be
loved, as if called upon to prove that his dearest friend
exists. He spoke of God as being to him his dearest
friend, and he followed that with some words as to which I am
not quite sure whether he intended to use them in the sense in
which they fell upon my ears. He described God as “ the
sum and substance of all existence.” I do not want to
make any verbal trick, and if I am putting more on Mr.
Armstrong than he meant to convey I should like to be put
right when he rises again, and I will ask him if he considers
God to be the sum and substance of all existing; and, if
he does not, I will ask him in what respect he distinguishes
between God, in his mind, and the sum and substance of
all existence ; because clearly, when he used those words he
had some meaning in his mind, and I should like to know
these two things : First, do you identify God in your mind
with the sum and substance of all existence ? If not, in
what respects do you distinguish God in your mind from
the sum and substance of all existence ? If you say that
you identify God with the sum and substance of all exist
ence, then I ask, are we included in that, sum and substance
of all existence ? And if we are included in that sum and
substance of all existence, is it reasonable for one phe
nomenon or for a number of phenomena, to offer worship
�T9
to any of, and to how much of, what remains ? Then he
addressed himself to the very old argument, which he put
so beautifully, when he said : “How do I know God?” and
launched into what is known as the argument from conscience,
an argument very fully stated by Professor Flint in the
Baird lectures to which I have referred. Mr. Armstrong
said, and here I will take a little exception; he said : “ In
me, as in all men here, are strong instincts; in me, as in all
men, there are strong desires; in me, as in all men, there is
a voice.” That is just the blunder; that is not true. I do
not mean that in any sort of disrespectful sense. If you
take a volume like Topinard’s “ Anthropology ” you find
that men’s desires, men’s emotions, and men’s instincts all
vary with race, all vary with locality, with type, all vary with
what Buckle called “Food, climate, soil, and life surround
ings and I ask, if there be this variance in individuals of
different races, nay, more, if there be this variance in in
dividuals of the same race at the same moment, and if the
members of the same race vary in different places and ages,
as to their instincts, desires, and emotions, I ask you whether
there has been the same variation in the source of it? You
say the source is God, and if so, how can a variable source
be a reliable object of worship ? Then let us see a little
more. “ I do not desire to do something, but my monitor
says ‘ Do ” or the reverse; and thus voice is the evidence
of Deity. I should have been obliged if Mr. Armstrong
had defined exactly what it was he meant by conscience,
because here we are going terribly to disagree. I am going
to deny the existence of conscience altogether, except as a
result of development upon organisation, including in that,
transmitted predisposition of ability to possible thought or
action. But if that be so, what becomes of this “ still small
voice,” of those desires and instincts? The mere fact
that the mother may have worked in a cotton-mill while
childbearing and have had bad food, or that the father may
have beaten her—his brutality may result in the awakening
of a desire and instinct exactly the opposite of that which Mr.
Armstrong has, and the organisation fitted for repeating
which may be handed down through generations. I stood
this morning for other purposes at the doors of Coldbath
fields Prison. One man who came out gave a sort of shrill
whistle and plunged into the crowd with a defiant and a
mocking air, showing that his conscience, his monitor, said
nothing to him except that he was glad he was outside, and
�20
ready to war with the world again (applause). I am not
wishing to press this view in any fashion unkindly or unfairly; '
I am only wanting to put the thing as it appears to me. I
want to.know: “ Does Mr. Armstrong contend that there is a
faculty identical in every human being which he calls con
science, which does decide for each human being, and
always decides, in the same manner, what is right and what
is wrong ? Or does he mean that this ‘ monitor,’ as he calls
it, decides differently in different men and in different
countries ? And if ‘ yes,’ is the source different in each case
where there is a different expression ? And if ‘ yes,’ is it
justifiable and reasonable to offer worship to an uncertain
source, or to a source which speaks with a different voice, or
to a source which is only one of a number, and of which you
do not know how far its limit extends, and where its juris
diction begins or ends ? ” Let us follow this out a little
more. We have not only to define conscience, but we have
also to define right and wrong, and I did not hear Mr. Arm
strong do that. I did hear him say that when he had done
something in opposition to his monitor he felt remorse. I
did hear him say there was struggling between himself and
his monitor, and here I had another difficulty. What is the
himself that struggles, as distinguished in his mind from the
monitor that he struggles against ? If the struggle is a
mental one, what is mind struggling against ? and if it is not,
how does Mr. Armstrong explain it ? Let us, if you please,
go to right and wrong. By moral I mean useful. I mean
that that is right which tends to the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, with the least injury to any. I am only
following Jeremy Bentham. That is my definition of right.
Many matters which have been held to come within that
definition in one age have been found in another age not to
come within it, and the great march of civilisation is that
from day to day it instructs us in what is useful. I submit
that instead of adoring the source of contradictory verdicts
it is more reasonable to find out for ourselves some rule we
can apply. For example, here Mr. Armstrong’s conscience
would not raise any particular objection to his taking animal
food, unless he happens to be a vegetarian, and then, I am
sure, he would conscientiously carry it out; but the majority
of people’s consciences in England would raise no great
objection to taking animal food. Yet in China and in
Hindustan hundreds of thousands of human beings have
died because vegetable food was not there for them, and
«
�21
their consciences made them prefer death to tasting
animal food' I want to know whether the conscience is
from the same source here as in Hindustan, and I want to
know, if that is so, which people are justified in worshipping
the source ? Take the case of murder. Mr. Armstrong’s
conscience would clearly tell him that it was wrong to murder
me. And yet there are many people in this country who
would not go to that extent. But I am going to take a
stronger illustration. There are a number of people who
think it perfectly right to bless the flags of a regiment, and to
pray to the God whom Mr. Armstrong asks me to worship,
that a particular regiment, whose flags are blessed, may kill
the people of some other particular regiment as rapidly as
possible. This shows that there are confusions of mind as
to what is meant by murder, and a like confusion exists on
a number of other matters on which the monitor is
misrepresenting.
And then Mr. Armstrong has said^
“ I mean by God the source of admonition, rebukes,
remorse, trouble,” and he says: “ It is a conscience-voice
which is recognised by every true man and woman.”
I am sure he would not wish to put any position
stronger than it should be put, and he put it, too, that this
was the feature in which man differed from the brutes. I
am inclined to tell him that not only there is not that recog
nition to-day amongst the physiological and psychological
teachers, but that we have a number of. men whose re
searches have been collected for us, who show us that what
you call the “ still small voice,” this monitor, these desires,
instincts, emotions, are to be found—varied, it is true
—right through the whole scale of animal life. Whereever there is a nervous encephalic apparatus sufficient
you have—except in the fact of language—wider distinc
tion between the highest order of human race and the
lowest, than you have between the lowest order of human
beings and those whom you are pleased to call brutes. I
will now only take the illustration of the eve of St. Bartho
lomew, which is fatal to the argument of Mr. Armstrong.
He gave the Protestant lover—a very fine character—reject
ing the symbolic bandage, and preferring to die for his faithy
or, .as Mr. Armstrong put it, “ to face death in simple
loyalty rather than play the hypocrite, and the source of that
feeling was God.” Was that the source of the feeling
which led Bruno to be burnt at the stake as if for Atheism,
or for Vanini, burnt for Atheism ; or for Lescynski, burnt
�for Atheism; or for Mrs. Besant, robbed of her child because
of her avowal of Atheism (hisses) ? You are hissing ; wait
whilst I answer. Is the source of your hissing, God ? Then
what a cowardly and weak thing, and little fitted for worship
must be that source (applause). I desire to deal with this
subject in all gravity, in all sincerity, in all kindness, but I
plead for a cause—weakly, it is true—for which great and
brave men and women have died, and I will permit no insult
to it in my presence—(cheers)—knowingly I will pass none.
I believe my antagonist to meet me loyally, honourably, and
honestly, and I believe him to meet me earnestly and
sincerely. I believe he has no desire to wound my feel
ings, and I 'do not wish to wound his ; and I ask you, the
jury here, to try to follow the same example set by him
in this debate (cheers).
Mr. Armstrong, being received with cheers, said:
It is very difficult indeed to think on these deep
problems under consideration with excitement amongst
the audience present, therefore I hope that you will be as
quiet as you can. I will begin at once with a confession
—and this, at any rate, will be a testimony of my candour—
by saying that the moment I had spoken certain words in
my opening speech I thought: “'Mr. Bradlaugh will have
me there;” and he had me (laughter). The words
were those in which I spoke of God as the sum and
substance of all existence. Now, to me, God is a much
simpler word than the phrase, “ sum and substance of all
existence.” Whether God be the “ sum and substance of
all existence ” I know not, for those words convey to me
less clear meaning than the word “God” conveys to me. The
source, moreover, of my immediate knowledge of God is
such that it can make no asseverations whatever upon deep
questions of metaphysics, as to what the “ sum and sub
stance of all existence” may consist. Mr. Bradlaugh has taken
a definition of God from Professor Flint. He is a Scotchman,
and Scotchmen are very fond of definitions (a laugh). Very
often, too, their definitions obscure their subject-matter, and
it is far harder to get any proper significance from them than
in the thing which they intended to define. I am
utterly incapable of saying whether that definition of Pro
fessor Flint’s is an accurate definition of God or not. What I
mean by “God,” and perhaps Mr. Bradlaugh will take it as the
best definition I can here give, is the source, whatever it be, of
this metaphorical voice—of these intimations or monitions,
�23
that come to me in certain experiences which I have. Mr.
Bradlaugh, of course, devoted much time to answering Pro
fessor Flint. He asked whether God was the source of that
loyalty with which the Atheists he mentioned went to the
stake, and’I say from the bottom of my heart, that he was. God
knows the Atheist though the Atheist knows not him. God
is the source of loyalty of heart, in whomsoever it may be.
If others are led to propound propositions which I believe
to be false, and if they dispute other propositions which I
believe to be true, do you think that God is going to judge
them for that, so long as they have been true and faithful to
their own reasoning powers (applause) ? Mr. Bradlaugh
noticed the phrase which fell from me, about a discussion
like this being distasteful to me. I did not say that the
matter under discussion was distasteful to me. I did not say
that a discussion under other conditions would be distasteful
to me. I did not say that it was at all distasteful to me to
search the grounds of my own belief, for my own belief
would be poor indeed were not such search my constant
practice (hear, hear). Mr. Bradlaugh laid great stress,
during the greater part of his speech, upon what
appear to be, in different races and in different
climes, the different and contradictory deliverances of
conscience. That difficulty is one which has been
felt by many persons, and dealt with, well and ill, by
various writers. The difficulty is one of importance, and it
arises, perhaps, from the word “ conscience ” being used in
various different senses. My use of the word “ conscience ” is
simply as being that voice of God (as I still call it) which says,
“Do the right; don’t do the wrong.” It does not in anyway say
what is right or what is wrong. That which I call the right,
like so much of our manhood, is the gradual development
and evolution of history, and it is largely dependent, as
Mr. Bradlaugh, says, upon climate and other external sur
roundings. We have to reason about what is right and wrong.
We must have gradual education of the individual and
of the race to get a clearer and more worthy conception of
the right and wrong ; and all I claim for conscience is that
the man, having resolved in his own mind what is right and
what is wrong,this conscience says, “Do the right,and do not
the wrong.” Therefore, instates of barbarous society, where
misled reason has induced persons to think certain things
were right which we look upon as crimes, still the voice of
conscience must necessarily tell them to do the right. The
�24
thing is right to the individual if he thinks it right. It may
be a terrible mistake of his—it may be a terrible mistake to
believe or teach certain things; nevertheless, the voice of
conscience says, “ Do the rightit does not define what
the right is. That is one of the things which God leaves to
be developed in humanity by slow degrees. Thank God, we
see that the idea of the right and the wrong is purifying—is
clarifying in the course of history. The conception of what
is right and what is wrong is better now than it was a
hundred years ago; the conception of what is right
and what is wrong is better still than it was a thou
sand years ago.
Many of the things then considered
laudable are now considered base; and many of the things
then considered base are now considered laudable. This
voice of which I speak, however, like all other voices, may
not be equally perceived at all times. Supposing that you
were at school, and a certain bell rang at six o’clock every
morning. If you accustom yourself to rising when the bell
rings, you will naturally enough go on hearing it; but if you
get into the habit of disregarding it, and turning over on the
other side for another nap, the bell may sound loudly but
you will cease to hear it. So it is, I take it, with the voice
of God, which ever speaks—which ever pleads—but against
which man may deafen himself. He may make himself so
dull of understanding that he may not hear it clearly. Not
only the individual man’s own obstinacy may make
him dull of hearing, but it must be conceded that this
dulness of hearing may descend to him from long
generations of those from whom he proceeds. It may
be a part of his inheritance. But it does not follow that
this voice does not exist, and that it does not still plead with
him if he had the ear to hear it. No man is so lost but that
if he strives to hear, that voice will become to him clearer and
more clear. I ask you here whether you find any difficulty
in deciding what, to you, is right or wrong? Mr. Bradlaugh
is very fond of definitions. The words “right’’and “wrong’’are
so simple that any definition of them would only obscure
them. I know, andyou know, what you m ean by right and wrong.
If I say of a thing, “ That is not right, don’t do it,” you know
what I mean. Can I speak in any plainer way than to say
of a thing, “ That is not right ” ? If there is no better way
of explaining what you mean than this—if there is no plainer
way—it is best not to attempt to define the word, because
the definition would only tend to obscure it. Not being
4
>
�25
much accustomed to debates of this description, much of
what I desired to say in the first half-hour was not said. I
am told that all this experience which I have been trying
to relate to you is fancy, and I am asked to prove that there
is some being who can be imagined to be this God whom I
believe I hear speaking to me. I might ask : “ Is it not
enough that not only do I think I hear this voice, but that
so many hundreds and thousands of the great and good
have also thought so ? Is it not enough that many of the
great reformers, many of the great leaders in the paths of
righteousness and mercy, in this England of ours, tell us that
they hear this voice ? You must, if you deny it, either think
they lie or that they are deluded. When Newman, Voysey,
Theodore Parker—the glorious abolitionist of America—
say that it is their most intimate experience, it is somewhat
shallow to assert that there is nothing in it. I am not one
of those who think that the existence of a God can be
proved to the understanding of every one in a large audience
on a priori grounds. At the same time the balance of
probability on a priori grounds seems to be, to me, strongly
in favour of Theism. I find that there is, in my own.
mental constitution, a demand for cause of some kind for
every phenomenon. I want to know what has led to thephenomenon, and I find a good many other people are apt to
inquire in the like direction. Even very little children,
before they are sophisticated by us teachers and parsons,
want to be informed as to the causes of things. Another
point — I cannot help believing that all cause must beintelligent. Yes, I knew that would go down in Mr. Brad
laugh’s notes; but I say again, I cannot conceive of any
cause which is not intelligent in some sort of way (applause).
Mr. Brad laugh : There are two things which are evidently
quite certain so far as my opponent is concerned; one is that
we shall have a good-tempered debate, and the other that we
shall have a candid debate. Mr. Armstrong has said frankly,
with reference to the definition of God, that he is perfectly in
capable of saying whether the definition of Professor Flint is
correct or not, and he has, I think I may say, complained that
I am too fond of definitions. Will he permit me on this to read
him an extract from Professor Max Muller’s recent lecture :
“ It was, I think, a very good old custom never to enter
upon the discussion of any scientific problem without giving,
beforehand definitions of the principal terms that had to be
employed. A book on logic or grammar generally opened
�with the question, What is logic? What is grammar ? No
one would write on minerals without first explaining what he
meant by a mineral, or on art, without defining, as well as
he might, his idea of art. No doubt it was often as trouble
some for the author to give such preliminary definitions as
it seemed useless to the reader, who was generally quite
incapable in the beginning of appreciating their full value.
Thus it happened that the rule of giving verbal definitions
came to be looked upon after a time as useless and obsolete.
Some authors actually took credit for no longer giving these
definitions, and it soon became the fashion to say that the
only true and complete definition of what was meant by
logic or grammar, by law or religion, was contained in the
books themselves which treated of these subjects. But
what has been the result ? Endless misunderstandings and
controversies which might have been avoided in many cases
if both sides had clearly defined what they did and what
they did not understand by certain words.” I will show you
presently where this need of accurate definition comes so
very strongly. Mr. Armstrong is quite clear that he knows
what right means ; he is also quite clear that you know
what he means. That may be true, but it also may not, and
I will show you the difficulty.
Suppose there were a
thorough disciple, say of some bishop or church, who thought
it right to put to death a man holding my opinions. That
man would think the capital punishment for heresy right,
Mr. Armstrong would not. That man’s conscience would
decide that it was right, Mr. Armstrong’s would decide that
it was not. What is the use of saying you both know what
is right ? The word right is a word by which you label
certain things, thoughts, and actions, the rightness of which
you have decided on some grounds known only to yourselves.
It may be they are pleasant to you or disagreeable to your
antagonist. I, in defining morality, gave you my reason for
labelling the thing with the name “right.” Mr. Armstrong has
given you no reason whatever. Mr. Armstrong says that
conscience is the voice of God which says : “ Do that which
is right, don’t do that which is wrong.” Yet the divine voice
does not tell you what is right and what is wrong. Hence
that conscience talking to the cannibal: “ It is right to eat
that man, he’s tender; it’s wrong to eat that man, he’s
tough ”—(laughter)—and the voice of God says : “eat the
tender men because it is right; don’t eat the tough men
because it is wrong.” I ask how that illustration is to be
�27
dealt with? If the voice does not in any way enable you to
determine the character of the act, then it simply means
that what you call the voice of God asks you to continue
committing every error which has been bequeathed you
from past times as right, and to avoid every good thing
because in past times it has been condemned and is yet con
demned as wrong. If that is to be the conclusion, then
I say that the voice of God is not a voice to be worshipped,
and that it is not reasonable to worship such a voice
and taking that to be the definition I submit that upon
that a negative answer must be given in this debate.
Mr. Armstrong very frankly and candidly says that the
conception of what is right and wrong is being cleared
and purified ‘ day by day. That is, the conception now is
different to what it was one hundred years ago, and better
still than it was a thousand years ago; but the voice of
God, a thousand years ago, told the Armstrong and Brad
laugh then living, to do that which conscience said to them
was right, and which the conscience to-day says is wrong.
Was God governed by the mis-education, the mis-informa
tion, and the mis-apprehension of the time ? If the God
was outside the ignorance of the day, why did he not set the
people right ? Was he powerless to do it ? In which case,
how do you make out that he is God ? Or had he never the
willingness to do it ? In which case how do you make out
that he was God good ? And if he preferred to leave them
in blindness, how do you reconcile that? Then we are told
the voice is not always clear, but that you may make it more
clear by a habit of obedience. That is so I suppose. And you
may transmit the predisposition to the habit of galloping tohorses on this side the ocean, the predisposition to the
habit of trotting to horses on the other side the ocean;' tothinking MahommedanisminTurkey,and to thinking another
“ ism ” in England, and some other “ism” in Hindustan.
You do not transmit the actual thought any more than you
transmit the actual gallop or trot, but you transmit the pre
disposition, given the appropriate surroundings to reproduce
any action physical or mental. And the source of this is
God, is it ? I vow I do not understand how the Theist is to
meet the contradiction thus involved. Then, Mr. Arm
strong says that when he uses the word “ right,” he defies
anyone to make it plainer. Let us see what that means :
I forge a cheque; Mr. Armstrong says that’s wrong. Why?
Oh ! it is a dishonest and dishonourable thing, it tends to
�28
injure, and so on. But let us see whether you are always
quite clear about these things ? When you are annexing a
country, for example; praying to your God that you may
annex successfully, and that he will protect you when you
have annexed, does not your conscience run away with you,
or does not God mislead you in some of these things ? Is
it not true that the moment you get outside the definition
of the word “ right,” and the moment you say : “ I have a
standard of right which I will not tell you, because nothing
I tell you will make it clear ” you are launched at once into
a heap of absurdities and contradictions ? You think it is
right to have one wife, the Turk thinks it right to have two.
How are you to determine between them ? It only means,
that one of you has labelled bigamy “ right ” and the other
has labelled it “ wrong.” You must have some kind of ex
planation to justify what you are talking about it. We had
an argument offered by Mr. Armstrong which, if it meant
anything, meant that the voice of the majority should pre
vail. Mr. Armstrong said, that it was not only his experience
but that of thousands of others. Does he mean to tell me
that problems of this kind are to be determined by an un
trained majority, or by the verdict of a skilled minority ?
If by a majority, I have something to say to him, and if by
the skilled minority, how are you to select them ? In his
first speech, which I did not quite finish replying to, we
were told that God’s peace and beauty were apprehended in
lakes and mountains. But I have seen one lake—-Michigan—
the reverse of peace and beauty; I have seen little vessels
knocked about by the waves, and dashed to pieces ; and I
have seen Mount Vesuvius when it has been the
very opposite of calm and beautiful, and I have
heard of the houses at Torre del Grecco—though I
have never seen it—being burned in the night by the fiery
lava stream. Where is the peace and beauty of that scene ?
You can take peace. Given a lake, and I can show you a
tornado. Given a mountain and I can give you Vesuvius
with the fiery stream burning the huts of the fishers on the
slope of Torre del Grecco. Did God do this ? Did God
run the two vessels into one another on the Thames and
have those hundreds of people drowned? If you take
credit for the beauty you must also take debit for the
pain and misery (applause). Well, then, I am told that re
ligion is the noblest of all instincts. Max Muller tells us—
whether that be true or not, as Francis Newman puts it—that
�29
religion is a word about which people never have agreed in
any age of the world; about which there have been more
quarrels than about any other word, and about which people
have done more mischief than about any other word; and
I will ask our friend to explain, if it be the noblest of all
instincts, how is it that people have racked each other, and
beheaded each other, and tortured each other by, or in the
name of, this religion ? We are told, and I am thankful to
hear it, that we sceptics have purged it of a great deal of
mischief, and we hope to do more in that way as we go on
(applause). And here—and I want to speak with as much
reverence as I can on the subject of prayer, and it is ex
tremely difficult to touch upon it without giving my oppo
nent pain—so I will deal with it as a general, and not a
personal question. Mr. Armstrong said, after speaking of
how he prayed against temptation : “ He answered me as he
has answered the immemorial prayer of Christendom and
delivered me from temptation.” Why does he not deliver
from the temptation that misery, poverty, and ignorance
bring to the little one who did not choose that he should be
born in a narrow lane, or a back street, in an atmosphere
redolent of squalor and filth ? This little one, whom God
can lift out of temptation, but whom he lets still be cold and
miserable, whom he sees famishing for food, him whom he
sees go famishing to the baker’s, watching to steal the
loaf to relieve his hunger—why won’t he deliver this little
one ? Does Mr. Armstrong say: “ Oh, the little one must
know how to pray before God will answer him ” ? Oh, but
what a mockery to us that the source of all power places
within the reach of the temptation—nay, puts as though
surrounded by a mighty temptation trap, so that there should
be no possible escape—that little one, and then gives way to the
skilled entreaty, high tone, habit-cultured voice which Mr.
Armstrong uses, while he is deaf to the rough pleading of the
little one, and allows him to sink down, making no effort
for his recovery ! I have only one or two words more to
say to you before I again finish, and I would use these to
ask Mr. Armstrong to tell me what he meant by the word
“ cause,” and what he meant by saying “ cause must be
intelligent ” ? By cause, I mean, all that without which an
event cannot happen—the means towards an end, and by
intelligence I mean the totality of mental ability—its activity
and its results in each animal capable of it.
Mr. Armstrong: Mr. Bradlaugh has just been re-
�3°
buking me for my laxness with respect to defini
tions, and has come down upon me with a great autho
rity. Now, it is a habit of mine not to think much
of authorities as authorities, but rather of the value
of what they say. Mr. Bradlaugh came down upon
me with Max Muller, and read a sentence in reference to the
value of definitions, to the effect that they were wonderful
things for preventing and avoiding controversies and dis
putes. Is it, I ask, Mr. Bradlaugh’s experience that the
number of definitions given from public platforms in his
presence has tended to less controversy or to more ? Has
there been more or less talk with all these definitions, than
there would have been without them ? I fancied that Mr.
Bradlaugh’s career had been one very much connected with
controversies, and that the definitions which he has been ac
customed to give have not had the effect of leaving him in peace
from controversy. I am perfectly amazed at Mr. Brad
laugh’s memory, at the wonderful manner in which he
manages to remember, with tolerable accuracy, what I have
said, and to get down as he does the chief points of my
speeches.
I have, unfortunately, a miserable memory,
although I have an excellent shorthand which I can write,
and I cannot generally read it (laughter). Trusting, however,
to those two guides, I must endeavour to reply. Mr. Brad
laugh unintentionally misrepresented me when he alleged
that I had said that the voice of God, called conscience, was
not always clear. I did not say that that voice was not always
clear -—- what I said was that it was not always clearly
heard. I illustrated this by the simile of the bell, the sound
of which was perfectly clear of itself, but which was not
heard by those who would not heed.
Mr. Bradlaugh
also accused me of going in for the authority of majori
ties, because I quoted a number of names and said
that I might quote many more who concurred in the
belief in Deity grounded upon the sort of experi
ence which I said that I had myself enjoyed. Now, the
opinions of the majority have no authority—at least they go
for what they are worth, but are not a binding or an absolute
authority. But the experience of a majority, or of a minority,
or of a single individual, has authority. The experience
of a single man is a fact, and all the rest of the world not
having had that experience, or thinking that they have not
had it, does not make it less the fact. Therefore, if you
have half-a-dozen men upon whose words you can rely, who
�3i
say that they have had a certain experience, because Mr.
Bradlaugh says he has not had such experience, that makes
it none the less the fact. Now I approach that awful question
which stares in the face of the Theist—and which
ioften seems to stare most cruelly—this question of the evil
in the world. It is a question upon which the greatest
intellects of mankind have broken themselves, one which
has never been really explained or made clear, either by
the Theist or the Atheist, but which is probably beyond the
solution of the human faculties. All that we can do is to
fringe the edge of the mystery, and to see whether the best
feelings within us seem to guide us to anything approaching
a solution. Do you think that these things of which Mr.
Bradlaugh has spoken do not touch me as they touch
him ? Look, say, at the poor child born in misery, and
living in suffering; it would absolutely break my heart if I
thought that this could be the end of all. I believe that it
would weigh me down so that I could not stand upon a
public platform, or perform the ordinary business of life, if I
believed that there were beings in the world of whom misery
and sin were the beginning and the end. But I thank God that
I am enabled to maintain my reason upon its seat, and my
trust intact. I know, or I think I know, God as a friend. If he
be a friend to me, shall he not be a friend to all ? If I know
by my own experience his wondrous loving kindness, can I
not trust him for all the rest of the world, through all the
ages of eternity ? You may see a son who shall be familiar
with his father’s kindness, who shall always be kindly treated
by his father ; and there shall be a great warm love between
them. But the child sees certain actions on the part of his
father which he cannot explain. He beholds suffering
apparently brought by his father upon others, and is,
perhaps, inclined to rebel against his father’s authority. But
which is the truest child—the child who, having himself
experienced his father’s love, says : “ Well, this is strange, it
is a mystery; I would it were not so, but I know that my father
is good, and will bring some good out of this which could
not have been obtained otherwiseor the child who says :
“All my experience of my father’s goodness shall go to the
winds. I see a problem which I cannot explain, and I will,
therefore, throw up my trust, rebel against the paternal
goodness, and believe in my father’s love no more ! ” It
would be base in such of you as may be Atheisst
to rest in such a trust, since vou do not know the
�32
love of God; but were you touched with that love
this trust would come to you. It would come to you in
your best and truest moments, the moments when you feel
that you are most akin with all that is good and holy, and
when you feel, as it were, lifted above what is base. ’ This
problem of the evil in the world, I have said, surpasses the
faculties of humanity to solve, either from the platform of
the Theist, the Atheist, or the Pantheist. . I ask you what
you conceive to be the highest good to humanity ? Is not
the highest good, virtue ? You say, it may be, happiness is
better. Take the Huguenot. One way, with him, led to
happiness, the other to destruction. Was the choice he made
the better or the worse ? You say the better ? Then you
hold that virtueis betterthan happiness. Withregardto virtue
imagine, if you can, a world free from every sort of suffer
ing, from every sort of temptation, every sort of trial, what
a very nice world to live in, but what very poor creatures we
should all be ! Where would be virtue, where valour, where
greatness, where nobility, where would be all thos’e high
functions which call forth our reverence, and make
us look up from men to the God of man ? The world
is not made of sugar-plums. I, for my own part, can
not conceive how virtue, the highest good which we can
conceive, could possibly come about in human character
unless human character had evil against which it had to
contend (applause). If you can tell me how we could have
a world in which men should be great, and good, and
chivalrous, and possess all such qualities as raise feelings of
reverence in our bosoms, where nevertheless all should be
smooth and easy, you will have told me of something which,
I think, has never been told to any human being (applause).
Mr. Bradlaugh : A large number of definitions lead to
more controversy or to less. If the definitions are offered
to the minds of people well educated, and thoroughly
understanding them—to much less controversy and to more
accuracy; and when they are offered to people who are yet
ignorant, and have yet to understand them, then they lead
to more controversy, but even there, also, to more accuracy.
I am asked: Can you tell me how to make a world ? I
cannot. Do you intend to base your conclusions on my
ignorance ? If there be an onus, it lies on you, not on me.
It is your business to show that the maker you say ought to
be adored, has made the world as good as it can be. It is
not my business at all to enter upon world-making. Then
�33
I am not sure—while I am quite ready to be set right upon
a verbal inaccuracy—I am not sure there is very much dis
tinction between the voice not being heard, and not being
clearly heard. It is said to be the voice of God that speaks;
but he made the deafness or otherwise of the person to
whom he speaks, or he is not the creator, preserver, “ the
dearest friend in whom I trust, on whom I rely”—these
are Mr. Armstrong’s words. If God cannot prevent the
deafness, then the reliance is misplaced; if he made rhe
deafness, it is of no use that he is talking plainly; if he
has made the person too deaf to hear his voice, then the
voice is a mockery. Then I had it put to me, that the
opinions of majorities were not binding as authority; they
only had their value as expressions of opinion ; but that i
the experiences of individuals are binding. What does
that mean? Is there such a certitude in consciousness
that there can be no mistake in experience ? What do
you mean? When you have a notion you have had an
experience, and I have a notion you have not had it?
Supposing, for example, a man says : “ I have ex
perience of a room which raced with the Great Northern
train to London ; it was an ordinary room, with chairs and
tables in it, and none of them were upset, and it managed
to run a dead heat with the Great Northern express.” You
would say : “ My good man, if you are speaking seriously,
you are a lunatic.” “ No,” he would say, “ that is my ex
perience.” Mr. Armstrong says that that experience de
serves weight. I submit not unless you have this : that the
experience must be of facts coming within the possible range
of other people’s experience; and mustbe experience which is
testable by other people’s experience, with an ability on the
part of the person relating to clearly explain his ex
perience, and that each phenomenon he vouches to you, to
be the subject possible of criticism on examination by your
self, and that no experience which is perfectly abnormal,
and which is against yours, has any weight whatever with
you, or ought to have, except, perhaps, as deserving ex
amination. When it possibly can be made part of your
experience, yes; when it admittedly cannot be made part
of your experience, no. A man with several glasses of
whisky sees six chandeliers in this room ; that is his ex
perience—not mine. I do not refuse to see; I cannot see
more than three. Mr. Armstrong says the problem of evil
never has been made clear by Atheist or Theist. There is
D
�34
no burden on us to make it clear. The burden is upon
the person who considers that he has an all-powerful friend
of loving kindness, to show how that evil exists in con
nection with his statement that that friend could prevent
it. If he will not prevent it, he is not of that loving
kindness which is pretended. Mr. Armstrong says: “My
dear friend is kind to me, shall I not believe that he is
kind to the little lad who is starving?” What, kind
to the lad whom he leaves unsheltered and ill-clad
in winter, whose mother is drunken because the place
is foul, whose father has been committed to gaol ?
Where is the evidence to that lad of God’s loving kind
ness to him ? God, who stands by whilst the little child
steals something; God, who sets the policeman to catch
him, knowing he will go amongst other criminals, where he
will become daily the more corrupted; God, who tells him
from the Bench through the mouth of the justice, that he
has given way to the temptation of the devil, when it is the
very God has been the almighty devil (applause). That
may be a reason for Mr. Armstrong adoring his friend, but
it is no reason for this poor boy to adore. “ Ah,” Mr.
Armstrong says, “ my reason for homage is this. I should
be dissatisfied if this were going to last for ever, or if this
were to be the whole of it; that is so bad I should be in
anguish were there no recompense.” You condemn it if it
is to continue. How can you worship the being who allows
that even temporarily which your reason condemns ? Has
he marked his right to be adored as God by the
little girl who is born of a shame-marked mother in the
shadow of the workhouse walls, who did not select the
womb from which she should come, and whose career, con
sequent on her birth, is one of shame and perhaps crime
too. Ah ! that friend you love, how his love is evidenced
to that little girl is yet to be made clear to me. Then
comes another problem of thought which I am not sure I
shall deal fairly with. Is the highest good virtue or happi
ness ? But the highest happiness is virtue. That act is
virtuous which tends to the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, and which inflicts the least injury on any—that
which does not so result in this is vice. When you put happi
ness and virtue as being utterly distinguished, in your mind
they may be so, but not in my mind. You have confused
the definition of morality which I gave on the first opening;
you have, without explaining it, substituted another in lieu
�35
•of it. You would be right to say my definition is wrong,
■and give another definition, but you have no right to ignore
my definition and use my word in precisely the opposite
sense to that in which I used it. A very few words now will
determine this question for this evening, and I will ask you
to remember the position in which we are here. I am
Atheist, our friend is Theist. He has told you practically
that the word “ God ” is incapable of exact definition,
and if this is so, then it is incapable of exact belief. If it is
incapable of exact definition, it is incapable of exact
thought. If thought is confused you may have prostration of
the intellect, and this is all you can have. Our friend says
that he prays and that his prayer is answered daily, but he
forgot the millions of prayers to whom God is deaf. In his
peaceful mountains and lakes—Vesuvius and Lake Michi
gan escaped him. The fishers in Torre del Grecco, they on
whom the lava stream came down in the night, had their
lips framed no cry for mercy ? Did not some of those
hundreds who were carried to death on the tide of the muddy
Thames, did not they call out in their despair ? and yet he
was deaf to them. He listened to you, but it is of those
to whom he did not listen of whom I have to speak. If
he listens to you and not to them he is a respecter of
persons. He may be one for you to render homage to, but
not for me. First, then, the question is : “ Is it reasonable
to worship God?” and the word “worship” has been left
indistinctly defined. I defy anyone who has listened to
Mr. Armstrong to understand how much or how little he
would exclude or include in worship. I made it clear how
much I would include. Our friend has said nothing
whatever relating to the subject with which we have had to
deal.. His word “God” has been left utterly undefined;
the words “ virtue ” and “ happiness,” and the words “ right”
and “ wrong,” are left equally unexplained; the questions I
put to him of cause and intelligence have been left as
though they were not spoken. I do not make this a re
proach to him, because I know it is the difficulty of the
subject with which he has to deal. The moment you tell
people what you mean, that moment you shiver the Vene
tian glass which contains the liquor that is not to be touched.
I plead under great difficulty.
I plead for opinions that
have been made unpopular; I appeal for persons who, in
the mouths of their antagonists, often have associated with
them all that is vicious. It is true that Mr. Armstrong has
B 2
�36
no such reproach. He says that God will only try me
by that judgment of my own reason, and he makes my
standard higher than God’s on the judgment day. God
made Bruno; do you mean that Bruno’s heresy ranks as
high as faith, and that Bruno at the judgment will stand
amongst the saints ? This may be high humanity, but it is
no part of theology. Our friend can only put it that because
in his own goodness he makes an altar where he can worship,
and a church where he would make a God kind and loving
as himself, and that as he is ready to bless his fellows, so
must his God be; but he has shown no God for me to
worship, and he has made out no reasonableness to wor
ship God except for himself, to whom, he says, God is kind.
Alas ! that so many know nothing of his kindness (applause).
I beg to move the thanks of this meeting to Mr. Rothera
for presiding this evening.
Mr. Armstrong : I wish to second that.
Carried unanimously.
The Chairman : Permit me just to express the obliga
tions I feel under to you for having made my duty so
simple and pleasant. My position as chairman necessarily
and properly excludes me from making any judgment what
ever upon the character and quality of what has been
addressed to you. Notwithstanding that, I may say this i
that it is, I believe, a healthy sign of the times when a num
ber of men and women, such as have met together in this
room, can listen to such addresses as have been made to
night, for it will help on our civilisation. And if you want
a definition of what is right, I say that our business is to
learn what is true, then we shall do what is right (applause).
�37
SECOND
NIGHT.
The Chairman, who was much applauded, said : Ladies
and Gentlemen—It is with much satisfaction that I re
sume my duties as chairman this evening. No one occupy
ing this position could fail to be gratified with the high tone
and excellent temper of the debate which we listened to
last night (hear, hear), or, in noting as I did, the earnest,
sustained, and intelligent attention of a large and much
over-crowded audience (applause). I regard this as a health
ful sign of the times. There are those who look upon such
a discussion as this as dangerous and irreverent. I do not
share in that opinion (hear, hear). There is an intelligence
abroad that no longer permits men to cast the burden of
their beliefs upon mere authority, but which compels them
to seek for reasons for the faith that is in them (hear, hear).
To those, I think, such discussion as this, maintained in the
spirit of last evening, cannot fail to be useful. It is obvious
that the first requisite of religion is, that it be true. Fear of
the results of investigation, therefore, should deter no one
from inquiry. That which is true in religion, cannot be
shaken, and that which is false no one should desire to pre
serve (applause). Now, as you are aware, Mr. Armstrong in
this discussion is charged with the duty of maintaining the
proposition that it is reasonable in us to worship God. The
negative of that proposition is supported by Mr. Bradlaugh.
Under the arrangement for the debate, Mr. Bradlaugh is to
night entitled to half-an-hour for his opening, Mr. Arm
strong to half-an-hour for his reply. After that a quarterhour will be given to each alternately, until Mr. Armstrong
will conclude the debate at ten o’clock. I have now great
pleasure in asking Mr. Bradlaugh to open the discussion
(applause).
Mr. Bradlaugh, who was very warmly received, said :
In contending that it is not reasonable to worship God, it
seemed to me that I ought to make clear to you, at any
�38
rate, the words I used, and the sense in which I used them,
and to do that I laid before you last night several definitions,
not meaning that my definitions should necessarily bind
Mr. Armstrong, but meaning that, unless he supplied some
other and better explanations for the words, the meaning
I gave should be, in each case, taken to be my meaning all
through. I did not mean that he was to be concluded by
the form of my definition if he were able to correct it, or if
he were able to give a better instead ; but I think I am now
entitled to say that he ought to be concluded by my defini
tions, and this, from the answer he has given (hear, hear).
The answer was frank—very frank—(hear) and I feel
reluctant to base more upon it than I ought to do in a dis
cussion conducted as this has been. If I were meeting an
antagonist who strove to take every verbal advantage, I
might be tempted to pursue only the same course; but
when I find a man speaking with evident earnestness, using
language which seems to be the utter abandonment of his
cause, I would rather ask him whether some amendment
of the language he used might not put his case in a
better position. His declaration was that he was perfectly
incapable of saying whether the definition, which I had taken
from Professsor Flint, of God, was correct or not (hear,
hear). Now, I will ask him, and you, too, to consider the
consequence of that admission. No definition whatever is
given by him of the word “ God.” There was not even the
semblance, or attempt of it. The only words we got which
were akin to a definition, except some words which, it
appears, I took down hastily, and which Mr. Armstrong
abandoned in his next speech, the only words bearing even
the semblance of a definition, are “ an awful inscrutable
somewhat” (laughter and hear, hear). Except these words,
there have been no words in the arguments and in the
speeches of Mr. Armstrong which enabled me, in any
fashion, to identify any meaning which he may have of it,
except phrases which contradict each other as soon as you
examine them (applause). Now, what is the definition of which
Mr. Armstrong says that he is incapable of saying whether or
not it is correct? “ That God is a self-existent, eternal being,
infinite in power and wisdom, and perfect in holiness and
goodness, the maker of heaven and earth.” Now, does
Mr. Armstrong mean that each division of the definition
comes within his answer ? Does he mean that in relation to
no part of that which is predicated in this definition is he
�39
capable of saying whether it is correct or not ? Because, if
he does, he is answered by his own speech, as a portion of
this defines God as being perfect in holiness and goodness,
in power and wisdom; and it defines him as eternal in
duration and infinite in his existence; and also defines him
as being the creator of the universe. Now, if Mr. Armstrong
means that “ as a whole, I can’t say whether it is correct or
not,” or if, in defending his position, he means that, haying
divided the definition in its parts, he cannot say whether it is,
in any one part, correct or not, then I must remind him that,
in this debate, the onus lies upon him of saying what it is he
worships, and what it is he contends it is reasonable of us
to worship (hear, hear). If he cannot give us a clear and
concise notion of what he worships, and of what he says it
is reasonable for us to worship, I say that his case has fallen
to the ground. It must be unreasonable to worship that of
which you, in thought, cannot predicate anything in any way
—accurately or inaccurately (applause). Mr. Armstrong
evidently felt—I hope that you will not think that the feel
ing was justified—that there was a tendency on my part to
make too much of, and to be too precise as to, the meaning
of words used. Permit me to say it is impossible to be too
precise; it is impossible to be too clear ; it is impossible to
be too distinct—(hear, hear)—especially when you are dis
cussing a subject in terms which are not used by everybody
in the same sense, and which are sometimes not used by the
mass of those to whom you are addressing yourself at all
(applause). It is still more necessary to be precise when
many of those terms have been appropriated by the teachers
of different theologies and mythologies, such teachers having
alleged that the use of the words meant something which, on
the face of it, contradicted itself, and by other teachers who,
if they have not been self-contradictory, have attached meanings
widely different to those given by their fellows (hear, hear).
I will ask you, then, to insist with me that what is meant by
God should be given us in such words that we can clearly
and easily identify it (hear, hear). If you cannot even in
thought identify God, it is unreasonable—absolutely un
reasonable—to talk of worshipping “ it ” (applause). What
is “ it ” you are going to worship ? Can you think clearly
what it is you are going to worship ? If you can think clearly
for yourself what it is, tell me in what words you think it.
It may be that my brain may not be skilled enough to fully
comprehend that, but, at any rate, we shall then have an
�4°
opportunity of testing for ourselves how little or how much
clear thought you may have on the subject (laughter and ap
plause). If you are obliged to state that it is impossible to
put your thoughts in words so clear and so distinct that I may
understand the meaning of it as clearly as you do, or that
a person of ordinary capacity cannot comprehend the words
in which you describe it—if that is impossible, then it is un
reasonable to ask me to worship it (loud applause). I say it
is unreasonable to ask me to worship an unknown quantity
—an unrecognisable symbol expressing nothing whatever.
If you know what it is you worship—if you think you know
what it is you worship—I say it is your duty to put into
words what you think you know (hear, hear). We have had
in this debate some pleas put forward, which, if they had
remained unchallenged, might have been some sort of pleas
for the existence of a. Deity, but each of those pleas has in
turn failed. I do not want to use too strong a phrase, so I
will say that each in turn has been abandoned. Take, for
instance, the plea of beauty, harmony, and calmness of
the world, as illustrated by lakes and mountains, to
which I contrasted storms and volcanoes. Mr. Arm
strong’s reply to that was: “ But this involves problems
which are alike insoluble by Theist and Atheist.” If it is
so, why do you worship what is non-capable of solution ?
If there be no solution, why do you put that word “ God ”
as representative of the solution which you say is unattain
able, and ask me to prostrate myself before it and adore it ?
(applause).
We must have consistency of phraseology.
Either the problem is soluble—then the onus is upon you
to state it in reasonable terms; or it is insoluble, and then
you have abandoned the point you set out to prove, because
it must be unreasonable to worship an insoluble proposition
(applause). Howdoyou know anything of that God you askus
to worship ? I must avow that, after listening carefully to what
has fallen from Mr. Armstrong, I have been unable to glean
what he knows of God or how he knows it (hear, hear). I
remember he has said something about a “ voice of God,”
but he has frankly admitted that the voice in question has
spoken differently and in contradictory senses in different
ages (loud cries of “no, no,”)—and those who say “no,”
will do better to leave Mr. Armstrong to answer for him
self as to the accuracy of what I state (hear, hear). I say
he frankly admitted that the voice he alluded to had spoken
differently and contradictorily in different ages. (Renewed
�4i
cries of “ no ”). I say yes, and I will give the evidence of
my yes. (Cries of “ no, no,” “ order,” and “ hear, hear.”)
I say yes, and I will give the evidence of my yes (hear,
hear, and applause).
Mr. Armstrong said that in one
hundred years there had been a purification, and an
amelioration, and a clearing away; and that that change
had been vaster still since one thousand years ago (ap
plause). He is responsible for admitting what I said
about the definition of morality being different in one
age and amongst one people, to what it is in another
age and amongst another people; and if that does not mean
exactly what I put substantially to you, it has no meaning
at all (loud applause).
I strive not to misrepresent
that which I have to answer; I will do my best to under
stand what it is that is urged against me. Those who hold
a different judgment should try, at least, to suspend it until I
have finished (hear, hear, and applause). In the Baird
Lectures, to which I referred last night—and let me here
say that I don’t think that any complaint can be fairly made
of my quoting from them—something was said last night
about my using great men as an authority. Now I do not do
that; but if I find that a man, whose position and learning
gave him advantages with regard to a subject upon which
I am speaking, and he has expressed what I wished to say
better than I can do—if I use his language it is right
I should say from where I have taken my words (hear, hear)
And if I remember right, we had, last night, quotations from
Charles Voysey, Professor Newman, Professor Blackie, and
a host of similar writers on the other side. I take it they
were given in the same fashion that I intended in giving the
names of the writers of the quotations I have cited—not for
the purpose of overwhelming me with their authority, but
simply to inform me and you from whence were got the
words used (hear, hear). Now, Professor Flint, in his book
on Atheism, directed against the position taken up by men
like myself, says : “ The child is born, not into the religion
of nature but into blank ignorance; and, if left entirely to
itself, would probably never find out as much religious truth
as the most ignorant of parents can teach it.” Again, on page
23 he says : “The belief that there is one God, infinite in
power, wisdom, and goodness, has certainly not been
wrought out by each one of us for himself, but has been
passed on from man to man, from parent to child: tradi
tion, education, common consent, the social medium, have
�42
exerted great influence in determining its acceptance and
prevalence.” Now, what I want to put to you from this is
that, just as Max Muller and others have done, you must try
to find out whether what is to be understood by the word
“ God ” is to be worshipped or not, by tracing backwards
the origin and growth of what is to-day called religion. You
will have to search out the traditions of the world, should
there fail to be any comprehensible meaning come from the
other side. Now, what God is it that we are to worship ?
Is it the Jewish God? Is it the Mahometan God? Is it
the God of the Trinitarian Christian ? Is it one of the
gods of the Hindus ? Or is it one of the gods of the old
Greeks or Italians, and, if so, which of them ? And in each
case from what source are we to get an accurate definition
of either of those gods ? Perhaps Mr. Armstrong will say
that it is none of these. He will probably decline to
have any of these Gods fastened upon him as the proper
God to worship ; but the very fact that there are so many
different gods—different with every variety of people—contra
dictory in their attributes and qualities—the very fact that
there is a wide difference in believers in a God makes it but
right that I should require that the God we are asked to
worship should be accurately defined (applause). In
the current number of the /Jonteinporary Review, Professor
Monier Williams, dealing with the development of Indian
religious thought, has a paragraph which is most appro
priate to this debate. He says, on page 246 : “ The early
religion of the Indo-Aryans was a development of a still earlier
belief in man’s subjection to the powers of nature and his
need of conciliating them. It was an unsettled system,
which at one time assigned all the phenomena of the uni
verse to one first Cause; at another, attributed them to
several Causes operating independently; at another, sup
posed the whole visible creation to be a simple evolution
from an eternal creative germ. It was a belief which,
according to the character and inclination of the
worshipper was now monotheism, now tritheism, now
polytheism, now pantheism.
But it was not yet
idolatry. Though the forces of nature were thought of as
controlled by divine persons, such persons were not yet
idolised. There is no evidence from the Vedic hymns that
images were employed. The mode of divine worship con
tinued to be determined from a consideration of human
liking and dislikings. Every worshipper praised the gods
'
�43
because he liked to be praised himself. He honoured them
with offerings because he liked to receive presents himself.
This appears to have been the simple origin of the sacrificial
system, afterwards closely interwoven with the whole re
ligious system. And here comes the difficult question—
What were the various ideas expressed by the term sacrifice?
In its purest and simplest form it denoted a dedication of
some simple gift as an expression of gratitude for blessings
received. Soon the act of sacrifice became an act of pro
pitiation for purely selfish ends. The favour of celestial
beings who were capable of conferring good or inflicting
harm on crops, flocks, and herds, was conciliated by offerings
and oblations of all kinds. First, the gods were invited to
join their worshippers at the every-day meal. Then they
were invoked at festive gatherings, and offered a share of
the food consumed. Their bodies were believed to be com
posed of ethereal particles, dependent for nourishment on
the indivisible elementary essence of the substances presented
to them, and to be furnished with senses capable of being
gratified by the aroma of butter and grain offered in fire
(homa); and especially by the fumes arising from libations
of the exhilarating juice extracted from the Soma plant.”
I will allege that .you cannot give me a definition of
God that does not originate in the ignorance of man as to
the causes of phenomena which are abnormal to him, and
which he cannot explain. The wonderful, the extraordinary,
the terrific, the mysterious, the mighty, the grand, the
furious, the good, the highly beneficent—all these
that he did not understand became to him God. He
might have understood them on careful investigation
had his mind then been capable for the search,
but instead of that he attributed them to huge per
sonifications of the Unknown—the word behind which
to-day is God, and it is the equivalent for all he observed,
but did not comprehend, for all that happened of which he
knew not the meaning (applause). It was not education but
ignorance which gave birth to the so-called idea of a God
(hear, hear). And I will submit to you that, in truth, all
forms of worship have arisen from exaggeration and mis
application of what men have seen in their fellow-men and
fellow-women. A man found that a big furious man might
be pacified and calmed by soothing words; that a big
avaricious man might be satisfied and pleased with plenteous
gifts ; that this one might be compelled to do something by
�44
angry words or harsh treatment; and that this one could be
won by supplications to comply with his wishes—and what
he imagined or observed as to his fellows he applied to the
unknown, thinking, no doubt, that that which he had found
efficacious in the known experience, might also be efficacious
in that in which he had no experience. And what did you
find ? You found the sailor at sea, who’did not understand
navigation, offering candles to his Deity, or special saint,
and promising more offerings of a similar character if the
Deity brought him safe into port. I say it is more reason
able to teach him how to steer than how to worship, and also
more reasonable to know something about the science of
navigation. That would prove much more serviceable than
worship, for when he relied upon candles, he ran upon rocks
and reefs, but as soon as he understood navigation, he
could bring his own ship safely into port (applause).
Prayer is spoken of by Mr. Armstrong as an act of wor
ship. What does it imply ? It implies a belief held on the
part of the person who prays, that he may be noticed by the
being to whom he prays; and it also implies that he is
asking that being to do something which he would have left
undone but for that prayer. Then does he think that he can
influence the person whom he addresses by his rank or by his
position ? Does he think he can influence his Deity by his
emotion ? Does he think that as he would win a woman’s
love, so he would gain God, by passionate devotion ?
Does he think that, as he would frighten a man,
so he would influence God through fear ? Does he appeal
to God’s logic, or to his pity? Does he appeal to his
mercy or to his justice ? or does he hope to tell God one
thing he could not know without the prayer ? (loud applause.)
I want an answer, here, clear and thorough, from one
who says that prayer is a reasonable worship to be offered to
God (renewed applause). Something was said last night
about a cause being necessarily intelligent, and I think, in
my speech afterwards, I challenged the assertion. Nothing
was said to explain what was meant, nothing was done to
further explain the matter, and although I defined what I
meant by cause, and defined what I meant by intelligence,
no objection was taken. Now, I have seen a hut crushed
by an avalanche falling on it, as I have been crossing the
Alps.
Does Mr. Armstrong mean to tell me that the
avalanche which crushed the hut was intelligent, or that it
had an intelligent wielder? If the avalanche is intelligent,
�45
why does he think so ? If the avalanche has an intelli
gent wielder, please explain to me the goodness of that
intelligent wielder who dashes the avalanche on the cottage ?
(applause). If you tell me that it is a mystery which you
cannot explain, I say it is unreasonable to ask me to worship
such a mystery—(renewed applause)—and as long as you
call it a mystery, and treat it as that which you cannot explain,
so long you have no right to ask me to adore it. There was
a time when man worshipped the lightning and thunder,
and looked upon them as Deity. But now he has grown
wiser, and, having investigated the subject, instead of
worshipping the lightning as a Deity, he erects lightningconductors and electric wires, and chains the lightning and
thunder God; knowledge is more potent than prayer (ap
plause). As long as they were worshipped • science could
do nothing, but now we see to what uses electricity has been
brought. When they knew that the lightning-conductor
was more powerful than the God they worshipped, then
science was recognised the mighty master and ruler, instead
of ignorant faith (applause). I have already submitted that
there has not been the semblance of proof or authority for
the existence of any being identifiable in words to whom it
would be reasonable to offer worship, and I will show you
the need for pressing that upon you. A strong statement
was made last night which amounted to an admission that
there was wrong here which should not be, and that, but for
the hope on the part of the speaker that that wrong would
be remedied at some future time, he would be in a state of
terrible despair. He gave no reason for the hope, and no
evidence why he held the hope. He only contended that
things were so bad here that they would be indefensible
except for the hope that they woutd be remedied. This
admission is fatal to the affirmation of God to be worshipped
in the way here mentioned.
Then we had something said
about experience. All experience must be experience of the
senses : you can have no other experience whatever. To
quote again from Max Muller: “ All consciousness begins
with sensuous perception, with what we feel, and hear, and
see. Out of this we construct what may be called con
ceptual knowledge, consisting of collective and abstract
concepts. What we call thinking consists simply in addi
tion and subtraction of precepts and concepts. Conceptual
knowledge differs from sensuous knowledge, not in sub
stance, but in form only. As far as the material is con
�46
cerned, nothing exists in the intellect except what existed
before in the senses.” It is the old proposition put in
different, forms , by Locke, Spinoza, and others, over and
over again, but it has to be taken with this qualification that
you have innumerable instances of hallucinations of the
senses. Delusions on religious matters are open to the re
mark that of all hallucinations of the senses—as Dr H
Maudsley shows in the Fortnightly Review—all halluci
nations of the senses those on religious matters only keep
current with the religious teachings of the day. Sight, touch
smell, hearing, feeling—all are the subject of illusion as is
shown over and over again. Any man bringing as evidence
to us the report of experience which is only of an abnor
mal character, is bound to submit it to a test which is some
thing beyond in severity that which we should apply to
normal events. . The more abnormal it is the more par
ticularity in detail do I wish, in order to examine it, so that
I may be able to identify it; and the more curious the state
ment the more carefully do I wish to test it. Loose words in
theology will not do, and here I submit that at present
we stand, with, at any rate, on one side, nothing whatever
affirmed against me. I gathered last night—I hope incor
rectly—I gathered last night—I hope the words were spoken
incautiously—that Mr. Armstrong held it to be natural that
a man should have to struggle against wrong, vice, and folly,
for the purpose of bringing out the higher qualities, and that
it was alleged that it was to that struggle we were indebted
for our virtue. If that were a real thought on the part of
Mr. Armstrong it is but a sorry encouragement to any
attempts, at reformation and civilisation. Why strive to re
move misery and wrong if the struggle against them is con
ducive to.virtue ? It would take a long time to bring about
any ameliorating change in society if such doctrine were
widely held (loud applause).
The Rev. R. A. Armstrong, who was applauded on rising,,
said : Mr. Chairman and Friends—I wish, in justice to
myself, to say that I freely offered Mr. Bradlaugh the choice
of parts as to the order of speaking. I know not which way
the balance of advantage lies; but after the speech we
have listened to, I think you will agree with me that he who
speaks, first the second night has a considerable pull (laughter).
Last night as I passed down that awful flight of stairs, which
they must climb who, in this town, would soar from the nether
world to the celestial realms of Secularism, I heard many
�47
•comments, and among others one man just behind me said:
“Oh ! Armstrong is nowhere in Bradlaugh’s hands. Bradlaugh
can do just what he likes with him ” (laughter). Now, my
friend said the very truth in a certain sense. As a debater
I am nowhere compared with Mr. Bradlaugh. He has
fluency-—I compute that in thirty minutes I can string
together some 4,000 words, while, I fancy, Mr. Bradlaugh’s
score would be just about 6,000—so that to equalise our
mere mechanical advantages I ought really to have three
minutes to every two of his. If I have omitted many things
which I ought to have said, it is due to this reason (laughter
and hear, hear)—for I have not been silent during the time
assigned to me. Of course, I do not complain of this.
Then, to say nothing of Mr.'Bradlaugh’s powerful intellect, to
which I do not pretend, and his wide reading, he is in
constant practice at this work so new to me, so much so that
I find almost every thought he expressed last night, and in
almost—sometimes precisely—identical language, printed in
his pamphlets, and much of it even spoken in one or other o
his numerous debates. Take this, along with his prodigious
memory, and you will see that the doctrine of Atheism has,
indeed, in him, the very ablest defender that its friends could
wish. And if what he says is not enough to demolish
Theism, then you may be sure that Theism cannot be
demolished (applause). But then, friends, I do want you not to
look on this as a personal struggle between Mr. Bradlaugh
and myself at all. I no more accept it in that light than I would
accept a challenge from him to a boxing match, and I think
you will all agree with me that in that case, in discretion I should
show the better part of valour (hear, hear, and laughter).
We are both speaking in all earnestness of what we hold to be the
truth. Neither of us, I presume, in the least, expects to make
converts on the spot: converts so quickly made would be
like enough to be swayed back the other way next week.
But we do desire that the seed of our words should sink
into your minds; that you should give them your reverent
attention, that, in due season, so far as they are good
and true, they may ripen into matured convictions of
the. truth (applause). And now let me look back at the
position in which this conference was left last night. I am
the more at liberty to do so, as to-night Mr. Bradlaugh has
only—or chiefly—done two things, namely, repeated some
things whichhe saidlast night, andanswered certain arguments
of Professor Flint. That is perfectly fair, but it is equally fair
�48
for me to leave Professor Flint to answer for himself (hear
hear, and applause). And I complain that Mr. Bradlaugh
either did not listen to, or did not understand, what I
endeavoured to put in plainest words about the function of
that voice of God which we call conscience (hear, hear).
Observe, that while in different climesand ages, ay, in the same
manat different times, the conceptions of the particular deeds
that come under the head of right differ, the idea of rightness
itself, of rectitude, is always and invariably the same, from its
first faint glimmer in the savage little removed comparatively
from the lower animal, from which he is said to be
developed, to the season of its clear shining, luminous and
glorious, in hero, prophet, martyr, saint—in Elizabeth Fry,
in Mary. Carpenter, in Florence Nightingale. To speak
metaphysically, the abstract subjective idea of right is the
same and one, but our ideas of the concrete and objective
right develop and progress ever towards a purer and more
beautiful ideal. We have by our own powers to satisfy our
selves as best we can what is right. But when we have
made up our minds, the voice of God sounds clear as a
bell upon the soul and bids us do it (applause). This I
stated again and again last night, yet to-night again Mr.
Bradlaugh has confounded the two things. Mr. Bradlaugh
raised a laugh with his story of the cannibal objecting to the
tough, and choosing the tender meal. That cannibal, in so
far, does but illustrate how a man is swayed by those lower
instincts and desires which I rigorously and definitely'dis
tinguished and separated from conscience. Why Mr. Brad
laugh confounded this with a case of the deliverance of
conscience I cannot think, because I am so sure it wasneither to make you grin nor to confuse your minds (hear,
hear). The latter part of the first night’s debate turned on
the mystery of evil. But Mr. Bradlaugh did not then ven
ture to allege the possibility of a world in which noble character
could be developed without the contact with suffering and
pain (hear, hear). He said he was not called upon to make
a world ; happily not; but at any rate he should not question
the excellence of the world in which he lives unless he can at
least conceive abetter—(loud applause)—and I say that where
evil had never been, or what we call evil, manliness, bravery,
generosity, sympathy, tenderness, could never be (applause).
A world without temptation would be a world without
virtue (hear, hear). A world all pleasurable would be a
world without goodness, and even the pleasurable itself
�49
would cease by sheer monotony to give any pleasure at all. A
world not developed out of the conflict of good and evil,
or joy and pain, would necessarily be an absolutely neutral
world, without emotion of any sort. Unless the whole
tint is to be neutral, you must have light and shade; and the
only test by which to judge whether the power controlling the
world is good or evil—God or Devil, as Mr. Bradlaugh says—
(applause)—is to note whether light or darkness preponderates;
and not only that, but whether the movement, the tendency,
the development, the drift of things is towards the gradual
swallowing up of darkness by the light, or light by darkness;
w'hether freedom, happiness, virtue, are in the procession
of the ages losing their ground, or slowly, surely wanning
ever fresh accession (applause). I take it, then, that if we
are to have a final predominance of goodness—nay, even of
happiness, if you make that the highest good—it can only be
by these things winning their way by degrees out of the evil
which is their shadow. And I invite you once more to test
this from experience. My own experience, clear and sure,
and that of every other devout man, is simply this : that
whatever sorrow, whatever pain we suffer, though it wring
our very heart, the time is sure to come when, looking back
thereon, we thank God that it was given us, perceiving that
it was good, not evil, that befel us, being the means, in
some wray or other, of our further advance in happiness or
goodness, or nearness to our heavenly Father. You tell meit is
all very well for me; but you point to those whose lot is cast in
less pleasant places, and ask me what of them ? Is God
good to them? Well, I will take you to a dark and dismal
cellar beneath the reeking streets of a mighty city. And
this picture is not drawn from fancy, it is a photograph
from the life of one I know of. In that dark and poor abode you
shall enter, and you shall see an aged woman to whom that
spot is home. She is eaten up with disease, the inheritance,
doubtless, of her forefathers’ sin. For fifty years her simple
story has been of alternations between less pain and more.
Beside her are two orphan children, no kith or kin of hers,
but adopted by her out of the large love which she nurtures
in her heart, to share the pence she wins from the mangle,
every turn of which is, to her, physical pain. Well, surely,
she knows nought of God, has none of those “ experiences ”
which Mr. Bradlaugh treats as if they were luxuries confined
to the comfortable Theist in his easy-chair, or on his softlypillowed bed. Ay, but she is rising from her knees to
�5°
turn to the dry crust on the board, which is all she has to
share with the children. And what says she as you enter ?
“ Oh, sir, I was only thanking God for his good
ness, and teaching these poor children so.” Now,
if Mr. Bradlaugh is right in declaring we can know
nought of God, then that old woman ought never
to have eased her laden heart by the outburst of her prayer,
ought to have cast out of her as a freak of lunacy the peace
that stole upon her there as she rose from her knees, ought to
have shunned teaching those children, whose lot was like to be
as hard as hers, one word about the reliance that she had
on God (applause). Instead of that she taught the pros
perous man who stumbled down the broken stair into her
abode, a lesson of trust and faith in the goodness and pre
sence of God, which he never forgot as long as he lived
(hear, hear and applause). I sat the other day beside a
dying girl. Her body was in hideous pain, but her face was lit
with a light of beauty and of love which told a wondrous tale of
her spirit’s life. She died, and her mother and her sisters
weep to-day. But a new love, a new gentleness, a new
sense of the nearness of the spirit - world has already
blossomed in their home, and, I am not sure that they
would call her back even if their voices could avail. So it
is; this woe which we call evil is the sacred spring of all
that is beautiful and good (hear, hear). To the Atheist the
world’s sorrow must, indeed, be insupportable. If he be
sincere and have a heart, I do not know how he can ever
eat and drink and make merry, still less how he can make a
jest and raise a titter in the very same speech in which he
dwells with all the skill of practised eloquence upon that
woe (applause). If I were an Atheist I hardly think I could
ever throw off the darkness of this shadow. But, believing
in God, whom I personally know, and know as full of love,
I am constrained to trust that, though this evil be a mystery
the full significance of which I cannot understand, and
though relatively to the little sum of things here and now it
seem great, yet that relatively to the whole plan and sum of
the universe it is very small, and that that poor child, born
of sin and shame, who knew no better than to steal the loaf,
shall one day wear a diadem of celestial glory, and be by no
means least in the Kingdom of Heaven. And when I see
the Atheist smiling, laughing, having apparentlya lightheart in
him, I am bound to suppose that he too, somehow, trusts that
..goodness and happiness are going to win in the end—that
�is, that goodness is the ultimately overruling power. And.
if he believes that, he believes in the power which men
call God (applause). Now, Mr. Bradlaugh has casti
gated me with some severity for not obliging him
with definitions. It is impossible, he says, to be too
precise in the use of words, and I agree with him.
But by definitions I cannot make the simplest words
in the English language more plain to you (hear, hear).
He, himself, has given us some . specimens of defini
tions which I do not think have made things much clearer
than they were before. There are three words of import
ance in the title of this debate, and I will try, since Mr.
Bradlaugh has experienced difficulty in understanding me,
whether I can tell him more distinctly what I mean by them.
Those three words are “ reasonable,” “ worship,” “ God.”
When I say it is reasonable to do a thing, I do not mean
that I can demonstrate to you with the precision of, mathe
matics that every proposition, the truth of which is assumed
in that act, is true; but Ido mean that the propositions, on the
assumption of which the act proceeds, are, at least, sufficiently
probable to win the verdict of an unbiassed judgment, and
that the act itself is likely to be found to be a good. Mr.
Bradlaugh himself has defined “ worship ” as including
“ prayer, praise, sacrifice, offerings, solemn services, adora
tion, and personal prostration.” If Mr. Bradlaugh will kindly
occupy his next fifteen minutes by defining to me exactly
what he means by each of those terms, I may be better able
to tell him whether I include them all in worship, and
whether he has left anything out. But at present I do not
find that any one of them is simpler or more comprehensible
than the term worship, while “prayer, praise, sacrifice, and
offerings,’’each might mean at least two very different things
“ solemn services ” is hopelessly vague ; “ adoration,” as I
understand it, is included in some of the others; and before
we know what “personal prostration” means, we must
define “ person ”—no easy matter—and then explain what'
we mean by the “ prostration ” of that person (laughter and.
applause). Meanwhile, I have described, at the very outset,
that energy of my soul which I call worship, namely, that in
which I address myself to God as to one immeasurably sur
passing me in goodness, in wisdom, in power, in love (hear,
hear). I don’t think this is plainer than the good old Saxon
word “worship;” I think that word conveys a pretty clear
meaning to most men. But Mr. Bradlaugh finds it easier to
�52
understand long phrases than simple Saxon words; and my
. only fear now is that he will want me to define all the
words in my definition—(laughter)—and though I am ready
enough to do that, I fear it would take a week (renewed
laughter, and hear, hear). God:—You ask me to define God,
and you say I have not in any way done so. You quote
the metaphysical definition of Flint, and want me to enter
into metaphysics. What do you mean by defining ? Do
you mean to draw a circle round God, so as to separate him
from all else ? If you do, I reply, I can’t; because, as far as
I can see, or my imagination can extend, I discern no
boundaries to God. But if you mean to ask simply what I
mean by God, I mean—and I said this again and again
last night—the source of the command that comes to me
to do right, to abjure wrong ; the source of the peace
that comes to me even in pain, when I have done right,
and of the remorse that comes to me even in prosperity
when I have done ill. I mean also the source—which
I believe to be identical — of the wondrous sense of
a divine presence which seizes me in the midst of
nature’s sublimest scenes — ay, and even of nature’s
awful catastrophes. I mean also the source of the
moral and spiritual strength that comes to me in response to
the worship which my soul pours forth; and if you want to
know what I mean by my soul, I mean myself. What else
besides the source of these things God maybe, I cannot tell you.
It is only so—in his relation to me—that I directly know him.
Beyond that he is the subject of philosophy, but not of im
mediate knowledge. I believe him to be very much more;
but that does not affect the reasonableness of worshipping
him, and that is the subject of our debate (hear, hear). So
that I cannot define God in the way I can define Notting
ham, or Europe, or the earth (hear, hear). I cannot tell
how much is included in his being \ how much, if any, is
excluded. I can tell you what he is to me, in relation to me—
and that is the only way in which any entity can be defined—
and I can tell you what other men testify by word, by deed,
by martyrdom, he is to them (hear, hear). Beyond that I
have no instruments by which to measure; and therefore
I take up no pen with which to write down the measure
ments, or define (applause). But Mr. Bradlaugh says if
we cannot exactly define an object we are incapable of exact
thought or belief concerning it. Did Mr. Bradlaugh do al
gebra at school ? That most exact and prosaic science con-
�•sists largely in reasoning about unknown quantities ; that is,
about some x or_y, of which you only know that it has some
one or perhaps two definite relations to certain other things.
You don’t know what x or y is in itself—only some function
by which it is related to a and b and c. From that relation you
reason, and sometimes from it you get by subtle processes
to infer a vast deal more, and it will perhaps prove just from
that relation that x must be such and such a number, or that
it must be infinite. Does Mr. Bradlaugh say we can have
no exact thought about the x in the algebraic equation,
before we have worked out the whole sum ? Yes, we know
it in its relations or some of them. Yet the very essence
of algebra is that x is undefined. The human soul is the a, b,
•or q the well-known, the familiar; God is the x, related wondrously thereto, yet none has ever yet worked out that sum.
The supremestphilosophers, who hereare school-boys indeed,
have only displayed workings on their slates which, to
use again mathematical language, show that x approaches
towards a limit which is equal to infinity (hear, hear). But
Mr. Bradlaugh says there should be no belief in that which we
•cannot define. Now, I challenge Mr. Bradlaugh in all re
spect and sincerity to define himself (applause). If he de
clines or fails, I will not say we must cease to believe in Mr.
Bradlaugh, but that is the necessary inference from his
maxims. Mr. Bradlaugh says all experience must be the
experience of the senses. By which sense does he experience
love, indignation, or all the varied sentiments which bind him
to his fellow-men and women (applause) ? Mr. Bradlaugh
told us in his concluding speech last night that no ex
perience of another man’s can be anything at all to him
until tested by his own. Is, then, a man born blind un
reasonable if he believes that others have experience of
some wonderful sensation, making objects very vividly
present to them, which they call sight ? Shall the man born
■deaf say he does not believe there is such a thing as sound ?
I know not whether Mr. Bradlaugh has any personal ex
perience of the heat of the torrid zone. Does he believe
it ? Has he tested the height of Mont Blanc ? If not, does
he hold his belief in suspense as to whether it is 15,000 feet
high or not ? The fact is the enormous majority of the
beliefs on which we act every day of our lives with perfect
•confidence are founded either on sheer Faith, untested and by
us untestable, or on Testimony, that is the recorded experience
■of others which we have not tested. But Mr. Brad
�54
laugh says that if the alleged experience of another
is “ abnormal ” we must not believe it. He did
not define “abnormal,” and I want to know who is
to be judge whether my experience of the command that
comes to me in conscience is abnormal or not. Mr. Brad
laugh ? This audience ? With confidence I accept the ver
dict of any gathering of my fellow-men and women, knowing
that my experience herein has a sure echo in their own. But
Mr. Bradlaugh says, if someone said a room ran a race,
you would call him a lunatic. That argument means
nothing, or else it means that Martineau and Newman, and
all great and good who have recognised God—ay, and Voltaire
and Thomas Paine—Theistsboth—are to be counted lunatics
(hear, hear). Time has prevented—I hope it may not still
prevent—my stating clearly what I mean, when I proceed on
philosophical grounds to allege my belief that there is an
intelligent cause. “Intelligent ” I shall not stop to define,
unless I am challenged to it, because I presume intelligence
in you (applause). “ If there were no such supreme intelli
gence,” says Mr. Voysey, “ the universe, supposing it to be
self-evolved (and of course unconscious, since it is not intel
ligent) has only just come into self-consciousness through
one of its parts—viz., man. It had been, so to speak,
asleep all these cycles of ages till man was born and his
intellect dawned upon the world, and, for the first time, the
universe realised its own existence through the intelligent
consciousness of one of its products. I do not think
absurdity could go further than that. If there be no self
conscious intelligence but man, then the universe is only
just now, through man, becoming aware of its own exist
ence ” (hear, hear, and applause). “ Cause,” Mr. Brad
laugh, I think, has defined, in language which in
cluded the words, “ means towards an end.” A mean o:
means, however, is, by the very conception of the word, the
second term in a series of three of which the end is the
third, and “means” implies some power making use of
those means, and that power is the first term in the series.
Now, I claim that cause is that first term, whether there be
two more, or only one. By “ cause ” I mean—and you
mean, if you will search your thought—the initiating power,
that which begins to produce an effect. Now, my mind is so
constituted that to speak to me of a power which initiates
effects, yet is not conscious, intelligent, is sheer nonsense;
therefore I hold the power which displays itself as one in the
�55
%
uniformity of the laws of nature, and lies behind all phe
nomena—the growth of the grass, the rush of the cataract,
the breath of the air, the stately sailing of the stars through
their geometric paths, to be intelligent, conscious, to do it
all by distinct purpose; and I can in no way otherwise con
ceive. I conceive this source of the geometric motion of
all the spheres and of the minutest dance of protoplasm in the
nettle’s sting as always, everywhere, ofpurpose producing these
effects. And the worship which I gave God as I know him
in relationship to me is refined and glorified by the conception which thus dawns on me of his being. And in the
words of Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire, I commune thus
with myself: “ Where,” says he, “ is the eternal geometrician ?
Is he in one place, or in all places without occupying space ?
I know not. Has he arranged all things of his own sub
stance? I know not. Is he immense without quantity
and without quality ? I know not. All I know is, that we
must adore him and be just ” (loud applause).
Mr. Bradlaugh : It is perfectly true that what I have said
here I have said before, and very much of what I have said I
have printed before. I am quite sure that Mr. Armstrong
did not intend that as any blame upon me. [Mr. Arm
strong : Certainly not.] In fact, if any advantage accrued,
it would accrue to him, because, having what I had to say
on the subject to refer to, he would be better able to answer
it by previous preparation. Why I mention it is because
one person seemed to think that it was very reprehensible on
my part to say here anything that was not perfectly new.
I make no claim to originality, but try to say the truest
thing I can in the clearest way I can (hear, hear, and
applause). Then I am told that I did not pay attention
enough to what was said last night about the functions of
the voice of God. I have been told to-night that the idea of
righteousness and rectitude has always been one and the
same amongst all human beings, from the savage to the
highest intellect. If telling me so is evidence of it, then,
of course, I must be content. But, unfortunately, I am not
content, but say that the evidence is all the other way (hear,
hear, and a laugh). I have read carefully Wake’s latest book
on the evolutions of morality, tracing out the growth of
notions of morality amongst savages. I have read Tylor,
Broca, Lubbock, Agassiz, Gliddon, Pritchard, Lawrence,
and I think I am familiar with the best of ancient and
modern authors on the subject; and I say it is
�56
absolutely contrary to the fact that the notions of
morality are, and always have been identical from
the lowest savage to the highest intellect. It is abso
lutely contrary to the fact that one and the same idea of
right always and everywhere prevails (hear, hear). It is not
a question of my opinion ; it is a question of the conclusive
evidence laboriously collected on the subject, and I am
sorry to have to put it in that plain and distinct way (hear,
hear). Then I am told, and I am sure Mr. Armstrong
would not have said that unless he thought he did, that he care
fully separated last night the lower instincts which were not
included in conscience from the higher mental qualities.
But to my memory this was not so, and I have read the
whole of the speeches to-day in the reporter’s notes, and I
must say I found nothing of the kind. Now we have a.
greater difficulty. How much and how many—how much
of the mental instincts, and how many of the mental faculties
—are we to class as going to make up conscience, and how
much not ? I do not pretend to make the classification.
It rests upon the person who has the burden of proof here..
I deny there has been, as yet, even an attempt at classifica
tion, and I call for some statement which shall enable me
to understand that; without it is to be foregone. Then I
had it returned upon me that I had no right to criticise this
world unless I could conceive a better. The very act of
criticism involves the conception of the better. When I
point out something insufficient or wrong, that criticism
implies the conception of something conceivably better if’
that were changed. If you want, now, an illustration of
something possibly better, I would point to the famine in
China. There, actually, millions of people are dying for
want of food, and, for the purpose of sustaining life a little
longer in themselves, the members of families are eating
their own relations. If I were God I should not tolerate
that—(applause)—nor could I worship a God who does.
Mr. Armstrong, in his speech, pointed out what he terms an
intelligent purpose. It may be for an intelligent purpose that
millions of the Chinese should die of starvation, and actually
eat one another for want of food ; but if it is, I cannot
understand the goodness of the intelligent purposer. You
cannot take one illustration and say that it is the work of an
intelligent person, and then take another and say that it is.
not. If it is the intelligence of God displayed in one caseit must be in another, unless Mr. Armstrong contends that
�57
there are a number of Gods, amongst which number there
must be a good many devils (laughter and loud applause).
There are many things of a similar kind I could point out,
and ask the same question with regard to; where is the intelli
gence of God as displayed in permitting the Bulgarian
atrocities, the Russo-Turkish war, the Greek insurrection—
or in the world nearer home, its crime, misery, and want
(hear, hear, and applause). I do not draw the same moral
from the story of the starving woman that Mr. Armstrong
would draw. While you thank God for the crime, pauperism,
misery, and poverty, I say that you are degrading yourself.
The Atheist deplores the misery, the poverty, and the crime,
and does all he can to prevent it by assisting the sufferers to
extricate themselves, instead of spending his time in blessing
and praising a God for sending the woe and attributing it to
his superior intelligence (applause). Then there was an
astounding statement which came more in the sermon part
of the speech than in the argumentative portion of it
(laughter). Perhaps that may account for the wealth of its
assumption, and also for deficiency of its basis. It was that
freedom, happiness, and virtue, through the power of God,
were continually winning their way. How is it that an intelli
gent and omnipotent God does not look after them more,
and see that they overcome opposition a little faster than
they have done ? Mr. Armstrong says that I fight shy of
experience. I don’t do anything of the kind. I fight shy of
experience which will not submit itself to any test; I fight
shy of experience which cannot bear examination and
investigation; I fight shy of such experience only. Our
friend gives us the experience of a dying girl. Now, I do
not mean to say that every religion in the world has not
been a consolation to dying people—that belief in a God
has not been a consolation to persons who have enjoyed the
full power of their mental faculties on their death-beds. Since
I was in America some time ago I saw a copy of a sermon
preached by a New York clergyman, who had attended,
what he believed to be the dying bed of an Atheist, and he
said that he hoped that Christians would learn to die as
bravely and as calmly as the Atheist seemed prepared to
die. Luckily that Atheist did not die. He is alive to
night to answer for himself (applause and hear, hear). I
don t think an illustration of personal experience in that way
can go for much. The man and woman who die in possession
of their faculties, with strong opinions, will generally die
�strong in those opinions. Men have been martyred for
false gods as well as for the one you would have me worship.
It is useless to make this kind of an appeal in a discussion,
in which there was room and need for much else. Heavenly
stars, a crown, and that kind of thing are not as certain as
they ought to be in order to be treated as material
in this discussion. And then Mr. Armstrong says what he
would do and how he would feel if he were an Atheist.
Charles Reade wrote a novel, which he entitled “ Put yourself
in his Place.” Mr. Armstrong has been trying to put him
self in the Atheist’s place, but he has not been very success
ful (hear, hear). The Atheist does not think that all the
evil which exists in this world is without remedyj he does
not think that there is no possible redemption from sorrow,
or that there is no salvation from misery (hear, hear). He
thinks and believes that the knowledge of to-day a little,
and to-morrow more, and the greater knowledge of the day
that will yet come, will help to redeem, will help to rescue
the inhabitants of this world from their miserable position ;
and further, that this is not to be in some world that is to
come, but in the world of the present, in which the salva
tion is self-worked out (loud applause). The Atheist will
not make promises of something in the future as a compen
sation for the present miseries of man. Instead of saying
that for prayers and worship the poor woman or man will
have the bread of life in future, he tries to give her and him
the strength to win bread here to sustain and preserve life as
long as it is possible to do so (applause). The diadems,
too—which our friend has to offer to the poor—which are to
be worn in heaven by those who have had no clothes here
—possess no attraction to the Atheist; therefore he does nor
offer them, but, instead, tries to develop such self-reliant
effort as may clothe and feed those who are naked and
hungry while they are here. He directs his efforts towards
human happiness in the present, and believes that in the
future humanity must be triumphant over misery, want, and
wrong (applause). A diadem of celestial glory may or may
not be a very good thing; of that I do not look upon my
self as a judge, so long as I have no belief in its possibility.
That there is much misery and suffering in the world I
know, and it rests with Mr. Armstrong to prove whether it
is better to try and remedy it here or to worship its author
in the doubtful endeavour to obtain as recompense a crown
of celestial glory (hear, hear, and applause). But which
�59
God is it that we are to worship ? Is it the Mahometan
God, or the Jewish God? Is it one of the Gods of the
Hindus ? Is it the Christian’s God ? If so, which sect of
Christians? You must not use phrases which mean
different things in different mouths (hear, hear). Then we
come to definitions, and, having objected that there was
no necessity for defining, or having objected that defining
would not make things more clear, with the skill and tact of
a practical debater, my friend goes through every word
(laughter). Prayer, we were told, has two distinct meanings.
Might I ask in which sense it was used in the first speech
made last night? You did not tell us then that prayer had
two senses. I ask why you did not tell us ? I might have
thought it was one fashion when you meant another. I ask
what meaning you meant when you used it ? What two
senses has prayer towards God ?—in which of the two senses
did you use prayer—and, knowing it had two meanings,
why did you not tell us in which sense you used it ? Then
praise, too, you said, is to thank God for his goodness; and
as you used the word many times last night you knew what
you meant by it, having relied upon it so firmly that it
seemed to be an evidence of God’s existence (applause).
By sacrifice I mean an act of real cowardice. The coward
does not dare to pay in his own person for the wrong which
he has done, so he offers something or somebody weaker in
his stead. He tries by offering a sacrifice to avert the ven
geance which would fall—and, according to his creed,
ought to fall—upon himself. Sacrifice is the act of a
coward (applause). Offerings are of flowers, of fruits;
offerings of young animals, lambs, kids; sometimes the
offerings are things which come the nearest to their hands;
sometimes the sacrifice consists of inanimate things which
had a special value to the worshipper; sometimes the
first fruits of their fields or flocks, which they offer
to the source, as they think, of the plenty in those
fields and flocks.
In later times, offerings have got
to be much more complex; but even now you will still find
them, in modified fashions, in the Churches of England
and Rome. The mutual system is that which operates in
every form of worship which makes any sort of claim to re
ligion. The word “ worship ” was only used as a general
word which covers the whole of those forms, leaving our
friends to select and repudiate, and in any case the burden
is on Mr. Armstrong to make the meaning clear (hear,
�6o
hear). I read the whole of the speeches of last night with
out finding any repudiation or question about the definitions
I presented ; and I submit it is scarcely fair, after what has
passed, to ask me to further define them at this late stage
of the debate. I should have had no objection had it been
invited at the earliest outset (applause). Well, now, we
have worship defined as “ the energy of my soul.” Well,
but you have not explained your soul. Why do you call it
soul ? Where is its place in your body ? Is there any
thing about soul you can notice so as to enable me to know
anything at all about it ? Will you take your definition of
soul from Voltaire, whom you have quoted against me?
When you reply, will you tell us what Voltaire, Professor
Newman, Paine, or Martineau say upon the subject of God,
and in which of their writings you will find that which all
the others would accept as a definition ? You must
remember the Theist of Paine’s time is not the Theist of
to-day, and I want you to tell us what are the specific
opinions of each of those you have quoted—of Francis
William Newman, of John William Newman, of Martineau,
of Thomas Paine, of Voltaire—as to the questions I have
asked (applause). Which of the Gods is it that I am to
understand Mr. Armstrong as defending and asking me to
worship (loud applause) ?
Mr. Armstrong : Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentle
men,—I am somewhat at a loss as to which of the numerous
questions I am to answer first. I shall not take them in
any logical order, but simply pick out of my note-book
the most important of them. Mr. Bradlaugh has said
that the act of criticism of the world implied the conception
of a better world. Mr. Bradlaugh has tried to describe his
conception of the better world, and I have tried in my pre
vious speeches to show that he would not make it better.
And I again submit that, instead of being better, it would
be worse (hear, hear). He says he does not draw the same
conclusion from that poor woman in the cellar that I
do. He says that while you are content to suffer, you de
grade yourself. Now, there are two kinds of content.
You may be content like the sloth or the sluggard, or you
may be content like that poor woman, who while trying to
improve her position, still remained poor to the end of her
days, and yet at the same time felt the peace of God in
her heart.
Does the belief in a God, as a fact,
make men less energetic and vigorous in improving
�6i
their own condition, or trying to improve that of
others ? I don’t believe it does (applause). I believe you
have Theists as well as Atheists, who devote their kindly
sympathies to the good of their fellow creatures. They are
content in one sense and discontent in another sense.
They have that holy discontent which makes them anxious
to remedy the world’s evil, and that content which makes
them see God, who is working from evil to good (applause).
We have been told by Mr. Bradlaugh what the Atheist will
do ; how he will give the bread of this life to the hungry
child; the Theist will do the same (applause). The
Theist will—but no, I will not institute these comparisons ;
we are each, I feel sure, striving to do our best; so I won’t
enter into comparisons (rounds of applause). He says it
is unreasonable to worship an insoluble proposition. A
proposition is a grammatical term signifying a statement,
and I am not aware that I asked anyone to worship a
statement or proposition at all. I have called upon you
to worship God (applause). He says I did not separate
the lower instincts from the higher mental qualities in
man. I do not say I did. But I did separate the lower
instincts from the voice of God in conscience. I said that
it was entirely distinct from the lower instincts in man. I
said that the voice had a right to command and rule these
lower instincts (hear, hear). He asks me which God it is
that I am preaching. I will tell you what God I ask you to
worship—the best that you can conceive, whatsoever it is
(applause). I want you all to worship the best that you can
conceive (rounds of applause). If the Hindu’s idea is the
best he can conceive, let him, by all means, worship it
(hear, hear). If the Jew’s God is the best he can imagine,
let him pay homage to it. If the Christian’s idea of God
is the highest he can conceive, let him be true to it and
worship it, and it will make him a nobler man (applause).
It is not mere names which signify in a matter of this
kind. Though each sect may give him different names,
it is still the same God (hear, hear). Mr. Bradlaugh
wants to know which of them all I uphold as God ;
which of the different types I acknowledge, or ask you
to acknowledge.
Is it the God of Martineau, of New
man, of Parker, or of whom else ? I say it is that which is
common among them all—namely, the conception of good
ness and excellence which you will find in every one
of their definitions.
It is that God which they
�62
-all recognise, and concerning which they only go wrong
when they begin to try and define it metaphysically
{hear, hear). Mr. Bradlaugh wants me to define God;
further than I have done so, I cannot. In the words of
the Athanasian Creed an attempt is made to define the undefinable. The Athanasian Creed tries to explain the whole
of that which overrules the universe instead of describing
simply that which is in relationship to you. I have always
been under the supposition that that was a practice of the
theologian which had greatly retarded the progress of the
world. Mr. Bradlaugh spoke of prayer as implying a hope
—a hope to induce God to do what he would not do with
out prayer; and he wanted to know in what sense I used
the word “prayer” in my speeches. I have not used the
word “ prayer ” without describing what I meant. At least,
I have not done so to my knowledge ; if I have, I am
sorry for it (applause). Mr. Bradlaugh says that prayer im
plies a hope of inducing God to do what he would not do
without it. For my part, I doubt whether some things
that have been called prayers, such as the prayers for the
recovery of the Prince of Wales—(loud hisses and laughter)
—for wet weather, and for fine weather, have very much
influenced the divine counsels (hear, hear and applause).
But what do I mean by prayer ? As I have said before,
the addressing of my soul to this power which I feel and
recognise above me; and the law of the answer of prayer—
and it is as much a law as any law of nature—is that they
who do thus energise themselves towards Godbecomethereby
more susceptible to the energising of God towards them. The
law is that he who energises or addresses himself towards
God, consciously, reverently, and of set purpose, thereby sets
at motion a law by which he becomes more susceptible to
God’s addressing of himself to him, and so he gains to him
self the strength, moral and spiritual, which we find in prayer
(hear, hear). Mr. Bradlaugh picked out one of the words from
his own definition of worship. By sacrifice he said he meant
the act of a man who was too cowardly to bear the result of his
own actions. As far as that definition goes, I may say I do
not include it in my idea of worship (applause). Now, sir,
I have striven to the best of my power to be precise and
clear in my words. It is true I have not dealt with the
matter from a platform purely metaphysical. lama positivist
in most things, understanding by a positivist one who founds
his philosophy on observed phenomena. I have passed out
�63
of the stage in which men believe that theological theories
will solve all the problems of the universe. I have passed
out of the stage in which Mr. Bradlaugh now is, in which
metaphysics are looked upon as the best ground of reason
ing we can have. I have passed into the stage in which
positive thought, the recognition of phenomena, is recog
nised as the best starting-point we can have from which
to get at the truth. Auguste Comte traces the progress of
the thought of the world and of the individual from the
theological stage to the metaphysical stage, and from that
to the positive stage. I invite Mr. Bradlaugh to look
at things from that stage, and to see whether he cannot
make his thoughts clearer by the use of the positive method
than by the use of the metaphysical (loud applause).
Mr. Bradlaugh : The curious thing is that I have never
used the word metaphysics, and I have offered to affirm no
proposition that does not relate to phenomena. I am as
tounded to hear that I am a metaphysician (laughter and
applause). Is it because I only used language which I can
make clear that my opponent gave me that title ? It is
because he does not use language that is related to phe
nomena that he is obliged to commend his Theism by
speaking of it as a problem which is insoluble (applause).
I have not done anything, as far as my case is concerned,
except use language relating to phenomena. Now, I have
only a few moments, and this speech will be my last in this
debate. I would, therefore, like you to see the position in
which we stand. I am told that the improvement I would
suggest would in no sense tend to virtue. I must refer again
to the state of things in China, where the members of the
same family are eating each other for want of food. Would
it not tend to virtue if their condition was remedied (ap
plause) ? I wish my friend and myself to look at things
from this point of view, and, as he is in the positive way of
thinking, let him put himself in the same state as they are,
and then ask whether an amendment of the condition
would not tend to greater virtue (renewed applause). What
God is it that we are to worship ? Oh, the God it is reasonable
to worship is the best we can conceive—but no conception has
yet been put before us. You have been told a great deal
about stars, but the more important facts and arguments
still remain unchallenged (hear, hear). Now, I am asked,
does belief in God hinder philanthropy ? Yes, when it is
held as those do hold it in some parts of the world, who.
�64
think that God has designed, in his thought and intelligence,
and for good purposes, that a famine should take place, such
as the one in China (hear, hear). There are at least people
among the Mahometans and the Hindus whose virtue has
been clearly shown to have suffered much more from religion
than from civilisation (applause). The case put as to prayer is
one which I think has something peculiar about it. We are
told first of the law of prayer, which is said to be as much
a law of nature as any other law. Well, now, by law of
nature (Mr. Armstrong : Hear, hear)—I don’t know if I am
misrepresenting you—I only mean observed order of
happening (pouring water from glass); I do not mean
that there has been some direction given that this water shall
fall, but that, given the conditions, the event ensues. Law
of nature is order of sequence or concurrence, the observed
order of phenomena. What observed order of phenomena
is there in the order of prayer ? When the prayer prays
“ himself he sets a law in motion.” Is this so? We are
told that the prayer for the recovery of the Prince of
Wales did not much tend to alter the divine counsel. Mr.
Armstrong did not tell you how he knew that.
His
own admission here proves that prayer is sometimes
offered in vain, taking the observed order of its phenomena
(hear, hear). He spoke of the holy discontent in pious
men which set them to seek to remedy evil. Holy discon
tent against the state of things which God in his intelligent
purpose has caused ! Then the holy discontent is dissatis
faction with God’s doings. How can you worship the God
with whom you are dissatisfied (applause) ? But what is the
truth of the matter ? In the early ages of the world man
saw the river angry and prayed to the river-god; but science
has dispelled the river-god, and has substituted for prayer,
weirs, locks, dykes, levels, and flood-gates (hear, hear). You
see the same thing over the face of nature wherever you go.
What you have found is this : that in the early ages of the
world gods were frightful, gods were monstrous, gods were
numerous, because ignorance predominated in the minds of
men. The things they came in contact with were not under
stood, and no investigation then took place ; men wor
shipped. But gradually men learned first dimly, then more
clearly, and god after god has been demolished as science
has grown. The best attempt at conception of God is
always the last conception of him, and this because God
has to give way to science. The best conception of God is
�65
in substituting humanity for deity, the getting rid of, and
turning away from, the whole of those conceptions and
fancies which men called God in the past, and which they
have ceased to call God now (applause). Mr. Armstrong
thought that it was because men had given different names to
God that I tried to embarrass him by bidding him choose
between them. It was not so; it is the different characteristics
and not the different names that I pointed out as a difficulty.
We have gods of peace, gods of war, gods of love, a god of
this people, or of that tribe, a god of the Christians, a
god of misery, of terror, of beneficence—these are all
different suppositions held by men of the gods they have
created. It has well been said that the gods have not
created the men, but the men have created the gods, and
you can see the marks of human handicraft in each divine
lineament (applause). I cannot hope, pleading here to
night, to make many converts. I can and do hope that all
of you will believe that the subject treated wants examina
tion far beyond the limits of this short debate. I have a very
good hopeindeed,and reallybelieve thatsome good has been
done when it can be shown that two men of strong opinions,
and earnest in their expressions, can come together without
one disrespectful word to each other, or want of respect in
any way; without any want of due courtesy to the other;
and with a great desire to separate the truth and the false
hood (applause). If there has been unwittingly anything
disrespectful on my part, I am sorry for it. I have to thank
Mr. Armstrong for coming forward in the manner in which
he has done, and I can only ask all to use their services in
making the spread of virtue, truth, and justice easier than
it has been. I am aware that I have nominally a vast
majority against me, but I do not fear on that ground, and
still shall continue to point out falsehood wherever I may
find it. At any rate, the right of speech is all I ask, and
that you have conceded. I have only an earnest endeavour
to find out as much as I can that will be useful to my
fellows, and to tell them as truly as I can how much I
grasp. It is for you—-with the great harvest of the unreaped
before you—who can do more than I, to gather and show
what you have gathered; it is for you who have more truth
to tell it more efficiently; and when you answer me I put it
to you that so far as the world has redeemed itself at all, it
has only redeemed itself by shaking off in turn the Theistic
religions which have grown and decayed. So far, it seems
c
�to be a real and solid redemption (applause). When re
ligion was supreme through the ignorance of men, the people
were low down indeed, and a few devoted men had to
grapple with the hereafter theory and all the content with
present wrong which the belief in it maintained. Take a
few hundred years ago, when there was little or no scepticism
in the world. Only a very few able to be heretical—the mass
unable and too weak to doubt or endure doubt. Look at the
state of things then, and look at it now. Could a discussion
like this have taken place then ? No. But it can since the print
ing-press has helped us; it can since the right of speech has
been in good part won. Two hundred years ago it could not
have been. Two hundred years ago I could not have got the
mass of people together to listen as you have listened last night
and to-night, and had not men treated your religion as I treat it,
we should not have therightof meeting even now (applause)’
If you want to convince men like myself, hear us; answer
us if you can—say what you have to say without making it
more bitter than we can bear. We must believe it if it is
reasonable, and if not we must reject it. So long as there
is any wrong to redeem we shall try to redeem it our■selves (applause). We may be wrong in this, but at
least we do our part.
I do not mean that in the same
ranks as my friend there are not men as sincere and as earnest,
men as devoted, men as human-redemption seeking as myself,
but I, or the best of those for whom I plead, urge that their
humanity is not the outcome of their theology (applause).
Then their experience of right, their hope of life, and their
experience of truth rest entirely on what they do here. And
I will ask you this : do you not think it is quite possible, as
Lessing says, that he who thinks he grasps the whole truth
may not even grasp it at all ? like the one deceived by the
juggler's trick, he may think he holds something in his hand,
but when it is opened it is empty (hear, hear). Take the
truth as you can—not from me, not from him, not from any
one man. There is none of the bad which is all bad, none of
the good all good, none of the truth all true: it is for you to
select, to weigh, to test for yourselves (hear, hear). Many
of us stumble in trying to carry the torch in dark places in
the search for truth, but even in our trembling steps the
sparks we scatter may enable some to find the grains of truth
we miss ourselves (loud and prolonged applause).
Mr. Armstrong : Mr. Bradlaugh, the body to which I
belong also have the majority against them; over that
�we can shake hands. Let us try, each in our own way, as
may best seem to us, to serve what we hold to be true (ap
plause). Depend upon it, whether there be a God or
not, we each shall do best so. If there be no God, then
you tell me I shall still do well to serve humanity. And
if there be a God, he will gather you also, my brother, to
his arms, so long as you are true—true and absolutely sincere
in those convictions which come to you from the reason
which he has given you (loud applause). You have
told us that while religion held sway men were down-trodden.
While superstition held sway it is true they were (applause) ;
while false ideas of a cruel and lustful God held sway, it is
true they were (applause); but just in proportion as men’s
thoughts of Godt have purified and clarified, just in pro
portion as they have restored to Christianity its sweet
meaning, just in that proportion religion has risen to be a
power in the world of all that is good and sweet and holy
(applause). Now, sir, to speak of what I said about the
prayers for the recovery of the Prince of Wales. I said I
thought they had been of little avail.
But the prayer for
spiritual purity from a Christian man does win its answer by
a law—a law of nature, I will now say, since you have defined .
a law of nature as the observed sequence of phenomena;
but I dared not so call it until I knew what your definition
■of nature might be. But let us come back from these philo.sophisings, in which it is so easy to go wrong, to the test of
experience. Mr. Bradlaugh says I do not submit the ex
periences of which I have spoken, to the test. I invite you to
test them, and see whether Mr. Bradlaugh has upset them
or not. If you test them fairly and then find them false,
then come and tell me so. They are neither uncommon
nor abnormal experiences, but the experiences of nearly every
man and woman. It may be that their hearing is dull, but
still they know the voice. You all know those in which the
initiative comes from God, the voice of conscience, of which
I spoke ; you all know the solemn feeling which comes over
you in the presence of the majesty of nature. You all may know
the other things in which you have to take the initiative.
Heed those things whether you believe they come from God
or not, and you all may know the other—that of worship
—and its answer. My contention solely is, that it would
be reasonable for you to seek for that experience, that it is
reasonable in us to practise it (hear, hear). And now I will
tell you a little story for the end of this debate, of a little
�68
family of children; and as I shall not found any argument upon
. it, I do not think it will be unfair. They sat one Christ
mas Eve in a chamber where the wintry gloom of early
twilight fell. The eldest son sat and talked of the good
ness of their father, and how, from the earliest days he
could recollect, his tenderness had sheltered him, and how
he seemed to have a heart to love every little child all
through the world, and how he was surely even now prepar
ing some sweet surprise for them every one But John, the
second boy, had lived all his life at a school on the far sea
coast, where he had been sent, that rough ocean breezes might
strengthen his weakly frame, and now, tanned and burly,
he had just come home for Christmas, and he had not even,
seen his father yet. And he said he did not believe they
had a father ; that Theophilus, declaring he had seen him,
was nothing to him, for if there was one thing he had learned
at school, it was not to trust the experience of other people
till tested by his own. But Edward said he, too, knew they
had a father; he, too, had seen him, but he was very stern,
and he thought they could all do as well without him, and
what could be more unkind than to leave them there in
. twilight solitude on Christmas Eve. And little Tom sat
apart in the very darkest corner of the room, with a tearstained face, crying as if his heart would break, over
the hard sums set him there to do, and thinking that
his brothers were a selfish lot of fellows, to talk and talk, and.
not care for him and his hard task. And Theophilus had
just come to steal his arm around little Tom’s waist, and dry
his tears, and try if he could not help him to do his sum,
when the door of the next room was thrown open and a
blaze of light flashed upon their faces, and one after the other
they all rushed in and beheld their father standing by such a
glorious Christmas-tree as boys never beheld before. And
for each and all there were gifts so rare and precious—the
very things they had longed for all the by-gone half. And for
John, who had been so far away and had not known his father,
there was a grasp of the father’s hand so strong and tender,
and a kiss from the father’s lips so sweet and loving, that he
felt as if he had known that dear father all his life ; and as
for little Tom, all his tears were dissolved in rippling
laughter, and he quite lorgot his sum, for on his brow was
set the brightest coronet on all the tree, and they told him
he should be king through all the long Christmasday to follow. And now, dear friends, may the peace of
�69
God which passeth all understanding, that peace which the
perishing things of the world can neither give nor take away,
that peace promised to the weary by our dear brother,
Jesus Christ, even in the midst of all his suffering and woe,
be with you for ever. Amen (applause).
Mr. Armstrong having sat down, rose again and said,
—And now, Mr. Chairman, I desire to move to you the
hearty thanks of this meeting for your conduct in the chair,
for your impartial manner of ruling over us, and the kind
words you have spoken. I thank you, Mr. Bradlaugh, for
the courtesy and fairness with which you have conducted
your part in this debate; and I thank you, sir, for presiding
over us (applause).
Mr. Bradlaugh : I second that motion. I cannot say
that we can thank you for your fairness, for, fortunately, you
have had no opportunity of showing it. But I thank you most
heartily for accepting a position which might have been one
of great difficulty and the taking of which may cause you
to be misrepresented. I also thank Mr. Armstrong for having
met me, and for the kindly manner in which he has spoken
(applause).
The vote of thanks was put and carried unanimously.
The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen,—the thanks
which have been given to me are due rather to the gentle
men who have spoken. I cannot but praise the admirable
way in which they have rendered my position almost a
sinecure. This debate has shown that a subject of such
great importance can be discussed fairly, liberally, honestly,
as this has been, and that no danger threatens him who
occupies the chair, or those who lay their honest and earnest
views before you. I feel that I have derived much know
ledge from the truth which has been laid before us ; and I
do feel that there is a growing interest in things of this
sort, which is itself a proof that discussions of this kind are
very useful (applause).
�•wk
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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 Ethical Society
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Is it reasonable to worship God?
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Armstrong, R.A. [Rev.]
Bradlaugh, Charles
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 69 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Verbatim report of two nights' debate at Nottingham between the Rev. R. A. Armstrong and Charles Bradlaugh. Inscription in ink: "Mr M.D. Conway, with RAA's kind regards." From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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1878
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CT78
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ("Is it reasonable to worship God?"), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Atheism
Free Thought
Theism
Apologetics
Atheism
Conway Tracts
Free Thought-Controversial Literature
Religious Disputations
Theism
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e01a613ec81df290ba58dfeec505e29e
PDF Text
Text
ON THE RELATIONS
OF
THEISM TO PANTHEISM,
AND
ON THE GALLA RELIGION.
W. NEWMAN.
Professor F.
PUBLISHED BY
THOMAS
MOUNT PLEASANT,
RAMSGATE.
1872.
Price Sixpence.
SCOTT,
�i—nMM
�ON
THE RELATIONS
OF
THEISM TO PANTHEISM.
-------------- ♦--------------
HANKS be to God, religious thought is not
stagnant. His spirit is in men’s hearts : under
his constant pressure our intellects struggle forward
into .more knowledge, more wisdom. We are ad
vancing. Of this the test is, that the more active
and higher minds in opposite schools tend toward
agreement, though they have not reached unity.
. One condition of advancement is, that we should
discern our own errors, and unlearn them. This, to
a superficial eye, may suggest that our creed is melt
ing away, and that believers in God are becoming
unbelievers; but it is not so. Our notions of God
from age to age have undergone vast enlargement;
hence of necessity we drop from time to time -many
crude opinions concerning him, which opinions were
of old fought for by Theists and opposed by Atheists
or doubters. But simultaneously we attain greater
richness and nobleness of conception, and towards
our brethren who are in opposition a tenderer and
wiser sentiment, in so far as their opposition is from
diversity of intellect, not from perversity of morals.
T
�4
On the Relations of
Without attempting anything so arduous as a history
of opinion on these great subjects, a few broad out
lines shall be essayed which may have interest.
In antiquity the only school of thought known
to us which understood the real magnitude of the
universe was practically atheistic ; that of Democritus
and Epicurus: and with Epicurus this magnitude,
having nothing moral in it, could scarcely be called
grandeur. A universal storm or curdling of atoms
in tens of thousands of worlds, was all that he could
see. With the poets of Greece and the vulgar, the
gods were not the creators of worlds, but themselves
first creations from the mighty power of blind nature ;
a notion which to us may seem to differ little from
atheism. The first gods thus brought into existence
were Titans, . beings of gigantic powers, but pre
valently deficient in intellect. They were conquered
and superseded by Jupiter, who, though in the earliest
poets represented as a selfish despot, yet disapproved
and chastised human wickedness. Hence with the
progress of generations, the notion of Jupiter in the
purest minds of Greece became little different from
that of the chief god with the highest sages of
Palestine or Persia.
Meanwhile, Grecian astronomy arose, and in about
four centuries attained its fullest perfection in
Alexandria. It stopped short in the solar system, of
which the earth was made centre. To accommodate
t e forced geometry thus induced, numerous crystal
orbs were imagined, and the stars were compared to
brass-headed nails fastened into a far vaster solid
vault. This agreed exceedingly well with the old
Hebrew conception of a firmament, or, as the prophets
ca it, a sea of glass or crystal. By excluding the
idea that the stars are suns, the view of God’s universe
w ich midnight opens to us was perverted into a
mere show of fireworks; moreover, men were con
firmed in the puerile error, that this earth is the
�lheism to Pantheism.
5
divine centre, and sole or main object of divine
interest. Learned men among the Hebrews, who
received Alexandrian cultivation, enlarged their notion
of Jehovah as the God of all nations, and easily har
monized with Greek Neo-Platonism.
Where to place Heaven, the special seat of God,
was a difficulty with those who clung to the idea of
some such sacred locality. The Greeks appear to
have solved it in a most unsatisfactory way, by revert
ing to the old poetical idea which identified Heaven
and God, and interpreting Heaven to be the outer
most vault in which the stars are fixed. This, I
believe, was prevalent with the Stoics, and it is put
by Cicero into the mouth of Africanus, when he means
to set forth the most advanced religious notions of his
day. “ By nine circles, or rather spheres, all thingy
are knit together; of which one which comprises aSfl
others, is heavenly and outmost, the Supreme God,
hvn^elf, constraining and containing the rest; in
whonj^are fixed those ever-revolving courses of stars ;
and in lower region the seven [planets].” Nothing
anorded more derision to the Epicureans than this
notion of a visible, round, ever-rolling, and blazing
God; which certainly lowered the Greek Theism of
that age.
The point on which the West and the East were
prevalently divided, was on the relation of God to
Nature or Matter. The authorities esteemed sacred
by the Hebrews were in no apparent collision with
the philosophic Greeks ; for Jehovah was represented
as the ever active force in all nature, not only creat
ing’ originally, but sustaining all action in the ele
ments, in brutes, and in the human mind; in short,
to use the modern epithet, he was immanent in his
own creations. No antagonism was imagined between
God and Matter. Miracles were not regarded as a
suspension of the laws of Nature, because no sharp
idea of Law had been attained; only in a miracle the
�6
On the Relations of
God. who is always at work in matter displayed his
ordinary action with more than usual distinctness,
that is, in such a way as to manifest his moral judg
ment. An obvious and vulgar illustration is, when
some elementary disturbance is interpreted as a divine
interposition. A man is struck dead by lightning, or
a high tower is smitten; it must have been because
the man had offended God by impiety, or the tower
by aspiring to too proud a height. An earthquake
or an inundation must have been elicited by the pecu
liar wickedness of the nation whom it afflicted. A
God, who thus dispensed elementary inflictions as
moral punishments, was not suspending his own laws,
but administering them, if he sent down fire from
heaven at the prayer of a prophet, or otherwise
wrought through some favoured servant what is
called a religious miracle. There is harmony in such
a view.. But a breach of harmony began, when it
was taught that the men on whom the tower of
Siloam fell were not therefore to be judged guiltier
than others; that we must not interpret external
calamity as a mark of God’s anger ; that whom the
Lord loveth, he chasteneth; that it is folly to run
hither and thither, and look about with the natural
eye for marks of God’s moral judgments, or expect
signs from heaven; but that the kingdom of God is
within us. The results of this doctrine were really
antagonistic to miracle; but that, for long ages,
Hebrew and Christian, was not discerned. God was
regarded as not only immanent in Nature, but as
obeyed systematically by Nature; who displayed,
alike in her broad laws and in her apparently excep
tional operations, the moral judgments of her supreme
animater. The religious Greek philosophers, how
ever little apt to believe in miraculous interpositions,
entirely agreed with the Hebrew prophets as to the
harmouy of Nature with God who was the cause of
all movement, all production, all mental action.
�Theism to Pantheism.
7
But the Eastern speculators, in Persia and perhaps
beyond, prevalently accounted for Evil in the world
by the incurable stubbornness of Matter, which could
not be brought into obedience to the divine will.
Hence with them God and Nature were eternal
antagonists; and Matter played the part which Chris
tendom has assigned to Satan, the evil Spirit who is
supposed, really and eternally, to defeat God’s efforts
for the benefit of his creatures. Some say that it was
through Augustine, in his youth a Manichee, that
these notions were established as the fixed creed of
Christians. Be that as it may, we cannot overlook
the similarity of the Mediaeval creed concernin2“ the
cause of Evil to that of the East, which indeecT was
far less offensive to enlightened sentiment.
The higher Greek intellect seldom took a course in
harmony with Hebrew piety;—perhaps scarcely be
yond one very limited school, the Neo-Platonists.
Those who had no sympathy with Epicurus or with
Atheism, vacillated between two systems; that of
Stoicism, which tried to interpret the popular mytho
logy into consonance with sober reason, and the doc
trine which we call Pantheism, to which indeed many
Stoics strongly inclined. The earliest known origin of
this was in India; where it was taught that the eternal
infinite Being creates by self-evolution, whereby he
becomes and is all Existence ; that he alternately
expands and as it were contracts himself, re-absorb
ing into himself the things created. Thus the Uni
verse, Matter and its Laws, are all modes of divine
existence. Each living thing is a part of God, each
soul is a drop out of the divine ocean; and as Virgil
has it, the soul of a bee is “ divinse particula aurse.”
Some Greek speculators, developing this thought
rather coarsely, treated the visible and palpable world
as the material body, of which God was the invisible
soul. I have read of one, who carried out the ana
logy so far between the world and a huge animal, as
�8
'
On the Relations of
to account for the saltness of the sea, by comparing
it to human sweat! To the same class of thought be
longs the conception of 2Eschylus and Virgil, who com
pare the fertilizing showers of spring to a marriage
of Earth and Heaven. However pure and noble this
theory may have been in the highest minds, it almost
instantly, and as it were inevitably, with the vulgar
drew after it a loss of moral character to God. To
combine with this doctrine the cardinal Hebrew idea,
that God is Holy, was eminently hard: for externally,
what see we of holiness ? Indeed such Pantheism
with great ease lapsed into the old Polytheism. Why
not call the ocean Nereus, the sea Neptune, the earth
Ceres, the sun Apollo, if they are diverse manifestations
of the deity ? And if man be himself only God in dis
guise, how can man be sinful ? God in man cannot
resist himself. Man may be responsible to man for his
conduct, but no room seemed left for that antagonism
of man to God, which Hebrews and Christians call
Sin, and regard as a cardinal fact in religion. Prac
tically it has appeared to Christians, that Pantheism
desecrates God and unnerves man; for it relaxes the
sinews of the soul, just as does that belief in Necessity
which denies the human Will, and represents us as
bubbles carried on the wave with no power of self
guidance,—the sport of desire.
The collision of opinion between Pantheism and
Christian thought seems to have attained its maxi
mum, when Protestant Europe re-organized its creed
concerning God and Creation, under the influences
of the Newtonian astronomy. The prevalent belief,
which from Christians passed to those soon after
called Deists, was, that at a definite point of past
time not very distant, God created Matter,—that is,
caused it to exist; before which time (some will
infer) he must have existed from all eternity in soli
tude without a world. Upon Matter he imposed
certain laws and certain initial motions; and then
�Theism to Pantheism.
9
withdrew from further influencing it,—resting, as the
Hebrews said, after six days’ work. So he created
trees, shrubs, and animals endued with definite
powers, and having thus started them in life, left
them to themselves and to the elements. Here a
very sharp separation is made between God and
Nature, though no antagonism is imagined. The
Creator constructs a machine, winds up the spring,
and then leaves the machine to act of itself. He is
wholly external to his own world, not immanent and
active in it. The grand material laws or forces
which we call Gravitation, Affinity, Cohesion, Re
pulsion, Electricity, Heat, and so on, are regarded as
qualities of Matter,—qualities, no doubt, with which
God, at a distant moment of time, endowed Matter;
but these are in no proper sense divine forces. In
this view, a miracle became an exceptional interpo
sition of God, an interference with the laws of
matter, for the sake of a moral purpose. Such a
theory seemed excellently to maintain, as well the
moral character of the Creator, as the moral inde
pendence and responsibility of man. In England of
the eighteenth century, it held almost entire domi
nion over those Christians who studied the new
material sciences, and over Deists who rejected
Christian authority.
A few speculators among us, of whom I believe
Cudworth was the chief, struggled in favour of a
more comprehensive view, which should embrace all
that is noblest in Pantheism, and incorporate it with
the Jewish and Christian conceptions of God’s Holi
ness. To do this wisely seems to me the real problem
still before us, towards which we have already made
very important advances. If to any it seem astonish
ing that thoughtful men could imagine a God living
in solitude for a past eternity, and then suddenly
creating a world, a sufficient reply, and probably the
true reply, is, that Past Eternity (make what we will
�io
On the Relations of
of the words) is an inextricable puzzle to the human
mind. Those who said, that at a certain time God
created Matter and of it formed a world, pretended
no knowledge of what had preceded, and ought not
to have anything at all charged on them concerning
Past Eternity; a topic which speculators of every
school ought to confess to be involved, not in dark
ness only, but in such perplexity that we may well
suspect some fundamental error in our notions. The
Schoolmen who said that God knew nothing of Time,
but that with him Eternity was “ a standing point,”
expressed in their own way their sense that this
mystery is inscrutable.
Eut the progress of science has led men to inquire,
What is Matter ? and some, like Faraday, tell us,
that it is nothing but force. Atoms, he said, were
centres of force,—that is all. Few can be satisfied
with this naked definition, which seems not only to
explode Inertia altogether, but also to be open to
Aristotle s objection against Plato’s Ideas; which
objection (in our phraseology) may run thus : that
we are required to believe in the existence of an
adjective which has no substantive,—in an attribute
which inheres in nothing. Nevertheless, it is clear
that the Forces at work in the Universe have become
more and more prominent in our conception than
mere inert Matter. Geology teaches to the men of
the nineteenth century, that the formation of this
globe was no mere spirt of primitive creation, but
the gradual product of vast ages; and since it is
apparent that in different stages of its development
it was peopled by different species of animals, and
ttiat too, long before man stood on its surface,—it has
become necessary to admit, either that Creation was
continued through long ages, or even that creation
is mere evolution. La Place’s theory of the genera
tion of the solar system has almost taken the place
of established science, and strains the imagination as
�Theism to Pantheism.
ii
to the ages requisite for such evolution. Finally in
the stellar system various celebrated nebulae appear
to show worlds in an initial state, which will be
developed after countless ages in the future. Out of
all this the modern conviction has arisen, that God
creates now, and will always create ; that his creative
action is normal and incessant, and that the notion of
a definite era at which he brought the world into
being, is as puerile and gratuitous as that of a thea
trical “day” of judgment, with God seated on a
throne. Hence, whatever “Matter” may be, it
seems to follow that it is co-eternal with God; and
the thought inevitably presses itself in, that the great
forces of the Universe,—Gravitation, Electricity, and
such like,—are the means by which Creation and
other divine action are carried on. In fact, they
seem to be strictly inseparable from the Divine
existence. And if what we call Nature is for ever
inextricably interwoven with God, we have to make
fundamental changes on the Deistical theory of the
last century.
Thus, in the course of perhaps eighty years, the
pendulum of Theistic thought has oscillated very
decidedly towards Pantheism; and there is good
reason why the Theists of to-day should be unwilling
to accept the name Deist, which confounds their
doctrine with that which prevailed in the eighteenth
century. How then are we to avoid the characteristic
dangers of Pantheism ? As I apprehend, by holding
fast to the very simple axiom, that the truth nearest to
us and first known must ever be our fixed standing place.
The knowledge of man begins from man, and must
not be sacrificed for any after-developments of mate
rial science or any speculations about God, con
cerning whom we have only later and derivative
knowledge. The very first certainty which we
receive, is, that which the Germans call acquaintance
with the Ego and the outer world. The two are
�12
On the Relations of
learned simultaneously. A sense of resistance to his
efforts teaches the infant that there is an outer world,
his consciousness of the effort which is resisted teaches
him that he has a Will of his own. He finds that he
can originate action; in this consists his Will, his
personality. One who duly considers that this primi
tive contrast is the basis of all other knowledge
whatsoever, ought to discern the absurdity of trying
to obliterate this contrast by after-inference. With
ingenious but stupid pertinacity Necessarians try to
convince us, that, inasmuch as regions of the material
universe in which Chance or Will was once supposed
to be dominant, have been found to be subjected to
Necessity, therefore the same ought to be inferred of
the human Will. This reasoning is as vain, as an
attempt to explode the Axioms of geometry by
deduction from its remote theorems. The whole
fabric then falls in a mass. ' As well tell us that all
life is a dream, as that our primary convictions (the
basis of all knowledge) are illusive. Every human
language abounds with words of praise and blame,
words of moral colour, all of which are illusive, if
man moves like a planet in a wholly constrained
orbit. Thus we have the testimony of collective
Mankind to Free Will. It is not pretended by us
that the will, any more than other force, is of infinite
strength; its limit is soon reached: its originating
power acts within bounds : but unless man have some
originating power, all morality is annihilated; to
speak of a wicked or virtuous man becomes as absurd
as to call a planet wicked or virtuous. Thus when
we have learned that the outward universe has its
fixed laws, we must with Pope admit the sharp con
trast,
(God) binding Nature fast in Fate,
Left free the human Will.
As the unshrinking maintenance of this is abso
lutely essential to the foundations of Morality, so too
�Theism to Pantheism.
13
in it lies the reconciliation of Theism and Pantheism.
Unless we have a positive ineradicable belief in the
human Will,—if we allow ourselves for a moment to
admit that this may be illusive,—we lose all reason
able ground for ascribing Will to the Creator, who is
presently confounded with blind Fate. A gentleman,
my contemporary, who has written and preached in
London as an avowed Pantheist, has printed that God
creates, not with any design, but because it is his
impulse! which will come to this,—“because he
cannot help it, and hardly knows what he is doing.”
Such is the proclivity of Pantheism. But if we start
with a belief in the human Will as our first principle,
and in Morality as essential to the nature of Man, in
contrast to the collective brutes, we instantly find it
inevitable to ascribe Will to the superhuman Power in
whose actions we see Design, and to ascribe every
mental perfection to him, from whom our minds and
souls are only derivative. Conscious of the independ
ence of the human will, we cannot believe that we
are absorbed in God, or are mere machines moved by
him ; but we are, in the true and noble sense, children
of God. Finally, while recognising him as not only
a Creator of distant worlds, at a distant time, but as
the present Spirit who every moment maintains our
life and inspires our energies, we glory in sounding
to him the utterance, “ Thou only art Holy.”
Modern Theists have probably a much more abruptaversion to the idea of miracle, than had our early
Deists. This, as I believe, has arisen from the vast
accumulation, in a century and a half, of experience
as to the deceitfulness of the imagined evidence for
miracles: but students of material science whose
Theism is somewhat obscure, often appear to Chris
tians to object to miracles from ground almost
Atheistic. The Christian complaint was powerfully
expressed by Lacordaire in the following words : “ It
is impossible, say the natural philosophers, for God
�■WWWMHII—
14
On the Relations of
to manifest himself by the single act which publicly
and instantaneously announces his presence,—by the
act of sovereignty. Whilst the lowest in the scale of
being has the right to appear in the bosom of nature
by the exercise of its proper force; whilst the grain
of sand, called into the crucible of the chemist,
answers to his interrogations by characteristic signs
which range it in the registers of Science; to Gocl
alone it is. denied to manifest his force in the personal
measure that distinguishes him, and makes him a
separate being. . . . Not only, say they, must
God not have manifested himself, but it must be for
ever impossible for him to manifest himself, in virtue
even of the order of which he is the Creator. Banished
to the profound depths of his silent and obscure eter
nity, if we question him, if we supplicate him, if we
cry to him, he can only say to us (supposing, how
ever, that he is able to answer us), ‘ What would you
have ? I have made laws ! Ask of the sun and the
stars: ask of the sea and the sand upon its shores.
As for me, my condition is fixed : I am nothing but
repose, and the contemplative servant of the works of
my own hands.’ ”
On this it may be remarked, first, that Lacordaire’s
argument is addressed to the Deist of the eighteenth,
not to the Theist of the nineteenth century. We do
not maintain that God is nothing but repose. Few will
dare to say (certainly not I) that God is unable to
manifest himself in forms wholly unlike anything
which we. have seen. But if I admit to an old Greek
01 Egyptian that God is able to take the form of a
bull or a swan, is that a reason for believing, as fact,
somebody s tale that he was actually incarnate in a
bull. Again, without denying that he might be
incarnate a thousand times in the form of man, as
the Hindoos say, or once, as Christians say, surely
this is far enough from admitting the fact. We must
have proof ; and when it is attempted to assign proof,
�Theism to Pantheism.
i 5
the idea itself vanishes as contemptible. We have to
learn outward truths by experience, and among these
is the question, By what means God is pleased to
reveal his action and his mind ? Experience replies,
“ Solely in the laws of the Universe, and in our inner
consciousness.” Our minds are a mirror for appre
hending his mind, and an aid to interpret his action.
What indeed would Lacordaire have ? If his demands
are just, we may claim a God who will talk with us
and teach .us, as a human preceptor.
While I strenuously maintain, that incredulity con
cerning miracles can be based logically only on ex
perience of human credulity, and that the propel’
ground for rejecting the pretended miracles of the
Gospels and Acts is the abundant proof of credulity
in the writers,'with the total absence of evidence that
they saw what they presume to tell so confidently
(nay, the certainty in most cases that they were
repeating mere distant hearsay;) yet, in the present
development of Theism, another grave reason against
belief in miracles seems to me to become prominent;
viz., that if the laws of Nature are inseparable from
Deity, they must be esteemed as a part of the Divine
existence, with which it is unimaginable that he should
tamper. Where we see nothing but immutability,
are we to be scolded as limiting God and denying
power to him, because we glorify that immutability,
as essential to his perfection ? Without miracles he
has given us all things needful to life and godliness.
We will not dictate to him how he shall be pleased to
reveal himself, but are contented to take what we
find.
Finally, there is a thought which I wish to drop,
as a reverential conjecture only, that others may pon
der over it, and give it whatever weight it deserves.
That forces which I recognise as Divine, should act
by fixed laws which display nothing moral, seems to
me at first very paradoxical. I inquire, whether the
�16
The Relations of Theism to Pantheism.
analogy be merely fanciful, or is possibly true, which
compares the divine being and the human in this
further respeot: namely, as Man has in him vegetative
force which is wholly unmoral, besides his mind or
soul which is moral but invisible; so God, whose
moral part is wholly invisible, has, as another part of
his being, the material and unmoral laws of the
Universe, which are in some sense visible and palpable.
But all such analogies admit diversity as well as
likeness in the things compared. Man is unconscious
of his vegetative action, especially when it is most
healthful: I suggest no such unconsciousness in the
case of the Divine action. Indeed, so timidly do I
write, that nothing but the urgent remonstrance has
withheld me from striking out this paragraph.
But I have no timidity as to our duty of borrowing
from hostile schools whatever we can honestly bor
row . I firmly believe, that our only way to exterminate
Pantheism and Atheism, is, by learning all of truth
which Pantheists or Atheists hold, and incorporating
it with our Theism.
�ON
THE GALLA RELIGION.
->
|HE Gallas are a people who live to the south of
a
Abyssinia, in a very low state of civilization.
The facts concerning their religion here adduced are
drawn from the writings of Lorenz Tutschek,—
“ Dictionary and Grammar of the Galla Language,
Munich, 1844-45.” Probably more has been learned
concerning them in these twenty-five years past,
either by new intercourse, or by studying the
numerous MSS. of Karl Tutschek, who died prema
turely. His brother, Lorenz, who has edited the
Grammar and Dictionary, was drawn into African
philology by nothing but the death of Karl; and
professes (in 1844) his inability to use to advan
tage the large materials left in his hands. A sketch
is here given of the very interesting account, in order
to give the reader confidence that the documents here
laid before him, however fragmentary, are authentic.
Duke Maximilian of Bavaria redeemed four young
negroes at an African slave mart, and brought them
to Germany for education, supposing them to be three
Nubians and one Abyssinian. He secured for their
tutor a young jurist, Karl Tutschek, who had been
distinguished in linguistic study, and was acquainted
with Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Arabic. After about
�18
On the Galla Religion.
ten weeks, Tutschek at length discovered that they
were neither Nubian nor Abyssinian ; that three of
them had only been a year away from home, and were
of excellent capacity. The youngest had forgotten
most of his language and of his people, and was
depressed in mind by the circumstance. They
belonged to the four nations, Galla, Umale, Darfur,
and Denka, and communicated with one another, very
imperfectly, in vulgar Arabic. After a while, he
excited in them the desire to impart to him all that
they could tell of their homes and countries, sometimes
in reply to direct questions, sometimes in connected
narrative suggested by him or originated by them
selves. The Tutscheks do not hesitate to ascribe to
some of these compositions, which were wholly oral,
“great solidity and elegance, as to style, contexts,
and arrangement,” notwithstanding the youth of the
narrators. Lorenz accounts for this by reminding us
that the art of relating is cultivated by oriental
people [by illiterate people ?], and that those children
of nature are from earliest childhood eminently
observant of external things, and closely acquainted
with the circumstances of their villages and tribes.
Karl Tutschek directed his chief study first to the
Galla language, spoken by Akafade, which appeared
to be best vocalised and easiest; but Lorenz applies to
the Yumale negro (Jalo Jordan Are) the epithet
highly gifted. Three volumes of his dictations were in
Lorenz’s hands when he wrote. He adds that they
“ deserve the praises that have been bestowed on
their sterling worth as to form and contents, and
bear the impression of mature judgment and critical
truth.” They are divided into such as are the repro
duction of the excellent memory of Jalo, and such as
are his own free compositions. Jalo declared himself
to be nephew of Wofter Mat, hereditary king of the
Yumales. But the Gallas alone here concern us.
On January 2nd, 1841, in a sitting of the philoso
�On the Galla Religion.
T9
phical class at Munich, Karl Tutschek read a report
of his investigations, and laid before it a tolerably
complete dictionary of the Galla Language, a sketch
of the Grammar, and many dictations, prayers, and
songs. He had received from M. Jomard of Paris a
treatise on the Galla language, extracted from the
bulletin of the Geographical Society, August, 1839,
which in many ways confirmed his own results. He
even found in it prayers of the Gallas, nearly agreeing
with those dictated by Akafede. What was better
still, he gained two months’ intercourse with a second
Galla, named Otshu Aga, who had been delivered
from slavery by Mr Pell. By him not only all that
he had learned was confirmed, but materials were
given for comparing two dialects of Galla, and the
number of dictations, prayers, and songs was increased.
Otshu and Akafede presently became warm friends,
and at Tutschek’s suggestion, entered into corre
spondence. Hereby he got fourteen letters, valuable
alike for philology and for exhibiting the mind and
soul of the correspondents. Further, through Otshu,
an African girl by name Bililo was introduced to
Tutschek. She had been supposed Abyssinian, but
was really from the Galla country Guma, and had
taught Otshu Aga many of her songs, which Tutschek
noted down. A fourth native Galla, Aman Gonda,
who had been brought to Europe by Duke Paul of
Wirtemberg,, was visited by Tutschek. He had been
a magistrate under the service of his prince, had been
better educated, and appeared to speak his own lan
guage correctly. For these reasons, Tutschek set
much value on his communications.
The chief occupations of the Gallas are agriculture
and cattle-tending ; but subordinate to these, in their
villages, are weavers, tanners, potters, leather cutters,
and workers in metal, who furnish warlike imple
ments. The form of government is royalty ; but, as
separate tribes have different kings, the king seems
�20
On the Galla Religion.
to be not much above the Arab chieftain. The royalty
is generally hereditary, but is occasionally changed by
election. Their religion is a monotheism, penetrating
deep into all practical life, but obscured (says Lorenz
Tutschek) by many superstitions. This is only to be
expected; but no superstition appears in his speci
mens of their prayers, which with a few verbal
changes of mere English dialect, are the following :
Morning Prayer.
0 God, thou hast brought me through the night in
peace; bring thou me through the day in peace I
Wherever I may go, upon my way which thou madest
peaceable for me, 0 God, lead thou my steps ! When
I have spoken, keep off calumny [falsehood ?] from
me. When I am hungry, keep me from murmuring.
When I am full, keep me from pride. Calling upon
thee I pass the day, 0 Lord who hast no Lord.
Evening Prayer.
0 God, thou hast brought me through the day in
peace ; bring thou me through the night in peace ! O
Lord who hast no Lord, there is no strength but in
thee. Thou only hast no obligation. Under thy
hand I pass the day ; under thy hand I pass the night.
Thou art my Mother; thou my Father.
LITURGY
After the Sufferings of a Bloody Invasion.
Good God of the earth, my Lord! thou art above
me, I am below thee.
When misfortune comes to us; then, as trees keep off
the sun, so mayest thou keep off misfortune.
My Lord ! be thou my screen.
�On the Galla Religion.
21
Calling upon thee I pass the day, calling upon thee 1
pass the night.
When this moon rises, forsake me not. When I rise,
I forsake not thee. Let the danger pass me by.
God my Lord ! thou Sun with thirty rays ! when the
enemy comes, let not thy worm be killed upon
the earth, but keep him off, as we, seeing a worm
upon the earth, crush him, if we like, or spare
him, if we like. As we tread upon and kill a
worm on the earth, so thou, if it please thee,
crushest us on the earth.
God, thou goest, holding the bad and the good in thy
hand. My Lord ! let us not be killed. We, thy
worms, are praying to thee.
A man who knows not evil and good, may not anger
thee. But if once he knew it, and was not
willing to know it, this is wicked. Treat him as
it pleases thee.
If he formerly did not learn, do thou, God my Lord !
teach him. If he hear not the language of men,
yet will he learn thy language.
God ! thou hast made all the animals and men that
live upon the earth. The corn also upon the
earth, on which we are to live, thou hast made.
We have not made it. Thou hast given us
strength. Thou hast given us cattle and corn.
We worked with them and the seed grew up
for us.
With the corn which thou hadst raised for us, men
were satisfied. But the corn in the house hath
been burnt up. Who hath burnt the corn in
the house F Thou knowest.
If I know one or two men, I know them by seeing
them with my eye : but thou, even if thou didst
not see them with the eye, knowest them by thy
heart.
A single bad man has chased away all our people
from their houses. The children and their
�22
On the Galla Religion.
mother hath he scattered, like a flock of turkeys,
hither and thither.
The murderous enemy took the curly-headed child
out of his mother’s hand and killed him. Thou
hast permitted all this to be done. But why so F
Thou knowest.
The corn which thou raisest, thou showest to our
eyes. To it the hungry man looketh and is
comforted. Yet when the corn bloometh, thou
sendest into it butterflies and locusts and doves.
All this comes from thy hand. Thou hast caused
it. But why so F Thou knowest.
My Lord ! spare those who pray to thee. As a thief
stealing another’s corn is bound by the owner of
the corn, not so bind thou us, 0 Lord! But
thou, binding the beloved one, settest him free
by love.
If I am beloved by thee, so set me free, I entreat
thee from my heart. If I do not pray to thee
with my heart, thou hearest me not. But if I
pray to thee with my heart, thou knowest it,
and art gracious unto me.
The inquiry suggests itself, How old is this religion
of the Gallas F It contains no trace of Mohammedan,
nor yet of Christian influence. God is, in their
belief, as Lorenz Tutschek observes, the One Supreme,
almighty, all-knowing, all-wise, and all-good. No
prophet, no angel appears. If the religion were an
independent reform originated in modern times,
Theism superseding Polytheism, one might expect
some prophet’s name to be connected with it. Prima
facie, the probability seems rather to be, that it is con
temporaneous with Hebrew Theism and akin with the
old Abyssinian religion ; perhaps, also, with that of
Sheba, which was the S.E. corner of Arabia.
In a paper read before the Philological Society of
London in 1847, I tried to show the relation of the
Galla Verb and Pronouns to those of other known
�On the Galla Religion.
23
tongues ; and claimed for the language a place in the
class which Prichard has styled Hebrseo-African.
This class, besides the group related closely to Arabic
and Hebrew, comprises the Abyssinian language,
those of Mount Atlas and the Great Western Desert
(of which the Zouave is now the best known), and
perhaps even the ancient Egyptian.
We know that the old Abyssinian language, called
the Gheez, differed little from Hebrew, and that there
was an ancient sympathy between the Hebrews and
Sheba (where Jewish princes ruled, in the time of
the Maccabees), also between Judsea and Abyssinia.
It may be thrown out for further inquiry, whether
possibly a common Theism was maintained, a thou
sand years before the Christian era, in these three
countries, and also in that of the Gallas.
�The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing
a letter enclosing the price in postage stamps to Mr Thomas
Scott, Mount Pleasant, Pamsgate.
The Doctrine of Immortality in its Bearing on Education. By “Pres
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Some remarks by J. D. La Touche, Vicar of Stokesay, Salop. Price 3d.
A Challenge to the Members of the Christian Evidence Society. By
Thos. Scott.
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Price 6d.
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Price 6d.
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Price 3d.
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By Samuel Hinds, D.D.. late Lord Bishop of Norwich. Price 6d.
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�
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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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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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On the relations of theism to pantheism and on the Galla religion
Creator
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Caldecott, Alfred
Description
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Publisher's list on unnumbered back page. The Galla are a people widespread in the modern state of Ethiopia, speaking a language belonging to the Eastern (or Low) Kushitic group which includes Afar-Saho and Somali.
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Thomas Scott
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1872
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G4847
Subject
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Theism
Pantheism
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Galla Peoples
Morris Tracts
Pantheism
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Cl 2^
Ph ases of Atheism,
DESCRIBED, EXAMINED, AND ANSWERED.
BY
SOPHIA
DOBSON
COLLET.
“ An Atheist by choice is a phenomenon yet to be discovered, among thousands
who are Atheists by conviction.”—The Reasoner, July 31, 1859.
“Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless till it resteth in
Thee.”—St. Augustine’s Confessions, Book I., s. 1.
I860.
�LONDON :
JOHN WATTS, PRINTER, 147, FLEET STREET, E.C.
�PREFACE.
The following Essay is reprinted, with revisions and additions,
from the American Christian Examiner for November, 1859.
Its original form as a magazine article will explain its limitation
to the writings of a few authors only. My object has been to
show—first, that the purely Secular view which, regarding
religion as a mere intellectual uncertainty, endeavours to avoid
that uncertainty by virtually eliminating the spiritual element
from daily life, misses the richest and highest influences that life
can receive, and cramps the full and natural development of the
human soul. Secondly, that the more ideal Atheism which
escapes this error, does so only to fall into another equally
serious. Preserving the religious sentiment, and alive to all the
intuitions of ideality and devotion, yet unable to link them with
any source of personal trust beyond the reach of human frailty,
“ Religious Atheism” struggles at every step under the impos
sible attempt to make the finite human conscience and the frail
earth-bound affections meet the infinite claims made upon both
by the tasking realities of life; and under the perpetual, haunting
sense of grief and failure thence resulting, is driven to question
—and most justly so—whether the absence of a Divine Helper
from the world of moral conflict, does not virtually amount to
the Supremacy of Evil.
Those who have the happiness to believe in the God of Con
science as the Life of their life, ever leading them on through
tempest and calm, humiliation and conquest, to a deeper sym
pathy and a completer self-surrender to His infinite goodness,
are surely bound to do all that in them lies to lift aside the
obstacles which cast these shadows of Atheism on the minds and
lives of their fellow-creatures. No one can be more sensible
than myself to how small a share in such a work this brief
Essay can pretend. But if only a few of the suggestions here
made should lead any of my Atheist readers but a single step
nearer to the God whom, under the names of “ Truth ” and
“Duty,” they may already have unconsciously sought and
served, these pages will not have been written in vain.
London, January, 1860.
S. D. C.
�■
_______
■-
H
�PHASES
OF
ATHEISM.
1. The Life and Character of Richard Carlile. By George Jacob
Holyoake. 1849.
2. The Last Trial by Jury for Atheism in England; a Fragment of
Autobiography. By George Jacob Holyoake. 1851.
3. The Case of Thomas Pooley. By G. J. Holyoake. 1857.
4. The Trial of Theism. By G. J. Holyoake. 1858.
5. Shadows of the Past. By Lionel H. Holdreth. 1856.
6. The Affirmations of Secularism ; in Seven Letters to G. J. Holyoahe.
By L. H. Holdreth. Published in the Reasoner for 1857.
7. Conscience and Consequence. A Tale for the Times. By Lionel
H. Holdreth. Published in the Reasoner for 1858. London :
Holyoake and Co.
Among the many signs of the times which demand the study of
religious thinkers, few are so little known in proportion to their
importance as the recent developments which Atheism has assumed
among the working-classes of England. These developments are in
many respects widely different from those which were current about
thirty or forty years ago. There is no less a chasm between the
Deism of Thomas Paine and the “ Natural Religion ” of Theodore
Parker, than between the crude “ infidelity ” of Richard Carlile and
the devout Stoicism of Lionel Holdreth. We do not thoroughly
appreciate any form of religion till we know what are the classes of
minds that reject it, and what sort of principles they accept in pre
ference. And when the rejection of religion is itself tinged with a
religious spirit, we may safely predict, not only that the current creed
is too narrow for the age, but that a wider and deeper faith is already
striking its roots in the hearts of men.
The popularization of Atheism in the working-class mind of Eng
land owes its first impulse to the labours of Richard Carlile, the
editor of “ The Republican.” Untutored, antagonistic, and coarse,
but brave, devoted, and sincere, he initiated and sustained a twenty years’
struggle for the free publication of the extremest heresies in politics
and religion, at the expense of nine years’ imprisonment (at different
times, ranging from 1817 to 1835) to himself, and frequent incar
cerations of his wife, sister, and shopmen. This movement, though
vigorous to the point of fanaticism, was not widely supported, and it
virtually died out, as a sort of drawn game between the government
and the heretics. A somewhat milder revival of it took place in
1840-1843, when “ The Oracle of Reason” was set on foot by a few
energetic young Atheists, and several prosecutions took place. It
B
�2
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
was this movement which first introduced to the public the name of
George Jacob Holyoake, who, having served his apprenticeship to
propagandism by a six months’ imprisonment, rose in a few years
to be the acknowledged leader of the sect. Under his influence, it
has not only increased immensely in numbers, but has passed into a
far higher stage of character, both moral and intellectual. This is
strikingly illustrated in the case of Thomas Pooley, a poor, half
crazed Cornish labourer, who was in 1857 sentenced to a long im
prisonment for “ blasphemy.” Fifteen years previously, Mr. Holyoake’s own imprisonment excited but little notice beyond a small
circle, and not one petition was presented to Parliament for his
release. But by the time that Pooley’s case occurred, the Freethinking movement was strong enough to reach the sympathies of
liberal men in all sects, and thus to effect the reversal of an iniquitous
*
sentence.
This event also illustrates the progress of Freethought
in another direction. The coarse language for which the poor
labourer was indicted—language only too frequent in the pre-IIolyoake
era—found no defenders among the Secularists who petitioned for
his release, but was unanimously objected to, as degrading to Freethought. And this double change, bringing both parties one step
nearer to each other, is, there can be no doubt, mainly owing to the
good sense, rectitude, and devotedness of George Jacob Holyoake.
But Mr. Holyoake’s influence is not the only one observable in the
Atheist party. Like many others, that party now possesses its right,
left, and centre. For the improvement which took its rise from the
establishment of the Reasoner, in 1846, has gradually come to tell
upon the mixed elements of the Freethinking party ; and in 1855 a
sort of reactionary “split” took place, and the ultra-Atheistic Secu
larists set up a rival journal, the Znveó'tig,ator,f for the avowed pur
pose of returning to the old traditions of hatred and ridicule, in opposi
tion to Mr. Holyoake’s more catholic and fraternal policy. The
utterly shameless spirit in which the Investigator habitually treats of
the human side of religion is quite sufficient to stamp its incapacity
for touching what pertains to the Divine; and its malignant and
calumnious enmity towards Mr. Holyoake is a sufficient indication of
the divergence between his advocacy and that of “ Old Infidelity,” as
it is expressively termed. Counting this reactionary party as the
lowest development of English Atheism, we next come to the party
of the centre, namely, that party which is represented by Mr. Holy
oake. This is much the largest of the three. Its idea may be
stated in Mr. Holyoake’s words,—“ that the light of duty may be
* Pooley was sentenced to twenty-one months’ imprisonment. He was par
doned at the end of five months, most of which was spent in the county lunatic
asylum, to which it soon became necessary to remove him. He was so judi
ciously treated there, however, that on the receipt of his pardon he was restored
to his family.
t Delunct in August, 1859.
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
3
seen, that a life of usefulness may be led, and the highest desert may
be won, though the origin of all things be hidden from us, and the
revelations of every religious sect be rejected ;”* in short, that Life,
Nature, and Morals are self-sufficient, and independent of religion.
Beyond this aspect of Atheism is yet another, numbering at present
no definitely attached adherents besides its enthusiastic propounder,
but evidently received with pleasure by many listeners during the
last three years. This new Gospel owns to the paradoxical title of
Religious Atheism, and is put forth by Mr. Lionel Holdreth, the most
cultivated and coherent thinker of whom the Atheist party can boast. He
does not, in fact, belong to the working-classes either by birth or educa
tion, although his sympathies with them are of the warmest. A little
volume of poems, entitled “ Shadows of the Past,” is the only separate
volume he has published; and all his other communications to the
Freethinking public have been made through the columns of the
Reasoner. The reactionary “ infidels ” hate religion: Mr. Holyoake
wishes to be neutral to it: Mr. Holdreth desires to re-incarnate it in
another form. Such are the three phases of the Atheistic party in
England,—the central body shading off into the two others at either
extremity. Passing by the first section, as presenting mere hollow
word-controversy, untinged by any real passion for Truth, we pro
pose to examine the second and third sections at some length.
The disintegrated state of Theology in the present, day has given
rise to the necessity for preaching the Gospel of Free Utterance,
wholly distinct from any decision as to what is to be uttered. To
preach this Gospel has been, in the main, Mr. Holyoake’s vocation.
But now that the right to speak has been so largely won, the question
arises, “ What have you to say ?” and the metaphysical and spiritual
bearings of the subject come into prominence. To this question Mr.
Holyoake has endeavoured to give some coherent reply in his recent
work, “ The Trial of Theism,” in which he has reprinted and revised
the chief papers on theological subjects which he had written during
the previous ten years, with other matter here first published. It is
a singular book; utterly destitute of anything like systematic thought,
and scarcely less deficient in any arrangement of its materials ; pain
fully unequal, both in substance and tone. Frequently we come
upon noble, earnest, manly writing, which indicates real intellectual
power, aud fine perception; then comes some passage so puerile, so
weak, so indiscriminating, as to cause quite a revulsion of feeling in
the reader’s mind. What makes this frequently-recurring contrast
more singular is, that those chapters which are reprints of former
papers are mostly revised with minute care, the alterations often indi
cating delicate discrimination and real expansion of mind. (Chapter
27, which is a reprint of “ The Logic of Death,” is an instance of this.)
Yet the entirely new matter is often of quite inferior quality, both in
Cowper Street Discussion, p. 221.
�4
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
thought and expression. It would seem inexplicable how a writer
who could give us the better portions of this book could endure to
put forth some other parts of it, were not this inequality a pheno
menon of such frequent recurrence in literature as to be one of its
standing anomalies. Intellectual harmony is almost as rare as moral
consistency, and men of even the finest genius too often cultivate one
side of their nature to the positive neglect of others. The prominent
side of Mr. Holyoake’s nature is the moral and practical. He belongs
to the concrete world of men, rather than to the abstract World of
ideas. The best parts of his book are the delineations of character,
some of which are very felicitous. Chapter 14, on Mr. Francis New
man, and Chapter 29, on “Unitarian Theism,” give the high-water
mark of his religious character-sketches. A man who could thus
appreciate the leading ideas of his opponents might (one would think)
do great things in theological reform. But note the limiting condi
tion of his power ;—he can appreciate these ideas when incarnated in
another human mind, but it is mainly through his human sympathies
that he does so. Neither the religious instincts nor the speculative
intuitions are sufficiently magnetic and passionate in his own nature
to force their way to an independent creative existence. Whenever
he turns to the region of abstract thought, his power seems to depart
from him. And this book, which deals almost exclusively with
speculative themes, is a marked illustration of it. It manifests all the
weaknesses, and but very little of the best strength, of his mind. Thus
it affords no clue to the real benefits which, in spite of grave errors,
his movement has produced for many among the working classes;
while it shows plainly the barriers which must ever limit any move
ment, however sincere, which excludes religion from the field of
human life.
We ought not, however, to quit this point without quoting the
author’s apology for some of the imperfections of his work:—
“ If anything written on the following pages give any Theist the
impression that his views, devoutly held, are treated with dogmatism
or contempt, the writer retracts the offending phrases. Theological
opinion is now so diversified, that he has long insisted on the propriety
of classifying, in controversy, the schools of thought, and identifying
the particular type of each person, so that any remarks applied to
him alone shall not be found ‘ at large ’ reflecting upon those to
whom they were never intended to apply. If just cause of offence
is found in this book, it will be through some inadvertent neglect of
this rule.
“ The doctrine is quite just, that crude or incomplete works ought
to be withheld from publication ; and the author reluctantly prints
so much as is here presented. If this book be regarded, as it might
with some truth, as a species of despatch from the field of battle, the
reader will tolerate the absence of art and arrangement in it. The
plan contemplated—that of taking the authors on the side of Theism
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
5
who represented chronological phases of thought—required more time
than the writer could command. From these pages, as they stand,
some unfamiliar with the present state of Theistical discussion uiay
obtain partial direction in untrodden paths. Hope ot leisure in which
to complete anything systematic has long delayed the appearance of
this book, after the writer had seen that many might be served even
by so slender a performance. At length he confesses, in a literary
sense (if he may so use words which bear a spiritual meaning), —
‘ Time was he shrank from what was right,
From fear of what was wrong:
He would not brave the sacred fight,
Because the foe was strong.
‘ But now he casts that finer sense
And sorer shame aside ;
Such dread of sin was indolence,
Such aim at Heaven was pride.’—Lyra Apostólica." *
In seeking for the central pivot of the movement which Mr. Holyoake represents, we find it in the Independence and Self-sufficiency of
Ethics,—their independence of Theology, their sufficiency in them
selves to the needs of man. This doctrine is a compound of several
elements, some of which are doubtless valuable truths, while others
are serious errors. To disentangle these from each other is now our
task. The following passages sufficiently sketch Mr. Holyoakes
position. The first is from an early number of the Reasoner, the
second will be found in the “ Trial of Theism —
“Anti-religious controversy, which was originally, and ever should
be, but a means of rescuing morality from the dominion of future world
*
speculation, became an end,—noisy, wordy, vexed, capricious, angry,
imputative, recriminative, and interminable.
“ To reduce this chaos of aims to some plan, to discriminate objects,
to proportion attention to them, to make controversy just as well as
earnest, and, above all, to rescue morality from the ruins of theological
arguments, were the intentions of the Reasoner. It began by announ
cing itself ‘ Utilitarian in Morals,’ and resting upon utility as a basis.
In all reforms it took unequivocal interest, and only assailed Theology
when Theology assailed Utility. The Reasoner aimed, not so much to
create a party, as to establish a purpose. It threw aside the name of
‘ Infidel,’ because it was chiefly borne by men who were disbelievers in
secret, but who had seldom the honour to avow it openly. It threw
aside the term ‘ Sceptic’ as a noun, as the name of a party, because it
wished to put an end to a vain and cavilling race, who had made the
negation of Theology a profession, and took advantage of their dis
belief in the Church to disbelieve in honour and truth.’’f
“ Let any one look below the mere surface of pulpit declamation,
* Preface to “ The Trial of Theism.”
t “ Reasoner,” No. 57.
�6
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
and ask himself two questions : What has even Atheism, on the whole,
meant ? What has it, on the whole, sought, even in its negative and
least favourable aspect ? It has, in modern times, disbelieved all ac
counts of the origin of nature by an act of creation, and of the govern
ment of nature by a Supreme Being distinct from nature. It has felt
these accounts to be unintelligible and misleading, and has suggested
that human dependence and morals, in their w’idest sense, should be
founded on a basis independent of Scriptural authority; and it has done
this under the conviction, expressed or unexpressed, that greater sim
plicity, unanimity, and earnestness of moral effort would be the result.
This is what it has meant, and this is what it has sought. The main
popular force of speculative argument has been to show that morals
ought to stand on ground independent of the uncertain and ever-con
tested dogmas of the churches.”f
Now this desire to sever life and ethics from “ the dominion of
future-world speculation,” is not without its true side. When the •
great synthetic conceptions of life which arose out of deep religious
impulses are breaking up through the imperfections of the doctrinal
forms in which they are incarnated, it is necessary to deal with each
element separately, before the general mind can reach the point at
which it becomes possible to recast the whole. And in these periods
of transition, we often see special teachers whose vocation seems to be
the preaching of those supplementary truths which are needed to
bridge the chasms—to detach moral realities from the crude doctrinal
form in which they were no longer credible, and so to prepare us for
a completer view, in which they shall hold a truer position. The
connection of Morals with Theology has hitherto been frequently
taught on an incomplete basis—namely, that the ground of duty was
only to be found in God’s command. Thus whatever was held to be
God’s command was exacted from men as duty; and any criticism of
the supposed command, as violating conscience or reason, was at once
condemned as rebellion—God’s will being represented as the only
criterion of right. In early and unreflective stages of development,
the errors of this doctrine were mostly latent; but when the moral
and intellectual elements in spiritual life arrive at a distinct and
separate existence, a fuller and more discriminating estimate of the
truth becomes imperative. That Moral Obligation is inherently sacred,
and that the sense of this obligation does not necessarily imply belief
in a Person who claims our obedience, is true; and it is a truth which
needs to be clearly recognised, and which is recognised by many of
the most religious thinkers of the day. It is also true that a common
possession of moral truth forms a positive ground of union for its
votaries ; and this, too, is important in an age when so much differ
ence exists between good men on religious subjects. So far as Mr.
Holyoake has preached the independent foundation and positive nature
f “ Trial of Theism,” p. 135.
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
7
of Ethics, he has been working on solid ground, and his work has
been productive of useful results, which may long outlive their
polemic environment. But when he proceeds to erect these doctrines
into a basis of neutrality to religion, he enters new ground. He does
not actually say that Ethical Truth is the only supersensible reality
attainable by man; but he implies that it is so to himself, and he
evidently believes it to be so for an increasing majority of mankind.
That his Atheism is suspensive rather than dogmatic, is indubitable
from many touching passages scattered throughout his writings ; but
*
the fact remains, that he deems this suspensive position capable of
being incorporated as a permanent element in the philosophy of life,
not only for himself, but for human creatures in general—that he
studiously cultivates neutrality to religion as a principle of action.
Baffled by the difficulties which obstruct his intellectual comprehension
of the universe, he has no spiritual apprehension of its fundamental
realities sufficiently vivid to fall back upon ; and although “ in hours
of meditation he confronts with awe the great Mystery,” his “ baffled
speculation returns again to the Secular sphere,”f and he deems it
possible and desirable to divide the secular from the spiritual with a
sharpness that can entitle the former to support a whole philosophy
of life. Now such a philosophy is quite conceivable on the supposi
tion that the spiritual does not and cannot exist; and for thoroughly
materialised Atheists such a philosophy is consistent and right. This
is the ground taken by the reactionary “ Infidels.” But Mr Holyoake
evidently means something different from this : he means that a man
may pass through life as satisfactorily as man can, without being
thoroughly convinced of the truth of either Theism or Atheism; that
the chief part of human life is independent of religion; that to the
Secularist’s aspirations “ the idea of God is not essential, nor the
* “ I see the influence men can exert on society, and that life is a calculable
process. But why is it so ? There my curiosity is baffled, and my knowledge
ends. In vain I look back, hoping to unravel that mysterious destiny with
which we are all so darkly bound. That is the channel through which all my con
sciousness seems to pass out into a sea of wonder; and if ever the orient light of
Deity breaks in on me, it will, I think, come in that direction. The presence of
law in mind is to me the greatest fact in nature.”—“ Trial of Theism,” p. 69.
“ When pure Theists, as Mazzini and Piofessor Newman, explain their fine
conception of God as the Deity of duty, or of moral aspiration, the imagination,
borne on the golden wings of a reverence untinged by tenor, soars into the
radiant light of a possible God. But the Possible is not the Actual. Hope is not
proof. . . .
“ Had I been taught to conceive of Deity as either of tbe writers just named
conceive of Him, I think it likely that I should never have ceased to hold Theism
as true: and if it were not misleading to one’s self to covet opinion, I could even
wish to be able to share their convictions. But having once well parted from my
early belief, I am free to inquire and resolute to know,And I seek for evidence
which will not only satisfy my present judgment, but evidence with which I can
defy the judgment of others. He who can supply me with this can command me.”
—Ibid., pp. 115, 113.
f Ibid., p. 115.
�8
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
denial of the idea necessary.”* “ What help has the Theist which
the Atheist has not also
he asks, evidently unaware how the per
ception of religious reality modifies the whole of life, altering its pro
portions, and often even reversing its purposes. Take, for instance,
the subject of death. How widely different are the feelings with
which we must regard the vicissitudes and problems of life, on the
supposition that our career is not ended by death, from those feelings
which are forced upon us by the supposition that it is so terminated!
This is a case in which the reality must lie either with the one
alternative or the other : either we shall, or we shall not, survive our
present existence; and except in those cases where excessive misery
or mental torpor has produced a state of abnormal indifference to life
altogether, a neutral feeling on the subject is scarcely possible. Our
affections, hopes, pursuits—the whole conduct and tone of our lives
—must inevitably be influenced to an incalculable extent by the con
clusion which we adopt. It is quite true that Duty is equally binding
on us, whether our term of life be mortal or immortal. But the
absence of a futurity must alter the line of our duty in an infinity of
directions, and it is unavoidable that we act from one hypothesis or
the other. Even suspensive Atheism, though not shutting out the
chance of a futurity, is obliged to act on the other theory. Mr.
Holyoake, though far more open to spiritual influences than his party
generally, is obliged to base his world on the Secular alone. His
superiority on these points is purely individual, and is constantly
overborne in party and polemic life by the inevitable tendency of his
principles.
There is an instinctive feeling in men’s minds that
religion is either a great reality or a great mistake, but that it cannot
be a matter of indifference. And this perception is beginning to show
itself in the Secularist party. They are dividing more and more
visibly into positive and negative sections,—the one repudiating
religion, the other reapproaching it more or less distinctly.^ For
human nature is so constituted that men cannot for ever rest at the
parting of the ways. Individuals there have always been, to whom a
peculiar combination of temperament and culture renders a decision
on the great problems of life less easy to the intellect, and perhaps
less imperative to the character, than to the generality of mankind ;
but, whatever other services to human welfare such minds may render,
they cannot aid in the development of those primary spiritual intui
tions which have formed the deepest basis of human life in all ages.
But Mr. Holyoake may plead that it is quite legitimate to prefer
one of two influences without absolutely pronouncing against the
other, if the one be certain and the other uncertain,—the one close at
hand and the other .afar off. And this is his view of the Secular as
contrasted with the Spiritual. He does not presume to say that God
* “ Trial of Theism,” p. 175.
f Ibid., p. 121.
J See Appendix A.
�PHASES OP ATHEISM.
9
does not exist ; but he holds that, whether God is or is not, the
*
course of human affairs is left to humanity alone,—that human effort
is the only practical agency which it is of any use to invoke. Take
the following passages, for instance, from “The Two Providences.”
“ It is said we are without God in the world ; but remember, if it
be so, that it is not our fault. We would rather that the old theories
were true, and that light could be had in darkness, and help in the
hour of danger. It better comports with human feebleness and harsh
destiny that it should be so. But if the doctrine be not true, surely
it is better that we know it. Could the doctrine of Divine aid be
reduced to intelligible conditions, religion would be reinstated in its
ancient influence. For a reasonable certainty and an unfailing trust,
men would fulfil any conditions possible to humanity. Faith no
longer supplies implicit confidence, and the practical tone of our day
is impatient of that teaching which keeps the word of promise to the
ear, and breaks it to the hope.
“ Could we keep before us the first sad view of life which breaks in
upon the working man, whether he be a white slave or a black one,
we should be able to see self-trust from a more advantageous point.
We should learn at once sternness and moderation. Do we not find
ourselves at once in an armed world where Might is God and
Poverty is fettered? Every stick and stone, every blade of grass,
every bird and flower, every penniless man, woman, and child, has an
owner in this England of ours no less than in New Orleans. The
bayonet or baton bristles round every altar, at the corner of every
lane and every street. Effort, in its moral and energetic sense, is
the only study worth a moment’s attention by the workman or the
slave.....................
“Now it is not needful to contend that prayer never had any
efficacy,—it may have been the source of material advantage once ;
but the question is, Will it bring material aid now ? It is in vain
that the miner descends into the earth with a prayer on his lips, unless
he carries a Davy lamp in his hand. A ship-load of clergymen
would be in danger of perishing, if you suffer the Amazon once to
take fire. During the prevalence of a pestilence an hospital is of more
value than a college of theologians. When the cholera visitation is
near, the physician, and not the priest, is our best dependence, and
those whom medical aid cannot save must inevitably die. Is it not,
therefore, merciful to say that science is the Providence of life ? . . .
Science represents the available source of help to man, ever augment
ing in proportion to his perspicacity, study, courage, and industry.
We do not confound science with nature. Nature is the storehouse
of riches, but when its spontaneous treasures are exhausted, science
enables us to renew them and to augment them. It is the well* “ Does the most absolute Atheism do more than declare the secret of nature
to be unrevealed ? ”—“ Trial of Theism,” p. 143.
�10
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
devised method of using nature. It is in this sense that Science is the
Providence of Man. It is not pretended that Science is a perfect
dependence; on the contrary, it is admitted to be narrow, and but
partially developed; but though it should be represented as a limited
dependence, we must not overlook the fact that it is the only special
dependence that man has; and however infantine now, it is an evergrowing power.” *
But in what respect is it needful that the study of Nature, and the
methodising of its agencies for the material benefit of man, should be
regarded as invalidating the existence of a Divine purpose in Nature ?
Surely nothing can be more congruous with Theism than that Nature
and Man should be found in harmony with each other. In exploring
our relation to the home in which we are placed, and in utilizing every
material within our reach, we are in no sense turning away from the
Author and Animator of Nature, but rather acquainting ourselves
with His infinite resources of power and beauty. The real question
between the Theist and the Atheist lies far deeper down ; it is,
whether we have any means of reaching the Power displayed in the
Universe beyond that which we gain from the study of Nature,—
whether that power is a Conscious Soul, with which we can com
mune, and whence we can derive help and guidance when the visible
world ceases to afford us aid,—whether, when “Nature”is dumb, He
will speak,—whether, when all “materialadvantage” shall have been
reaped by material science, the affections and the conscience must yet
be left entirely to themselves, possessing no power of contact with
any Personal Reality beyond that of erring fellow-mortals. Yet, if
such contact be possible, it must affect our moral lite to an incalcu
lable extent; and the moral life of those who do not cherish any
relation to that Personal Reality must miss one of its most important
elements. In contrast, therefore, to the Secularist theory, on the one
hand, which holds that Ethics as a whole, both in theory and prac
tice, is attainable without Religion,—and to the orthodox theory, on
the other hand, which maintains that the unassisted human mind can
neither know nor do anything in Morals without the conscious recog
nition of Religion,—we hold that Conscience and Faith are, each of
them, primary sentiments in man; that each may arise independ
ently of the other, and may grow up separately, to a certain point of
development,—a point varying relatively to the temperament and
culture of each individual,—but that beyond that point each tends to
call forth a need of the other, and deteriorates if that need be not
supplied. He in whose glowing heart spiritual love precedes the
strong sense of duty becomes a bigot or a dreamer, if his idea of God
long fails to suggest a free and reasonable standard of conscience.
And he who finds his purely human conscience really all-sufficient to
his needs, can scarcely have much fulness of moral life requiring to
* “Trial of Theism,” Chap. XXII.
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
11
be guided. And here it is to the point to remark, that the absence of
any reliance on such higher Personality has a visibly cramping effect
on the minds of Ethical Atheists. There are innumerable cases in
life where human sympathy and reciprocation must fail ; nay, where
the very fact of virtue implies the renunciation of sympathy. In
such cases it may too often be seen that the Atheist is thrown back
upon himself, in a way which tempts him either to yield the point
for the sake of sympathy, or to hold by the point in a way which
is apt to overstrain his sense of duty done. In Atheistic defences
we frequently see a recapitulation of facts brought forward to de
monstrate the rectitude of the party, or of its champions, which even
generous minds cannot save from a tone of “ self-righteousness,”
while to commonplace speakers the danger is not even perceptible.
Now it is fatal to the healthiness of virtue to look back in this way
at its own achievements. The love of Goodness is kept safe and
sound by being constantly directed to that which is before, and not
behind it. Otherwise, it is apt to sink into ?elf-complacency with
having been virtuous, and rather to test its aspirations by its perform
ances, than to feel that the only good of its performances is derived
from the aspirations which they but imperfectly realise. Broadly
speaking, there is a certain climate of tendency observable in dif
ferent communions—a gravitation of influences towards certain levels,
—which determines the tone of average minds, and which the higher
thinkers only escape by lying open to other inlets of thought and
feeling. The Secularistic idealisation of human duty as the only
source of moral life, must ever give rise to the tendency to glory in
“merits.” It is inevitable that this temptation should come to minds
vividly conscious of honest and faithful purpose, and anxious to
defend that purpose against coarse and base aspersions, but not con
scious of receiving, from an Infinite Source above them, far more
than the most devoted of human lives can ever re-express, and whose
human fatigues and disappointments are thus unrefreshed by that
repose and re-invigoration which are essential to the elasticity of the
highest human endeavour.
Now this strain on the nobler faculties which results from the
absence of Divine sympathy, must necessarily vary greatly according
to the need of sympathy in different minds. Many upright, unimpulsive men, in whom conscience scarcely rises into affection, do not
feel it at all. Others, of generous and affectionate natures, are yet
so far free from the disturbing influences of passion as to be able to
live habitually from a sense of duty alone. To observers at a little
distance, the benumbing effect of a merely Secular faith may be visible
in such natures, confirming their constitutional defects, and cutting
them off from rousing influences; yet the Secularist’s own mind
may not be distinctly conscious of the want. But now and then
comes a passionate soul, that feels the need of the Divine with a
keenness that cannot be suppressed. The mind may be entirely per
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PHASES OF ATHEISM.
suaded of the untenability of Theism; but the intellectual convic
tion in such cases is at war with the whole bent of the soul. To
such a nature, the needs of the affections must be recognised dis
tinctly, whether for satisfaction or abnegation : they are primary reali
ties which cannot be passed by in any accepted theory of human life.
And here does Ethical Atheism culminate in the religious sentiment,
not only virtually, but avowedly, as we shall find by passing on to the
latest development of Atheism, as propounded by Mr. Lionel Holdreth.
With Mr. Holdreth the relation of Ethics to Theology takes an
altogether different aspect from that which it assumes in Mr. Holyoake’s system. Mr. Iloldreth utterly eschews all neutrality; his
Atheism is far more decisive than that of his friend. Ilis Secularism
is confessedly based on the rejection of Spiritualism, and he is fully
aware of their essential incompatibility. But, on the other hand, his
natural feelings toward religion are of a very different nature from
those manifested by Mr. Holyoake. The latter can respect the reli
*
gious sentiment, but he does not appear to have ever been deeply
conscious of it in himself, since the unreflecting period of his boy
hood ; all the realities of life which take hold of him most strongly,
bring no irrepressible longing for anything beyond humanity. But
with Mr. Iloldreth the religious sentiment is woven into his very
nature, and the intensity of his Atheism makes this only the more
apparent. The first specimens we shall present of his writings are
two passages which, taken together, strike the key-note of his whole
conception of life and faith.
“ In advocating the claim of Secularism to rank among religions,
and in asserting its inherent superiority to all other forms of reli
gion in point of truth, purity, and directness, I had in view, not
merely the assertion of a fact, but the attainment for Secularism of a
position, without which I do not conceive it possible that it can
maintain its ground. I wish to render it stable by defining and con
solidating its principles ; I wish to weaken the enemy by depriving
them of the monopoly of that principle—the religious—which always
must exercise a paramount influence over the minds of men. Human
nature is not a mere bundle of faculties, under the direction of a
supreme and infallible intellect; if it were, then we might rely
solely upon the intellect, not merely to teach men what is right, but
to compel them to follow its teaching. But as things are constituted
it is only the first of these points which the intellect can achieve;
we have to look for some other motive influence which shall induce
men to do what they know to be right. This can only be found in
their emotions or affections. It is on these that the religious senti
ment has its hold, and therefore, apart from the religious sentiment,
_• He calls Mr. Newman’s work on “The Soul” “a book conceived in the
highest genius of proselytism, which must command respect for the religious
sentiment wherever it is read.”—“ Trial of Theism,” p. 60.
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
13
you can rarely hope to find steady and thoroughgoing virtue in any
life; never, except in minds peculiarly well balanced by nature, and
well disciplined by the education of life and action, of teachers and of
circumstances. Here and there, it is true, you may find a man or
woman who docs right by habit or by impulse ; but these are motives
which can hardly be relied upon to resist the pressure of strong
temptation. For the strength here needed we must look to a prin
ciple which can exercise complete control over the affections, and
wield their whole power in such a struggle ; a commander-in-chief of
the faculties of our moral nature. Such a principle is that of Reli
gion, and such is no other. This principle is embodied in the faith of
the Christian and the Deist, of Socrates and of Paul, of Isaiah and
of Mazzini, of Plato, ay, and of Paine. None of these were or are
Atheists; they write and speak of a God in tones of reverence and
adoration ; and it is in this religious sentiment which is embodied in
their creed that they find consolation in sorrow, and strength in the
hour of conflict. Such a strength and such a consolation must be
found in any faith which is ever to attain an empire over the hearts
of men; such a principle of power must there be in a creed, call it
philosophical or religious, on which our morality is to be based, and
by which our life is to be directed, or we shall be sure to find it fail
us in our hour of need. And I maintain that, as a fact, Secularism, as
taught by Mr. Holyoake, and as accepted by myself, does contain such
a principle, in its religious sense of duty; a duty derived from natural
principles, and referable to natural laws; a duty binding on men as
fractions of mankind, and on mankind as a portion of the cosmic whole.”*
“ I believe in no true, honourable, virtuous life but in this reli
gion ; and in proportion as the supernatural creeds have contained
this essential religious element, have they been useful and saving
faiths. Christianity had far more of it than Paganism, Theism than
Christianity; but pure Secularism is the pure religion—faith in a
grand principle its sole guide of life, its sole source of strength,
unalloyed by timid dependence on a Father’s arm, unpolluted by
selfish thoughts of a reward hereafter. To this Religion of Duty—
the One True Faith, the one true principle giving life and spirit
to the bodies of false doctrine wherein it hath been incorporated—do
I look for all strength for each of us, all guidance for all men, all
progress for mankind.’’^
In this remarkable declaration there are three main propositions :—
First. That “ any faith which is to attain an empire over the hearts
of men” must contain “a principle which can exercise complete con
trol over the affections, and wield their whole power in the struggle."
No truer ideal of faith could be laid down than this.
Second. “That Secularism does contain such a principle, in its
religious sense of duty.”
* “ Reasoner,” No. 600.
t “ Reasoner,” No. 579.
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PHASES OF ATHEISM.
Third. That Secularism is “superior to all other forms of religion
in truth, purity, and directness,” because it holds this sense of duty
unalloyed by any dependence on a Father, or any hope of a hereafter.
Now that “ Secularism, as taught by Mr. Holyoake, and accepted
by Mr. Holdreth, does contain a religious sense of duty,” may be
readily granted. Mr. Holdreth elsewhere says, that “ Sacrifice for
the sake of others, not in the hope of future reward, is a principle
which, though glimpses of it were occasionally visible through the
mists of the future to Prophets and Apostles, waited for its full
recognition until a faith arose which knew nothing of an eternal
retribution.”* And there is a truth in this which should not be
forgotten. The absence of any settled hope of futurity does throw
into keener relief the absolute disinterestedness of virtue; and
although there have been Theists, as well as Atheists, who leave the
question of immortality as an insoluble problem, yet it is the noblest
characteristic of Ethical Atheism to have preached, deliberately and
fearlessly, that virtue is a present rectitude, utterly irrespective of
pleasant “ consequences,” whether in this world or in any other.
The popularization of this truth is one of the most valuable contri
butions that Secularism has made to the moral education of Free
Thought. But it is one thing to assert that Moral Obligation is a
primary element of our nature, “ derived from natural principles,
and referable to natural laws
and it is quite another thing to main
tain that no extra-human Personality exists, of whose parental rela
tion to us, those natural laws are but an outward visible expression.!
It is one thing to assert that the idea of virtue excludes, per se, the
very notion of reward; and it is quite another thing to maintain
that our sentient existence cannot extend beyond our life in this
visible plar.et. The connection between ethical truth and cosmical
fact is one that cannot be thus assumed a priori. Moreover, although
the ethical truth on which Mr. Holdreth bases his whole system is
one which can scarcely be over estimated in its own place, it is’clearly
incapable of fulfilling all the requirements of the ideal which he
previously sketched as essential to a complete Faith. Is Duty, as a
matter of fact, “ a principle that can exercise complete control over
the affections, and wield their whole power in the struggle?” We
apprehend that no mortal soul, however saintly, could ansiver “Yes.”
It is true that almost any amount of self-sacrificing heroism may be
gradually attained by a dutiful nature, even to a degree that would
at first appear incalculably beyond the power of human nature to
support. Let the capacity for “service and endurance ” be granted
to the full, untainted by any notion of “ reward,” either in earth or
heaven. But the province of effort, which is active and voluntary, is
distinct from the province of affection, which is receptive and involun
tary. Duty may, indeed, be taught to exercise control over the
* “ Reasoner,” No. 596.
t See Appendix B.
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
15
affections, in the sense of coercing them; but that is clearly not the
sort of control of which Mr. Holdreth is here speaking. The con
trolling principle that he desiderates is one that shall “ wield the
whole power of the affections in the struggle." It must therefore
respond to their fullest longings, and dominate them by an Objective
Reality that can rightly command them. But how is this possible
if the object loved be an unconscious one ? Only a person (in the
sense of a conscious mind) can wield the whole power of the affec
tions, for only a person can reciprocate them—and what affection
ever comes to its full maturity until it is reciprocated ? And what
person can wield that complete control over our highest and purest
affections which is here sought, but One who shall be above us all—
the realisation of Infinite Perfection ? The admission of the affec
tions into the “ religious sense of duty ” naturally implies the idea of
an Object on which to repose them; and the absence of any such
object in Mr. Holdreth’s theory is an incongruity somewhat like that
exhibited by Tycho Brahe, who admitted that the planets revolved
round the sun, but maintained that the sun and the planets together
revolved round the earth- In the same way, Mr. Holdreth holds
that all our faculties should be under the complete control of reli
gion, but that religion itself is only dependent upon man—that is, upon
the very being who needs the control. Perhaps he would reply with
the heroic but most melancholy saying of Spinoza, “ He who loves
God aright must not expect that God should love him in return;” an
idea which implies that the power of loving has been, in some mys
terious way, monopolised by mortals, and is the only quality for
which the Great Cosmos has no capacity. Now if the affection we
receive from our fellow-creatures were in itself perfectly satisfying,
and always at our command when deserved, there would be much
plausibility in the theory that we have no concern with any other
affection. But that such is not the case in human life, it would be
superfluous to prove. Moreover, if there be one feature of Mr.
Holdreth’s writings more characteristic than the rest, it is the keen
ness and distinctness of his desire after an Infinite Object of affec
*
tion.
It is therefore to the point to discover the estimate he himself
takes of this desire. The fullest notice he has taken of it, as an
argument for Theism, is as follows:—
“ Some have urged that, since in Nature is found no want without
a satisfaction, no appetite but for a purpose, it were contrary to
nature to suppose man’s natural instinct of worship, and—so to
speak—desire of Deity implanted only to be balked. But to this it
* Many critics of his poems were misled by this characteristic to under-esti
mate the reality of his Atheism—a very easy mistake to arise in the minds of
those who see the religious instinct, and who do not see the complicated intellec
tual difficulties which may coexist with it. We have frequently heard the
remark, “Mr. Holdreth will not long remain an Atheist.” But the question
remains, Why is he an Atheist now ?
�16
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
may be replied, that for artificial desires Nature provides not always
gratifications; nor for all natural needs, except to those who have
the capacity to seek their satisfaction aright. Accordingly, it is
nowise to be accounted an anomaly in Nature, if she provide not a
personal object of worship, such as shall satisfy the artificially
excited imaginations and feelings of men and women, educated from
youth to worship; or if she yield no gratification to those whose
neglected intellect and uncultivated conscience can reverence naught
that is not personal, and love only where they expect reward for
loving. But for so much of this devotion as is natural in minds
sound and healthily trained, there is a sufficient object in the Order,
the Truth, the Beauty of Nature herself—in the Duty which springs
from Law, and in the authority which belongs to Conscience.”*
Such is Mr. Holdreth’s theoretical conviction. But what are the
utterances of his natural feeling ? Scrupulously passing by all such
passages as he might possibly reject or modify now, we will illustrate
this point by a few quotations. The first is from the opening of a
lecture delivered in 1856, entitled “Theism the Religion of Senti
ment.”
“ Stern indeed and strong must that heart be—if indeed it be not
utterly callous and insensible—-that has not at times, at many times,
sighed after such a comfort. The strongest spirit has its hours of
weakness, the most hopeful and elastic nature its moments of deep
and hopeless depression. What comfort is theirs who in these
moments can cast themselves on the ever-present arm of an Eternal
Father, in calm reliance on his unfailing power and inexhaustible
kindness! In the hours of loneliness and melancholy, when the
heart feels itself as it were alone amid a deserted universe, how
enviable is their state who feel that they are not alone—that with
them and around them is a Friend who sticketh closer than a brother
—a very present help in time of trouble. To the labourer whose
twelve hours’ toil can barely suffice to earn bread for his suffering
wife and his sickly children ; to the slave who sees before him no rest,
no mercy, no escape but in the grave ; to the lonely student on his
solitary couch of sickness ; to the starving and sorely tempted seam
stress in her fireless and foodless garret; to the martyr of conscience
in his dismal prison, or yet more dismal liberty ; to the patriot exile,
inclined almost to despair of the cause for which he has given all that
was dear in life—what happiness to turn from the harshness and the
misery of earth to the Father which is in heaven !
“ And, on the other hand, how hard seems their fate who have no
such hope and no such comfort—who must endure through life the
hardships of poverty, the sorrows of obscurity, the misery of unbe
friended loneliness, and must at last pass to their graves with the
bitter thought, that they have lived in vain for others, and worsc* “Reasoner,” No. 629.
�PHASES or ATHEISM.
17
than in vain for themselves. Truly, it is no light, no easy matter to
be, much more to become, an Atheist.”*
(How much, by the way, is implied in that parenthesis,—“much
more to become an Atheist.”) The next passage we quote appeared
considerably later, and occurred in a review of the “ Eclipse of Faith.”
After quoting the only passage in that book which can be said to
contain “ any indication of an insight into the real feelings and posi
tion of a true Sceptic,” Mr. Holdreth remarks on it thus :—
“ I presume that there is no thoughtful mind, which has ever been
truthful and honest enough to enter earnestly upon the quest of truth,
that has not very early in its career passed through the Slough of
Despond that is here described. But this is assuredly not the
language of a matured and deliberate scepticism; it is that of a mind
which has floundered about in the quicksands into which it first
plunged on quitting the barren rocks of Christianity, and which has
never succeeded in reaching the shore beyond. Those who have gone
through this state do not speak in this tone. They are satisfied either
that there is no God, or that there is, or that we cannot tell whether
there be or no. At any rate, they remain satisfied: if there be no
God, the crying after him is childish and unmanly; if we cannot
know him, it is futile and absurd; in either case experience soon
teaches us that what we cannot in course of nature expect to have can
be naturally dispensed with. It is only during the first stage of
mental progress, while still enfeebled by the habit of dependence,
still unaccustomed to love Truth as Truth, to pursue Duty as Duty,
to repose confidence in Law as Law, independently of a God and a
Lawgiver, that we hear these echoes of the bitter cry, 1 My God, my
God ! why hast thou forsaken me ?’ ”f
'
Thus it is evidently felt by the writer, that the crying after God
would not necessarily be childish and unmanly if He did exist; and
that it is only because we cannot have Divine sympathy, that we must
learn to do without it. Still further, our Atheist acknowledges that
it is only after a painful process that the heart weans itself from this
affection, and learns to cease “ sighing after such a comfort.” This
is resignation, but not satisfaction; it is the manly endurance of a
harsh necessity, but it is not a faith “ which can exercise complete
control over the affections, and wield their whole power in the
struggle."
How such a theory as Mr. Holdreth’s would work in actual life, is
a question which naturally suggests itself; and towards this we have
a partial approximation in his novelette of “ Conscience and Conse
quence,” designedly written to show what life would be to a genuine
Atheist. Our author has here endeavoured to realize his faith in
duty and his disbelief in God, side by side, in all their bearings, and
the result is so unique as to demand special analysis.
* “ Reasoner,” No. 535.
c
f Ibid., No. 603.
�18
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
The plot of the story is a bold interpolation into the history of
religious opinion in England. The hero, Ernest Clifford, is expelled
from Cambridge for Atheism; his father disinherits him in con
sequence, and he joins an Atheist propaganda in London, the leader
of which, Francis Sterne, is the model Atheist of the tale, and the
life and soul of a movement which would certainly not have been
forgotten if it had ever existed. The date of the story is about the
period of the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Bill (1829). At
that time the Carlile agitation was going on, and it certainly contained
many such adherents as the Hatherley and Carter whose coarse but
genuine earnestness Mr. Holdreth has here depicted; but the Freethinking newspapers of that day could boast of no such editor as
“ Arthur Clayton, the Melancthon of Atheism,” nor did they possess
among their contributors any such men as Francis Sterne or Ernest
Clifford. The whole tale is an arabesque, in which all the combina
tions of circumstance are nearly impossible. As the author must be
perfectly aware of this, we attribute to him the intention of aiming
at coherence merely in ideal respects. Conceding to him this liberty,
however, we see, by the elements of which he builds his world, which
are the points in the relation of theology to life that have most importance for him, either in feeling or observation.
In the first place, it should be remarked that, although the romance
has great faults as a work of art, it displays one characteristic which
many works of greater finish do not possess. It is a genuine attempt
to paint from life, rather than to construct from mere fancy or theory.
Although the dialogue is very defective in easy, natural flow, the
conception and description of character indicate close observation and
delicate perception. Especially does the writer’s attention seem to
have been given to the varying styles of character among Free
thinkers. Nearly all the dramatis personae are Atheists, yet all differ
from each other as people do in real life; they are not sketched from
their creed, inwards, but from their character, outwards. Perhaps
Sterne is an exception to this rule; but Ernest, Clayton, Seaton,
Louis, Arnott, and the rest, are clearly drawn from observation, and
not from theory,—and this is no small merit in a tale written to
exemplify a theory. It is a merit, too, in a deeper sense than at first
appears. For this endeavour to paint men as they are, under the
creed of Atheism, has thrown a light upon the effects of that creed
which no Atheist ever gave us before. The author has laid bare the
weak points of his own faith with the candour of one who has no
purpose to serve but the perfect truth. We have not space to
illustrate this as fully as we could wish, and must confine ourselves to
the more salient points alone.
The first “ consequence ” which the “ conscience ” of the Atheist
entails upon him is, of course, the external loss of friends and
position; but this is plainly subordinate in the author’s view to the
internal consequences resulting from the change. It is not only the
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
19
human affections that Ernest is called upon to renounce,—he has to
part with hopes that had outsoared death, and to forsake the peace
with which
“ the heavenly house he trod,
And lay upon the breast of God.”
“ He regretted keenly the old hymns of the Church, in which he
could never join again, as formerly, with simple, heart-felt faith. He
regretted the Incarnate God, dear for Ilis human love, and still
dearer for His human sorrow, who had gradually dwindled before his
eyes into a man, of the common stature of men, or at least less than
the greatest. He regretted the Bible he had trusted so implicitly, but
could never take up now without lighting on some page defiled by
blood or blotted with error and ignorance. He regretted the atoning
martyr, whose dying pardon to his enemies, and dying promise to the
penitent thief, had been the delight of his early meditations. He re
gretted the Heaven which his friend had resolved into its cloud
elements ; that beautiful Fata Morgana of Christianity,—or more
truly of Spiritualism,—where it is promised us that we shall meet
hereafter the loved and lost on earth. Above all, he regretted the
God who was vanishing into thin air before the opened eyes of his reason;
God, the avenger of human suffering, the Redressor of human wrong,
the Consoler of human sorrow; God, whose wisdom can never err,
and whose love shall never fail.................................... We must not
blame Ernest Clifford too severely, therefore, if, in the first bitterness
of this disappointment, when finding the most cherished visions of
his heart fade from the clear light of reason, he was hardly conscious
that there was aught left behind to make life worth living.’'*
Nor does the author give us to understand that this grief was
merely the dark transition-period leading to a happier, fuller, and
richer faith. The only growth of character which he depicts as
resulting from Atheism is a development of the power of endurance.
In his view, the allegiance to Truth not only entails many painful
consequences in its progress to a nobler life, but it is the inlet to a
whole world of suffering, unrelieved by any gleams of sunlight; it
excites the active impulses, but tortures the receptive side of our
nature with cruel starvation.^ We must give some illustration
of this from Ernest’s history. Expelled from his home, he is forced
to part from his sister, without any hope of a future meeting.
* “ Reasoner,” No. 632. The italics here and elsewhere are our own.
+ Those who know Keats’s Life and Letters may be here reminded of his
beautiful parable of human life (Vol. 1. p. 140), where the keen vision of the
world’s misery first assails the young soul,—“ whereby this Chamber of MaidenThought becomes gradually darkened, and at the same time on all sides of it
many doors are set open,—but all dark,—all leading to dark passages. We see
not the balance of good and evil; we are in a mist, we are in that state, we feel
the ‘ Burden of the Mystery.’ . . . Now if we live, and go on thinking, we
too shall explore these dark passages,”
�20
PHASES OP ATHEISM.
“A heavy weight lay on Ernest’s heart, which all the courage
given by a clear conscience, all the resolution of martyrdom, all the
strength of despair, barely sufficed to endure. He could say but
little to his darling sister; but the child knew the mood, and was
content to lie on his arms, dreaming not of the most terrible trouble
she had known, which was to come from those lips that had never
breathed anything but tenderness and peace to her.................... ‘ And
now, dear Alice, farewell. May you be happy, my darling, my
treasure, my first and last hope in life!’
“ How one misses, on such an occasion, the old Saxon ‘ God Hess you P
which consigns the loved one to a higher and stronger care, yet one as
tender as our own! He strained the child to his breast for one long
embrace. Then he unclasped her little arms from his neck, kissed
her once more, and was gone........................... ‘ Farewell!’ he re
peated, bitterly. ‘ And all this misery comes of doing my duty.
Certainly, then, there ¿s no God !’ ”*
“ But if Duty lead to destruction, what matters it ? Soldiers
sworn into allegiance to that sacred name, whither she commands,
thither are we bound to march ; ay, to Hell, if need should be.
‘ Ours not to make reply ;
Ours not to reason why ;
Ours but to do or die.’
There is more of martyrdom still in this world than the world dreams
of. Every step in advance that mankind makes, is made not only
over the bodies of fallen defenders of the ancient Evil. The road is
paved with the noblest, the truest, the bravest hearts that have
struggled or suffered in the good cause: and it is by trampling on our
wounded brethren that we advance to victory. It is the law; who
shall gainsay it ? Ask of the Almighty God, if there be one, why he
constructed the world so clumsily. Remember that Nature, working
ever by fixed rules, and with imperfect instruments, can only attain
the final happiness of the Many by constant sacrifices of the Few.
And will the Few complain of this sacrifice? If they do, it will be
neither wisely nor justly. Pre-eminent sorrow is the price of pre
eminence ; ■ ■ . the finest, noblest, loftiest minds of every age have it
as their assigned destiny—as the finest bull or ram was slain before
the gods of olden time—to be sacrificed at the altar of Progress.
The hemlock of Socrates, the cross of Jesus, the scaffold of More, are
not strange and unnatural accidents in the career of benefactors of
mankind, but only extreme and marked examples of the natural fate
of those whose moral and intellectual pre-eminence renders them
prominent marks for the hostility of the ‘powers of darkness.’
‘ Serve and enjoy,’ is Nature’s commandment to mankind; those whom
she deigns to honour with a special mandate are charged to serve and
endure.”f
* “ Reasoner,” No. 639.
f “ Reasoner,” No. 635.
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
21
This is the first mention in Mr. Holdreth’s writings of “ the powers
of darkness,”—but it is not the last. In the following chapter of
“Conscience and Consequence,” we hear that Superstition is “the
worst and most terrible of all the emanations of the Evil Principle ;
the spirit on whom alone no holy name seems to have power, whom
no exorcism can cast out, and with whom no spiritual strength can
grapple.”* And at length we come to the following plain state
ment of the terrible alternative. Ernest is speaking to a Sicilian
patriot, who has been expressing his fervent faith in God.
“ But may we not ask, Signor, if there be a God, why are you
here, and Francis the poltroon on the throne of the Two Sicilies ? Is
this God’s world, or the Devil’s? Must we not rather say—when-we
look to the men who fill the thrones of Europe on the one side, and
to those who crowd her dungeons on the other—when we think of
the darkness that broods over the souls and minds of her millions of
inhabitants, and remember that here we have the best and highest
forms of human life—whether or no there be a Devil, assuredly there is
no God /”f
Thus our author’s keen sense of Moral Evil leads him to regard its
wide-spread existence as invalidating the reality of a Divine Purpose
in the world. That this bitter “ fountain of tears ” is the central
source of his Atheism, is evident from the whole tenor of his writings.
It will, however, be useful here to quote the exact form in which he has
summed up his view of the subject as a whole. We quote from a
letter of Sterne’s to Ernest.
“ Let me point out to you our arguments as against God’s existence.
“ First: evil exists. God, being omnipotent, could crush evil with
out diminishing good—that is, without causing any moral deteriora
tion on our part for want of something to contend against, or the like.
God, being utterly good, would do so. But it is not done ; evil is al
lowed to exist; therefore God either does not exist, or is deficient either
in power or goodness. If in the former, we cannot trust Him, since
we know not the limits of His power; and if in the latter, we decline
to worship an imperfect Being.
“ Second: God’s foreknowledge, being absolute, is incompatible
with Man’s free will.
“ But the Atheist’s grand argument is that the Theist has none.
There is no credible evidence whatsoever that God exists, and the
burden of proof rests with those who affirm that He does.”|
Every phase of disbelief must be viewed in relation to that belief
which it negatives. We see here what is the sort of Theism to
which Mr. Holdreth enters so decided an opposition. It is the faith
* “ Reasoner,” No. 637. This is said, not by any person in the story, but by the
narrator himself. We have carefully avoided quoting any passages as illustrative
of the author’s views, which are not clearly meant to be so understood.
f Ibid., No. 648.
X Ibid., No. 626.
�22
PHASES OP ATHEISM.
in an Autocratic Power, who is capable of creating good and evil by an
arbitrary fiat of volition,—a Power whose absolute and all-pervading
personality excludes all free and self-modifying existence in all His
creatures. No wonder that such a faith should strain and break down
under the pressure of life’s realities. This sort of Theism is a com
pound of two elements,—the Despot-God of Calvinistic Orthodoxy,
and the Law-God of physical science. The essentially immoral and
unphilosophical nature of the former conception renders superfluous
any argument against it on our part; but the latter idea contains a
partial truth. Inorganic nature indubitably bears the impress of
Cosmic Law. The stars in their orbits, the plants in their growth, ex
press rather than obey the changeless rules of Nature. Unconscious
of pain, undisturbed by temptation, their beautiful life is the incarna
tion of an Orderly Force, whose movements we can (within small, but
yet widening limits) calculate beforehand. Fascinated by this great and
apparently benevolent Power, philosophers have worshipped the God of
Nature as the Supreme. But when this conception of Deity is
carried into the regions of the human will, it is utterly inadequate to
interpret the most important of phenomena; it is dumb concerning all
those moral problems which are specially characteristic of human
life, and distinguish it from the inorganic or irrational departments of
nature. Some thinkers, like Mr. Buckle, fall back on the notion that
the fluctuations of good and evil in the history of individual man are
of small importance, and that the only permanent interests of
humanity consist in what can be generalised and classified. Not so
Mr. Holdreth: he stands fast by the moral realities of individual
life, as being far more important to us than mere general laws, and he
has the courage to maintain that, although, to him, all sight of a Divine
Purpose has vanished from the world,—though the Ordinances of
Nature ruthlessly crush the weak, and wrong the innocent,—yet
still, virtue and sin in man are now, as ever, infinitely opposed; and
that, even under the half-diabolic Shadow which saddens an im
perfect Universe, we should fight to the death for the sacredness of
*
Good.
But now, starting from the point of Man’s Free Will, in which Mr.
Holdreth vehemently believes,f why should this exclude the possible
existence of a God ? Is no other conception of Him possible than the
mere Law-God of Science, or the Arbitrary Despot of Orthodoxy?
* Nor is it only an external warfare that he urges ; he speaks of moral conflict
as one who knows the meaning of temptation, and who has recognised the need
felt by every sensitive conscience of coercing internal as well as external foes. And
it is from this point that his ideal of a faith is conceived, as may he seen in the
first extract we have given from his writings.
+ “The doctrine of Necessity is contradictory to instinct, to reason, to ex
perience. It is a renunciation of morality, a blasphemy against duty, an Atheism
to Nature. . . . My instinct revolts against such degradation. I feel that I
am free, as I feel that I think, that I move, that I exist,” etc.—“ Theism the
Religion of Sentiment,” “ Reasoner,” No. 537.
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
23
To merely speculative intellects, who care only to hold “views” of
theology, no satisfying insight into the truth is attainable. But to
those in whose minds, as in Mr. Iloldreth’s, moral action forms an essen
tial part of that life of which speculative thought is but the exponent,
there is a vision possible, which we will attempt (however imperfectly)
to indicate.
1. We believe that God, by giving us Free Will to use or misuse
our faculties, has put into our hands a large amount of independent
power, which precludes His possession of that absolute foreknowledge
of our individual course which many popular theories attribute to
Him. But by confining our capacities to a certain range in relation
to the other forces of the universe, lie has insured that our individual
aberrations shall never pass beyond a preordained limit, after which
the compensations of nature restore the general equilibrium. With
respect to our capacity, therefore, we are governed by the necessity
of God’s ordinances; with respect to the use we make of our capacity,
He leaves our individuality in our own hands. What He seeks from
us, there, is not the mechanical acquiescence of a plant or a bird, that
must obey the laws of its nature; but the free service of the Eternal
Right, the unconstrained love of the Infinite Goodness. Now such
freedom cannot be given without the power to choose wrongly. What
is virtue ? Not the mere absence of Evil, but the preference of Good,
—the devotion to Good as Good. Were there no distinctive
differences between right actions and wrong ones, no perception of
excellence could exist. Were there not in man a capacity for choosing
and following evil, no struggle of the will could arise at all: the
very existence of the idea of Duty—the Ought—implies that there is
a course which we ought not to follow. Some thinkers maintain that
this doctrine implies the subjection of God to an extraneous Fate; but
surely such thipkers overlook the true state of the case. Can we
conceive of God as creating a square circle, or as causing rain to fall
and not to fall at the same time and place ? These are self-contra
dictory requirements in physics, and the inability to combine them
does not imply any want of power. And is it not our greater inex
perience in Morals which alone renders it possible to us to conceive of
them as not amenable to fixed consistencies, and capable of being
moulded at pleasure by the caprice of an arbitrary Will? “If
Wisdom and Holiness are historical births from His volition, they are
not inherent attributes of His being.”* To resolve the conception of
God into the single attribute of volition, is to lose the substance of
Deity for an impossible phase of Omnipotence. For if we imagine
Him to be without a consistent manner of existence, we lose all that
makes Him the Object of our reverence and trust. “ Let Him
precede good and ill, and His Eternal Spirit is exempt alike from the
one and from the other, and recedes from our aspirations into perfect
moral indifierence.”j’
2. God has established a limit to the “ powers of darkness.” Beyond
* “ Prospective Review,” November, 1815. Review of Whewell’s “ Elements
of Morality.”
f “ Prospective Review,” ut supra.
�24
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
a certain point, crime leads to the destruction of its agents; the con
tact with nature and reality is fatal to evil in the long run. Death
and Birth perpetually tend to restore the balance of things, by re
moving the incurably corrupt, and filling the world with new life,
capable of healthier development. Thus much God grants to us as
“general law
more complete salvation we cannot have without our
own individual exertions. Now, that mankind have in many direc
tions gone very near the limit of human capacity to do evil, there can
be no doubt. The state of the Roman Empire for several centuries,
the horrors of religious persecution in all ages, the present state of
American slavery, are all testimonies to the awful capacity in man for
deliberate and consummate wickedness. But however wide may be the
shadow which human guilt can cast, it can never exceed the measure
of those faculties which occasion it, and consequently it must always
be possible for the right exercise of those faculties to attain an
equally wide development. It may be replied, that to do wroDg is
easier than to do right; or, in other terms, that our powers of action
and enjoyment tend to an over-selfish degree of gratification. That
they have such a tendency is most true ; but we have another tendency,
of an opposite nature. “ It is not more true that the flesh lusteth
against the spirit, than that the spirit lusteth against the flesh.”*
And it is this power of choice between the lower and the higher ten
dency, that makes us moral beings. The perennial alternative is,
whether we will cultivate our faculties for the sake of self alone, or
whether we will train them to be ministers in the service of that Pure
Goodness which can alone set our hearts free. And that there is an impulse
in man which seeks the pure, unselfish service of Goodness and Right,
and that this impulse ought to be the ruling authority of man’s heart,
is no secret to the best Atheists; indeed, it forms the acknowledged
groundwork of Mr. Holdreth’s faith. What is required for the salva
tion of mankind is this,—that the souls of men should love the Right
above all else, and promote it personally and publicly, with all their
strength and mind and heart. Of individual heroism and holiness the
experience of the race already affords many bright examples; but
these qualities have yet to be developed in social forms. Something
of this has been approached when a great moral enthusiasm has com
municated itself to a large body of men, animating them with one
common sentiment, burning up their littlenesses, and developing them
into a new life. Partial and incomplete as such results have been, they
have sufficiently manifested the fact that mankind are capable of a
social conscience, in the development of which individual excellence
may attain its ripest fulness. And “ if” (as Mr. Iloldreth says) “ we
were all now to begin to do our duty,”—if every single individual who
is troubled by the shadow of moral evil were to exert himself to the
utmost to assail it,—the combined efforts of so many workers would
assuredly, before the lapse of many generations, visibly diminish the
* Francis W. Newman, “ The Soul,” Chap. II I. “ The Sense of Sin.’
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
25
extent of that shadow. It is Action that we want,—moral devoted
ness to realise what moral and intellectual study have shown to be
the true needs of man.
3. Now comes the question, what light would such combined social
action throw upon the problem of the Universe? We believe it
would reveal much. For, although discouragements abound, from
the stubbornness of sin and the waywardness of passion, yet there is
an under-current of hope which persistent and faithful souls can
scarcely miss. There is, underneath the accumulated refuse of past
errors, a real thirst in human nature for right, and truth, and good
ness, which gradually becomes visible to genuine explorers, and which
is capable of infinite expansion. For we are so constituted that, how
ever long we may wander in darkness and falsehood, we can only
thrive in light and reality. The world is based on truth. Good and
Evil are not coequal powers, but Goodness, because it is Goodness, is
the mightier of the two when once fairly fledged. Evil may indefinitely
delay the advent of Good in the rebellious human heart; but directly
we turn to clasp and serve the Good in real earnest, we gain some of
its own power in addition to our own—a power which, if we are
faithful, will increase in us ever more and more, freeing us from the
bondage of selfish desires, and inspiring us with strength, peace, and
blessedness.
4. But, asks Mr. Holdreth, why should the consequences of guilt
be allowed to fall upon the guiltless ?
“ We that have sinned may justly rue,
Sin grows to pain in order due—
Why do the sinless suffer too ?”*
Without assuming to fathom the whole depth of the difficulty, we
would reply, that there is one obvious reason for this ordinance. The
tie of a common sensibility is the necessary postulate of social life,
which could not even exist, if the pains and pleasures of separate
individuals did not extend beyond themselves. If our actions affected
ourselves alone, what would become of all the relations of family,
friendship, country, and race ? We might as well be dwelling in
solitary and separate worlds. And it is not, in the nature of things,
possible that we should receive joy from our human sympathies,
without being also capable of receiving sorrow from them. The same
constitution which makes us open to improvement from the influences
of virtue, renders us liable to contagion from the contact of vice. Is
this an immoral doctrine ? Far from it. By testifying to the great
ness of social influences, it indirectly suggests how widely they may
minister to human improvement. Like all other extensions of our
sensibility and capacity, its consequences for good only demand our co
operation to outweigh infinitely its consequences for evil. One of the
first incitements that can move a sympathetic nature to self-discipline,
is the perception that his failures in virtue cazmoOnjure himself alone,
but must inevitably bring mischief and misery upon others also. To
* “ Shadows of the Past,” p. 36.
�26
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
see the untamed evil in their own hearts reflected back upon them in
the marred lives of the innocents whom they love, is a punishment
■which may recall many self-willed natures, who, in the recklessness
of passion, care but little for such consequences as only affect them
selves. Even the best of us continually need to see the right and
wrong of our actions illuminated by the well-being or injury of the
human creatures around us, in order to realise the full responsibility
imposed by that just and awful law, “Whatsoever thou sowest, that
also shalt thou reap.”
And when guilt seems to have passed beyond the human chances
of redemption, when long courses of evil-doing have hardened vice
and crime into “ established institutions,” then is it not our pity for
the victims that moves us to seek redress ? Probably the tyrants of
power, in all cases, are more fearfully injured by sin, than their
victims by suffering. Yet, clearly as we may perceive the degrada
tion caused by slavery and tyranny to the oppressing races or rulers,
human nature is not so constituted that this perception can act as a
sufficient motive-power on the general heart of man to induce the
reformation of the offenders. It is our pity for the innocent that
moves us to overthrow the oppressor. True, the arresting his career
is the best service we can do lor him ; but it is not for his sake that
we do it. He has, by wilful persistence in evil, put himself beyond
the pale of direct human service; it is only indirectly that we can
benefit him, by destroying his power to do evil. That indirect
service, however, shows that the tie of human brotherhood still
remains, and the blow which breaks the chain of the sufferer restores
the balance of the world, and gives another chance even to the oppressor.
The “ Innocents ” were said to be the earliest of Christian martyrs,
and their place is yet sacred in the roll of the world’s benefactors.
When, therefore, we see that the power to distinguish and choose
between Good and Evil is essential to the perception and service of
Good, both in the life of individuals and in the wider sensibilities of
social existence; when we see that, however terribly our choice of
Evil may injure ourselves and others, we have, all of us, chance upon
chance of redemption offered, and natural limits placed to our
capacity for evil-doing; when we see that the service of Good is
capable of being made as wide as the service of Evil has too often been,
and moreover that the inherent vitality of Good excels that of Evil,
in being capable of an infinite expansion and development in harmony
with nature, instead of in discord with it—surely, however much is still
hidden from us on this subject, we see enough to reassure us that the
Great Mystery is not a maleficent one.
*
* Probably it requires Infinite Perfection to formulate the whole truth concern
ing Good and Evil. The humblest efforts of conscience enable us to see clearer
in morals than the most acute intellect can ever penetrate without them; and it
may well be, that, as moral insight increases with moral worth, it can only be
complete where Goodness and Intellect are both entire and coequal, in the mind
of the Only Perfect One.—See Appendix C.
�PHASES OP ATHEISM.
27
Here it is necessary to take up Mr. Holdreth’s conception of
“Nature” from another point, and to examine his reason for main
taining that cosmical harmony does not imply a Personal Unity. Mr.
Holdreth adopts Mr. Holyoake’s doctrine on this point, which he thus
briefly re-states:—
“ The Atheist looks to the universe, under the guidance of the
divine; and the divine points to the traces of law, and cries, ‘ There
you behold the finger of God.’ The pupil asks why this is known to
be a finger-mark of Deity; and the reply is, when reduced to a logical
form, ‘ Fitness proves design, design an intelligent author—and this
author we name God.’ Objects his auditor, ‘ Then the fitness of God
proves an author of God ?’ ‘ Not so.’ ‘ Then how came you to say
that the universe must have an author ?’ ‘ How else comes it to
exist ?’ says the theologian. ‘ How comes God to exist ?’ is the natural
retort. ‘ An eternal universe is as easy of conception as an eternal
God.’ ”*
In this argument there is a mixture of truth and error which
requires to be carefully disentangled. The Theist does not, or at any
rate should not, affirm that the mere fitness or perfection of any
object indicates its design from another hand. What he maintains is
this : that when we see the exercise of Force in the direction of a
urpose, we, by an inevitable inference, attribute the phenomenon to
some conscious agent. You may call this an assumption, if you will,
but it is the necessary postulate of all our conceptions of consciousness.
What other test of consciousness can we imagine but this ? And how
can we dissever the perception from the inference? Now when the
purpose attained by any existence is clearly not resultant from forces
consciously exerted by it—as in the motions of the stars, the growth
of plants from their seeds, the propagation and support of animal
life from the exercise of blind instincts, etc.—we say that such results
must have been intended by some Intelligence extraneous to the
objects themselves. And when we see such exercise of purposeful
force pervading the Universe with a coherent harmony which implies
an unmistakable Cosmical Unity, we cannot but attribute to that
force a consciousness of the results which it produces. In spite of
their rejection of this inference, Atheists perpetually speak of
“ Nature ” as a causal source, both of force and order. Mr. Holdreth
does this most markedly, as may be seen in the following passages
from his “ Affirmations of Secularism : ”—
“ To be saved from perdition, moral and material, we must have
faith in the laws by which Nature has provided for our deliverance,
and upon that faith we must act. . . . Nature demands from us
that we should believe in her, obey her; and she will not fail to
enforce belief by moral penalties, and to punish disobedience by
material sufferings. . . . Nature’s government is a despotism,
* “ Reasoner,” No. 627.
�28
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
with the eternal accident heureux of a beneficent ruler. And I, for
one, am glad that it is so. I, for one, have more faith in the order
and harmony of Nature than in the justice or wisdom of men, and am
rejoiced that it is not left to the latter to arrange the politics of the
ethical world at their will.”*
Mr. Holdreth is, however, far from being consistent on this point.
The foregoing passage implies the attribution of a higher and firmer
morality to Nature than is to be found in man ; but elsewhere our
author maintains that “ the one appalling fact stands every day more
and more clearly visible before the eyes of every thoughtful inquirer,
that Nature is not governed on principles of moral equity; that good
is only attained through evil, and that the justice which is exacted
from just men is not dealt to them ; in a word, that the Author of
Nature, if there be one, is not a Moral Governor, but a stern and
ruthless Machinist.”f
Being pressed with this discrepancy by a Theistic correspondent of
the Reasoner, Mr. Holdreth gave the following explanation:—
“ The Cosmist sees in Nature a machine, which works according to
definite laws which it did not create, and which were not created, but
which it cannot violate. . . If the machine crushes his child or maims
himself, he blames but his own folly, or pities his own misfortune, but
still recognises the value and beneficence of the mechanism. The
Theist, believing Nature an instrument in the hands of a conscious
Being, must see in her workings the designed operations of that Being,
and the evidence of His character. And since those workings often
operate injustice and cruelty in individual cases, he ought to suppose
that Being careless of justice and benevolence, or unable to execute
His own will. Seeing a disregard of morality (which the Cosmist
considers the consequence, not the cause of natural law) in Nature’s
operations, he is bound to believe the operator devoid of moral
character.”!
Thus, then, we come to this point. The general laws of Nature
are “ ever active and ever beneficentbut, as we see the welfare of
individuals perpetually sacrificed to that of the whole, we must
“ believe the operator devoid of moral character,” unless we resort to
the darker theory that the individual injustice was itself planned by
a Designing Devil—an idea which certainly seems to present itself
occasionally to Mr. Holdreth’s mind, though it would scarcely appear
that he actually believes it. In contrast to these theories, we have
endeavoured to show that the capacity for individual sin and suffering
is the indispensable postulate of all our virtue and happiness—the
material out of which all sensitive and active life is moulded, and
through which alone we can attain the truest good of which our
nature is capable. Moreover, we believe that those apparently
exceptional phenomena of our lives, which to the human judgment
* “ Reasoner,” No. 583.
t Ibid., No. 594.
Î Ibid., No. 607.
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
29
appear most inexplicable and distressing, are often the very means of
leading us into nobler and richer fields of life, not otherwise attainable.
If we faithfully meet the new trouble in a spirit of obedience and
trust, it gradually unfolds its hidden meaning, and reveals to us beyond
our bounded imaginations and imperfect efforts, the presence of
One whose Reality transcends our highest ideals, and who, in His
exhaustless love, is ever seeking our perfection, and pleading with us
for the free devotion of our hearts to Ilis service. Among the earliest
tokens of this filial relationship are our longings after an inexhaust
ible Source of love and truth, who shall guide and respond to us
where man’s help must stop short. There are some striking illustra
tions of this tendency in Mr. Holdreth’s novelette. One of the most
prominent is the depiction of the way in which the hero partially
fills up the void in his heart caused by the loss of his religion, with
an intense devotion to his “ Master,” Sterne, who does, in fact, take
the place of a God to him. He accepts the whole responsibility of
Ernest’s life, for which Ernest gives, in return, an almost childlike
obedience. Thus, such comfort as he does find is gained by reposing
on a higher and stronger will than his own. Any such need in
Sterne’s own character is obviated by the coldly-calm temperament
ascribed to him. “ Having no passionate love for any other object
than his sister, having no cause to serve in whose success his soul was
absorbed, and serving the cause of Atheism simply from a quiet, un
impassioned conviction of its truth and necessity, he felt no need of
any assistance or protection from without. He was sufficient to him
self, and his conscience was sufficient to him.”
Yet, with a perceptiveness which singularly contrasts with the
author’s admiration for his ideal Atheist, he has painted Sterne’s
inability to train his wayward sister Annie, with a verisimilitude that
is only too painfully real. The need of influences beyond humanity
to solve such problems of character as hers is so clearly manifested in
this little episode of Atheist life, that we must extract enough to show
its main features. Sterne is the guardian of his two orphan sisters.
A scene of contention with the elder child has just taken place, in
which Sterne has tried in vain to bring her to reason.
“ The child understood ; that much, -at least, was clear. But she
would not seem to feel. And Sterne bit his lip, and turned away
sadly to take the hand of his favourite, as she danced into the room.
.... Annie sat by the window, where she could see them depart,
and notice her brother’s tenderness towards the tiny creature, who
in the midst of her laughter, was even then murmuring a word of pity
for ‘ poor Annie,’—more needed than Emily could know. The sullen
girl bowed her head on her hands, and gave way to a passionate burst
of grief and vexation. ‘ How be loves her! and I—no one loves me!
Well, I won’t care ; I hate them;’—but the word was sobbed forth
with an intensity of rage which belied it; and it was long ere Annie
could resume her usual quiet and sullen behaviour. Pity that her
�30
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
brother had’not'seen those tears, and heard that bitter cry of desola
tion, ‘ No one loves me.’ He who knows no Father in heaven is doubly
bound to be tender toward the fatherless on earth. Sterne knew and
felt this. He had done his duty by his sisters nobly and kindly;
and Annie would have had no reason to complain, were it possible for
Duty to command love, despite all the faults and unloveliness of its
object. Sterne did his duty; and here his task ended. He could
not love one so thoroughly unamiable.”—Chap. VI.
“ She returned to her seat (after doing a kindness to Emily), not
unnoticed by her brother, whose conscientious vigilance seldom
missed a single trait of character in either of his wards. ‘ Thank you,
Annie,’ he said, in a tone of more gentleness, and even tenderness,
than it was his wont to use towards the wayward and vexatious
child. What a pity that the shadow of the fireplace screened the
light of the candle from Annie’s face, and forbade her brother to
notice the glow of momentary pleasure which illumined it. It was
but for a moment; then came the thought, ‘ If it had been his
favourite, he would have said, Thank you, darling,' and all the
sullenness returned to her face and her demeanour, as she resumed
her old attitude and her solitary musings. It is a fearful power that
the words and tones of one human being exercise over the mind of
another; a power so inevitable and yet so incalculable that it is
hard for him or her who wields it to have the slightest clue to its
right use. Indeed, it is perhaps as well that we have in general so
little ability to direct our use of this influence; for one who could
calculate beforehand the effect his every word and gesture would pro
duce might be a despot of no common kind. Yet it is grievous to
think that an accidental variation of phrase or tone, which we could
not possibly remember or foresee, should affect so fatally the peace or
the character of another. A single word of affection then spoken
might have saved years of discomfort, sorrow, and self-reproach; yet
could Sterne have known that it was wanted, or would be felt, it bad
certainly not been withheld.”—Chap. VIII.
It would be impossible to depict more clearly the inadequacy of the
bare sense of Duty to compass all the work which is given us to do.
What Sterne needed was to break up the ice round his sister’s heart,
by penetrating to the human feeling underneath her pride and
waywardness. And what could have enabled him to do this so well
as a faith in an Infinite Causal Love beyond, within, and around them
both ? Failing this, all the most delicate and tender growths of
affection are (as our author sees) at the mercy of the slightest physical
accident, and continually liable to waste away in aimless wanderings,
or to fester in morbid pride. Yet in one of the few cases where the
novelist has allowed an Atheist to love happily, we see that even
when affection is mutual and satisfying, it can never be relied upon
by an Atheist as a permanent and integral part of his being. In the
touching chapter entitled “ The Valley of the Shadow,” narrating the
�PHASES OF ATHEISM.
31
death of Emily Sterne, we see the point from which the author
endeavours to deal with this poignant grief of eternal separation, from
the principle supplied by “ the Religion of Duty.”
“ Ernest could not leave his friend in this great sorrow, and his
presence was evidently a diversion to Sterne’s melancholy, and a
pleasure to the dying child. For dying she certainly was,—fading
away from life like a gathered rose-bud, but slowly and quietly, her
self half conscious but fearless, sorrowful only for the misery which
all her adored brother’s self-command could not conceal from her
loving eyes. And she would make him sit close beside her, and clasp
her little hand in his, while his thoughts were darkened by the
shadow of the coming day, when he should never clasp that loving
little band again. Few of us know what is the anguish of the
meaning he had uttered in those bitter words, ‘ my all in life.’ She
—this beautiful and innocent little one—was the object of dll his care,
dll his labour, dll his hope. When she should be gone from him,
what would he have left but a dreary, dark, cheerless path to a goal
of utter nothingness? In those hours of torture, few could have seen
further than this, even of men less capable of passionate love, filling
the inmost recesses of existence; but Sterne was of a few. Men of
his mould are not to be found in the every-day walks of life, though
one or two such there are on earth, perhaps, if we but knew where to
seek them when we want heroes to lead us and martyrs to die for us.
Dark and waste and dreary indeed his after-life must be, but it might
be trodden boldly and faithfully; for the darkness was not all.
Even amid that long and cruel agony he remembered the work that
lay before him ; and knew that he would not do it the less bravely
and constantly, because he had no other love on earth, no other hope
on earth or in heaven. For him Duty was God and Nature was His
prophet; and though the God’s mandates were hard, and the prophet
prophesied no smooth things, Sterne was not one to lose hold of his
faith because of tribulation, nor to fling it aside in madly clasping at
a staff which, in the utmost need of those who lean thereon, cannot
but prove a broken reed................
“ ‘ What advantageth it us, if the dead rise not ? Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die.’
“ Sterne sat by the side of his sleeping sister, who, lulled to rest for
a short time by heavy opiates, was not to be roused by their lowtoned conversation. He was bending over her, and his face was
hidden. But as his proselyte spoke these bitter words, he looked up;
and the first harsh sentence Ernest had ever heard him speak was his
reply.
“ ‘ Ernest Clifford, look at your own life, and at mine ; look here,
where all I have to love or hope in the universe is passing away from
me; and remember that I, in this utter desolation, have never
forgotten that I have no right to die with my work undone. It may
be, when you have known what such wretchedness as this is, that you
�32
PHASES OF ATHEISM.
will learn a better faith than that borrowed Epicureanism of Paul,
and bethink you that those who have so much to do before they die
to-morrow have need to make the utmost use of to-day.’
“Ernest was somewhat abashed, yet could not but recognise the
justice of the rebuke. If this man did not sink into utter despair,
what right had he to murmur ?”
Thus, one by one, fade the stars of love and hope from the Atheist’s
sight, and he is left alone, with nothing but the work which Duty
prescribes. “ He would not do it the less bravely and constantly,
because he had no other love on earth, no other hope on earth or in
heaven.” But if it be possible for all love and hope on earth or in
heaven to be thus destroyed, what work remains possible, and what
objects remain to be worked for? What is then the value of life—
not merely its relative value to this or that sufferer, but its absolute
value to man as man ? How can such a mutilated and benumbing
conception of duty “ exercise complete control over the affections, and
wield their whole power in the struggle ?" “ Nature” must be not only
“devoid of moral character,”—she must be absolutely Diabolical, if
she condemns her truest children to this terrible crushing of their
noblest yearnings. The universal heart of man refuses to believe in
such an anomalous dissonance, and, springing to the embrace of the
Infinite Goodness, echoes the cry of St. Augustine,—“ Thou hast
made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless till it resteth in Thee1”
Here we must close our remarks, although we have but touched
the mere outline of the subject. Our aim has not been to furnish a
short and easy guide to the mysteries of this infinite Universe, but
simply to indicate a few of the clues to the great underlying Reality,
which no worshipper can ever wholly comprehend, but which unfolds
itself ever more and more to wise and patient hearts. That Reality
must be sought by each soul singly and alone. That such a mind as
Mr. Iloldreth’s cannot seek it in vain, we feel assured. It may be
nearly impossible for any one to help such seekers in solving a
problem w’hich so largely depends on the individual experience of
life. But our task will not have been valueless if we have succeeded
in showing that there is, in these recent forms of Atheism, a faith in
truth and in virtue which commands the sympathy of religious
thinkers, and which is in itself a hopeful sign of the times. “ When
people assume that an Atheist must live without God in the world,”
■f says an able and generous writer, “ they assume what is fatal to their
own Theism.” And those who recognise in all human goodness the
sustaining hand of the Creator, will hold fast to the faith that no
genuine truth-seeker can ever be forsaken by the tender care of Him
of whom it is said that the pure in heart shall see God.
�APPENDIX.
THE RELATION OF SECULARISM TO THEISM.
Note A,page 8.
I. In illustration of this, it may be mentioned that in July, 1857, a
Society of Materialists was formed, “ for a union of Freethinkers for a more
definite object than appeared possible under the diffusive principles which
were represented under the name of Secularism.”* In the first meeting
called to consider the proposal, all the speakers in favour of the new
Society lamented the admission of “ persons of spiritualistic tendencies ”
into the Secular body, as a drag upon the efforts of Freethinkers. Soon
afterwards, Mr. Holyoake and “ Iconoclast ” held some discussions on the
position of Secularism, in which “ Iconoclast ” “ denied that there was any
middle standing between Atheism and Theism,” and maintained “ that
Secularism was impracticable when separated from Atheism, urging that
the plan of Secularism was essentially Atheistic.”! To the same class of
views belong the well-known “ Religious Confessions ” of Mr. Joseph
Barker, who, from having been successively a Methodist, an Unitarian, and
a Theistic Secularist, became an Atheistic Secularist, holding Secularism
“ as the sole concern and business of mankind,” and blending it inex
tricably with Atheism, which, according to him, “ occupies the position of
positive science, and is a mighty reformatory principle.’’J On the other
hand may be quoted the numerous articles of Mr. Holdreth, who has
always maintained that “ it is both better and easier to win for Secularism
a front place among religions, than to obtain respect or tolerance for
irreligión :”§ and who has lately (since the first edition of this Essay was
sent to the press) withdrawn himself from the public advocacy of Secu
larism, because “ his views of it differ so widely from those which have
determined the aspect it has recently assumed.”||
II. Mr. Holyoake, however, still believing in the possibility of a neutral
faith, has lately published a little pamphlet, entitled “ Principles of
Secularism,” in which he endeavours to define and consolidate his owr
position. He there maintains the following points.
1. That Secularism is a “ synonym of Freethought,” in harmony with
“ the hereditary characteristics of Freethinking” (p. 4); that “Secularism
is the name given to a series of principles of Positivism, intended for the
guidance of those who find Theology indefinite, or inadequate, or deem it
unreliable” (p. 7).
2. That a Secularist “ concerns himself with present time and materiality,
neither ignoring nor denying the future and spiritual, which are indepen
dent questions ” (p. 6).
3. That, “ occupying, as Secularism intends to do, the ground of Nature,
it may refuse to engage itself with Atheism, Theism, or Biblicism. So long
as he [the Secularist] chooses to remain within the sphere of his own
principles, he simply ignores all outlying sectarian systems, and is no
more to be put down as opposed to any such views than the geologist is to
be cried down as the enemy of music, or the chemist as the opponent of
geometry, because he ignores those subjects, and confines his attention to
his own. Honour those who advisedlv, and for the public good, com
promise themselves ; only take care that associates are not affected by
this conduct of others. And this will never take place so long as the
simple and pure profession of common principles is kept intrinsically in
dependent and unassailably neutral ” (p. 18).
But this is precisely what the Secularists have never done. It is as
a “ synonym of Freethought,” i.e., of unfettered speculative inquiry, that the
very name of Secularism is put forth: and not only are five-sixths of the
* “ Reasoner,” No. 582.
§ Ibid , No. 584.
f Ibid, Nos. 584, 591.
t Ibid, Nos. 646, 649
|| Ibid, No. 690, August 14,1859.
�34
APPENDIX.
Secularists thorough-going Atheists, but by far the greatest amount of
their activity as a party is given to the discrediting of religion. It is even
one of Mr. Holyoake’s own definitions of Secularism, that its principles
“ are intended for the guidance of those who find Theology indefinite, or in
adequate, or deem it unreliable.” How, then, can Secularist principles be
ever regarded as intrinsically independent, and unassailably neutral?
How can a Secularist claim that he is no more to be put down as opposed
to religion, than the geologist is to be cried down as the enemy of music, or
the chemist as the opponent of geometry? The researches of the geologist
in no way assail the theories of the musician, nor does the chemist discredit
the principles of the geometer. But Secularism, if it does really “ neither
ignore nor deny the future and the spiritual,” and claims Theistic adherents
on that ground—must be in direct opposition to Atheism, by which the
affirmations of religion are necessarily either ignored or denied.
III. Is it, then, impossible for Theists and Atheists to combine together for
purposes of practical usefulness which both may have equally at heart?
God forbid. It is only impossible when a speculative theory is made the
condition of union. The Association for the Promotion of Social Science
may be regarded as a happy instance of a true Secular Society, in the only
sense in which that term can be accepted by both parties, t.e., its stand
point is the importance of earthly work, not the doing it from merely earthly
motives. Consequently, the Association exacts from its members no defi
nition of the relation of work to faith, nor of this world to the next, but
leaves the human and the Divine to find their natural and ever-varying
proportions in the mind and life of each individual. Mr. Holyoake’s
Secularism, on the other hand, “ draws the line of separation between the
things of time and the things of eternity;” “selects for its guidance the
principle that ‘ human affairs should be regulated by considerations purely
human,’” and regards the beliefs of religion as “ supplementary specula
tions.”* Now there are stages of suspensive Atheism and of imperfect
Theismf with which these declarations may consist; and it is important
that such intermediate stages of belief should be clearly distinguished from
dogmatic Atheism. But, nevertheless, the views held by these inter
mediate thinkers are not those of a mature and consistent Theism. To a
true Theist, the Being of God is no “ supplementary speculation,” but the
underlying Reality of the Universe; and so far from seeking to regulate
human affairs by considerations purely human, he regards the life of
humanity as perpetually needing to be interpreted by the light of the
Divine. And while the Secularist “inculcates the practical sufficiency of
natural morality, apart from ” any spiritual basis, the Theist holds that that
“ natural morality ” only exists by virtue of His existence who is the
fountain alike of nature and of grace. But, on the other hand, a consistent
Theist will never deny that a man may himself be morally estimable and
reliable who does not hold this belief. For Character and Speculation
are by no means co-ordinate in their development, and a man’s character
is the man himself, while his speculations only give us the conscious pro
gramme adopted by him. Frankly should we say to those Atheists who
command our respect, “ We will work with you wherever we can
agree, because, believing in God as the source of all human goodness
and truth, we recognise every good impulse and true thought in you as
coming from Him, and therefore as equally sacred with our own.” But
* “ Principles of Secularism,” pp. 6, 7.
t See an interesting letter, signed “ Truth-Seeker,” in “ Reasoner,” No. 588,
from a correspondent who professes himself to be “ a believer (at least pro
visionally) in the being of a God and the immortality of the soul,” and who
earnestly contends that Mr. Holyoake’s Atheism does not assume any certainty
of negation. See also, the criticisms of some Theistic Secularists (“ Reasoner,”
Nos. 650, 651, 659, 668) on Mr. Barker’s Confessions.
�APPENDIX.
35
this is essentially different from giving our adherence to a system which
regards the main foundations of our faith as “ supplementary speculations,”
“ indefinite, inadequate, or unreliable.”
I am especially anxious to clear up this point, because it is one Hpon
which there has been considerable misapprehension on both sides. Many
Theists have hesitated to give full scope to their natural liberality of feel
ing, from the fear lest they should, in some sense, be obscuring their
fidelity to religion by co-operating with Atheists, even in matters involving
no profession of disbelief. Surely, where such a fear exists, the true
difference between Theism and Atheism cannot have been clearly dis
criminated, still less can the true relation between Theists and Atheists
have been explored in all its fulness of light and shadow. The true difference
between the Theist and the Atheist (to borrow the words of one of the most
spiritual of living preachers “ is not that the one has God and the other
)
*
has Him not, but that the one sees him and the other sees him not.” Our
charge against speculative Atheism is not that it necessarily cuts men off
from the teaching, still less from the tenderness, of God; but that it pre
vents them from consciously seeking and cherishing that teaching and tender
ness, and thus confines the voluntary range of character to that growth
alone which can be self-evolved.f But we can never bring the question up
to this point, which is the real heart of the matter, until we have, by word
and deed, made unmistakably plain that the goodness which we seek for our
selves is essentially one with that to which right-minded “ Freethinkers ”
also aspire, and that when we decline to subscribe the creed of the Secu
larist, it is in allegiance to a faith which can never prohibit our human
fellowship with the Atheist.
Note B., page 14.
Upon this point, I cannot forbear from quoting the following suggestive
passage from a review of Theodore Parker’s “ Theism, Atheism,” etc.,
which appeared in the Inquirer for Nov. 12th, 1853.
“ It is a favourite maxim with physiologists and secularists, that no
physical conditions of health and strength can be disregarded without
causing the pain which always indicates that something is wrong. It is
clear that such pain, not being self-caused, but being forced upon us by
those rules of our bodily constitution which we have no power to alter, is
a sign that physical tendencies within us are checked or thwarted, that
constant forces are not allowed their normal play. Keep the body bound
in one position, and violent pain soon ensues. Of what is that pain the
sign? It indicates that physical impulses tending to motion and change of
posture are disregarded and restrained—that a vital force, not under our
own control, is asking for its natural liberty, and is denied it. So far the
Atheist concurs. He says that so it is, but that the vital force, not under
* “ I never can believe that God retires from a man who is perplexed and unable
to discover Him. Is a man deserted by his God because he cannot find Him ?
For my own part, I believe there is a secret grace of God in the heart of every man,
and that God is there, whether he sees Him, or whether he sees Him not. The
difference between a Christian and an unbeliever is not that the one has God and
the other has Him not, but that the one sees Him and the other sees Him not.”
Speech of the Rev. James Martineau at Stourbridge, reported in the “Inquirer”
for Nov. 6, 1858.
f See an earnest and able paper on Self-knowledge (entitled “ A True Prophet”)
in “Reasoner,” No. 683,in which the writer maintains that “ Self-knowledge is to
the Secularist what grace is to the Christian.” He does not take into account
that self-knowledge is only an intellectual pre-condition of moral progress,
and that its value in any case wholly depends upon the moral use to which it is
put, and especially on the power of self-coercion or self-surrender to the desired
ideal. Now “ grace ” not only shows us our errors and dangers, but leads us out
of them by pouring into us a new life, and uniting us to an All-conquering Love.
’
�36
APPENDIX,
our control, is a development of the eternal, blind, dead forces of the
universe. But apply the same reasoning to our moral constitution. Let a
man try to descend from his own conceptions of right to a lower moral
level. What is the result?—that a moral misery, the sense of a moral
resistance, not under our own control, not of ourselves, immediately results
checking us in our own efforts to do wrong. Now, what is the meaning of
saying that such a resisting force is part of ourselves? We have no means
of getting rid of it, we cannot ignore it, we cannot cause it. It is in us,
but not of us; it is a force eatmg into our nature, and yet it is a moral
force, it cannot be identified with mere physical tendencies, it must be from
a mind, for matter could not plead with us, and rivet our gaze to the sin
we are committing. We are in actual conflict with a power, which it is
mere self-contradiction to call a material power, and which yet we know to
be other than our own will If it be replied that it is one part of our
nature contending against the other, still here are two powers, both of
them moral and spiritual, one subject to our control, and ope not so subject,
of which we call the former, ourself; what, then, are we to call the other
which we recognise as intruding its suggestions upon us from sources we
cannot fathom? This is but the very essence of the meaning which a Theist
expresses by the word ‘ God.’ ”
Of course, all our ideas of duty are necessarily relative rather than abso
lute, and it is only a comparative goodness that can be suggested, even by
God Himself, to creatures of limited and progressive capacity. But were
all our ideas of right merely self-evolved, without contact (more or less
conscious) with a Higher Personality, we could not experience this sensa
tion that, in wilful wrong-doing, we are resisting the pleadings of an
Infinite Moral Being. (See this theme treated at length in Mr. F. W.
Newman s “ Theism,” Book I., Sect. 5. “ God in Conscience.”)
Note C., page 27.
Since this Essay was sent to the press, Mr. Holdreth has published a
short paper on “ The Existence of Evil,”* stating that “ after mature con
sideration, he feels called upon to qualify ” his argument on that subject.
“ It is (he says), logically conceivable that matter may have an independent
existence and laws of its own, of which it was as impossible for the
Creator to make a perfect world, as it would have been for Him to make
two and two equal to five. Therefore, all that is really proved by the
argument from the suffering and sin around us, is, that the world was not
formed by a Creator at once perfect in power, and -perfect in beneficence
it is not shown that it might not have been framed by a God of perfect
goodness but limited power. ... Of course, this in no way affects the
grand argument of Atheism—the total absence of evidence of Creation.”
What is here.meant by ‘‘creation” is not clear, and in none of Mr.
Holdreth s writings has he done more than touch the subject incidentally.
I therefore confine myself to remarking that the theory which he does accept,
under the name of Cosmism, appears to stop short of Theism for a moral
reason only. It is because the Cosmist sees “ a disregard of morality in
Nature s operations,” that “ he is bound to believe the operator devoid of
moral character.” But if it be granted that, in the very nature of things,
it may have been “as impossible for the Creator to make a perfect world,
as it would have been for Him to make two and two equal to five,” that
moral objection becomes sensibly diminished. It cannot, however, disappear
entirely, until it be also granted that the moral perfection which God could
not make in the human world, He can, and does enable us to approximate
to more and more for ever, by the joint action of our free will in accord
with His grace.
THE END.
* “ Reasoner,” No. 686.
�
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Phases of atheism, described, examined, and answered
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Collet, Sophia Dobson
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Notes: Inscription in ink on page 32 "R. H. Hulton. National Review, No. 3. "Atheism". Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. 'The relation of secularism to theism.' Printed by John Watts, Fleet Street, London. "The following Essay is reprinted, with revisions and additions, from the American Christian Examiner for November, 1859". [From Preface]. Discusses four works by Holyoake and three by Lionel H. Holdreth. Sophia Dobson Collet was a 19th-century English feminist freethinker. She wrote under the pen name Panthea in George Holyoake's Reasoner, wrote for The Spectator and was a friend of the leading feminist Frances Power Cobbe.
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Atheism
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252,1
ATHEISM
A SPECTRE.
WITH READING FROM MAX MULLER'S SIXTH
HIBBERT LECTURE.
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, JUNE 23, 1878.
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
PRICE TWOPENCE,
�LONDON 5
PRINTED BY WATERLOW AND SONS LIMITED
LONDON WALL.
�READING.
(From Max Müller's Sixth Hibbert Lecture?)
In the bright sky they (the ancient Aryans) perceived an Illumi
nator ; in the all-encircling firmament an Embracer ; in the roar
of thunder and in the violence of the storm they felt the pre
sence of a Shouter and ®f furious Strikers, and out of rain they
created an Indra, or giver of rain. With this last step, however,
came also the first re-action, the first doubt So long as the
thoughts of the ancient Aryan worshippers had something mani
fest or tangible to rest on, they might, no doubt, in their religious
aspirations, far exceed the limits of actual observation ; still no
one could ever question the existence of what they chose to call
their Devas or their gods. The mountains and rivers were always
there to speak for themselves, and if the praises bestowed upon
them seemed to be excessive, they might be toned down, without
calling in question the existence of these gods. The same applied
to the sky, the sun, and'the dawn. They also were always there,
and though they might be called mere visions and appearances, yet
the human mind is so made that it admits of no appearance
without admitting at the same time something that appears, some
reality or substance. But when we come to the third class of
gods, not only intangible, but invisible, the case is different.
Indra, as the giver of rain, Rudra, as the thunderer, were com
pletely creations of the human mind. All that was given was
' the rain, and the thunder ; but there was nothing in nature that
�4
could be called an appearance of the god himself, who thundered
or who sent the rain. Man saw their work, but that was all: no
one could point to the sky or the sun or the dawn or anything
else visible, to attest the existence of Indra and Rudra. We saw
before that Indra, for the very reason that there was nothing in
nature to which he cluDg, nothing visible that could arrest his
growth, developed more than all the other gods into a personal,
dramatic, and mythological being. More battles are recorded,
more stories are told of Indra than of any other Vedic god, and
this helps us to understand how it was that he seemed even to the
ancient poets to have ousted Dyaus, the Indian Zeus, from his
supremacy. But a Nemesis was to come. The very god who
seemed for a time to have thrown all the others into the shade,
whom many would call, if not the supreme, at least the most
popular deity of the Veda, was the first god whose very exist
ence was called in question. . . Thus we read, “Offer praise
to Indra if you desire booty, true praise, if he truly exists.
Some one says : There is no Indra ! Who has seen him ? Whom
shall we praise ? ” In this hymn the poet turns round, and, intro
ducing Indra himself, makes him say : “ Here I am O worship
per ! Behold me here ! In might I overcome all creatures.” But
we read again in another hymn : ‘ ‘ The terrible one of whom
they ask where he is, and of whom they say that he is not: he
takes away the riches of his enemies like the stakes at a game ;
Believe in him, ye men, for he is indeed Indra.” When we thus
see the old god Dyaus antiquated by Indra, Indra himself denied,
and Prajapati falling to pieces, and when another poet declares
in so many words that all the gods are but names, we might imagine
that the stream of religious thought, which sprang from a trust in
mountains and rivers, then proceeded to an adoration of the sky
and the sun, then grew into a worship of invisible gods, such as
the sender of thunderstorms and the giver of rain had well nigh
�5
finished its course. We might expect in India the same catas
trophe which in Iceland the poets of the Edda always predicted,
the Twilight of the gods, preceding the destruction of the world.
We seem to have reached the stage when Henotheism, after try
ing in vain to grow into polytheism on the one side, or mono
theism on the other, would by necessity end in Atheism, or a
denial of all the gods or Devas.
So it did. Yet Atheism is not the last word of Indian reli
gion, though it seemed to be so for a time in the triumph of
Buddhism. The word itself—Atheism—is out of place as applied
to the religion of India. The ancient Hindus had neither the
0eos of the Homeric singers, nor the
of the Eclectic philo
sophers. Their Atheism, such as it was, would more correctly
be called Adevism, or a denial of the old Devas. Such a denial,
however, of what was once believed, but could be believed no
longer, so far from being the destruction, is in reality the vital
principle of all religion. The ancient Aryans felt from the
beginning—aye, it may be more in the beginning than afterwards
—the presence of a Beyond, of an Infinite, of a Divine, or what
ever else we may call it now ; and they tried to grasp and com
prehend it, as we all do, by giving it name after name. They
thought they had found it in the Mountains or Rivers, in the Dawn,
in the Sun, in the Sky, in the Heaven, and the Heaven-Father.
But after every name there came the No! What they looked for
was like the Mountains, like the Rivers, like the Dawn, like the
Sky, like theFather : but it was not the Mountains, «¿/the Rivers»
not the Dawn, not the Sky, it was not the Father. It was some
thing of all that, but it was also more, it was beyond all that.
Even such general names as Asura or Deva could no longer
satisfy them. There may be Devas and Asuras, they said, but
we want more, we want a higher word, a purer thought. They
denied the bright Devas, not because they believed or desired
�6
less, but because they believed and desired more than the bright
Devas. There was a conception working in their mind: and the
cries of despair were but the harbingers of a new birth. So it
has been, so it always will be. There is an Atheism which is
unto death, there is another Atheism which is the very life
blood of all true faith. It is the power of giving up what in
our best, our most honest moments, we know to be no longer
true; it is the readiness to replace the less perfect, however
dear it may have been to us, by the more perfect, however
much it may be detested, as yet, by others. It is the true self
surrender, the true self-sacrifice, the truest trust in truth, the
truest faith. Without that Atheism no new religion, no reform,
no reformation, no resuscitation, would ever have been possible;
without that Atheism no new life is possible for any one of us.
In the eyes of the Brahmans, Buddha was an Atheist; in the
eyes of the Athenian Judges, Socrates was an Atheist; in the
eyes of the Pharisees, St. Paul was an Atheist; in the eyes of
Swiss Judges, Servetus was an Atheist; and why? Because
every one of them was yearning for a higher and purer conception
of God than what he had learnt as a child.
Let no one touch religion, be he clergyman or layman, who is
afraid of being called an Infidel or an Atheist—aye, who is afraid
of asking himself, Do I believe in a God, or do I not ? Let me
quote the words of a great divine, lately deceased, whose honesty
and piety have never been questioned: “God,” he says,'“is a
great word. He who feels and understands that will judge more
mildly and more justly of those who confess that they dare not
say that they believe in God.” Now, I know perfectly well that
what I have said just now will be misunderstood, will possibly
be misinterpreted. I know I shall be accused of having defended
and glorified Atheism, and of having represented it as the last
and highest point which man can reach in an evolution of
�7
fc!
t2
9
<
,
•.
religious thought. Let it be so. If there are but a few here present
who understand what I mean by honest Atheism, and who know
how it differs from vulgar Atheism, I shall feel satisfied, for I
know that to understand this distinction will often help us in the
hour of our sorest need. It will teach us that, while the old
leaves, the leaves of a bright and happy spring, are falling, and
all seems wintry, frozen and dead within and around us, there is
and there must be a new spring in store for every warm and
honest heart. It will teach us that honest doubt is the deepest
spring of honest faith; and that he only who has lost can find.
�I
�ATHEISM.
The boldness of Max Muller’s defence of a faith
ful Atheism which I have read you, does not consist
in its thought so much as in the word he adopts.
The thought is that which sad experience has revealed
to many a reverential thinker in the past as well as
the present. William Penn, the Quaker, said that he
who speaks worthily of God is very like to be called
an Atheist. We owe high honour to the man who
has courage to proclaim in Westminster Abbey the
truth which hitherto has been uttered by the despised
and rejected. But it remains doubtful whether even
the independence and fidelity of the Hibbert lecturer,
and his learning, will be able to recover a word so
fraught with misunderstandings as the word “Atheism.”
If mankind used such words etymologically, “Atheism ”
might be restored ; but they do not; and it is to be
feared that as the name of Jesus could not save
“Jesuitism,” and the name of Christ cannot save
“Christian,” so in another direction the fact that
“ Atheist ” means one who denies the gods of common
�IO
belief, and is without any theory of God, cannot out
weigh the popular meaning of the word. To the
masses Atheist means a godless man, and a godless
man means a bad man. Because of that acquired
accent of immorality Theologians seem fond of using
the word. It is, therefore, a bit of debased currency,
and, as I think, will one day drop out of use. Yet
many excellent people, like Max Müller, see that
while theologically the word carries a vulgar mean
ing, morally it represents the right of man to grow. In
this sense it represents the freedom of man to deny
any and every god which others set up. If that right
had not been exercised we should still be worshipping
Siva or Odin, or the Virgin Mary. The same authority which w’ould to day silence the Atheist before
Jehovah, would have silenced Paul before Diana of
Ephesus. “ Atheism ” is a flag that means unlimited
right of denial, and that involves the right of progress
and the pursuit of truth.
Many liberal thinkers accept the epithet, not as
dogma—not as antitheism—but because they mean to
stand by their freedom, and will not cower before
popular clamour. Trelawney asked the poet Shelley
why, with his high pantheism, he called himself
“ Atheist.” Shelley replied that he did not choose it.
That name was the gauntlet they threw down, and he
picked it up. In that heroic spirit, some still call
�themselvesil Atheists,” even at risk of being misunder
stood. And it must be acknowledged that the epithet
will carry with it a certain accent of moral honesty and
courage, so long as intellectual liberty is met with
menace. When that lingering struggle is over and
past, and the victory of free thought is completely
won, as won it must be, it will no longer be any sur
render of their colours if such brave men and women
consult with their allies to find whether there may not
be a broader, a more universal, banner to represent
our common liberty than that marked “Atheism.” But,
before that time can arrive, earnest and thinking
people must give up their horror of “ Atheism.” That
name now means to most people what devil meant
to our ancestors, and it is equally mythical, unreal,
fantastic. Even many so-called liberal people have
not sufficiently thrown off their theological training to
be released from terror of this latest phantom.
Stat nominis umbra. It is the shadow of a name.
That I propose to prove to you. The laws of nature
have been sufficiently explored to turn the devil into
a grotesque superstition; the laws of mental and
moral nature are sufficiently known to lay this spectre
of “ Atheism ” which has followed him. The so-called
“Atheist” is no more outside psychological laws than
he is bodily outside physical laws. Moral and mental
facts hold him as much as gravitation holds him.
�12
Those facts he may name one way and you another,
but where the reality is the same shall we be tricked
by names ?
There are cases in which the reality is not the
same. A man may believe in a three-headed deity,
in a tri-personal deity, in Jove, Jupiter, Adonai, or
some other celestial thunderer; such belief is not of
thought but authority, it does not pretend to rest upon
fact and evidence, but on tradition or revelation. We
must at present leave all that out of the question.
What we are now concerned with is the difference
between those who, exercising the same reason, in the
same method, upon the same facts, in them and outside
them, state their conclusions differently. One calls
himself 11 Theist,” the other calls himself “ Atheist.”
These words are opposite. But are the realities under
them opposite ?
To find out that we must ask what is in the con
sciousness of each when he so names his conclusion—
assuming that conclusion to be divested of all tradition
in the one case, and of all mere pluck in the other in
each case a genuine product of reason resting on
evidence.
What then is in the mind of the intentionally
rational Theist when he says: “ I believe there is a
God ” ? There is in his consciousness a concept of
law and order in the universe; there is a recognition
�i3
of facts in himself, reason, love, the sense of right, the
ideal, the beautiful; he reasons that because these
things are in him they must be in nature, for he is in
nature, and of nature ; and combining these inward
realities with the law and order of the universe, and
with the tendency of the world to his ideals, the
Theist generalises them all in the word “ God.”
But here many a Theist would break in and say:
“Your statement is incomplete. I believe much
more than that. I believe that God is a personal
Being; I believe that He created the universe; I
believe that He hears and answers prayer.” To which
I reply: “ No doubt you believe these other things ;
but the question is not what you believe, but what you
think, what is purely the product of your reason acting
on evidence. A Catholic believes in his Madonna as
strongly as any Theist in the personality of God. But
what evidence does either give us for such belief?
None at all. What facts show that the world ever was
created? Nobody pretends any. What evidence that
God hears and answers prayer? Absolutely none.”
But then this believing Theist answers : “ It is true
I cannot actually prove the truth of my belief in these
particulars. It may be sentiment, but must sentiment
count for nothing ? What would life be if everything
depended on cold logic ? I feel that I have a Heavenly
Father with whom I can hold communion.”
�14
Very well; but now comes along our man who has
not that feeling at all. He says he feels sure that the
world was never created; that if there were a God
who answered prayer the world would know less
misery; and that he can imagine no personality of
God that would not make him a huge man.
“ Then you are an Atheist! ” cries our believing
Theist.
“ If to disbelieve your private god be Atheism, I
am.”
11 Then I will have nothing to do with you,” the
Theist may say.
“ I am much obliged to you,” the Atheist may
reply. “ In old times they used to have a good deal
to do with us ; it is something to be let alone.”
But now let us cross-examine this Atheist, in his
turn. li Do you believe in the laws of nature ? ” “I
do.” 11 Do you believe in reason? ” “ I do.” “ Do
you possess the sense of right, acknowledge the
sacredness of love, reverence your ideal of truth,
goodness, and beauty ? ” “ These make my moral
and intellectual nature; I can not help believing in
them.” “ Do you believe in the progress of mankind ? ”
“ My life is devoted to it.”
Now, another question—“ Taking all these things
together, what do they sum up in your mind ? ” “A
universe, or nature.”
�15
“Would you mind calling it God?” “Yes; I
object.” “ And why ? ” “ Because most persons when
they say ‘ God ’ mean something very different, and
they would understand me as believing what I do not
believe, and what cannot be proved true. In India
they would understand me as believing in Vishnu on
his Serpent; in Turkey they would think I meant
Allah of the Koran; here some would think I meant
Jehovah, others that I believed in the Trinity, and yet
others that I believed in an omnipotent sovereign
Man reigning over the world.”
“ Then what our Theist calls your ‘ Atheism ’ means
only that you disbelieve all those particular personifi
cations which men have imagined reigning over the
universe, while you do accept all the facts they can
show for their theories ? ”
“ That is what it amounts to. I travel harmoniously
with the Theist so long as he speaks of reason, love,
truth, law, conscience, for these things I know. I
still journey with him when he talks of the vast realm
of the unknown, and of truths and realities that may
be there beyond my grasp ; but when he sets up his
own theory about what is in that unknown, and de
mands that I shall believe that all the same as if it were
proved fact, I am compelled to say I am not convinced.
Then he calls me an Atheist and leaves me—probably
hates me.”
�i6
Now, it is perfectly certain that there is no actuality
in the mind of one of these men that is not in that of
the other. As their eyes see by the same sunshine,
and their lungs breathe the same air, their reason and
rectitude are the same. Yet are they widely sundered—
separated as by an abyss—so that we have the
anomaly of an army of former comrades winning their
common liberty only to use it in fighting each other.
Assuredly there is a serious fault here, perhaps more
faults than one. One is the slowness with which
liberal thinkers raise their hearts to the standard of
their intelligence. In asserting the liberty of reason
it would appear that many of them did not mean to
be taken at their word. That was much the way
with some of the Fathers of the Reformation. Luther
affirmed the right of private judgment, but was aghast
when he found people carrying it a line farther than
himself, and said human nature was like a drunken
man on a horse who, when set up straight on one side,
toppled over on the other. John Calvin too asserted
the right of private judgment. His idea seems to
have been that men -were perfectly free to think as
they pleased, and he was perfectly free to burn them
if their opinions did not please him.
After what happened to Servetus thinkers became
prudent; they followed Erasmus who compared himself
to Peter following his Lord afar oft. But at last the
cock crew. Thinkers took up their cross.
�i7
After many martyrdoms of the best men our laws
have largely, though not fully, proclaimed the freedom
of reason and conscience. But Orthodoxy has never
conceded it. Dogma has been reluctantly compelled
to transfer the faggot and stake by which free
opinion was punished from this world to the next;
and in this world still treats disbelievers as people who
ought to be burned, and will be burned.
But those who call themselves liberal—liberal Chris
tians and Theists—are persons who have avowed the
conditions of freedom in good faith, and if they now
recoil from the inevitable results of those conditions
it is but natural that freethinkers should say they have
not the courage of their principles.
I do not think that explains the whole case ; but it
is natural that it should be so said, and that the anta
gonism of freethinkers should be thereby intensified.
The reserve or hostility of Unitarians and Theists
towards Atheists, so called, is not altogether result of
timidity. They themselves have a severe conflict with
the orthodox, one largely involving their social rela
tions, and they do not wish to be compromised by being
supposed to hold views they do not hold. They
know that men are apt to be judged by the company
they keep, and so they keep aloof from those whose
opinions seem to them extreme and untrue.
Yet are they wrong in this. They are throwing
�i8
their weight in favour of the discredited method of
intolerance, and against the high principle they have
espoused—intellectual liberty. They cannot serve
two masters. They cannot claim freedom for them
selves against the orthodox, then turn and deny it as
against the Atheists. And it is a denial of freedom
when we concede it verbally but treat it when exercised
with aversion or contempt. The moderate liberal
should beware lest in his care not to compromise
himself he does compromise that great and wide prin
ciple of freedom on which he and the Atheist alike
depend. Let him know too that his god is debased
when set against mental independence ; and so long
as any Theism excommunicates any honest thinker it
not only renders Atheism necessary, but lowers itself
beneath that Atheism. For surely that god is only an
idol not yet mouldered, who is supposed to care more
for recognition of his personal existence than for
charity and the independence of the human mind.
Fundamentally, all alienations in the ranks of liberal
people result from the survival in half of them of the
ancient error, that some moral character inheres in
mere opinion. There is a sense in which a man is
responsible for his opinions; he is responsible for the
pains he takes to find the truth, and responsible for
honest utterance of the thing he holds true. But it is
a great and grievous error to suppose that a man can
�19
be morally bound to accept any belief whether he has
reason to believe it or not. For example, to tell a
man he ought to believe in God is like telling a
woman she ought to love her husband. If she has a
husband, and if that husband is worthy of love, and
wins her love, the exhortation to love him is superflu
ous; if otherwise, all the exhortation in the world
cannot enable here to love one who is unloveable. Or,
we may say, to tell a man it is his duty to believe in
God is like lecturing oxygen on its duty to combine
with hydrogen at the moment when galvanism has
decomposed the two.
The liberty of reason being introduced among the
old creeds its effects must be accepted. It can no
more be scolded than any other force in nature. The
thinker must follow his thought, the reasoner must
believe what he finds reason to believe, as the lover
must love what he or she is impelled to love. If the
thinking Theist would convince the thinking Atheist
of a personalised Deity, he must introduce a force
adapted to combine his proposition with the mind to
be convinced. It must be a rational force if it is to
affect the reason. Contempt is not a rational force
—rather it is a confession that there is no rational
force. It is falling back on the old dogmatic and
coercive principle which, if it prevailed, would suppress
all liberty and restore the faggot and the Inquisition.
�20
The unity which I believe possible among the sons
of freedom lies in the spirit of freedom and the spirit
of truth. The position of the simple Theist is not even
yet so popular as to require no sacrifices to maintain
it shall he not respect the still greater sacrifices made
by the man who is denounced as Atheist ? He may
not like the word Atheist; I do not; for I believe
that wherever there is such self-sacrifice, such fidelity
rising above selfishness, there is a spirit essentially
divine. But shall men be blinded by a name—a
word ? Can they not see beyond all phrases that the
spirit in which a man, even an Atheist, earnestly seeks
truth, and bravely stands by what he believes truth—
the spirit which for right, for freedom and justice, casts
away all interests and all ease, toiling, living, suffering
for his ideal right—O can they not see that such bear
in their bleeding hands the very stigmata of Truth’s
own martyrs ? Can we not all see how far above our
doctrines and definitions rises this fidelity of our time,
though it be called infidelity now as it was called im
morality in Socrates and Beelzebub in (Jhrist—while it
was then, is now, the spirit which in all history has been
leading mankind from thraldom to liberty, from dark
ness to light ? If our Theism does not see that spirit, if
our Theism cannot clasp to its heart all hearts animated
by that spirit, be sure it is a mere relic of the past—
some fragment not yet crumbled of ancient supersti
�tion; be sure that the only true God is the God of the
living—and they are the living whose lives are con
secrated to truth and right, however they may be
named, or be they nameless.
Theistic friend, your special theory will pass away.
The highest mind of the past was not able to frame
a god which you can worship unmodified, and you
cannot frame—none living can conceive—an image
which will not be fossil in a few centuries. Nay,
your Theos may be even fortunate if it can be quietly
dismissed before higher light without being degraded
by its efforts to resist that light, sounding war-cries
against earnest thinkers, and gradually taking on the
base insignia of the many Idols, once Ideals, that
kept not their first estate.
I was lately examining a devil carved on Notre
Dame—a hideous creature crushing human beings
beneath his feet. I thought, how hast thou fallen, O
Lucifer, son of the morning ! Thou too wert once a
light-bringer and a god ! But even so must fall all
personifications which try to crush and menace the
reason and nature of man. Just upon the head of
this horrid Notre Dame devil—exactly between his
horns—a little bird has built its nest, and laid its eggs,
with the sky’s soft blue upon them : and as I write it
is probably gathering its young under its wing, and
feeding them, and on the head of that personified
�22
wrath of a god, fearless and free goes on the work of
nature, the divine mystery of life and love.
The Theos of the Theist may wear a halo to-day,
but it depends on his worshippers what that halo shall
be when the personification passes away before another,
or before the eternal Love which vaults above all per
sonifications. That halo may become an immortal ideal
if it mean love to all • but such haloes have generally
turned to horns, and the god of the Theist to-day need
only denounce reason and hate freethinkers to become
quite as grotesque a figure as that Notre Dame
and take the place of that Atheism which now makes
a devil for so many. But above all such tyrannous
forms on their heads, between their finally powerless
horns—the ancient mystery and beauty of Life will
go on. Love will still gather its young under its
wings. Mothers will feed their babes with tenderer
thoughts and purer ideals. Reason will work on;
men and women will think and aspire, will save and be
saved from actual hells regardless of fictitious ones;
the unnamed, uncomprehended, eternal spirit of nature
and the heart will suffer no decay—but ascend for
evermore.
�
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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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Atheism : a spectre : with a reading from Max Muller's sixth Hibbert Lecture, South Place Chapel, June 23, 1878
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 22 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. Part of Morris Misc. Tracts 1. With a reading from F. Max Muller's sixth Hibbert Lecture 'On henotheism, polytheism, monotheism and atheism' given at Westminster Abbey in June 1878.
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[South Place Chapel]
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[1878]
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G3339
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Atheism
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Atheism : a spectre : with a reading from Max Muller's sixth Hibbert Lecture, South Place Chapel, June 23, 1878), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Atheism
Belief and Doubt
Free Thought
Morris Tracts
Reason
Theism
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THEISM OR ATHEISM:
WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE?
A
PUBLIC
DEBATE
BETWEEN
MR. W. T. LEE
(Lecturer to the Christian Evidence Society)
AND
MR. G. W. FOOTE
(President of the National Secular Society)
Held
in the
Temperance Hall, Derby, May 15
and 16, 1895
Chairman : J. W. PIPER, Esq.
(Editor of “ The Derby Daily Telegraph”)
Revised by Both Disputants
London :
R. FORDER, 28, STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
1896
�THEISM OR ATHEISM:
WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE ?
FIRST NIGHT.
The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen,—Allow me, in
the first place, to express my indebtedness to the members
of the local committee who are charged with the manage
ment of this meeting, for having bestowed upon me the
compliment of inviting me to preside over this meeting. In
the next place, I should like to assure you of the deep sym
pathy I feel in every honest effort to get at the truth with
regard to matters vitally affecting the peace of mind and
happiness of the people. Believe me, I have as little sym
pathy or patience with the gay trifler who, referring to
matters of this importance, insists that ignorance is bliss, as
I have with those persons who blindly take their orders from
the priests and from the bookmen. Let me again frankly
admit that I have little sympathy with a reckless and indis
criminate discussion on topics of this sacred character • I
hold that the truth can best be arrived at, and a satisfactory
solution of difficulties best secured, by temperate and
orderly discussion. Happily for us to-night, we are sur
rounded by all the elements of profitable debate. The con
tending champions are gentlemen of acknowledged ability,
and, I believe, of sterling honesty of purpose. In Mr. Lee—
•(loud applause) we have a powerful and high-minded expo-
�THEISM OR ATHEISM?
5
And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have only to express
the hope that this discussion throughout may be charac
terised, both on the part of the disputants and on the part
of the audience, with good temper, so that we may hope for
profitable and useful results. In accordance with arrange
ment, I propose sounding a bell three minutes before the
expiration of the allotted time to each . speaker—you will
quite understand what that signifies—and again at the com
pletion of the allotted time.
I will now, then, in accordance with arrangements made,
ask Mr. Lee to open the real business of this debate.
Mr. Lee : Mr. Chairman, Mr. Foote, Ladies and Gentle
men,—The question we have met to discuss will necessitate
the use of four very important words. These words I
propose defining as follows : First, by the word “ universe ”
I mean the sum-total of all conditioned existence. Second,
by the term “ reasonable ” I understand what is in accord
ance with the logical demands of the mind. Third, by the
word “ Atheism ” 1 understand that doctrine which rejects
the idea that the universe was produced by a Being called
God, and, in denying His existence, goes on to show that the
universe is eternal, or is the necessary outcome of the neces
sary working of the substance it calls matter, and speaks of
as eternal. Fourth, the term “ Theism,” the name of that
doctrine which regards the universe as the consciously-willed
production of the unoriginated Being, who is absolute in
wisdom and power, who was before all things, and by whom,
and in whom, all things exist and consist. This Being is
spoken of by Theists as God.
These being my definitions, I must ask Mr. Foote to
accept them as true, or to show them to be untrue by
appealing to the great masters of lexicography, whose busi
ness it is to treat of the origin, history, and meaning of
words. This is due to me, his opponent, and also to you,
our judges.
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
7
this proposition will sound like a truism ; but in this debate
we must take nothing for grantedj therefore it is clearly my
duty to prove, as it will be clearly Mr. Foote’s duty to
analyse, and, if possible, disprove, the proposition which I
now advance. Until this is done, nothing will be gained by
Mr, Foote, nothing will be lost by me. I assert, then, that
the universe is not the eternal existence for which we seek,
because the universe has not always existed. There was a
time when this universe was not; a time when this earth,
the sun, and all the orbs of heaven were non-existent; a
time when the substance of all material things existed in a
highly-attenuated and gaseous state. And not only are we
scientifically sure that this universe has not eternally existed
■—we are equally certain it will come to an end. For, just
as our world is slowly but certainly approaching the sun, so
all the moving bodies of the sidereal heavens are making for
a common centre; every star and sun is getting cooler, and
energy, in the form of heat, is being dissipated, and an end
to the universe must be acknowledged.
Under these circumstances, to speak of the universe being
eternal, as Professor Haeckel does, is to lay one’s self open
to the slashing reply of Herbert Spencer : “ Haeckel is unphilosophical; it is the indestructibility of force and the
eternity of motion which are a priori truths, transcending
both demonstration and experience.”
But I expect before this debate closes to have the
pleasure of showing that Herbert Spencer is as unscientific
as Haeckel.
We must, then, admit, from numerous scientific facts and
inductions from them, that our universe has not always
existed; and, if this universe is not eternal, its present
existence must be an effect due to some cause. But what
do we mean by the term “ cause,” and what by the word
** effect ” ? By the former we understand something which
really exists, something which has power, something which
has power enough to account for the existence or happening
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
9
as a vehicle of energy with the two attributes extension and
inertia, he cannot conceive of matter at all.
Let us see how the Atheistic position is stated, and then
how much this position is worth.
Professor Haeckel, the high priest of Monism, tells us
that the universe is both eternal and infinite, and that
matter and motion, inseparable from matter, remain eternal
and indestructible. Now, you will remember what Herbert
Spencer said about the statement of Haeckel’s—he said it
was utterly unphilosophical ; and now we will prove this
statement of Herbert Spencer’s to be true, for, “ if matter be
Infinite in extension, the universe must be full of matter,
find if the universe be full of matter, there can be no attrac
tive force ; every spot being equally full, no particle can
draw closer to another, and there can be no rotatory motion,
for there would be no reason for turning one way more than
another, neither would there be any primitive heat, for heat
is motion, and no change of place is possible in a plenum
where no particle has any place to move into that is not
already full.” So, then, matter fails to explain itself, while,
if it be infinite, motion and the origination of the universe
become philosophically impossible. Atheism, then, fails to
explain the existence of matter and the possibility of motion,
<nd, failing here, it must fail everywhere ; for, if it cannot
account for matter, how shall it account for life ? If it fails
to account for motion, how shall it account for mind ? If
it fails to explain the atom, how can it explain the universe ?
If it fails to account for motion, how can it account for that
mighty power of human reason which climbs the starry
stairs of the universe and reads the history of stars and suns,
projects itself into the very heart of things, and then con
fesses the presence of a power greater than itself, and a
reason higher than its own ? (Applause.)
Thus far, then, we have shown Atheism to be utterly
unreasonable as a doctrine of the universe, and that it
always gets more into each succeeding effect than can be
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
11
men resemble each other in this one general characteristic,
will not this experience warrant us in ascribing to both a
similar, though, of course, a proportionate, cause ?” Admit
the facts, and the induction from the facts is amply justi
fied. But the question naturally arises, Do the facts of
Dature agree with the productions of men in the manifesta
tion of aim, intention, purpose ? I believe they do, and
here are my reasons for so believing. Whatever our theory
Of the origin of the universe may be, we must admit that
the earth, the sea, and the sky are full of beauty. From
far-off space, where the unresolved nebulae float, in all the
millions and millions of suns and systems of suns which
glitter in the brow of night, and here, even in this tiny speck
we call our world, order is everywhere manifested, order
everywhere known. In the midst of numberless varieties
there is a deep-seated unity, vast worlds and systems of
worlds, the marshalled battalions of heaven, alongside of
which our earth and our planets are as nothing, are rolling
through space in orbits millions and millions of times greater
than that of our solar system ; but everywhere the same laws
Of gravitation, the same laws of light, of heat, of motion, are
found. From speck of dust to blazing sun and floating
nebulae, order and law everywhere prevail. But order and
law are the manifestation of power guided by intelligence.
Nowhere do we discover order and law apart from intelli
gence, and, therefore, I hold that the cause of the universe
must not only have power, but also mind and intelligence.
(Cheers.) To put this another way, one great irrefutable
fact of the universe is this, it is a gigantic intelligible unity,
all its laws are mathematical relations, and can be expressed
in mathematical formula. This is undoubtedly true of the
law of gravitation, and of chemical combinations, the law of
colour and of music, the facets of crystals, the pistils of
flowers, the feathers of birds. Now, I put this question to
Mr. Foote. If it takes the intellect of a Copernicus, a
Kepler, and a Newton years upon years of anxious study to
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
13
gent, or it could not have put thought into the universe.
Thus our third proposition is established ; this universe is
the manifestation of power directed by intelligence. In
Others words, we have proved these four facts—first, the
existence of an eternal substance ; second, the possession
Of power by this substance; third, that this eternal substance
is the cause of the universe ; and, lastly, that the order, law,
purpose, intention manifested in nature are a proof that the
cause of the universe is possessed not only with power,
but with intelligence. In so far as these propositions are
established, in so far is Theism shown to be true, and in
proportion to the proof of the Theistic doctrine of the
universe is the Atheistic doctrine disproved.
And now I come to my fourth proposition—that the facts
Of man’s mental, moral, and religious nature cannot be
explained on the principles of Atheism, but are easily
accounted for by the doctrines of Theism. Every man has,
tn his own consciousness (the mind’s knowledge of its
own states) the evidence of the existence of mind ; in
other words, all of us are conscious of ourselves—we know
we exist, and we know we think. We also know that the
Blind is altogether other than the body; in a word, that
mind and matter are not only distinct, but different sub
stances, manifesting themselves to us by sets of different and
totally incompatible attributes. If Mr. Foote denies this, I
must ask him to show that the attributes of mind and matter
are alike. Until this is done, we shall continue to believe
that we have two sets of incompatible attributes ; and, when
we find that this belief is not peculiar to ourselves, but is
held in some form by all the peoples of the earth, we not
only feel that our belief is justified, but we believe that
it brings us into the presence of a fact which calls for
explanation ; and we turn to those who hold the Atheistic
position, and ask, How is the existence of this thinking sub
stance, which we call self, to be accounted for ? That it has
not always existed is undeniable ; and, if it began to be, it
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
15 "
I shall stop by submitting to my friend a few questions,
and the first is this: What is the substance of which
this universe is composed ? |How could an ordered
universe arise from an unordered state of physical
units ? How could an intelligible universe arise out of a
mindless physical condition ? How could an universe mani
festing law have arisen from a condition where no law can
be found ? How could an universe without a moral nature
produce beings with a moral nature ? How could a number
of elementary substances called atoms have produced the
unity everywhere manifested in nature? How could life,
the power which moulds and builds] up organisms, and
preserves them from the disintegrating influences which act
on mere matter, have been produced from the non-living ?
And, in the last place, how could a universe which, according
to Atheism, excludes the possibility of God have produced
a number of beings, the very flower of that universe, who
have become thoroughly persuaded there is a God? (Loud
tpplause.)
The Chairman : I have now, ladies and gentlemen, to
bfispeak,'on the part of Mr. Foote, the same conscientious
attention that you have given to his opponent, Mr. Lee.
Mr. Foote : Mr. Chairman, Mr. Lee, Ladies and GentleMen,—It would be absurd for me to assume that anything
more than an encouraging percentage of this audience was
in toy kind of agreement with my ideas ; and as Mr. Lee,
in bis otherwise extremely temperate speech, was good
enough to say that the Atheistic position was an outrage on
human intelligence, I must warn you, if that be correct, that
I am likely to say things which will be regarded as an out
rage on human intelligence. (Laughter and cheers.) You
will, therefore, from that point of view, grant me the indul
gence which we always expect from an educated, an
intelligent, and honest English audience. (Hear, hear.)
�THEISM OR ATHEISM?
17
In the next place, Mr. Lee was good enough, not only to
define Theism, but to define Atheism, and in a fashion
which suited himself. When this debate was being arranged,
it was suggested that the proposition for discussion should
be, ’‘Theism or Atheism : Which is the more reasonable
theory of the universe?” and Mr. Lee is quite well aware
that I insisted upon the words “theory of the universe”
being struck out, because Atheism per se does not affirm a
theory of the universe. An Atheist like the late Charles
Bradlaugh may affirm, as a personal thinker, his theory of
th® universe ; but Atheism per se simply means, not denial,
but rejection, in the sense of not accepting the Theistic
theory of the universe which Mr. Lee has put forward to
night. I suppose everybody will admit that Charles
Bradlaugh, whose name was mentioned in such honourable
terms by our Chairman, was an eminent, and, in a certain
sense, a typical, Atheist. When I am told that I must go to
the lexicographers for a definition of terms, I reply that I
decline to do anything of the sort. Lexicographers all work
on their own individual responsibility. Webster will define
a wrd in one way, Richardson in another, Latham in
another ; and how can I accept the meaning of important
terms on the authority of these conflicting lexicographers ?
If I want to know what is Christianity, I am bound to find
OUt what Christians mean by the term ; if I want to know
what Buddhism is, I am bound to have the term explained
by Buddhists ; and if Mr. Lee wants to know what Atheism
is, for the purpose of discussion, he must discover what
Atheists themselves mean by that term. Now, Charles
Bradlaugh, in the very first sentence of his pamphlet, Is
there a God ? says : “ The initial difficulty is in defining the
Word God. It is equally impossible to intelligently affirm or
deny any proposition unless there is at least an under
standing on the part of the affirmer or denier of the meaning
Of every word used in the proposition. To me, the word
God, standing alone, is a word without meaning.” I endorse
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
19
of the old raw material of theology, or, as I should call it,
superstition. There is, in this respect, even in modern days,
nothing new; it is but a fresh presentation of old material
in a new form. The masses of the people never believe
religion upon grounds of reason, but upon grounds of
authority and early education. The grounds of argument
are only adopted by the apologists of religion when they are
hard pressed by the critics of religion. (Applause.)
I deny, therefore, that Atheism per se denies the existence
Of God j I deny that Atheism per se affirms the eternity of
Matter; and I decline to accept responsibility for any theory
Of the universe. I tell Mr. Lee that, notwithstanding his
ability, his mind is not large enough to comprehend the
universe—(“Oh, oh”)—or to formulate a satisfactory theory
about It Further, I say that there is no intelligence on this
earth adequate to form a satisfactory theory of the universe.
And why ? Because, in the very language which Mr. Lee
has employed, infinity is predicated; and how can the mind
of man, which is admittedly finite, formulate a satisfactory
theory of an infinite existence ? The thing is a contradic
tion in terms—(applause)—and it is no insult to Mr. Lee to
say that his powers are inadequate to an infinite task.
(Hear, hear.)
I noticed that Mr. Lee fell into, what seemed to me, at
any rate, a confusion about the universe. He spoke of the
universe and of the matter composing it. Are they two
distinct things ? The universe simply means the whole, and
the whole is made up of what composes it. You cannot
have the universe separate, and the matter which composes
it separate. The universe is simply a term for the total
quantity of its composition. When Mr. Lee said that this
universe was not eternal, he took an illustration from our
solar system. Does Mr. Lee mean, because there is a dis
sipation of energy from our planet, that energy is lost?
Does Mr. Lee mean, if a planet should ultimately, in some
Sidereal cataclysm, become broken and scattered through
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
21
and, if you predicate a mind in the universe outside ours,
you must either endow it with the essential powers of our
own mind, or you must give some reason for believing that
it belongs to an entirely separate category of intelligence,
Now, I ask anyone to inquire of himself what he knows of
creation. We say the poet creates, the artist creates. But
what does he create ? He does not produce something out
of nothing. He works with matter that existed before he
was born, and will exist after he is dead. He changes
matter from one combination into another, but he cannot
create an atom of matter, and he cannot destroy an atom of
matter. I, therefore, say the term creation, in the meta
physical sense of producing absolutely out of nothing, or
out of something discrete, is, to my mind, utterly unintelli
gible ; and I cannot possibly accept what conveys no reality
to my own intelligence.
Mr. Lee says that the Atheist begins with matter and ends
with mind. Then he talks about the grave, and says the
Atheist begins with dust and ends with dust. But we all
have to pass through the same stages of being. Mr. Lee
was born as I was ; Mr. Lee will die as I shall, for the
age of miracles has passed. What is the use of com
plaining of the Atheist, when the Theist has to go through
exactly the same career? You may tell me, of course, that
after you are dead something very agreeable is going to
happen to you ; but I will wait until I know it before I
assume it as a fact which should serve as the basis of a
discussion.
We came eventually to that something which was the
cause of this material universe, and that something is intelli
gent, and that something is eternal; that is, this something
eternally existed before it made up its mind to create the
material universe. Has Mr. Lee any idea of what could
have occurred to put a new thought into an infinite mind ?
Why, an infinite mind must live in an infinite now. Being
infinite, there is neither past, present, nor future to it; for
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
23
ness. As a matter of fact, very few of us are as goodlooking as we could wish to be, and I don’t really think that
you can ground the existence of God upon the argument of
beauty. You yourself will admit that man has existed for
thousands of years ; surely by this time his Creator, with
that high sense of beauty, ought to have made him a more
presentable object than he is.
Then we are told there is intelligence because there is
law and order. I have to complain that Mr. Lee has used
for metaphysical purposes two terms which are commonly
used in another sense—in political and social conversation.
We speak of law and order in the political and social world,
and what do we mean ? By order we mean good behaviour ;
by few we mean edicts, decrees, or acts promulgated either by
the king or the parliament of the country, and for the in
fraction of which there is a prescribed penalty. I deny that
you have any right to use the word law in nature in any
such sense as that. All you mean by law is a certain
ffiethod in which things occur, and the question behind that
which Mr. Lee is asking is this, Is that method in which
things occur settled by intelligence, or is it the result of the
absolute, unchangeable, inherent properties of matter ?
When you use the word ■“ law ” in a metaphysical sense, you
are begging the very question at issue; for under cover of
the term “ law ” you introduce the law-giver, which is the
very subject we are met this evening to discuss.
Mr. Lee says that he can think about the stars, and that
ht can get thought out of them. (A laugh.) He cannot.
Let an idiot look at a star for a thousand years, if he lived
so long, and what thought would he get out of it ? (Hisses.)
Let a poet look at a star, and he might, to use this fashion
Of speech, get thought out of it; but the thought is not in
the star—the capacity for thought is in the poet’s brain.
(Applause.) Mr. Lee did not get thought out of the star;
he got it out of his own active intelligence.
Mr. Lee says that there is thought in the universe, and
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
25
that the best way to answer a prophet is to prophesy the
opposite. As a matter of fact, one of our greatest jurispruclists, Sir Henry Maine, in his powerful work upon
Popular Government, argues that there are perceptible limits
to man’s intellectual capacity for improvement ; and, in the
face of this, it is idle to ask me to accept as an established
fact what is only a conjecture about the future on the part
of Mr. Lee himself.
Then man has aspirations for the true, the holy, and the
eternal, and there must therefore be the true, the holy, the
eternal! But does the Atheist say there is nothing true ?
Surely the Atheist can aspire to truth as well as the Theist.
The motto of the National Secular Society, which does me
the honor to elect me President, is “We seek for Truth.”
It is again idle to tell us the aspiration after truth involves
the existence of the Being whom Mr. Lee is endeavoring to
establish. And what do you mean by the word holy ?
Holy, as generally used, is something connected with
religion. A clergyman is “ a holy person,” a church is “ a
holy building,” and a Church festival, or Sunday, is “a holy
day.” Very well; if you use the word in that sense, I will
leave you its full possession. But if by the word holy
you mean anything which is dignified, honest, or pertains to
the highest moral nature of man, then we aspire to the holy
quite as much as any of the Theists who speak from the
platforms or preach from the pulpits of the world.
A word, in conclusion, about man’s moral sense. It is
imposed from without by God, says Mr. Lee. I say that
even men in your own Church, like Professor Henry
Drummond, contend that morality is a natural evolution,
without anything supernatural in it from beginning to end.
God imposes morality upon us 1 Then why did he not
impose it so that in all parts of the world it was understood
alike ? You say we know when we do right and when we
do wrong. Do we ? If you commit bigamy in England,
you will get seven years’ imprisonment; but if you commit it
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
27
of Atheism, no matter what you say against Theism. Theism
tnay, or may not, be true; but, if you say nothing in favor
of Atheism, you have not established your position.
Our friend said I defined the universe as the sum-total of
all conditioned existence. I did; and I abide by that.
Bat Mr. Foote says I assume to know something of an un
conditioned existence. I do; and Mr. Foote cannot think
Of any material object without thinking of that object as
Conditioned ; and he cannot think of the conditioned with
out being driven to the recognition of the unconditioned—
you arc bound to go on to the unconditioned. Mr. Foote
may say there is nothing but the conditioned. I say there
are the conditioned and the unconditioned.
But our friend went on to say that I defined reasonable
aS that which conforms to human intelligence. I did
«©thing of the kind. Mr. Foote has managed to leave out
two very important words. I defined reasonable as that
Which conforms to the logical demands of man’s mind. This
is not saying that what is reasonable is reasonable, but that
that is reasonable which is in harmony with the logical
demands of the mental life we all possess.
But Mr. Foote says I defined Atheism and Theism to suit
I did not. I defined them in harmony with the
great masters of language; and I say, when we come to
debate terms which stand for great doctrines, we must use
those terms, not as any individual wishes them to be used,
but as the great masters of speech everywhere use them.
But he went on to say : “Atheism does not affirm per se
a theory of the universe.” Will Mr. Foote kindly tell me
how Atheism can affirm anything per se ? Mr. Bradlaugh
said that, to him, the word “ God ” was a word without
Waning. Then how could Mr. Bradlaugh justify his
attempt to get rid of an affirmation which has a great deal
Of meaning to others, but none to himself? But Mr. Foote
says he will quote Mr. Bradlaugh’s words : “ The Atheist
does not say there is no God.” I admit that. Mr. Bradlaugh
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
29
God, we must have a knowledge of God. This Mr. Foote
regards as impossible. But I would remind Mr. Foote that
some of the great German philosophers hold that, before we
can say anything is unknown and unknowable, you must be
above and beyond it. But, if you are above and beyond it,
you make it known ; and so you destroy your doctrine that
it is unknown. Thus, in getting rid of my proposition, Mr.
Foote has got rid of his own contention that God is un
known and unknowable.
But Mr. Foote says I fell into a mistake when I spoke of
matter and of the universe as different. I did so purposely
—in other words, I was dealing in the first part of my
remarks with the visible universe ; but the matter which
makes the universe, though a part of it, is not visible ; and,
when I used these two terms, I meant by the universe that
which we can see, and by matter that which is resolvable
into the atom, which we cannot see. I fail to see any
difficulty in this position. Then as to the atoms which I
referred to as bearing the marks of manufactured articles.
Mr. Foote says this is a metaphorical expression, as nobody
has seen them. Very well. If these atoms have not been
seen, how do you know they do not bear the marks of being
manufactured ? In other words, Mr. Foote has to go
through a process of reasoning in order to say these atoms
do not bear these marks, just as great physicists like Clerk
Maxwell have gone through processes of reasoning and say
they do bear the marks. Personally, I prefer taking the
statements of the physicists before those of Mr. Foote.
But, says our friend, if we think of this universe as the
outcome of an existence which is eternal, and which is
related to this universe as cause to effect, we are face to
face with this difficulty : we cannot possibly conceive of
creation. If by that you mean I cannot form an idea or
image in my mind as to the way in which it was done, I
agree with you ; but if you say I cannot understand or
apprehend the bringing of something into existence by a
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
31
sensation are abolished unilaterally ; but mental operations
are still capable of being carried on in their completeness
through the agency of one hemisphere.”
Mr. Foote : Mr. Lee demands—(“ Oh, oh ”)—I repeat
that Mr. Lee demands what he has no power to exact. I
have already declined, as any man of sense would decline,
to answer questions read out to me, and not furnished to
me. Mr. Lee, by his own act, robbed himself of the right
to put questions. In the original conditions, as the Joint
Committee know, there was to be a certain space of time—
a quarter of an hour or so—allowed for questions between
the disputants. It was Mr. Lee’s own suggestion that the
time for questions should be struck out.
Mr. Lee : I rise to a point of order. The part that was
Struck out was the part relating to a Socratic method of
debate, in which the question should be put and immediately
answered ; but that does not rob me of the right to put
questions in the course of my address. In every debate in
which I have taken part these questions have always been
recognised and answered.
Mr. Foote : Then, with whatever explanation Mr. Lee
Hiay qualify the statement, the statement is accurate, that at
Mr. Lee’s suggestion the time allotted for questions and
answers was struck out from the original articles of debate ;
and I decline altogether to come here with the responsi
bility of answering questions that have not been furnished
to me—questions that no memory could charge itself with
the task of accurately retaining. If Mr. Lee wants questions
of that kind answered, he shall furnish them beforehand, so
that one could get an acquaintance with their terms and
bearing. Every man knows that you can ask more questions
in a couple of minutes than the wisest man on earth can
answer in twenty-four hours. At any rate, Mr. Lee may
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
33
Sistent with those facts, then Atheism would have a perfect
right to deny the existence of that God so defined. That
is what Atheism does. If Mr. Lee tells me there is a God
att'fowerful, all-wise, and all-good, I tell him that the facts
of life contradict the existence of such a being. (“ No, no.”)
We have heard the names of scientific men. Well, the
|pWtest naturalist that ever lived, Charles Darwin—(a laugh)
pMhe man that smiles at that name cannot know what he
is smiling at—I say, the greatest naturalist that ever lived,
Charles Darwin, said there is too much suffering in the
world ; and he, the greatest scientific intellect since Newton,
in face of the facts that science has revealed, felt himself
Utterly unable to accept the God that Mr. Lee has put forward
tonight, and predicated as absolutely necessary to logical
human thought.
Now, we had a little merriment about “Atheism per se?
but there is really nothing metaphysical about that. “Per se ”
simply means, as Mr. Lee knows, “ by itself.” You cannot
ttink of a thing in universal connections. Man’s powers
being finite, he must isolate, for purposes of convenience,
th# objects of his thought; although, in external nature, they
are all in infinite relations to each other. Thus, when
you define a line, owing to the imperfection of human
powers, you define it as “ length without breadth
but you
IWVer find this in actual experience. It is a device you
have to resort to ; you take the idea of length separate from
theidea of breadth, although the two things are never found
except in conjunction with each other. Very well. Atheism
in itself, apart from the personal notion of individual
Atheists—or, as I expressed it, “ Atheism per se ’’—does
•not affirm a theory of the universe. I said that individual
Atheists, like Mr. Bradlaugh himself, might affirm Monism
(lite Spinoza, who was charged with Atheism, but affirms
Bantheism); but that is a different thing altogether from
What are the logical contents of the term Atheism. I deny
that Atheism affirms a theory of the universe. And if Mr.
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
35
than the atom itself; and how can this mystery explain the
other? I will tell you how a thing is explained. A thing
is explained when Science shows us exactly its origin, its
glWth, its development, and possibly its decay and dis
appearance ; tracing it from its initial stage to the completion
of its, career. . That is a scientific explanation; and, when
Science explains a thing like that, we understand it; but it
fe
a scientific or a rational explanation of a thing to say,
‘<Gocl did it.” That is what ignorance has said in all ages’
(Applause.)
It used to be asked, “Who made the world?” until the
nebular hypothesis explained to us the history of worlds.
Tten the question was shifted farther back, and it was
asked, “ Who made all the various species of life upon this
planet ?” Darwin explained the Origin of Species—I will
Bpt say to the satisfaction of all parties, but to the satisfac
tion of scientific men. And now the question is put farther
back—“Who made life? Or who made the atoms ?” In
Other words, the banner of Theology is always planted at
the point where knowledge ends and ignorance begins. It
IS driven farther and farther back. It is the banner, not of
Knowledge, but of Mystery. It is the flag of Superstition,
wider which all the priesthoods of the world have gathered
for the exploitation of the people. (Applause.)
„ Mr. Lee said that he used the word universe to signify
visible matter. Now, there is no distinction between visible
attd invisible matter, except in Mr. Lee’s powers of percep
tion ' Visible matter means matter large enough to be seen.
But if you have millions upon millions of invisible atoms
forming a visible combination of matter, there is no difference
in the condition of the atoms because they are in collection,
and large enough for our organs of vision to perceive them.
That is a distinction without a difference.
A word about brain and thought. Who ever said that
man—who has two brains working in combination, though
sometimes not in entire harmony—who ever said that he
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
37
OS it is a question of conviction. Mr. Foote tells us the
Wational Secular Society is in search of truth. We Theists
believe we have found it. (Cheers.)
Mr. Foote says, no matter what Mr. Lee demands, Mr.
Lee struck out the part of the conditions of debate which
referred to a Socratic debate, and, therefore, has no right to
ask questions. The reason I struck that part of the con
ditions out was this. I do not believe in mixing up things
that differ. If we want a Socratic debate, we will have it;
b«t I object to wedging in half-an-hour of Socratic debate
in a debate of another character; but I still have the right
to ask questions respecting matters which are fundamental
to my position and to Mr. Foote’s. If we have no right to
ask such questions, why are we here to discuss ?
But Mr. Foote says that I have not been able to produce
a single fact in favour of Theism. Well, now, I have pro
duced a series of propositions ; I have shown that some
thing must be eternal. Mr. Foote has not attempted to
deal with that. I have shown you that that something must
have power; Mr. Foote has not attempted to deal with that.
I have shown you that something must be the cause of the
changes in this universe; Mr. Foote has not attempted to
deal with that. I have shown you that the different move
meats going on in this universe are going on in accordance
With law; Mr. Foote has not attempted to deal with that.
And I have shown you that we have reason, mind, a religious
and moral sense ; but Mr. Foote has not attempted to deal
With that. The whole of my propositions stand untouched
—(applause)—and not only untouched, but the banner of
theology, which Mr. Foote has spoken of as floating above
the place where ignorance begins and knowledge ends—this
banner of theology—this banner, sir—floats high above our
beads, not as the symbol of “ we do not know,” but as the
sign of a coming victory which has already been shown to
fee ours by your refusing to deal with these questions.
(Loud applause.) Ah, Mr. Foote says, “ the banner of
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
39
do not believe in fighting definitions, unless I know that
those definitions are part and parcel of the thing I fight. I
have not attempted this evening to give you a definition of
God ; I have given you a few suggestions as to what I under
stand God to be. I told you I believe him to be an eternal
something, having power and intelligence, and such-like.
But, while I do not know all about God, I know something
of God; I do not know all about Derby, but I know some
thing of Derby. Still, I have often said—I said it three
months ago—I am not one of those who say they believe in
God ; I have got a knowledge of God. I go beyond belief
—I know God.
Our friend talked to us about the defects of definitions
tfid such-like, and went on to say that the atom is some
thing, and that the universe is only a bigger atom. Well,
now, I object altogether to this position of Mr. Foote’s,
because he said that an atom is something which cannot be
seen. Now, not only is an atom that which cannot be seen
“he has told us that—but he went on to say that this world
of ours must be the same as the matter which is unseen.
Now, if that is so, then the unseen atom must be under
the same conditions as this seen table; and, as this seen
table cannot move itself, how came the atom to move
itself ?
But our friend says that I simply get rid of one difficulty
—the origin of the atom—in order to bring in a greater
difficulty—God. No, I do not. Mr. Foote has told us that
an atom is that which is so infinitely little that it cannot be
seen ; yet Mr. Foote must, if he is logical, seek to build up
this wondrous universe, with its teeming forms of living
activity, from a thing that cannot be seen, and that is so
infinitely powerless that it can do nothing of itself—because
“the unseen must be the same as the seen.” Then he says
I Bring in another subject which is equally unthinkable;
Did I not show you that something must be eternal ? Does
Mr. Foote believe the atom is eternal ? If so, he is opposed
�THEISM OR ATHEISM?
41
there is food, if your mental hunger proves that somewhere
there is knowledge, the hunger of the soul proves that some
where there is God. Mr. Foote may say, “ I have not got
this appetite, I know nothing about it ”; but, as we do not
trust a blind man when we wish to know something about
the sun, neither do we trust an Atheist when we want to
know something about God. (Cheers.)
The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen,—I am sure
you must have undergone considerable inconvenience in the
heat of this crowded hall, especially those of you who are
standing; but it seems to me so in harmony with the instincts
of fair play that Mr. Foote should have a full, a fair, and
impartial hearing to ?he end that I trust no one will leave
the meeting until Mr. Foote has finished his concluding
address.
Mr. Lee expressed a similar wish.
Mr. Foote : I am extremely obliged for the kindly spirit
which was manifested in the hint just given, but I hardly
think it is necessary. I do not feel so profoundly upon the
matter as it seems to be imagined, and if any lady or gentle
man, at any time, does not want to hear me, I really do not
Object to their withd«awing. On the other hand, I do not
think it is a right thing to assume that anybody would leave
the meeting. Personally, I think we ought to accept people’s
innocence until there is reason to believe they are guilty.
(Dissent and interruption.) Apparently one disputant is
free to introduce a matter which the other disputant is not
to say anything about. Is that fair play?
Mr. Lee said that the child and the fire meet, and the fire
burns, and what I have got to do is to explain why it burns.
(“ No, no.”) I repeat that Mr. Lee said I was bound to
explain how it came to burn. Now, I say I am under no
such necessity. All I am obliged to do, if I want to be
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
43
to convert me, and, if I had answered all his propositions to
his satisfaction, he would not become an Atheist. What is
the use, then, of his saying I have not answered his ques
tions ? All I can do is to reply. I do not expect Mr. Lee
to think that I have shattered all his positions.
Mr. Lee says he knows the unconditioned ; but I deny
that he knows, or can know, the unconditioned. He is
himself distinctly conditioned, every moment of his life
being absolutely dependent upon his environment. When
he talks about matter being incapable of moving itself, I
tell Mr. Lee that he himself, except in relation to external
Mature, would lose all capacity of thought. Mankind can
only work under the stimulus of the external universe. We
begin with sensations, perceptions; we weave them into
ideas ; but it is the stimulus of the external universe that
furnishes us with the sensations, and it is the stimulus of
that external universe that keeps alive the activity of our
powers.
. Mr. Lee said it was no use fighting definitions. What
else can we fight in a discussion ? It is idle to talk about
fighting God : we are here to fight over the defined God. If
God exists, he does not require any man’s defence ; and if
God do not exist, no man’s defence can establish his exist
ence. Our object is discussion, and discussion can only
proceed upon definitions ; consequently it is really defini
tions that we are here to debate.
We were told that the religious banner is a sign of victory.
Not necessarily. Both armies carry banners into the field,
and in general it is only one side that wins. And banners
are not confined to battle; they are floated in times of
peace as well as in war. I do not think it is right to found
an argument upon a metaphor. A metaphor is a very good
thing as an adornment, a help, an illustration—but no more.
And when you say your banner is triumphant, I say the
very fact that, after thousands of years of priestly teaching,
and! of the authority of religion over the child’s mind—I
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
45
of Matter than any common man that walks the streets. He
can tell you how atoms combine, and how they divide; he
can show you their chemical properties ; but he has no
knowledge whatever of their creation or origination. The
doctrine accepted by all scientists is that man cannot
create an atom, man cannot destroy an atom ; and I say
that, arguing from analogy, it is reasonable at any rate,
more reasonable—to suppose that what cannot be destroyed
will never cease to be, and that what cannot be made never
began to be.
Finally, we were told, in poetical language, about God’s
kindness; and we were given a poetical recitation, which I
h©pe Mr. Lee did not think was any contribution to the
debate. I might cite poetry, but then is that discussion ?
Shelley said the name of God has fenced about all crime
with holiness. You talk of the kindness of your God ! I
fail to see the kindness when I look at the history of the
world. The great Cardinal Newman, the keenest theological
intellect that this country has produced in the present
century, said that, although his being was full of the idea of
God, yet when he looked into the universe the impression
made upon him was as though he had looked into a mirror
and saw no reflection of his face. What he saw in the
world was incompatible with the doctrines of theology in
which he had been educated. The kindness of God and
religion 1 The kindness of the auto-da-fe! The kindness
of the thumb-screw, the rack, the torture chamber! The
kindness of the heretic’s dungeon ! The kindness of per
verting and distorting the mind of the child ! I prefer the
kindness of Humanity to the kindness of all the gods the
world has ever known. (Loud applause.)
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
47
course, had the opportunity of deciding the direction of the
SWhing’s debate. To-night that opportunity lies with me.
I do not suppose that anybody who differs from me (and
in this I will include my opponent) will be quite satisfied
with the direction I take; but I am in the conduct of my
Own case, and I intend to do what I consider to be justice
fc> it, quite irrespective of the opinions of anyone else.
(Hear, hear.)
Now I wish, at the outset, to say just a few words about
the direction the debate took last night. It was mainly of
a HWtaphysical character, and chiefly turned upon the
problem of the origin of the universe, if I may express it in
that summary fashion. Mr. Lee told us a great deal about
matter and atoms, and the whole argument really turned
upon what is admittedly incomprehensible—that is, incom
prehensible in the present state of our knowledge. I am
not one of those who say that no particular problem will at
Some future time be solved ; but one zk entitled to say that a
pertain specified problem is insoluble in the present con
dition of human knowledge ; and, as a matter of fact, when
you discuss the origin of matter, you are discussing a thing
which, from the very nature of the case, you are not in a
position to determine. And it appears to me that you may
mix up with a discussion of that kind a great deal of very
questionable physics. For instance, we were told last night
that, if the universe were full of matter, there would be no
possibility of motion ; but, of course, that overlooks the fact
that combinations of matter are of various degrees of density.
Every time Mr. Lee and I walk along the street we walk,
aS it were, through matter, for the air around us is as much
matter, although in a gaseous condition, as this table or the
floor upon which we stand. To illustrate this from another
Standpoint: if you were to take a bottle and put half-aifozen marbles in it, and then fill the bottle right up with
wtter, and hermetically seal it, you would find that, as you
moved the bottle about, the marbles, under the law of
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
49
words, that Atheism does not explain the universe. Well,
no Atheist attempts to explain the universe. He is more
modest than to pretend to do anything of the kind. The
Atheist declares that the finite intelligence of man is not
Capable of solving the infinite problem of the inconceivably
distant origin of this universe. (Cheers.) But if you pressed
and said that, as a thinker, I must have some idea upon
the subject, I should say : “ Very well; I am not prepared
to assert that matter is either eternal or not eternal; I am
not in a position to make a positive assertion where I have
no positive evidence ; but it is as open for me to conjecture
as for any man, and perhaps my conjecture would be as true
as his; and, if you tell me there must be an eternal some
thing, I should start from what I know, for I would rather
believe in the eternity of what I know than in the eternity
of something that I have not been able to discover. And
W, I say, matter exists ■ matter is all about us ■ our bodily
organism, at any rate, is material ■ and I would prefer to
believe that the matter which, according to physical teaching,
’\by us at any rate, indestructible in its atoms, is essentially
indestructible; that it never began to be; that, as it existí
now, and did exist eternally in the past, so it will continue
to exist eternally in the future.” In other words, if there is
t0. be an eternal something, I prefer an eternal something
which I know, to an eternal nothing which is only the postu
late of an opponent in a discussion. (Applause.)
Atheism and Theism, except they come into dogmatic
relationship to morals and conduct, are speculations, and it
is well known that speculations-the very same speculations
—can be entertained by men of all varieties of moral chá
mete and condition. Indeed, when one speculation is
e ore the world, and another is opposed to it, and when
the world has been discussing these speculations for thou
sands of years, and is still discussing them, with no hope of
smving at a satisfactory conclusion, an impartial, honest,
and careful thinker is tempted to ask himself, What is the
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
51
of the universe ; and, when the words were put down for
discussion, I declined to admit them. The Atheist has no
such theory. He does not set out to explain the universe;
he tries to learn as much as he can about it; and, if he learns
any new truth to-day, there is more to be learned to-morrow.
As long as man’s mind is finite, and he has to inhabit this
world—which is really but as a speck of dust in the infinitude
of space—however far he advances, there will be the same
old horizon of knowledge. However we may gather know
ledge in the years to come, our far-off posterity will have a
similar opportunity, and may they put it to a similar use !
(Applause.)
Now, if we have to enter upon a trial of Theism, we must
understand what Theism is. Mr. Lee, last night, refrained
from defining God. His God accounts for everything, but
the very thing which was all-important in the case was never
defined,
I shall define Theism as. “that form of belief which
declares that the visible, tangible, conditioned universe is
created and governed by infinite intelligence, which belongs
to an infinite personality, which is characterised by infinite
power and infinite wisdom ; nay, more—it is characterised,
according to Theistic teaching, by infinite goodness or
benevolence.” What I am going to do in the trial of Theism
is to ascertain whether the facts fit in with the theory. I
am not going to rush off to a supposed centre, to which the
sun, with all our system, is hurrying. I am not going to
peer with the microscope in the vain hope of discovering
the origin of the atom. I am going to speak about what
we know of the facts of life, instead of rushing off into
infinite space. I am going to see what can be found in this
world, the world in which we live. (Applause.) I submit
that, if Theism can be proved at all, it ought to be proved
from what we thoroughly know, rather than from what we
are only inadequately acquainted with.
Now, what is the great teaching of men of science—a
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
53
Now, what does this struggle for existence mean ? It
means that the world, ever since the rise upon it of organic
life—at least, ever since the advent of beings who are capable
of feeling pleasure and pain—has been one great cock-pit,
running red with the blood of mutual slaughter. In this
Struggle for existence there is no quarter given. You are not
let off to fight another day. As Professor Huxley says, the
result for the vanquished is death. And this red cock-pit,
which the world has been ever since sentient organisms
appeared upon it, I am told by the Theists was designed,
and that the Being who designed it foresaw all that would
happen, sees wrhat does happen, and, in spite of all our
efforts to improve it, continues it as it is. I say that this is
too hard for common flesh and blood to believe, if we realise
What it means. I would rather be an Atheist, who says, “ I
knpw nothing of God, and your definition of God does not
Commend itself to my intelligence, in the face of the facts of
existence,” than be a Trieist, believing in a God who permits
—nay, as Creator, ordained—that which every tender-hearted
mao and woman would put a stop to, if possible, to-morrow.
(Applause.)
What is human history? Looked at through the long
records that have come down to us, it is more or less a long
succession of quarrelling, largely about religion, and wars of
dynasty and ambition, and the sacrifice of the lives, liberties,
and happiness of the great masses of the people, in the
interests of those who leaped into the seats of power, and
used mankind for their own purposes. Why, it is only
within recent memory that the people, even in civilised
countries, have been brought within the pale of a free con
stitution. Their whole lives were previously decided for
them by a handful of upper classes. I can no more see in
human history, than I can see in Evolution, the signs of an
fotClligent and moral governor. Even when we take man as
he bow is, where and how does Theism justify itself? The
human organism is extremely imperfect. Take the most
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
55
responsible for them, then God is responsible for them. If
God produces eyes that cannot see, or eyes that can only
See very inadequately, it is idle to tell me that his wisdom
and power are infinite; for infinite wisdom would know how
to produce better eyes, and infinite power would be able to
second the designs of infinite wisdom.
Then look at the disasters that occur in the world. Man
fe encouraged to build his house, to found his home, and
suddenly, without warning, the earthquake shatters it and
Mils him ; or, if he is spared himself, perhaps his dearest are
buried beneath its ruins. Do you mean to tell me that an
infinite intelligence is responsible for this ? Do you mean
to tell me that the work of that infinite intelligence is
prompted by infinite wisdom, and is carried out by infinite
power ? I say that these disasters that are constantly
desolating the world, that these pestilences, these blightings
of crops, are all confutations of your Theistic theory. Here
in England we send missionaries out to India, and when a
famine occurs in India through the failure of the harvest
we subscribe money in order to save from starvation the
people who, if left to providence, would starve by the action
of this God of infinite wisdom and goodness and power.
How, upon the Theistic hypothesis, can you reconcile
yourself to the fact of disease ? Disease is ever baffling the
man of science. Often, as we master one disease, another
becomes more malignant. As we learn how to treat fevers,
Cancer becomes more severe in its ravages ; and, as we
manage, by improved sanitation, to get a better condition
of general health among the people, we suffer from that
disease which is known as insanity, and which is gaining
ground in every civilised country. Now, what is the cause
of these diseases ? You may tell me it is the microbes ; but
who made the microbes to produce diseases ? Your infinite
deity planned the microbe and planned the man; he
arranged it so that the microbe would get into the man’s
blood, and set up an action there which produces terrible
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
57
champion will, in due course, have the opportunity of
replying. I must, further, press this point, because, with
©very desire to be impartial, I cannot be blind to the fact
that the majority of persons present are in distinct opposition
to the views expressed by the gentleman who has just sat
down.
I will take the liberty of saying that the attribute of fair
play demands that the courage he displays in standing
before an hostile audience, and so fearlessly expounding his
principles, should secure for him a patient and respectful
hearing.
I make these observations in good faith, and I also
bespeak for Mr. Lee your kindly consideration, as he has
been seriously indisposed to-day, and I can only regard his
presence here to-night as an indication of his pluck and
determination in carrying through his part of the program.
Mr. Lee : Mr. Chairman, Mr. Foote, Ladies and Gentle
men,—I have listened to the address which Mr. Foote has
given us with a very great deal of attention, but, I must say,
with a very great deal of disappointment. I gathered that
Mr. Foote wished us to understand that Atheists had no
theory of the universe; but, before Mr. Foote sat down, he
showed us that they have a theory of the universe; that
they are able to judge of the Theistic theory, and declare
it to be bad, and speak of another—the Atheistic—as better.
In spite of these facts, Mr. Foote has repeated his state
ment that Atheism does not deny God, and that Atheism
has no theory of the universe. I hold in my hand Mr.
Charles Bradlaugh’s debate with the Rev. T. Lawson, of
West Hartlepool, on Is Atheism the True Doctrine of the
Universe ? Mr. Foote quoted Mr. Bradlaugh several times
last night; I am therefore appealing to his own authority to
refute his statements. Mr. Bradlaugh says : “ By Atheism
I mean the affirmation of one existence. This affirmation
is a positive, not a negative, affirmation, and is properly
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
59
observations on the phenomena of disease and accident in
man, that the substance of the cerebrum is itself insensible
—that is, no injury done to it, or physical impression made
upon it, is felt by the subject of it.” And Dr. Carpenter
goes on to say: “ It is clear, therefore, that the presence of
the cerebrum is not essential to consciousness
So much for Mr. Foote’s contention that, where he finds
a certain physical condition, there he finds thought. Dr.
Carpenter distinctly opposes that view. Indeed, it is agreed
by all great mental physiologists that it is impossible for us
to explain the passage from the physics of the brain to the
facts of self-consciousness ; while Professor Tyndall assures
us that self-consciousness is the rock on which Materialism
splits.
But Mr. Foote says that he denies my right to assert that
matter has originated. I repay the compliment by denying
his right to assert that it did not originate.
But what does Mr. Foote mean by the word “ matter ” ?
He has used the term several times. Every word I used I
defined as I used it. I therefore demand an explanation of
this word “ matter.”
Mr. Foote last night denied that he is compelled to think
of something as eternal, and he spoke of the changing
phenomena of this earth and the worlds around us, implying
that an infinite series of causes and effects is the explanation
of the evolution of the visible universe. That was the
implication ; or, if it was not, what was the implication ?
And if it was, then Mr. Foote can think of the eternal, for
he speaks of an eternal series of causes and effects. But if
we carefully analyse what is meant by an infinite, or eternal,
series of causes and effects, we find it means that a long
series of finite changes can make up a total which is infinite.
This is opposed to common sense, educated reason, and the
first principles of scientific induction. You cannot get an
infinite total by the multiplication of finite units. Mr.
Foote may try, but he will fail.
�THEISM OR ATHEISM?
61
of intellect with intellect, and mind against mind, we shatter
the beliefs of those who say there is no God. (Applause.)
In reference to my statement that we have certain bodily,
mental, and spiritual appetites, Mr. Foote says : “ Yes, I
admit we have these appetites for knowledge; but have we not
room enough in the universe to satisfy these appetites ?” I
say, No; and the fact that all the progressive races of the
earth have not been content to rest in the universe is a
proof that man is not satisfied with the universe. When
he looks upon this universe, as it comes within the field of
his vision, he sees upon its face the indications of a Being
behind and above the universe—a Being to whom he must
go on, and before whom he must bow’. No, our friend has
not shown that we must be satisfied with the universe which
is around us ; rather, we rise “ through nature up to nature’s
God.”
Our friend has referred to a sentence-which occurred in
the little poem* which I recited to you last night, in which
the “ sweet kindness ” of God is spoken of. He said (and I
think I never heard a more illogical argument in my life)—
“ Kind,” said he, “ when this God has designed thumb
screws and racks to tear and rend men ?” God designed
thumbscrews and racks 1 Why, it is man who has done
this, not God. No, not God, but man, on the nature of
whom Mr. Foote builds his philosophy, saying there exist
guarantees of morality in human nature. Guarantees of
morality in human nature ! History and experience refute
the statement, and show that, when man is astray from the
moral Governor of the universe, these guarantees become
guarantees of so many ferocious appetites, which wreak
themselves on the weak, the defenceless, the poor, and the
holy. The fact is, no trust can be put in man ; our trust
must be in the living, eternal God. (Applause.)
* This poem will be found at the end of this report, the reporter
having omitted to take it down in its proper place.
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
63.
until our friend shows this to be impossible, our position is
unshaken.
But Mr. Foote says: “ Can God have designed this
universe, when the law of it is ‘ eat or be eaten ’ ?” I will
deal with this doctrine in a few minutes, and probably I
shall be able to eat it before I have done.
Our friend says, when I speak of motion being impossible
in an infinitely extended universe of matter, I forget the
different densities of matter. I do not. I say that you
cannot have different density in matter where you have a
perfect vacuum. Every particle of matter must be of the
same weight in a perfect vacuum. If, however, the universe
be full of matter, every point of space must be occupied.
Therefore, there can be no space unoccupied. To talk of
the different densities of matter is to say there is room in
space, points where matter is not.
Our friend says he is not prepared to say matter is eternal
or not eternal. That is standing on the edge—not going
one way or the other; and, if Atheism is in that position, I
do not envy it.
Our friend says he would rather believe in the eternity of
something which he knows than of something he does not
know. But he does not know matter; he knows only his
sensations. In other words, he can think of matter only in
terms of mind. Now, Sir, if you can think of matter only
in terms of mind, the most certain fact is mind, and you
reach matter by inference. You really know mind; you
only infer matter.
Our friend says we have these perpetual discords and
debates because we have not got at the facts; but the
universe is all around us, and we are seeking to understand
it. Men have understood it, and, in proportion as they
have understood it, they have risen above the universe, and
found themselves in the presence of One “ greater than I,
and holier than thou.”
But our friend says he falls back upon the fact that man
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
65
out teleology there would be no mechanism, but only a
confusion of crude forces; and without mechanism there
would be no teleology, for how could the latter effect its
purpose?” Against Mr. Foote’s statement I place this
quotation from Dr. Welsmann.
But our friend says he cannot imagine a God designing a
world in which “ eat or be eaten ” is the law of existence.
Our friend forgot to tell us how he gets this fact of “ eat or
be eaten.” In other words, he got the eater before he got
the life to eat; and I want to know where he gets the life
before he gets the eater. But if this universe, or this world,
is, as he described it, “one great cock-pit, running red with
human slaughter,” I ask him how he can reconcile this with
his coming here to-night and advocating the teaching of
Atheism, when this blind, mindless, cruel, biting, slaying
machine, which he calls the world, grinds the lives, and
blasts the hopes, and crushes the affections of those whom
it has produced, only to destroy. No future life, no future
good; but blindly, aimlessly, uselessly, simply to play with,
it produces men only to destroy them, only to crush them,
only to make them suffer. That, Sir, is the teaching of
Atheism. But we Theists believe that, through these
sorrows and sufferings, there is a great purpose being
worked out—that God is working out a plan; and, until
our friend can show that the plan is not being realised,
he has no right to reject the belief that there is such a
plan.
Now, if Evolution means anything, it means that everything
which is, and which has been, has a purpose and a function;
and therefore Evolution itself witnesses to the great Being
who has arranged it thus and thus.
But is it true that this universe is a great, brutalising,
“ eat-or-be-eaten ” machine? (“Yes,” “No.”) There are
more smiles than tears in the world, more days of sunshine
than rain; and, on a mere balance of probabilities, there is
more good in God than evil. So that our friend has not in
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
67
that, When Helmholtz had pointed out what he regarded as
«^rfeetions in the eye as an optical instrument, he con
cluded his address by saying that, if every improvement
which he had suggested were put into the eye, it would
render it less fit for its purpose than it now is; and he went
on to say that no sane man would think of taking a razor
to cleave blocks—he would take an axe; and that for the
rough-and-ready work which the human eye was called
to perform, it could not be improved. So, then, our friend
has his own authority with whom to settle. But I want our
friend to answer this : If it is necessary for an optician to
make my glasses and his glasses (which cannot be comta-ed to the wondrous mechanism of the human eye), does
not the human eye itself demand a maker who shall be
greater in wisdom and power than all the opticians on
earth?
But our friend says we see men destroyed all around us.
es,. but there is this difference between the position of the
Thet« and that of the Atheist. The Theist does not say the
man is destroyed. God has given him life, and God has a
right to remove that life to any other sphere He pleases.
He does not destroy the being of man, He simply changes
the place of being, and, therefore, He has a right, if a man
does net square with His demands, or if He thinks fit to
i
. m t0 SOme other condition, to do it, because He
is the originator of all life, and in Him only can life exist.
. ut our friend says there are diseases. Yes, even
microbes Again, I ask you to think. If we were travelling
Midland Railway, so long as the engines kept theiT
proper lines we should say the powers in the engine were
a fl, lf tW° en§ineS C°ming in 0PP0site directions
wkid’4hat P°Wer WhlCh Was g00d would become an evil.
Why
Because the arrangements which had been laid
flown for their safety had been violated, either by the care
lessness or wickedness of man. Now, the vital' forces of
our body and of all living organisms God intended should
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
69
should have been disappointed had it been so, because my
estimate of Charles Bradlaugh was that, whether right or
wrong, he was one of the most careful thinkers and one of
th® most careful expressers of his thought. Now, Charles
Bradlaugh says in explicit terms, as I read to you last night,
that Atheism does not say there is no God; and I submit
that a man’s explicit statement to that effect is of more im
portance than any inference which Mr. Lee or anyone else
may derive from some other passage which he has penned or
spoken, in written or oral debate. Here is a man’s written
aod explicit declaration which cannot be evaded : “ The
Atheist does not say there is no God.” The Atheist takes
the definitions of God which are laid before him for his
acceptance, and, finding that they do not fit in with the
faetg of existence, he contradicts them, because the facts
Contradict them. Now, if that is not an intelligible position
foe a man to take up, then we must admit that we use
Words in a totally different signification, and any further
discussion, at least upon that point, is simply a waste of
time.
But we were told that what Mr. Bradlaugh’s statement
came to was that Atheism denies Theism, including Pan
theism, Polytheism, and Monotheism. Well, I admitted as
much in my opening speech, and there was no occasion to
elaborate what was admitted.
It was stated by my opponent that Atheism had no
foundation. It has the same foundation that anything else
has, or possibly can have. The only foundation for anything,
M Mr. Lee knows well, is man’s knowledge. Mr. Lee also
knows that there have been Atheistic scientists, like Professor Clifford, and that there have been Agnostic scientists
(which comes to the same thing), like Charles Darwin, Pro
fessor Huxley, and Herbert Spencer, whose names will stand
as high as any upon the Theistic roll that Mr. Lee can
produce.
Mr, Lee wants to know what I mean by “conditioned,”
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
71
made Theists before they are able to judge for themselves.
I WS charged with “ robbing the community of its faith
in God.” Robbing ! that is a term from the Old Bailey.
Mr. Lee : I did not wish to use it in that sense, and, if it
is repugnant to Mr. Foote, I will withdraw it.
Mr. Foote : Every man who thinks he has a glimmer of
truth not only has the right to present it to his fellow-men,
but is under a duty to do so. If a man finds, in listening
to another man, that a belief which he thought true is only
half true, or not true at all, instead of being deprived of
anything valuable, he is deprived of something which occu
pied the door of his mind, and kept the truth out of it.
When this intruder is removed, the truth can enter in the
plane of the falsehood that usurped its situation. (Applause.)
We were told, too, that there was no guarantee of morality
in human nature, and that we must trust entirely to God;
yet I find that some of the most notorious villains of our
time have been well-known professors of religion. I do not
say they were so because of their religion, but in the face of
their profession, and in the face of the statistics of crime, it
is idle to tell me we must trust to God for morality. Wher
ever a human heart beats with sympathy ; wherever mothers
love their children ; wherever fathers protect them ; wherever
parents will, with their own lives, save the lives of their dear
ones; wherever one man will rush to the aid of another—
then is the guarantee of morality. Your argosy of faith
floats upon the great sea of humanity. You declare that
the water would dry up without your fleet; yet, if your fleet
were to sink, the mighty ocean of humanity would roll on
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. (Applause.)
Now, we come to what has been said about my opening
speech. Mr. Lee quoted from Weismann, and said that
he put against Mr. Foote’s views of design the words of a
great German. But there is no particular sanctity about a
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
73
apparatus to inflict agony upon every part of their being—
if I could not stop it, I would denounce it, and disown all
responsibility for it. Such things were done in the name of
your God, yet he never stopped it, but let it go on. It is
science and humanity that have put down the brutalities of
your religion. (Applause.)
There are, says Mr. Lee, more smiles than tears in the
world, and so he strikes a balance in favour of his God. A
balance in favour of infinite wisdom, infinite power, and
infinite goodness ! And man strikes it! I can understand
a balance to a man’s credit; but a balance to God’s credit!
And this is the God I am asked to believe in. I cannot
believe in a God like that.
If God makes poor eyes, and the oculist sees their defects,
how is it—Mr. Lee asks—that the oculist cannot make
better ones ? Why, “ making ” is a term of art, and not a
term of nature. Eyes are not made; human beings are not
made; lower animals are not made; plants are not made;
you cannot even make a crystal; you cannot make the
crystallised frost upon your window-pane. The word in
nature is “ growth,” and, if the eye has grown, it is God’s
method, according to Mr. Lee’s argument, of bringing it
into existence; and God is responsible for his handiwork.
It is idle to say we have not the right to point out errors in
a theory unless we have a better theory of our own. We
have such a right. I may not be able to explain the
universe, and I admit I cannot; yet, if you put forward
ft theory that is contradicted by facts which you and I
alike admit, I have a right to say that, whatever may be
the true theory, yours is false; because a theory which does
not fit the facts is false, according to the canons of logic.
(Cheers.)
Mr. Lee: You will observe that the questions which I
put to Mr. Foote in my last speech have not been dealt
with. Mr. Foote has not told us what he believes or under-
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
75
tion is. I am bound to say that Mr. Bradlaugh himself
Seems to me to fail to construct anything, and all Atheists
must share in the same fate.
Our friend says I used, last night, the word “conditioned.”
Yes. And I also said what I meant by it—(cheers)—
namely, that which witnesses to something other than itself,
and demands for its existence some other thing. Now, Mr.
Foote has no right to say that we do not explain our words
where we take every care to explain them. But Mr. Foote
says that by conditioned he means “ existing in relation to
Other things
but this universe is one, not many. Then
what does this witness to, what is it in relation to ? If in
relation to something, what is that something ? If not in
relation to something, then it has no relation at all; and,
if it has no relation at all, then it is not conditioned, and
you do not know it, for you know only the conditioned.
Our friend quotes a number of scientists, Darwin and
Others, and he says these men were men who believed in
Atheism or Agnosticism. I say that these men, almost
Without exception, repelled the charge of Atheism. Tyndall
Said that this word was affixed to him unfairly, and repelled
it. Huxley has rejected the name again and again, Darwin
never said he was an Atheist, and not one of the men to
whom reference has been made ever said he was an Atheist.
In order to show their humility, they took up the position
that they did not know whether there is any God, but they
did not say there is none, and they did not try to prove
there is none ; they simply said they did not know. So our
friend failed altogether even in his references to these men.
But our friend says, in reference to the problem of know
ledge, that knowledge is only relation. Very well. If know
ledge is only relation, and this universe is one, and, therefore,
according to your position, is not relative to any other thing,
how can you, a part of the universe, be conscious of another
part, unless that other part be other than yourself; and if
that Other part be other than yourself, then you are in
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
77
to this earth, and this earth alone, and fixing their affections
and their minds on things of time and sense alone, they
have thought themselves to be part and parcel of a brutal
ising world; and so they have crushed and tom each other,
not because of God, but because their hearts have been
opposed to God.
God, our friend says, has allowed this to occur, and, in a
very thrilling statement, he said: “Now, if any man were
to injure another in my name, if I could not stop it, I would
denounce it.” Yes, and the great God has put into men a
power of mind which we call conscience, and that power of
mind has bitten men like a serpent when they dared to
break the law of God’s world, “Love thy neighbour as
thyself.” (Applause.)
Our friend says God has not interfered in this world. We
have no right to go into the question of revelation to-night,
but we believe God has interfered. But our friend, Mr.
Foote, does not believe in God because he has not interfered
to stop certain cruelties ; and when he did interfere for the
Salvation of man from sin, our friend denied that he had
interfered at all 1 This is a very strange contradiction, and
a very strange position to be in. (Derisive laughter.)
Mr. Foote referred to Weismann, and seems to imagine
that I thought there is a strange charm in a German scientist.
Mr. Foote : I said there is no magic in a German name.
Mr. Lee : That implied the same. The reason I empha
sised that Weismann was a German was that a great deal
of our philosophy and science comes from Germany. The
foremost thinkers in Europe to-day are to be found in
Germany; great experimenters and observers in Germany
have given to the world facts, and inferences from facts,
which English and other thinkers have been careful to follow
out. That is why I emphasised German.
But our friend says that these quotations from Weismann
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
79
A word as to Darwin and his Descent of Man. Dr.
Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of
the principle of Evolution, has gone into the question of
Buffering very thoroughly, and, in his work on Darwinism^
he shows, in some three or four pages, that what Mr. Foote
has attempted to establish on that point to-night is not what
is in nature, but what exists only in Mr. Foote’s mind.
(Applause.)
The Chairman : We have now reached the final stage
Of this debate. I am about to call upon Mr. Foote to give
us his last contribution to it; and I would take the liberty
Of again saying that he is entitled, and I hope will receive,
your careful and courteous attention. It is more than pro
bable—I do not say I expect it—that he will adduce
arguments and make statements which may trouble the
minds of some who listen to them ; but I will again remind
guch persons that they will, on this occasion, have the oppor
tunity of hearing the final word from their own champion.
Mr. Foote : My attention is drawn to the fact that no
H®w matter is to be introduced into the last speech. That
is a point which my opponent must be careful about, as he
has got the last speech, not I. My position is one which I
generally find the Atheist has to accept. Theism, of course,
is true, and Atheism, of course, is false ; yet Theists usually
fed the advantage, even in the case of truth against error,
of having the last word.
Now, with respect to Germany, I do not object to
Germany; my only surprise was that “ German ” should be
put before “science,” as it was. Science is not English,
French, German, or of any nationality. Science is universal.
Science speaks an universal language when it speaks fact
and truth. And I deny that all our English science and
philosophy comes from Germany. It is a libel upon
England. Charles Darwin, the greatest biologist of this
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
8l
Then, again, Mr. Lee says that Atheism and Agnosticism
are different. What is the difference ? It is very largely
the difference between courage and timidity. I have
defined—rather ironically, it may be, but I may repeat it as
I have said it before—I have defined an Agnostic as an
Atheist with a tall hat on; and really Agnostics, who, as
Mr. Lee says—giving the names of Huxley and Spencer—
declare they do not know there is a God, are, to all intents
and purposes, in the same position as the Atheist. If they
do not know there is a God, it is clear that they are without
God, and to be without God is to be an Atheist.
Then we were told that God made man, but man’s heart
went astray and was opposed to God. (“ Oh.”) I should be
sorry to misrepresent Mr. Lee.
Mr. Lee : The words were “ but man has sought out
many devices.”
Mr. Foote : That is not the expression I was referring
to, Mr. Lee said that man’s heart had got opposed to
God I should be sorry to misrepresent him, but that is
Wfcat I have written down, and what, I think, I heard—at
any rate, it is the substance of what Mr. Lee said upon this
point. Jost take a human father and his child. If a child
of mine go astray, and I have fulfilled all my duties towards
him, I am not responsible for his wandering; because, in
bringing him into the world, I was not able to determine
absolutely his intellectual and moral character. But if a
father could absolutely determine the intellectual and moral
character of his child, and that child went astray, the
father Would be responsible for not exercising his power.
(Applause.) God is not in the position of an earthly father.
An earthly father works under what to us, however inscrutable, are laws of heredity; for a child is not simply the
child of his father, he is a child of his father’s father, and
his mother s father, and their mothers and fathers. Heredity
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
83
parposes, and we are striving to abolish it, and so to prevent
the ethical education which you say God intends by his in
flictions.
God, we are told, has a right to take the life he sends.
For the sake of argument I will not impugn that. There is
no time to discuss it. But, assuming that God has the right
to take life, let us see how it works out. Under the law we
have a right to take life. A criminal is tried and sentenced
to execution. But society insists that, if he is to be killed,
he shall be killed in the most painless manner possible.
We insist that the hanging shall be done with the utmost
dispatch. In America they are trying whether electricity is
not even less painful than hanging. In short, although we
must (as we say) kill (though I doubt if anybody has that
right), still, if we must kill, we are refined enough to say we
must kill swiftly and painlessly. But that is not God’s
method; what we see in nature is not swift killing; it is
slow killing. When man is killed by “the act of God,” it
is often done very slowly ; not in a moment as by’the
hangman’s noose or by electrocution. A lingering disease
comes on and kills him week by week, month by month,
ahd year by year. It is an agonising form of cruelty. If
God has the right to take life, I deny that he has the right
to take it in that way. If life must be taken, it should be
taken swiftly and painlessly. All this cruelty in nature, all
this killing of human beings by slow disease and long agony,
gives the He to the statement that your God is a being of
¡»finite kindness and love.
&
Mr. Lee says that I object to revelation because I am
told that God does interfere in the world, and that I object
to Theism because God does
interfere in the world. He
says that is a contradiction. There is no contradiction; it
is a harmony. I object to Theism, because God does not
interfere to prevent injustice, cruelty, and suffering. You
try to justify his non-interference. Afterwards you offer me
a revelation, in which he does interfere. The contradiction
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
85
(so far as I am concerned) must be brought to a close. I
do not expect that what I have said in this debate will
haw pleased everybody. All I can say is that it was my
duty to say what I thought necessary. I took my own
position and defended it, and attacked what Mr. Lee himself
advanced. The world moves by this constant agitation.
You find sound water in the eager, flowing current. The
Still pool is stagnant and loathsome. And when the air
gets overcharged at times, we see the beautiful spectacle
of the lightning. But you cannot have the lightning without
the dash of the thunder-clouds. And when we differ in
opinion we have these friendly meetings, so that out of the
thunder-clash of debate there may leap forth the lightning
of truth. (Loud applause.)
The Chairman : In fifteen minutes more this debate
will be brought to a close. That space of time will be
occupied by Mr. Lee, whom I now call on.
Mr. Lee : I do not know whether I understood Mr. Foote
to say that Theists like the last word. If I did understand
him to say that, may I remind him that he suggested that I
should open the first night, and he would open the second
night ? That is not my arrangement, but his. So, then,
our friend has made a mistake in saying I like the last word.
Our friend says that the putting of the word “ German ”
before the word “ science ” was what he quarrelled with,
because science is universal. It does not belong to Germany
or Bngland; it is universal. If science is universal, then
knowledge is universal, and the great Scientific Being—if
you will allow me to use the word—must be an universal
Knowing Being ; and that Being can be no other than God.
The truth is that, out of all the scientific facts to be found
everywhere in nature, we can get lines of evidence which
lead up to one great fact—God is, and God reigns.
But our friend says it is an insult to England to say most
�THEISM OR ATHEISM ?
87
to ask for a definition ; and Mr. Foote, in answer to my
request, ought to have given me a definition. But we have
it now, and it comes to this—matter is the substance of all
the phenomena which come under his sensations. But
what are your sensations ? Sensations are not matter; they
are the mind's recognition of material existences and con
nections. Then there is something other than matter j and
the thing for which I have been contending, the recognition
Of mind as a separate entity and substance, is now estab
lished in the confession of Mr. Foote. (Applause.)
Mr. Foote says that Atheism does not construct, any
more than Theism constructs ; it is a speculative system.
But the speculation has shown itself in this way—that, while
I have been brave enough to lay down a series of given
propositions, each of them leading up to another, and to
construct an argument on definite propositions and evi
dences, Mr. Foote has not constructed any argument, but
has simply been criticising the ideas and theories which he
fancies represent Theism. So, then, Atheism, in the person
of Mr. Foote, has not constructed anything. Theism, in
the person of Mr. Lee, has constructed something; and
that something has not been touched. (Applause.)
But Mr. Foote admits there is a difference between
Atheism and Agnosticism. The one, he would say, re
presents courage, and the other timidity. But is it not
funny that some of the men to whom he has referred as
not believing in God are the men who write themselves
down Agnostics, and, therefore, are characterised by Mr.
Foote as being too timid to say what their belief is ? Not
by any means a flattering position to be in.
But Mr. Foote objects to the statement that man’s heart
is opposed to God. I am not sure whether I made use of
those words—probably I did; but, whether I used them or
not, they describe a great fact, and facts are stubborn things.
Man’s heart is opposed to God, for what has Mr. Foote
Shown us to-night ? “Tell me,” he said, “ that a God like
�THEISM OR ATHEISM?
89
Our friend says that the idea of God was of slow growth,
and he gave us a remarkable history as to how the idea of
God grew; but, while the story was pretty, it was opposed
to ascertained facts, for we know, by the science of com
parative religion, that the first form of religion known
to man was not belief in many Gods, but belief in one
God.
Ah, says our friend, but in battles of this nature clouds
gome together, and in the shock the lightning flash of
truth comes forth. Yes, yes; but what is truth ? I feel
sometimes, as I think of the sufferings through which I have
seen some small section of the human race pass, that I also
know something of suffering. I have seen my little ones
taken out of my home and hidden in the earth; but to tell
me5 Sir, that I have been produced by a mindless, brainless,
purposeless, heartless universe, only to have affections
qwcteied in my heart, only to have children born and
placed in my arms, and then for this blind, ruthless thing
you call the universe to wreck those affections and destroy
those lives, is to say that your universe is an incarnate fiend.
But if there be a God, and that God possesses mind, intention, heart, my children are not dead—they live. And out
of the shock of brain with brain, and heart with heart, there
©om® this truth: “Thank God, heaven is above all yet,
and there lives a Judge whom no king can corrupt.” (Much
applause.)
Mr* Lee, again rising, said : It is now my duty, my
pleasurable duty, to move that the very best thanks of this
meeting be given to our worthy chairman for so generously,
patiently, and ably presiding over our meeting on these two
evenings of debate.
Me. Moote : I beg, with the most profound sincerity, to
seccmd that vote of thanks.
Upon being put, the vote was carried by acclamation.
�(Poem omitted through Reporteds error (see page 61).
Who shall say that to no mortal
Heaven ere ope’d its mystic portal ?
Gave no dream or revelation,
Save to one peculiar nation ?
Souls sincere, now voiceless, nameless,
Knelt at altars, fired and flameless ;
Asked of nature, asked of reason,
Sought through every sign and season,
Seeking God. Through darkness groping,
Weeping, praying, panting, pining
For the light on Israel shining.
Ah, it must be God’s sweet kindness
Pities erring human blindness ;
And the soul whose pure endeavor
Strives toward God shall live forever—
Live by the great Father’s favor,
Saved by the all-sufficient Savior.
�
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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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Title
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Theism or atheism : which is the more reasonable?
Creator
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Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
Lee, W.T.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 90 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Report of a public debate between Mr. W.T. Lee and Mr. G.W.Foote held in the Temperance Hall, Derby, May 15 and 16, 1895. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Theism
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Atheism
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WHAT DOES
CHRISTIAN THEISM TEACH?
VERBATIM REPORT OF THE
TWO NIGHTS’ DISCUSSION
BETWEEN THE REV.
A. J. HARRISON AND C. BRADLAUGH.
Held at the New Hall of Science, Old Street, on Tuesday
and Wednesday, January yth and xoth, 1872.
J. R. ROBERTSON, ESQ., IN THE CHAIR.
LONDON |
Austin & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
PRICE SIXPENCE.
��FIRST NIGHT.
Subject of debate: A Certain Passage on page twentytwo of Mr. C. Bradlaugh’s pamphlet entitled “ A Plea for
Atheism.”
The Chairman, in opening the proceedings, said: Ladies
and Gentlemen,—My duty is a simple one, and with your
assistance it will be a very easy one. I have simply to read
now the subject of discussion this evening. Mr. Bradlaugh
is to prove the fairness of the following passage :—
What does Christian Theism teach ? That the first man made perfect
by the all-powerful, all-wise, all-good God, was nevertheless inperfect,
and by his imperfection brought misery into the world, where the
all-good God must have intended misery should never come. That
this God made men to share this misery, men whose fault was their
being what he made them. That this God begets a son, who is
nevertheless his unbegotten self, and that by belief in the birth of
God’s eternal son, and in the death of the undying who died to satisfy
God’s vengeance, man may escape the consequences of the first man’s
error. Christian Theism declares that belief alone can save man, and
yet recognises the fact that man’s belief results from teaching, by
establishing missionary societies to spread the faith. Christian
Theism teaches that God, though no respecter of persons, selected
as his favourites one nation in preference to all others ; that man
can do no God of himself or without God’s aid, but yet that each
man has a free will; that God is all-powerful, but that few go to
heaven and the majority to hell; that all are to. love God, who
has predestined from eternity that by far the largest number of human
beings are to be burning in hell for ever. Yet the advocates for
Theism venture to upbraid those who argue against such a faith.
Mr. Harrison is to take the negative.
Mr. Harrison, who was warmly cheered, said: My
friends, it is somewhat unusual for the speaker who opens
the debate, to take the negative; but the circumstances
under which we assemble here to-night are themselves
unusual, and may justify the departure in this case from the
customary rule of debates. The fact is, indeed, that the
affirmative is supposed to be already given; and the affirma
tive having been read to you by the Chairman in his address,
what I have to do is to show that Christian Theism does
not teach what it is asserted in the “ Plea for Atheism,” page
2.2, that it does teach, and that the passage as a whole is not
�4
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
a fair representation of what I should call Christianity, but
of what Mr. Bradlaugh calls Christian Theism. That is the
subject. Now this debate is to last two evenings. I pur
pose, then, dividing the passage into two parts, taking one
chiefly to-night, and the other chiefly to-morrow night. I
shall read to you the precise words I intend to criticise, and
then to criticise it: “ What does Christian Theism teach ?
That the first man made perfect by the all-powerful, all-wise,
all-good God, was nevertheless imperfect, and by his imper
fection brought misery into the world, where the all-good
God must have intended misery should never come. That
this God made men to share this misery, men whose fault
was their being what he made them.” So much I purpose
dealing with to-night. Now first of all, as to the method I
pursued in the study of this subject, and which I think a
fair method to pursue, I must state in a few words. It
appears-to me that the only fair way in dealing with the
teaching of Christian Theism is not to break it up into
several parts—no; even to destroy the consistency of the
parts themselves is to deal with it fragmentarily, but to take
it fairly as a whole, and gather its impressions of its practices,
principles, and instructions from the whole. (Hear, hear.)
That is precisely the course I should pursue with any scien
tific investigation whatever. A few facts taken isolatedly would
prove nothing. Taking the largest number of facts I can
obtain, I draw my conclusion from that number; and if I
find that the theory I adopt is in harmony with the larger
proportion of the facts, that theory is the most probable in
my estimation. If I find in the Bible certain statements all
bearing upon a particular teaching, I adopt that teaching,
whether it is to be found in the Old or in the New Testament.
If the several parts take form, I draw my conclusion from
them all. (Hear, hear.) With reference to the passage I
have cited, I make this preliminary remark, that in criticising
this particular passage, I have chosen what I considered the
best of sceptical views held by what I think is now known
as theSecular party. Mr. Bradlaugh will perhaps admitthat the
writings in the National Reformerxt\%y be taken as awhole as
the exponents of the views of the majority of Secularists, but
not of particular theories. Had I chosen to take the utter
ances of some obscure person, it might have been said that
that person was not a representative man, and that what
might therefore be said against Secularism or scepticism
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
5
would be as nothing. That being a fair rule, all I ask in re
turn is, the application of precisely the same principle. I
ask that when Mr. Bradlaugh breaks utterance to prove
what Christian Theism teaches, he will not speak of utter
ances which have not been heard of except within a limited
circle, but that he will go to the Scriptures, and show from
the Bible that his view of Christian Theism is the fair one.
(Cheers.) The passage which I have to criticise to-night
may be regarded as dealing, first, with the Christian doctrine
of God; and next, with the Christian doctrine of man. First
then ; we have it here stated “ that the first man made per
fect by the all-powerful, all-wise, all-good God, was never
theless imperfect.” Now the question before us is not
whether Mr. Bradlaugh draws this inference for himself, but
the question is, whether Christian Theism teaches that ?
(Hear, hear.) Does Christian Theism teach this doctrine,
that the first man made perfect by the all-powerful, all-wise,
all-good God, was nevertheless imperfect? Does it, in
short, teach that God made a man that was perfect and
yet imperfect ? I confess I do not know of a single
passage of Scripture which teaches that, and I do not
know even of any competent writer who asserts such
a thing. It would be unwise now to go into detail on
this subject, but my challenge is a broad one to Mr. Brad
laugh—namely, I challenge him to find any passages in the
Bible that teach such a thing, or any competent authorities that
teach such a thing. I object, not perhaps by any fault of
Mr. Bradlaugh, but by, may be, an unavoidable obscurity
of language ; but I object to the way in which this
thing is attributed to Deity. We are told that this man,
“by his imperfection brought misery into the world, where
the all-good God must have intended misery should never
come.” The word intended here, may be taken in several
senses. If Mr. Bradlaugh means that Christian Theists
believe God decreed that misery should never come into the
world, then I affirm that neither the Bible nor any intelligent
Theist teaches any such thing. If anything else than this is
meant, I suppose Mr. Bradlaugh will inform us by and bye.
Here, too, he has put together the words perfect and
imperfect in such proximity, that we are led to suppose that
Mr. Bradlaugh is referring to the same period of time, when
God made man perfect and yet imperfect. What is the real
teaching on that subject? Is it not that God made man
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CHRISTIAN THEISM,
perfect ? and that man by his sin brought misery into the
world ? I do not think any passage of Scripture affirms that
God compelled Adam or any other man to sin. If any such
passage can be found, Mr. Bradlaugh will have such in his
favour; but if there is nothing of the sort, then I think the
only conclusion at which you can arrive is, that the state
ment is not a fair representation of the facts. (Cheers.)
Now what appears to me to be the Christian doctrine in rela
tion to God, is simply this—that God is indeed all-wise, all
good, all-powerful, as Mr. Bradlaugh here asserts, but we do
not regard it as within the purpose or scope of Christianity
to account for the origin of evil, as it does not account for
its continuance. If the Bible were a philosophical book,
accounting for the strange problems of human life, then we
should expect to have an account of the origin of evil; but
it is not, and does not. The object for which the Bible was
given was not to account for the origin ot evil, but to help
to take evil away. (Cheers.) Now as the subject is not
Atheism versus Theism, it is enough for me to say that any
arguments that are brought forward as against the Bible, tell
with equal force as arguments for Theism. Mr. Bradlaugh
is not here to doubt the existence of a God. That he is an
Atheist we know; but as far as this particular statement is
concerned, he is not professing to show that there is no God,
only what Christian Theism teaches. I say that Christian
Theism does not teach this. Not only so, but the state
ment is made “that this God made men to share this
misery, men whose fault was their being what he made
them.” If any Christian Theist has taught that in so
many words, or in principle and essence, then I say I
hope that such a Christian Theist will not get many
persons to listen to him for the future. (Hear, hear.)
I never heard of any Theist who taught such nonsense as is
here given. I ask what is meant by the statement “ that God
made men to share this misery ?” Does it mean that he
created men for the purpose of sharing this misery ? because
if Mr. Bradlaugh means this, I ask for the proof of such an
extraordinary statement Does it mean that God compelled
men to share this misery ? because if it does, I ask where is the
proof to be found. I will deal with the answers when they are
given; I only put before you now the points upon which I
think it is right I should have satisfactory answers. The
view which Christians take of the Bible teaching is just this
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
7
—that God is indeed all-wise, all-good, all-powerful, but that
he has not violated, and that he will not violate, the consti
tution of man as he gave that constitution to him at first. I
grant to Mr. Bradlaugh, most readily, that the difficulties
around us on the subject of the existence of evil are very •
great. With the utmost frankness I admit that the origin of
evil, and its continuance, is a subject so involved in mystery,
that I know of .no way out of it; but what then? I have
never professed to account for the origin of evil or its con
tinuance; but here is a system which professes to teach
me what no dissertation of philosophy will do—viz., to
overcome the evil I have found in myself, and others around
me. (Cheers.) As to the theoretical difficulties which
environ the subject, the views of Christian Theists amount
to this—that though there are difficulties which we cannot
now account for, we must remember the doctrine of the
immortality of man, and we must take the several parts of
Christianity in one connected scheme; and if we are asked
to suspend judgment on as much as we are not competent
to attain, there is greater knowledge hereafter. What is dark
now may appear distinct and light then : and probably the
time will come when all that is perplexing and difficult here,
will be satisfactorily explained; but I must always remember
that as this world is intended to last a great deal longer than
I shall last in it, and has been in existence for a long period
of time, I am not competent to take in all the principles that
govern the world. It requires a mightier intellect than mine,
and therefore it is only reasonable that there are difficulties
which I cannot solve, and doubts which I cannot clear up.
(Cheers.) The second point is the Christian doctrine of
man’s nature. It is here assumed that it is not men’s fault
that they suffer for sin. If it were affirmed simply that there
was much suffering that originated with sin, but not the in
dividual sin of men and women, then there is no one that
would doubt the proposition; but if it is asserted that sin,
which first originated human misery, was a sin compelled by
God, then I say the doctrine is as false as it is blasphemous.
(Cheers.) Mr. Bradlaugh will perhaps draw his own infer
ences on the matter, but it is not inferences we want, but
the standard authority which we possess, and which must be
taken as proof, the Bible itself. I think th$ teaching is this
—that whilst man was made perfect, he was yet made free;
and the great problem is yet to be solved how it was possible
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
to make man with any goodness whatever' if that goodness
was not voluntary. How could a man be good, and true,
and right, if he had no choice in the matter, and had no will
in the matter ? How could that man be perfect whose con
duct was not voluntary? (Hear, hear.) I think this is
the doctrine of Christian Theism—not that man was made
imperfect, but that he was made as he should be made, a
being of free will and free moral agency, and therefore with
a possibility of sinning. This is a different assertion from
the passage I have read. From this one would suppose that
Mr. Bradlaugh wished us to suppose that the first man could
not sin, according to the Bible. Is it to be found in the
Bible, or even in the works of the most eminent Christian
Theists ? That there have been widely different views of
Christian doctrine, in different parts of the Christian Church,
may be readily granted, but not once that I know of has
any Christian Church ever represented Christianity as Mr.
Bradlaugh has represented it here. As far as I know, neither
on the continent of Europe, nor America—where great and
eminent men have lived and written—nor in England itself,
has any such representation been taken from the Christian
side, as here represented. With all desire to take Mr.
Bradlaugh’s words as fairly as I can, I must say that I should
never have understood what he meant from what is here
represented. It is only from the question, “What does
Christian Theism teach ?” that I am able to discover what
he is talking about. If I should find in the Bible what is
stated here in this passage, I should be inclined to doubt
whether the Bible has any right to my allegiance at all. It
would be impossible for me to teach a system which had
doctrines so monstrous as is here attributed; but when I find
upon a simple comparison of Mr. Bradlaugh’s statement with
the Bible itself, that the difference between them is as great as
darkness and light, I am literally and logically compelled to
come to the conclusion that Mr. Bradlaugh has yet to under
stand what Christianity is. (Cheers.) This is not, after all,
a harsh statement, for it appears to me that an Atheist is
rendered unable to understand Christianity, for the first
position which an Atheist must take is the position of
Theism ; that he must first be convinced that God is, and
then that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
So strongly is this impressed upon my mind, that I have
always declined to discuss the origin of the Bible with an
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
9
Atheist, for the simple reason that he will not admit that
there is a God to give a Bible. Why have I undertaken this
discussion then ? Because it is not the origin of the Bible,
but whether Mr. Bradlaugh has fairly represented the Bible.
It is not whether the Bible is true or false; but is Mr.
Bradlaugh’s representation of it true or false ? This then is
the limit of the discussion, and within which I hope it will
be confined; for I simply put before you this point—I say,
if I succeed in showing that Mr. Bradlaugh is unfair, I shall
have done something to discredit him when he speaks upon
Christianity. I mean simply to show that Mr. Bradlaugh
is not trustworthy when he comes to the doctrine of Chris
tianity, that he does not understand it, and that he cannot
fairly speak of it. (Loud cheering.) I will recall your
attention to the words, “ and by his imperfection brought
misery into the world, where the all-good God must have
intended misery should never come. That this God made
men to share this misery, men whose fault was their being
what he made them.” I must ask you to remember that, in
all human probability, the Old Testament would never have
been given if it was not intended that it should be succeeded
by the New Testament. That is proved from the Old Tes
tament itself. In the Old Testament you hear of promises
of one that is to be a great deliverer, and they increase in
force till the canon of die Old Testament was completed.
But this would have had no meaning if it was not intended
that the New Testament should have succeeded. Is it fair
then to take any passage in the Old Testament, and take it
out of its just relation to the New? I say the whole of the
“fall” must be taken in connection with the redemption.
Mr. Bradlaugh has no right to take the fall, and dissociate it
from the New Testament. Mr. Bradlaugh may think as
little of the New as of the Old Testament; but what
ever he thinks, I only ask for fairness, and that he will not
attribute to the Old or New Testament what it does not
state. And I say there is no statement in either the Old
or New Testament such as here described. (Cheers.)
If you study the Old Testament Scriptures, you will find
many passages which throw light upon the New; and there
is a unity of meaning there which would otherwise be in
visible to your sight. But I only ask you to judge for
yourselves whether the ordinary English Bible which you
possess does or does not teach that which is affirmed here
�............
IO
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
of it. That man is everywhere in the Bible spoken of as a
moral agent, and that he is again and again appealed to
to take his choice of two given courses; and that he may
choose I think is self-evident; therefore I think it is mon
strously unjust to say that Christian Theism teaches that
all this sin and misery came into the world without any
fault upon man’s part; that man, in short, could not be
other than he was; or, to adhere to the words literally as
they are here, “ that this God made men to share this
misery, men whose fault was their being what he made them.”’
(Loud cheers.)
The Chairman, before calling upon Mr. Bradlaugh,
requested that expressions of dissent or approval from the
audience might be quick, and soon finished, in order not to
waste the time of the speakers, which was limited to half-anhour.
Mr. Bradlaugh, who was also met with a very hearty
reception, said : This discussion is one of the simplest that
could possibly take place. It is whether or not the view of
Christian Theism contained in the words read by the Chair
man at the commencement of this debate, is a fair view;
that is all I am bound to prove. Mr. Harrison is to negate
that—to show that it is unfair; and he has told you that by
comparison of the words of the Bible with my words, that he
has arrived at two conclusions; one, that what I say is non
sense ; next, that it is what no intelligent Christian ever
taught. Now, if Mr. Harrison had given us the word's of
the Bible that he had compared with my words, I might
have been able more accurately than I can now, to estimate
the process by which he had entitled himself so to denounce'
my passage; but at present I do not know what part of the
Bible he has read. (Hear, hear.) He has deliberately
denied the truth of the whole of the statement, and given
nothing but the most general phrases in support of his
denial. My course, therefore, is a very simple one. With •
all respect to Mr. Harrison, I shall (except so far as it suits
my purpose) treat the speech just delivered as if it had not
been uttered \ and I shall prove the truth of every statement
I have made. Mr. Harrison did not attempt to define
Christian Theism from his point of view, or otherwise, and
it might be asked, Is it Roman Catholicism ? is it Church of
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
II
Englandism ? is it Presbyterianism ? is it Wesleyanism ?
Do the Baptists teach Christian Theism ? or do the Inde
pendents ? or the Quakers ? or the Lutherans ? or the Greek
Church? (Laughter.) I do not intend myself to meddle
with any other Christian Theism than that which is declared
to be so by the law of England, under the 9th and 10th of
William III., chap. 32, section 1, and which is to be found
in the Bible and die book of Common Prayer. It is
from the Bible and the Thirty-nine Articles, and the creeds
included in those articles, that I intend to prove every word
of the passage which has been read, except one, and that
Mr. Harrison has been pleased to admit, I should have
had some difficulty in proving that the Bible taught thatman
had a free will, but Mr. Harrison has distinctly admitted
that, and it may be taken as proved. (Laughter.) All the
rest I will undertake to prove by texts of Scripture, without
the slightest possibility of doubt about them. First, Is God
all-powerful ? With reference to that I will read Matt. xix.
26 : “With God all things are possible.” I will read you.
Genesis xviii. 14: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” I
will read you Jeremiah xxxii. 17 and 27. I should mention,
however, that I do not always read the whole of the verses ;
only such as suits my purpose. (Oh, oh, and laughter.) If
there is any other portion of the verse that contradicts or
explains, then it is open to Mr. Harrison to avail himself of
his time to show that I have read it unfairly. I thought it
right to mention this, so as not to mislead you or Mr. Har
rison. The 17th and 27th verses are: “Ah Lord God! behold,
thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great
power and stretched-out arm, and there is nothing too hard
for thee,” and—“ Is there anything too hard for me ?” (A
voice: Read it through, please.) If you will cultivate decency
I should be obliged. (Hear, hear.) Then, Luke i. 37:
“ For with God nothing shall be impossible.” Luke xviii.
27, says I “The things which are impossible with men are
possible with God.” I submit that I have proved in the
words of my pamphlet that God is all-powerful; but, lest
there should be any doubt on the point, I will read the
explicit words from the first of the Thirty-nine Articles,
which declares that God has. “ infinite power.” I admit
that something may be said on the contrary. I do not say
that Mr. Harrison may not quote texts in direct opposition
sometimes to what I have quoted—(laughter)—and as he
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
says that he avails himself of the majority of facts, then if
the majority of texts are against me, that will be fair argu
ment for him, subject to one or two comments which I may
make. There is something which may be said against
God’s all-powerfulness. Mr. Harrison may quote Genesis
vi. 3, which says : “ My spirit shall not always strive with
man,” and he may urge that an omnipotent God does not
—could not—strive with man at all; or he may quote from
Judges i. 19 : “And the Lord was with Judah; and he
drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could
not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had
chariots of iron.” I will not presume to urge that that con
tradicts God’s omnipotence, because while the grammar is
'doubtful the translation is worse; and probably our friend
may tell you that in some other version it does not quite
mean what it says here. (Cheers.) As he has limited him
self to the Bible I will do the same, and I think I have
made out a fair case that Christian Theism teaches that God
is all-powerful. Does it teach that God is all-wise? In
order to show you this I will read from Job xxiv. 23 : “ For
his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his
doings.” That is not quite clear; but the Bible has the dis
advantage of not being always clear; and, as in the Tichborne case, if I cannot get one good witness, I must call a
number of bad ones. (Laughter.) Proverbs xv. 3 : “The
eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and
the good.” That is a little stronger, but not so strong as it
might be. Jeremiah xxxii. 19: “Great in counsel, and
mighty in work; for thine eyes are open upon all the ways
of the sons of men.” 1 Chron. xxviii. 9 : “ For the Lord
searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations
of the thoughts.” Then in Acts i. 24, you will find this
statement: “ Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all
men,” and prayer founded upon that declaration. In Acts
xv. 18 there is another declaration: “ Known unto God
are all his works from the beginning of the world.” If
you think these quotations are not conclusive—and I
admit they want patching together—then I will read in
support of my statement the first article of the Christian
religion, that declares “God is of infinite wisdom,” and
I think that last witness makes up for any little defects
that may have gone before in the others. But my posi
tion here, I grant, is not unassilable. Mr. Harrison
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
*3
may quote Genesis xviii. 20, 21, and say, “What do you
mean by declaring God is all-wise, when I read ‘ The cry
of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is
very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they
have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come
unto me; and if not, I will know.’ How can a God be all
wise when he says he does not know what was happening at
Sodom and Gomorrah?” (Loud cheers.) I admit that that
is a weak point in my case, and I admit there are forty or
fifty such passages in the Bible; but when I have the articles
of religion declaring that “ God is all-wise,” then I think it
is not unfair to say that Christian Theism teaches that God
is all-wise as well as all-powerful. Then comes, “Is God all
good ?” Those are the only points as to attributes of Deity.
I will read Psalm xcii. 15. It says, “ The Lord is upright;
he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” Deut.
Xxxii. 4 says, “ He is the rock, his work is perfect; for all
his ways are judgment; a God of truth and without iniquity,
just and right is he.” Then the first article of the Christian
religion also declares God to be “of infinite goodness,” so I
think I have proved that Christian Theism teaches that God
is all-good. I know Mr. Harrison may make out a case on
the other side; so I will deal with that too. He may read
Romans ix. 10, 11, 12, and 13, which are in these words :
“And not only this; but when Rebecca also had con
ceived by one, even by our father Isaac (for the children
being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil,
that the purpose of God according to election might stand,
not of works, but of him that calleth); it was said unto her,
The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob
have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” Mr. Harrison may say,
“How could the good God love and hate children yet un
born, and whom he had created for the purpose of loving
and hating?” I will admit that my case is very weak there.
(Laughter.) He may quote to me Ezekiel xx. 25, “ Where
fore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judg
ments whereby they should not live.”* If he puts that, I
must tell him it is a wretched translation, and that he must
not rely too much upon that. That being so, I think I may
take it as proved that God is all-wise, all-powerful, and all
good. Now I will take it that that God is all-perfect. In
Genesis i. 27, it says: “So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God created he him.” Then in the
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
31st verse we have : “ God saw everything that he had made,,
and behold it was very good.” I think that should be
sufficient proof that God made man perfect; but there is.
something to be said as to general Christian teaching, in
order that it may not be said I am drawing a doctrine that,
nobody else takes. (Hear, hear.) John Pye Smith, in
his work on “ Theology,” for those who teach in pulpits,,
declares: “ The first human pair must have been created
in a state of maturity and perfection as to the immediate use
of powers, organs, and faculties of every kind.” I submit
that under the text in Genesis, it is proven that God made
man perfect; but I ought not to rob my friend of one advan
tage, which he may use. He may quote Psalm viii. 5 :
“ For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels ;”
and he may ask how God could make man so ? Well, if he
will kindly explain to me the precise condition of the angels,
I will at once frankly give up anything that that text drives
out of my position; but till he does that I may say that God
made man perfect. (Cheers.) Next: “ Man by his imper
fection brought misery into the world.” I propose to read
to you first, Romans v. 12 : “ By one man sin entered into
the world, and death by sin.” The 14th verse : “ Neverthe-less death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them
that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgres
sion.” Then part of the 18th verse : “ By the offence of
one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation.” Part
of the 19th verse : “For by one man’s disobedience many;
were made sinners.” Then I will read to you from 1 Cor.
xv. 21, 22, which are as follows : “ By one man came death;,
in Adam all die.” Those are parts of the verses which seem
to support my case. I may in addition to that urge that.
Calvin figured to some extent in Christianity, although’
I do not put him upon my friend as unanswerable. In>
Calvin’s Institutes, book 2, cap. i., sections 5, 6, and 8
“We derive an innate depravity from our very birth; thedenial of this is an instance of consummate impudence. . . ..
All children, without a single exception, are polluted as;
soon as they exist. Infants, themselves, as they bring their
condemnation into the world with them, are rendered,
obnoxious to punishment by their own sinfulness.
For
though they have not yet produced the fruits of their iniquity,,
yet they have the whole seed of it in them, their whole
nature cannot but be odious, and abominable to God.’1
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
15
Then I think I show that this one man by his imperfection
brought misery into the world. (Cheers.) Then I propose
to prove that this all-wise and omnipotent God, made men
to share that misery. I propose to prove that by reading to
you the first article of the Christian faith, which says that
“ God is the maker and preserver of all things •” and I urge
that if God is the maker of all things—all-wise and all
knowing—as I have proved, then he knew what the result
of his manufacture would be before he manufactured it.
(Loud cheers.) I quote, also to you the Nicene Creed,
which teaches the same doctrine as the first article; and then
I quote the 17th Article of the Church of England, which is
in these words : “ Predestination to life is the everlasting
purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the
world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel,
secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom
he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind;” and “ Predestu
nation is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the devil doth
thrust them either into desperation, or into recklessness of
most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.” Then
Romans viii. 29 : “ For whom he did foreknow, he also did
predestinate.” 30th verse : “ Moreover, whom he did predes
tinate, them he also called.” 31st verse : “What shall we say
then to these things ? If God be for us, who can be against
us ?” Then I read from Ephesians i. 5 : “ Having predes
tinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to
himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.” And
from Isaiah xlvi. 9, 10: “I am God, and there is none else;
I am God, and there is none like me. Declaring the end
from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that
are not yet done.” I allege that these things prove that
God knew before the beginning what was to happen—
predestined what was to happen, and made men for the pur
pose of taking their part in the things so happening.
(Cheers.) I submit that I have proved, in the words of my
pamphlet, that “ God made men to share this misery.”
Next, “ that God begets a son, who is nevertheless his un
begotten self.” I will read to you from the second article
of the Christian faith: •“ The Son, which is the Word of
the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very
and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father.”
Also from the Nicene Creed: “And in one Lord Jesus
Christ, the only begotten son of God, begotten of his Father
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God
of very God; begotten, not made; being of one substance
with the Father, by whom all things were made?’ And
from the Athanasian Creed: “ God is one; such as the
Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible,
and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. And yet there are
not three Gods, but one God.” (Laughter.) I say, in the
words of my pamphlet, then, “ That this God begets a son,
who is nevertheless his unbegotten self.” I am now ap
proaching that stage in which my time will end; therefore,
I may not go farther, for it would be useless to try to prove
another proposition, which will take a longer time than I
have at my disposal. But I ask you to deal with the posi
tion as we occupy it. Mr. Harrison says that if I mean,
when I urge that an all-good God intended misery should
come into the world, that he decreed misery should come
into the world, then it is not so. Well, when I find that
God predestined and declared that misery should exist, I
have the right to say he both decreed it, and knew it. When
Mr. Harrison says he cannot account for the origin of evil,
I will read in my next speech passages which show that God
made it. (Loud and prolonged cheering.)
Mr. Harrison : I am very much surprised to discover
that Mr. Bradlaugh has so early in the debate given up his
whole case. (“ Oh, oh,” and laughter.) Not one single pas
sage that Mr. Bradlaugh has quoted, proves a statement
contained in the “ Plea for Atheism,” except points upon
which there was no dispute. (Hear, hear.) I will say in
passing, in reference to the verse upon which Mr. Bradlaugh
could not quote from Judges without a smile, that any intel
ligent or fair man—Christian or infidel—could not read that
passage, and think it referred to God. No intelligent man
thinks that the He there spoken of, who could not drive out
the inhabitants that had chariots of iron, is God. Mr. Brad
laugh himself gave the clue to the answer when he said the
translation was a wretched one. If he knew the translation
was wretched, jthen his unfairness in quoting the passage
was wretched also. (Loud cheers.) He brings forward a
passage, not in reply, for the greater part of the speech had
nothing to do with the subject of debate. (“ Oh, oh.”)
Allow me to say a word to you Secularists : I have ventured
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
17
to face the lion inhis den—the Douglas in his hall. (Hisses.)
I have come among you trusting to fair play, and thinking
the Secularists of London were as fair as the Secularists of
the provinces. (Hear, hear.) I think Mr. Bradlaugh is a man
capable of defending himself, therefore do not take the
credit out of his hands. That is a friendly hint in passing. I
say that Mr. Bradlaugh, in the majority of the passages
quoted, was simply wasting time ; for what I want from
him is not inferential statements of his, but I want decisive
proof that the doctrine he teaches is taught in the Bible,
or by Christian Theists. What does he do ? He takes the
passages, and travels over different parts of the Bible, and
brings those passages into the connection which he manu
factures for them, instead of the connection in which they
stand; and then he boasts of the success of the assertions in
his pamphlet, which he has not even attempted to prove.
If it were a discussion as to the consistency of the Bible
in all its parts, or a defence of Christianity, I should
show that his objections are only seeming objections, for he
has brain enough to know the rules upon the subject, and
the interpretations given by scholars. If this were a discus
sion upon Christianity generally, I would undertake to
show that the phrases quoted as to God going down in
relation to Sodom, and as to hatred in the Romans, are
expressions in harmony with the usages of speech, and
which scholars often use; and that the majority of Sun
day-school teachers in this country have knowledge
enough of the Bible to explain those passages very easily
indeed. (Cheers.) But that is not the question before us,
and I object to have dust thrown in my eyes by Mr. Brad
laugh’s hand, or any other man’s hand. I asked him to
give positive proof—which he has not given—that God
made men for the purpose of suffering this misery, and
that they had to suffer it through the fault of God, who
made them what they were. If we look for a moment or
two at his statements, you will see how little there is in
them. He brings forward passages which I have not denied
—the omnipotence of God, and the goodness of God. I
thought he was hard up to know how to fill up his full time,
and that therefore he resorted to an expedient of this kind.
But I thank him for even what he has done, for if the
passages which he has given be read when the report of this
discussion is printed, some Secularists will become acquainted
�'
18
tM-'
■ ••»
; •
'■. yUX'1."?
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
with many passages with which they were not acquainted
before. But let it be granted that God was all-wise and all
good, and that he knew from the beginning what would
happen. There it is where Mr. Bradlaugh breaks down; he
thinks that whereas God foreknew all that would occur, that
he, foreknowing it, compelled it. There is a great difference
between the two things. (Hear, hear.) But assuming that
it is as he says, but which I deny, then I say that upon his
own showing, even upon the identity of foreknowledge and
foreordination, it is not proven that the Bible teaches God
compelled man to sin. The point is not whether it is logical
inference, but does the Bible state it ? I have heard nothing
yet of it, but only some of Mr. Bradlaugh’s inferences, which
he is so fond of drawing. I ask you to notice this. He waxed
eloquent, as if he was weak in his logic. He says to us that
God foreknew what would be the result of man’s being
made. Can he tell us the ultimate result of man’s creation?
I say, as in opening, that if it be true that God foreknew the
misery, and created man in relation to that misery, on Mr.
Bradlaugh’s own showing it is equally true that God fore
saw redemption, and created man in relation to that redemp
tion. (Cheers.) Mr. Bradlaugh in teaching what he holds
to be the doctrines of divine omnipotence, forgets one thing
—that nowhere in the Bible or anywhere else is it ever held
that the omnipotence includes the doing of impossibility. It
is perfectly true that what is impossible to men is possible toGod; but there is this which I hold to be impossible in its.
very essence—that a perfectly righteous and wise being
should act unwisely or unrighteously. What is the position I
take ? Why simply this; that as we have so limited a com
prehension as to be able to understand but a small portion
of the phenomena presented to us, it is not to be expected
that we can judge of the wisdom or the unwisdom of the
creation of man. But my opinion is, that the wisdom of God
in the fulness of time will appear to all, and that all these
things in the Bible should be taken together in connection
with the doctrine of immortality and the life to come. But
the point is, not whether it is true or false, but whether the
Bible teaches what Mr. Bradlaugh affirms it teaches, and
which I affirm he has not proved that it does. (Hisses.)For if you will consider all the passages which he has cited,
you will find that he has proved these things. They show
the omnipotence, the omniscience, and the perfection of God ;
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
19
that God created men perfect; that afterwards, man became
sinful; but they do not show that God made man to sin. They
show that God had predestinated or foreordained offices and
men for a great purpose in the providential government of the
world; they showa doctrine of predestination; but they do not
prove Mr. Bradlaugh’s doctrine of predestination. The point
where his argument fails is, that he has failed to show that the
teaching which he infers is the teaching of the Bible itself.
Nothing but the Scripture can suffice for this. He brings a
multitude of charges, but these are not to be determined by
false witnesses but by honest reading of the Bible; and by
such a means is he to prove his position if such passages are
to be found. He found fault with me for not citing passages
with which I had compared the “ Plea for Atheism.” Was
there not an excellent reason why I should not do such a
thing ? You know that according to the rules of this debate
the affirmative is to be found in the “ Plea for Atheism,”
and he does not give one single passage there to prove his
point. (Cheers.)
Mr. Bradlaugh : As to one or two adjectives and ad
verbs in Mr. Harrison’s remarks in the course of his speech,.
I will take the liberty of leaving them, because the debate
will be reported and printed. He has said I have wrenched
my passages from their context. That may be so, but I
think I have not, and I invite him to show me where I
have done so. The only one to which he referred was
Judges i. 19, and he says no intelligent person could
have so used that text, while admitting that the translation
was wretched. I hold in my hand a French print of the
Hebrew Scriptures, with Cahen’s notes to the passages and
verses; and I say, assuming that Mr. Harrison knew what
the original text was, he has said that which within his own
knowledge was not true, if Mr. Harrison be right. I will
read Cahen’s translation, and translate it roughly in these
words:—“L’Eternel fut avec Jehouda, il d^blaya la montagne, mais il ne put expulser les habitans de la plaine qui
avaient des chars de fer.” “The Eternal [this is the word
in our version rendered Lord] was with Judah; he swept
the mountain, but he could not expel the inhabitants of the
plain, who had chariots of iron.” (Cheers.) I say, that if
the “ he ” was intended to apply to Judah, it would have
read qui, instead of il, he. Fortunately, this construction
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
does not rely upon my view, because Cahen, who was a
great scholar (which I do not pretend to be) and a devout
man (which I do not pretend to be), has actually published
the precise criticisms on the disputed words in the notes at
the bottom of the page, which I place at Mr. Harrison’s
service. (Cheers.) I do not know that I have yet made
any “ boast ” in this debate; it is too early to boast in one’s
first speech, and I will therefore not trouble you at all with
that. Whether it is correct or not correct that I was
specially eloquent in order to cover any weak point
of argument is really of little consequence. (Hear, hear.)
I daresay if I wanted to cover a weakness I have the acute
ness to do so, and I hope Mr. Harrison will exhibit at least
as much acuteness in discovering my weaknesses as he has
manifested in this instance. (Laughter.) As to foreknow
ledge, there was Jonathan Edwards, “an intelligent Chris
tian,” who wrote : “ The existence of a perfect and certain
foreknowledge implies the certainty of the objects foreknown;
otherwise it would not be knowledge but conjecture, and if
the objects or events did not come to pass, it would be false
conjecture.” Mr. Harrison said that it was. mpossible a
perfectly righteous being should not act righteously. When
we find God declaring to Moses in Exodus xxxii. io: “Let
me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that
I may consume them,” what are we to think, especially
when we find that he repented of the evil upon a few
words of expostulation from Mose’s ? Mr. Harrison was quite
right in saying that I had not proved my case; I will go on
to do so now. I have declared in the “ Plea for Atheism,”
“ that by belief in the birth of God’s eternal son, and in
the death of the undying who died to satisfy God’s vengeance,
Christian Theism teaches that man may escape the conse
quences of the first man’s error.” I ought to notice that
Mr. Harrison says : “ If God foreknow the fall, he also fore
knew of the redemption.” That would be very convenient
for the few redeemed, but most unfortunate for the many
who died before the redemption. I proved from the eigh
teenth article of the Christian faith—and it is strange that
Mr. Harrison did not think it necessary to speak of it;
probably my case was so weak that it did not require it:—
“ That they are to be accursed who presume to say that every
man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth,
so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
21
law, and the light of nature. For Holy Scripture doth set
out unto us only the name of Jesus Christ, whereby men
must be saved.” And in Mark xvi. 16, we have these words :
“ He that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved; but he
that believeth not shall be damned.” And then in John iii. 16,
that “ God so loved the world, that he gave his only be
gotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.” That is not only my own
opinion, but Luther, in his “ De Captivitate Babylonica,”
says : “ Thus you find ”—and I only give a part of it,
but you can give the context—“ how richly gifted is a Chris
tian and baptised man, who, even if >he wills it, cannot
forfeit his salvation by how many sins soever, unless he is
unwilling to believe. For no sins have power to damn
him, save only the sin of incredulity.” If you have
listened to the sermons of Mr. Spurgeon you will re
member how he puts the monster sin of unbelief as worse
than all other crime; and therefore I think I have
proved that Christian Theism does teach that man may
escape the consequences of the first man’s error by belief in
the birth and death of God’s eternal son. I have not only
proved that through belief in the death of his son we are
saved, by the Scripture, but I have proved it from the
Athanasian Creed. And now I will prove from the Nicene
Creed and the third article, as “ Christ died for us, and
was buried; so also is it to be believed that he went down
into hell.” The next point is : “ That God, though no re' specter of persons, selected as his favourites one nation in
preference to all others.” I will read to you Romans ii. 11:
“ For there is no respect of persons with God.” Then I
will read to you Psalm cv. 5 to 15 : “Remember his mar
vellous works that he hath done; his wonders, and the
judgments of his mouth; O ye seed of Abraham, his ser
vant, ye children of Jacob his chosen. He is the Lord our
God; his judgments are in all the earth. He hath remem
bered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded
to a thousand generations. Which covenant he made with
Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac; and confirmed the same
unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting
covenant. Saying, unto thee will I give the land of Canaan,
the lot of your inheritance ; when they were but few men in
number; yea, very few, and strangers in it. When they
went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
another people; He suffered no man to do them wrong-;
yea, he reproved kings for their sakes ; saying, Touch not
mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” If Mr.
Harrison should say there is not overwhelming evidence in
the Bible that the Jews were cared for more than other nationsin the world, I will read a hundred or two texts to prove
that they were. (Laughter.) Then the next point is
“ That man can do no good of himself or without God’s
aid.” I will read part of the 9th and 10th articles of
religion: “ Original sin is the fault and corruption of the
nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the
offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from
original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined toevil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit;
and therefore in every person bom into this world, it deservethGod’s wrath and damnation.” “ The condition of man is
such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own
natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon
God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works plea
sant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God.” I
will also read Genesis viii. 21, in which it appears that God
was so convinced of this, that after he had drowned the whole
world with the exception of one family, he found it was
inutile : “ And the Lord said in his heart, I will not again
curse the ground any more for man’s sake, for the imagina
tion of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” I will read from
Psalms xiv. 2, 3, where you will find it said: “ The Lord
looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see
if there were any that did understand and seek God. They
are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy; there isnone that doeth good, no, not one.” Jeremiah xvii. 9
“ The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked.” Romans vii. 18 to 20—this is Paul speaking, sup
posing him to have been the writer: “ For I know that in me
dwelleth no good thing; for the good that I would I do not;
but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do
that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that
dwelleth in me.” Then in part of Article eleven, I find that
men cannot be justified before God by their own strength,,
merits, or works, but they are justified for Christ’s sake when
they believe they are received into favour. I think now I
have proved that man can do nothing of himself. I have
not proved that man has free will, for Mr. Harrison has ad
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
23
mitted that in his first speech. Then I have said “ that few
men go to heaven and the majority to hell.” I will read
Luke xiii. 2 4, where you will find these words: ‘‘ Strive to enter in
at the strait gate; for many will seek to enter in, and shall
not be able.” Matthew xxii. 16 : “ For many are called, but
few are chosen.” But I need not give you any further
proof, for I have said that it is only by belief in Christ that we
can be saved. The population of the world is computed at
1,375,000,000, of whom only 306,269,000 are Christians,
therefore 1,068,000,000 must be damned. And out of the
306,000,000, the small minority only are Protestant Chris
tians. (Cheers.)
Mr. Harrison : Mr. Bradlaugh has practically charged me
with having stated that which I have not stated. I will refer to
the words, and when this debate is printed you will judge for
yourselves whether I have used the words with which I am
charged. ' I said I knew not how any man could read these
words without knowing that they did not refer to the Lord.
♦Thewords were these:—“And the Lord was with Judah,and
he drove out the inhabitants of the mountains; but could
not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had
chariots of iron.” I maintain still that they refer to Judah,
and not to the Lord. (Cheers.) But next, Mr. Bradlaugh,
instead of trying to show the translation was a wretched one,
tried to show that the translation was practically right;
whereas, it was his statement that the translation was a
wretched one, and not mine, and that it did not fairly give
the original. If he knew this, he should not have availed
himself of the translation at all. (Hisses.) Now I am glad
to find that he has kept a little more to the subject in his last
speech, for we might have had enough to do to settle the
proposition in my first speech. But having travelled out of
the way at first, he has dealt with it more practically than
heretofore. I will deal with him in the same way. As to the
two passages stated, I think I have grave ground to complain
of his unfairness. The words are in the present tense:
“ He tnat believeth, and he that believeth not,” and the verse
refers to the present time, and the then present audience, we
might say, and the only fair conclusion which any man can
arrive at is this—that you must take into account that the
Gospel had been preached to those to whom the words re
ferred, and that those words did not refer to the persons to
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
whom the Gospel was never preached. (Cheers.) You
must take fairly into account not only the words uttered, but
the circumstances in which the words were uttered, if you
are to give a true and accurate representation. I contend
that so far from the words having the meaning ascribed to
them by Mr. Bradlaugh, they have the very reverse. Chris
tian teaching, so far as I know it, sets forth a very different
doctrine. And I will say that, while I agree with a great deal
in the authorities he has quoted, I do not see how they bear
out his argument. I may be dull of apprehension, and that
may account for it; but as I do not see how most of those pas
sages quoted by Mr. Bradlaugh bear upon the subject, I must
pass them by. I will deal with those passages which do bear
upon it; and I think it would be an unfair and unjust thing
to take the two verses quoted, and say they referred to those
who had never heard the Gospel at all. Upon that general
subject, if I turn to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, I find
there is a general argument which bears upon the subject.
If I could have known all the passages Mr. Bradlaugh
might quote, I would have had all the passages that explained
them marked also; but you must give me time. (Oh, oh.)
Well now, be fair ! how can I do so now ? In this passage
from Romans, St. Paul affirms that the Gentiles who have
not the law, are a law unto themselves—that not having the
same privileges in fact that Christians have, they have the
law written in their hearts, and that that law accuses or ex
cuses them. If you admit that, I think you will find it as
unlike Christian Theism as given by Mr. Bradlaugh, as it is
possible to be. (Hear, hear.) I fail to find the exact
words now, but I will find them presently. (Laughter.)
Never mind ! I will give Mr. Bradlaugh both chapter and
verse. I will now refer to another, in Romans v. i,
where you will find that we have these words: “ There
fore being justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Justification therefore
is by faith. I turn to Matthew xxv., and I find here,
in reading the whole account of the general judgment, some
thing like the following words : “ Then shall the King say
unto them on his righthand, come, ye blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world. For I was an hungered, and ye gave me
meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger,
and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me I was sick,
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
25
and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
Then follows the account of those who have not done So.
In 2 Corinthians v. you will find the perfect consistency of
the whole word of God. You find, first, that justification is
by faith, and secondly, that judgment is by works. If a man
would receive justification, in reference to law, for sins that
are past, he must trust in the atonement of the Lord Jesus
Christ, if the opportunity has been presented to him; but
after that justification by faith. After the man’s lifehasbecome
a new one, if he thinks he may live any sort of life because
he is justified, he will find a terrible mistake in the day of
judgment. He will find that “ every one shall be judged
according to the deeds done in the body.” You have the
same necessity for individual action with Christianity as you
have to get anything else, only more so, because at the same
time a man’s conduct shall decide his position hereafter.
(Cheers.) If there be any passage to which I have referred
to-night, and not given the exact verse, I will do so to-morrow
night, if I should have to travel over the same ground. I
pray you to remember that Mr. Bradlaugh practically ad
mitted that his whole argument depended upon the sub
ject of predestination. (“No, no.”) Well, you will remember
what he said about all this being predestined; but I will
withdraw the words “practically admitted”—Mr. Bradlaugh
is not in the habit of admitting much. (Hisses.) Why Mr.
Bradlaugh says the Bible teaches that it is predestined the
greater portion of the world will be burning in hell for ever.
(“ No, no,” and hisses.) Well, if it is not predestined, then
his argument falls to the ground. But I may say that I
believe Christ’s work was foreordained and that it was pre
destined that men should benefit by that work. But if they had
not an opportunity of hearing of the atonement, they would
not be held accountable for their unbelief. Mr. Bradlaugh
has not shown that any of the heathen will be lost for not
believing the Gospel of which they never heard. This strikes
me as being so painful a perversion of Christian teaching
that I feel at a loss to know how he has arrived at the con
clusion. And I think it is not right, while we have the
supreme court of appeal, the Bible, that he should bring
strange objections from uninspired authors, and thrust them
down my throat. The question is not to be determined
thus. No Protestant thinks that even the Augsburg Con
fession, or the Articles of the Church of England, are
�26
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
infallible. (Hear, hear.) No one holds such a view as
that; but we will believe in any creed as we find it in har
mony with the word of God. At the same time, I find
nothing in them that proves Mr. Bradlaugh’s position.
But I must say that creeds are valueless except as they set
before us the Christian teaching of the New Testament.
We hold our creeds in subjection to the word of God,
and we claim the right, every now and then, to go into the
silence of our own studies, and see if anything in the creed
is contrary to the Word, and bring it into harmony with the
Word if we find it erring. (Cheers.)
Mr. Brad laugh : Surely Mr. Harrison forgot what I read
from the articles of the Church of England. I find it said :
“ They also are to be had accursed that presume to say
that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he
professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according
to that law, and the light of nature.” According to Chris
tian Theism, Mr. Harrison is accursed from the doctrine to
which he has given utterance. If he intended to join the
Church of England, that article would shut him out. (Hear,
hear.) Mr. Harrison says these articles are not infallible;
then why is there a statute on the statute book rendering me
liable to indictment and imprisonment under the Act 9th
and 10th ofWilliam III., chap. 32, if I attempt to affix any
new sense to—if I deny the truth of—any article ? (Cheers.)
I have in this debate nothing to do with any other question
than what is Christian Theism. I have to prove nothing
more than this : That my representation of Christian Theism
is a fair representation. That I intend to prove. Mr.
Harrison says that at first I said that the text of Judges i. 19,
was a wretched translation, and then I showed that it was
right. If he had attended to what I said, he would have
heard what I quoted from Cahen, and that the Hebrew is
not as our text. But it did not affect the all-powerfulness
of the Deity! If, supposing it to be true—which it is not
—that the Hebrew means that Judah could not drive out
the inhabitants, but that God could—(and I say that the
Lord could not)—if it was the Lord, then it was not Judah
alone, it was the Lordplus Judah. (Cheers.) Mr. Harrison
has not ventured to give you any texts in answer to those I
have read. He referred to a text in Romans, but said he
could not find it, and will deal with it to-morrow. Then I
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
27
will do the same. He said : “ I will read to you from Mat
thew xxv.and he made a proper statement when he in
timated that, as he did not know what I would quote, it was
too much to expect him to answer to-night. (Laughter.)
If he is not sufficiently acquainted with the Bible to put his
texts to you, as I have done—(loud cheers, mingled with
hisses)—and as I will try to do, although I cannot possibly
tell what he will quote, it is only fair that he should have
reasonable time to do so. I do not complain of that.
(Hisses.) I will allow for your uneasiness, for, as Mr. Har
rison says, people do wax warm when they feel they are
getting the worst of it. He quoted from Matthew xxvi.,
beginning with the 34th verse; if he had read you the 29th
verse, he would have found an interesting text which would
have helped his explanation : “ For unto everyone that hath
shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him
that hath not shall be taken away even that which he
hath.” It so thoroughly helps out the doctrine of good
works, that I wonder it escaped the notice of my friend. I
do not suggest that he avoided it, but in the hurry it no
doubt escaped him, and he will be obliged to me that I
have quoted it for him. (Laughter.) He is good enough
also to tell you that the text which I read from Mark, that
I forgot to tell you that it was in the present tense. It is
possibly so; but I don’t think it is. I will show you how
much it is in the present tense. I will read the text: “ He
said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the
gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised
shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.”
It was not in the present tense, but it was in the future;
and what the future tense means is very clear, for the Athaaasian Creed says : “ This is the Catholick faith, which, ex
cept a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.” And
the articles say, a man is to be accursed who presumes to
say that he can be saved by any other agency than that of
the Lord Jesus Christ. (A voice : “ Bosh.”) It is “bosh,”
you are quite right. (Laughter.) I am indebted to the
sensible Christian friend who helped me out to condemn his
creed in one word, in a way in which I should not probably
have succeeded. Then Mr. Harrison says that I practically
admit that the whole argument rests upon predestination.
Allow me to say that, without supposing the slightest wish
to misrepresent me, he had better have said that the one
�2S
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
particular argument was affected by the Church article as to
predestination—just that little portion of it; but the making
men to sin, and punishing them for it, depend upon other
texts as well. He says that in his opinion the people
who have no opportunity of hearing about Christianity will
be saved. I am delighted that he holds that doctrine;
but, then, why do Christians send missionaries to the
heathens to preach possible damnation to them ? (Loud
cheers.) Mr. Harrison’s doctrine is a very good one—I ex
pected it from him. From what I knew of him I thought
his doctrine was that people who have not the opportunity
of hearing of Christianity will not be damned; but there is
this unfairness, that those who do hear it, but will not
believe it, are placed in a more horrible position. For
example, suppose- a man who had never heard anybody on
Christianity, then that man would go to heaven. (No, no.)
Well, if it did not mean that, it meant nothing. Then the
moment Mr. Harrison, or somebody else, preaches Chris
tianity, the man has a fair opportunity of being damned.
When my time expired in my last speech, I was engaged in
proving that more men go to hell than to heaven, and I
read passages to show that it was only the believers who
went to heaven. I said there was a surplus of 1,068,000,000
of people in the year 1868 who were not Christians, and
that out of 306,000,000 who were Christians, 195,194,000
were Roman Catholics. Only about 110,000,000, then, are
left as Protestants, and they include all sects—Independents,
Baptists, Muggletonians, Presbyterians, and every one,
taking in ourselves, too, for we are all lumped in as well.
(Cheers.) This is not my view alone. Martin Luther, a
Christian of some authority—although I do not put him at
too much importance—says that God in this world has
scarcely a tenth part of the people, and that the smallest
number only will be saved. This is in his “Table Talk,”
pages 41 and 43 : “ If you would know why so few are
saved, and so infinitely many are damned, this is the cause
—the world will not hear Christ.” I think I have now
amply shown that I have fairly put the representation of
Christian Theism; I was not bound to prove every state
ment as precisely as I have done. Mr. Harrison says I
have proved statements which were not called in question;
but, in truth, I have, as I think, proved everything in the
selected passage of my pamphlet; and I defy him to lay
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
29
his hand upon a sentence which is not susceptible of proof
from the Bible, the creeds, or the articles. Mr. Harrison
says the articles are not infallible; but he opened them for
me in his first speech, when he said : “ I take representative
men; you take the same.” I have not, I contend, taken
one man who is not entitled to be considered a fair repre
sentative of Christian Theism. If Mr. Harrison says that
the Church of England teachings do not represent Christian
Theism, then I say why is it thrust drown my throat, from
the cradle to the grave, as Christian Theism ? (Hear, hear.)
I will not deal with a word of what has fallen from him as
to “ subterfuge ” or “ misrepresentation,” till he at least tries
to show that the charge is warranted, by dealing with the
text itself. The imputation stands self-answered by the
absence of any sort of attempt to prove the serious allega
tion in the words themselves. I will only say that I could
have wished no better platform to stand upon; I could have
wished no pamphlet better to defend. I do not stand here
as the representative of Freethought, but simply as the re
presentative of the views of my pamphlet, bound to prove
that they are reasonably fair. It is perfectly true that I
dress up the Christian creeds in these arguments ; but you
have only to show that the clothes selected are not taken
from your wardrobe, and not of your making. Don’t speak
of the misfit until you show it is of some other faith. I have
quoted outside your Bible and Prayer Book from no one
except Luther, Calvin, Pye Smith, Jonathan Edwards, and
the Augsburg confession. This is not going back to the
old councils. The creeds are the law of England at the
present moment. Those who do not receive them are, on
conviction, forbidden to be plaintiffs, defendants, executors,
or trustees; they cannot receive legacies, or hold civil or
military office. I have used nothing which will not fairly
show thatjny case is now proved. (Loud and continued
cheering.)
A vote of thanks to the Chairman, moved by Mr. Brad
laugh, seconded by Mr. Harrison, and energetically carried,
brought the evening to a close.
�SECOND NIGHT.
The Hall was more crowded <than on the previous night,
vast audiences assembling on each occasion, and the interest
in the debate seemed to have intensified, if possible. J. R.
Robertson, Esq., again occupied the chair, and briefly in
troduced the first speaker—
Mr. Harrison, who again met with a very cordial reception,
said: Mr. Chairman and friends, there was a misunderstanding
last night, to which I must of necessity make some reference
this evening. Mr. Bradlaugh, in his closing speech, reiterated
his statement respecting that verse in Judges i., and Mr.
’Bradlaugh appeared to be very triumphant in the manner in
which he quoted from a certain work, and brought his quota
tion to bear on my rendering of the passage. I do not pre
tend to answer the question as to the relative merits of Mr.
Bradlaugh and myself as to scholarship ; but I will state to
you the reasons which I have to give for the conclusions at
which I arrived last night. And I will give you what I
think a fair explanation of the passage. I am sorry that there
is any necessity for that, because it keeps us from the
proper subject of debate, and because that passage has
nothing to do with the subject under discussion. I mention
it only that I might vindicate myself from the charge brought
against me by Mr. Bradlaugh. In turning to the “ Rules of
Interpretation,” by Dr. Angus, in his “ Bible Hand-Book,”
I find on page 60, and paragraphs 126 and 127, that—“ The
analysis of the chapters of the Bible, and the titles and sub
scriptions of the books of the New Testament, form no
part of the inspired writings. The present division of the
Scriptures, too, into chapters and verses, and the order of
the several books, are not of Divine origin, nor are they of
great antiquity.” And I find on page 61, that: “As a rule
no importance is to be attached to the division of verses, or of
chapters, unless it coincide with the division of paragraphs.”
That is the rule which is laid down here, and which, I think,
must commend itself as a perfectly fair rule. (Hear, hear.)
I proceed to apply this rule to the passage in question. Now,
the passage cited by Mr. Bradlaugh last night was this:
“ And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inha
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
3r
bitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inha
bitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.”
Against Mr. Bradlaugh’s interpretation I contended that the
meaning of the English words was this—that it was Judah
that was not able to drive out the inhabitants of the valley;
and the reason why Judah could not drive them out was
because they had chariots of iron. Mr. Bradlaugh said it
was a wretched translation ■ I retorted that if it was so, he
should not have made use of it at all. (Hear, hear.) I am
not seeking to gain any point whatever; but only to inform
you of what took place last night. Adopting the rule which
I have quoted from the “ Hand-Book,” I take the context,
and read in the eighteenth verse of the same chapter, these
words : “ Also Judah took Gaza, with the coast thereof, and
Askelon, with the coast thereof, and Ekron, with the coast
thereof.” And by this rule, I am justified in adding “And the
Lord was with Judah” to the 18th verse. Then the nineteenth
verse would read thus: “And he”—that is Judah,’who is the
principal subject of the previous sentence, which is united
by the conjunction “ and”—“drave out the inhabitants of the
mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the
valley, because they had chariots of iron.” It appears to
me therefore, reading the passage thus, as I have a right to
do, there is no difficulty; and you will notice that I
am not making any alteration in the words, but am
simply putting the full stop a little further on than in the
English version, without any change whatever, directly or
indirectly, in the words themselves. (Hear, hear.) I will
just further make this remark as to the inability of Judah to
to drive out the inhabitants of the valley. The remark is
this—that if you turn back to Numbers xxxiii. 55, you wiD
read: “But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the
land from before you, then it shall come to pass, that
those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your
eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land
wherein ye dwell.” In Judges ii. 14, 15, I find: “And
the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he delivered
them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he
sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so
that they could not any longer stand before their enemies.
Whithersoever they went out the hand of the Lord was
against them for evil, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord
had sworn unto them; and they were greatly distressed.”
�32
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
What is the bearing of the passage before us ? This passage
shows clearly enough that the Israelites had about this
time disobeyed God, and the judgment which was
prophesied came upon them for their disobedience.
It is not unfair then, I think, to draw from the pas
sage before us the conclusion that Judah’s inability was
occasioned by the fact that he had sinned against the Lord,
and therefore the Lord’s help was withdrawn from him.
(Cheers.) I do not mean to say that Mr. Bradlaugh can find
no fault with this view. There is nothing in the world that
he cannot find fault with—he is a remarkably keen critic
as you know. (Laughter.) But I appeal to your sense of
fairness whether it is not a perfectly intelligible and perfectly
legitimate interpretation of the passage in question. (Cheers.)
I do not care to go further in the matter; 1 stated my view
because I wished to vindicate myself against the charge last
night But as far as the discussion of this evening is con
cerned, I hope we shall be able to keep it within the proper
limits, or it will terminate unfortunately both for the Secular
and Christian parties. There is an important difference
between the two lines of debate as carried on by Mr. Brad
laugh and myself. I cannot help feeling that all Mr. Brad
laugh’s arguments last night were based upon a misunder
standing of the direct object of the discussion. (Oh, oh,
and cheers.) I say misunderstanding, because I do not
wish to impugn Mr. Bradlaugh’s honesty—(hisses)—I say mis
understanding, because I do not wish to say he is a deliberate
trickster—(hisses)—and I say misunderstanding, because I
believe that Mr. Bradlaugh is not a trickster, but that he did
through ignorance misunderstand the point under discussion
last night. (Renewed hissing.) I think this gives very little
cause for hissing. But hear me out; the question of discus
sion was not what inferences he might draw from Christian
Theism; that was not the subject, but that was what he dis
cussed. As far as I know, the whole subject taken up by
him was not the question directly of Christian teaching, but
the inferences which Mr. Bradlaugh drew from that teaching.
Now I will show you the importance of this distinction if you
will hear for a little time. There are some persons who hold
that Atheism is an exceedingly bad thing; there are others
who think there may be drawn from the tenets of Atheism
much that seems to justify theft and murder, and I know not
what besides ; but if such persons were to turn round, and
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
33
say that Atheists teach it is right to thieve and murder, it
would be a monstrous slander upon Atheists. (Hear, hear.)
I claim no more than this distinction. I say there is a vast
difference between the teaching of Atheism and the infer
ences drawn from that teaching ; so I say there is a vast
difference between what Christian Theism teaches, and the
inferences drawn from that teaching. (Cheers.) I was sorry
that so many quotations were taken from authors last night,
because they had not anything to do with the several state
ments contained in the “ Plea for Atheism.” I will put these
two things before you, and ask you to judge for yourselves,
and I am confident that the most enthusiastic admirer of
Mr. Bradlaugh will admit that not one of the statements in
the “ Plea for Atheism ” was to be found in the authorities
whom he quoted last night. Notwithstanding that I hold it
is a waste of time when we have a Bible, to go to Luther and
others, I will say of the passages quoted from different
authorities, not one of them contained the statements in the
“ Plea for Atheism“ That the first man made perfect by
the all-powerful, all-wise, all-good God, was nevertheless
imperfect.” Did the quotation from Luther contain that
statement? No! Did the Augsburg Confession ? No! Did
the quotation from Pye Smith or the Thirty-nine Articles ?
No ! But, after all, the question is, whether the Bible teaches
those things ? If he can bring forward the words in the
“ Plea for Atheism ” in the texts quoted by him, he will be
able to do what he was utterly unable to do last night
(Cheers.) I turn now to certain passages cited by Mr. Brad
laugh last evening, and with those passages I hope to deal.
(But I here give the reference which I quoted last night.
—Romans ii., 13,14* and 15.) I will deal with that passage
which he especially referred to. It is in Matthew xxv., and
he asked me to deal with Matthew xxv. 29, saying too that
I had better take the context. I will take the precise
passage which he read as containing something wonderful.
It was: “ For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he
shall have abundance; but from him that hath not, shall be
taken away even that which he hath.” That was the
passage. (Laughter.) That is the passage which he wished
me to read last night. I find in this passage the greatest
confirmatory evidence that my view was correct. What is
the context of the passage itself? We have the Parable of
the Talents. I will read it: “For the kingdom of heaven is
�34
CHRTSTIAN. THETSM.
as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own
servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one
he gave five talents,, to another two, and to another one ; to
every man according- to- his several ability; and straightway
took his journey. Then he that had' received the five talents
went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.
And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other
two. But he that had received one, went and digged in the
earth, and hid his lord's- money. After a long time the lord
of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. And so
he that had received five talents came and brought other five
talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents;
behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. HisLord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful ser
vant ; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make
thee ruler over many things; enter into the joy of thy Lord.
He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord,
thou deliveredst unto me two talents; behold, I have gained
two other talents beside them. His Lord said unto him,
Well done good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful
over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things ;
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Then he which had re
ceived the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that
thou art an hard man, reapingwhere thou hast not sown, and
gathering where thou hast not strawed; and I was afraid,
and went and hid thy talent in the earth ; lo, there thou
hast that is thine. His Lord answered and said unto
him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that
I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not
strawed; thou ought est therefore to have put my money to the
exchangers, and then at my coming I sWould have received
mine own with usury.” Allow me by the way, to say that
the word “ usury” simply means, with interest. (Laughter.)
I hope I shall be allowed the time lost by these interruptions.
Allow me to say to those who laugh at it only show that
they have not carefully read the passage, or they are not
acquainted with the history of the English language. (“ Oh,,
oh.”) There is no intelligent reader of that history
who does not know that the word “ usury ” took
the general meaning of interest. (Hear, hear.) Then ::
“ Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him
who hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall begiven, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
35
not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” The
whole passage of the parable goes directly to show that my
statement was correct, that judgment hereafter would be ac
cording to man’s conduct; that he who has one talent is
rewarded in proportion to it, and the manner in which he
uses it. There is my argument, and there is the confirma
tion of it. (Cheers.) But I have marked passages brought
forward by Mr. Bradlaugh last night, and one, which was
intended to prove that man was made imperfect was this,
Psalm viii. 5 : “For thou hast made him a little lower than
the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.”
That was the passage cited. Now I ask whether any fair
man would find in that a proof that man was made imper
fect ? I should find very different from that. If I were
Asked to believe that because the elm is not an oak, that
therefore the elm is imperfect, it would be absurd; but to say
that because a man is not an angel, that therefore he is im
perfect, is equally absurd. I should think that everybody
knew that man was not an angel. (Cheers.) It is a fact
About which, in Mr. Bradlaugh’s case as in my own, I have
no doubt; we are neither of us angels. This passage then,
upon which Mr. Bradlaugh seems to have laid some stress,
disappears from the list of passages which may be brought
Against the view I advocated. I take John iii. 18, and the
passage in Mark. Mr. Bradlaugh appeared to think I had
been inaccurate in the use of the present tense; yet you will
find the present tense was used so far as “he that believeth”
is concerned. I will read you the passage : “ He that
believeth on him is not condemned.” Perhaps it is only
fair to ask, whether those who did not hear of the gospel
would be lost because they had not heard of the gospel ?
But I said nothing of the sort. I said those who had not
heard of the gospel would be judged by another standard.
■“ He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that
believeth not is condemned already.” It cannot refer to
future punishment, because it says : “ He is condemned
Already.” “ This is the condemnation, that light is come
into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light,
because their deeds were evil,” which makes it apparent, as
far as this verse is concerned, that the condemnation was
by.themselves unto themselves. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Brad
laugh also cited Mark xvi. 16 : “ He that believeth and is
baptised shall be saved ; but he that believeth not shall be
�36
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
damned.” He appeared to think that this proved his posi
tion ; that this passage, at least, if not the other, was con
clusive that those who did not hear the gospel should
be lost for not believing. But let us take the context in the
15th verse: “He said unto them, Go ye into all the world,
and preach the gospel to every creature,” which shows dis
tinctly that this passage refers only to those who heard the
gospel. For the previous verse shows that they were to
preach the gospel, and that by all fair rules of interpretation
it was only when people had heard the gospel, and having
had an opportunity of hearing it, still rejected it, that they
should be condemned. (Cheers.) I have now cited, and
criticised for your attention, the principal passages that
appeared to me to bear upon the subject of debate last
night. I am not able to find that one of those passages
proved what Mr. Bradlaugh asserted; whereas I find that they
prove what I asserted last night. I purpose now taking up
what he referred to last night—that this inference might be
drawn from my teaching—viz., that a man who had heard the
gospel from my lips was worse off than if he had not heard
it. Mr. Bradlaugh made a statement to that effect, and
he made it appear that I hold that those persons who had
not heard the gospel were saved on account of not hearing
the gospel. I never said anything of the kind; I made no
such statement. I will tell you (and I hope you will listen
patiently) that my judgment is that the atonement of Jesus
Christ was for all mankind; and on account of his atone
ment his Spirit is given to all mankind—aye, even to
Atheists. (Cheers.) That all men who are striving to live
up to the light within them, are thus brought within the
scope of the atonement; and that these men are thus bene
fited by it, though they hear not the Gospel; and that if they
live by the light thus given them, these men will be saved.
But that is very different from saying that men will be saved
because they did not hear the gospel. To those who have
heard the gospel, and have had the opportunity of believing
in it, it is a question of faith; and the standard of judg
ment will be our whole conduct here, because in the 2
Corinthians v. it is distinctly stated that we shall have our
reward according as we have done in this world, whether what
we have done be good or bad. (Cheers.)
Mr. Bradlaugh, who on rising was enthusiastically
cheered, said: With reference to Judges i. 19, you who
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
37
were present last night will remember that the argument
that was put to you was not precisely the argument which
has been put to-night by Mr. Harrison. It was in effect
that the pronoun he applied to Judah and not to the Lord ;
and I will tell you why Mr. Harrison has to-night amended
that statement. It is because on looking to-day to authori
ties, he found that Dr. Adam Clarke had given the reason
which you have heard this evening; and those who have
quoted Dr. Clarke since have represented it that the words
“ the Lord was with Judah,” should end the verse. I am
quoting Barrett’s “ Synopsis,” a book where, for the use of
the clergy, the various religious and critical commentaries
are collected. If he had referred to Dr. Kennicott, he
would have found that the verse was not as he has put it; on
the contrary, he would have found that there was not a
word in the Hebrew for “could.” It should, according to
Kennicott, read: “ J ehovah was with Judah, so that he drove
out the inhabitants of the mountain, but not to drive out
the inhabitants of the valley.” (Cheers.) I have put this
to Mr. Harrison, because he said “ that to speak of the
translation as being wretched, and then to use it as I have
read it, was unfair.” When I quoted the passage I was
arguing as to the all-powerfulness of God, which point I
contend has not been dealt with at all by Mr. Harrison;
and when he says that I have changed my tactics, I ask
him what right he has to say that the words “ the Lord
was with Judah,” belong to verse 18 ? It is not true that
the Hebrew text gives him any right to do so. I have all
the authorities here for and against; and he is welcome
to have them. I deny that there is a particle of ground to
warrant the conclusion at which he has arrived. He says
that the passage has nothing to do with the subject. I
thought it had to do with the subject, for one portion of my
task was to show whether or not I was right in arguing that
God was all-powerful: and I thought that anything that
threw light on the omnipotence of the Deity would have
something to do with the subject. Suppose that even the
translation is wretched; I am not to be debarred therefore
from touching the Bible. It was a piece of candour on
my part, I think, to suggest what I did U and I think if
the passage is wretched, that the wretchedness or unfair
ness of user is in the Christian people who translated it.
I confess I am astounded by the supplement made by Mr.
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
Harrison, who says: “I will read the 18th and 19th
verses together, in this way: I will read the words ‘ and the
Lord was with Judah ’ at the end of the 18th verse; and I will
then show that what I say is a prophecy from Numbers.”
Then he says : “ The Israelites by this time had disobeyed
God.” I ask, where is there proof of it happening between
the 18th and 19th verses? The Lord is with Judah in
the first of these verses ! I do not deny the fact that he
may not have been with him in the 19th; but I ask for the
slightest proof of the statement that Judah had. sinned and
the Lord had ceased to be with him. But then Mr. Harrison
is good enough to say that my citations last night were
founded upon a misunderstanding; and he says that he would
believe me ignorant rather than a deliberate trickster. He
adds that this is a mild way of putting it I make allowances
for his feelings and offer no reply. (Laughter.) Then he
said, I took up so much time in quoting authors. I quoted
a few passages from Luther, Calvin, the Augsburg Confes
sion, and Pye Smith, but the bulk of my quotations were
from the Bible. (Hear, hear.) “But,” says Mr. Harrison,
“ with reference to the quotations read from Luther,
Calvin, Augsburg Confession, and Pye Smith, they do
not prove the statement that “ the first man made perfect
was nevertheless imperfect.” They were not read to prove
that. The passages read to prove that he was perfect were
Genesis i. 27 and 31, and the passage read from Pye Smith,
with Psalm viii. 5 rather arguing against it. The passages
to prove that one man’s imperfection brought misery into the
world, were from Romans v. 12, 14, 18, 19; 1 Corinthians
xv. 21, 22; and one quotation from Calvin’s “Institutes,”
which you have not touched. Our friend, from having too
many texts to night, has passed over the whole of those
given, in an extraordinary way. I tried to give deliberate
proof—chapter and verse of everything I said; and I deli
berately read the words and applied them to what I was
stating, instead of drawing inferences. But he said: “I
will give you what I promised last night from the Romans,
to show—against what Mr. Bradlaugh says, ‘ that man is
saved by faith ’—that we require works as well as faith to
save a man.” I will show that that is not so. Mr. Harrison
has not answered the texts I read on the subject; but I will
quote to you from Romans iii. 20, which says: “ Therefore
by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
39
his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Then
the 27th and 28th verses : “Where is boasting then? It is
excluded. By what law ? of works ? Nay: but by the law
of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by
faith without the deeds of the law.” Romans iv. 2 : “ For
if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to
glory ; but not before God. For what saith the Scripture?
Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto, him for
righteousness.” Galatians ii. 16: “Knowing that a man is
not justified by the works of the law, but by faith of Jesus
Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might
be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of
the law; for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justi
fied.” If those verses are not as conclusive as anything
could be, that it is by faith alone that man is to be justified,
then I do not understand what meaning language can be
intended to convey. But, says Mr. Harrison, “ man is to
be judged by conduct; and those who have not the Gospel,
are to be judged by some other standard.” Why, he has
forgotten the articles which I read last night, which say:
“ They also are to be had accursed who presume to say, That
every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that
law, and the light of nature. For Holy Scripture doth set
out unto us only the name of Jesus Christ, whereby men
must be saved.” Then, I did not contend “that men were
to be saved because they had not heard,” but I did contend
that, according to Mr. Harrison’s doctrine, they were to be
saved, although they had riot heard; and I said it was an
advantage to a man who had not heard ; and that to send
out missionaries to the heathen was to bring men into a
position of danger. (Hear, hear.) But now Mr. Harrison
reads Mark xvi. 1, which has been referred to several times,
and he says, “ Clearly here, according to the words of the
text itself, the penalty is only to those who hear and will
not believe.” For he says the passage is : “ Go ye into all
the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He
that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved.” He says it
is only those who have heard and do not believe that shall
be damned. If he turn to Matthew x. 14, he will find a very
different doctrtne, for he will find the doctrine : “Whosoever
shall not receive you, nor hear your words, it shall be more
tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
judgment than for that city.” So that it is not only the men
who have heard the Gospel, but the men who have not heard
it at all. (Cheers.) Mr. Harrison says that I am afraid of the
context; was there anything last night to show that I was
afraid ? Every time I read a part of the verse, I said it was
a part. A man who was afraid of the context, would not
have done this. There is nothing else in the speech to which
we have just listened, because when he tells you that Jesus
died for all mankind, it is for him not to give us his view of
the matter, but to give chapter and verse as testimony.
There are one or two matters arising out of last night, upon
which I have to comment. Mr. Harrison says the Old
Testament would never have been given, if the New was not
intended by God to succeed it. He did not give any proof
of it. He should at least quote some authority. (Hear,
hear.) Then referring to my words “ that God made men
to share this misery, which was brought into the world
by his imperfection,” Mr. Harrison says that no intelli
gent Christian teaches it, or believes that the Bible teaches
it. Well, I will show that the Bible does. In Amos
iii. 6, you will find these words: “Shall there be evil in a
city, and the Lord hath not done it ?” In Isaiah you will
find: “I make peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all
these things.” In Proverbs : “The Lord had made all
things for himself; yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.”
(Loud cheers.) In Romans ix. 21, 22, and 23, we have:
“ Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump
to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dis
honour ? What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to
make his power known, endured wtth much long-suffering the
vessels of wrath fitted to destruction : and that he might
make knowm the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy,
which he had afore prepared unto glory.” So much for the
text; now for an intelligent Christian. Luther, in his tract
“ De Servo Arbitrio,” discussed in Hamilton’s book, says :
“ All things take place by the eternal and invariable will of God,
which blasts and shatters in pieces the freedom of the human
will. God creates in us the evil, in like manner as the good.
The high perfection of faith, is to believe that God is just,
notwithstanding that by his will he renders us necessarily
damnable, and seemeth to find pleasure in the torments of
the miserable.” But Mr. Harrison said no intelligent Chris
tian ever taught this. Take Calvin’s “Institutes,” book i.
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
4i
He says: “ Sin and crime occur by the will of God,” and he
declares: “ That while God by means of the wicked fulfils
his secret decrees, they are not excusable.” “But,” says
Mr. Harrison, “ there is one virtue which must not be over
looked, that the Bible teaches the doctrine of immortality.”
I am not so sure of that. I do not say he cannot quote texts
in favour of immortality, but there are others on the oppo
site side, which make it doubtful. I quote from Job: “ O
remember that my life is wind; as the cloud is consumed
and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to the grave
shall come up no more.” Ecclesiastes iii. 18, 19 : “I said
in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that
God might manifest them, and that they might see that they
themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of
men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the
one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath;
so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast.” Then
Ecclesiastes ix. 4, 5, and 6 : “ For to him that is joined to
all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than
a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die; but the
dead know not anything,neither have they any more a reward;
for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their
hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any
moreaportion for ever in anything that is done under the sun.”
Isaiah xxvi. 14: “ They are dead, they shall not live; they are
deceased, they-shall not rise; therefore hast thou visited and
destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.” Psalm
ciii. 15, 16 : “As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower
of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it,
and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.”
I am aware that in one of these quotations, Ecclesiastes iii., I
have passed an important part of the context; but I dare my
friend to take it up where I left off. He said there is nothing
in the Bible teaching us that God compelled man to sin. I
will take 2 Samuel xxiv. 1: “And again the anger of the Lord
was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against
them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.” You will
find that that numbering was sin for which God killed
70,000 of the people. Mr. Harrison may say from other
verses that he can show it was the devil and not God that
moved David; and as I cannot sometimes distinguish
properly between God and the Devil in the Bible, I will
leave it for him to prove. Exodus vii. 3 : “ I will harden
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in
the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto
you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt.” Yet Mr. Har
rison says there is no text alleging that God compelled man
to sin 1 Then in i Kings xxii. 19, to 23 : “ He said, I saw
the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven
standing by him on his right hand and on his left. And
the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go
up and fall at Ramothgilead ? And one said on this
manner, and another said on that manner. And there came
forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will per
suade him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith ? And
he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the
mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt per
suade him, and prevail also; go forth, and do so. Now,
therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the
mouth of all these thy prophets.” Then Numbers xxxi.
17 and 18 : “Now, therefore, kill every male among the
little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by
lying with him. But all the women children, that have not
known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
(A voice: “Awful!”) I did not make it; here it is.
(Cheers.) It is because I thought it awful that I wrote thispamphlet; it was because I thought it awful that I attack
Christian Theism. Deuteronomy xx. 16: “But of the
cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give
thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that
breatheth.” 2 Thessalonians ii. 11 and 12: “For this cause
God shall send them strong delusion, that they should
believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believe
not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Deut.
ii. 30 : “ But Sihon King of Heshbon would not let us pass
by him; for the Lord thy God hardened his spirit, and
made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into
thy hand.” How, then, dare Mr. Harrison say there is no
text in the Bible which shows or alleges that God com
pelled man to sin ? I could have hoped there would have
been some attempt to have gone through some of the mass
of texts which it was my duty to read to you last night;
but we have only one reference to Judges, and one in
Matthew which was introduced by myself. There has been
not the slightest wish or attempt to go through these texts..
Mr. Harrison says I have gone to other writers; but 1
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
43
have quoted the Bible, and the creeds, and the Thirty-nine
Articles. (Hear, hear.) I have something to say about
the justice of Mr. Harrison’s remarks concerning the texts. I
ask whetherin common fairness a debate should be conducted
as this debate is ? I do not pretend that the texts I have
quoted are intended for more than to prove the passage in
my pamphlet; but I think there was a duty devolving on
my antagonist, to show from the Bible that the texts I have
used were not a correct representation of it. But we have
been assured “that in precise words you have not been told in
the Bible that the first man made perfect by the allpowerful, all-wise, all-good God, was nevertheless imper
fect, and by his imperfection brought misery into the world.”
Of course you have not, but you find this set forth in effect.
You cannot perhaps find it all in any one text, but you can
by comparing one text with another. If I did not know
that my friend is too honest to do so, I should be inclined
to think that this objection of his was in subtle language an
avoidance of the subject. I neither suspect my friend,
however, of deliberate trickery, nor of being ignorant. He
of course naturally wants to make the best he can of this
debate. I know the best ought to be on his side, because on
his side all the literature, language, learning, and wealth of
the country are with him. The articles of the Church of
England have been maintained by men of the most won
drous ability, therefore every evidence that skill could collect
should be at his hand and service; and I was ready pre
pared with the quotations which I thought he would use.
But he keeps from any matter of proof—wisely, I admit;
skilfully, I grant; for it is a skilful general who never puts
his forces in danger of being killed. (Cheers.)
Mr. Harrison : There is one preliminary remark I desire to
make concerning that passage in Judges i., of which I think
you have already heard enough. The remark is this : that
I do not see wherein the line of argument I took last night
differs from that of to-night. On one side Mr. Bradlaugh
has represented Dr. Clarke, and on the other, Dr. Kennicott;
but neither of them finds in the passage any proof that God
was not omnipotent. Mr. Bradlaugh became very warm and
very eloquent in his denunciation of me and Christianity,
just now. (“ No, no.”) Well he looks warm ; and he was
■eloquent, I am sure. (Hisses; which were only quelled by
�......
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
the interference of the chairman.) Mr. Bradlaugh read a
number of passages to-night, and I do him the justice to say
they had a deal more to do with the subject of discussion than
anything he brought forward last night He has tried to
prove that God created evil, in the sense of wickedness and
sin; and he has quoted from Numbers xxxi. 17, 18; but I do
not find that these words were spoken by God at all. I will
read the passage from Numbers xxxi. 13 •; “ And Moses, and
Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation
went forth to meet them without the camp. And Moses
was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains
over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came
from the battle. And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved
all the women alive ? Behold, these caused the children of
Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass
against the Lord, in the matter of Peor, and there was a
plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore
kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman
that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women
children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep
alive for yourselves. And do ye abide without the camp
seven days; whosoever hath killed any person, and whoso
ever hath touched any slain, purify both yourselves and your
captives on the third day, and on the seventh day.” (Cheers.)
Do you want any more? I have read what he read, and a
great deal more. I do not think it is fair of him to put this
matter in this light. I hope that when Mr. Bradlaugh has
again occasion to bring forth any statement as being from the
mouth of God, he will be a little more accurate in his state
ments. (Hear, hear.) I admit that it is possible to take a
1 umber of texts from the New and Old Testaments, and
make them to all appearance contradict each other. But
there is a well known rule of interpretation which you should
bear in mind: if you find different passages which appear to
be in opposition to each other, do not take a part of them,
but take them all, and then form your conclusion from the
whole. One remark may deal with the passages about im
mortality. I will not take them in detail, because they are
not the main subject of debate. Mr. Bradlaugh has not
denied that the New Testament has anything in its doctrines
which teaches the doctrine of immortality; therefore I need
not speak of them in the New Testament. But when you
compare them in the New and Old, I think you will find
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
45
that the writers in the Old Testament are not speaking of
the spirit of man, but speaking of his body and life here,
and not speaking of what becomes of the spirit when it parts
company with the body. Mr. Bradlaugh has cited those
passages from Isaiah and Amos, and so on; and as I think
it is impossible to deal with all in ten minutes, I will deal
with the most severe and important. I will take those from
Isaiah. He tells us that the Lord creates evil—both peace
and evil. It is not speaking of good and evil—not of holiness
and sin. If by evil Mr. Bradlaugh means punishment treads
on the heels of sin, I have not denied it. If he means that
the evil is wickedness, I say it is not the meaning, nor any
thing approaching to it. Then the passage from Proverbs,
that the Lord had made the wicked for the day of evil. Does
it say he made them wicked? It is no such thing. The
punishment of the wicked is appointed, and it is certain that
the day of evil will come upon the wicked man. That is
different from affirming that the Lord made them wicked.
Then from Amos, in which we have a question : “ Shall
there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?” But
if I turn to the verse it appears plain to me that it is not
referring to God’s having done wickedness itself—not having
any reference to sin; but evil—that is, taken in the physical
sense, which follows slowly upon the transgression of the
sinner. I will ask you to pay attention to the passage; you
have it in Amos iii. 6. Further down in the chapter you
have : “ Publish in the palaces of Ashdod, and in the palaces
in the land of Egypt, and say, Assemble yourselves upon the
mountains of Samaria, and behold the great tumults in the
midst thereof, and the oppressed in the midst thereof. For
they know not to do right, saith the Lord, who store up
violence and robbery in their palaces.” So here you see the
sin is denounced instead of God creating sin. (Cheers.)
Now I do not care to waste your time by the consideration
of passages which do not bear with equal force upon the
point; but I grant that he has brought forward passages
which I shall deal with if time allows, and if I do not deal
with them it is because they do not bear with equal force
as the passages which I have quoted. I think it is only
fair that I should take those that appear to bear most against
myself. I find the statement then of Mr. Bradlaugh, about
God creating sin, that it is contrary to the whole tenour
of God’s word, and it is contrary to the whole spirit and
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
genius of the Testament.
If we take evil as meaning
punishment, we shall find that it harmonises with and ex
plains the passages quoted by Mr. Bradlaugh. Let it be
granted that there is a God—and that ought to be granted,
and if not granted it should be dealt with as a separate sub
ject, and dealt with before the Bible comes up—then grant
ing that there is a God, we shall find that these passages
harmonise with the doctrine of Christian Theism, that God
rewards the good, and brings evil upon the wicked. Every
thing that lies against the door of Theism lies against the
door of Atheism. All the evils are but a repetition of what
we find in nature itself. The facts of nature, the facts of
providence, all tend to show that judgment shall overtake
nations and tribes. Let the principle be admitted, that
there is a dual principle of justice and mercy, and then I
think every passage which Mr. Bradlaugh has quoted, will
be explained as justice, as mercy, that God should punish for
sins, but while doing so, that sinners may be saved from sin
itself—not from hell only, but the evil that is in the heart.
It is requisite that there should be a justice punishing it,
while there is a mercy promising to take it away. All the
passages which Mr. Bradlaugh has read, are perfectly strong
against me on the assumption that there is no God at all—
they tell against me, because it is taken that there is no God.
The ground I have taken before Mr. Bradlaugh is—that the
only fair and logical way of discussing Christian Theism, is to
take the principle of divine existence as granted. When this is
done, I will show therq is not a difficulty which can be
brought against the God of the Bible which cannot equally
be brought against the God of nature. (Cheers.) I only
ask that in dealing with these passages Mr. Bradlaugh should
take them in the spirit I have indicated, remembering that
it is only right and fair that we should take as the exposition
of Christian Theism, Christianity itself as contained in the
New Testament Scriptures. (Cheers.)
Mr. Bradlaugh : Doubtless from thorough forgetfulness,
Mr. Harrison omitted to show where Judah disobeyed the
Lord, between Judges i. i8and 19. Perhaps he overlooked
it. Then he is good enough to say—and he is quite right—
that the whole chapter of Numbers is from the mouth of
Moses. Well, I had an impression that the bulk of the
Pentateuch was put in that way. If it is right to say that
Moses was not the mouthpiece of God to the Jews, then I
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
47
am wrong, but the general view is, that he was God’s mouth
piece to the children of Israel. But I concede Mr. Harrison
any advantage that arises from that, although I do not see
that by giving him. that advantage it very much helps him ;
for the texts I afterwards quoted plainly showed that the
Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and the heart of Sihon,
King of Heshbon; and that he sent the lying spirit; and
that he tempted David to a sin, for which he killed some
70,000 people afterwards. Perhaps Mr. Harrison did not
consider these of sufficient importance to warrant notice.
I dp not pretend to judge of their relative importance in
quoting these texts; he does, and I shall be glad to hear
his views. He says that the texts in Isaiah and in Proverbs,
do not mean that God made moral evil, but declares that
Isaiah means physical evil. Oh, does he ? I should not
have thought so from reading the text; I am delighted to
have my friend’s explanation. That is one good of debate,
you learn. (Laughter.) I should not have got this view
but from the debate. “ I form the light, and create dark
ness ; I make peace, and create evil.” The one is the anti
thesis of the other; but don’t it look like—very much like
—moral mischief there ? And if God is all-wise, and allpowerful, and predestined everything—if God did not create
the moral evil, who did? (Cheers.) No one, in spite of
God, for God is proved from various texts to be all-powerful.
No one beyond his knowledge, for he is all-wise. No one
out of his dominion, because he planned everything.
(Cheers.) “ But,” says Mr. Harrison, “ in order to show
that Mr. Bradlaugh is wrong, I will read the passage in
Amos, and take the context.” I learn continually by what
Mr. Harrison does; I never knew what the “ context ” was
before to-night; that is, if his interpretation of it is the
right one. (Laughter.) I read the passage which finishes
at the sixth verse; but he begins at the ninth verse, and
takes that up as the context—a new paragraph ! I do not
say it is not the context—it may be from a theological
standpoint; but I find nothing to connect it with previous
verses. (Laughter.) He says too: “ Having dealt with
Numbers, I won’t deal with the other texts; they are not of
equal importance.” There was the case from Samuel, of
David and the numbering of the people; the case from
Exodus of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart; the case from
Kings of the lying spirit; the case of killing everybody
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CHRISTIAN THEISM.
without mercy, from Deuteronomy; the case in Thessalo
nians, that people who believed the lie sent to them by God
should be damned I and one or two little matters of that
kind, all these of no importance. (Laughter.) And the case
in Romans of God being compared to the potter, and that
he had a right to make bad vessels if he likes. Mr. Harrison,
in effect, says the way to dispose of these is to allege that
there are in the Bible texts totally the contrary to these.
But suppose that this be true; that would prove that the
Bible flatly contradicts itself. He then says : “ Let it be
granted that there is a dual principle of justice and mercy
going through the Bible.” But I cannot grant it. I do not
see the justice of hardening Pharaoh’s heart; and the killing
of the people; and the justice of killing one woman at the
mill, and leaving the other; or the justice and mercy of
numbering the people, and killing 70,000 ■ or sending a lying
spirit to tempt a king into the battle to get his people
destroyed; nor the justice of the bloodthirsty and whole
sale murderings in Deuteronomy and in Numbers, which
are amongst the most cruel of anything you will find
in history. (Cheers.) Mr. Harrison says : “ The cases
of evil are cases of judgment on the part of the Deity,
that sin may not be loved nor practised.” In what way
was sin not to be loved nor practised, in tempting David to
number his people ? And the same with tempting two nations
by sending them into battle ? and sending a delusion to be
a lie, so that people might be damned ? In what way was
sin not to be loved or practised by hardening Pharaoh’s
heart ? It is an extraordinary perversion of language to put
it this way. I have dealt, I think, with everything that he
has put to me. There are nineteen-twentieths of the texts
marked out to-night, that are not answered; and as this debate
is to be printed, if Mr. Harrison thinks them of importance,
he will confer a favour upon me by noticing any of them he
wishes to be dealt with. I cannot help admiring the peculiar
constitution of his intellect in regarding the death of the
undying God, and the begetting of the eternal son of the un
begotten undying Father, as matters of too little importance
to be noticed. I will take the liberty of reading to you, to
show that there is something to be said on both sides, a work
by a very able clergyman of the Church of England. It is in
reply to Canon Liddon. He says : “ Supposing that Christ
is God, and that his words have been handed down with un-
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
49
erring correctness, would lift His sayings above all criticism
and the application of any moral standard; but, if the rules
of human veracity and sincerity could be applied, Christ
would be convicted of untruthfulness, and a cruelly mislead
ing phraseology, when knowing Himself to be God, and
knowing also that faith in His Godhead was to be a vital
necessity, He, without elucidating and guarding explanations,
expressed Himself as follows : ‘ Why callest thou me good ?
None is good except one, that is God.’ (Markx. 18; Luke
xviii. 19.) ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he
hath anointed me,’ &c. (Luke iv. 18, 19, comp. Matt. xii. 18.)
‘ Of that day or that hour knoweth no one, neither the angels
in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father.’ (Mark xiii. 32; comp.
Matt. xxiv. 36, and Acts i. 7.) ‘To sit on my right hand,
and on my left, is not mine to give, except to those for whom
it has been prepared by my Father.’ (Matt xx. 23; Mark
x. 40.) ‘ Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my
Father, and he will furnish me with more than twelve legions
of angels ?’ (Matt. xxvi. 53.) ‘ My Father, if it be possible,
let this cup pass from me ; nevertheless, not as I will, but
as thou wilt.’ (Matt. xxvi. 39, 42; Mark xiv. 34, 36; Luke
xxii. 42.) ‘ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?’
(Matt, xxvii. 46 ; Mark xv. 34.)’” Then this book teaches
that Jesus, who was the eternal God himself—for this is the
declaration of the creed itself that I read: “ The very God
of very God, of one substance with the Father”—absolutely
and deliberately lies 1 So Christian Theism teaches. (Cheers.)
As I cannot tell what I should have to reply to, I will save
one quotation about the Unity of the Father and Son till
the next speech; but when Mr. Harrison talks about what
he might do under other circumstances, permit me to say
that if it came from any other man, I should consider it
as idle talk; but as nothing that falls from my opponent is
idle talk, I will deal with the matter. He said he could
have explained certain passages last night if he had liked.
He has no right to say so. He has told you what he would do
“ if the divine existence were to be discussed.” That is not
the subject of discussion; it is what Mr. Bradlaugh has said
about Christian Theism in his “ Plea for Atheism.” (Hear,
hear.) Mr. Harrison has had months to consider it; he
has gone round the country, and his committee have reputed
him as having defeated those with whom he had discussed,
and that he had defeated me, and perhaps would again win
�5»
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
the same laurels. I have little doubt that Mr. Harrison?
thought his committee were entitled to say all this, or he
would have repudiated the announcement made on hisbehalf. I am glad to meet a man so far greater than
myself; I am always ready to sit at the feet of Gamaliel, and
am willing to learn from such an one. At present, however,
I challenge him to- say whether this passage is true or not;
that is the question which we have to- debate. (Loud and
continued cheering.)
Mr. Harrison : As-1 am now coming to' my last speech,,
in closing this debate I hope that you will be patient with
me, and not cause me to lose any time by interruption.
Now I put it clearly before this audience, as I put it before
the more extensive audience who will probably read thedebate, that Mr. Bradlaugh has, from first to last, misunder
stood me. (“ Oh, oh,” and hisses.) Cannot you bear with
me ? I appeal to your sense of fair play. Though I may
say things unpalatable to you,, let me say them as it is
my last time. I said I thought he had- misunderstood my
position, and the object for which I accepted his challenge
to this debate. I want it to be distinctly understood that in
the lecture to which he has just referred, I said I thought I
could show that, if occasion turned up, the passage on page22 of the “Plea for Atheism,” was not a fair representation
of the teachings of Christian Theism. He asked me to this?
discussion. I said that a discussion as to the truth or false
hood of Christianity would be a blunder, that such a subject
was only fairly discussable with a man who took common
ground as to Theism; with whom- I could then discusswhether the Bible is from God. I did not come here to
discuss the general truth- or falsehood of Christianity; but
only to show whether Mr. Bradlaugh had dealt fairly with
what Christianity was> I think the majority of passages
brought forward by Mr. Bradlaugh, go to show that in his
judgment there are contradictions in the Bible itself. I am
justified, therefore, if they do not prove his position, in
saying that the contradictions do not exist. Then I was
justified in saying that if that were the subject of debate, I
could give a very easy explanation; but I have only wanted1
to show to the infidels here, that there- is something more tobe said for Christianity, that he has not even hinted at. Mr.
Bradlaugh has said here, that he did not come with
�CHRISTIAN THEISM*
5J
the purpose of making the best o£ his opponent’s case,
but with making the best of his own case. That is
laudable enough within a certain range • but neither Mr.
Bradlaugh nor any other man will ever , make the best of
his own case who does not deal fairly with his opponent’s
case ; and I think he has not. Have Christians ever taught
“that God died ?” I think we have never had that taught.
Sure am I that I never taught such, a thing; and I am bound
to say, from the lips of no public teacher have I ever heard
it. But I have heard that: “ In the beginning was the
word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.”
I have heard (as I read from John i.) : “ That the word was
made flesh, and dwelt among us
I have heard, as I read
in the Philippians, that Jesus, “ being in the form of God,
thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made him
self of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a ser
vant, and was made in the likeness of men.” That is our
teaching-.on the subject, and I think it is a fairly representa
tive teaching of Christian Theism. Our teaching is, that the
Son of God became incarnate; and that the God man,
the Lord Jesus Christ, died upon the cross for human sin.;
therefore it is .not that the Deity died, but that the
Lord Jesus Christ offered himself for human sin as a
sacrifice. There is a vast difference between this state
ment and the statement that God died. (Hear, hear.) Our
position is fairly this : That as we say the spirit of man does
not die when it leaves the body, so when we say .that Jesus
died we do not assert that God died, though in his two-fold
separation there was death. Those who listen to this will at
•once see, I believe, that there is a vast difference between such
teaching and that of the “ Plea for Atheism.” The question
which Mir. Bradlaugh has brought up is not an instance of
God compelling men to sin, but it is a question of the
punishment which follows sin. We see it in the moral con
stitution of man to-day, that the habit of committing sin has
.a tendency to harden a man in sin. It is a punishment for
sin ; but-is it just to say that therefore God causes the sin ?
Then in Pharaoh’s case, the word translated hardened, may
be translated, without any straining of the meaning, that what
God is represented in our English version as doing, is done
naturally by the moral laws of the human constitution; and
taken whether in the light of the text, or of a more accu
rate translation, it surely must appear fair that there should
�52
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
be punishment following upon sin. But if you find it says
the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, it says also, several
times before, that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. If the
Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, you will find it coming as a
punishment, and that Pharaoh first hardened his own heart.
As to “ peace and evil,” Mr. Bradlaugh only gave a part of
my statement. I said there was physical evil in the case of
punishment for sin, and it is right to say that God does make
that evil, for he does punish men for transgression. But
Mr. Bradlaugh says there are other passages I have not
noticed. With reference to the “ context,” it is true I did
not read two verses between.the passage I read, and the
verses read subsequently. I did not read them, but if Mr.
Bradlaugh will show that they modify what I said, I shall
be sorry that I did not read them. The only reason why I
did not read them was, because they did not appear to bear
upon the subject, and I thought it would simply waste your
time. In the three or four minutes left, will you allow me
to give—for I have no opportunity to speak again—will you
allow me to give my representation of Christianity, winding
up the debate as opposed to Mr. Bradlaugh ? (Hear, hear.)
Then I hold that, first of all, from the independent evidence
of the universe around us, there is proof of divine existence.
I find after that proof that there are difficulties as to the
origin of evil and its continuance which I am not able to
explain, but upon which Atheism is equally powerless. But
is there any plan to escape from the evil in my own heart—
using the words in a moral sense—and is there any plan to
help man in escaping ? I come to the New Testament, and
find God’s pitying love, and the doctrine that Jesus Christ
was given for the express purpose of offering up an atone
ment for human guilt. And it is said in John i., that He was a
light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
(A voice : “Bless him.”) I hold this then, as I pointed out
in this debate, that in consequence of the love and pity of
God, in consequence of the atonement of J esus Christ, there
is diffused throughout the world the spirit of enlightenment,
that will aid men to live to the best of their knowledge.
But if they will not do so, then they shall be judged accord
ing to their conduct, and condemned for not so living..
Then, why do I send Christianity to the heathen ? I want
men to live a nobler and more blessed life. (Cheers.)
I find in this country, where Christianity is, that there are
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
53
numbers of persons who are not living according to the
light within them, and I would bring them to a higher life.
I think that Mr. Bradlaugh has been unfair to the cause
which I represent. (Hisses.) I will not say that he is in
tentionally unfair—my own judgment is, that he has such a
passionate antagonism to Christianity, that when he comes
to speak of it, he cannot fairly discuss it. (Oh, oh; and
cheers.)
Mr. Brad laugh said he wished to ask through the Chair
man, before Mr. Harrison sat down, what was the exact
Hebrew word alleged to be mistranslated as hardened, and
what was the precise rendering Mr. Harrison would give;
also where, in the Bible, it was said several times, before
Exodus vii. 3 : “ That Pharaoh hardened his own heart ?”
Mr. Harrison : I think I have a right to protest against
this interruption as unfair. I have only one minute left, and
the question cannot be answered in that time. It is unfair
to ask the question now. (No, no.; and disorder.)
‘ The Chairman interfered, and said he thought Mr. Brad
laugh had a perfect right to ask the question through him,
and, at the same time, Mr. Harrison had an equal right to
reply that he would not answer it. (Laughter.)
Mr. Bradlaugh then said : As Mr. Harrison, in the exer
cise of his discretion, which he has a perfect right so to exercise,
has declined to answer the question I put—(disorder; occa
sioned by Mr. Harrison rising to protest)—at present I shall
make no comment upon Mr. Harrison’s argument that the
word which is translated hardened, ought to be translated
some other word, except this, that when we get the new
version of the Bible, we may get some light on Christian
Theism which we have not now. That some’Bible may
contain the several times in which Pharaoh hardened his
heart before the 7th chapter of Exodus, is possible, but I do
not know any version amongst the number which my small
acquaintance with the Bible has given me access to.
(Laughter.) Mr. Harrison says that the greatest portion of
my speeches yesterday “ went to show there are contradic
tions in the Bible.” Surely that is a mistake. On the ques
tion as to God being all-powerful, I quoted five texts and
one Article in proof, and I quoted two texts on the
other side. So, in every case, I proved every statement;
and it was only in relation to some of them that I thought
it right to bring the texts which seemed contradictory. But
�54
,
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
it was not for the purpose alone of proving contradiction,
although I in truth sought to damage the Bible as much as
I could, and it was perfectly legitimate for me to do so if I
thought proper. But I think I proved my case from the
texts I brought before you, and I think you will be of that
opinion also when you come to read the debate. Has it
been shown that the texts have been quoted unfairly, or a
false construction put upon them ? I think not, therefore
the inuendo is not right, and an honest man should be
ashamed of having made it. Then he says that “ Christian
Theism never taught that God diedand he says further
that “ no public teacher had ever taught it.” Well, I thought
I had read to him the Third Article of the Church of
England, which declared that Jesus died.
Mr. Harrison : He is not God..
Mr. Brad laugh : Well, I thought I read these words in
the Nicene Creed : “The Lord Jesus Christ, the only be
gotten son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds ;
God of God, Light of Light, very God of very Godand
I ask whether any stronger language can be used ? If lan
guage is to have no meaning, then Mr. Harrison may have
made out something; but at any rate, he was bound to deal
with this. He says : “We do not teach that God died; we
teach that he became incarnate, and that Jesus Christ
offered himself for all sinners.” He did not try to
prove it, or I would have shown you that Jesus said:
■“ I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of
Israel.” He says the natures of God and man were united,
but were separated when J esus died on the cross. Which
died ? Was it a mockery for God to pretend to bear upon
him bur punishment? Where did the separation begin ?
Was it in the garden of Gethsemane, when the agony as of
bloody sweat came upon him, and he prayed to himself for
help ? Was it when he cried in his dying agony : “ My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” If Mr. Harrison
believes Jesus &as very God of very God, he must have
been very God always. His creed says that Jesus was very
God of very God before all worlds, long before the world
was made ; and I ask whether this, if it were in anything else
than a discussion on Christianity, would not be considered
the vilest subterfuge of language, to say that Jesus was very
God of very God, and yet was not God at one and the same
time ? But Mr. Harrison says, “ our position is so and so.”
�CHRISTIAN THEISM.
55
Whose position? I asked you at the commencement of this
debate, whether Roman Catholics, Church of England,
Baptists, Wesleyans, Independents, and so on ? You gave
no explanation. I told you what I took, and I now say that
if.you took the Bible, the Creed, and the Articles as by law
established, they taught nothing of the kind you have stated ;
and if you have taken any other Christian Theism, you have
carefully hidden it from us. But here is an extraordinary
proposition in metaphysics as to the two-fold nature of J esus
Christ—there was a separation! A separation from God the
infinite. Nothing beyond God, no possibility of getting out
side God, and yet man is taken away from him ? Inside or
outside—where? Why it is one of the most ridiculous
phrases in the language. (Cheers.) Then as to the passage
in Amos, he says the two verses, between “did not bear on
the subject.” That is not the question; it is, whether he
took a new paragraph when professing to read the con
text. He has not, even after all my appeal, shown the
text between the two verses of Judges proving where
Judah sinned, as alleged by him. I cannot attempt to
measure my representation of Christianity against Mr.
Harrison, but as he has told you his representation of Chris
tianity, hear me while I give one, founded on the Bible.
Thence I will take it that God made the world in the begin
ning with nothing inside and no shape outside; that he
made everything very good, with a devil included ; that he
made man after the animals, but created man before all the
other animals; that he made the world good, and cursed it
afterwards; that he had no respect for persons, but picked
out one family in preference to all others, and then, being
a loving God, gave his chosen ones a mission of blood and
murder among the rest of his children; that he, having laid
a patent trap in the garden of Eden for the first man to fall
into, damns to eternity in a bottomless pit of fire and brim
stone, everyone bom of the race of Eve. Then, after thou
sands of yeaifc, during which he will not be just, and cannot
pardon, because, having punished the only sinner, there is
no crime to be pardoned, he determined to be born as a
babe from a virgin’s womb, without a father, his mother’s
husband having two fathers, living in one country and in
another country at the same time; that he performed miracles
among people who did not believe he performed them;
then he said if all other people don’t believe what these
�56
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
people won’t and can’t believe, then they shall be punished
in torment for ever. Here is Christianity ! You have had
all the literature of Europe in your hands; all the power in
your hands for 1500 years, and you kept mankind enslaved;
all the education, and you kept men ignorant; but Freethought has given battle to Christianity, and we see liberty
raising her head in spite of your accursed creed. (Loud
cheers, again and again repeated, a vast number rising and
waving hats.)
Mr. Harrison then moved a vote of thanks to the Chair
man and the Committee who had arranged the preliminaries
in connection with the debate, all of whom he considered
had acted with perfect fairness to both disputants. He also
thanked the leaders of the Secular party in London for the
courtesy with which they had treated him in their own hall.
Mr. Bradlaugh seconded the proposition, and in so
doing, corroborated the remarks of Mr. Harrison as to the
impartiality of the Chairman.
The vote of thanks was accorded unanimously.
The Chairman, in response, intimated that he was a
Christian, and believed that it was only by free discussion
that the truth, for which all ought to seek, can be attained.
He concluded by thanking the audience—which on both
nights seemed to fill the spacious building—for the atten
tion and good conduct they had exhibited.
The proceedings then terminated.
London : Printed and published by Austin & Co., 17, Johnson’s
Court, Fleet Street.
�
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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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What does Christian theism teach?: verbatim report of the two nights' discussion between the Rev. A.J. Harrison and C. Bradlaugh. Held at the New Hall of Science, Old Street, on Tuesday and Wednesday, January 9th and 10th, 1972.
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Harrison, A.J.
Bradlaugh, Charles
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 56 p. : 18 cm.
Notes: Chaired by J.R. Robertson.
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Austin & Co.
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[1872]
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Theism
Christianity
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Theism
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JOHN STUART MH
(photographed, by permission,
from the statue on
bankmenT)
W
17, JOHNSON"
£.C.
�THE
RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION
[Founded 1899.]
(Limited).
Chairman—GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.
Honorary Associates:
M. Berthelot
Paul Carus, Ph.D.
Edward Clodd
Stanton Coit, Ph.D.
W. C. Coupland, D.Sc., M.A.
F. J. Furnivall, M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt.
F. J. Gould
Prof. Ernst Haeckel
/
Leonard Huxley
Prof. W. C. van Manen
Eden Phillpotts
J. M. Robertson
W. R. Washington Sullivan
Prof. Ed. A. Westermarck
Thomas Whittaker
Bankers:
The London City and Midland Bank, Ltd., Blackfriars Branch, London, S.E.
A tiditors:
Messrs. Woodburn Kirby, Page, & Co., Chartered Accountants, I, Laurence Pountney Hill,
London, E.C.
Secretary and Registered Offices:
Charles E. Hooper, 5 and 6, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
All who approve of the publication, in a cheap and popular form, of works
such as the present Reprint can help to produce them, and can join in a systematic
propaganda for encouraging free inquiry and sober reflection, and repudiating
irrational authority.
These are the objects of the R. P. A. (The Rationalist Press
Association, Ltd.).
The Members of this Association have banded themselves
\ together, not with any view to commercial gain, but solely to promote sound
masoning and the growth of reasoned truth, as essential to the welfare and
•ess of humanity.
Should these aims commend themselves to your judgment,
quid apply at once for full particulars to
The Secretary,
R. P. A., Ltd.,
5 and 6, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street,
London, E.C.
�gV>58
bJMS
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
NATURE
THE
UTILITY OF RELIGION
AND
THEISM
BY
JOHN STUART MILL
[issued for the rationalist press association, limited]
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1904
��INTRODUCTORY NOTICE
The three following Essays on Religion
were written at considerable intervals of
time, without any intention of forming a
consecutive series, and must not there
fore be regarded as a connected body of
thought, excepting in so far as they
exhibit the Author’s deliberate and ex
haustive treatment of the topics under
consideration.
The two first of these three Essays
were written between the years 1850 and
1858, during the period which intervened
between the publication of the Princi
ples of Political Economy and that of
the work on Liberty; during which
interval three other Essays—on Justice,
on Utility, and on Liberty—were also
composed. Of the five Essays written
at that time, three have already been
given to the public by the Author.
That on Liberty was expanded into the
now well-known work bearing the same
title. Those on Justice and Utility were
afterwards incorporated, with some altera
tions and additions, into one, and pub
lished under the name of Utilitarianism.
The remaining two—on Nature and on
the Utility of Religion—are now given
to the public, with the addition of a third
—on Theism—which was produced at a
much later period.
In these two first
Essays indications may easily be found I
of the date at which they were composed;
among which indications may be noted
the absence of any mention of the works
of Mr. Darwin and Sir Henry Maine in
passages where there is coincidence of
thought with those writers, or where
subjects are treated which they have
since discussed in a manner to which
the Author of these Essays would cer
tainly have referred had their works been
published before these were written.
The last Essay in the present volume
belongs to a different epoch; it was
written between the years 1868 and
1870, but it was not designed as a sequel
to the two Essays which now appear
along with it, nor were they intended to
appear all together. On the other hand,
it is certain that the Author considered
the opinions expressed in these different
Essays as fundamentally consistent.
The evidence of this lies in the fact that
in the year 1873, after he had completed
his Essay on Theism, it was his intention
to have published the Essay on Nature
at once, with only such slight revision as
might be judged necessary in preparing
it for the press, but substantially in its
present form. From this it is apparent
that his manner of thinking had under
gone no substantial change. Whatever
discrepancies, therefore, may seem to
�4
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE
remain, after a really careful comparison
between different passages, may be set
down either to the fact that the last
Essay had not undergone the many
revisions which it was the Author’s habit
to make peculiarly searching and
thorough ; or to that difference of tone,
and of apparent estimate of the relative
weight of different considerations, which
results from taking a wider view, and
including a larger number of considera
tions in the estimate of the subject as a
whole, than in dealing with parts of it
only.
The fact that the Author intended to
publish the Essay on Nature in 1873 is
sufficient evidence, if any is needed,
that the volume now given to the public
was not withheld by him on account of
reluctance to encounter whatever odium
might result from the free expression of
his opinions on religion. That he did
not purpose to publish the other two
Essays at the same time was in accord
with the Author’s habit in regard to the
public utterance of his religious opinions.
For at the same time that he was pecu
liarly deliberate and slow in forming
opinions, he had a special dislike to the
utterance of half-formed opinions. He
declined altogether to be hurried into
premature decision on any point to which
he did not think he had given sufficient
time and labour to have exhausted it to
the utmost limit of his own thinking
powers. And, in the same way, even
after he had arrived at definite conclu
sions, he refused to allow the curiosity
of others to force him to the expression
of them before he had bestowed all the
elaboration in his power upon their
adequate expression, and before, there
fore, he had subjected to the test of
time, not only the conclusions them
selves, but also the form into which he
had thrown them. The same reasons,
therefore, that made him cautious in the
spoken utterance of his opinion in pro
portion as it was necessary to be at once
precise and comprehensive in order to
be properly understood, which in his
judgment was pre-eminently the case in
religious speculation, were the reasons
that made him abstain from publishing
his Essay on Nature for upwards of
fifteen years, and might have led him
still to withhold the others which now
appear in the same volume.
From this point of view it will be seen
that the Essay on Theism has both
greater value and less than any other of
the Author’s works. The last consider
able work which he completed, it shows
the latest state of the Author’s mind, the
carefully balanced result of the delibera
tions of a lifetime. On the other hand,
there had not been time for it to undergo
the revision to which from time to time
he subjected most of his writings before
making them public. Not only there
fore is the style less polished than that of
any other of his published works, but
even the matter itself, at least in the
exact shape it here assumes, has never
undergone the repeated examination
which it certainly would have passed
through before he would himself have
given it to the world.
Helen Taylor.
�CONTENTS
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UTILITY OF RELIGION
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THEISM
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NATURE -
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PART I.
57
INTRODUCTION
THEISM
THE EVIDENCES OF THEISM
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ARGUMENT FOR A FIRST CAUSE
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THE ARGUMENT FROM MARKS OF DESIGN IN NATURE -
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ARGUMENT FROM THE GENERAL CONSENT OF MANKIND
THE ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIOUSNESS
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PART II.
ATTRIBUTES -
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PART III.
IMMORTALITY
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PART IV.
REVELATION
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PART V.
GENERAL RESULT
102
��NATURE
“Nature,” “natural,” and the group of
words derived from them, or allied to them
in etymology, have at all times filled a
great place in the thoughts and taken a
strong hold on the feelings of mankind.
That they should have done so is not sur
prising when we consider what the words,
in their primitive and most obvious
signification, represent; but it is unfor
tunate that a set of terms which play so
great a part in moral and metaphysical
speculation should have acquired many
meanings different from the primary
one, yet sufficiently allied to it to admit
of confusion. The words have thus
become entangled in so many foreign
associations, mostly of a very powerful
and tenacious character, that they have
come to excite, and to be the symbols
of, feelings which their original meaning
will by no means justify, and which
have made them one of the most copious
sources of false taste, false philosophy,
false morality, and even bad law.
The most important application of the
Socratic Elenchus, as exhibited and im
proved by Plato, consists in dissecting
large abstractions of this description;
fixing down to a precise definition the
meaning which as popularly used they
merely shadow forth, and questioning
and testing the common maxims and
opinions in which they bear a part. It
is to be regretted that among the
instructive specimens of this kind of
investigation which Plato has left,
and to which subsequent times have
been so much indebted for whatever
intellectural clearness they have attained,
he has not enriched posterity with a dia
logue irepi <f>v(r€(D<s. If the idea denoted
by the word had been subjected to his
searching analysis, and the popular
commonplaces in which it figures had
been submitted to the ordeal of his
powerful dialectics, his successors pro
bably would not have rushed, as they
speedily did, into modes of thinking and
reasoning of which the fallacious use of
that word formed the cornerstone; a
kind of fallacy from which he was him
self singularly free.
According to the Platonic method,
which is still the best type of such in
vestigations, the first thing to be done
with so vague a term is to ascertain
precisely what it means. It is also a
rule of the same method that the mean
ing of an abstraction is best sought for
in the concrete—of an universal in the
particular. Adopting this course with
the word “ nature,” the first question
must be, what is meant by the “ nature ”
of a particular object, as of fire, of
water, or of some individual plant or
animal? Evidently the ensemble or
aggregate of its powers or properties :
the modes in which it acts on other
things (counting among those things the
senses of the observer), and the modes
in which other things act upon it; to
which, in the case of a sentient being,
�8
NATURE
must be added its own capacities of
feeling, or being conscious. The nature
of the thing means all this; means its
entire capacity of exhibiting phenomena.
And since the phenomena which a thing
exhibits, however much they vary in
different circumstances, are always the
same in the same circumstances, they
admit of being described in general
forms of words, which are called the
laws of the thing’s nature. Thus it is a
law of the nature of water that, under
the mean pressure of the atmosphere
at the level of the sea, it boils at 2120
Fahrenheit.
As the nature of any given thing is
the aggregate of its powers and pro
perties, so Nature in the abstract is the
aggregage of the powers and properties
of all things. Nature means the sum of
all phenomena, together with the causes
which produce them; including not only
all that happens, but all that is capable
of happening; the unused capabilities
of causes being as much a part of the
idea of Nature as those which take
effect. Since all phenomena which have
been sufficiently examined are found to
take place with regularity, each having
certain fixed conditions, positive and
negative, on the occurrence of which it
invariably happens, mankind have been
able to ascertain, either by direct
observation or by reasoning processes
grounded on it, the conditions of the
occurrence of many phenomena; and
the progress of science mainly consists
in ascertaining those conditions. When
discovered they can be expressed in
general propositions, which are called
laws of the particular phenomenon, and
also, more generally, Laws of Nature.
Thus the truth, that all material objects
tend towards one another with a force
directly as their masses and inversely as
the square of their distance, is a law of
nature. The proposition, that air and
food are necessary to animal life, if it be,
as we have good reason to believe, true
without exception, is also a law of
nature, though the phenomenon of
which it is the law is special, and not,
like gravitation, universal.
Nature, then, in this, its simplest,
acceptation, is a collective name for all
facts, actual and possible; or (to speak
more accurately) a name for the mode,
partly known to us and partly unknown,
in which all things take place. For the
word suggests, not so much the multi
tudinous detail of the phenomena, as
the conception which might be formed
of their manner of existence as a mental
whole, by a mind possessing a complete
knowledge of them : to which concep
tion it is the aim of science to raise
itself, by successive steps of generalisa
tion from experience.
Such, then, is a correct definition of
the word “ nature.” But this definition
corresponds only to one of the senses
of that ambiguous term. It is evidently
inapplicable to some of the modes in
which the word is familiarly employed.
For example, it entirely conflicts with
the common form of speech by which
Nature is opposed to Art, and natural
to artificial. For, in the sense of the
word “nature” which has just been
defined, and which is the true scientific
sense, Art is as much Nature as any
thing else; and everything which is
artificial is natural—Art has no inde
pendent powers of its own : Art is but
the employment of the powers of Nature
for an end. Phenomena produced by
human agency, no less than those which
as far as we are concerned are spon
taneous, depend on the properties of the
elementary forces, or of the elementary
�NATURE
substances and their compounds. The
united powers of the whole human race
could not create a new property of
matter in general, or of any one of its
species. We can only take advantage
for our purposes of the properties which
we find. A ship floats by the same laws
of specific gravity and equilibrium as a
tree uprooted by the wind and blown
into the water. The corn which men
raise for food grows and produces its
grain by the same laws of vegetation by
which the wild rose and the mountain
strawberry bring forth their flowers and
fruit. A house stands and holds to
gether by the natural properties, the
weight and cohesion of the materials
which compose it: a steam engine works
by the natural expansive force of steam,
exerting a pressure upon one part of a
system of arrangements, which pressure,
by the mechanical properties of the
lever, is transferred from that to another
part where it raises the weight or removes
the obstacle brought into connection with
it. In these and all other artificial opera
tions the office of man is, as has often
been remarked, a very limited one : it
consists in moving things into certain
places. We move objects, and, by doing
this, bring some things into contact
which were separate, or separate others
which were in contact; and, by this
simple change of place, natural forces
previously dormant are called into action,
and produce the desired effect. Even
the volition which designs, the intelli
gence which contrives, and the muscular
force which executes these movements,
are themselves powers of Nature.
It thus appears that we must recognise
at least two principal meanings in the
word “ nature.” In one sense, it means
all the powers existing in either the outer
or the inner world and everything which
9
takes place by means of those powers.
In another sense, it means, not everything
which happens, but only what takes
place without the agency, or without the
voluntary and intentional agency, of man.
This distinction is far from exhausting
the ambiguities of the word ; but it is
the key to most of those on which im
portant consequences depend.
Such, then, being the two principal
senses of the word “nature,” in which of
these is it taken, or is it taken in either,
when the word and its derivatives are
used to convey ideas of commendation,
approval, and even moral obligation ?
It has conveyed such ideas in all
ages. Naturum sequi was the funda
mental principle of morals in many of
the most admired schools of philosophy.
Among the ancients, especially in the
declining period of ancient intellect and
thought, it was the test to which all
ethical doctrines were brought. The
Stoics and the Epicureans, however irre
concilable in the rest of their systems,
agreed in holding themselves bound to
prove that their respective maxims of
conduct were the dictates of nature.
Under their influence the Roman jurists,
when attempting to systematise jurispru
dence, placed in the front of their expo
sition a certain Jus Naturale, “quod
natura,” as Justinian declares in the
Institutes, “ omnia animalia docuit
and as the modern systematic writers,
not only on law but on moral philosophy,
have generally taken the Roman jurists
for their models, treatises on the so-called
Law of Nature have abounded; and
references to this Law as a supreme rule
and ultimate standard have pervaded
literature. The writers on International
Law have done more than any others to
give currency to this style of ethical
speculation; inasmuch as, having no
�io
NATURE
positive law to write about, and yet
being anxious to invest the most ap
proved opinions respecting international
morality with as much as they could of
the authority of law, they endeavoured
to find such an authority in Nature’s
imaginary code. The Christian theology
during the period of its greatest ascen
dancy opposed some, though not a com
plete, hindrance to the modes of thought
which erected Nature into the criterion
of morals, inasmuch as, according to the
creed of most denominations of Chris
tians (though assuredly not of Christ),
man is by nature wicked. But this very
doctrine, by the reaction which it pro
voked, has made the deistical moralists
almost unanimous in proclaiming the
divinity of Nature, and setting up its
fancied dictates as an authoritative rule
of action. A reference to that supposed
standard is the predominant ingredient
in the vein of thought and feeling which
was opened by Rousseau, and which has
infiltrated itself most widely into the
modern mind, not excepting that portion
of it which calls itself Christian. The
doctrines of Christianity have in every
age been largely accommodated to the
philosophy which happened to be pre
valent, and the Christianity of our day
has borrowed a considerable part of its
colour and flavour from sentimental
deism. At the present time it cannot
be said that Nature, or any other
standard, is applied as it was wont to
be, to deduce rules of action with
juridical precision, and with an attempt
to make its application co-extensive with
all human agency. The people of this
generation do not commonly apply prin
ciples with any such studious exactness,
nor own such binding allegiance to any
standard, but live in a kind of confusion
of many standards ; a condition not pro
pitious to the formation of steady moral
convictions, but convenient enough to
those whose moral opinions sit lightly on
them, since it gives them a much wider
range of arguments for defending the
doctrine of the moment. But though
perhaps no one could now be found who,
like the institutional writers of former
times, adopts the so-called Law of
Nature as the foundation of ethics, and
endeavours consistently to reason from
it, the word and its cognates must still
be counted among those which carry
great weight in moral argumentation.
That any mode of thinking, feeling, or
acting, is “ according to nature ” isusually accepted as a strong argument
for its goodness. If it can be said witb
any plausibility that “ nature enjoins ”
anything, the propriety of obeying the
injunction is by most people considered
to be made out; • and, conversely, the
imputation of being contrary to nature
is thought to bar the door against any
pretension, on the part of the thing so*
designated, to be tolerated or excused;
and the word “ unnatural ” has not ceased
to be one of the most vituperative
epithets in the language. Those whodeal in these expressions may avoid
making themselves responsible for any
fundamental theorem respecting the
standard of moral obligation, but they
do not the less imply such a theorem,
and one which must be the same in sub
stance with that on which the more
logical thinkers of a more laborious age
grounded their systematic treatises on
Natural Law.
Is it necessary to recognise in these
forms of speech another distinct mean
ing of the word “nature”? Or can they
be connected, by any rational bond of
union, with either of the two meanings
already treated of? At first it may
�NATURE
seem that we have no option but to
admit another ambiguity in the term.
All inquiries are either into what is or
into what ought to be: science and
history belonging to the first division ;
art, morals, and politics to the second.
But the two senses of the word “ nature ”
first pointed out agree in referring only
to what is. In the first meaning, Nature
is a collective name for everything which
is. In the second, it is a name for
everything which is of itself, without
voluntary human intervention. But the
employment of the word “nature ” as a
term of ethics seems to disclose a third
meaning, in which Nature does not
stand for what is, but for what ought to
be, or for the rule or standard of what
ought to be. A little consideration, how
ever, will show that this is not a case of
ambiguity; there is not here a third
sense of the word. Those who set up
Nature as a standard of action do not
intend a merely verbal proposition;
they do not mean that the standard,
whatever it be should be called Nature;
they think they are giving some informa
tion as to what the standard of action
really is. Those who say that we ought
to act according to Nature do not mean
the mere identical proposition that we
ought to do what we ought to do. They
think that the word “nature” affords some
external criterion of what we should do;
and if they lay down as a rule for what
ought to be, a word which in its proper
signification denotes what is, they do so
because they have a notion, either clearly
or confusedly, that what is constitutes
the rule and standard of what ought
to be.
The examination of this notion is the
object of the present Essay. It is pro
posed to inquire into the truth of the
doctrines which make Nature a test of
11
right and wrong, good and evil, or which
in any mode or degree attach merit or
approval to following, imitating, or obey
ing Nature. To this inquiry the fore
going discussion respecting the meaning
of terms was an indispensable introduc
tion. Language is, as it were, the
atmosphere of philosophical investiga
tion, which must be made transparent
before anything can be seen through it
in the true figure and position. In the
present case it is necessary to guard
against a further ambiguity, which, though
abundantly obvious, has sometimes mis
led even sagacious minds, and of which
it is well to take distinct note before pro
ceeding further. No word is more
commonly associated with the word
“nature” than “law”; and this last word
has distinctly two meanings, in one of
which it denotes some definite portion
of what is, in the other of what ought to
be. We speak of the law of gravitation,
the three laws of motion, the law of
definite proportions in chemical combi
nation, the vital laws of organised beings.
All these are portions of what is. We
also speak of the criminal law, the civil
law, the law of honour, the law of
veracity, the law of justice ; all of which
are portions of what ought to be, or of
somebody’s suppositions, feelings, or
commands respecting what ought to be.
The first kind of laws, such as the laws
of motion and of gravitation, are neither
more nor less than the observed uni
formities in the occurrence of pheno
mena ; partly uniformities of antecedence
and sequence, partly of concomitance.
These are what, in science, and even in
ordinary parlance, are meant by laws of
nature. Laws in the other sense are the
laws of the land, the law of nations, or
moral laws ; among which, as already
noticed, is dragged in, by jurists and
�12
NATURE
publicists, something which they think ■ modes of acting are so in exactly the
proper to call the Law of Nature. Of , same degree. Every action is the
the liability of these two meanings of i exertion of some natural power, and its
the word to be confounded there can be : effects of all sorts are so many pheno
no better example than the first chapter mena of nature, produced by the powers
of Montesquieu, where he remarks that and properties of some of the objects of
the material world has its laws, the nature, in exact obedience to some law
inferior animals have their laws, and or laws of nature. When I voluntarily
man has his laws; and calls attention to use my organs to take in food, the act,
the much greater strictness with which and its consequences, take place accord
the first two sets of laws are observed ing to laws of nature : if instead of food
than the last; as if it were an inconsis I swallow poison, the case is exactly the
tency, and a paradox, that things always same. To bid people conform to the
are what they are, but men not always laws of nature when they have no power
what they ought to be. A similar con but what the laws of nature give them—
fusion of ideas pervades the writings of when it is a physical impossibility for
Mr. George Combe, from whence it has them to do the smallest thing otherwise
overflowed into a large region of popular than through some law of nature, is an
literature, and we are now continually absurdity. The thing they need to be
reading injunctions to obey the physical told is what particular law of nature they
laws of the universe, as being obligatory should make use of in a particular case.
in the same sense and manner as the When, for example, a person is crossing
moral. The conception which the a river by a narrow bridge to which there
ethical use of the word “nature ” implies, is no parapet, he will do well to regulate
of a close relation if not absolute iden his proceedings by the laws of equilib
tity between what is and what ought to rium in moving bodies, instead of con
be, certainly derives part of its hold on forming only to the law of gravitation
the mind from the custom of designat and falling into the river.
ing what is by the expression “ laws of
Yet, idle as it is to exhort people to
nature,”while the same word “law” is also do what they cannot avoid doing, and
used, and even more familiarly and em absurd as it is to prescribe as a rule of
phatically, to express what ought to be.
right conduct what agrees exactly as
When it is asserted, or implied, that well with wrong, nevertheless a rational
Nature, or the laws of Nature, should be rule of conduct may be constructed out
conformed to, is the Nature which is of the relation which it ought to bear
meant Nature in the first sense of the to the laws of nature in this widest
term, meaning all which is—the powers acceptation of the term. Man neces
and properties of all things? But in sarily obeys the laws of nature, or in
this signification there is no need of a other words the properties of things ; but
recommendation to act according to he does not necessarily guide himself by
nature, since it is what nobody can them. Though all conduct is in con
possibly help doing, and equally whether formity to laws of nature, all conduct is
he acts well or ill. There is no mode not grounded on knowledge of them,
of acting which is not conformable to and intelligently directed to the attain
Nature in this sense of the term, and all ment of purposes by means of them.
�Though we cannot emancipate ourselves
from the laws of nature as a whole, we
can escape from any particular law of
nature, if we are able to withdraw our
selves from the circumstances in which
it acts. Though we can do nothing
except through laws of nature, we can
use one law to counteract another.
According to Bacon’s maxim, we can
obey nature in such a manner as to
command it. Every alteration of cir
cumstances alters more or less the laws
of nature under which we act; and by
every choice which we make either of
ends or of means we place ourselves to a
greater or less extent under one set of
laws of nature instead of another. If,
therefore, the useless precept to follow
nature were changed into a precept to
study nature; to know and take heed of
the properties of the things we have
to deal with, so far as these properties
are capable of forwarding or obstructing
any given purpose; we should have
arrived at the first principle of all intelli
gent action, or rather at the definition of
intelligent action itself. And a confused
notion of this true principle is, I doubt
not, in the minds of many of those who
set up the unmeaning doctrine which
superficially resembles it. They per
ceive that the essential difference
between wise and foolish conduct con
sists in attending, or not attending, to
the particular laws of nature on which
some important result depends. And
they think that a person who attends to
a law of nature in order to shape his
conduct by it may be said to obey
it, while a person who practically dis
regards it, and acts as if no such law
existed, may be said to disobey it: the
circumstance being overlooked, that
what is thus called disobedience to a law
of nature is obedience to some other,
or perhaps to the very law itself,
example, a person who goes into
powder-magazine either not knowing, or
carelessly omitting to think of, the ex
plosive force of gunpowder, is likely to
do some act which will cause him to be
blown to atoms in obedience to the very
law which he has disregarded.
But, however much of its authority the
“ Naturam sequi ” doctrine may owe to
its being confounded with the rational pre
cept “Naturum observare,” its favourers
and promoters unquestionably intend
much more by it than that precept. To
acquire knowledge of the properties of
things, and make use of the knowledge
for guidance, is a rule of prudence, for
the adaptation of means to ends ; for
giving effect to our wishes and intentions,
whatever they may be. But the maxim
of obedience to Nature, or conformity to
Nature, is held up not as a simply pruden
tial but as an ethical maxim; and by
those who talk of jus natura, even as a
law, fit to be administered by tribunals
and enforced by sanctions. Right action
must mean something more and other
than merely intelligent action; yet no
precept beyond this last can be con
nected with the word “ nature ” in the
wider and more philosophical of its
acceptations. We must try it, therefore,
in the other sense, that in which Nature
stands distinguished from Art, and de
notes, not the whole course of the pheno
mena which come under our observation,
but only their spontaneous course.
Let us, then, consider whether we can
attach any meaning to the supposed
practical maxim of following Nature, in
this second sense of the word, in which
Nature stands for that which takes place
without human intervention. In Nature
as thus understood is the spontaneous
course of things, when left to themselves,
�14
NA TURE
the rule to be followed in endeavouring
to adapt things to our use ? But it is
evident at once that the maxim, taken in
this sense, is not merely, as it is in the
other sense, superfluous and unmeaning,
but palpably absurd and self-contradic
tory. For while human action cannot
help conforming to Nature in the one
meaning of the term, the very aim and
object of action is to alter and improve
Nature in the other meaning. If the
natural course of things were perfectly
right and satisfactory, to act at all would
be a gratuitous meddling, which, as it
could not make things better, must make
them worse. Or if action at all could be
justified, it would only be when in direct
obedience to instincts, since these might
perhaps be accounted part of the spon
taneous order of Nature; but to do any
thing with forethought and purpose
would be a violation of that perfect
order. If the artificial is not better than
the natural, to what end are all the arts
of life? To dig, to plough, to build, to
wear clothes, are direct infringements of
the injunction to follow nature.
Accordingly it would be said by every
one, even of those most under the in
fluence of the feelings which prompt the
injunction, that to apply it to such cases
as those just spoken of would be to
push it too far. Everybody professes to
approve and admire many great triumphs
of Art over Nature: the junction by
bridges of shores which Nature had
made separate, the draining of Nature’s
marshes, the excavation of her wells, the
dragging to light of what she has buried
at immense depths in the earth; the
turning away of her thunderbolts by
lightning rods, of her inundations by
embankments, of her ocean by break
waters. But to commend these and
similar feats is to acknowledge that the
ways of Nature are to be conquered, not
obeyed; that her powers are often
towards man in the position of enemies,
from whom he must wrest, by force and
ingenuity, what little he can for his own
use, and deserves to be applauded when
that little is rather more than might be
expected from his physical weakness in
comparison to those gigantic powers.
All piaise of Civilisation, or Art, or Con
trivance, is so much dispraise of Nature ;
an admission of imperfection which it is
man’s business and merit to be always
endeavouring to correct or mitigate.
The consciousness that whatever man
does to improve his condition is in so
much a censure and a thwarting of the
spontaneous order of Nature, has in all
ages caused new and unprecedented
attempts at improvement to be generally
at first under a shade of religious sus
picion ; as being in any case uncompli
mentary, and very probably offensive to
the powerful beings (or, when polytheism
gave place to monotheism, to the allpowerful Being) supposed to govern the
various phenomena of the universe, and
of whose will the course of nature was
conceived to be the expression. Any
attempt to mould natural phenomena to
the convenience of mankind might easily
appear an interference with the govern
ment of those superior beings; and
though life could not have been main
tained, much less made pleasant, without
perpetual interferences of the kind, each
new one was doubtless made with fear
and trembling, until experience had
shown that it could be ventured on with
out drawing down the vengeance of the
Gods. The sagacity of priests showed
them a way to reconcile the impunity of
particular infringements with the main
tenance of the general dread of encroach
ing on the divine administration. This
�NATURE
was effected by representing each of the
principal human inventions as the gift
and favour of some god. The old reli
gions also afforded many resources for
consulting the Gods, and obtaining their
express permission for what would other
wise have appeared a breach of their
prerogative. When oracles had ceased,
any religion which recognised a revela
tion afforded expedients for the same
purpose. The Catholic religion had the
resource of an infallible Church, autho
rised to declare what exertions of human
spontaneity were permitted or forbidden ;
and in default of this the case was always
open to argument from the Bible whether
any particular practice had expressly or
by implication been sanctioned. The
notion remained that this liberty to con
trol Nature was conceded to man only
by special indulgence, and as far as
required by his necessities; and there
was always a tendency, though a dimin
ishing one, to regard any attempt to
exercise power over nature beyond a
certain degree and a certain admitted
range as an impious effort to usurp divine
power and dare more than was permitted
to man. The lines of Horace in which
the familiar arts of shipbuilding and
navigation are reprobated as vetitum
nefas indicate even in that sceptical age
a still unexhausted vein of the old senti
ment. The intensity of the correspond
ing feeling in the Middle Ages is not a
precise parallel, on account of the super
stition about dealing with evil spirits with
which it was complicated; but the im
putation of prying into the secrets of the
Almighty long remained a powerful
weapon of attack against unpopular
inquirers into nature ; and the charge of
presumptuously attempting to defeat the
designs of Providence still retains enough
of its original force to be thrown in as a
15
make-weight along with other objections
when there is a desire to find fault with
any new exertion of human forethought
and contrivance. No one, indeed, asserts
it to be the intention of the Creator that
the spontaneous order of the creation
should not be altered, or even that it
should not be altered in any new way.
But there still exists a vague notion that,
though it is very proper to control this
or the other natural phenomenon, the
general scheme of nature is a model for
us to imitate; that with more or less
liberty in details, we should on the whole
be guided by the spirit and general con
ception of nature’s own ways ; that they
are God’s work, and as such perfect; that
man cannot rival their unapproachable
excellence, and can best show his skill
and joiety by attempting, in however
imperfect a way, to reproduce their like
ness ; and that, if not the whole, yet some
particular parts of the spontaneous order
of nature, selected according to the
speakers predilections, are in a peculiar
sense manifestations of the Creator’s
will—a sort of finger-posts pointing out
the direction which things in general,
and therefore our voluntary actions, are
intended to take. Feelings of this sort,
though repressed on ordinary occasions
by the contrary current of life, are ready
to break out whenever custom is silent,
and the native promptings of the mind
have nothing opposed to them but
reason; and appeals are continually
made to them by rhetoricians, with the
effect, if not of convincing opponents,
at least of making those who already
hold the opinion which the rhetorician
desires to recommend, better satisfied
with it. For in the present day it pro
bably seldom happens that anyone is per
suaded to approve any course of action
because it appears to him to bear an
�i6
NA TURE
analogy to the divine government of the
world, though the argument tells on him
with great force, and is felt by him to be
a great support, in behalf of anything
which he is already inclined to approve.
If this notion of imitating the ways
of Providence as manifested in Nature
is seldom expressed plainly and downrightly as a matter of general applica
tion, it also is seldom directly contra
dicted. Those who find it on their path
prefer to turn the obstacle rather than to
attack it, being often themselves not
free from the feeling, and in any case
afraid of incurring the charge of impiety
by saying anything which might be held
to disparage the works of the Creator’s
power. They, therefore, for the most
part, rather endeavour to show that they
have as much right to the religious argu
ment as their opponents, and that, if the
course they recommend seems to conflict
with some part of the ways of Providence,
there is some other part with which it
agrees better than what is contended for
on the other side. In this mode of
dealing with the great a priori fallacies,
the progress of improvement clears away
particular errors while the causes of
errors are still left standing, and very
little weakened by each conflict; yet by
a long series of such partial victories
precedents are accumulated, to which
an appeal may be made against these
powerful prepossessions, and which
afford a growing hope that the misplaced
feeling, after having so often learnt to
recede, may some day be compelled to
an unconditional surrender. For, how
ever offensive the proposition may appear
to many religious persons, they should
be willing to look in the face the unde
niable fact that the order of nature, in so
far as unmodified by man, is such as no
being, whose attributes are justice and
benevolence, would have made with the
intention that his rational creatures
should follow it as an example. If made
wholly by such a Being, and not partly
by beings of very different qualities, it
could only be as a designedly imperfect
work, which man, in his limited sphere,
is to exercise justice and benevolence in
amending. The best persons have always
held it to be the essence of religion that
the paramount duty of man upon earth
is to amend himself; but all except
monkish quietists have annexed to this
in their inmost minds (though seldom
willing to enunciate the obligation with
the same clearness) the additional reli
gious duty of amending the world, and
not solely the human part of it, but the
material—the order of physical nature.
In considering this subject it is neces
sary to divest ourselves of certain pre
conceptions which may justly be called
natural prejudices, being grounded on
feelings which, in themselves natural
and inevitable, intrude into matters with
which they ought to have no concern.
One of these feelings is the astonishment,
rising into awe, which is inspired (even
independently of all religious sentiment)
by any of the greater natural phenomena.
A hurricane; a mountain precipice;
the desert; the ocean, either agitated or
at rest; the solar system, and the great
cosmic forces which hold it together;
the boundless firmament, and to an edu
cated mind any single star—excite feel
ings which make all human enterprises
and powers appear so insignificant that,
to a mind thus occupied, it seems in
sufferable presumption in so puny a
creature as man to look critically on
things so far above him, or dare to
measure' himself against the grandeur of
the universe. But a little interrogation
of our own consciousness will suffice to
�NATURE
convince us that what makes these
phenomena so impressive is simply their
vastness. The enormous extension in
space and time, or the enormous power
they exemplify, constitutes their sub
limity ; a feeling in all cases, more allied
to terror than to any moral emotion.
And though the vast scale of these
phenomena may well excite wonder, and
sets at defiance all idea of rivalry, the
feeling it inspires is of a totally different
character from admiration of excellence.
Those in whom awe produces admiration
may be aesthetically developed, but they
are morally uncultivated. It is one of
the endowments of the imaginative part
of our mental nature that conceptions of
greatness and power, vividly realised,
produce a feeling which, though in its
higher degrees closely bordering on pain,
we prefer to most of what are accounted
pleasures. But we are quite equally
capable of experiencing this feeling
towards maleficent power; and we never
experience it so strongly towards most of
the powers of the universe as when we
have most present to our consciousness
a vivid sense of their capacity of inflict
ing evil. Because these natural powers
have what we cannot imitate, enormous
might, and overawe us by that one attri
bute, it would be a great error to infer
that their other attributes are such as we
ought to emulate, or that we should be
justified in using our small powers after
the example which Nature sets us with
her vast forces. For how stands the
fact? That, next to the greatness of
these cosmic forces, the quality which
most forcibly strikes every one who does
not avert his eyes from it is their perfect
and absolute recklessness. They go
straight to their end, without regarding
what or whom they crush on the road.
Optimists, in their attempts to prove
17
that “whatever is, is right,” are obliged
to maintain, not that Nature ever turns
one step from her path to avoid tramp
ling us into destruction, but that it would
be very unreasonable in us to expect
that she should. Pope’s “ Shall gravita
tion cease when you go by ? ” may be a
just rebuke to any one who should be
so silly as to expect common human
morality from nature. But if the ques
tion were between two men, instead of
between a man and a natural phenome
non, that triumphant apostrophe would be
thought a rare piece of impudence. A
man who should persist in hurling stones
or firing cannon when another man
“ goes by,” and having killed him should
urge a similar plea in exculpation,
would very deservedly be found guilty of
murder.
In sober truth, nearly all the things
which men are hanged or imprisoned
for doing to one another are nature’s
every-day performances. Killing, the
most criminal act recognised by human
laws, Nature does once to every being
that lives ; and, in a large proportion of
cases, after protracted tortures sUch as
only the greatest monsters whom we
read of ever purposely inflicted on their
living fellow-creatures. If, by an arbi
trary reservation, we refuse to account
anything murder but what abridges a
certain term supposed to be allotted to
human life, nature also does this to all
but a small percentage of lives, and does
it in all the modes, violent or insidious,
in which the worst human beings take
the lives of one another. Nature impales
men, breaks them as if on the wheel,
casts them to be devoured by wild
beasts, burns them to death, crushes
them with stones like the first Christian
martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes
them with cold, poisons them by the
c
�iS
NATURE
quick or slow venom of her exhalations,
and has hundreds of other hideous
deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious
cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never
surpassed. All this Nature does with
the most supercilious disregard both of
mercy and of justice, emptying her
shafts upon the best and noblest indif
ferently with the meanest and worst;
upon those who are engaged in the
highest and worthiest enterprises, and
often as the direct consequence of the
noblest acts; and it might almost
be imagined as a punishment for them.
She mows down those on whose exist
ence hangs the well-being of a whole
people, perhaps the prospect of the
human race for generations to come,
with as little compunction as those
whose death is a relief to themselves, or
a blessing to those under their noxious
influence. Such are Nature’s dealings
with life. Even when she does not
intend to kill, she inflicts the same
tortures in apparent wantonness. In the
clumsy provision which she has made
for that perpetual renewal of animal life,
rendered necessary by the prompt termi
nation she puts to it in every individual
instance, no human being ever comes
into the world but another human being
is literally stretched on the rack for hours
or days, not unfrequently issuing in
death. Next to taking life (equal to it
according to a high authority) is taking
the means by which we live ; and Nature
does this too on the largest scale and
with the most callous indifference. A
single hurricane destroys the hopes of a
season ; a flight of locusts, or an inun
dation, desolates a district; a trifling I
chemical change in an edible root
starves a million of people. The waves
of the sea, like banditti, seize and appro
priate the wealth of the rich and the little
all of the poor with the same accompani
ments of stripping, wounding, and killing
as their human antitypes. Everything,
in short, which the worst men commit
either against life or property is perpe
trated on a larger scale by natural agents.
Nature has Noyades more fatal than
those of Carrier; her explosions of fire
damp are as destructive as human
artillery; her plague and cholera far
surpass the poison-cups of the Borgias.
Even the love of “ order,” which is
thought to be a following of the ways of
Nature, is in fact a contradiction of them.
All which people are accustomed to
deprecate as “disorder” and its conse
quences is precisely a counterpart of
Nature’s ways. Anarchy and the Reign
of Terror are overmatched in injustice,
ruin, and death by a hurricane and a
pestilence.
But, it is said, all these things are for
wise and good ends. On this I must
first remark that whether they are so or
not is altogether beside the point. Sup
posing it true that, contrary to appear
ances, these horrors, when perpetrated by
Nature, promote good ends, still, as no
one believes that good ends would be
promoted by our following the example,
the course of Nature cannot be a proper
model for us to imitate. Either it is
right that we should kill because nature
kills; torture because nature tortures ;
ruin and devastate because nature does
the like; or we ought not to consider at
all what nature does, but what it is good
to do. If there is such a thing as a
reductio adabsurdum, this surely amounts
to one. If it is a sufficient reason for
doing one thing, that nature does it, why
not another thing ? If not all things,
why anything ? The physical govern
ment of the world being full of the things
which when done by men are deemed
�NATURE
the greatest enormities, it cannot be
religious or moral in us to guide our
actions by the analogy of the course of
nature. This proposition remains true,
whatever occult quality of producing
good may reside in those facts of nature
which to our perceptions are most
noxious, and which no one considers it
other than a crime to produce artifici
ally.
But, in reality, no one consistently
believes in any such occult quality. The
phrases which ascribe perfection to the
course of nature can only be considered
as the exaggerations of poetic or devo
tional feeling, not intended to stand the
test of a sober examination. No one,
either religious or irreligious, believes
that the hurtful agencies of nature, con
sidered as a whole, promote good pur
poses, in any other way than by inciting
human rational creatures to rise up and
struggle against them. If we believed
that those agencies were appointed by a
benevolent Providence as the means of
accomplishing wise purposes which could
not be compassed if they did not exist,
then everything done by mankind which
tends to chain up these natural agencies
or to restrict their mischievous operation,
from draining a pestilential marsh down
to curing the toothache, or putting up an
umbrella, ought to be accounted im
pious ; which assuredly nobody does
account them, notwithstanding an under
current of sentiment setting in that
direction which is occasionally percep
tible. On the contrary, the improve
ments on which the civilised part of man
kind most pride themselves consist in
more successfully warding off those
natural calamities which, if we really
believed what most people profess to
believe, we should cherish as medicines
provided for our earthly state by infinite
19
wisdom. Inasmuch, too, as each genera
tion greatly surpasses its predecessors in
the amount of natural evil which it
succeeds in averting, our condition, if
the theory were true, ought by this time
to have become a terrible manifestation
of some tremendous calamity, against
which the physical evils we have learnt
to overmaster had previously operated
as a preservative. Any one, however,
who acted as if he supposed this to be
the case would be more likely, I think,
to be confined as a lunatic than rever
enced as a saint.
It is undoubtedly a very common fact
that good comes out of evil, and when it
does occur it is far too agreeable not tofind people eager to dilate on it. But, in
the first place, it is quite as often true of
human crimes as of natural calamities.
The fire of London, which is believed to
have had so salutary an effect on the
healthiness of the city, would have pro
duced that effect just as much if it had
been really the work of the furor
papisticus ” so long commemorated on
the Monument. The deaths of those
whom tyrants or persecutors have made
martyrs in any noble cause have done a
service to mankind which would not
have been obtained if they had died by
accident or disease. Yet, whatever inci
dental and unexpected benefits may
result from crimes, they are crimes,
nevertheless. In the second place, if
good frequently comes out of evil, the
converse fact, evil coming out of good,
is equally common. Every event, public
or private, which, regretted on its occur
rence, was declared providential at a
later period on account of some unfore
seen good consequence, might be
matched by some other event, deemed
fortunate at the time, but which proved
calamitous or fatal to those whom it
�20
IVA TURE
appeared to benefit. Such conflicts
between the beginning and the end, or
between the event and the expectation,
are not only as frequent, but as often
held up to notice, in the painful cases as
in the agreeable; but there is not the
same inclination to generalise on them ;
or at all events they are not regarded by
the moderns (though they were by the
ancients) as similarly an indication of
the divine purposes : men satisfy them
selves with moralising on the imperfect
nature of our foresight, the uncertainty
of events, and the vanity of human ex
pectations. The simple fact is, human
interests are so complicated, and the
effects of any incident whatever so multi
tudinous, that, if it touches mankind at
all, its influence on them is, in the great
majority of cases, both good and bad.
If the greater number of personal mis
fortunes have their good side, hardly any
..good fortune ever befel any one which
■did not give either to the same or to
some other person something to regret :
and unhappily there are many misfor
tunes so overwhelming that their favour
able side, if it exist, is entirely over
shadowed and made insignificant; while
the corresponding statement can seldom
be made concerning blessings. The
.effects, too, of every cause depend so
much on the circumstances which acci
dentally accompany it that many cases
are sure to occur in which even the total
result is markedly opposed to the pre
dominant tendency: and thus not only
evil has its good and good its evil side,
but good often produces an overbalance
of evil and evil an overbalance of good.
This, however, is by no means the
general tendency of either phenomenon.
On the contrary, both good and evil
naturally tend to fructify, each in its own
kind, good producing good, and evil,
evil. It is one of Nature’s general rules,
and part of her habitual injustice, that
“ to him that hath shall be given, but
from him that hath not shall be taken
even that which he hath.” The ordinary
and predominant tendency of good is
towards more good. Health, strength,
wealth, knowledge, virtue, are not only
good in themselves, but facilitate and
promote the acquisition of good, both of
the same and of other kinds. The person
who can learn easily is he who already
knows much : it is the strong and not
the sickly person who can do everything
which most conduces to health ; those
who find it easy to gain money are not
the poor, but the rich; while health,
strength, knowledge, talents, are all
means of acquiring riches, and riches
are often an indispensable means of
acquiring these. Again, e conveyso, what
ever may be said of evil turning into
good, the general tendency of evil is
towards further evil. Bodily illness
renders the body more susceptible of
disease; it produces incapacity of exer
tion, sometimes debility of mind, and
often the loss of means of subsistence.
All severe pain, either bodily or mental,
tends to increase the susceptibilities of
pain for ever after. Poverty is the parent
of a thousand mental and moral evils.
What is still worse, to be injured or
oppressed, when habitual, -lowers the
whole tone of the character. One bad
action leads to others, both in the agent
himself, in the bystanders, and in
the sufferers. All bad qualities are
strengthened by habit, and all vices and
follies tend to spread.
Intellectual
defects generate moral, and moral, intel
lectual ; and every intellectual or moral
defect generates others, and so on with
out end.
That much applauded class of authors,
�NA TURE
the writers on natural theology, have, I
venture to think, entirely lost their way,
and missed the sole line of argument
which could have made their speculations
acceptable to any one who can perceive
when two propositions contradict one
another. They have exhausted the
resources of sophistry to make it appear
that all the suffering in the world exists
to prevent greater—that misery exists,
for fear lest there should be misery : a
thesis which, if ever so well maintained,
could only avail to explain and justify
the works of limited beings, compelled
to labour under conditions independent
of their own will; but can have no
application to a Creator assumed to be
omnipotent, who, if he bends to a sup
posed necessity, himself makes the
necessity which he bends to. If the
maker of the world can all that he will,
he wills misery, and there is no escape
from the conclusion. The more consis
tent of those who have deemed them
selves qualified to “ vindicate the ways of
God to man ” have endeavoured to avoid
the alternative by hardening their hearts,
and denying that misery is an evil. The
goodness of God, they say, does not
consist in willing the happiness of his
creatures, but their virtue; and the uni
verse, if not a happy, is a just, universe.
But, waving the objections to this scheme
of ethics, it does not at all get rid of the
difficulty. If the Creator of mankind
willed that they should all be virtuous,
his designs are as completely baffled as
if he had willed that they should all be
happy : and the order of nature is con
structed with even less regard to the
requirements of justice than to those of
benevolence. If the law of all creation
were justice and the Creator omnipotent,
then, in whatever amount suffering and
happiness might be dispensed to the
2r
world, each person’s share of them would
be exactly proportioned to that person’s
good or evil deeds ; no human being
would have a worse lot than another,
without worse deserts ; accident or
favouritism would have no part in such
a world, but every human life would be
the playing out of a drama constructed
like a perfect moral tale. No one is able
to blind himself to the fact that the
world we live in is totally different from
this ; insomuch that the necessity of re
dressing the balance has been deemed
one of the strongest arguments for
another life after death, which amounts
to an admission that the order of things
in this life is often an example of injus
tice, not justice. If it be said that God
does not take sufficient account of
pleasure and pain to make them the
reward or punishment of the good or the
wicked, but that virtue is itself the
greatest good and vice the greatest evil,
then these at least ought to be dispensed
to all according to what they have done
to deserve them; instead of which, every
kind of moral depravity is entailed upon
multitudes by the fatality of their birth ;
through the fault of their parents, of
society, or of uncontrollable circum
stances, certainly through no fault of
their own. Not even on the most dis
torted and contrasted theory of good
which ever was framed by religious or
philosophical fanaticism can the govern
ment of Nature be made to resemble the
work of a being at once good and omni
potent.
The only admissible moral theory of
Creation is that the Principle of Good
cinnot at once and altogether subdue the
powers of evil, either physical or moral;
could not place mankind in a world free
from the necessity of an incessant struggle
with the maleficent powers, or make
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NATURE
them always victorious in that struggle,
but could and did make them capable of
carrying on the fight with vigour and
with progressively increasing success.
Of all the religious explanations of the
order of nature, this alone is neither
contradictory to itself nor to the facts
for which it attempts to account. Accord
ing to it, man’s duty would consist, not
in simply taking care of his own interests
by obeying irresistible power, but in
standing forward a not ineffectual auxi
liary to a Being of perfect beneficence ;
a faith which seems much better adapted
for nerving him to exertion than a vague
and inconsistent reliance on an Author
of Good who is supposed to be also the
author of evil. And I venture to assert
that such has really been, though often
unconsciously, the faith of all who have
drawn strength and support of any worthy
kind from trust in a superintending
Providence. There is no subject on
which men’s practical belief is more
incorrectly indicated by the words they
use to express it than religion. Many
have derived a base confidence from
imagining themselves to be favourites of
an omnipotent but capricious and
despotic Deity. But those who have
been strengthened in goodness by rely
ing on the sympathising support of a
powerful and good Governor of the
world have, I am satisfied, never really
believed that Governor to be, in the
strict sense of the term, omnipotent.
They have always saved his goodness at
the expense of his power. They have
believed, perhaps, that he could, if he
willed, remove all the thorns from their
individual path, but not without causing
greater harm to some one else, or frus
trating some purpose of greater importance
to the general well-being. They have
believed that he could do any one thing,
but not any combination of things; that
his government, like human government,
was a system of adjustments and com
promises ; that the world is inevitably
imperfect, contrary to his intention.1
And since the exertion of all his power
to make it as little imperfect as possible
leaves it no better than it is, they cannot
but regard that power, though vastly
beyond human estimate, yet as in itself
not merely finite, but extremely limited.
They are bound, for example, to suppose
that the best he could do for his human
creatures was to make an immense
majority of all who have yet existed be
born (without any fault of their own)
Patagonians, or Esquimaux, or something
nearly as brutal and degraded, but to
give them capacities which, by being
cultivated for very many centuries
in toil and suffering, and after many
of the best specimens of the race
have sacrificed their lives for the
purpose, have at last enabled some
chosen portions of the species to grow
into something better, capable of being
improved in centuries more into
1 This irresistible conviction conies out in the
writings of religious philosophers, in exact pro
portion to the general clearness of their under
standing. It nowhere shines forth so distinctly
as in Leibnitz’s famous Theodicee, so strangely
mistaken for a system of optimism, and, as such,
satirised by Voltaire on grounds which do not
even touch the author’s argument. Leibnitz
does not maintain that this world is the best of
all imaginable, but only of all possible, worlds ;
which, he argues, it cannot but be, inasmuch as
God, who is absolute goodness, has chosen it
and not another. In every page of the work be
tacitly assumes an abstract possibility and impos
sibility, independent of the divine power ; and,
though his pious feelings make him continue to
designate that power by the word “Omnipotence, ’
he so explains that term as to make it mean
power extending to all that is within the limits
of that abstract possibility.
�NA TURE
something really good, of which hitherto
there are only to be foun 1 individual
instances. It may be possible to believe
with Plato that perfect goodness, limited
and thwarted in every direction by the
intractableness of the material, has done
this because it could do no better. But
that the same perfectly wise and good
Being had absolute power over the
material, and made it, by voluntary
choice, what it is; to admit this might
have been supposed impossible to any
one who has the simplest notions of
moral good and evil. Nor can any such
person, whatever kind of religious phrases
he may use, fail to believe that if Nature
and man are both the works of a Being
of perfect goodness, that Being intended
Nature as a scheme to be amended, not
imitated, by man.
But even though unable to believe
that Nature, as a whole, is a realisation
of the designs of perfect wisdom and
benevolence, men do not willingly re
nounce the idea that some part of
Nature, at least, must be intended as an
exemplar, or type; that on some portion
or other of the Creator’s works the
image of the moral qualities which they
are accustomed to ascribe to him must be
impressed ; that if not all which is, yet
something which is, must not only be a
faultless model of what ought to be, but
must be intended to be our guide and
standard in rectifying the rest. It does
not suffice them to believe that what
tends to good'is to be imitated and per
fected, and what tends to evil is to be
corrected: they are anxious for some
more definite indication of the Creator’s
designs; and, being persuaded that this
must somewhere be met with in his
works, undertake the dangerous respon
sibility of picking and choosing among
them in quest of it. A choice which,
except so far as directed by the general
maxim that he intends all the good and
none of the evil, must of necessity be
perfectly arbitrary; and if it leads to any
conclusions other than such as can be
deduced from that maxim, must be,
exactly in that proportion, pernicious.
It has never been settled by any
accredited doctrine what particular de
partments of the order of nature shall be
reputed to be designed for our moral
instruction and guidance ; and accord
ingly each person’s individual predilec
tions, or momentary convenience, have
decided to what parts of the divine
government the practical conclusions
that he was desirous of establishing
should be recommended to approval as
being analogous. One such recommen
dation must be as fallacious as another,
for it is impossible to decide that cer
tain of the Creator’s works are more
truly expressions of his character than
the rest; and the only selection which
does not lead to immoral results is the
selection of those which most conduce
to the general good—in other words, of
those which point to an end which, if the
entire scheme is the expression of a
single omnipotent and consistent will, is
evidently not the end intended by it.
There is, however, one particular
element in the construction of the world
which, to minds on the look-out for
special indications of the Creator’s will,
has appeared, not without plausibility,
peculiarly fitted to afford them ; viz.,
the active impulses of human and other
animated beings. One can imagine such
persons arguing that, when the Author of
Nature only made circumstances, he may
not have meant to indicate the manner
in which his rational creatures were to
adjust themselves to those circumstances;
but that when he implanted positive
�24
AU TURE
stimuli in the creatures themselves,
stirring them up to a particular kind of
action, it is impossible to doubt that he
intended that sort of action to be prac
tised by them. This reasoning, followed
out consistently, would lead to the con
clusion that the Deity intended, and
approves, whatever human beings do;
since all that they do being the conse
quence of some of the impulses with
which their Creator must have endowed
them, all must equally be considered as
done in obedience to his will. As this
practical conclusion wras shrunk from, it
was necessary to draw a distinction, and
to pronounce that not the whole, but
only parts, of the active nature of man
kind point to a special intention of the
Creator in respect to their tonduct.
These parts, it seemed natural to suppose,
must be those in which the Creator’s
hand is manifested rather than the man’s
own; and hence the frequent antithesis
between man as God made him and
man as he has made himself. Since
what is done with deliberation seems
more the man’s own act, and he is held
more completely responsible for it than
for what he does from sudden impulse,
the considerate part of human conduct
is apt to be set down as man’s share in
the business, and the inconsiderate as
God’s. The result is the vein of senti
ment so common in the modern world
(though unknown to the philosophic
ancients) which exalts instinct at the
expense of reason ; an aberration ren
dered still more mischievous by the
opinion commonly held in conjunction
with it, that every, or almost every, feel
ing or impulse which acts promptly with
out waiting to ask questions is an instinct.
Thus almost every variety of unreflecting
and uncalculating impulse receives a
kind of consecration, except those which,
though unreflecting at the moment, owe
their origin to previous habits of reflec
tion : these, being evidently not instinc
tive, do not meet with the favour accorded
to the rest; so that all unreflecting
impulses are invested with authority over
reason, except the only ones which are
most probably right. I do not mean, of
course, that this mode of judgment is
even pretended to be consistently carried
out : life could not go on if it were not
admitted that impulses must be con
trolled, and that reason ought to govern
our actions. The pretension is not to
drive Reason from the helm, but rather
to bind her by articles to steer only in a
particular way. Instinct is not to govern,
but reason is to practise some vague and
unassignable amount of deference to
Instinct. Though the impression in
favour of instinct as being a peculiar
manifestation of the divine purposes has
not been cast into the form of a con
sistent general theory, it remains a stand
ing prejudice, capable of being stirred up
into hostility to reason in any case in
which the dictate of the rational faculty
has not acquired the authority of pre
scription.
I shall not here enter into the difficult
psychological question, what are or are
not instincts : the subject would require
a volume to itself. Without touching
upon any disputed theoretical points, it
is possible to judge how little worthy is
the instinctive part of human nature to
be held up as its chief excellence—as the
part in which the hand of infinite good
ness and wisdom is peculiarly visible.
Allowing everything to be an instinct
which anybody has ever asserted to be
one, it remains true that nearly every
respectable attribute of humanity is the
result not of instinct, but of a victory
over instinct; and that there is hardly
�NA TURE
anything valuable in the natural man
except capacities—a whole world of pos
sibilities, all of them dependent upon
eminently artificial discipline for being
realised.
It is only in a highly artificialised con
dition of human nature that the notion
grew up, or, I believe, ever could have
grown up, that goodness was natural :
because only after a long course of arti
ficial education did good sentiments
become so habitual, and so predominant
over bad, as to arise unprompted when
occasion called for them. In the times
when mankind were nearer to their
natural state, cultivated observers re
garded the natural man as a sort of wild
animal, distinguished chiefly by being
craftier than the other beasts of the field;
and all worth of character was deemed
the result of a sort of taming ; a phrase
often applied by the ancient philosophers
to the appropriate discipline of human
beings. The truth is that there is hardly
a single point of excellence belonging to
human character which is not decidedly
repugnant to the untutored feelings of
human nature.
If there be a virtue which more than
any other we expect to find, and really
do find, in an uncivilised state, it is the
virtue of courage. Yet this is from first
to last a victory achieved over one of the
most powerful emotions of human nature.
If there is any one feeling or attribute
more natural than all others to human
beings, it is fear ; and no greater proof
can be given of the power of artificial
discipline than the conquest which it has
at all times and places shown itself
capable of achieving over so mighty and
so universal a sentiment. The widest
difference no doubt exists between one
human being and another in the facility
or difficulty with which they acquire this
25
virtue. There is hardly any department
of human excellence in which difference
of original temperament goes so far.
But it may fairly be questioned if any
human being is naturally courageous.
Many are naturally pugnacious, or
irascible, or enthusiastic, and these
passions when strongly excited may
render them insensible to fear. But
take away the conflicting emotion, and
fear reasserts its dominion : consistent
courage is always the effect of cultiva
tion. The courage which is occasionally,
though by no means generally, found
among tribes of savages is as much the
result of education as that of the
Spartans or Romans. In all such tribe?
there is a most emphatic direction of the
public sentiment into every channel of
expression through which honour can be
paid to courage and cowardice held up to
contempt and derision. It will perhaps
be said that, as the expression of a senti
ment implies the sentiment itself, the
training of the young to courage pre
supposes an originally courageous people.
It presupposes only what all good
customs presuppose—that there must
have been individuals better than the
rest who set the customs going. Some
individuals, who like other people had
fears to conquer, must have had strength
of mind and will to conquer them for
themselves. These would obtain the
influence belonging to heroes, for that
which is at once astonishing and
obviously useful never fails to be ad
mired : and partly through this admira
tion, partly through the fear they them
selves excite, they would obtain the
power of legislators, and could establish
whatever customs they pleased.
Let us next consider a quality which
forms the most visible and one of the
most radical of the moral distinctions
�26
NA TURE
between human beings and most of the
lower animals ; that of which the absence,
more than of anything else, renders men
bestial—the quality of cleanliness. Can
anything be more entirely artificial ?
Children, and the lower classes of most
countries, seem to be actually fond of
dirt: the vast majority of the human
race are indifferent to it : whole nations
of otherwise civilised and cultivated
human beings tolerate it in some of its
worst forms, and only a very small
minority are consistently offended by it.
Indeed, the universal law of the subject
appears to be that uncleanliness offends
only those to whom it is unfamiliar, so
that those who have lived in so artificial
a state as to be unused to it in any form
are the sole persons whom it disgusts in
all forms. Of all virtues this is the most
evidently not instinctive, but a triumph
over instinct. Assuredly neither cleanli
ness nor the love of cleanliness is natural
to man, but only the capacity of acquir
ing a love of cleanliness.
Our examples have thus far been taken
from the personal, or, as they are called
by Bentham, the self-regarding virtues,
because these, if any, might be supposed
to be congenial even to the uncultivated
mind. Of the social virtues it is almost
superfluous to speak, so completely is
it the verdict of all experience that
selfishness is natural. By this I do not
in any wise mean to deny that sympathy
is natural also ; I believe, on the contrary,
that on that important fact rests the pos
sibility of any cultivation of goodness
and nobleness, and the hope of their
ultimate entire ascendancy. But sym
pathetic characters, left uncultivated and
given up to their sympathetic instincts,
are as selfish as others. The difference
is in the kind of selfishness : theirs is not
solitary but sympathetic selfishness;
rego'isme a deux, a trois, or a quatre; and
they may be very amiable and delightful
to those with whom they sympathise, and
grossly unjust and unfeeling to the rest
of the world. Indeed, the finer nervous
organisations which are most capable of
and most require sympathy have, from
their fineness, so much stronger impulses
of all sorts that they often furnish the
most striking examples of selfishness,
though of a less repulsive kind than that
of colder natures. Whether there ever
was a person in whom, apart from all
teaching of instructors, friends or books,
and from all intentional self-modelling
according to an ideal, natural benevolence
was a more powerful attribute than
selfishness in any of its forms, may
remain undecided. That such cases are
extremely rare every one must admit,
and this is enough for the argument.
But (to speak no further of self-control
for the benefit of others) the commonest
self-control for one’s own benefit—that
power of sacrificing a present desire to a
distant object or a general purpose which
is indispensable for making the actions
of the individual accord with his own
notions of his individual good; even this
is most unnatural to the undisciplined
human being: as may be seen by the
long apprenticeship which children serve
to it; the very imperfect manner in
which it is acquired by persons born to
power, whose will is seldom resisted, and
by all who have been early and much
indulged; and the marked absence of
the quality in savages, in soldiers and
sailors, and in a somewhat less degree in
nearly the whole of the poorer classes in
this and many other countries. The prin
cipal difference, on the point under con
sideration, between this virtue and others,
is that although, like them, it requires
a course of teaching, it is more susceptible
�NA TURE
than most of them of being self-taught.
The axiom is trite that self-control is only
learnt by experience ; and this endow
ment is only thus much nearer to being
natural than the others we have spoken
of, inasmuch as personal experience,
without external inculcation, has a certain
tendency to engender it. Nature does
not of herself bestow this, any more than
other virtues; but nature often ad
ministers the rewards and punishments
which cultivate it, and which in other
cases have to be created artificially for
the express purpose.
Veracity might seem, of all virtues, to
have the most plausible claim to being
natural, since, in the absence, of motives
to the contrary, speech usually conforms
to, or at least does not intentionally
deviate from, fact. Accordingly, this is
the virtue with which writers like
Rousseau delight in decorating savage
life, and setting it in advantageous con
trast with the treachery and trickery of
civilisation. Unfortunately this is a mere
fancy picture, contradicted by all the
realities of savage life. Savages are
always liars. They have not the faintest
notion of truth as a virtue. They have
a notion of not betraying to their hurt,
as of not hurting in any other way,
persons to whom they are bound by
some special tie of obligation; their
chief, their guest, perhaps, or their
friend: these feelings of obligation being
the taught morality of the savage state,
growing out of its characteristic circum
stances. But of any point of honour
respecting truth for truth’s sake they
have not the remotest idea; no more
than the whole East and the greater
part of Europe ; and in the few countries
which are sufficiently improved to have
such a point of honour it is confined to
a small minority, who alone, under any
27
circumstances of real temptation, prac
tise it.
From the general use of the expression
“natural justice,” it must be presumed
that justice is a virtue generally thought
to be directly implanted by Nature. I
believe, however, that the sentiment of
justice is entirely of artificial origin; the
idea of natural justice not preceding but
following that of conventional justice.
The farther we look back into the early
modes of thinking of the human race,
whether we consider ancient times
(including those of the Old Testament)
or the portions of mankind who are still
in no more advanced a condition than
that of ancient times, the more com
pletely do we find men’s notions of
justice defined and bounded by the
express appointment of law. A man’s
just rights meant the rights which the
law gave him : a just man was he who
never infringed, nor sought to infringe,
the legal property or other legal rights of
others. The notion of a higher justice,
to which laws themselves are amenable,
and by which the conscience is bound
without a positive prescription of law, is
a later extension of the idea, suggested
by, and following the analogy of, legal
justice, to which it maintains a parallel
direction through all the shades and
varieties of the sentiment, and from
which it borrows nearly the whole of its
phraseology. The very words justus and
justilia are derived from jus, law.
Courts of justice, administration of
justice, always mean the tribunals.
If it be said that there must be the
germs of all these virtues in human
nature, otherwise mankind would be
incapable of acquiring them, I am ready,
with a certain amount of explanation, to
admit the fact. But the weeds that dis
pute the ground with these beneficent
�28
NATURE
germs are themselves not germs, but
rankly luxuriant growths, and would, in
all but some one case in a thousand,
entirely stifle and destroy the former,
were it not so strongly the interest of
mankind to cherish the good germs in
one another, that they always do so, in
as far as their degree of intelligence
(in this as in other respects still very
imperfect) allows. It is through such
fostering, commenced early, and not
counteracted by unfavourable influences,
that, in some happily circumstanced
specimens of the human race, the most
elevated sentiments of which humanity
is capable become a second nature,
stronger than the first, and not so much
subduing the original nature as merging
it into itself. Even those gifted organisa
tions which have attained the like excel
lence by self-culture owe it essentially to
the same cause; for what self-culture
would be possible without aid from the
general sentiment of mankind delivered
through books, and from the contempla
tion of exalted characters, real or ideal ?
This artificially created, or at least artifi
cially perfected, nature of the best and
noblest human beings is the only nature
which it is ever commendable to follow.
It is almost superfluous to say that even
this cannot be erected into a standard of
conduct, since it is itself the fruit of a
training and culture the choice of which,
if rational and not accidental, must have
been determined by a standard already
chosen.
This brief survey is amply sufficient to
prove that the duty of man is the same
in respect to his own nature as in respect
to the nature of all other things—namely,
not to follow but to amend it. Some
people, however, who do not attempt to
deny that instinct ought to be subordi
nate to reason, pay deference to Nature
so far as to maintain that every natural
inclination must have some sphere of
action granted to it, some opening left
for its gratification. All natural wishes,
they say, must have been implanted for
a purpose: and this argument is carried
so far that we often hear it maintained
that every wish which it is supposed to
be natural to entertain must have a
corresponding provision in the order of
the universe for its gratification; inso
much (for instance) that the desire of an
indefinite prolongation of existence is
believed by many to be in itself a
sufficient proof of the reality of a future
life.
I conceive that there is a radical
absurdity in all these attempts to dis
cover, in detail, what are the designs of
Providence, in order, when they are dis
covered, to help Providence in bringing
them about. Those who argue, from
particular indications, that Providence
intends this or that, either believe that
the Creator can do all that he will or
that he cannot. If the first supposition
is adopted—if Providence is omnipotent,
Providence intends whatever happens,
and the fact of its happening proves that
Providence intended it. If so, every
thing which a human being can do is
predestined by Providence and is a fulfil
ment of its designs. But if, as is the
more religious theory, Providence intends
not all which happens, but only what is
good, then indeed man has it in his
power, by his voluntary actions, to aid
the intentions of Providence; but he
can only learn those intentions by con
sidering what tends to promote the
general good, and not what man has
a natural inclination to; for, limited as,
on this showing, the divine power must
be, by inscrutable but insurmountable
obstacles, who knows that nun could.
�NATURE
have been created without desires which
never are to be, and even which never
ought to be, fulfilled ? The inclinations
with which man has been endowed, as
well as any of the other contrivances
which we observe in Nature, may be the
expression not of the divine will, but of
the fetters which impede its free action;
and to take hints from these for the
guidance of our own conduct may be
falling into a trap laid by the enemy.
The assumption that everything which
infinite goodness can desire actually
comes to pass in this universe, or at
least that we must never say or suppose
that it does not, is worthy only of those
whose slavish fears make them offer the
homage of lies to a Being who, they
profess to think, is incapable of being
deceived and holds all falsehood in
abomination.
With regard to this particular hypo
thesis, that all natural impulses, all
propensities sufficiently universal and
sufficiently spontaneous to be capable of
passing for instincts, must exist for good
ends, and ought to be only regulated,
not repressed; this is of course true of
the majority of them, for the species
could not have continued to exist unless
most of its inclinations had been directed
to things needful or useful for its pre
servation. But unless the instincts can
be reduced to a very small number
indeed, it must be allowed that we have
also bad instincts which it should be the
aim of education not simply to regulate,
but to extirpate, or rather (what can be
done even to an instinct) to starve
by disuse. Those who are inclined to
multiply the number of instincts, usually
include among them one which they call
destructiveness: an instinct to destroy
for destruction’s sake. I can conceive
no good reason for preserving this, any
29
more than another propensity which, if
notan instinct, is very like one—what has
been called the instinct of domination ;
a delight in exercising despotism, in
holding other beings in subjection to our
will. The man who takes pleasure in
the mere exertion of authority, apart
from the purpose for which it is to
be employed, is the last person in whose
hands one would willingly entrust it.
Again, there are persons who are cruel
by character, or, as the phrase is,
naturally cruel; who have a real pleasure
in inflicting, or seeing the infliction of
pain. This kind of cruelty is not mere
hardheartedness, absence of pity or re
morse; it is a positive thing; a par
ticular kind of voluptuous excitement.
The East and Southern Europe have
afforded, and probably still afford,
abundant examples of this hateful pro
pensity. I suppose it will be granted
that this is not one of the natural in
clinations which it would be wrong to
suppress. The only question would be,
whether it is not a duty to suppress the
man himself along with it.
But even if it were true that every one
of the elementary impulses of human
nature has its good side, and may by a
sufficient amount of artificial training be
made more useful than hurtful; how
little would this amount to, when it must
in any case be admitted that without
such training all of them, even those
which are necessary to our preservation,
would fill the world with misery, making
human life an exaggerated likeness of
the odious scene of violence and tyranny
which is exhibited by the rest of the
animal kingdom, except in so far as
tamed and disciplined by man. There,
indeed, those who flatter themselves
with the notion of reading the purposes
of the Creator in his works ought in
�3°
NATURE
consistency to have seen grounds for
inferences from which they have shrunk.
If there are any marks at all of special
design in creation, one of the things
most evidently designed is that a large
proportion of all animals should pass
their existence in tormenting and de
vouring other animals. They have been
lavishly fitted out with the instru
ments necessary for that purpose; their
strongest instincts impel them to it, and
many of them seem to have been con
structed incapable of supporting them
selves by any other food. If a tenth
part of the pains which have been ex
pended in finding benevolent adaptations
in all nature had been employed in
collecting evidence to blacken the
character of the Creator, what scope for
comment would not have been found in
the entire existence of the lower animals,
divided, with scarcely an exception, into
devourers and devoured, and a prey to a
thousand ills from which they are denied
the faculties necessary for protecting
themselves ! If we are not obliged to
believe the animal creation to be the
work of a demon, it is because we need
not suppose it to have been made by a
Being of infinite power. But if imitation
of the Creator’s will as revealed in nature
were applied as a rule of action in this
case, the most atrocious enormities of the
worst men would be more than justified
by the apparent intention of Providence
■that throughout all animated nature the
strong should prey upon the weak.
The preceding observations are far
from having exhausted the almost infinite
variety of modes and occasions in which
the idea of conformity to nature is intro
duced as an element into the ethical
appreciation of actions and dispositions.
I he same favourable prejudgment follows
the word “nature” through the numerous
acceptations in which it is employed as
a distinctive term for certain parts of the
constitution of humanity as contrasted
with other parts. We have hitherto con
fined ourselves to one of these accepta
tions, in which it stands as a general
designation for those parts of our mental
and moral constitution which are sup
posed to be innate, in contradistinction
to those which are acquired; as when
nature is contrasted with education; or
when a savage state, without laws, arts,
or knowledge, is called a state of nature;
or when the question is asked whether
benevolence, or the moral sentiment, is
natural or acquired; or whether some
persons are poets or orators by nature
and others not. But, in another and a
more lax sense, any manifestations by
human beings are often termed natural
when it is merely intended to say that
they are not studied or designedly
assumed in the particular case; as when
a person is said to move or speak with
natural grace; or when it is said that a
person’s natural manner or character is
so and so; meaning that it is so when he
does not attempt to control or disguise
it. In a still looser acceptation, a person
is said to be naturally that which he was
until some special cause had acted upon
him, or which it is supposed he would
be if some such cause were withdrawn.
Thus a person is said to be naturally
dull, but to have made himself intel
ligent by study and perseverance; to be
naturally cheerful, but soured by misfor
tune; naturally ambitious, but kept down
by want of opportunity. Finally, the
word “natural,” applied to feelings or
conduct, often seems to mean no
more than that they are such as are
ordinarily found in human beings ; as
when it is said that a person acted, on
some particular occasion, as it was
�NA TURE
natural to do; or that to be affected in
a particular way by some sight, or sound,
or thought, or incident in life, is perfectly
natural.
In all these senses of the term, the
quality called natural is very often con
fessedly a worse quality than the one
contrasted with it; but whenever its
being so is not too obvious to be
questioned, the idea seems to be enter
tained that by describing it as natural
something has been said amounting to a
considerable presumption in its favour.
For my part, I can perceive only one
sense in which nature, or naturalness, in
a human being, is really a term of praise ;
and then the praise is only negative—
namely, when used to denote the absence
of affectation. Affectation may be de
fined,the effort to appear what one is not,
when the motive or the occasion is not
such as either to excuse the attempt or
to stamp it with the more odious name
of hypocrisy. It must be added that the
deception is often attempted to be
practised on the deceiver himself as well
as on others ; he imitates the external
signs of qualities which he would like to
have, in hopes to persuade himself that
he has them. Whether in the form
of deception or of self-deception, or of
something hovering between the two,
affectation is very rightly accounted a re
proach, and naturalness, understood as
the reverse of affectation, a merit. But
a more proper term by which to express
this estimable quality would be sincerity :
a term which has fallen from its original
elevated meaning, and popularly denotes
only a subordinate branch of the cardinal
virtue it once designated as a whole.
Sometimes also, in cases wheretheterm
“ affectation ” would be inappropriate,
since the conduct or demeanour spoken
of is really praiseworthy, people say, in
disparagement of the person concerned,
that such conduct or demeanour is not
natural to him; and make uncompli
mentary comparisons between him and
some other person, to whom it is natural:
meaning that what in the one seemed
excellent was the effect of temporary
excitement, or of a great victory over
himself, while in the other it is the
result to be expected from the habitu il
character. This mode of speech is not
open to censure, since nature is here
simply a term for the person’s ordinary
disposition, and if he is praised it is not
for being natural, but for being naturally
good.
Conformity to nature has no con
nection whatever with right and wrong.
The idea can never be fitly introduced
into ethical discussions at all, except,
occasionally and partially, into the
question of degrees of culpability. To
illustrate this point, let us consider the
phrase by which the greatest intensity of
condemnatory feeling is conveyed in
connection with the idea of nature—the
word “ unnatural.” That a thing is un
natural, in any precise meaning which
can be attached to the word, is no
argument for its being blamable ; since
the most criminal actions are to a being
like man not more unnatural than most
of the virtues. The acquisition of virtue
has in all ages been accounted a work of
labour and difficulty, while the descensus
Averni, on the contrary, is of proverbial
facility; and it assuredly requires in
most persons a greater conquest over a
greater number of natural inclinations to
become eminently virtuous than tran
scendently vicious. But if an action, or
an inclination, has been decided on
other grounds to be blamable, it may be
a circumstance in aggravation that it is
unnatural—that is, repugnant to some
�32
NA TURE
strong feeling usually found in human
beings ; since the bad propensity, what
ever it be, has afforded evidence of being
both strong and deeply rooted, by having
overcome that repugnance. This pre
sumption, of course, fails if the individual
never had the repugnance; and the
argument, therefore, is not fit to be
urged unless the feeling which is violated
by the act is not only justifiable and
reasonable, but is one which it is
blamable to be without.
The corresponding plea in extenuation
of a culpable act because it was natural,
or because it was prompted by a natural
feeling, never, I think, ought to be
admitted. There is hardly a bad action
ever perpetrated which is not perfectly
natural, and the motives to which are
not perfectly natural feelings. In the
eye of reason, therefore, this is no
excuse, but it is quite “natural” that it
should be so in the eyes of the multi
tude ; because the meaning of the ex
pression is, that they have a fellow
feeling with the offender. When they
say that something which they cannot
help admitting to be blamable is never
theless natural, they mean that they can
imagine the possibility of their being
themselves tempted to commit it. Most
people have a considerable amount of in
dulgence towards all acts of which they
feel a possible source within themselves,
reserving their rigour for those which,
though perhaps really less bad, they can
not in any way understand how it is
possible to commit. If an action con
vinces them (which it often does on very
inadequate grounds) that the person who
does it must be a being totally unlike
themselves, they are seldom particular in
examining the precise degree of blame
due to it, or even if blame is properly
due to it at all. They measure the
degree of guilt by the strength of their
antipathy; and hence differences of
opinion, and even differences of taste,
have been objects of as intense moral
abhorrence as the most atrocious crimes.
It will be useful to sum up in a few
words the leading conclusions of this
Essay.
The word “ nature ” has two principal
meanings : it either denotes the entire
system of things, with the aggregate of all
their properties, or it denotes things as
they would be, apart from human
intervention.
In the first of these senses, the
doctrine that man ought to follow nature
is unmeaning; since man has no power
to do anything else than follow nature ;
all his actions are done through, and in
obedience to, some one or many of
nature’s physical or mental laws.
In the other sense of the term, the
doctrine that man ought to follow nature,
or, in other words, ought to make the
spontaneous course of things the model
of his voluntary actions, is equally
irrational and immoral.
Irrational, because all human action
whatever consists in altering, and all
useful action in improving, the spon
taneous course of nature.
Immoral, because the course of natural
phenomena being replete with every
thing which when committed by human
beings is most worthy of abhorrence, any
one who endeavoured in his actions to
imitate the natural course of things
would be universally seen and acknow
ledged to be the wickedest of men.
The scheme of Nature, regarded in its
whole extent, cannot have had, for its
sole or even principal object, the good of
human or other sentient beings. What
good it brings to them is mostly the
result of their own exertions. What
�NA TURE
soever, in nature, gives indication of
beneficent design proves this benefi
cence to be armed only with limited
power; and the duty of man is to co
operate with the beneficent powers, not
by imitating, but by perpetually striving
33
to amend, the course of nature—and
bringing that part of it over which we can
exercise control more nearly into con
formity with a high standard of justice
and goodness.
D
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
It has sometimes been remarked how
much has been written, both by friends
and enemies, concerning the truth of
religion, and how little, at least in the
way of discussion or controversy, con
cerning its usefulness. This, however,
might have been expected; for the truth,
in matters which so deeply affect us, is
our first concernment. If religion, or
any particular form of it, is true, its
usefulness follows without other proof.
If to know authentically in what order of
things, under what government of the
universe, it is our destiny to live were
not useful, it is difficult to imagine what
could be considered so. Whether a
person is in a pleasant or in an un
pleasant place, a palace or a prison, it
cannot be otherwise than useful to him
to know where he is. So long, therefore,
as men accepted the teachings of their
religion as positive facts, no more a
matter of doubt than their own existence
or the existence of the objects around
them, to ask the use of believing it
could not possibly occur to them. The
utility of religion did not need to be
asserted until the arguments for its truth
had in a great measure ceased to con
vince. People must either have ceased
to believe, or have ceased to rely on the
belief of others, before they could take
that inferior ground of defence without a
consciousness of lowering what they were
endeavouring to raise. An argument
for the utility of religion is an appeal
to unbelievers, to induce them to prac
tise a well-meant hypocrisy; or to semi
believers, to make them avert their eyes
from what might possibly shake their
unstable belief; or finally to persons in
general, to abstain from expressing any
doubts they may feel, since a fabric of
immense importance to mankind is so
insecure at its foundations that men
must hold their breath in its neighbour
hood for fear of blowing it down.
In the present period of history, how
ever, we seem to have arrived at a time
when, among the arguments for and
against religion, those which relate to its
usefulness assume an important place.
We are in an age of weak beliefs, and in
which such belief as men have is much
more determined by their wish to be
lieve than by any mental appreciation of
evidence. The wish to believe does not
arise only from selfish, but often from
the most disinterested, feelings; and,
though it cannot produce the unwaver
ing and perfect reliance which once
existed, it fences round all that remains
of the impressions of early education;
it often causes direct misgivings to fade
away by disuse; and, above all, it induces
people to continue laying out their lives,
according to doctrines which have lost
part of their hold on the mind, and
to maintain towards the world the same,
or a rather more demonstrative, attitude
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
of belief than they thought it necessary
to exhibit when their personal conviction
was more complete.
If religious belief be indeed so neces
sary to mankind as we are continually
assured that it is, there is great reason to
lament that the intellectual grounds
of it should require to be backed by
moral bribery or subornation of the
understanding. Such a state of things
is most uncomfortable, even for those
who may, without actual insincerity,
describe themselves as believers; and
still worse as regards those who, having
consciously ceased to find the evidences
of religion convincing, are withheld from
saying so lest they should aid in doing
an irreparable injury to mankind. It is
a most painful position, to a conscien
tious and cultivated mind, to be drawn
in contrary directions by the two noblest
of all objects of pursuit—truth and the
general good. Such a conflict must
inevitably produce a growing indiffer
ence to one or other of these objects,
most probably to both. Many who
could render giant’s service both to
truth and to mankind, if they believed
that they could serve the one without
loss to the other, are either totally para
lysed, or led to confine their exertions to
matters of minor detail, by the apprehen
sion that any real freedom of speculation,
or any considerable strengthening or
enlargement of the thinking faculties of
mankind at large, might, by making
them unbelievers, be the surest way to
render them vicious and miserable.
Many, again, having observed in others
or experienced in themselves elevated
feelings which they imagine incapable of
emanating from any other source than
religion, have an honest aversion to any
thing tending, as they think, to dry up
the fountain of such feelings. They,
35
therefore, either dislike and disparage all
philosophy, or addict themselves with
intolerant zeal to those forms of it in
which intuition usurps the place of
evidence, and internal feeling is made
the test of objective truth. The whole
of the prevalent metaphysics of the
present century is one tissue of suborned
evidence in favour of religion; often of
Deism only, but in any case involving a
misapplication of noble impulses and
speculative capacities, among the most
deplorable of those wretched wastes of
human faculties which make us wonder
that enough is left to keep mankind
progressive, at however slow a pace. It
is time to consider, more impartially
and therefore more deliberately than is
usually done, whether all this training to
prop up beliefs which require so great
an expense of intellectual toil and in
genuity to keep them standing, yields
any sufficient return in human well
being ; and whether that end would not
be better served by a frank recognition
that certain subjects are inaccessible to
our faculties, and by the application of
the same mental powers to the strength
ening and enlargement of those other
sources of virtue and happiness which
stand in no need of the support or
sanction of supernatural beliefs and in
ducements.
Neither, on the other hand, can the
difficulties of the question be so promptly
disposed of as sceptical philosophers are
sometimes inclined to believe. It is not
enough to aver, in general terms, that
there never can be any conflict between
truth and utility; that, if religion be
false, nothing but good can be the conse
quence of rejecting it. For, though the
knowledge of every positive truth is an
useful acquisition, this doctrine cannot
without reservation be applied to negative
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
truth. When the only truth ascertain
able is that nothing can be known, we
do not, by this knowledge, gain any
new fact by which to guide ourselves;
we are, at best, only disabused of our
trust in some former guide-mark, which,
though itself fallacious, may have pointed
in the same direction with the best indi
cations we have, and if it happens to be
more conspicuous and legible, may have
kept us right when they might have been
overlooked. It is, in short, perfectly
conceivable that religion may be morally
useful without being intellectually sus
tainable ; and it would be a proof of
great prejudice in any unbeliever to deny
that there have been ages, and that there
are still both nations and individuals,
with regard to whom this is actually the
case. Whether it is the case generally,
and with reference to the future, it is the
object of this paper to examine. We
propose to inquire whether the belief in
religion, considered as a mere persuasion,
apart from the question of its truth, is
really indispensable to the temporal wel
fare of mankind; whether the usefulness
of the belief is intrinsic and universal,
or local, temporary, and, in some sense,
accidental; and whether the benefits
which it yields might not be obtained
otherwise, without the very large alloy
of evil, by which, even in the best form
of the belief, those benefits are qualified.
With the arguments on one side of
the question we are all familiar : religious
writers have not neglected to celebrate
to the utmost the advantages both of
religion in general and of their own
religious faith in particular. But those
who have held the contrary opinion have
generally contented themselves with in
sisting on the more obvious and flagrant
of the positive evils which have been en
gendered by past and present forms of
I
religious belief. And, in truth, mankind
have been so unremittingly occupied in
doing evil to one another in the name of
religion, from the sacrifice of Iphigenia
to the Dragonnades of Louis XIV. (not
to descend lower), that for any immediate
purpose there was little need to seek
arguments further off. These odious
consequences, however, do not belong to
religion in itself, but to particular forms
of it, and afford no argument against the
usefulness of any religions except those
by which such enormities are encouraged.
Moreover, the worst of these evils are
already in a great measure extirpated
from the more improved forms of
religion; and as mankind advance in
ideas and in feelings, this process of
extirpation continually goes on: the
immoral or otherwise mischievous con
sequences which have been drawn from
religion are, one by one, abandoned,
and, after having been long fought for as
of its very essence, are discovered to be
easily separable from it. These mis
chiefs, indeed, after they are past, though
no longer arguments against religion,
remain valid as large abatements from its
beneficial influence, by showing that
some of the greatest improvements ever
made in the moral sentiments of man
kind have taken place without it and in
spite of it, and that what we are taught
to regard as the chief of all improving in
fluences has in practice fallen so far
short of such a character that one of the
hardest burdens laid upon the other good
influences of human nature has been
that of improving religion itself. The
improvement, however, has taken place;
it is still proceeding, and for the sake of
fairness it should be assumed to be com
plete. We ought to suppose religion to
have accepted the best human morality
which reason and goodness can work out,
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
37
The first question is interesting to
everybody; the latter only to the best;
but to them it is, if there be any differ
ence, the more important of the two.
We shall begin with the former, as being
that which best admits of being easily
brought to a precise issue.
To speak first, then, of religious belief
as an instrument of social good. We
must commence by drawing a distinction
most commonly overlooked. It is usual
to credit religion as such with the whole
of the power inherent in any system of
moral duties inculcated by education and
enforced by opinion. Undoubtedly
mankind would be in a deplorable state
if no principles or precepts of justice,
veracity, beneficence, were taught
publicly or privately, and if these virtues
were not encouraged, and the opposite
vices repressed, by the praise and blame,
the favourable and unfavourable, senti
ments of mankind. And since nearly
everything of this sort which does take
place takes place in the name of religion ;
since almost all who are taught any
morality whatever have it taught to them
as religion, and inculcated on them
through life principally in that character;
the effect which the teaching produces as
teaching, it is supposed to produce as
religious teaching, and religion receives
the credit of all the influence in human
affairs which belongs to any generally
accepted system of rules for the guidance
and government of human life.
Few persons have sufficiently con
sidered how great an influence this is ;
what vast efficacy belongs naturally to
1 Analysis of the Influence ofNatural Religion any doctrine received with tolerable
on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind. By unanimity as true, and impressed on the
Philip Beauchamp. See Autobiography, pp. 69- mind from the earliest childhood as duty.
71. This work, I believe, is really by George
A little reflection will, I think, lead us to
Grote, the Historian of Greece, and friend and
the conclusion that it is this which is the
fellow-student of Mill. He read and analysed
great moral power in human affairs, and
it in the MS. so early as 1822.—II.T.
from philosophical, Christian, or any
other elements. When it has thus freed
itself from the pernicious consequences
which result from its identification with
any bad moral doctrine, the ground is
clear for considering whether its useful
properties are exclusively inherent in it, or
their benefits can be obtained without it.
This essential portion of the inquiry
into the temporal usefulness of religion
is the subject of the present Essay. It
is a part which has been little treated of
by sceptical writers. The only direct
discussion of it with which I am
acquainted is in a short treatise, under
stood to have been partly compiled from
manuscripts of Mr. Bentham,1 and
abounding in just and profound views;
but which, as it appears to me, presses
many parts of the argument too hard.
This treatise, and the incidental remarks
scattered through the writings of M.
Comte, are the only sources known to
me from which anything very pertinent
to the subject can be made available for
the sceptical side of the argument. I
shall use both of them freely in the
sequel of the present discourse.
The inquiry divides itself into two
parts, corresponding to the double aspect
of the subject; its social, and its in
dividual aspect. What does religion do
for society, and what for the individual ?
What amount of benefit to social
interests, in the ordinary sense of the
phrase, arises from religious belief? And
what influence has it in improving and
ennobling individual human nature ?
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
that religion only seems so powerful be
cause this mighty power has been under
its command.
Consider first the enormous influence
of authority on the human mind. I am
now speaking of involuntary influence;
effect on men’s convictions, on their per
suasion, on their involuntary sentiments.
Authority is the evidence on which the
mass of mankind believe everything
which they are said to know, except facts
of which their own senses have taken
cognisance. It is the evidence on which
even the wisest receive all those truths of
science, or facts in history or in life, of
which they have not personally examined
the proofs. Over the immense majority
of human beings the general concurrence
of mankind, in any matter of opinion, is
all-powerful. Whatever is thus certified
to them they believe with a fulness of
assurance which they do not accord even
to the evidence of their senses when the
general opinion of mankind stands in
opposition to it. When, therefore, any
rule of life and duty, whether grounded
or not on religion, has conspicuously re
ceived the general assent, it obtains a
hold on the belief of every individual,
stronger than it would have even if he
had arrived at it by the inherent force of
his own understanding.
If Novalis
could say, not without a real meaning,
4‘ My belief has gained infinitely to me
from the moment when one other human
being has begun to believe the same,”
how much more when it is not one other
person, but all the human beings whom
one knows of. Some may urge it as an
objection, that no scheme of morality has
this universal assent, and that none,
therefore, can be indebted to this source
for whatever power it possesses over the
mind. So far as relates to the present
age, the assertion is true, and strengthens
the argument which it might at first seem
to controvert; for exactly in proportion
as the received systems of belief have
been contested, and it has become known
that they have many dissentients, their
hold on the general belief has been
loosened, and their practical influence on
conduct has declined; and since this
has happened to them, notwithstanding
the religious sanction which attached to
them, there can be no stronger evidence
that they were powerful not as religion,
but as beliefs generally accepted by man
kind. To find people who believe their
religion as a person believes that fire
will burn his hand when thrust into
it, we must seek them in those Oriental
countries where Europeans do not yet
predominate, or in the European world
when it was still universally Catholic.
Men often disobeyed their religion in
those times, because their human
passions and appetites were too strong
for it, or because the religion itself
afforded means of indulgence to breaches
of its obligations; but, though they dis
obeyed, they, for the most part, did not
doubt. There was in those days an
absolute and unquestioning complete
ness of belief, never since general in
Europe.
Such being the empire exercised over
mankind by simple authority, the mere
belief and testimony of their fellow
creatures; consider next how tremendous
is the power of education; how unspeak
able is the effect of bringing people up
from infancy in a belief, and in habits
founded on it. Consider also that in
all countries, and from the earliest ages
down to the present, not merely those
who are called, in a restricted sense of
the term, the educated, but all, or nearly
all, who have been brought up by parents,
or by any one interested in them, have
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
been taught from their earliest years
some kind of religious belief, and some
precepts as the commands of the
heavenly powers to them and to man
kind. And as it cannot be imagined
that the commands of God are to young
children anything more than the com
mands of their parents, it is reasonable
to think that any system of social duty
which mankind might adopt, even though
divorced from religion, would have the
same advantage of being inculcated from
childhood, and would have it hereafter
much more perfectly than any doctrine
has at present, society being far more
disposed than formerly to take pains for
the moral tuition of those numerous
classes whose education it has hitherto
left very much to chance. Now, it is
especially characteristic of the impres
sions of early education that they possess
what it.is so much more difficult for later
convictions to obtain—command over
the feelings. We see daily how powerful
a hold these first impressions retain over
the feelings even of those who have
given up the opinions which they were
early taught. While, on the other hand,
it is only persons of a much higher
degree of natural sensibility and intellect
combined than it is at all common to
meet with, whose feelings entwine them
selves with anything like the same force
round opinions which they have adopted
from their own investigations later in
life; and even when they do, we may
say with truth that it is because the
strong sense of moral duty, the sincerity,
courage, and self-devotion which enabled
them to do so, were themselves the fruits
of early impressions.
The power of education is almost
boundless : there is not one natural in
clination which it is not strong enough to
coerce, and, if needful, to destroy by
39
disuse. In the greatest recorded victory
which education has ever achieved over
a whole host of natural inclinations
in an entire people—the maintenance
through centuries of the institutions of
Lycurgus—it was very little, if even at
all, indebted to religion : for the Gods
of the Spartans were the same as those
of other Greek States; and though, no
doubt, every State of Greece believed
that its particular polity had at its first
establishment some sort of divine sanc
tion (mostly that of the Delphian oracle),
there was seldom any difficulty in obtain
ing the same or an equally powerful
sanction for a change. It was not
religion which formed the strength of
the Spartan institutions : the root of the
system was devotion to Sparta, to the
ideal of the country or State; which,
transformed into ideal devotion to a
greater country, the world, would be
equal to that and far nobler achieve
ments. Among the Greeks generally
social morality was extremely indepen
dent of religion. The inverse relation
was rather that which existed between
them; the worship of the gods was
inculcated chiefly as a social duty, inas
much as, if they were neglected or
insulted, it was believed that their dis
pleasure would fall not more upon the
offending individual than upon the State
or community which bred and tolerated
him. Such moral teaching as existed in
Greece had very little to do with religion.
The gods were not supposed to concern
themselves much with men’s conduct to
one another, except when men had con
trived to make the gods themselves an
interested party, by placing an assertion
or an engagement under the sanction of a
solemn appeal to them, by oath or vow.
I grant that the sophists and philoso
phers, and even popular orators, did
�40
UTILITY OF RELIGION
their best to press religion into the
service of their special objects, and to
make it be thought that the sentiments
of whatever kind, which they were
engaged in inculcating, were particularly
acceptable to the gods; but this never
seems the primary consideration in any
case save those of direct offence to the
dignity of the gods themselves. For
the enforcement of human moralities
secular inducements were almost exclu
sively relied on. The case of Greece is,
I believe, the only one in which any
teaching, other than religious, has had
the unspeakable advantage of forming
the basis of education; and though
much may be said against the quality of
some part of the teaching, very little can
be said against its effectiveness. The
most memorable example of the power
of education over conduct is afforded
(as I have just remarked) by this excep
tional case; constituting a strong pre
sumption that in .other cases early
religious teaching has owed its power
over mankind rather to its being early
than to its being religious.
We have now considered two powers,
that of authority and that of early educa
tion, which operate through men’s in
voluntary beliefs, feelings, and desires,
and which religion has hitherto held
as its almost exclusive appanage. Let
us now consider a third power which
operates directly on their actions, whether
their involuntary sentiments are carried
with it or not. This is the power of
public opinion; of the praise and blame,
the favour and disfavour, of their fellow
creatures; and is a source of strength
inherent in any system of moral belief
which is generally adopted, whether con
nected with religion or not.
Men are so much accustomed to give
to the motives that decide their actions
more flattering names than justly belong
to them that they are generally quite un
conscious how much those parts of their
conduct which they most pride them
selves on (as well as some which they
are ashamed of) are determined by the
motive of public opinion. Of course,
public opinion for the most part enjoins
the same things which are enjoined by
the received social morality; that
morality being, in truth, the summary of
the conduct which each one of the
multitude, whether he himself observes
it with any strictness or not, desires that
others should observe towards him.
People are therefore easily able to flatter
themselves that they are acting from the
motive of conscience when they are
doing in obedience to the inferior motive
things which their conscience approves.
We continually see how great is the
power of opinion in opposition to con
science; how men “follow a multitude
to do evil ”; how often opinion induces
them to do what their conscience dis
approves, and still oftener prevents them
from doing what it commands. But
when the motive of public opinion acts
in the same direction with conscience,
which, since it has usually itself made the
conscience in the first instance, it for the
most part naturally does; it is then, of
all motives which operate on the bulk of
mankind, the most overpowering.
The names of all the strongest passions
(except the merely animal ones) mani
fested by human nature are each of them
a name for some one part only of the
motive derived from what I here call
public opinion. The love of glory ; the
love of praise; the love of admiration ;
the love of respect and deference ; even
the love of sympathy, are portions of its
attractive power. Vanity is a vituperative
name for its attractive influence generally,
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
when considered excessive in degree.
The fear of shame, the dread of ill repute
or of being disliked or hated, are the
direct and simple forms of its deterring
power. But the deterring force of the
unfavourable sentiments of mankind
does not consist solely in the painfulness
of knowing oneself to be the object of
those sentiments; it includes all the
penalties which they can inflict: ex
clusion from social intercourse and from
the innumerable good offices which
human beings require from one another;
the forfeiture of all that is called success
in life; often the great diminution or
total loss of means of subsistence;
positive ill offices of various kinds,
sufficient to render life miserable, and
reaching in some states of society as far
as actual persecution to death. And
again the attractive or impelling influ
ence of public opinion includes the
whole range of what is commonly meant
by ambition ; for, except in times of law
less military violence, the objects of
social ambition can be attained only by
means of the good opinion and favour
able disposition of our fellow-creatures;
now, in nine cases out of ten, would
those objects be even desired were it not
for the power they confer over the senti
ments of mankind. Even the pleasure
of self-approbation, in the great majority,
is mainly dependent on the opinion of
others. Such is the involuntary influence
of authority on ordinary minds that per
sons must be of a better than ordinary
mould to be capable of a full assurance
that they are in the right, when the world
—that is, when their world—thinks them
wrong ; nor is there, to most men, any
proof so demonstrative of their own
virtue or talent as that people in general
seem to believe in it. Through all depart
ments of human affairs regard for the
4’
sentiments of our fellow-creatures is in
one shape or other, in nearly all
characters, the pervading motive. And
we ought to note that this motive is
naturally strongest in the most sensitive
natures, which are the most promising
material for the formation of great virtues.
How far its power reaches is known by
too familiar experience to require either
proof or illustration here. When once
the means of living have been obtained,
the far greater part of the remaining
labour and effort which takes place on
the earth has for its object to acquire
the respect or the favourable regard of
mankind; to be looked up to, or at all
events not to be looked down upon, by
them. The industrial and commercial
activity which advances civilisation, the
frivolity, prodigality, and selfish thirst of
aggrandisement which retard it, flow
equally from that source. While, as an
instance of the power exercised by the
terrors derived from public opinion, we
know how many murders have been
committed merely to remove a witness
who knew and was likely to disclose
some secret that would bring disgrace
upon his murderer.
Any one who fairly and impartially
considers the subject will see reason to
believe that those great effects on human
conduct which are commonly ascribed
to motives derived directly from religion
have mostly for their proximate cause the
influence of human opinion. Religion
has been powerful not by its intrinsic
force, but because it has wielded that
additional and more mighty power. The
effect of religion has been immense in
giving a direction to public opinion ;
which has, in many most important
respects, been wholly determined by it.
But without the sanctions superadded by
public opinion its own proper sanctions
�42
UTILITY OF RELIGION
have never, save in exceptional charac
ters, or in peculiar moods of mind,
exercised a very potent influence, after
the times had gone by, in which divine
agency was supposed habitually to
employ temporal rewards and punish
ments. When a man firmly believed
that, if he violated the sacredness of a
particular sanctuary, he would be struck
dead on the spot, or smitten suddenly
with a mortal disease, he doubtless took
care not to incur the penalty ; but when
any one had had the courage to defy the
danger, and escaped with impunity, the
spell was broken. If ever any people
were taught that they were under a
divine government, and that unfaithful
ness to their religion and law would be
visited from above with temporal
chastisements, the Jews were so. Yet
their history was a mere succession of
lapses into Paganism. Their prophets
and historians, who held fast to the
ancient beliefs (though they gave them
so liberal an interpretation as to think it
a sufficient manifestation of God’s dis
pleasure towards a king if any evil
happened to his great grandson), never
ceased to complain that their countrymen
turned a deaf ear to their vaticinations ;
and hence, with the faith they held in a
divine government operating by temporal
penalties, they could not fail to anticipate
(as Mirabeau’s father, without such
prompting, was able to do on the eve of
the French Revolution) laculbutegenerate;
an expectation which, luckily for the
credit of their, prophetic powers, was
fulfilled; unlike that of the Apostle John,
who, in the only intelligible prophecy in
the Revelations, foretold to the city of
the seven hills a fate like that of Nineveh
and Babylon; which prediction remains
to this hour unaccomplished. Unques
tionably the conviction which experience
in time forced on all but the very
ignorant, that divine punishments were
not to be confidently expected in a tem
poral form, contributed much to the
downfall of the old religions, and the
general adoption of one which, without
absolutely excluding providential inter
ferences in this life for the punishment
of guilt or the reward of merit, removed
the principal scene of divine retribution
to a world after death. But rewards and
punishments postponed to that distance
of time, and never seen by the eye, are
not calculated, even when infinite and
eternal, to have, on ordinary minds, a
very powerful effect in opposition to
strong temptation. Their remoteness
alone is a prodigious deduction from
their efficacy on such minds as those
which most require the restraint of
punishment. A still greater abatement
is their uncertainty, which belongs to
them from the very nature of the case :
for rewards and punishments adminis
tered after death must be awarded not
definitely to particular actions, but on a
general survey of the person’s whole life,
and he easily persuades himself that,
whatever may have been his peccadilloes,
there will be a balance in his favour at
the last. All positive religions aid this
self-delusion. Bad religions teach that
divine vengeance may be bought off by
offerings or personal abasement; the
better religions, not to drive sinners to
despair, dwell so much on the divine
mercy that hardly any one is compelled
to think himself irrevocably condemned.
The sole quality in these punishments
which might seem calculated to make
them efficacious, their overpowering mag
nitude, is itself a reason why nobody
(except a hypochondriac here and there)
ever really believes that he is in any very
serious danger of incurring them. Even
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
the worst malefactor is hardly able to
think that any crime he lias had it in his
power to commit, any evil he can have
inflicted in this short space of existence,
can have deserved torture extending
through an eternity. Accordingly, re
ligious writers and preachers are never
tired of complaining how little effect
religious motives have on men’s lives and
conduct, notwithstanding the tremendous
penalties denounced.
Mr. Bentham, whom I have already
mentioned as one of the few authors
who have written anything to the purpose
on the efficacy of the religious sanction,
adduces several cases to prove that
religious obligation, when not enforced
by public opinion, produces scarcely any
effect on conduct. His first example is
that of oaths. The oaths taken in courts
of justice, and any others which, from
the manifest importance to society of
their being kept, public opinion rigidly
enforces, are felt as real and binding
obligations. But university oaths and
custom-house oaths, though in a religious
point of view equally obligatory, are in
practice utterly disregarded even by men
in other respects honourable. The uni
versity oath to obey the statutes has
been for centuries, with universal acquies
cence, set at nought; and utterly false
statements are (or used to be) daily and
unblushingly sworn to at the Custom
house by persons as attentive as other
people to all the ordinary obligations of
life—the explanation being that veracity
in these cases was not enforced by
public opinion. The second case which
Bentham cites is duelling; a practice
now in this country obsolete, but in full
vigour in several other Christian coun
tries ; deemed and admitted to be a sin
by almost all who, nevertheless, in obedi
ence to opinion, and to escape from
43
personal humiliation, are guilty of it.
The third case is that of illicit sexual
intercourse, which in both sexes stands
in the very highest rank of religious sins,
yet, not being severely censured by
opinion in the male sex, they have in
general very little scruple in committing
it; while in the case of women, though
the religious obligation is not stronger,
yet, being backed in real earnest by
public opinion, it is commonly effectual.
Some objection may doubtless be
taken to Bentham’s instances, considered
as crucial experiments on the power of
the religious sanction; for (it may be
said) people do not really believe that in
these cases they shall be punished by
God, any more than by man. And this
is certainly true in the case of those
university and other oaths, which are
habitually taken without any intention of
keeping them. The oath, in these
cases, is regarded as a mere formality,
destitute of any serious meaning in the
sight of the Deity; and the most scrupu
lous person, even if he does reproach
himself for having taken an oath which
nobody deems fit to be kept, does not in
his conscience tax himself with the guilt
of perjury, but only with the profanation
of a ceremony. This, therefore, is not a
good example of the weakness of the
religious motive when divorced from
that of human opinion. The point
which it illustrates is rather the tendency
of the one motive to come and go with
the other, so that, where the penalties of
public opinion cease, the religious motive
ceases also. The same criticism, how
ever, is not equally applicable to Ben
tham’s other examples—duelling and
sexual irregularities. Those who do
these acts—the first by the command of
public opinion, the latter with its indul
gence—really do, in most cases, believe
�44
UTILITY OF RELIGION
that they are offending God. Doubtless,
they do not think that they are offending
him in such a degree as very seriously to
endanger their salvation. Their reliance
on his mercy prevails over their dread of
his resentment: affording an exemplifica
tion of the remark already made, that
the unavoidable uncertainty of religious
penalties makes them feeble as a
deterring motive. They are so, even in
the case of acts which human opinion
condemns ; much more with those to
which it is indulgent. What mankind
think venial, it is hardly ever supposed
that God looks upon in a serious light;
at least by those who feel in themselves
any inclination to practise it.
I do not for a moment think of deny
ing that there are states of mind in which
the idea of religious punishment acts
with the most overwhelming force. In
hypochondriacal disease, and in those
with whom, from great disappointments
or other moral causes, the thoughts and
imagination have assumed an habitually
melancholy complexion, that topic,
falling in with the pre-existing tendency
of the mind, supplies images well fitted
to drive the unfortunate sufferer even to
madness. Often, during a temporary
state of depression, these ideas take such
a hold of the mind as to give a per
manent turn to the character ; being the
most common case of what, in sectarian
phraseology, is called conversion. But
if the depressed state ceases after the
conversion, as it commonly does, and
the convert does not relapse, but per
severes in his new course of life, the
principal difference between it and the
old is usually found to be that the man
now guides his life by the public opinion
of his religious associates, as he before
guided it by that of the profane world.
At all events, there is one clear proof how
little the generality of mankind, either
religious or worldly, really dread eternal
punishments, when we see how, even at
the approach of death, when the remote
ness which took so much from their
effect has been exchanged for the closest
proximity, almost all persons who have
not been guilty of some enormous crime
(and many who have) are quite free from
uneasiness as to their prospects in
another world, and never for a moment
seem to think themselves in any real
danger of eternal punishment.
With regard to the cruel deaths and
bodily tortures which confessors and
martyrs have so often undergone for the
sake of religion, I would not depreciate
them by attributing any part of this
admirable courage and constancy to the
influence of human opinion. Human
opinion, indeed, has shown itself quite
equal to the production of similar firm
ness in persons not otherwise distin
guished by moral excellence ; such as
the North American Indian at the stake.
But if it was not the thought of glory in
the eyes of their fellow-religionists which
upheld these heroic sufferers in their
agony, as little do I believe that it was,
generally speaking, that of the pleasures
of heaven or the pains of hell. Their
impulse was a divine enthusiasm—a self
forgetting devotion to an idea : a state of
exalted feeling, by no means peculiar
to religion, but which it is the privilege
of every great cause to inspire; a
phenomenon belonging to the critical
moments of existence, not to the ordi
nary play of human motives, and from
which nothing can be inferred as to the
efficacy of the ideas which it sprung
from, whether religious or any other, in
overcoming ordinary temptations and
regulating the course of daily life.
We may now have done with this
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
branch of the subject, which is, after all,
the vulgarest part of it. The value of
religion as a supplement to human laws,
a more cunning sort of police, an
auxiliary to the thief-catcher and the
hangman, is not that part of its claims
which the more high-minded of its
votaries are fondest of insisting on ; and
they would probably be as ready as any
one to admit that, if the nobler offices
of religion in the soul could be dispensed
with, a substitute might be found for so
coarse and selfish a social instrument as
the fear of hell. In their view of the
matter, the best of mankind absolutely
require religion for the perfection of their
own character, even though the coercion
of the worst might possibly be accom
plished without its aid.
Even in the social point of view, how
ever, under its most elevated aspect,
these nobler spirits generally assert the
necessity of religion, as a teacher, if not
as an enforcer, of social morality. They
say that religion alone can teach us what
morality is; that all the high morality
ever recognised by mankind was learnt
from religion; that the greatest unin
spired philosophers in their sublimest
flights stopped far short of the Christian
morality, and, whatever inferior morality
they may have attained to (by the assist
ance, as many think, of dim traditions
derived from the Hebrew books, or from
a primaeval revelation), they never could
induce the common mass of their fellow
citizens to accept it from them. That
only when a morality is understood to
come from the gods do men in general
adopt it, rally round it, and lend their
human sanctions for its enforcement.
That, granting the sufficiency of human
motives to make the rule obeyed, were it
not for the religious idea we should not
have had the rule itself.
45
There is truth in much of this, con
sidered as matter of history. Ancient
peoples have generally, if not always,
received their morals, their laws, their
intellectual beliefs, and even their prac
tical arts of life, all in short which tended
either to guide or to discipline them, as
revelations from the superior powers, and
in any other way could not easily have
been induced to accept them. This
was partly the effect of their hopes and
fears from those powers, which were of
much greater and more universal potency
in early times, when the agency of the
gods was seen in the daily events of life,
experience not having yet disclosed the
fixed laws according to which physical
phenomena succeed one another. In
dependently, too, of personal hopes and
fears, the involuntary deference felt by
these rude minds for power superior to
their own, and the tendency to suppose
that beings of superhuman power must
also be of superhuman knowledge and
wisdom, made them disinterestedly desire
to conform their conduct to the pre
sumed preferences of these powerful
beings, and to adopt no new practice
without their authorisation either spon
taneously given, or solicited and ob
tained.
But because, when men were still
savages, they would not have received
either moral or scientific truths unless
they had supposed them to be supernaturally imparted, does it follow that
they would now give up moral truths any
more than scientific because they be
lieved them to have no higher origin than
wise and noble human hearts ? Are not
moral truths strong enough in their own
evidence, at all events to retain the belief
of mankind when once they have
acquired it ? I grant that some of the
precepts of Christ as exhibited in the
�46
UTILITY OF RELIGION
Gospels—rising far above the Paulism
which is the foundation of ordinary
Christianity—carry some kinds of moral
goodness to a greater height than had
ever been attained before, though much
even of what is supposed to be peculiar
to them is equalled in the meditations of
Marcus Antoninus, which we have no
ground for believing to have been in any
way indebted to Christianity. But this
benefit, whatever it amounts to, has been
gained. Mankind have entered into the
possession of it. It has become the
property of humanity, and cannot now
be lost by anything short of a return to
primaeval barbarism. The “ new com
mandment to love one another”/ the
recognition that the greatest are those
who serve, not who are served by,
others; the reverence for the weak and
humble, which is the foundation of
chivalry, they and not the strong being
pointed out as having the first place in
God’s regard, and the first claim on their
fellow-men; the lesson of the parable of
the Good Samaritan; that of “he that
is without sin let him throw the first
stone”; the precept of doing as we
would be done by; and such other
noble moralities as are to be found,
mixed with some poetical exaggerations,
and some maxims of which it is difficult
to ascertain the precise object; in the
authentic sayings of Jesus of Nazareth :
these are surely in sufficient harmony
with the intellect and feelings of every
good man or woman to be in no danger
of being let go, after having been once
acknowledged as the creed of the best
1 Not, however, a new commandment. In
justice to the great Hebrew lawgiver, it should
always be remembered that the precept, to love
thy neighbour as thyself, already existed in the
Pentateuch ; and very surprising it is to find it
there. (See John xiii. 34, Levit. xix. 18.)
and foremost portion of our species.
There will be, as there have been, short
comings enough for a long time to come
in acting on them ; but that they should
be forgotten, or cease to be operative on
the human conscience, while human
beings remain cultivated or civilised,
may be pronounced, once for all, im
possible.
On the other hand, there is a very real
evil consequent on ascribing a super
natural origin to the received maxims of
morality. That origin consecrates the
whole of them, and protects them from
being discussed or criticised. So that if,
among the moral doctrines received as a
part of religion, there be any which are
imperfect—which were either erroneous
from the first, or not properly limited and
guarded in the expression, or which, un
exceptionable once, are no longer suited
to the changes that have taken place in
human relations (and it is my firm belief
that in so-called Christian morality
instances of all these kinds are to be
found), these doctrines are considered
equally binding on the conscience with
the noblest, most permanent, and most
universal precepts of Christ. Wherever
morality is supposed to be of supernatural
origin, morality is stereotyped; as law is,
for the same reason, among believers in
the Koran.
Belief, then, in the supernatural, great
as are the services which it rendered in
the early stages of human development,
cannot be considered to be any longer
required, either for enabling us to know
what is right and wrong, in social
morality, or for supplying us with motives
to do right and to abstain from wrong.
Such belief, therefore, is not necessary
for social purposes, at least in the coarse
way in which these can be considered
apart from the character of the individual
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
human being. That more elevated
branch of the subject now remains to be
considered. If supernatural beliefs are
indeed necessary to the perfection of the
individual character, they are necessary
also to the highest excellence in social
conduct: necessary in a far higher sense
than that vulgar one which constitutes
it the great support of morality in
common eyes.
Let us, then, consider what it is in
human nature which causes it to require
a religion; what wants of the human
mind religion supplies, and what qualities
it developes. When we have understood
this, we shall be better able to judge
how far these wants can be otherwise
supplied, and those qualities, or qualities
equivalent to them, unfolded and brought
to perfection by other means.
The old saying, Primus in orbe Deos
fecit timor, I hold to be untrue, or to con
tain, at most, only a small amount of truth.
Belief in gods had, I conceive, even in
the rudest minds, a more honourable
origin. Its universality has been very
rationally explained from the spon
taneous tendency of the mind to attribute
life and volition, similar to what it feels
in itself, to all natural objects and
phenomena which appear to be self
moving. This was a plausible fancy, and
no better theory could be formed at first.
It was naturally persisted in so long as
the motions and operations of these
objects seemed to be arbitrary, and in
capable of being accounted for but by
the free choice of the Power itself. At
first, no doubt, the objects themselves
were supposed to be alive; and this
belief still subsists among African fetish
worshippers. But as it must soon have
appeared absurd that things which could
do so much more than man, could not or
would not do what man does, as for
47
example to speak, the transition was
made to supposing that the object pre
sent to the senses was inanimate, but
was the creature and instrument of an
invisible being with a form and organs
similar to the human.
These beings having first been be
lieved in, fear of them necessarily
followed ; since they were thought able
to inflict at pleasure on human beings
great evils, which the sufferers neither
knew how to avert nor to foresee, but
were left dependent, for their chances of
doing either, upon solicitations addressed
to the deities themselves. It is true,
therefore, that fear had much to do with
religion; but belief in the gods evidently
preceded, and did not arise from, fear:
though the fear, when established, was
a strong support to the belief, nothing
being conceived to be so great an offence
to the divinities as any doubt of their
existence.
It is unnecessary to prosecute further
the natural history of religion, as we
have not here to account for its origin in
rude minds, but for its persistency in the
cultivated. A sufficient explanation of
this will, I conceive, be found in the
small limits of man’s certain knowledge
and the boundlessness of his desire to
know. Human existence is girt round
with mystery: the narrow region of our
experience is a small island in the midst
of a boundless sea, which at once awes
our feelings and stimulates our imagina
tion by its vastness and its obscurity.
To add to the mystery, the domain of
our earthly existence is not only an
island in infinite space, but also in
infinite time. The past and the future
are alike shrouded from us : we neither
know the origin of anything which is nor
its final destination. If we feel deeply
interested in knowing that there are
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UTILITY OF RELIGION
myriads of worlds at an immeasurable,
and to our faculties inconceivable, dis
tance from us in space; if we are eager
to discover what little we can about
these worlds, and when we cannot know
what they are, can never satiate our
selves with speculating on what they may
be; is it not a matter of far deeper inte
rest to us to learn, or even to conjecture,
from whence came this nearer world
which we inhabit—what cause or agency
made it what it is, and on what powers
depends its future fate ? Who would not
desire this more ardently than any other
conceivable knowledge, so long as there
appeared the slightest hope of attaining
it ? What would not one give for any
credible tidings from that mysterious
region, any glimpse into it which might
enable us to see the smallest light
through its darkness, especially any
theory of it which we could believe, and
which represented it as tenanted by a
benignant and not a hostile influence?
But since we are able to penetrate into
that region with the imagination only,
assisted by specious but inconclusive
analogies derived from human agency
and design, imagination is free to fill up
the vacancy with the imagery most con
genial to itself; sublime and elevating if
it be a lofty imagination, low and mean
if it be a grovelling one.
Religion and poetry address them
selves, at least in one of their aspects, to
the same part of the human constitution:
they both supply the same want, that of
ideal conceptions grander and more
beautiful than we see realised in the
prose of human life. Religion, as dis
tinguished from poetry, is the product
of the craving to know whether these
imaginative conceptions have realities
answering to them in some other world
than ours. The mind, in this stage,
eagerly catches at any rumours respect
ing other worlds, especially when de
livered by persons whom it deems wiser
than itself. To the poetry of the super
natural comes to be thus added a
positive belief and expectation, which
unpoetical minds can share with the
poetical. Belief in a god or gods, and
in a life after death, becomes the canvas
which every mind, according to its
capacity, covers with such ideal pictures
as it can either invent or copy. In that
other life each hopes to find the good
which he has failed to find on earth, or
the better which is suggested to him by
the good which on earth he has partially
seen and known. More especially, this
belief supplies the finer minds with
material for conceptions of beings more
awful than they can have known on
earth, and more excellent than they
probably have known. So long as human
life is insufficient to satisfy human aspira
tions, so long there will be a craving for
higher things, which finds its most
obvious satisfaction in religion. So long
as earthly life is full of sufferings, so long
there will be need of consolations, which
the hope of heaven affords to the selfish,
the love of God to the tender and
grateful.
The value, therefore, of religion to the
individual, both in the past and present,
as a source of personal satisfaction and
of elevated feelings, is not to be dis
puted. But it has still to be considered
whether, in order to obtain this good, it
is necessary to travel beyond the boun
daries of the world which we inhabit;
or whether the idealisation of our earthly
life, the cultivation of a high conception
of what it may be made, is not capable
of supplying a poetry, and, in the best
sense of the word, a religion, equally
fitted to exalt the feelings, and (with the
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
same aid from education) still better
calculated to ennoble the conduct, than
any belief respecting the unseen powers.
At the bare suggestion of such a possi
bility, many will exclaim that the short
duration, the smallness and insignificance
of life, if there is no prolongation of it
beyond what we see, makes it impossible
that great and elevated feelings can con
nect themselves with anything laid out
on so small a scale : that such a concep
tion of life can match with nothing
higher than Epicurean feelings, and the
Epicurean doctrine, “ Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die.”
Unquestionably, within certain limits,
the maxim of the Epicureans is sound,
and applicable to much higher things
than eating and drinking. To make
the most of the present for all good
purposes, those of enjoyment among the
rest; to keep under control those mental
dispositions which lead to undue sacri
fice of present good for a future which
may never arrive; to cultivate the habit
of deriving pleasure from things within
our reach, rather than from the too eager
pursuit of objects at a distance; to think
all time wasted which is not spent either
in personal pleasure or in doing things
useful to oneself or others: these are
wise maxims, and the “carpe diem” doc
trine, carried thus far, is a rational and
legitimate corollary from the shortness of
life. But that because life is short we
should care for nothing beyond it, is not
a legitimate conclusion; and the supposi
tion, that human beings in general are
not capable of feeling deep, and even the
deepest, interest in things which they will
never live to see, is a view of human
nature as false as it is abject. Let it be
remembered that, if individual life is
short, the life of the human species is
not short; its indefinite duration is
49
practically equivalent to endlessness; and,
being combined with indefinite capability
of improvement, it offers to the imagina
tion and sympathies a large enough
object to satisfy any reasonable demand
for grandeur of aspiration. If such an
object appears small to a mind accus
tomed to dream of infinite and eternal
beatitudes, it will expand into far other
dimensions when those baseless fancies
shall have receded into the past.
Nor let it be thought that only the
more eminent of our species, in mind
and heart, are capable of identifying their
feelings with the entire life of the human
race. This noble capability implies, in
deed, a certain cultivation, but not
superior to that which might be, and
certainly will be if human improvement
continues, the lot of all. Objects far
smaller than this, and equally confined
within the limits of the earth (though
not within those of a single human life),
have been found sufficient to inspire
large masses and long successions of
mankind with an enthusiasm capable of
ruling the conduct and colouring the
whole life. Rome was to the entire
Roman people for many generations as
much a religion as Jehovah was to the
Jews; nay, much more, for they never
fell off from their worship as the Jews
did from theirs. And the Romans,
otherwise a selfish people, with no very
remarkable faculties of any kind except
the purely practical, derived, nevertheless,
from this one idea a certain greatness of
soul, which manifests itself in all their
history where that idea is concerned and
nowhere else, and has earned for them
the large share of admiration, in other
respects not at all deserved, which has
been felt for them by most noble-minded
persons from that time to this.
When we consider how ardent a
E
�5°
UTILITY OF RELIGION
sentiment, in favourable circumstances
of education, the love of country has
become, we cannot judge it impossible
that the love of that larger country, the
world, may be nursed into similar
strength, both as a source of elevated
emotion and as a principle of duty. He
who needs any other lesson on this sub
ject than the whole course of ancient
history affords, let him read Cicero de
Officiis. It cannot be said that the
standard of morals laid down in that
celebrated treatise is a high standard.
To our notions it is on many points un
duly lax, and admits capitulations of
conscience. But on the subject of duty
to our country there is no compromise.
That any man with the smallest pre
tensions to virtue could hesitate to sacri
fice life, reputation, family, everything
valuable to him, to the love of country is
a supposition which this eminent inter
preter of Greek and Roman morality
cannot entertain for a moment. If, then,
persons could be trained, as we see they
were, not only to believe in theory that
the good of their country was an object
to which all others ought to yield, but to
feel this practically as the grand duty of
life, so also may they be made to feel the
same absolute obligation towards the
universal good. A morality grounded
on large and wise views of the good of
the whole, neither sacrificing the in
dividual to the aggregate nor the
aggregate to the individual, but giving
to duty on the one hand and to freedom
and spontaneity on the other their proper
province, would derive its power in the
superior natures from sympathy and
benevolence and the passion for ideal
excellence: in the inferior, from the
same feelings cultivated up to the
measure of their capacity, with the super
added force of shame. This exalted
morality would not depend for its
ascendancy on any hope of reward ; but
the reward which might be looked for,
and the thought of which would be a
consolation in suffering, and a support in
moments of weakness, would not be a
problematical future existence, but the
approbation, in this, of those whom we
respect, and ideally of all those, dead or
living, whom we admire or venerate.
For the thought that our dead parents
or friends would have approved our con
duct is a scarcely less powerful motive
than the knowledge that our living ones
do approve it; and the idea that
Socrates, or Howard, or Washington, or
Antoninus, or Christ, would have sympa
thised with us, or that we are attempting
to do our part in the spirit in which they
did theirs, has operated on the very best
minds, as a strong incentive to act up to
their highest feelings and convictions.
To call these sentiments by the name
morality, exclusively of any other title, is
claiming too little for them. They are a
real religion; of which, as of other
religions, outward good works (the ut
most meaning usually suggested by the
word “morality”) are only a part, and are
indeed rather the fruits of the religion
than the religion itself. The essence of
religion is the strong and earnest direction
of the emotions and desires towards an
ideal object, recognised as of the highest
excellence, and as rightfully paramount
over all selfish objects of desire. This
condition is fulfilled by the Religion of
Humanity in as eminent a degree, and
in as high a sense, as by the supernatural
religions even in their best manifesta
tions, and far more so than in any of
their others.
Much more might be added on this
topic; but enough has been said to con
vince any one, who can distinguish
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
between the intrinsic capacities of human
nature and the forms in which those
capacities happen to have been histori
cally developed, that the sense of unity
with mankind, and a deep feeling for the
general good, may be cultivated into a
sentiment and a principle capable of ful
filling every important function of religion
and itself justly entitled to the name. I
will now further maintain that it is not
only capable of fulfilling these functions,
but would fulfil them better than any
form whatever of supernaturalism. It is
not only entitled to be called a religion :
it is a better religion than any of those
which are ordinarily called by that title.
For, in the first place, it is dis
interested. It carries the thoughts and
feelings out of self, and fixes them on an
unselfish object, loved and pursued as an
end for its own sake. The religions
which deal in promises and threats
regarding a future life do exactly the
contrary : they fasten down the thoughts
to the person’s own posthumous interests;
they tempt him to regard the perfor
mance of his duties to others mainly as
a means to his own personal salvation;
and are one of the most serious obstacles
to the great purpose of moral culture,
the strengthening of the unselfish and
weakening of the selfish element in our
nature; since they hold out to the
imagination selfish good and evil of such
tremendous magnitude that it is difficult
for any one who fully believes in their
reality to have feeling or interest to spare
for any other distant and ideal object.
It is true, many of the most unselfish of
mankind have been believers in super
naturalism, because their minds have not
dwelt on the threats and promises of
their religion, but chiefly on the idea of
a Being to whom they looked up with a
confiding love, and in whose hands they
5i
willingly left all that related especially to
themselves. Butin its effect on common
minds, what now goes by the name of
religion operates mainly through the
feelings of self-interest. Even the Christ
of the Gospel holds out the direct
promise of reward from heaven as a
primary inducement to the noble and
beautiful beneficence towards our fellow
creatures which he so impressively incul
cates. This is a radical inferiority of
the best supernatural religions, compared
with the Religion of Humanity, since
the greatest thing which moral influences
can do for the amelioration of human
nature is to cultivate the unselfish feel
ings in the only mode in which any
active principle in human nature can be
effectually cultivated—namely, by habitual
exercise; but the habit of expecting to
be rewarded in another life for our con
duct in this makes even virtue itself no
longer an exercise of the unselfish
feelings.
Secondly, it is an immense abate
ment from the worth of the old religions
as means of elevating and improving
human character, that it is nearly, if not
quite, impossible for them to produce
their best moral effects, unless we sup
pose a certain torpidity, if not positive
twist, in the intellectual faculties. For it
is impossible that any one who habitually
thinks, and who is unable to blunt his
inquiring intellect by sophistry, should
be able without misgiving to go on
ascribing absolute perfection to the
author and ruler of so clumsily made
and capriciously governed a creation as
this planet and the life of its inhabitants.
1 he adoration of such a being cannot be
with the whole heart, unless the heart
is first considerably sophisticated. The
worship must either be greatly over
clouded by doubt, and occasionally quite
�52
UTILITY OF RELIGION
darkened by it, or the moral sentiments
must sink to the low level of the ordi
nances of Nature : the worshipper must
learn to think blind partiality, atrocious
cruelty, and reckless injustice, not
blemishes in an object of worship, since
all these abound to excess in the com
monest phenomena of Nature. It is
true, the God who is worshipped is not,
generally speaking, the God of Nature
only, but also the God of some revela
tion ; and the character of the revelation
will greatly modify and, it may be,
improve the moral influences of the
religion. This is emphatically true of
Christianity; since the Author of the
Sermon on the Mount is assuredly a far
more benignant Being than the Author
of Nature. But, unfortunately, the be
liever in the Christian revelation is
obliged to believe that the same Being
is the author of both. This, unless he
resolutely averts his mind from the
subject, or practises the act of quieting
his conscience by sophistry, involves
him in moral perplexities without end;
since the ways of his Deity in Nature
are on many occasions totally at variance
with the precepts, as he believes, of the
same Deity in the Gospel. He who
comes out with least moral damage from
this embarrassment is probably the one
who never attempts to reconcile the two
standards with one another, but con
fesses to himself that the purposes of
Providence are mysterious, that its ways
are not our ways, that its justice and
goodness are not the justice and good
ness which we can conceive and which
it befits us to practise. When, however,
this is the feeling of the believer, the
worship of the Deity ceases to be the
adoration of abstract moral perfection.
It becomes the bowing down to a
gigantic image of something not fit for
us to imitate. It is the worship of power
only.
I say nothing of the moral difficulties
and perversions involved in revelation
itself; though even in the Christianity
of the Gospels, at least in its ordinary
interpretation, there are some of so
flagrant a character as almost to out
weigh all the beauty and benignity and
moral greatness which so eminently dis
tinguish the sayings and character of
Christ. The recognition, for example,
of the object of highest worship in a
being who could make a hell, and who
could create countless generations of
human beings with the certain fore
knowledge that he was creating them for
this fate. Is there any moral enormity
which might not be justified by imita
tion of such a Deity ? And is it possible
to adore such a one without a frightful
distortion of the standard of right and
wrong ? Any other of the outrages to
the most ordinary justice and humanity
involved in the common Christian con
ception of the moral character of God
sinks into insignificance beside this
dreadful idealisation of wickedness.
Most of them, too, are happily not so
unequivocally deducible from the very
words of Christ as to be indisputably a
part of Christian doctrine. It may be
doubted, for instance, whether Chris
tianity is really responsible for atone
ment and redemption, original sin and
vicarious punishment: and the same may
be said respecting the doctrine which
makes belief in the divine mission of
Christ a necessary condition of salvation.
It is nowhere represented that Christ
himself made this statement, except in
the huddled-up account of the Resurrec
tion contained in the concluding verses
of St. Mark, which some critics (I believe
the best) consider to be an interpolation.
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
Again, the proposition that “ the powers
that be are ordained of God,” and the
whole series of corollaries deduced
from it in the Epistles, belong to St.
Paul, and must stand or fall with
Paulism, not with Christianity. But
there is one moral contradiction insepar
able from every form of Christianity,
which no ingenuity ca.i resolve, and no
sophistry explain away. It is, that so
precious a gift, bestowed on a few,
should have been withheld from the
many; that countless millions of human
beings should have been allowed to live
and die, to sin and suffer, without the
one thing needful^ the divine remedy for
sin and suffering, which it would have
cost the Divine Giver as little to have
vouchsafed to all as to have bestowed
by special grace upon a favoured
minority. Add to this that the divine
message, assuming it to be such, has
been authenticated by credentials so in
sufficient that they fail to convince a
large proportion of the strongest and
cultivated minds, and the tendency to
disbelieve them appears to grow with
the growth of scientific knowledge and
critical discrimination. He who can be
lieve these to be the intentional short
comings of a perfectly good Being must
impose silence on every prompting of
the sense of goodness and justice as
received among men.
It is, no doubt, possible (and there
are many instances of it) to worship
with the intensest devotion either Deity,
that of Nature or of the Gospel, without
any perversion of the moral sentiments ;
but this must be by fixing the attention
exclusively on what is beautiful and
beneficent in the precepts and spirit of
the Gospel and in the dispensations of
Nature, and putting all tjiat is the reverse
as entirely aside as if it did not exist.
53
Accordingly, this simple and innocent
faith can only, as I have said, co-exist
with a torpid and inactive state of the
speculative faculties. For a person of
exercised intellect there is no way of
attaining anything equivalent to it, save
by sophistication and perversion, either
of the understanding or of the con
science. It may almost always be said
both of sects and of individuals, who
derive their morality from religion, that
the better logicians they are, the worse
moralists.
One only form of belief in the super
natural—one only theory respecting the
origin and government of the universe—■
stands wholly clear both of intellectual
contradiction and of moral obliquity. It
is that which, resigning irrevocably the
idea of an omnipotent creator, regards
Nature and Life not as the expression
throughout of the moral character and
purpose of the Deity, but as the product
of a struggle between contriving good
ness and an intractable material, as was
believed by Plato, or a Principle of Evil,
as was the doctrine of the Manicheans.
A creed like this, which I have known
to be devoutly held by at least one culti
vated and conscientious person of our
own day, allows it to be believed that all
the mass of evil which exists was un
designed by, and exists not by the
appointment of, but in spite of, the Being
whom we are called upon to worship. A
virtuous human being assumes in this
theory the exalted character of a fellow
labourer with the Highest, a fellow
combatant in the great strife; con
tributing his little, which by the aggrega
tion of many like himself becomes much,
towards that progressive ascendancy, and
ultimately complete triumph of good
over evil, which history points to, and
which this doctrine teaches us to regard
�54
UTILITY OF RELIGION
as planned by the Being to whom we
owe all the benevolent contrivance we
behold in Nature. Against the moral
tendency of this creed no possible
objection can lie : it can produce on
whoever can succeed in believing it no
other than an ennobling effect. The
evidence for it, indeed, if evidence it can
be called, is too shadowy and unsub
stantial, and the promises it holds out
too distant and uncertain, to admit of its
being a permanent substitute for the
religion of humanity; but the two may
be held in conjunction : and he to whom
ideal good, and the progress of the
world towards it, are already a religion,
even though that other creed may seem
to him a belief not grounded on evidence,
is at liberty to indulge the pleasing and
encouraging thought that its truth is
possible. Apart from all dogmatic belief,
there is for those who need it an ample
domain in the region of the imagination
which may be planted with possibilities,
with hypotheses which cannot be known
to be false; and when there is anything
in the appearances of nature to favour
them, as in this case there is (for, what
ever force we attach to the analogies of
nature with the effects of human con
trivance, there is no disputing the remark
of Paley, that what is good in nature
exhibits those analogies much oftener
than what is evil), the contemplation of
these possibilities is a legitimate indul
gence, capable of bearing its part, with
other influences, in feeding and animat
ing the tendency of the feelings and
impulses towards good.
One advantage, such as it is, the
supernatural religions must always
possess over the Religion of Humanity :
the prospect they hold out to the indi
vidual of a life after death. For, though
the scepticism of the understanding
does not necessarily exclude the Theism
of the imagination and feelings, and
this, again, gives opportunity for a
hope that the power which has done so
much for us may be able and willing to
do this also, such vague possibility must
ever stop far short of a conviction. It
remains then to estimate the value of
this element—the prospect of a world to
come—as a constituent of earthly happi
ness. I cannot but think that as the
condition of mankind becomes improved,
as they grow happier in their lives, and
more capable of deriving happiness from
unselfish sources, they will care less and
less for this flattering expectation. It is
not, naturally or generally, the happy
who are the most anxious either for a
prolongation of the present life, or for a
life hereafter : it is those who never have
been happy. They who have had their
happiness can bear to part with existence;
but it is hard to die without ever having
lived. When mankind cease to need a
future existence as a consolation for the
sufferings of the present, it will have lost
its chief value to them, for themselves.
I am now speaking of the unselfish.
Those who are so wrapped up in self
that they are unable to identify their
feelings with anything w’hich will survive
them, or to feel their life prolonged in
their younger cotemporaries and in all
who help to carry on the progressive
movement of human affairs, require the
notion of another selfish life beyond the
grave, to enable them to keep up any in
terest in existence, since the present life,
as its termination approaches, dwindles
into something too insignificant to be
worth caring about. But if the Religion
of Humanity were as sedulously culti
vated as the supernatural religions are
(and there is no difficulty in conceiving
that it might be much more so), all who
�UTILITY OF RELIGION
had received the customary amount of
moral cultivation would, up to the hour
of death, live ideally in the life of those
who are to follow them; and though,
doubtless, they would often willingly sur
vive as individuals for a much longer
period than the present duration of life,
it appears to me probable that, after a
length of time different in different per
sons, they would have had enough of
existence, and would gladly lie down and
take their eternal rest. Meanwhile, and
without looking so far forward, we may
remark that those who believe the
immortality of the soul generally quit
life with fully as much, if not more,
reluctance as those who have no such
expectation. The mere cessation of ex
istence is no evil to any one : the idea is
only formidable through the illusion of
imagination which makes one conceive
oneself as if one were alive and feeling
oneself dead. What is odious in death
is not death itself, but the act of dying
and its lugubrious accompaniments : all
of which must be equally undergone by
the believer in immortality. Nor can I
perceive that the sceptic loses by his
scepticism any real and valuable consola
tion except one—the hope of reunion
with those dear to him who have ended
their earthly life before him. That loss,
indeed, is neither to be denied nor ex
tenuated. In many cases it is beyond
the reach of comparison or estimate;
and will always suffice to keep alive, in
the more sensitive natures, the imagina
tive hope of a futurity which, if there is
nothing to prove, there is as little in our
knowledge and experience to contradict.
History, so far as we know it, bears
out the opinion that mankind can per
fectly well do without the belief in a
heaven. The Greeks had anything but
a tempting idea of a future state. Their
55
Elysian fields held out very little attrac
tion to their feelings and imagination.
Achilles in the Odyssey expressed a very
natural, and no doubt a very common
sentiment, when he said that he would
rather be on earth the serf of a needy
master than reign over the whole king
dom of the dead. And the pensive
character so striking in the address of the
dying emperor Hadrian to his soul gives
evidence that the popular conception had
not undergone much variation during
that long interval. Yet we neither find
that the Greeks enjoyed life less nor
feared death more than other people.
The Buddhist religion counts probably
at this day a greater number of votaries
than either the Christian or the Moham
medan. The Buddhist creed recognises
many modes of punishment in a future
life, or rather lives, by the transmigration
of the soul into new bodies of men or
animals. But the blessing from heaven
which it proposes as a reward, to be
earned by perseverance in the highest
order of virtuous life, is annihilation;
the cessation, at least, of all conscious
or separate existence. It is impossible
to mistake in this religion the work of
legislators and moralists endeavouring to
supply supernatural motives for the con
duct which they were anxious to en
courage; and they could find nothing
more transcendent to hold out as the
capital prize to be won by the mightiest
efforts of labour and self-denial than
what we are so often told is the terrible
idea of annihilation. Surely this is a
proof that the idea is not really or
naturally terrible; that not philosophers
only, but the common order of mankind,
can easily reconcile themselves to it, and
even consider it as a good; and that it is
no unnatural part of the idea of a happy
life, that life itself be laid down, after the
�56
UTILITY OF RELIGION
best that it can give has been fully en
joyed through a long lapse of time; when
all its pleasures, even those of benevo
lence, are familiar, and nothing untasted
and unknown is left to stimulate curiosity
and keep up the desire of prolonged
existence. It seems to me not only
possible, but probable, that in a higher,
and above all a happier, condition of
human life, not annihilation but immor
tality may be the burdensome idea ; and
that human nature, though pleased with
the present, and by no means impatient
to quit it, would find comfort and not
sadness in the thought that it is not
chained through eternity to a conscious
existence which it cannot be assured that
it will always wish to preserve.
�THEISM
Part
I.—INTRODUCTION
The contest which subsists from of old
between believers and unbelievers in
natural and revealed religion has, like
other permanent contests, varied materi
ally in its character from age to age;
and the present generation, at least in
the higher regions of controversy, shows,
as compared with the eighteenth and
the beginning of the nineteenth century,
a marked alteration in the aspect of the
dispute. One feature of this change is
so apparent as to be generally acknow
ledged : the more softened temper in
which the debate is conducted on the
part of unbelievers. The reactionary
violence, provoked by the intolerance of
the other side, has in a great measure
exhausted itself. Experience has abated
the ardent hopes once entertained of
the regeneration of the human race by
merely negative doctrine—by the destruc
tion of superstition. The philosophical
study of history, one of the most im
portant creations of recent times, has
rendered possible an impartial estimate
of the doctrines and institutions of the
past, from a relative instead of an abso
lute point of view—as incidents of
human development at which it is use
less to grumble, and which may deserve
admiration and gratitude for their effects
in the past, even though they may be
thought incapable of rendering similar
services to the future. And the position
assigned to Christianity or Theism by
the more instructed of those who reject
the supernatural is that of things once
of great value, but which can now be
done without, rather than, as formerly, of
things misleading and noxious ab initio.
Along with this change in the moral
attitude of thoughtful unbelievers to
wards the religious ideas of man
kind, a corresponding difference has
manifested itself in their intellectual
attitude. The war against religious
beliefs in the last century was carried
on principally on the ground of
common sense or of logic; in the present
age, on the ground of science. The
progress of the physical science is con
sidered to have established, by conclu
sive evidence, matters of fact with which
the religious traditions of mankind are not
reconcilable; while the science of human
nature and history is considered to show
that the creeds of the past are natural
growths of the human mind, in particular
stages of its career, destined to dis
appear and give place to other convic
tions in a more advanced stage. In the
progress of discussion this last class of
considerations seems even to be super
seding those which address themselves
directly to the question of truth. Re
ligions tend to be discussed, at least by
�58
THEISM
those who reject them, less as intrinsi
cally true or false than as products
thrown up by certain states of civilisa
tion, and which, like the animal and
vegetable productions of a geological
period, perish in those which succeed it
from the cessation of the conditions
necessary to their continued existence.
This tendency of recent speculation
to look upon human opinions pre
eminently from an historical point of
view, as facts obeying laws of their own,
and requiring, like other observed facts,
an historical or a scientific explanation
(a tendency not confined to religious
subjects), is by no means to be blamed,
but to be applauded; not solely as
drawing attention to an important .and
previously neglected aspect of human
opinions, but because it has a real,
though indirect, bearing upon the ques
tion of their truth. For whatever opinion
a person may adopt on any subject that
admits of controversy, his assurance, if
he be a cautious thinker, cannot be
complete unless he is able to account
for the existence of the opposite opinion.
To ascribe it to the weakness of the
human understanding is an explanation
which cannot be sufficient for such a
thinker, for he will be slow to assume
that he has himself a less share of that
infirmity than the rest of mankind, and
that error is more likely to be on the
other side than on his own. In his
examination of evidence the persuasion
of others, perhaps of mankind in general,
is one of the data of the case—one of
the phenomena to be accounted for. As
the human intellect, though weak, is not
essentially perverted, there is a certain
presumption of the truth of any opinion
held by many human minds, requiring to
be rebutted by assigning some other real
or possible cause for its prevalence.
And this consideration has a special
relevancy to the inquiry concerning the
foundations of Theism, inasmuch as no
argument for the truth of Theism is more
commonly invoked or more confidently
relied on than the general assent of
mankind.
But while giving its full value to this
historical treatment of the religious ques
tion, we ought not, therefore, to let it
supersede the dogmatic. The most im
portant quality of an opinion on any
momentous subject is its truth or falsity,
which to us resolves itself into the
sufficiency of the evidence on which it
rests. It is indispensable that the
subject of religion should from time to
time be reviewed as a strictly scientific
question, and that its evidences should
be tested by the same scientific methods
and on the same principles as those of
the speculative conclusions drawn by
physical science. It being granted, then,
that the legitimate conclusions of science
are entitled to prevail over all opinions,
however widely held, which conflict with
them, and that the canons of scientific
evidence which the successes and failures
of two thousand years have established
are applicable to all subjects on which
knowledge is attainable, let us proceed
to consider what place there is for
religious beliefs on the platform of
science; what evidences they can appeal
to such as science can recognise, and
what foundation there is for the doc
trines of religion, considered as scientific
theorems.
In this inquiry we, of course, begin
with Natural Religion, the doctrine of
the existence and attributes of God.
THEISM.
Though I have defined the problem
of Natural Theology to be that of the
�THEISM
existence of God or of a god, rather than
of gods, there is the amplest historical
evidence that the belief in gods is
immeasurably more natural to the human
mind than the belief in one author and
ruler of nature; and that this more
elevated belief is, compared with the
former, an artificial product, requiring
(except when impressed by early educa
tion) a considerable amount of intellectual
culture before it can be reached. For a
long time the supposition appeared
forced and unnatural that the diversity
we see in the operations of nature can
all be the work of a single will. To the
untaught mind", and to all minds in prescientific times, the phenomena of nature
seem to be the result of forces altogether
heterogeneous, each taking its course
quite independently of the others; and
though to attribute them to conscious
wills is eminently natural, the natural
tendency is to suppose as many such
independent wills as there are distin
guishable forces of sufficient importance
and interest to have been remarked and
named. There is no tendency in Poly
theism as such to transform itself spon
taneously into Monotheism. It is true
that in polytheistic systems generally the
Deity, whose special attributes inspire
the greatest degree of awe, is usually
supposed to have a power of controlling
the other deities; and even in the most
degraded, perhaps, of all such systems,
the Hindoo, adulation heaps upon the
divinity who is the immediate object of
adoration epithets like those habitual to
believers in a single god. But there is
no real acknowledgment of one governor.
Every god normally rules his particular
department, though there may be a still
stronger god, whose power when he
chooses to exert it can frustrate the
purposes of the inferior divinity. There
59
could be no real belief in one Creator
and one Governor until mankind had
begun to see in the apparently confused
phenomena which surrounded them a
system capable of being viewed as the
possible working out of a single plan. This
conception of the world was perhaps
anticipated (though less frequently than
is often supposed) by individuals of ex
ceptional genius, but it could only
become common after a rather long
cultivation of scientific thought.
The special mode in which scientific
study operates to instil Monotheism in
place of the more natural Polytheism is
in no way mysterious. The specific
effect of science is to show by accumula
ting evidence that every event in nature
is connected by laws with some fact or
facts which preceded it, or, in other
words, depends for its existence on some
antecedent; but yet not so strictly on
one as not to be liable to frustration or
modification from others; for these dis
tinct chains of causation are so entangled
with one another; the action of each
cause is so interfered with by other
causes, though each acts according to its
own fixed law; that every effect is truly
the result rather of the aggregate of all
causes in existence than of any one only;
and nothing takes place in the world of
our experience without spreading a per
ceptible influence of some sort through
a greater or less portion of nature, and
making perhaps every portion of it
slightly different from what it would have
been if that event had not taken place.
Now, when once the double conviction
has found entry into the mind—that every
event depends on antecedents; and at
the same time that to bring it about
many antecedents must concur, perhaps
all the antecedents in nature, insomuch
that a slight difference in any one of
�6o
THEISM
them might have prevented the
phenomenon, or materially altered its
character—the conviction follows that
no one event, certainly no one kind of
events, can be absolutely preordained or
governed by any Being but one who
holds in his hand the reins of all Nature,
and not of some department only. At
least, if a plurality be supposed, it is
necessary to assume so complete a con
cert of action and unity of will among
them that the difference is for most pur
poses immaterial between such a theory
and that of the absolute unity of the
Godhead.
The reason, then, why Monotheism
may be accepted as the representative of
Theism in the abstract is not so much
because it is the Theism of all the more
improved portions of the human race, as
because it is the only Theism which can
claim for itself any footing on scientific
ground. Every other theory of the
government of the universe by super
natural beings is inconsistent, either with
the carrying on of that government
through a continual series of natural
antecedents according to fixed laws, or
with the interdependence of each of
these series upon all the rest, which are
the two most general results of science.
Setting out, therefore, from the scientific
view of nature as one connected system,
or united whole—united not like a web
composed of separate threads in passive
juxtaposition with one another, but
rather like the human or animal frame,
an apparatus kept going by perpetual
action and reaction among all its parts
—it must be acknowledged that the
question, to which Theism is an answer,
is at least a very natural one, and issues
from an obvious want of the human
mind. Accustomed as we are to find, in
proportion to our means of observation,
a definite beginning to each individual
fact; and since, wherever there is a be
ginning, we find that there was an ante
cedent fact (called by us a cause), a fact
but for which the phenomenon which
thus commences would not have been,
it was impossible that the human mind
should not ask itself whether the whole,
of which these particular phenomena are
a part, had not also a beginning, and, if
so, whether that beginning was not an
origin; whether there was not something
antecedent to the whole series of causes
and effects that we term Nature, and but
for which Nature itself would not have
been. From the first recorded specula
tion this question has never remained
without an hypothetical answer. The
only answer which has long continued to
afford satisfaction is Theism.
Looking at the problem, as it is our
business to do, merely as a scientific in
quiry, it resolves itself into two questions.
First: Is the theory which refers the
origin of all the phenomena of nature to
the will of a Creator consistent or not
with the ascertained results of science ?
Secondly, assuming it to be consistent,
will its proofs bear to be tested by the
principles of evidence and canons of
belief by which our long experience of
scientific inquiry has proved the necessity
of being guided ?
First, then : there is one conception of
Theism which is consistent, another
which is radically inconsistent, with the
most general truths that have been made
known to us by scientific investigation.
The one which is inconsistent is the
conception of a God governing the
world by acts of variable will. The one
which is consistent is the conception of
a God governing the world by invariable
laws.
The primitive, and even in our own
�THE EVIDENCES OF THEISM
day the vulgar, conception of the divine
rule is that the one God, like the many
gods of antiquity, carries on the govern
ment of the world by special decrees,
made pro hac vice. Although supposed
to be omniscient as well as omnipotent,
he is thought not to make up his mind
until the moment of action; or at least
not so conclusively, but that his in
tentions may be altered up to the very
last moment by appropriate solicitation.
Without entering into the difficulties of
reconciling this view of the divine govern
ment with the prescience and the per
fect wisdom ascribed to the Deity, we
may content ourselves with the fact that
it contradicts what experience has taught
us of the manner in which things actually
take place. The phenomena of nature
do take place according to general laws.
They do originate from definite natural
antecedents. Therefore, if their ultimate
origin is derived from a will, that will
must have established the general laws
and willed the antecedents. If there be
a Creator, his intention must have been
that events should depend upon ante
cedents and be produced according to
fixed laws. But this being conceded,
there is nothing in scientific experience
inconsistent with the belief that those
laws and sequences are themselves due
to a divine will. Neither are we obliged
to suppose that the divine will exerted
itself once for all, and, after putting a
power into the system which enabled it
to go on of itself, has ever since let it
alone. Science contains nothing repug
nant to the supposition that every event
which takes place results from a specific
volition of the presiding Power, provided
that this Power adheres in its particular
volitions to general laws laid down by
itself. The common opinion is that this
hypothesis tends more to the glory of the
61
Deity than the supposition that the
universe was made so that it could go
on of itself. There have been thinkers,
however—of no ordinary eminence (of
whom Leibnitz was one)—who thought
the last the only supposition worthy of
the Deity, and protested against likening
God to a clockmaker whose clock will
not go unless he puts his hand to the
machinery and keeps it going. With
such considerations we have no concern
in this place. We are looking at the
subject not from the point of view of
reference, but from that of science ; and
with science both these suppositions as
to the mode of the divine action are
equally consistent.
We must now, however, pass to the
next question. There is nothing to dis
prove the creation and government of
Nature by a sovereign will; but is there
anything to prove it ? Of what nature
are its evidences; and, weighed in the
scientific balance, what is their value ?
THE EVIDENCES OF THEISM.
The evidences of a Creator are not only
of several distinct kinds, but of such
diverse characters that they are adapted
to minds of very different descriptions,
and it is hardly possible for any mind to
be equally impressed by them all. The
familiar classification of them into proofs
a priori and a posteriori marks that, when
looked at in a purely scientific view, they
belong to different schools of thought.
Accordingly, though the unthoughtful
believer whose creed really rests on
authority gives an equal welcome to all
plausible arguments in support of the
belief in which he has been brought up,
philosophers who have had to make a
choice between the a priori and the
a posteriori methods in general science
seldom fail, while insisting on one of
�62
THEISM
these modes of support for religion, to
speak with more or less of disparage
ment of the other. It is our duty in the
present inquiry to maintain complete im
partiality and to give a fair examination
to both. At the same time, I entertain a
strong conviction that one of the two
modes of argument is in its nature scien
tific, the other not only unscientific, but
condemned by science. The scientific
argument is that which reasons from the
facts and analogies of human experience,
as a geologist does when he infers the
past states of our terrestrial globe, or an
astronomical observer when he draws
conclusions respecting the physical com
position of the heavenly bodies. This is
the cl posteriori method, the principal
application of which to Theism is the
argument (as it is called) of design. The
mode qf reasoning which I call unscien
tific, though in the opinion of some
thinkers it is also a legitimate mode
of scientific procedure, is that which
infers external objective facts from ideas
or convictions of our minds. I say this
independently of any opinion of my own
respecting the origin of our ideas or con
victions ; for even if we were unable to
point out any manner in which the idea
of God, for example, can have grown
up from the impressions of experience,
still the idea can only prove the idea,
and not the objective fact, unless, in
deed, the fact is supposed (agreeably to
the book of Genesis) to have been
handed down by tradition from a time
when there was direct personal inter
course with the Divine Being; in which
case the argument is no longer a priori.
The supposition that an idea, or a wish,
or a need, even if native to the mind,
proves the reality of a corresponding
object, derives all the plausibility from
the belief already in our minds that we
were made by a benignant Being who
would not have implanted in us a ground
less belief, or a want which he did not
afford us the means of satisfying; and
is therefore a palpable petitio principii if
adduced as an argument to support the
very belief which it pre-supposes.
At the same time, it must be admitted
that all a priori systems, whether in
philosophy or religion, do in some sense
profess to be founded on experience,
since, though they affirm the possibility
of arriving at truths which transcend
experience, they yet make the facts of
experience their starting-point (as what
other starting-point is possible ?). They
are entitled to consideration in so far as
it can be shown that experience gives
any countenance either to them or to
their method of inquiry. Professedly a
priori arguments are not unfrequently of
a mixed nature, partaking in some degree
of the a posteriori character, and may
often be said to be a posteriori arguments
in disguise; the d priori considerations
acting chiefly in the way of making some
particular a posteriori argument tell for
more than its worth. This is emphati
cally true of the argument for Theism
which I shall first examine—the necessity
of a First Cause. For this has in truth
a wide basis of experience in the univer
sality of the relation of cause and effect
among the phenomena of nature ; while,
at the same time, theological philoso
phers have not been content to let it
rest upon this basis, but have affirmed
causation as a truth of reason appre
hended intuitively by its own light.
ARGUMENT FOR A FIRST
CAUSE.
The argument for a First Cause
admits of being, and is, presented as a
conclusion from the whole of human
�ARGUMENT FOR A FIRST CAUSE
experience. Everything that we know
(it is argued) had a cause, and owed its
existence to that cause. How, then, can
it be but that the world, which is but a
name for the aggregate of all that we
know, has a cause to which it is indebted
for its existence ?
The fact of experience, however, when
correctly expressed, turns out to be, not
that everything which we know derives
its existence from a cause, but only
every event or change. There is in
nature a permanent element, and also a
changeable : the changes are always the
effects of previous changes; the perma
nent existences, so far as we know, are
not effects at all. It is true we are
accustomed to say, not only of events,
but of objects, that they are produced
by causes, as water by the union of
hydrogen and oxygen. But by this we
only mean that, when they begin to exist,
their beginning is the effect of a cause.
But their beginning to exist is not an
object; it is an event. If it be objected
that the cause of a thing’s beginning to
exist may be said with propriety to be
the cause of the thing itself, I shall not
quarrel with the expression. But thatwhich in an object begins to exist is that
in it which belongs to the changeable
element in nature ; the outward form and
the properties depending on mechanical
or chemical combinations of its compo
nent parts. There is in every object
another and a permanent element—viz.,
the specific elementary substance or sub
stances of which it consists and their
inherent properties. These are not known
to us as beginning to exist: within the
range of human knowledge they had
no beginning, consequently no cause;
though they themselves are causes or
con-causes of everything that takes place.
Experience, therefore, affords no evi
63
dences, not even analogies, to justify our
extending to the apparently immutable
a generalisation grounded only on our
observation of the changeable.
As a fact of experience, then, causation
cannot legitimately be extended to the
material universe itself, but only to its
changeable phenomena; of these, indeed,
causes may be affirmed without any
exception. But what causes ? The cause
of every change is a prior change ; and
such it cannot but be; for, if there were
no new antecedent, there would not be
a new consequent. If the state of facts
which brings the phenomenon into
existence had existed always or for an
indefinite duration, the effect also would
have existed always or been produced
an indefinite time ago. It is thus a
necessary part of the fact of causation,
within the sphere of our experience, that
the causes as well as the effects had a
beginning in time, and were themselves
caused. It would seem, therefore, that
our experience, instead of furnishing an
argument for a First Cause, is repugnant
to it; and that the very essence of
causation, as it exists within the limits
of our knowledge, is incompatible with a
First Cause.
But it is necessary to look more par
ticularly into the matter, and analyse
more closely the nature of the causes of
which mankind have experience. For
if it should turn out that, though all
causes have a beginning, there is in all
of them a permanent element which
had no beginning, this permanent
element may with some justice be
termed a first or universal cause, inas
much as, though not sufficient of itself to
cause anything, it enters as a con-cause
into all causation. Now, it ‘ happens
that the last result of physical inquiry,
derived from the converging evidences
�64
THEISM
of all branches of physical science, does, from it, inasmuch as mind is the only
if it holds good, land us, so far as the thing which is capable of originating
material world is concerned, in a result change. This is said to be the lesson of
of this sort. Whenever a physical phe human experience. In the phenomena
nomenon is traced to its cause, that of inanimate nature the force which
cause when analysed is found to be works is always a pre-existing force, not
a certain quantum of force, combined originated, but transferred. One physical
with certain collocations. And the last object moves another by giving out to it
great generalisation of science, the con the force by which it has first been itself
servation of force, teaches us that vhe moved. The wind communicates to
variety in the effects depends partly the waves, or to a windmill, or a ship,
upon the amount of the force and partly part of the motion which has been given
upon the diversity of the collocations. to itself by some other agent. In volun
The force itself is essentially one and tary action alone we see a commence
the same; and there exists of it in ment, an origination of motion ; since all
nature a fixed quantity, which (if the other causes appear incapable of this
theory be true) is never increased or origination, experience is in favour of the
diminished. Here, then, we find, even conclusion that all the motion in exist
in the changes of material nature, a per ence owed its beginning to this one
manent element,-to all appearance the cause, voluntary agency, if not that of
very one of which we were in quest. This man, then of a more powerful Being.
it is apparently to which, if to anything,
This argument is a very old one. It
we must assign the character of First is to be found in Plato; not, as might
Cause, the cause of the material universe. have been expected, in the Phadon,
For all effects may be traced up to it, where the arguments are not such as
while it cannot be traced up by our would now be deemed of any weight, but
experience to anything beyond : its trans in his latest production, the Leges. LnA
formations alone can be so traced, and of it is still one of the most telling arguthem the cause always includes the force • ments with the more metaphysical class
itself; the same quantity of force in of defenders of Natural Theology.
some previous form. It would seem,
Now, in the first place, if there be
then, that in the only sense in which truth in the doctrine of the conservation
experience supports in any shape the of force—in other words, the constancy
doctrine of a First Cause—viz., as the of the total amount of force in existence—
primaeval and universal element in all this doctrine does not change from true
causes—the First Cause can be no other to false when it reaches the field of
than Force.
voluntary agency. The will does not,
We are, however, by no means at the any more than other causes, create force :
end of the question. On the contrary, granting that it originates motion, it has
the greatest stress of the argument is no means of doing so but by converting
exactly at the point which we have now into that particular manifestation a por
reached. For it is maintained that mind tion of force which already existed in
is the only possible cause of force; or other forms. It is known that the source
rather, perhaps, that mind is a force, from which this portion of force is
and that all other force must be derived derived is chiefly, or entirely, the force
�ARGUMENT FOR A FIRST CAUSE
evolved in the processes of chemical com
position and decomposition which con
stitute the body of nutrition; the force
so liberated becomes a fund upon which
every muscular, and even every merely
nervous action, as of the brain in thought,
is a draft. It is in this sense only that,
according to the best lights of science,
volition is an originating cause. Volition,
therefore, does not answer to the idea of
a First Cause; since force must in
every instance be assumed as prior to it;
and there is not the slightest colour, de
rived from experience, for supposing
force itself to have been created by a
volition. As far as anything can be con
cluded from human experience, force has
all the attributes of a thing eternal and
uncreated.
This, however, does not close the dis
cussion. For though whatever verdict
experience can give in the case is against
the possibility that will ever originates
force, yet, if we can be assured that
neither does force originate will, will
must be held to be an agency, if not
prior to force, yet coeternal with it; and
if it be true that will can originate, not
indeed force, but the transformation of
force from some other of its mani
festations into that of mechanical motion,
and that there is within human experience
no other agency capable of doing so, the
argument for a will as the originator,
though not of the universe, yet of the
kosmos, or order of the universe, remains
unanswered.
But the case thus stated is not con
formable to fact. Whatever volition can
do in the way of creating motion out of
other forms of force, and generally of
evolving force from a latent into a visible
state, can be done by many other causes.
Chemical action, for instance; electricity ;
heat; the mere presence of a gravitating
65
body : all these are causes of mechanical
motion on a far larger scale than any
volitions which experience presents to us ;
and in most of the effects thus produced
the motion given by one body to another
is not, as in the ordinary cases of
mechanical action, motion that has first
been given to that other by some third
body. The phenomenon is not a mere
passing on of mechanical motion, but a
creation of it out of a force previously
latent or manifesting itself in some other
form. Volition, therefore, regarded as
an agent in the material universe, has no
exclusive privilege of origination : all that
it can originate is also originated by other
transforming agents. If it be said that
those other agents must have had the
force they give out put into them from
elsewhere, I answer that this is no less
true of the force which volition disposes
of. We know that this force comes from
an external source—the chemical action
of the food and air. The force by which
the phenomena of the material world are
produced circulates through all physical
agencies in a never-ending though some
times intermitting stream. I am, of
course, speaking of volition only in its
action on the material world. We have
nothing to do here with the freedom of
the will itself as a mental phenomenon—
with the vex ata questio whether volition
is self-determining or determined by
causes. To the question now in hand it
is only the effects of volition that are
relevant, not its origin. The assertion is
that physical nature must have been pro
duced by a will, because nothing but will
is known to us as having the power of
originating the production of phenomena.
We have seen that, on the contrary, all
the power that will possesses over
phenomena is shared, as far as we have
the means of judging, by other and much
F
�66
THEISM
more powerful agents, and that in the
only sense in which those agents do not
originate, neither does will originate. No
prerogative, therefore, can, on the ground
of experience, be assigned to volition
above other natural agents, as a pro
ducing cause of phenomena. All that
can be affirmed by the strongest assertor
of the freedom of the will is that voli
tions are themselves uncaused, and are
therefore alone fit to be the First or
Universal Cause. But, even assuming
volitions to be uncaused, the properties
of matter, so far as experience discloses,
are uncaused also, and have the advan
tage over any particular volition, in being,
so far as experience can show, eternal.
Theism, therefore, in so far as it rests on
the necessity of a First Cause, has no
support from experience.
To those who, in default of experience,
consider the necessity of a First Cause as
matter of intuition, I would say that it is
needless, in this discussion, to contest
their premises; since admitting that there
is and must be a First Cause, it has now
been shown that several other agencies
than will can lay equal claim to that
character. One thing only may be said
which requires notice here. Among the
facts of the universe to be accounted for,
it may be said, is mind; and it is selfevident that nothing can have produced
mind but mind.
The special indications that mind is
deemed to give, pointing to intelligent
contrivance, belong to a different portion
of this inquiry. But if the mere exist
ence of mind is supposed to require,
as a necessary antecedent, another mind
greater and more powerful, the difficulty
is not removed by going one step back :
the creating mind stands as much in
need of another mind to be the source
of its existence as the created mind. Be
it remembered that we have no direct
knowledge (at least apart from revela
tion) of a mind which is even apparently
eternal, as force and matter are: an
eternal mind is, as far as the present
argument is concerned, a simple
hypothesis to account for the minds
which we know to exist. Now, it is
essential to an hypothesis that, if ad
mitted, it should at least remove the
difficulty and account for the facts. But
it does not account for mind to refer one
mind to a prior mind for its origin. The
problem remains unsolved, the difficulty
undiminished—nay, rather increased.
To this it may be objected that the
causation of every human mind is matter
of fact, since we know that it had a
beginning in time. We even know, or
have the strongest grounds for believing,
that the human species itself had a
beginning in time. For there is a vast
amount of evidence that the state of
our planet was once such as to be incom
patible with animal life, and that human
life is of a very much more modern
origin than animal life. In any case,
therefore, the fact must be faced that
there must have been a Cause which
called the first human mind—nay, the
very first germ of organic life—into exist
ence. No such difficulty exists in the
supposition of an eternal mind. If we
did not know that mind on our earth
began to exist, we might suppose it to
be uncaused; and we may still suppose
this of the mind to which we ascribe its
existence.
To take this ground is to return into
the field of human experience, and to
become subject to its canons, and we
are then entitled to ask where is the
proof that nothing can have caused a
mind except another mind. From what,
except from experience, can we know
�ARGUMENT FROM THE GENERAL CONSENT OF MANKIND
67
what can produce what—what causes reason to expect, from the mere occur
are adequate to what effects ? That rence of changes, that, if we could trace
nothing can consciously produce mind back the series far enough, we should
but mind is self-evident., being involved arrive at a primaeval volition. The world
in the meaning of the words ; but that does not, by its mere existence, bear
there cannot be unconscious production witness to a God; if it gives indications
must not be assumed, for it is the very of one, these must be given by the
point to be proved. Apart from experi special nature of the phenomena, by
ence, and arguing on what is called what they present that resembles adapta
reason—that is, on supposed self-evidence tion to an end : of which hereafter. If,
—the notion seems to be that no causes in default of evidence from experience,
can give rise to products of a more the evidence of intuition is relied upon,
precious or elevated kind than them it may be answered that if mind, as
selves. But this is at variance with the mind, presents intuitive evidence of
known analogies of nature. How vastly having been created, the creative mind
nobler and more precious, for instance, must do the same, and we are no nearer
are the higher vegetables and animals to the First Cause than before. But if
than the soil and manure out of which, there be nothing in the nature of mind
and by the properties of which, they are which in itself implies a Creator, the
raised up. The tendency of all recent minds which have a beginning in time, as
speculation is towards the opinion that all minds have which are known to our ex
the development of inferior orders of perience, must, indeed, have been caused,
existence into superior, the substitution but it is not necessary that their cause
of greater elaboration and higher organi should have been a prior intelligence.
sation for lower, is the general rule of
ARGUMENT FROM THE
Nature. Whether it is so or not, there
GENERAL CONSENT OF MAN
are at least in nature a multitude of facts
KIND.
bearing that character, and this is
sufficient for the argument.
Before proceeding to the argument
Here, then, this part of the discussion from Marks of Design, which, as it
may stop. The result it leads to is that seems to me, must always be the main
the First Cause argument is in itself of no strength of Natural Theism, we may
value for the establishment of Theism : dispose briefly of some other arguments
because no cause is needed for the exist which are of little scientific weight, but
ence of that which has no beginning; which have greater influence on the
and both matter and force (whatever human mind than much better argu
metaphysical theory we may give of the ments, because they are appeals to
one or the other) have had, so far as authority, and it is by authority that the
our experiences can teach us, no begin opinions of the bulk of mankind are
ning—which cannot be said of mind. principally, and not unnaturally, governed.
The phenomena or changes in the The authority invoked is that of mankind
universe have, indeed, each of them a generally, and specially of some of its
beginning and a cause, but their cause wisest men; particularly such as were in
is always a prior change; nor do the other respects conspicuous examples of
analogies of experience give us any ' breaking loose from received prejudices.
�68
THEISM
Socrates and Plato, Bacon, Locke, and
Newton, Descartes and Leibnitz, are
common examples.
It may, doubtless, be good advice to
persons who in point of knowledge and
cultivation are not entitled to think
themselves competent judges of difficult
questions, to bid them content them
selves with holding that true which
mankind generally believe, and so long
as they believe it; or that which has
been believed by those who pass for the
most eminent among the minds of the
past. But to a thinker the argument
from other people’s opinion has little
weight. It is but second-hand evidence;
and merely admonishes us to look out
for and weigh the reasons on which this
conviction of mankind or of wise men
was founded. Accordingly, those who
make any claim to philosophic treat
ment of the subject employ this general
consent chiefly as evidence that there is
in the mind of man an intuitive percep
tion, or an instinctive sense, of Deity.
From the generality of the belief they
infer that it is inherent in our constitu
tion ; from which they draw the con
clusion, a precarious one indeed, but
conformable to the general mode of
proceeding of the intuitive philosophy,
that the belief must be true; though as
applied to Theism this argument begs
the question, since it has itself nothing
to rest upon but the belief that the
human mind was made by a God, who
would not deceive his creatures.
But, indeed, what ground does the
general prevalence of the belief in Deity
afford us for inferring that this belief is
native to the human mind, and indepen
dent of evidence ? Is it, then, so very
devoid of evidence, even apparent ?
Lias it so little semblance of foundation
in fact that it can only be accounted for
by the supposition of its being innate ?
We should not expect to find Theists
believing that the appearances in nature
of a contriving intelligence are not only
insufficient, but are not even plausible,
and cannot be supposed to have carried
conviction either to the general or to
the wiser mind. If there are external
evidences of Theism, even if not perfectly
conclusive, why need we suppose that
the belief of its truth was the result of
anything else ? The superior minds to
whom an appeal is made, from Socrates
downwards, when they professed to give
the grounds of their opinion, did not
say that they found the belief in them
selves without knowing from whence it
came, but ascribed it, if not to revelation,
either to some metaphysical argument
or to those very external evidences
which are the basis of the argument
from design.
If it be said that the belief in Deity is
universal among barbarous tribes, and
among the ignorant portion of civilised
populations, who cannot be supposed to
have been impressed by the marvellous
adaptations of Nature, most of which are
unknown to them ; I answer, that the
ignorant in civilised countries take their
opinions from the educated, and that in
the case of savages, if the evidence is in
sufficient, so is the belief. The religious
belief of savages is not belief in the God
of natural theology, but a mere modifica
tion of the crude generalisation which
ascribes life, consciousness, and will to all
natural powers of which they cannot per
ceive the source or control the operation.
And the divinities believed in are as
numerous as those powers. Each river,
fountain, or tree has a divinity of its own.
To see in this blunder of primitive
ignorance the hand of the Supreme
Being implanting in his creatures an
�ARGUMENT FROM THE GENERAL CONSENT OF MANKIND
instinctive knowledge of his existence is
a poor compliment to the Deity. The
religion of savages is fetichism of the
grossest kind, ascribing animation and
will to individual objects, and seeking to
propitiate them by prayer and sacrifice.
That this should be the case is the less
surprising when we remember that there
is not a definite boundary line, broadly
separating the conscious human being
from inanimate objects. Between these
and man there is an intermediate class
of objects, sometimes much more power
ful than man, which do possess life and
will—viz., the brute animals, which in an
early stage of existence play a very great
part in human life; making it the less
surprising that the line should not at
first be quite distinguishable between the
animate and the inanimate part of nature.
As observation advances, it is perceived
that the majority of outward objects have
all their important qualities in common
with entire classes or groups of objects
which comport themselves exactly alike
in the same circumstances, and in these
cases the worship of visible objects is ex
changed for that of an invisible Being
supposed to preside over the whole class.
This step in generalisation is slowly
made, with hesitation and even terror;
as we still see in the case of ignorant
populations with what difficulty experi
ence disabuses them of belief in the
supernatural powers and terrible resent
ment of a particular idol. Chiefly by
these terrors the religious impressions of
barbarians are kept alive, with only
slight modifications, until the Theism
of cultivated minds is ready to take
their place. And the Theism of culti
vated minds, if we take their own
word for it, is always a conclusion either
from arguments called rational or from
the appearances in nature.
69
It is needless here to dwell upon the
difficulty of the hypothesis of a natural
belief not common to all human beings,
an instinct not universal. It is con
ceivable, doubtless, that some men
might be born without a particular
natural faculty, as some are born without
a particular sense. But when this is the
case, we ought to be much more particular
as to the proof that it really is a natural
faculty. If it were not a matter of
observation, but of speculation, that men
can see ; if they had no apparent organ
of sight, and no perceptions or knowledge
but such as they might conceivably have
acquired by some circuitous process
through their other senses, the fact that
men exist who do not even suppose
themselves to see would be a consider
able argument against the theory of a
visual sense. But it would carry us too
far to press, for the purposes of this dis
cussion, an argument which applies so
largely to the whole of the intuitional
philosophy. The strongest Intuitionist
will not maintain that a belief should be
held for instinctive when evidence (real
or apparent), sufficient to engender it, is
universally admitted to exist. To the
force of the evidence must be, in this
case, added all the emotional or moral
causes which incline men to the belief;
the satisfaction which it gives to the
obstinate questionings with which men
torment themselves respecting the past;
the hopes which it opens for the future ;
the fears also, since fear as well as hope
predisposes to belief; and to these in the
case of the more active spirits must
always have been added a perception of
the power which belief in the supernatural
affords for governing mankind, either for
their own good or for the selfish pur
poses of the governors.
The general consent of mankind does
�70
THEISM
not, therefore, afford ground for ad
mitting, even as an hypothesis, the origin,
in an inherent law of the human mind,
of a fact otherwise so more than suffici
ently, so amply, accounted for.
THE ARGUMENT FROM CON
SCIOUSNESS.
There have been numerous arguments,
indeed almost every religious meta
physician has one of his own, to prove
the existence and attributes of God from
what are called truth of reason, sup
posed to be independent of experience.
Descartes, who is the real founder of the
intuitional metaphysics, draws the con
clusion immediately from the first
premise of his philosophy, the celebrated
assumption that whatever he could very
clearly and distinctly apprehend must
be true. The idea of a God, perfect in
power, wisdom, and goodness, is’ a clear
and distinct idea, and must therefore, on
this principle, correspond to a real object.
This bold generalisation, however, that a
conception of the human mind proves
its own objective reality, Descartes is
obliged to limit by the qualification—
“ if the idea includes existence.” Now,
the idea of God implying the union of
all perfections, and existence being a
perfection, the idea of God proves his
existence. This very simple argument,
which denies to man one of his most
familiar and most precious attributes,
that of idealising as it is called—of con
structing from the materials of experience
a conception more perfect than experi
ence itself affords—is not likely to satisfy
any one in the present day. More
elaborate, though scarcely more success
ful efforts, have been made by many of
Descartes’ successors, to derive know
ledge of the Deity from an inward light;
to make it a truth not dependent on ex
ternal evidence, a fact of direct per
ception, or, as they are accustomed to
call it, of consciousness. The philo
sophical world is familiar with the attempt
of Cousin to make out that, whenever we
perceive a particular object, we perceive
along with it, or are conscious of, God;
and also with the celebrated refutation
of this doctrine by Sir William Hamilton.
It would be waste of time to examine
any of these theories in detail. While
each has its own particular logical
fallacies, they labour under the common
infirmity that one man cannot, by pro
claiming with ever so much confidence
that he perceives an object, convince
other people that they see it too. If, in
deed, he laid claim to a divine faculty of
vision, vouchsafed to him alone, and
making him cognisant of things which
men not thus assisted have not the
capacity to see, the case might be
different. Men have been able to get
such claims admitted; and other people
can only require of them to show their
credentials. But when no claim is set up
to any peculiar gift, but we are told that
all of us are as capable as the prophet of
seeing what he sees, feeling what he feels
—nay, that we actually do so—and when
the utmost effort of which we are capable
fails to make us aware of what we are
told we perceive, this supposed universal
faculty of intuition is but
“ The dark lantern of the Spirit
Which none see by but those who bear it
and the bearers may fairly be asked to
consider whether it is not more likely
that they are mistaken as to the origin of
an impression in their minds than that
others are ignorant of the very existence
of an impression in theirs.
The inconclusiveness, in a speculative
point of view, of all arguments from the
subjective notion of Deity to its objective
�THE ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIOUSNESS
reality was well seen by Kant, the most
discriminating of the a prion meta
physicians, who always kept the two
questions, the origin and composition of
our ideas and the reality of the
corresponding objects, perfectly distinct.
According to Kant, the idea of the
Deity is native to the mind, in the sense
that it is constructed by the mind’s own
laws, and not derived from without; but
this idea of speculative reason cannot be
shown by any logical process, or per
ceived by direct apprehension, to have a
corresponding reality outside the human
mind. To Kant, God is neither an
object of direct consciousness nor a con
clusion of reasoning, but a Necessary
Assumption—necessary, not by a logical
but a practical necessity, imposed by the
reality of the Moral Law. Duty is a
fact of consciousness : “Thou shalt ” is
a command issuing from the recesses of
our being, and not to be accounted for
by any impressions derived from experi
ence ; and this command requires a
commander, though it is not perfectly
clear whether Kant’s meaning is that
conviction of a law includes conviction
of a lawgiver, or only that a being of
whose will the law is an expression is
eminently desirable. If the former be
intended, the argument is founded on a
double meaning of the word “ law.” A
rule to which we feel it a duty to con
form has, in common with laws commonly
so-called, the fact of claiming our obedi
ence ; but it does not follow that the
rule must originate, like the laws of the
land, in the will of a legislator or legis
lators external to the mind. We may
even say that a feeling of obligation
which is merely the result of a command
is not what is meant by moral obligation,
which, on the contrary, supposes some
thing that the internal conscience bears
7i
witness to as binding in its own nature;
and which God, in superadding his
command, conforms to, and perhaps
declares, but does not create. Conced
ing, then, for the sake of the argument,
that the moral sentiment is as purely of
the mind’s own growth, the obligation of
duty as entirely independent of experi
ence and acquired impressions, as Kant
or any other metaphysician ever con
tended, it may yet be maintained that
this feeling of obligation rather excludes
than compels the belief in a Divine
legislator merely as the source of the
obligation; and, as a matter of fact, the
obligation of duty is both theoretically
acknowledged and practically felt in the
fullest manner by many who have no
positive belief in God, though seldom,
probably, without habitual and familiar
reference to him as an ideal conception.
But if the existence of God as a wise
and just lawgiver is not a necessary part
of the feelings of morality, it may still be
maintained that those feelings make his
existence eminently desirable. No doubt
they do, and that is the great reason why
we find that good men and women cling
to the belief, and are pained by its being
questioned. But surely it is not legiti
mate to assume that in the order of the
universe whatever is desirable is true.
Optimism, even when a God is already
believed in, is a thorny doctrine to
maintain, and had to be taken by
Leibnitz in the limited sense that the
universe, being made by a good being, is
the best universe possible, not the best
absolutely; that the Divine power, in
short, was not equal to making it more
free from imperfections than it is. But
optimism, prior to belief in a God, and
as the ground of that belief, seems one
of the oddest of all speculative delusions.
[ Nothing, however, I believe, contributes
�72
THEISM
more to keep up the belief in the general
mind of humanity than this feeling of its
desirableness, which, when clothed, as it
very often is, in the forms of an argu
ment, is a naif expression of the ten
dency of the human mind to believe
what is agreeable to it. Positive value
the argument, of course, has none.
Without dwelling further on these or
on any other of the a priori arguments
for Theism, we will no longer delay
passing to the far more important argu
ment of the appearances of contrivance
in nature.
THE ARGUMENT FROM MARKS
OF DESIGN IN NATURE.
We now at last reach an argument of
a really scientific character, which does
not shrink from scientific tests, but
claims to be judged by the established
canons of Induction. The design argu
ment is wholly grounded on experience.
Certain qualities, it is alleged, are found
to be characteristic of such things as are
made by an intelligent mind for a
purpose. The order of Nature, or some
considerable parts of it, exhibit these
qualities in a remarkable degree. We
are entitled from this great similarity in
the effects to infer similarity in the
cause, and to believe that things which
it is beyond the power of man to make,
but which resemble the works of man in
all but power, must also have been made
by intelligence, armed with a power
greater than human.
I have stated this argument in its
fullest strength, as it is stated by its
most thoroughgoing assertors. A very
little consideration, however, suffices to
show that, though it has some force, its
force is very generally overrated. Paley’s
illustration of a watch puts the case
much too strongly. If I found a watch
on an apparently desolate island, I
should, indeed, infer that it had been
left there by a human being; but the
inference would not be from marks
of design, but because I already knew
by direct experience that watches are
made by men. I should draw the infer
ence no less confidently from a footprint,
or from any relic, however insignificant,
which experience has taught me to attri
bute to man : as geologists infer the past
existence of animals from coprolites,
though no one sees marks of design in a
coprolite. The evidence of design in
creation can never reach the height of
direct induction; it amounts only to the
inferior kind of inductive evidence called
analogy. Analogy agrees with induction
in this, that they both argue that a thing
known to resemble another in certain
circumstances (call those circumstances
A and B) will resemble it in another
circumstance (call it C). But the differ
ence is that in induction A and B are
known, by a previous comparison of
many instances, to be the very circum
stances on which C depends, or with
which it is in some way connected.
When this has not been ascertained, the
argument amounts only to this, that
since it is not known with which of the
circumstances existing in the known
case C is connected, they may as well be
A and B as any others ; and therefore
there is a greater probability of C in
cases where we know that A and B exist
than in cases of which we know nothing
at all. This argument is of a weight
very difficult to estimate at all, and
impossible to estimate precisely. It may
be very strong, when the known points of
agreement, A and B, etc., are numerous
and the known points of difference few;
or very weak when the reverse is the
case; but it can never be equal in
�THE ARGUMENT FROM MARKS OF DESIGN IN NATURE
validity to a real induction. The resem
blances between some of the arrange
ments in nature and some of those made
by man are considerable, and even as
mere resemblances afford a certain pre
sumption of similarity of cause; but how
great that presumption is it is hard to
say. All that can be said with certainty
is that these likenesses make creation by
intelligence considerably more probable
than if the likenesses had been less, or
than if there had been no likenesses
at all.
This mode, however, of stating the
case does not do full justice to the
evidence of Theism. The design argu
ment is not drawn from mere resem
blances in Nature to the works of human
intelligence, but from the special charac
ter of those resemblances. The circum
stances in which it is alleged that the
world resembles the works of man are
not circumstances taken at random, but
are particular instances of a circumstance
which experience shows to have a real
connection with an intelligent origin, the
fact of conspiring to an end. The
argument, therefore, is not one of mere
analogy. As mere analogy it has its
weight, but it is more than analogy. It
surpasses analogy exactly as induction
surpasses it. It is an inductive argu
ment.
This, I think, is undeniable, and it
remains to test the argument by the
logical principles applicable to induction.
For this purpose it will be convenient to
handle, not the argument as a whole, but
some one of the most impressive cases
of it, such as the structure of the eye or
of the ear. It is maintained that the
structure of the eye proves a designing
mind. To what class of inductive argu
ments does this belong ? and what is its
degree of force ?
73
The species of inductive arguments
are four in number, corresponding to the
four inductive methods—the methods of
agreement, of difference, of residues, and
of concomitant variations. The argu
ment under consideration falls within the
first of these divisions—the method of
agreement. This is, for reasons known
to inductive logicians, the weakest of the
four; but the particular argument is a
strong one of the kind. It may be
logically analysed as follows :—
The parts of which the eye is com
posed, and the collocations which con
stitute the arrangement of those parts,
resemble one another in this very
remarkable property, that they all con
duce to enabling the animal to see.
These things being as they are, the
animal sees; if any one of them were
different from what it is, the animal, for
the most part, would either not see, or
would not see equally well. And this is
the only marked resemblance that we can
trace among the different parts of this
structure, beyond the general likeness of
composition and organisation which
exists among all other parts of the animal.
Now, the particular combination of
organic elements called an eye had, in
every instance, a beginning in time, and
must, therefore, have been brought
together by a cause or causes. The
number of instances is immeasurably
greater than is, by the principles of in
ductive logic, required for the exclusion
of a random concurrence of independent
causes, or, speaking technically, for the
elimination of chance. We are, there
fore, warranted by the canons of in
duction in concluding that what brought
all these elements together was some
cause common to them all; and inasmuch
as the elements agree in the single
circumstance of conspiring to produce
�74
THEISM
sight, there must be some connection by
way of causation between the cause which
brought those elements together and the
fact of sight.
This I conceive to be a legitimate in
ductive inference, and the sum and sub
stance of what induction can do for
Theism. The natural sequel of the argu
ment would be this. Sight, being a fact
not precedent but subsequent to the
putting together of the organic structure
of the eye, can only be connected with
the production of that structure in the
character of a final, not an efficient, cause;
that is, it is not sight itself, but an ante
cedent idea of it, that must be the
efficient cause. But this at once marks
the origin as proceeding from an in
telligent will.
I regret to say, however, that this
latter half of the argument is not so in
expugnable as the former half. Creative
forethought is not absolutely the only
link by which the origin of the wonderful
mechanism of the eye may be connected
with the fact of sight. There is another
connecting-link on which attention has
been greatly fixed by recent speculations,
and the reality of which cannot be called
in question, though its adequacy to
account for such truly admirable com
binations as some of those in Nature is
still, and will probably long remain,
problematical. This is the principle of
“ the survival of the fittest.”
This principle does not pretend to
account for the commencement of
sensation or of animal or vegetable life.
But assuming the existence of some one
or more very low forms of organic life, in
which there are no complex adaptations
nor any marked appearances of con
trivance, and supposing, as experience
warrants us in doing, that many small
variations from those simple types would
be thrown out in all directions, which
would be transmissible by inheritance,
and of which some would be advan
tageous to the creature in its struggle for
existence and others disadvantageous,
the forms which are advantageous would
always tend to survive, and those which
are disadvantageous to perish. And
thus there would be a constant though
slow general improvement of the type as
it branched out into many different
varieties, adapting it to different media
and modes of existence, until it might
possibly, in countless ages, attain to the
most advanced examples which now
exist.
It must be acknowledged that there is
something very startling, and prima facie
improbable, in this hypothetical history
of Nature. It would require us, for
example, to suppose that the primaeval
animal, of whatever nature it may have
been, could not see, and had at most
such slight preparation for seeing as
might be constituted by some chemical
action of light upon its cellular structure.
One of the accidental variations which
are liable to take place in all organic
beings would at some time or other pro
duce a variety that could see, in some
imperfect manner, and this peculiarity
being transmitted by inheritance, while
other variations continued to take place
in other directions, a number of races
would be produced who, by the power of
even imperfect sight, would have a great
advantage over all other creatures which
could not see, and would in time ex
tirpate them from all places, except,
perhaps, a few very peculiar situations
underground. Fresh variations super
vening would give rise to races with
better and better seeing powers, until we
might at last reach as extraordinary a
combination of structures and functions
�ATTRIBUTES
as are seen in the eye of man and of the
more important animals. Of this theory,
when pushed to this extreme point, all
that can now be said is that it is not so
absurd as it looks, and that the analogies
which have been discovered in experi
ence, favourable to its possibility, far
exceed what any one could have sup
posed beforehand. Whether it will ever
be possible to say more than this is at
present uncertain.
The theory, if
admitted, would be in no way whatever
inconsistent with creation. But it must
be acknowledged that it would greatly
attenuate the evidence for it.
Leaving this remarkable speculation
to whatever fate the progress of discovery
may have in store for it, I think it must
be allowed that, in the present state of
our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature
afford a large balance of probability in
favour of creation by intelligence. It is
equally certain that this is no more than
Part
75
a probability ; and that the various other
arguments of natural theology which we
have considered add nothing to its force.
Whatever ground there is, revelation
apart, to believe in an author of nature
is derived from the appearances in the
universe. Their mere resemblance to
the works of man, or to what man could
do if he had the same power over the
materials of organised bodies which he
has over the materials of a watch, is of
some value as an argument of analogy;
but the argument is greatly strengthened
by the properly inductive considerations
which establish that there is some con
nection through causation between the
origin of the arrangements of nature and
the ends they fulfil; an argument which
is in many cases slight, but in others,
and chiefly in the nice and intricate
combinations of vegetable and animal
life, is of considerable strength.
II.—ATTRIBUTES
The question of the existence of a Deity,
in its purely scientific aspect, standing as
is shown in the First Part, it is next to
be considered, given the indications of a
Deity, what sort of a Deity do they point
to? What attributes are we warranted,
by the evidence which Nature affords of
a creative mind, in assigning to that
mind?
It needs no showing that the power, if
not the intelligence, must be so far
superior to that of man as to surpass
all human estimate. But from this to
omnipotence and omniscience there is a
wide interval. And the distinction is of
immense practical importance.
It is not too much to say that every
indication of Design in the Kosmos is so
much evidence against the omnipotence
of the designer. For what is meant by
design? Contrivance : the adaptation of
means to an end. But the necessity for
contrivance—the need of employing
means—is a consequence of the limita
tion of power. Who would have re
course to means if to attain his end his
mere word was sufficient? The very idea
of means implies that the means have an
�7&
THEISM
efficacy which the direct action of the
being who employs them has not.
Otherwise they are not means, but an
encumbrance. A man does not use
machinery to move his arms. If he did,
it could only be when paralysis had
deprived him of the power of moving
them by volition. But if the employ
ment of contrivance is in itself a sign of
limited power, how much more so
is the careful and skilful choice of con
trivances? Can any wisdom be shown
in the selection of means when the
means have no efficacy but what is given
them by the will of him who employs
them, and when his will could have
bestowed the same efficacy on any other
means ? Wisdom and contrivance are
shown in overcoming difficulties, and
there is no room for them in a being for
whom no difficulties exist. The evi
dences, therefore, of Natural Theology
distinctly imply that the Author of the
Kosmos worked under limitations; that
he was obliged to adapt himself to
conditions independent of his will, and
to attain his ends by such arrangements
as those conditions admitted of.
And this hypothesis agrees with what
we have seen to be the tendency of the
evidences in another respect. We foundthat the appearances in nature point,
indeed, to an origin of the Kosmos, or
order in nature, and indicate that origin
to be design, but do not point to any
commencement, still less creation, of the
two great elements of the universe—the
passive element and the active element,
matter and force. There is in nature
no reason whatever to suppose that
either matter or force, or any of their
properties, were made by the being who
was the author of the collocations by
which the world is adapted to what we
consider as its purposes; or that he has
power to alter any of those properties"
It is only when we consent to entertain
this negative supposition that there
arises a need for wisdom and con
trivance in the order of the universe.
The Deity had on this hypothesis to
work out his ends by combining materials
of a given nature and properties. Out
of these materials he had to construct a
world in which his designs should be
carried into effect through given proper
ties of matter and force, working to
gether and fitting into one another.
This did require skill and contrivance,
and the means by which it is effected
are often such as justly excite our
wonder and admiration; but exactly be
cause it requires wisdom, it implies
limitation of power, or rather the two
phrases express different sides of the
same fact.
If it be said that an Omnipotent
Creator, though under no necessity of
employing contrivances such as man
must use, thought fit to do so in order
to leave traces by which man might
recognise his creative hand, the answer
is that this equally supposes a limit to
his omnipotence. For if it was his will
that men should know that they them
selves and the world are his work, he,
being omnipotent, had only to will that
they should be aware of it. Ingenious
men have sought for reasons why God
might choose to leave his existence so
far a matter of doubt that men should
not be under an absolute necessity of
knowing it, as they are of knowing that
three and two make five. These
imagined reasons are very unfortunate
specimens of casuistry; but even did we
admit their validity, they are of no avail
on the supposition of omnipotence, since,
if it did not please God to implant in man
a complete conviction of his existence,
�ATTRIBUTES
nothing hindered him from making the
conviction fall short of completeness by
any margin he chose to leave. It is usual
to dispose of arguments of this descrip
tion by the easy answer—that we do not
know what wise reasons the Omniscient
may have had for leaving undone things
which he had the power to do. It is
not perceived that this plea itself implies
a limit to omnipotence. When a thing is
obviously good and obviously in accor
dance with what all the evidences of
creation imply to have been the Creator’s
design, and we say we do not know
what good reason he may have had for
not doing it, we mean that we do not
know to what other, still better object—
to what object still more completely in
the line of his purposes, he may have
seen fit to postpone it. But the neces
sity of postponing one thing to another
belongs only to limited power. Omni
potence could have made the objects
compatible. Omnipotence does not need
to weigh one consideration against
another. If the Creator, like a human
ruler, had to adapt himself to a set
of conditions which he did not make,
it is as unphilosophical as presumptuous
in Us to call him to account for any
imperfections in his work; to complain
that he left anything in it contrary to
what, if the indications of design prove
anything, he must have intended. He
must at least know more than we know,
and we cannot judge what greater good
would have had to be sacrificed, or what
greater evil incurred, if he had decided
to remove this particular blot. Not so
if he be omnipotent. If he be that, he
must himself have willed that the two
desirable objects should be incompatible;
he must himself have willed that the
obstacle to his supposed design should
be insuperable. It cannot, therefore, be
77
his design. It will not do to say that it
was, but that he had other designs which
interfered with it; for no one purpose
imposes necessary limitations on another
in the case of a being not restricted by
conditions of possibility.
Omnipotence, therefore, cannot be
predicated of the Creator on grounds of
natural theology. The fundamental
principles of natural religion, as deduced
from the facts of the universe, negative
his omnipotence. They do not, in the
same manner, exclude omniscience: if
we suppose limitation of power, there is
nothing to contradict the supposition of
perfect knowledge and absolute wisdom.
But neither is there anything to prove it.
The knowledge of the powers and
properties of things necessary for
planning and executing the arrange
ments of the Kosmos is, no doubt, as
much in excess of human knowledge as
the power implied in creation is in excess
of human power. And the skill, the
subtlety of contrivance, the ingenuity as
it would be called in the case of a human
work, is often marvellous. But nothing
obliges us to suppose that either the
knowledge or the skill is infinite. We
are not even compelled to suppose that
the contrivances were always the best
possible. If we venture to judge them
as we judge the works of human artificers,
we find abundant defects. The human
body, for example, is one of the most
striking instances of artful and ingenious
contrivance which nature offers, but we
may well ask whether so complicated a
machine could not have been made to
last longer, and not to get so easily and
frequently out of order. We may ask
why the human race should have been
so constituted as to grovel in wretched
ness and degradation for countless ages
before a small portion of it was enabled
�78
THEISM
to lift itself into the very imperfect state
of intelligence, goodness, and happiness
which we enjoy. The divine power may
not have been equal to doing more ; the
obstacles to a better arrangement of
things may have been insuperable. But
it is also possible that they were not.
The skill of the Demiourgos was suffi
cient to produce what we see; but we
cannot tell that this skill reached the
extreme limit of perfection compatible
with the material it employed and the
forces it had to work with. I know not
how we can even satisfy ourselves, on
grounds of natural theology, that the
Creator foresees all the future; that he
foreknows all the effects that will issue
from his own contrivances. There may
be great wisdom without the power of
foreseeing and calculating everything;
and human workmanship teaches us the
possibility that the workman’s knowledge
of the properties of the things he works
on may enable him to make arrange
ments admirably fitted to produce a given
result, while he may have very little
power of foreseeing the agencies of
another kind which may modify or
counteract the operation of the machinery
he has made. Perhaps a knowledge of
the laws of nature on which organic life
depends, not much more perfect than
the knowledge which man even now
possesses of .some other natural laws,
would enable man, if he had the same
power over the materials and the forces
concerned which he has over some of
those of inanimate nature, to create
organised beings not less wonderful nor
less adapted to their conditions of exist
ence than those in nature.
Assuming, then, that while we confine
ourselves to Natural Religion we must
rest content with a Creator less than
Almighty, the question presents itself,
Of what nature is the limitation of his
power ? Does the obstacle at which the
power of the Creator stops, which says
to it, Thus far shalt thou go and no
further, lie in the power of other Intelli
gent Beings; or in the insufficiency and
refractoriness of the materials of the
universe ; or must we resign ourselves to
admitting the hypothesis that the author
of the Kosmos, though wise and know
ing, was not all-wise and all-knowing, and
may not always have done the best that
was possible under the conditions of the
problem ?
The first of these suppositions has
until a very recent period been, and in
many quarters still is, the prevalent
theory even of Christianity. Though
attributing, and in a certain sense
sincerely, omnipotence to the Creator,
the received religion represents him as
for some inscrutable reason tolerating
the perpetual counteraction of his pur
poses by the will of another Being of
opposite character and of great though
inferior power, the Devil. The only
difference on this matter between popular
Christianity and the religion of Ormuzd
and Ahriman is that the former pays its
good Creator the bad compliment of
having been the maker of the Devil, and
of being at all times able to crush and
annihilate him and his evil deeds and
counsels, which, nevertheless, 'he does
not do. But, as I have already
remarked, all forms of polytheism, and
this among the rest, are with difficulty
reconcileable with an universe governed
by general laws. Obedience to law. is
the note of a settled government, and
not of a conflict always going on. When
powers are at war with one another for
the rule of the world, the boundary
between them is not fixed, but constantly
fluctuating. This may seem to be the
�ATTRIBUTES
case on our planet as between the
powers of good and evil when we look
only at the results; but when we con
sider the inner springs we find that both
the good and the evil take place in the
common course of nature, by'virtue of
the same general laws originally im
pressed—the same machinery turning
out now good, now evil things, and
oftener still the two combined. The
division of power is only apparently
variable, but really so regular that, were
we speaking of human potentates, we
should declare without hesitation that
the share of each must have been fixed
by previous consent. Upon that suppo
sition, indeed, the result of the combina
tion of antagonist forces might be much
the same as on that of a single creator
with divided purposes.
But when we come to consider, not
what hypothesis may be conceived, and
possibly reconciled with known facts, but
what supposition is pointed to by the
evidences of natural religion, the case
is different. The indications of design
point strongly in one direction—the
preservation of the creatures in whose
structure the indications are found.
Along with the preserving agencies there
are destroying agencies, which we might
be tempted to ascribe to the will of a
different Creator; but there are rarely
appearances of the recondite contrivance
of means of destruction, except when the
destruction of one creature is the means
of preservation to others. Nor can it be
supposed that the preserving agencies are
wielded by one Being, the destroying
agencies by another. The destroying
agencies are a necessary part of the pre
serving agencies : the chemical com
positions by which life is carried on
could not take place without a parallel
series of decompositions. The great J
79
agent of decay in both organic and in
organic substances is oxidation, and it is
only by oxidation that life is continued
for even the length of a minute. The
imperfections in the attainment of the
purposes which the appearances indicate
have not the air of having been designed.
They are like the unintended results of
accidents insufficiently guarded against,
or of a little excess or deficiency in the
quantity of some of the agencies by
which the good purpose is carried on, or
else they are consequences of the wearing
out of a machinery not made to last for
ever: they point either to shortcomings
in the workmanship as regards its in
tended purpose, or to external forces not
under the control of the workman, but
which forces bear no mark of being
wielded and aimed by any other and
rival Intelligence.
We may conclude, then, that there is
no ground in Natural Theology for attri
buting intelligence or personality to the
obstacles which partially thwart what
seem the purposes of the Creator. The
limitation of his power more -probably
results either from the qualities of the
material—the substances and forces of
which the universe is composed not
admitting of any arrangements by which
his purposes could be more completely
fulfilled; or else, the purposes might have
been more fully attained, but the Creator
did not know how to do it; creative
skill, wonderful as it is, was not suffi
ciently perfect to accomplish his purposes
more thoroughly.
We now pass to the moral attributes
of the Deity, so far as indicated in the
Creation ; or (stating the problem in the
broadest manner) to the question, what
indications Nature gives of the purposes
of its author. This question bears a very
different aspect to us from what it bears
�8o
THEISM
to those teachers of Natural Theology who
are encumbered with the necessity of ad
mitting the omnipotence of the Creator.
We have not to attempt the impossible
problem of reconciling infinite benevo
lence and justice with infinite power in
the Creator of such a world as this. The
attempt to do so not only involves abso
lute contradiction in an intellectual point
of view, but exhibits to excess the revolt
ing spectacle of a Jesuitical defence of
moral enormities.
On this topic I need not add to the
illustrations given of this portion of the
subject in my essay on Nature. At the
stage which our argument has reached
there is none of this moral perplexity.
Grant that creative power was limited by
conditions the nature and extent of which
are wholly unknown to us, and the good
ness and justice of the Creator may be all
that the most pious believe; and all in
the work that conflicts with those moral
attributes may be the fault of the con
ditions which left to the Creator only a
choice of evils.
It is, however, one question whether
any given conclusion is consistent with
known facts, and another whether there
is evidence to prove it; and if we have
no means for judging of the design but
from the work actually produced, it is a
somewhat hazardous speculation to sup
pose that the work designed was of a
different quality from the result realised.
Still, though the ground is unsafe, we
may, with due caution, journey a certain
distance on it. Some parts of the order
of nature give much more indication of
contrivance than others; many, it is not
too much to say, give no sign of it at all.
The signs of contrivance are most con
spicuous in the structure and processes
of vegetable and animal life. But for
these, it is probable that the appearances
in nature would never have seemed to
the thinking part of mankind to afford
any proofs of a God. But when a God
had been inferred from the organisation
of living beings, other parts of nature,
such as the structure of the solar system,
seemed to afford evidences more or less
strong in confirmation of the belief:
granting, then, a design in Nature, we can
best hope to be enlightened as to what
that design was by examining it in the
parts of nature in which its traces are the
most conspicuous.
To what purpose, then, do the ex
pedients in the construction of animals
and vegetables, which excite the admira
tion of naturalists, appear to tend ?
There is no blinking the fact that they
tend principally to no more exalted
object than to make the structure
remain in life and in working order for
a certain time; the individual for a few
years, the species or race for a longer
but still a limited period. And the
similar though less conspicuous marks
of creation which are recognised in
inorganic nature are generally of the
same character. The adaptations, for
instance, which appear in the solar
system consist in placing it under con
ditions which enable the mutual action
of its parts to maintain instead of
destroying its stability, and even that
only for a time, vast,.indeed, if measured
against our short span of animated
existence, but which can be per
ceived even by us to be limited;
for even the feeble means which
we possess of exploring the past are
believed by those who have examined
the subject by the most recent lights to
yield evidence that the solar system was
once a vast sphere of nebula or vapour,
and is going through a process which in
the course of ages will reduce it to a
�ATTRIBUTES
single and not very large mass of solid '
matter frozen up with more than arctic
cold. If the machinery of the system is
adapted to keep itself at work only for a
time, still less perfect is the adaptation
of it for the abode of living beings, since
it is only adapted to them during the
relatively short portion of its total dura
tion which intervenes between the time
when each planet was too hot and the
time when it became, or will become,
too cold to admit of life under the only
conditions in which we have experience
of its possibility. Or we should, per
haps, reverse the statement, and say that
organisation and life are only adapted
to the conditions of the solar system
during a relatively short portion of the
system’s existence.
The greater part, therefore, of the
design of which there is indication in
nature, however wonderful its mechanism,
is no evidence of any moral attributes,
because the end to which it is directed,
and its adaptation to which end is the
evidence of its being directed to an end at
all, is not a moral end; it is not the good
of any sentient creature; it is but the
qualified permanence for a limited period
of the work itself, whether animate or
inanimate. The only inference that can
be drawn from most of it respecting
the character of the Creator is that he
does not wish his works to perish as
soon as created; he wills them to have
a certain ^duration. From this alone
nothing can be justly inferred as to the '
manner in which he is affected towards
his animate or rational creatures.
After deduction of the great number
of adaptations which have no apparent
object but to keep the machine going,
there remain a certain number of pro
visions for giving pleasure to living
beings, and a certain number of provi-
sions for giving them pain. There is no
positive certainty that the whole of these
ought not to take their place among the
contrivances for keeping the creature or
its species in existence, for both the
pleasures and the pains have a con
servative tendency—the pleasures being
generally so disposed as to attract to the
things which maintain individual or
collective existence; the pains, so as to
deter from such as would destroy it.
When all these things are considered,
it is evident that a vast deduction must
be made from the evidences of a Creator
before they can be counted as evidences
of a benevolent purpose; so vast, indeed,
that some may doubt whether, after such
a deduction, there remains any balance.
Yet, endeavouring to look at the question
without partiality or prejudice, and with
out allowing wishes to have any influence
over judgment, it does appear that,
granting the existence of design, there is
a preponderance of evidence that the
Creator desired the pleasure of his
creatures. This is indicated by the fact
that pleasure of one description or
another is afforded by almost everything,
the mere play of the faculties, physical
and mental, being a never-ending source
of pleasure, and even painful things
giving pleasure by the satisfaction of
curiosity and the agreeable sense of
acquiring knowledge; and also that
pleasure, when experienced, seems to
result from the normal working of the
machinery, while pain usually arises from
some external interference with it, and
resembles in each particular case the
result of an accident. Even in cases
when pain results, like pleasure, from the
machinery itself, the appearances do not
indicate that contrivance was brought
into play purposely to produce pain :
what is indicated is rather a clumsiness
G
�82
THEISM
in the contrivance employed for some
other purposes. The author of the
machinery is no doubt accountable for
having made it susceptible of pain ; but
this may have been a necessary condition
of its susceptibility to pleasure; a suppo
sition which avails nothing on the theory
of an omnipotent Creator, but is an
extremely probable one in the case of a
Contriver working under the limitation
of inexorable laws and indestructible
properties of matter. The susceptibility
being conceded as a thing which did
enter into design, the pain itself usually
seems like a thing undesigned ; a casual
result of the collision of the organism
with some outward force to which it was
not intended to be exposed, and which
in many cases provision is even made to
hinder it from being exposed to. There
is, therefore, much appearance that
pleasure is agreeable to the Creator,
while there is very little, if any, appear
ance that pain is so; and there is a
certain amount of justification for infer
ring, on grounds of Natural Theology
alone, that benevolence is one of the
attributes of the Creator. But to jump
from this to the inference that his sole
or chief purposes are those of benevo
lence, and that the single end and aim of
Creation was the happiness of his creatures,
is not only not justified by any evidence,
but is a conclusion in opposition to such
evidence as we have. If the motive of
the Deity for creating sentient beings
was the happiness of the beings he
created, his purpose, in our corner of
the universe at least, must be pro
nounced, taking past ages and all
countries and races into account, to
have been thus far an ignominious
failure; and if God had no purpose but
our happiness and that of other living
creatures, it is not credible that he would
have called them into existence with the
prospect of being so completely baffled.
If man had not the power by the exercise
of his own energies for the improvement
both of himself and of his outward
circumstances to do for himself and
other creatures vastly more than God
had in the first instance done, the Being
who called him into existence would
deserve something very different from
thanks at his hands. Of course, it may
be said that this very capacity of improv
ing himself and the world was given to
him by God, and that the change which
he will be thereby enabled ultimately to
effect in human existence will be worth
purchasing by the sufferings and wasted
lives of entire geological periods. This
may be so; but to suppose that God
could not have given him these blessings
at a less frightful cost is to make a
very strange supposition concerning the
Deity. It is to suppose that God could
not, in the first instance, create anything
better than a Bosjesman or an Andaman
islander, or something still lower; and
yet was able to endow the Bosjesman or
the Andaman islander with the power of
raising himself into a Newton or a
Fenelon. We certainly do not know
the nature of the barriers which limit
the divine omnipotence; but it is a very
odd notion of them that they enable the
Deity to confer on an almost bestial
creature the power of producing by a
succession of efforts what God himself
had no other means of creating.
Such are the indications of Natural
Religion in respect to the divine benevo
lence. If we look for any other of the
moral attributes which a certain class of
philosophers are accustomed to distin
guish from benevolence, as, for example,
Justice, we find a total blank. There is
no evidence whatever in nature for
�IMMORTALITY
divine justice, whatever standard of
justice our ethical opinions may lead us to
recognise. There is no shadow of justice
in the general arrangements of nature;
and what imperfect realisation it obtains
in any human society (a most imperfect
realisation as yet) is the work of man
himself, struggling upwards against
immense natural difficulties into civilisa
tion, and making to himself a second
nature, far better and more unselfish
than he was created with. But on this
point enough has been said in another
essay, already referred to, on Nature.
These, then, are the net results of
Natural Theology on the question of the
divine attributes. A Being of great but
limited power, how or by what limited
Part
83
we cannot even conjecture; of great,
and perhaps unlimited intelligence, but
perhaps, also, more narrowly limited than
his power; who desires, and pays some
regard to, the happiness of his creatures,
but who seems to have other motives of
action which he cares more for, and who
can hardly be supposed to have created
the universe for that purpose alone.
Such is the Deity whom Natural Re
ligion points to; and any idea of God
more captivating than this comes only
from human wishes, or from the teaching
of either real or imaginary Revelation.
We shall next examine whether the
light of nature gives any indications con
cerning the immortality of the soul and
a future life.
III.—IMMORTALITY
The indications of immortality may be
considered in two divisions—those which
are independent of any theory respecting
the Creator and his intentions, and those
which depend upon an antecedent belief
on that subject.
Of the former class of arguments
speculative men have in different ages
put forward a considerable variety, of
which those in the Phcedon of Plato are
an example; but they are for the most
part such as have no adherents, and
need not be seriously refuted, now.
They are generally founded upon pre
conceived theories as to the nature of
the thinking principle in man, considered
as distinct and separable from the body,
and on other preconceived theories re
specting death. As, for example, that
death, or dissolution, is always a separa
tion of parts ; and the soul being without
parts, being simple and indivisible, is
not susceptible of this separation.
Curiously enough, one of the interlo
cutors in the Phcedon anticipates the
answer by which an objector of the
present day would meet this argument—
namely, that thought and consciousness,
though mentally distinguishable from
the body, may not be a substance
separable from it, but a result of it,
standing in relation to it (the illustration
is Plato’s) like that of a tune to the
musical instrument on which it is
played; and that the arguments used
to prove that the soul does not die with
the body would equally prove that the
tune does not die with the instrument,
�84
THEISM
but survives its destruction and con
tinues to exist apart. In fact, those
moderns who dispute the evidences of
the immortality of the soul do not, in
general, believe the soul to be a sub
stance per se, but regard it as the name
of a bundle of attributes, the attributes
of feeling, thinking, reasoning, believing,
willing, etc.; and these attributes they
regard as a consequence of the bodily
organisation, which, therefore, they argue,
it is as unreasonable to suppose surviving
when that organisation is dispersed as
to suppose the colour or odour of a
rose surviving when the rose itself has
perished. Those, therefore, who would
deduce the immortality of the soul from
its own nature have first to prove that
the attributes in question are not attri
butes of the body, but of a separate
substance. Now, what is the verdict of
science on this point ? It is not per
fectly conclusive either way. In the
first place, it does not prove, experi
mentally, that any mode of organisation
has the power of producing feeling or
thought. To make that proof good it
would be necessary that we should be
able to produce an organism, and try
whether it would feel—which we cannot
do; organisms cannot by any human
means be produced, they can only be
developed out of a previous organism.
On the other hand, the evidence is wellnigh complete that all thought and feel
ing has some action of the bodily
organism for its immediate antecedent
or accompaniment; that the specific
variations, and especially the different
degrees of complication of the nervous
and cerebral organisation, correspond to
differences in the development of the
mental faculties; and though we have
no evidence, except negative, that the
mental consciousness ceases for ever
when the functions of the brain are
at an end, we do know that diseases
of the brain disturb the mental functions,
and that decay or weakness of the brain
enfeebles them. We have, therefore,
sufficient evidence that cerebral action
is, if not the cause, at least, in our
present state of existence, a condition
sine qua non of mental operations; and
that, assuming the mind to be a distinct
substance, its separation from the body
would not be, as some have vainly
flattered themselves, a liberation from
trammels and restoration to freedom,
but would simply put a stop to its
functions and remand it to unconscious
ness, unless and until some other set of
conditions supervenes, capable of re
calling it into activity, but of the exist
ence of which experience does not give
us the smallest indication.
At the same time, it is of importance
to remark that these considerations only
amount to defect of evidence; they
afford no positive argument against
immortality. We must beware of giving
a priori validity to the conclusions of
an a posteriori philosophy. The root of
all a priori thinking is the tendency to
transfer to outward things a strong asso
ciation between the corresponding ideas
in our own minds; and the thinkers
who most sincerely attempt to limit
their beliefs by experience, and honestly
believe that they do so, are not always
sufficiently on their guard against this
mistake. There are thinkers who regard
it as a truth of reason that miracles are
impossible; and in like manner there
are others who, because the phenomena
of life and consciousness are associated
in their minds by undeviating experi
ence with the action of material organs,
think it an absurdity per se to imagine it
possible that those phenomena can exist
�IMMORTALITY
under any other conditions. But they
should remember that the uniform co
existence of one fact with another does
not make the one fact a part of the
other, or the same with it. The relation
of thought to a material brain is no
metaphysical necessity, but simply a
constant co existence within the limits
of observation. And when analysed to
the bottom on the principles of the
Associative Psychology, the brain, just
as much as the mental functions, is, like
matter itself, merely a set of human
sensations either actual or inferred as
possible—namely, those which the anato
mist has when he opens the skull, and
the impressions which we suppose we
should receive of molecular or some
other movements when the cerebral
action was going on, if there were no
bony envelope and our senses or our
instruments were sufficiently delicate.
Experience furnishes us with no example
of any series of states of consciousness
without this group of contingent sensa
tions attached to it; but it is as easy to
imagine such a series of states without
as with this accompaniment, and we
know of no reason in the nature of
things against the possibility of its being
thus disjoined. We may suppose that
the same thoughts, emotions, volitions,
and even sensations which we have
here, may persist or recommence some
where else under other conditions, just
as we may suppose that other thoughts
and sensations may exist under other
conditions in other parts of the universe.
And in entertaining this supposition we
need not be embarrassed by any meta
physical difficulties about a thinking
substance. Substance is but a general
name for the perdurability of attributes ;
wherever there is a series of thoughts con
nected together by memories, that consti
85
tutes a thinking substance. This absolute
distinction in thought and separability
in representation of our states of con
sciousness from the set of conditions
with which they are united only by con
stancy of concomitance is equivalent in
a practical point of view to the old
distinction of the two substances, Matter
and Mind.
There is, therefore, in science no
evidence against the immortality of the
soul but that negative evidence, which
consists in the absence of evidence in
its favour. And even the negative evi
dence is not so strong as negative
evidence often is. In the case of witch
craft, for instance, the fact that there is
no proof which will stand examination
of its having ever existed is as conclu
sive as the most positive evidence of its
non-existence would be ; for it exists, if
it does exist, on this earth, where, if it
had existed, the evidence of fact would
certainly have been available to prove
it. But it is not so as to the soul’s
existence after death. That it does not
remain on earth and go about visibly or
interfere in the events of life is proved
by the same weight of evidence which
disproves witchcraft. But that it does
not exist elsewhere there is absolutely
no proof. A very faint, if any, presump
tion is all that is afforded by its dis
appearance from the surface of this
planet.
Some may think that there is an
additional and very strong presumption
against the immortality of the thinking
and conscious principle, from the analysis
of all the other objects of Nature. All
things in Nature perish, the most beau
tiful and perfect being, as philosophers
and poets alike complain, the most
perishable. A flower of the most ex
quisite form and colouring grows up
�86
THEISM
from a root, comes to perfection in
weeks or months, and lasts only a few
hours or days. Why should it be other
wise with man? Why, indeed. But
why, also, should it not be otherwise ?
Feeling and thought are not merely
different from what we call inanimate
matter, but are at the opposite pole of
existence, and analogical inference has
little or no validity from the one to the
other. Feeling and thought are much
more real than anything else; they are
the only things which we directly know
to be real, all things else being merely
the unknown conditions on which these,
in our present state of existence, or in
some other, depend. All matter apart
from the feelings of sentient beings has
but an hypothetical and unsubstantial
-existence; it is a mere assumption to
account for our sensations ; itself we do
not perceive, we are not conscious of it,
but only of the sensations which we are
said to receive from it; in reality it is a
mere name for our expectation of
sensations, or for our belief that we can
have certain sensations when certain
other sensations give indication of them.
Because these contingent possibilities
of sensation sooner or later come to
an end and give place to others, is it
implied in this that the series of our
feelings must itself be broken off? This
would not be to reason from one kind of
substantive reality to another, but to
draw from something which has no
reality except in reference to something
else, conclusions applicable to that
which is the only substantive reality.
Mind (or whatever name we give to
what is implied in consciousness of a
continued series of feelings) is, in a
philosophical point of view, the only
reality of which we have any evidence;
and no analogy can be recognised or
comparison made between it and other
realities, because there are no other
known realities to compare it with.
That is quite consistent with its being
perishable; but the question whether it
is so or not is res integra, untouched by
any of the results of human knowledge
and experience. The case is one of
those very rare cases in which there is
really a total absence of evidence on
either side, and in which the absence of
evidence for the affirmative does not, as
in so many cases it does, create a strong
presumption in favour of the negative.
The belief, however, in human immor
tality in the minds of mankind generally
is probably not grounded on any scien
tific arguments either physical or meta
physical, but on foundations with most
minds much stronger—namely, on one
hand the disagreeableness of giving up
existence (to those at least to whom it
has hitherto been pleasant), and on the
other the general traditions of mankind.
The natural tendency of belief to follow
these two inducements, our own wishes
and the general assent of other people,
has been in this instance reinforced by
the utmost exertion of the power of
public and private teaching; rulers and
instructors having at all times, with the
view of giving greater effect to their
mandates, whether from selfish or from
public motives, encouraged to the utmost
of their power the belief that there is a life
after death, in which pleasures and suffer
ings far greater than on earth depend
on our doing or leaving undone while
alive what we are commanded to do in
the name of the unseen powers. As
causes of belief these various circum
stances are most powerful. As rational
grounds of it they carry no weight at all.
That what is called the consoling
nature of an opinion—that is, the pleasure
�IMMORTALITY
we should have in believing it to be true—
can be a ground for believing it is a
doctrine irrational in itself, and which
would sanction half the mischievous
illusions recorded in history or which
mislead individual life. It is sometimes,
in the case now under consideration,
wrapped up in a quasi-scientific language.
We are told that the desire of immor
tality is one of our instincts, and that
there is no instinct which has not corre
sponding to it a real object fitted to
satisfy it. Where there is hunger there
is somewhere food, where there is sexual
feeling there is somewhere sex, where
there is love there is somewhere some
thing to be loved, and so forth : in like
manner, since there is the instinctive
desire of eternal life, eternal life there
must be. The answer to this is patent
on the very surface of the subject. It
is unnecessary to go into any recondite
considerations concerning instincts, or to
discuss whether the desire in question
is an instinct or not. Granting that
wherever there is an instinct there
exists something such as that instinct
demands, can it be affirmed that this
something exists in boundless quantity,
or sufficient to satisfy the infinite craving
of human desires ? What is called the
desire of eternal life is simply the desire
of life; and does there not exist that
which this desire calls for? Is there not
life? And is not the instinct, if it be
an instinct, gratified by the possession
and preservation of life? To suppose
that the desire of life guarantees to us
personally the reality of life through all
eternity is like supposing that the desire
of food assures us that we shall always
have as much as we can eat through
our whole lives, and as much longer as
we can conceive our lives to be pro
tracted to.
The argument from tradition or the
general belief of the human race, if we
accept it as a guide to our own belief,
must be accepted entire : if so, we are
bound to believe that the souls of
human beings not only survive after
death, but show themselves as ghosts to
the living; for we find no people who
have had the "one belief without the
other. Indeed, it is probable that the
former belief originated in the latter,
and that primitive men would never have
supposed that the soul did not die with
the body if they had not fancied that it
visited them after death. Nothing could
be more natural than such a fancy ; it is,
in appearance, completely realised in
dreams, which in Homer, and in all ages
like Homer’s, are supposed to be real
apparitions. To dreams we have to add
not merely waking hallucinations, but the
delusions, however baseless, of sight and
hearing, or, rather, the misinterpreta
tions of those senses, sight or hearing
supplying mere hints from which imagi
nation paints a complete picture and
invests it with reality. These delusions
are not to be judged of by a modern
standard: in early times the line be
tween imagination and perception was
by no means clearly defined; there was
little or none of the knowledge we now
possess of the actual course of nature,
which makes us distrust or disbelieve
any appearance which is at variance
with known laws. In the ignorance of
men as to what were the limits of nature,
and what was or was not compatible
with it, no one thing seemed, as far
as physical considerations went, to be
much more improbable than another.
In rejecting, therefore, as we do, and as
we have the best reason to do, the tales
and legends of the actual appearance of
disembodied spirits, we take from under
�88
THEISM
the general belief in mankind in a life
after death, what in all probability was
its chief ground and support, and
deprive it of even the very little value
which the opinion of rude ages can ever
have as evidence of truth. If it be said
that this belief has maintained itself in
ages which have ceased to be rude, and
which reject the superstitions with which
it once was accompanied, the same may
be said of many other opinions of rude
ages, and especially on the most im
portant and interesting subjects, because
it is on those subjects that the reigning
opinion, whatever it may be, is the most
sedulously inculcated upon all who are
born into the world. This particular
opinion, moreover, if it has on the whole
kept its ground, has done so with a
constantly increasing number of dis
sentients, and those especially among
cultivated minds. Finally, those culti
vated minds which adhere to the belief
ground it, we may reasonably suppose,
not on the belief of others, but on
arguments and evidences; and those
arguments and evidences, therefore, are
what it concerns us to estimate and
judge.
'Fhe preceding are a sufficient sample
of the arguments for a future life which
do not suppose an antecedent belief in
the existence, or any theory respecting
the attributes, of the Godhead. It re
mains to consider what arguments are
supplied by such lights, or such grounds
of conjecture, as Natural Theology affords
on those great questions.
We have seen that these lights are but
faint; that of the existence of a Creator
they afford no more than a preponder
ance of probability; of his benevolence,
a considerably less preponderance ; that
there is, however, some reason to think
that he cares for the pleasures of his
creatures, but by no means that this is
his sole care, or that other purposes do
not often take precedence of it. His
intelligence must be adequate to the
contrivances apparent in the universe,
but need not be more than adequate
to them, and his power is not only not
proved to be infinite, but the only real
evidences in Natural Theology tend to
show that it is limited, contrivance being
a mode of overcoming difficulties, and
always supposing difficulties to be over
come.
We have now to consider what infer
ence can legitimately be drawn from
these premises, in favour of a future life.
It seems to me, apart from express
revelation, none at all.
The common arguments are, the good
ness of God; the improbability that he
would ordain the annihilation of his
noblest and richest work, after the greater
part of its few years of life had been
spent in the acquisition of faculties
which time has not allowed him to turn
to fruit; and the special improbability
that he would have implanted in us an
instinctive desire of eternal life, and
doomed that desire to complete dis
appointment.
These might be arguments in a world
the constitution of which made it pos
sible without contradiction to hold it for
the work of a Being at once omnipotent
and benevolent. But they are not argu
ments in a world like that in which we
live. The benevolence of the divine
Being may be perfect, but, his power
being subject to unknown limitations,
we know not that he could have given
us what we so confidently assert that he
must have given ; could (that is) without
sacrificing something more important.
Even his benevolence, however justly
inferred, is by no means indicated as the
�IMMORTALITY
interpretation of his whole purpose; and
since we cannot tell how far other pur
poses may have interfered with the
exercise of his benevolence, we know
not that he would, even if he could, have
granted us eternal life. With regard to
the supposed improbability of his having
given the wish without its gratification,
the same answer may be made: the
scheme which either limitation of power,
or conflict of purposes, compelled him to
adopt may have required that we should
have the wish, although it were not
destined to be gratified. One thing,
however, is quite certain in respect to
God’s government of the world : that he
either could not, or would not, grant to
us everything we wish. We wish for
life, and he has granted some life; that
we wish (or some of us wish) for a
boundless extent of life, and that it is not
granted, is no exception to the ordinary
modes of his government. Many a
man would like to be a Croesus or an
Augustus Caesar, but has his wishes
gratified only to the moderate extent of a
pound a week or the secretaryship of his
Trade Union. There is, therefore, no
assurance whatever of a life after death,
on grounds of natural religion. But to
any one who feels it conducive either to
his satisfaction or to his usefulness to
hope for a future state as a possibility,
there is no hindrance to his indulging
that hope. Appearances point to the
existence of a Being who has great
power over us—all the power implied in
the creation of the Kosmos, or of its
organised beings at least—and of whose
goodness we have evidence, though not
of its being his predominant attribute;
and as we do not know the limits either
of his power or of his goodness, there is
room to hope that both the one and the
other may extend to granting us this
gift, provided that it would really be
beneficial to us. The same ground
which permits the hope warrants us in
expecting that, if there be a future life, it
will be at least as good as the present,
and will not be wanting in the best
feature of the present life—improvability
by our own efforts. Nothing can be
more opposed to every estimate we can
form of probability than the common
idea of the future life as a state of
rewards and punishments in any other
sense than that the consequences of our
actions upon our own character and sus
ceptibilities will follow us in the future as
they have done in the past and present.
Whatever be the probabilities of a future
life, all the probabilities in case of a
future life are that such as we have been
made or have made ourselves before the
change, such we shall enter into the life
hereafter; and that the fact of death will
make no sudden break in our spiritual
life, nor influence our character any
otherwise than as any important change
in our mode of existence may always be
expected to modify it. Our thinking
principle has its laws, which in this life
are invariable, and any analogies drawn
from this life must assume that the same
laws will continue. To imagine that a
miracle will be wrought at death by the
act of God making perfect every one
whom it is his will to include among his
elect, might be justified by an express
revelation duly authenticated, but is
utterly opposed to every presumption
that can be deduced from the light of
Nature.
�THEISM
90
Part
IV.—REVELATION
The discussion in the preceding pages
respecting the evidences of Theism has
been strictly confined to those which
are derived from the light of Nature. It
is a different question what addition has
been made to those evidences, and to
what extent the conclusions obtainable
from them have been amplified or modi
fied, by the establishment of a direct
communication with the Supreme Being.
It would be beyond the purpose of this
essay to take into consideration the
positive evidences of the Christian or
any other belief which claims to be a
revelation from Heaven. But such
general considerations as are applicable,
not to a particular system, but to
Revelation generally, may properly find
a place here, and are, indeed, necessary
to give a sufficiently practical bearing
to the results of the preceding investi
gation.
In the first place, then, the indications
of a Creator and of his attributes which
we have been able to find in Nature,
though so much slighter and less con
clusive even as to his existence than the
pious mind would wish to consider
them, and still more unsatisfactory in
the information they afford as to his
attributes, are yet sufficient to give to the
supposition of a Revelation a standing
point which it would not otherwise have
had. The alleged Revelation is not
obliged to build up its case from the
foundation; it has not to prove the very
existence of the Being from whom it
professes to come. It claims to be a
message from a Being whose existence,
whose power, and to a certain extent
whose wisdom and goodness, are, if not
proved, at least indicated with more or
less of probability by the phenomena of
Nature. The sender of the alleged
message is not a sheer invention; there
are grounds independent of the message
itself for belief in his reality; grounds
which, though insufficient for proof, are
sufficient to take away all antecedent
improbability from the supposition that
a message may really have been received
from him. It is, moreover, much to the
purpose to take notice that the very
imperfection of the evidences which
Natural Theology can produce of the
Divine attributes removes some of the
chief stumbling blocks to the belief
of a Revelation; since the objections
grounded on imperfections in the Reve
lation itself, however conclusive against
it, if it is considered as a record of
the acts or an expression of the wisdom
of a Being of infinite power combined
with infinite wisdom and goodness, are
no reason whatever against its having
come from a Being such as the course of
nature points to, whose wisdom is pos
sibly, his power certainly, limited, and
whose goodness, though real, is not
likely to have been the only motive
which actuated him in the work of
Creation. The argument of Butler’s
Analogy is, from its own point of view,
conclusive : the Christian religion is open
to no objections, either moral or intel
lectual, which do not apply, at least,
equally to the common theory of Deism;
the morality of the Gospels is far higher
and better than that which shows itself
in the order of Nature; and what is
�REVELATION
morally objectionable in the Christian
theory of the world is objectionable only
when taken in conjunction with the
doctrine of an omnipotent God; and
(at least as understood by the most
enlightened Christians) by no means im
ports any moral obliquity in a Being
whose power is supposed to be restricted
by real though unknown obstacles,
which prevented him from fully carrying
out his design. The grave error of
Butler was that he shrank from admit
ting the hypothesis of limited powers ;
and his appeal consequently amounts
to this : The belief of Christians is
neither more absurd nor more immoral
than the belief of Deists who acknow
ledge an Omnipotent Creator; let us,
therefore, in spite of the absurdity and
immorality, believe both. He ought to
have said : Let us cut down our belief
of either to what does not involve
absurdity or immorality; to what is
neither intellectually self-contradictory
nor morally perverted.
To return, however, to the main sub
ject : on the hypothesis of a God, who
made the world, and in making it had
regard, however that regard may have
been limited by other considerations, to
the happiness of his sentient creatures,
there is no antecedent improbability in
the supposition that his concern for
their good would continue, and that he
might once, or oftener, give proof of it
by communicating to them some know
ledge of himself beyond what they were
able to make out by their unassisted
faculties, and some knowledge or pre
cepts useful for guiding them through
the difficulties of life. Neither on the
only tenable hypothesis, that of limited
power, is it open to us to object that
these helps ought to have been greater,
or in any way other than they are. The
91
only question to be entertained, and
which we cannot dispense ourselves from
entertaining, is that of evidence. Can
any evidence suffice to prove a Divine
Revelation ? And of what nature, and
what amount, must that evidence be ?
Whether the special evidences of
Christianity, or of any other alleged
revelation, do or do not come up to the
mark, is a different question, into which
I do not propose directly to enter. The
question I intend to consider is, what
evidence is required; what general con
ditions it ought to satisfy; and whether
they are such as, according to the known
constitution of things, can be satisfied.
The evidences of Revelation are com
monly distinguished as external or in
ternal. External evidences are the testi
mony of the senses or of witnesses. By
the internal evidences are meant the
indications which the Revelation itself
is thought to furnish of its divine origin ;
indications supposed to consist chiefly in
the excellence of its precepts, and its
general suitability to the circumstances
and needs of human nature.
The consideration of these internal
evidences is very important, but their
importance is principally negative : they
may be conclusive grounds for rejecting
a Revelation, but cannot of themselves
warrant the acceptance of it as divine.
If the moral character of the doctrines
of an alleged Revelation is bad and
perverting, we ought to reject it from
whomsoever it comes, for it cannot come
from a good and wise Being. But the
excellence of their morality can never
entitle us to ascribe to them a super
natural origin; for we cannot have con
clusive reason for believing that the
human faculties were incompetent to find
out moral doctrines of which the human
faculties can perceive and recognise the
�92
THEISM
excellence. A Revelation, therefore,
cannot be proved divine unless by ex
ternal evidence—that is, by the exhibi
tion of supernatural facts. And we
have to consider whether it is possible
to prove supernatural facts, and, if it
is, what evidence is required to prove
them.
This question has only, so far as I
know, been seriously raised on the
sceptical side by Hume. It is the ques
tion involved in his famous argument
against miracles—an argument which
goes down to the depths of the subject,
but the exact scope and effect of
which (perhaps not conceived with per
fect correctness by that great thinker
himself) have in general been utterly
misconceived by those who have at
tempted to answer him. Dr. Campbell,
for example, one of the acutest of his
antagonists, has thought himself obliged,
in order to support the credibility of
miracles, to lay down doctrines which
virtually go the length of maintaining
that antecedent improbability is never a
sufficient ground for refusing credence
to a statement, if it is well attested. Dr.
Campbell’s fallacy lay in overlooking a
double meaning of the word “impro
bability”; as I have pointed out in my
Logic, and, still earlier, in an editorial
note to Bentham’s treatise on Evidence.
Taking the question from the very
beginning, it is evidently impossible to
maintain that, if a supernatural fact really
occurs, proof of its occurrence cannot be
accessible to the human faculties. The
evidence of our senses could prove this
as it can prove other things. To put
the most extreme case : Suppose that I
actually saw and heard a Being, either
of the human form or of some form
previously unknown to me, commanding
a world to exist,, and a new world
actually starting into existence and com
mencing a movement through space,
at his command. There can be no
doubt that this evidence would convert
the creation of worlds from a speculation
into a fact of experience. It may be
said I could not know that so singular
an appearance was anything more than
a hallucination of my senses. True,
but the same doubt exists at first re^
specting every unsuspected and surpris
ing fact which comes to light in our
physical researches. That our senses
have been deceived is a possibility which
has to be met and dealt with, and we do
deal with it by several means. If we
repeat the experiment, and again with
the same result; if at the time of the
observation the impressions of our senses
are in all other respects the same as
usual, rendering the supposition of their
being morbidly affected in this one par
ticular extremely improbable; above all,
if other people’s senses confirm the testi
mony of our own; we conclude, with
reason, that we may trust our senses.
Indeed, our senses are all that we have
to trust to. We depend on them for the
ultimate premises even of our reason
ings. There is no other appeal against
their decision than an appeal from the
senses without precautions to the senses
with all due precautions. When the
evidence on which an opinion rests is
equal to that upon which the whole con
duct and safety of our lives is founded,
we need ask no further. Objections
which apply equally to all evidence are
valid against none. They only prove
abstract fallibility.
But the evidence of miracles, at least
to Protestant Christians, is not, in our
own day, of this cogent description. It
is not the evidence of our senses, but of
witnesses, and even this not at first
�REVELATION
hand, but resting on the attestation of
books and traditions. And even in the
case of the original eye-witnesses, the
supernatural facts asserted on their
alleged testimony are not of the trans
cendent character supposed in our ex
ample, about the nature of which, or
the impossibility of their having had a
natural origin, there could be little
room for doubt. On the contrary, the
recorded miracles are, in the first place,
generally such as it would have been
extremely difficult to verify as matters of
fact, and, in the next place, are hardly
ever beyond the possibility of having
been brought about by human means or
by the spontaneous agencies of nature.
It is to cases of this kind that Hume’s
argument against the credibility of
miracles was meant to apply.
His argument is: The evidence of
miracles consists of testimony. The
ground of our reliance on testimony
is our experience that, certain conditions
being supposed, testimony is generally
veracious. But the same experience
tells us that, even under the best condi
tions, testimony is frequently either inten
tionally or unintentionally false. When,
therefore, the fact to which testimony is
produced is one the happening of which
would be more at variance with experi
ence than the falsehood of testimony,
we ought not to believe it. And this
rule all prudent persons observe in the
conduct of life. Those who do not are
sure to suffer for their credulity.
Now, a miracle (the argument goes on
to say) is, in the highest possible degree,
contradictory to experience; for if it
were not contradictory to experience it
would not be a miracle. The very
reason for its being . regarded as a
miracle is that it is a breach of a law
of nature—that is, of an otherwise invari
93
able and inviolable uniformity in the
succession of natural events. There is,
therefore, the very strongest reason for
disbelieving it that experience can give
for disbelieving anything. But the men
dacity or error of witnesses, even though
numerous and of fair character, is quite
within the bounds of even common
experience. That supposition, therefore,
ought to be preferred.
There are two apparently weak points
in this argument. One is, that the evi
dence of experience to which its appeal
is made is only negative evidence, which
is not so conclusive as positive, since
facts of which there had been no pre
vious experience are often discovered,
and proved by positive experience to
be true. The other seemingly vulner
able point is this. The argument has
the appearance of assuming that the
testimony of experience against miracles
is undeviating and indubitable, as it
would be if the whole question was
about the probability of future miracles,
none having taken place in the past;
whereas the very thing asserted on the
other side is that there have been
miracles, and that the testimony of
experience is not wholly on the negative
side. All the evidence alleged in favour
of any miracle ought to be reckoned as
counter-evidence in refutation of the
ground on which it is asserted that
miracles ought to be disbelieved. The
question can only be stated fairly as de
pending on a balance of evidence: a
certain amount of positive evidence in
favour of miracles, and a negative pre
sumption from the general course of
human experience against them.
In order to support the argument
under this double correction, it has to be
shown that the negative presumption
against a miracle is very much stronger
�94
THEISM
than that against a merely new and sur
prising fact. This, however, is evidently
the case. A new physical discovery,
even if it consists in the defeating of a
well-established law of nature, is but the
discovery of another law previously un
known. There is nothing in this but
what is familiar to our experience; we
were aware that we did not know all the
laws of nature, and we were aware that
one such law is liable to be counteracted
by others. The new phenomenon, when
brought to light, is found still to depend
on law; it is always exactly reproduced
when the same circumstances are re
peated. Its occurrence, therefore, is
within the limits of variation in experi
ence, which experience itself discloses.
But a miracle, in the very fact of being
a miracle, declares itself to be a supersession, not of one natural law by
another, but of the law which includes
all others, which experience shows to be
universal for all phenomena—viz., that
they depend on some law ; that they are
always the same when there are the
same phenomenal antecedents, and
neither take place in the absence of
their phenomenal causes, nor ever fail to
take place when the phenomenal condi
tions are all present.
It is evident that this argument against
belief in miracles had very little to rest
upon until a comparatively modern
stage in the progress of science. A few
generations ago the universal depen
dence of phenomena on invariable laws
was not only not recognised by mankind
in general, but could not be regarded by
the instructed as a scientifically estab
lished truth. There were many pheno
mena which seemed quite irregular in
their course, without dependence on
any known antecedents ; and though, no
doubt, a certain regularity in the occur
rence of the most familiar phenomena
must always have been recognised,
yet even in these the exceptions which
were constantly occurring had not yet,
by an investigation and generalisation of
the circumstances of their occurrence,
been reconciled with the general rule.
The heavenly bodies were from of old
the most conspicuous types of regular
and unvarying order; yet even among
them comets were a phenomenon
apparently originating without any law,
and eclipses, one which seemed to take
place in violation of law. Accordingly,
both comets and eclipses long continued
to be regarded as of a miraculous nature,
intended as signs and omens of human
fortunes. It would have been impossible
in those days to prove to anyone that
this supposition was antecedently im
probable. It seemed more conformable
to appearances than the hypothesis of an
unknown law.
Now, however, when, in the progress
of science, all phenomena have been
shown by indisputable evidence to be
amenable to law, and even in the cases
in which those laws have not yet been
exactly ascertained, delay in ascertaining
them is fully accounted for by the special
difficulties of the subject; the defenders
of miracles have adapted their argument
to this altered state of things by main
taining that a miracle need not neces
sarily be a violation of law. It may,
they say, take place in fulfilment of a
more recondite law, to us unknown.
If by this it be only meant that the
Divine Being, in the exercise of his
power of interfering with and suspending
his own laws, guides himself by some
general principle or rule of action, this,
of course, cannot be disproved, and is
in itself the most probable supposition.
But if the argument means that a
�RE VELA TION
95
It will perhaps be said that a miracle
miracle may be the fulfilment of a law
in the same sense in which the ordinary <does not necessarily exclude the inter
events of Nature are fulfilments of laws, it vention of second causes. If it were the
seems to indicate an imperfect concep will of God to raise a thunderstorm by
tion of what is meant by a law, and of miracle, he might do it by means of
winds and clouds. Undoubtedly; but
what constitutes a miracle.
When we say that an ordinary physical the winds and clouds were either suffi
fact always takes place according to cient when produced to excite the
some invariable law, we mean that it is thunderstorm without other divine assist
connected by uniform sequence or co ance, or they were not. If they were
existence with some definite set of not, the storm is not a fulfilment of law,
physical antecedents; that whenever that but a violation of it. If they were suffi
set is exactly reproduced the same pheno cient, there is a miracle, but it is not the
menon will take place, unless counter storm ; it is the production of the winds
acted by the similar laws of some other and clouds, or whatever link in the chain
physical antecedents; and that, when of causation it was at which the influence
ever it does take place, it would always of physical antecedents was dispensed
be found that its special set of antece with. If that influence was never dis
dents (or one of its sets if it has more pensed with, but the event called mira
than one) has pre-existed. Now, an culous was produced by natural means,
event which takes place in this manner and those again by others, and so on
is not a miracle. To make it a miracle from the beginning of things; if the
it must be produced by a direct volition, event is no otherwise the act of God
without the use of means; or, at least, than in having been foreseen and
of any means which, if simply repeated, ordained by him as the consequence of
would produce it. To constitute a the forces put in action at the Creation ;
miracle a phenomenon must take place then there is no miracle at all, nor
without having been preceded by any anything different from the ordinary
antecedent phenomenal conditions suffi working of God’s providence.
For another example : a person pro
cient again to reproduce it; or a pheno
fessing to be divinely commissioned
menon for the production of which
the antecedent conditions existed must cures a sick person by some apparently
be arrested or prevented without the in insignificant external application. Would
tervention of any phenomenal antece this application, administered by a person
dents which would arrest or prevent it not specially commissioned from above,
in a future case. The test of a miracle have effected the cure? If so, there is
is: Were there present in the case such no miracle; if not, there is a miracle,
external conditions, such second causes but there is a violation of law.
It will be said, however, that, if these
we may call them, that whenever these
be violations of law, then law is violated
conditions or causes reappear the event
will be reproduced? If there were, it is every time that any outward effect is
not a miracle; if there were not, it is a produced by a voluntary act of a human
miracle, but it is not according to law; being. Human volition is constantly
it is an event produced, without, or in modifying natural phenomena, not by
violating their laws, but by using their
spite of, law.
�96
THEISM
laws. Why may not divine volition do combination of physical antecedents and
the same ? The power of volitions over a physical consequent. But this, whether
phenomena is itself a law, and one of the true or not, does not really affect the
earliest known and acknowledged laws argument; for the interference of human
of nature. It is true the human will will with the course of Nature is only not
exercises power over objects in general an exception to law when we include
indirectly, through the direct power among laws the relation of motive to
which it possesses only over the human volition; and by the same rule interfer
muscles. God, however, has direct ence by the Divine will would not be an
power, not merely over one thing, but exception either, since we cannot but
over all the objects which he has made. suppose the Deity in every one of his
There is, therefore, no more a supposi acts to be determined by motives.
tion of violation of law in supposing that
The alleged analogy, therefore, holds
events are produced, prevented, or modi good; but what it proves is only what I
fied by God’s action, than in the suppo have from the first maintained—that
sition of their being produced, pre divine interference with nature could be
vented, or modified by man’s action. proved if we had the same sort of
Both are equally in the course of Nature, evidence for it which we have for
both equally consistent with what we know human interferences. The question of
of the government of all things by law.
antecedent improbability only arises be
Those who thus argue are mostly be cause divine interposition is not certified
lievers in Free Will, and maintain that by the direct evidence of perception,
every human volition originates a new but is always matter of inference, and,
chain of causation, of which it is itself more or less, of speculative inference.
the commencing link, not connected by And a little consideration will show that
invariable sequence with any anterior in these circumstances the antecedent
fact. Even, therefore, if a divine inter presumption against the truth of the
position did constitute a breaking-in inference is extremely strong.
upon the connected chain of events, by
When the human will interferes to
the introduction of a new originating produce any physical phenomenon, ex
cause without root in the past, this would cept the movements of the human body,
be no reason for discrediting it, since it does so by the employment of means,
every human act of volition does pre and is obliged to employ such means as
cisely the same. If the one is a breach are by their own physical properties
of law, so are the others. In fact, the sufficient to bring about the effect.
reign of law does not extend to the Divine interference by hypothesis pro
origination of volition.
ceeds in a different manner from this : it
Those who dispute the Free Will produces its effect without means, or with
theory, and regard volition as no excep such as are in themselves insufficient.
tion to the universal law of Cause and In the first case, all the physical phe
Effect, may answer, that volitions do not nomena, except the first bodily move
interrupt the chain of causation, but ment, are produced in strict conformity
carry it on, the connection of cause and to physical causation; while that first
effect being of just the same nature movement is traced by positive observa
between motive and act as between a tion to the cause (the volition) which
�REVELATION
produced it. In the other case the
event is supposed not to have been pro
duced at all through physical causation,
while there is no direct evidence to con
nect it with any volition. The ground on
which it is ascribed to a volition is
only negative, because there is no other
apparent way of accounting for its exist
ence.
But in this merely speculative explana
tion there is always another hypothesis
possible—viz., that the event may have
been produced by physical causes in a
manner not apparent. It may either be
due to a law of physical nature not yet
known, or to the unknown presence of
the conditions necessary for producing
it according to some known law. Sup
posing even that the event, supposed to
be miraculous, does not reach us through
the uncertain medium of human testi
mony, but rests on the direct evidence of
our own senses; even then, so long as
there is no direct evidence of its produc
tion by a divine volition, like that we
have for the production of bodily move
ments by human volitions—so long,
therefore, as the miraculous character of
the event is but an inference from the
supposed inadequacy of the laws of
physical nature to account for it—so
long will the hypothesis of a natural
origin for the phenomenon be entitled to
preference over that of a supernatural
one. The commonest principles of
sound judgment forbid us to suppose for
any effect a cause of which we have
absolutely no experience, unless all
those of which we have experience are
ascertained to be absent. Now, there
are few things of which we have more
frequent experience than of physical
facts which our knowledge does not
enable us to account for, because they
depend either on laws which observation,
97
aided by science, has not yet brought to
light, or on facts the presence of which
in the particular case is unsuspected by
us. Accordingly, when we hear of a
prodigy, we always in these modern times
believe that, if it really occurred, it was
neither the work of God nor of a demon,
but the consequence of some unknown
natural law or of some hidden fact. Nor
is either of these suppositions precluded
when, as in the case of a miracle
properly so called, the wonderful event
seemed to depend upon the will of a
human being. It is always possible that
there may be at work some undetected
law of nature which the wonder-worker
may have acquired, consciously or un
consciously, the power of calling into
action; or that the wonder may have
been wrought (as in the truly extraordi
nary feats of jugglers) by the employ
ment, unperceived by us, of ordinary
laws, which also need not necessarily be
a case of voluntary deception ; or, lastly,
the event may have had no connection
with the volition at all, but the coinci
dence between them may be the effect
of craft or accident, the miracle-worker
having seemed or effected to produce by
his will that which was already about to
take place, as if one were to command
an eclipse of the sun at the moment
when one knew by astronomy that an
eclipse was on the point of taking place.
In a case of this description the miracle
might be tested by a challenge to repeat
it; but it is worthy of remark that re
corded miracles were seldom or never
put to this test. No miracle-work er
seems ever to have made a practice of
raising the dead; that and the other
most signal of the miraculous operations
are reported to have been performed
only in one or a few isolated cases,
which may have been either cunningly
h
�98
THEISM
selected cases or accidental coincidences.
There is, in short, nothing to exclude
the supposition that every alleged miracle
was due to natural causes; and as long
as that supposition remains possible no
scientific observer, and no man of ordi
nary practical judgment, would assume
by conjecture a cause which no reason
existed for supposing to be real, save the
necessity of accounting for something
which is sufficiently accounted for with
out it.
Were we to stop here, the case against
miracles might seem to be complete.
But, on further inspection, it will be
seen that we cannot, from the above
considerations, conclude absolutely that
the miraculous' theory of the production
of a phenomenon ought to be at once
rejected. We can conclude only that
no extraordinary powers which have ever
been alleged to be exercised by any
human being over nature can be evidence
of miraculous gifts to any one to whom
the existence of a Supernatural Being
and his interference in human affairs is
not already a vera causa. The existence
of God cannot possibly be proved by
miracles, for, unless a God is already
recognised, the apparent miracle can
always be accounted for on a more
probable hypothesis than that of the
interference of a Being of whose very
existence it is supposed to be the sole
evidence. Thus far Hume’s argument
is conclusive. But it is far from being
equally so when the existence of a Being
who created the present order of Nature,
and, therefore, may well be thought to
have power to modify it, is accepted as
a fact, or even as a probability resting on
independent evidence. Once admit a
God, and the production by his direct
volition of an effect, which in any case
owed its origin to his creative will, is no
longer a purely arbitrary hypothesis to
account for the fact, but must be
reckoned with as a serious possibility.
The question then changes its character,
and the decision of it must now rest
upon what is known or reasonably sur
mised as to the manner of God’s govern
ment of the universe; whether this
knowledge or surmise makes it the more
probable supposition that the event was
brought about by the agencies by which
his government is ordinarily carried on,
or that it is the result of a special and
extraordinary interposition of his will in
supersession of those ordinary agencies.
In the first place, then, assuming as a
fact the existence and providence of
God, the whole of our observation of
Nature proves to us by incontrovertible
evidence that the rule of his government
is by means of second causes; that all
facts, or at least all physical facts, follow
uniformly upon given physical condi
tions, and never occur but when the
appropriate collection of physical condi
tions is realised. I limit the assertion
to physical facts, in order to leave the
case of human volition an open question;
though, indeed, I need not do so, for, if
the human will is free, it has been left free
by the Creator, and is not controlled by
him either through second causes or
directly, so that, not being governed, it
is not a specimen of his mode of govern
ment. Whatever he does govern, he
governs by second causes. This was
not obvious in the infancy of science ; it
was more and more recognised as the
processes of nature were more carefully
and accurately examined, until there
now remains no class of phenomena of
which it is not positively known, save
some cases which from their obscurity
and complication our scientific pro
cesses have not yet been able completely
�REVELATION
to clear up and disentangle, and in
which, therefore, the proof that they
also are governed by natural laws could
not, in i’ne present state of science, be
more complete. The evidence, though
merely negative, which these circum
stances afford that government by second
causes is universal, is admitted for all
except directly religious purposes to be
conclusive. When either a man of
science for scientific, or a man of the
world for practical, purposes inquires
into an event, he asks himself, What is
its cause ? and not, Has it any natural
cause? A man would be laughed at
who set down as one of the alternative
suppositions that there is no other cause
for it than the will of God.
Against this weight of negative evi
dence we have to set such positive
evidence as is produced in attestation of
exceptions; in other words, the positive
evidences of miracles. And I have al
ready admitted that this evidence might
conceivably have been such as to make
the exception equally certain with the
rule. If we had the direct testimony of
our senses to a supernatural fact, it might
be as completely authenticated and
made certain as any natural one. But
we never have. The supernatural cha
racter of the fact is always, as I have
said, matter of inference and specula
tion ; and the mystery always admits the
possibility of a solution not supernatural.
To those who already believe in super
natural power the supernatural hypo
thesis may appear more probable than
the natural one; but only if it accords
with what we know or reasonably surmise
respecting the ways of the supernatural
agent. Now, all that we know from the
evidence of nature concerning his ways
is in harmony with the natural theory and
repugnant to the supernatural. There
99
is, therefore, a vast preponderance of
probability against a miracle, to counter
balance which would require a very
extraordinary and indisputable congruity
in the supposed miracle and its circum
stances with something which we con
ceive ourselves to know, or to have
grounds for believing, with regard to the
divine attributes.
This extraordinary congruity is sup
posed to exist when the purpose of the
miracle is extremely beneficial to man
kind, as when it serves to accredit some
highly important belief. The goodness
of God, it is supposed, affords a high
degree of antecedent probability that he
would make an exception to his general
rule of government for so excellent a
purpose. For reasons, however, which
have already been entered into, any
inference drawn by us from the good
ness of God to what he has or has not
actually done, is to the last degree pre
carious. If we reason directly from God’s
goodness to positive facts, no misery,
nor vice, nor crime ought to exist in the
world. We can see no reason in God’s
goodness why, if he deviated once from
the ordinary system of his government
in order to do good to man, he should
not have done so on a hundred other
occasions ; nor why, if the benefit aimed
at by some given deviation, such as the
revelation of Christianity, was transcen
dent and unique, that precious gift
should only have been vouchsafed after
the lapse of many ages; or why, when it
was at last given, the evidence of it
should have been left open to so much
doubt and difficulty. Let it be remem
bered also that the goodness of God
affords no presumption in favour of
a deviation from his general system of
government unless the good purpose
could not have been attained without
�IOO
THEISM
deviation. If God intended that man of the wonderful stories, such multitudes
kind should receive Christianity or any of which were current among the early
other gift, it would have agreed better Christians; but when they do, excep
with all that we know of his government tionally, name any of the persons who
to have made provision in the scheme of were the subjects or spectators of the
creation for its arising at the appointed miracle, they doubtless draw from tradi
time by natural development; which, let tion, and mention those names with
it be added, all the knowledge we now which the story was in the popular mind
possess concerning the history of the (perhaps accidentally) connected; for
human mind tends to the conclusion whoever has observed the way in which
that it actually did.
even now a story grows up from some
To all these considerations ought to small foundation, taking on additional
be added the extremely imperfect nature details at every step, knows well how,
of the testimony itself which we possess from being at first anonymous, it gets
for the miracles, real or supposed, which names attached to it; the name of some
accompanied the foundation of Chris one by whom, perhaps, the story has
tianity and of every other revealed re been told being brought into the story
ligion. Take it at the best, it is the itself first as a witness, and still later
uncross-examined testimony of extremely as a party concerned.
ignorant people, credulous as such
It is also noticeable, and is a very im
usually are, honourably credulous when portant consideration, that stories of
the excellence of the doctrine or just miracles only grow up among the igno
reverence for the teacher makes them rant, and are adopted, if ever, by the
eager to believe; unaccustomed to draw educated when they have already be
the line between the perceptions of come the belief of multitudes. Those
sense and what is superinduced upon which are believed by Protestants all
them by the suggestions of a lively ■originate in ages and nations in which
imagination; unversed in the difficult there was hardly any canon of proba
art of deciding between appearance and bility, and miracles were thought to be
>
reality, and between the natural and the ;among the commonest of all phenomena.
supernatural; in times, moreover, when 'The Catholic Church, indeed, holds as
no one thought it worth while to con- £an article of faith that miracles have
tradict any alleged miracle, because it inever ceased, and new ones continue to
was the belief of the age that miracles in Ibe now and then brought forth and
themselves proved nothing, since they I
believed, even in the present incredulous
could be worked by a lying spirit as well e —yet if in an incredulous generation
age
as by the spirit of God. Such were the c
certainly not among the incredulous
witnesses; and even of them we do not portion of it, but always among people
f
possess the direct testimony; the docu- v
who, in addition to the most childish
ments of date long subsequent, even on i;
ignorance, have grown up (as all do who
the orthodox theory, which contain the a
are educated by the Catholic clergy)
only history of these events, very often t
trained in the persuasion that it is a duty
do not even name the supposed eye- ti believe and a sin to doubt; that it is
to
witnesses. They put down (it is but d
dangerous to be sceptical about anything
just to admit) the best and least absurd v
which is tendered for belief in the name
�RE VELA TION
of the true religion; and that nothing is
so contrary to piety as incredulity. But
these miracles which no one but a
Roman Catholic, and by no means every
Roman Catholic, believes, rest frequently
upon an amount of testimony greatly
surpassing that which we possess for any
of the early miracles; and superior, espe
cially in one of the most essential points
—that in many cases the alleged eye
witnesses are known, and we have their
story at first hand.
Thus, then, stands the balance of
evidence in respect to the reality of
miracles, assuming the existence and
government of God to be proved by
other evidence. On the one side, the
great negative presumption arising from
the whole of what the course of nature
discloses to us of the divine government,
as carried on through second causes and
by invariable sequences of physical
effects upon constant antecedents. On
the other side, a few exceptional in
stances, attested by evidence not of a
character to warrant belief in any facts
in the smallest degree unusual or impro
bable ; the eye-witnesses in most cases
unknown, in none competent by charac
ter or education to scrutinise the real
nature of the appearances which they
may have seen,1 and moved, moreover,
by a union of the strongest motives
which can inspire human beings to per
suade, first themselves, and then others,
that what they had seen was a miracle.
The facts, too, even if faithfully reported,
are never incompatible w’ith the sup
1 St. Paul, the only known exception to the
ignorance and want of education of the first
generation of Christians, attests no miracle but
that of his own conversion, which of all the
miracles of the New Testament is the one which
admits of the easiest explanation from natural
causes.
IOI
position that they were either mere co
incidences, or were produced by natural
means, even when no specific conjecture
can be made as to those means, which
in general it can. The conclusion I
draw is that miracles have no claim
whatever to the character of historical
facts, and are wholly invalid as evidences
of any revelation.
What can be said with truth on the
side of miracles amounts only to this:
Considering that the order of nature
affords some evidence of the reality of a
Creator, and of his bearing goodwill to
his creatures, though not of its being the
sole prompter of his conduct towards
them: considering, again, that all the
evidence of his existence is evidence also
that he is not all-powerful, and consider
ing that in our ignorance of the limits of
his power we cannot positively decide
that he was able to provide for us by the
original plan of Creation all the good
which it entered into his intentions to
bestow upon us, or even to bestow any
part of it at any earlier period than that
at which we actually received it—con
sidering these things, when we consider
further that a gift, extremely precious,
came to us which, though facilitated,
was not apparently necessitated by what
had gone before, but was due, as far as
appearances go, to the peculiar mental
and moral endowments of one man, and
that man openly proclaimed that it did
not come from himself, but from God
through him, then we are entitled to say
that there is nothing so inherently im
possible or absolutely incredible in this
supposition as to preclude any one from
hoping that it may perhaps be true. I
say from hoping; I go no further; for I
cannot attach any evidentiary value to
the testimony even of Christ on such a
subject, since he is never said to have
�102
THEISM
declared any evidence of his mission
(unless his own interpretations of the
Prophecies be so considered) except in
ternal conviction; and everybody knows
that in pre-scientific times men always
supposed that any unusual faculties
which came to them, they knew not
how, were an inspiration from God; the
best men always being the readiest to
ascribe any honourable peculiarity in
themselves to that higher source rather
than to their own merits.
pART V.—GENERAL RESULT
Brom the result of the preceding exami
nation ol the evidences of Theism, and
(Theism being pre-supposed) of the evi
dences of any Revelation, it follows that
the rational attitude of a thinking mind
towards the supernatural, whether in
natural or in revealed religion, is that of
scepticism as distinguished from belief
on the one hand, and from Atheism on
the other; including in the present case
under Atheism the negative as well as
the positive form of disbelief in a God—
viz., not only the dogmatic denial of his
existence, but the denial that there is
any evidence on either side, which, for
most practical purposes, amounts to the
same thing as if the existence of a God
had been disproved. If we are right in
the conclusions to which we have been
led by the preceding inquiry, there is
evidence, but insufficient for proof, and
amounting only to one of the lower
degrees of probability. The indication
given by such evidence as there is points
to the creation, not, indeed, of the
universe, but of the present order of it, by
an Intelligent Mind, whose power over
the materials was not absolute, whose
love for his creatures was not his sole
actuating inducement, but who, never
theless, desired their good. The notion
of a providential government by an
Omnipotent Being for the good of his
creatures must be entirely dismissed.
Even of the continued existence of the
Creator we have no other guarantee than
that he cannot be subject to the law of
death which affects terrestrial beings,
since the conditions that produce this
liability wherever it is known to exist are
of his creating. That this Being, not
being omnipotent, may have produced a
machinery falling short of his intentions,
and which may require the occasional
interposition of the Maker’s hand, is a
supposition not in itself absurd nor
impossible, though in none of the cases
in which such interposition is believed to
have occurred is the evidence such as
could possibly prove it; it remains a
simple possibility, which those may
dwell on to whom it yields comfort to
suppose that blessings which ordinary
human power is inadequate to attain
may come not from extraordinary human
power, but from the bounty of an intelli
gence beyond the human, and which
continuously cares for man. The possi
bility of a life after death rests on the
same footing—of a boon which this
powerful Being who wishes well to man
may have the power to grant, and which,
�GENERAL RESULT
if the message alleged to have been sent
by him was really sent, he has actually
promised. The whole domain of the
supernatural is thus removed from the
region of Belief into that of simple
Hope; and in that, for anything we can
see, it is likely always to remain; for we
can hardly anticipate either that any
positive evidence will be acquired of the
direct agency of Divine Benevolence in
human destiny, or that any reason will
be discovered for considering the realisa
tion of human hopes on that subject as
beyond the pale of possibility.
It is now to be considered whether
the indulgence of hope, in the region of
imagination merely, in which there is no
prospect that any probable grounds of
expectation will ever be obtained, is
irrational, and ought to be discouraged
as a departure from the rational principle
of regulating our feelings as well as
opinions strictly by evidence.
This is a point which different thinkers
are likely, for a long time at least, to
decide differently, according to their
individual temperament. The principles
which ought to govern the cultivation
and the regulation of the imagination—
with a view on the one hand of prevent
ing it from disturbing the rectitude of
the intellect and the right direction of
the actions and will, and on the other
hand of employing it as a power for in
creasing the happiness of life and giving
elevation to the character—are a subject
which has never yet engaged the serious
consideration of philosophers, though
some opinion on it is implied in almost
all modes of thinking on human character
and education. And I expect that this
will hereafter be regarded as a very im
portant branch of study for practical
purposes, and the more in proportion as
the weakening of positive beliefs respect
103
ing states of existence superior to the
human leaves the imagination of higher
things less provided with material from
the domain of supposed reality. To me
it seems that human life, small and con
fined as it is, and as, considered merely
in the present, it is likely to remain even
when the progress of material and moral
improvement may have freed it from the
greater part of its present calamities,
stands greatly in need of any wider
range and greater height of aspiration
for itself and its destination, which the
exercise of imagination can yield to it
without running counter to the evidence
of fact; and that it is a part of wisdom
to make the most of any, even small,
probabilities on this subject, which furnish
imagination with any footing to support
itself upon. And I am satisfied that the
cultivation of such a tendency in the
imagination, provided it goes on pari
passu with the cultivation of severe reason,
has no necessary tendency to pervert the
judgment; but that it is possible to form
a perfectly sober estimate of the evidences
on both sides of a question and yet to
let the imagination dwell by prefer
ence on those possibilities which are at
once the most comforting and the most
improving without in the least degree
overrating the solidity of the grounds
for expecting that these rather than any
others will be the possibilities actually
realised.
Though this is not in the number of
the practical maxims handed down by
tradition and recognised as rules for the
conduct of life, a great part of the hap
piness of life depends upon the tacit
observance of it. What, for instance, is
the meaning of that which is always
accounted one of the chief blessings of
life—a cheerful disposition? What but
the tendency, either from constitution or
�104
THEISM
habit, to dwell chiefly on the brighter
side both of the present and of the
future ? If every aspect, whether agree
able or odious of everything, ought to
occupy exactly the same place in our
imagination which it fills in fact, and
therefore ought to fill in our deliberate
reason, what we call a cheerful disposi
tion would be but one of the forms of
folly, on a par except in agreeableness
with the opposite disposition in which
the gloomy and painful view of all things
is habitually predominant. But it is not
found in practice that those who take
life cheerfully are less alive to rational
prospects of evil or danger and more
careless of making due provision against
them than other people. The tendency
is rather the other way, for a hopeful
disposition gives a spur to the faculties
and keeps all the active energies in good
working order. When imagination and
reason receive each its appropriate
culture they do not succeed in usurping
each other’s prerogatives. It is not
necessary for keeping up our conviction
that we must die, that we should be
always brooding over death. It is far
better that we should think no further
about what we cannot possibly avert,
than is required for observing the rules
of prudence in regard to our own life and
that of others, and fulfilling whatever
duties devolve upon us in contemplation
of the inevitable event. The way to
secure this is not to think perpetually of
death, but to think perpetually of our
duties, and of the rule of life. The true
rule of practical wisdom is not that of
making all the aspects of things equally
prominent in our habitual contempla
tions, but of giving the greatest promi
nence to those of their aspects which
depend on, or can be modified by, our
own conduct. In things which do not
depend on us, it is not solely for the sake
of a more enjoyable life that the habit
is desirable of looking at things and at
mankind by preference on their pleasant
side; it is also in order that we may be
able to love them better and work with
more heart for their improvement. To
what purpose, indeed, should we feed
our imagination with the unlovely aspect
of persons and things ? All unnecessary
dwelling upon the evils of life is at best
a useless expenditure of nervous force:
and when I say unnecessary, I mean all
that is not necessary either in the sense
of being unavoidable, or in that of being
needed for the performance of our duties
and for preventing our sense of the
reality of those evils from becoming
speculative and dim. But if it is often
waste of strength to dwell on the evils of
life, it is worse than waste to dwell
habitually on its meannesses and base
nesses. It is necessary to be aware of
them; but to live in their contemplation
makes it scarcely possible to keep up in
oneself a high tone of mind. The
imagination and feelings become tuned
to a lower pitch ; degrading instead of
elevating associations become connected
with the daily objects and incidents of
life, and give their colour to the thoughts,
just as associations of sensuality do in
those who indulge freely in that sort of
contemplations. Men have often felt
what it is to have had their imaginations
corrupted by one class of ideas, and I
think they must have felt with the same
kind of pain how the poetry is taken out
of the things fullest of it, by mean asso
ciations, as when a beautiful air that had
been associated with highly poetical
words is heard sung with trivial and
vulgar ones. All these things are said in
mere illustration of the principle that in
the regulation of the imagination literal
�GENERAL RESULT
truth of facts is not the only thing to be
considered. Truth is the province of
reason, and it is by the cultivation of the
rational faculty that provision is made
for its being known always, and thought
of as often as is required by duty and
the circumstances of human life. But
when the reason is strongly cultivated,
the imagination may safely follow its own
end, and do its best to make life
pleasant and lovely inside the castle, in
reliance on the fortifications raised and
maintained by Reason round the outward
bounds.
On these principles it appears to me
that the indulgence of hope with regard
to the government of the universe and
the destiny of man after death, while we
recognise as a clear truth that we have
no ground for more than a hope, is
legitimate and philosophically defensible.
The beneficial effect of such a hope is
far from trifling. It makes life and
human nature a far greater thing to the
feelings, and gives greater strength as
well as greater solemnity to all the senti
ments which are awakened in us by our
fellow-creatures, and by mankind at
large. It allays the sense of that irony
of Nature which is so painfully felt when
we see the exertions and sacrifices of a
life culminating in the formation of a
wise and noble mind, only to disappear
from the world when the time has just
arrived at which the world seems about
to begin reaping the benefit of it. The
truth that life is short and art is long is
from of old one of the most discourag
ing parts of our condition ; this hope
admits the possibility that the art em
ployed in improving and beautifying the
soul itself may avail for good in some
other life, even when seemingly useless
for this. But the benefit consists less in
the presence of any specific hope than in
105
the enlargement of the general scale of
the feelings; the loftier aspirations being
no longer in the same degree checked
and kept down by a sense of the insignifi
cance of human life—by the disastrous
feeling of “ not worth while.” The gain
obtained in the increased inducement to
cultivate the improvement of character
up to the end of life is obvious without
being specified.
There is another and a most impor
tant exercise of imagination which, in
the past and present, has been kept up
principally by means of religious belief,
and which is infinitely precious to man
kind, so much so that human excellence
greatly depends upon the sufficiency of
the provision made for it. This con
sists of the familiarity of the imagination
with the conception of a morally perfect
Being, and the habit of taking the
approbation of such a Being as the
norma or standard to which to refer
and by which to regulate our own
characters and lives. This idealisation
of our standard of excellence in a Person
is quite possible, even when that Person
is conceived as merely imaginary. But
religion, since the birth of Christianity,
has inculcated the belief that our highest
conceptions of combined wisdom and
goodness exist in the concrete in a living
Being who has his eyes on us and cares
for our good. Through the darkest and
most corrupt periods Christianity has
raised this torch on high—has kept this
object of veneration and imitation before
the eyes of man. True, the image of
perfection has been a most imperfect,
and, in many respects, a perverting and
corrupting one, not only from the low
moral ideas of the times, but from the
mass of moral contradictions which the
deluded worshipper was compelled to
swallow by the supposed necessity of
�io6
THEISM
complimenting the Good Principle with
the possession of infinite power. But it
is one of the most universal, as well as
of the most surprising, characteristics of
human nature, and one of the most
speaking proofs of the low stage to
which the reason of mankind at large
has ever yet advanced, that they are
capable of overlooking any amount of
either moral or intellectual contradic
tions and receiving into their minds
propositions utterly inconsistent with
one another, not only without being
shocked by the contradiction, but with
out preventing both the contradictory
beliefs from producing a part at least of
their natural consequences in the mind.
Pious men and women have gone on
ascribing to God particular acts and a
general course of will and conduct in
compatible with even the most ordinary
and limited conception of moral good
ness, and have had their own ideas of
morality, in many important particulars,
totally warped and distorted, and not
withstanding this have continued to con
ceive their God as clothed with all the
attributes of the highest ideal goodness
which their state of mind enabled them
to conceive, and have had their aspira
tions towards goodness stimulated and
encouraged by that conception. And it
cannot be questioned that the undoubt
ing belief of the real existence of a Being
who realises our own best ideas of per
fection, and of our being in the hands of
that Being as the ruler of the universe,
gives an increase of force to these feel
ings beyond what they can receive from
reference to a merely ideal conception.
This particular advantage it is not
possible for those to enjoy who take a
rational view of the nature and amount
of the evidence for the existence and
attributes of the Creator. On the other
hand, they are not encumbered with the
moral contradictions which beset every
form of religion which aims at justifying
in a moral point of view the whole
government of the world. They are,
therefore, enabled to form a far truer
and more consistent conception of Ideal
Goodness than is possible to anyone who
thinks it necessary to find ideal good
ness in an omnipotent ruler of the world.
The power of the Creator once recog
nised as limited, there is nothing to dis
prove the supposition that his goodness
is complete, and that the ideally perfect
character in whose likeness we should
wish to form ourselves, and to whose
supposed approbation we refer our
actions, may have a real existence in a
Being to whom we owe all such good as
we enjoy.
Above all, the most valuable part of
the effect on the character which Chris
tianity has produced by holding up in a
Divine Person a standard of excellence
and a model for imitation is available
even to the absolute unbeliever, and can
never more be lost to humanity. For it
is Christ, rather than God, whom Chris
tianity has held up to believers as the
pattern of perfection for humanity. It
is the God incarnate, more than the
God of the Jews or of Nature, who, being
idealised, has taken so great and salutary
a hold on the modern mind. And what
ever else may be taken away from us by
rational criticism, Christ is still left; a
unique figure, not more unlike all his
precursors than all his followers, even
those who had the direct benefit of his
personal teaching. It is of no use to
say that Christ as exhibited in the
Gospels is not historical, and that we
know not how much of what is admir
able has been superadded by the tradi
tion of his followers. The tradition of
�GENERAL RESULT
followers suffices to insert any number
of marvels, and may have inserted all
the miracles which he is reputed to have
wrought. But who among his disciples
or among their proselytes was capable of
inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus,
or of imagining the life and character
revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not
the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly
not St. Paul, whose character and
idiosyncrasies were of a totally different
sort; still less the early Christian writers,
in whom nothing is more evident than
that the good which was in them was
all derived, as they always professed that
it was derived, from the higher source.
What could be added and interpolated
by a disciple we may see in the mystical
parts of the Gospel of St. John, matter
imported from Philo and the Alexandrian
Platonists and put into the mouth of the
Saviour in long speeches about himself
such as the other Gospels contain not the
slightest vestige of, though pretended to
have been delivered on occasions of the
deepest interest and when his principal
followers were all present; most promi
nently at the last supper. The East was
full of men who could have stolen any
quantity of this poor stuff, as the multi
tudinous Oriental sects of Gnostics after
wards • did. But about the life and
sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of
personal originality combined with pro
fundity of insight which, if we abandon
the idle expectation of finding scientific
precision where something very different
was aimed at, must place the Prophet of
Nazareth, even in the estimation of those
who have no belief in his inspiration, in
the very first rank of the men of sublime
genius of whom our species can boast.
When this pre-eminent genius is com
bined with the qualities of probably the
greatest moral reformer, and martyr to
107
that mission, who ever existed upon
earth, religion cannot be said to have
made a bad choice in pitching on this
man as the ideal representative and
guide of humanity; nor, even now,
would it be easy, even for an unbeliever,
to find a better translation of the rule of
virtue from the abstract into the concrete
than to endeavour so to live that Christ
would approve our life. When to this
we add that, to the conception of the
rational sceptic, it remains a possibility
that Christ actually was what he sup
posed himself to be—not God, for he
never made the smallest pretension to
that character, and would probably have
thought such a pretension as blasphe
mous as it seemed to the men who con
demned him—but a man charged with
a special, express, and unique commis
sion from God to lead mankind to truth
and virtue; we may well conclude that
the influences of religion on the character
which will remain after rational criticism
has done its utmost against the evidences
of religion are well worth preserving,
and that what they lack in direct strength
as compared with those of a firmer belief
is more than compensated by the greater
truth and rectitude of the morality they
sanction.
Impressions such as these, though not
in themselves amounting to what can
properly be called a religion, seem to me
excellently fitted to aid and fortify that
real, though- purely human, religion,
which sometimes calls itself the Religion
of Humanity and sometimes that of
Duty. To the other inducements for
cultivating a religious devotion to the
welfare of our fellow-crtatures as an
obligatory limit to every selfish aim, and
an end for the direct promotion of which
no sacrifice can be too great, it superadds
the feeling that, in making this the rule
�10S
THEISM
of our life, we may be co-operating with
the unseen Being to whom we owe all
that is enjoyable in life. One elevated
feeling this form of religious idea admits
of, which is not open to those who
believe in the omnipotence of the good
principle in the universe, the feeling of
helping God—of requiting the good
he has given by a voluntary co-operation
which he, not being omnipotent, really
needs, and by which a somewhat nearer
approach may be made to the fulfilment
of his purposes. The conditions of
human existence are highly favourable
to the growth of such a feeling, inasmuch
as a battle is constantly going on, in
which the humblest human creature is
not incapable of taking some part,
between the powers of good and those
of evil, and in which every, even the
smallest, help to the right side has its
value in promoting the very slow and I
often almost insensible progress by which
good is gradually gaining ground from
evil, yet gaining it so visibly at consider
able intervals as to promise the very
distant, but not uncertain, final victory of
God. To do something during life, on
even the humblest scale if nothing more
is within reach, towards bringing this
consummation ever so little nearer, is
the most animating and invigorating
thought which can inspire a human
creature; and that it is destined, with or
without supernatural sanctions, to be the
Religion of the Future I cannot entertain
a doubt. But it appears to me that
supernatural hopes, in the degree and
kind in which what I have called rational
scepticism does not refuse to sanction
them, may still contribute not a little to
give to this religion its due ascendancy
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Nature, the utility of religion, and theism
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Mill, John Stuart [1806-1873]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 112 p. ; 22 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints
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Notes: Printed in double columns. First published 1874. Publisher's advertisements on last four numbered pages at the end, and continue on endpaper and on back cover. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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CT10?
THE TWO THEISMS.
BY
PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCO.TT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
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��THE TWO THEISMS.
HOSE who are contending for free thought in
a
and
Tarereligion are contending for thatnoble prize,withheld
temporarily united, while
prize is
from the public by a powerful adversary. But the
moment they commence to use their freedom, the same
thing happens, and must happen, now as always here
tofore. Human infirmity clings to all. Each is finite,
and sees but partially ; hence their judgments are often
in opposition. The contrasts of opinion in Greek
philosophy, when there was no organized priesthood
to forbid or to cripple freedom of thought, were as ex
treme as now.
Some imagine that, because the schools of material
science work on in harmony, and the conflicts of
opinion rather assist progress, being but partial and
temporary, so will it be in religion, as soon as we
resolve to cultivate religious thought scientifically.
This might be the case, if materialism were the basis,
or if we had foundations recognized by all. But in
metaphysics, and in mental science generally, the great
discouragement of study has lain in the irreconcilable
and fundamental variance of the professors. Material
ism and Spiritualism fight together for possession of
the schools of morals and of psychology; so also of
necessity will they in religion. Those who wish to be
scientific are not agreed as to the bases and procedure
of the new (religious) science, for which they are hoping
in common. Every science has to work out its own
�4
The Two Theisms.
problems in. its own way. Strong analogies and har
monies are detected between the several sciences after
they arise and live; nevertheless each is born inde
pendently, and acts independently; nor can any endure
dictation from without, though hints and suggestions
may be welcome and profitable. Thus, after we have
agreed that free thought is necessary in religion, and
that a scientific religion is the thing to be desired, we
may easily remain as far apart in religious opinion and
belief as were Stoics and Epicureans ; or if our difference
be less extreme, it may be rather from holding more
negations in common than from agreement in affirma
tion.
Nor, when people profess to believe in God and call
themselves Theists, does this go far to indicate real
agreement. The question recurs, What do we mean
by God 1 If vre may not give a reply, the word is un
meaning to us, and we deceive ourselves in thinking
that we have any belief at all. But as soon as we give
a reply,—not as believing that it can exhaust the whole
reality, but merely that it may explain our thought,—some one arises to reprove us for presumption in sup
posing that we can limit the illimitable, and define the
incomprehensible. Men who by general suffrage are
eminent in some physical science, think forthwith that
their physical attainments justify their laying down the
law in religion; and we who have broken loose from
the dogmatism of the churches find that we have to
encounter a new fight for our freedom against the dog
matism of this or that “ man of science,” who perhaps
graciously allows us the field of “ the Unknowable”
or religion, or not even that; for it is well if the new
dogmatist will let us have any belief in a Superior
Spirit at all. Nothing is commoner than a shriek of
derision against a “ personal God.” Under the ground
less pretence that personality means limitation, or means
Anthropomorphy, we are forbidden to believe in a God
who has purposes and sentiments. A God wzUAowi
�The Two Theisms.
5
either purposes or sentiments is a God in whom we
cannot recognize mind at all, and is therefore a blind
force or a blind fate. A recent writer of great literaryeminence, while fancying that he is about to deliver
religion from sacerdotal metaphysics, emphatically de
nies, not the personality only, but even the unity of
God ; thus presenting us with nothing but a plurality
of either forces or abstractions, and plunging us into
an abyss of metaphysics still deeper—-onp also out of
which no practical religion has ever yet emerged.
Setting aside avowed Atheism and avowed Pantheism
(a very equivocal term), even in the apparently more
limited form of belief denoted as Theism, there are at
least two broadly distinguished schools of thought,
between which, if we remain Theists, it is necessary to
choose; and the more fully the two can be described
and contrasted, the greater will be the aid to students
of Free Religion. Indeed one might mark out a third
school, the Deism of the eighteenth century. This
pourtrayed the Creator as external to his creation,
which they supposed him to have endowed with selfacting forces. Matter, in this theory, was either created
or endowed with gravitation at a definite time, which
may be called the crisis or era of creation; so that the
action of God upon matter was convulsive and momen
tary ", and the great forces of the universe, which he
then bestowed on it, were regarded as no part of the
divine essence, but as the properties of matter. To
every planet he gave an 11 initial impulse,” which pre
vents its falling into the sun; and then left the system
to itself. Thus he may be said to have made a clock,
wound up the spring, and pushed the pendulum into
activity. Such apparently was the belief of the great
Sir Isaac Newton. But in the nineteenth century this
doctrine is almost universally disowned. The smallest
acquaintance with the great science of geology convinces
every one that the idea of creation as limited to a single
crisis of time has no plausibility whatever; that crea-.
�6
The Two Theisms.
tion is undoubtedly the work of continuous ages, enor
mous in duration, whatever its mode and progress;
moreover, that if God is to be recognized at all in the
universe, the great forces which are therein detected
by the mental eye are strictly divine forces, and that
any distinction between initial impulses as divine and
continued forces as not divine is groundless. This is the
incipient reconciliation of Pantheism and Theism.
Nevertheless, our Theism divides itself into two
schools, broadly separated, and for convenience it may
be allowed to entitle them Greek Theism and Hebrew
Theism. Of the former, the great Aristotle was pro
bably a worthy representative ; and it commends itself
to a great majority of those who are forward to
identify their faith with science. The cardinal point of
this is that it supposes God to have nothing, in him
or of him, but general Law. He may be described as
Force acting everywhere according to Law, under the
guidance of Mind. He is supposed to be so absorbed
in general action as to remain quite inobservant of the
detailed results, or at least unconcerned about them.
Thus he intends this earth to have day and night, to
have vegetation and various animals on it, moreover to
have a human population. These generalities he is
not too great to design and devise. But it is said, we
cannot suppose him to pay attention to any particular
man, without supposing him to attend to every
sparrow, to every oyster, to every stalk of sea-weed,
and this (it is thought) would be absurd. He wishes
the human race, as a whole, to attain its own perfec
tion, but it is thought puerile to suppose him to attend
to each individual; and, as favouritism would be a
human weakness, he has no love and no care for any
one of us. Conversely then, it would be gratuitous,
unseemly, perhaps impossible, for any of us to love
him. In accordance with this, Aristotle makes a
passing remark—“ for it would be ridiculous for any
one to say that he loves Jupiter;” not, I apprehend,
�The Two Theisms.
7
from his investing Jupiter with the colours of Greek
mythology, hut from his supposing no moral relations
to exist between the Supreme God and us. Of course
it will follow from that view that human injustice and
vice, great as are their mischiefs, are offences against
man or ourselves, not against God ; hence the idea
of “ sin against God ” cannot exist. God is not sup
posed to be concerned with the sin of an individual;
to confess it to him would be an impertinence which
Aristotle never seems to imagine possible. Indeed,
the same great philosopher esteems intellectual virtue
as higher than moral virtue, on the express ground
that God cannot possess moral virtue, which belongs
only to the natures which have passions to restrain
and direct wisely ; nor indeed is it intelligible to
ascribe moral virtue to a Being who is wholly solitary,
and has neither temptations to resist, nor duties to
fulfil. But probably the modern Theists of this class
will admit, that, when a Superior Being gives sensitive
life to other objects, he creates for himself relations to
them and duty to them, especially the duty of justice
not to create them for mere misery, or deal inequitably
with them ; and that two lines of imaginable conduct at
once open, according to one of which God would show
himself good, and according to the other evil. Hence
the epithet good attached to God is not idle and un
meaning, but has a real sense. I do not know, but I
hope, that those whom I entitle Greek Theists in the
present day regard it as rightful and becoming to
believe that God is good, even while contemplating
either that violence of the elements which causes
destruction and pain to myriads of his creatures, or the
preying of one class of animals on another. That pain
and death are strictly necessary, I suppose all thought
ful persons to understand.
But here a caution is needed, concerning the de
scription of omnipotence, — a word which is often
gravely misunderstood ; insomuch that one may doubt
�8
The Two Theisms.
whether it is wise to use it at all. If the word be
strictly pressed, omnipotence makes wisdom needless,
and leaves to it no functions. We cannot ascribe wis
dom, without implying difficult problems to be solved ;
but to omnipotence there can be no difficulty at all,
and no problem ; a “ fiat ” suffices. Hence in calling
God Wise, or All-Wise, we virtually assume that there
are limits to his power, even if we know not exactly
what. A second consideration shows that cases of
apparent impotence in God may be mere inventions of
human absurdity. It is a celebrated Greek saying
that “ the only thing which God cannot achieve is, to
undo the past.” This does but assert that divine
power is out of place in solving the absurd problem of
making contradictions simultaneously true ; such as,
“ Alexander conquered Darius,” a past fact, and,
“ Alexander did not conquer Darius,” the past fact
undone. Verbal contradictions belong to the puzzle of
human thought, and are no problem for power. One
who disputes this does not know what he is saying.
Even dull minds will find themselves constrained to
deny that God can create a God like to himself. To
create the uncreated, is a contradiction. This distinc
tion between the uncreated and the created is irrever
sible. We may advance from this to geometrical con
siderations. Archimedes discovered that a sphere is
exactly two-thirds of its circumscribing cylinder. To
bring about, by a divine fiat, that the ratio should be
three-quarters would be to establish a contradiction.
To deny that this falls within the sphere of power can
not shock piety. As well might one be shocked at the
denial that a geometrical shape can be made simul
taneously round and square. Further: mathematicians
easily imagine a force of gravitation which shall obey
a different law from that of Newton, and in following
out the inferences find no self-contradiction. Yet it is
more than possible that the Newtonian law is a rigid
necessity of the physical system, and that to change it
�The Two Theisms.
9
belongs not at all to the sphere of power, any more than
to reverse geometrical or verbal truths. JNevertheless,
it may justly be feared that some minds, who have
credit for “ philosophy,” ill understand thoughts
apparently so simple and obvious ; since the late
eminent John Stuart Mill committed himself to the
declaration that in some other world than this, for aught
he knew, two and two might make five; and that he
knew “ the Whole to be greater than the Part” by expe
rience only :—though it is evidently a verbal truth.
But as soon as we understand that the great geome
trical and physical laws of the universe are a condition
under which Creating Power acts, we find abundant
room for the profoundest wisdom. When we ascribe
Almightiness, it is only a short phrase for saying that
“ we cannot know the limits of God’s power in any of
the problems in which power is applicable ; and in
dealing with them, we assume that there are no limits.”
But this belongs to our ignorance, not to our knowledge.
The Homeric epithet Much-miglity may be preferred by
a rigid philosophy to Almighty, in speaking of that
which transcends knowledge.
The Theism which teaches that there is no definite
moral relation between an individual man and his
Divine Author, but only between the collective human
race and its source; and that the relation is limited to
this, that God by creating bound himself to be just to
the race collectively,—such Theism does not encourage
the individual to any acts of worship, and scarcely to
the sentiment of gratitude. Compare the case of a
land-owner who likes to have pheasants in his copses.
Perhaps he takes some pains to keeps away the animals
which are destructive to them, and in so far causes the
pheasants to increase and enjoy life. But if he does
not care for any one of them, neither does he wish any
of them to care for him. A Greek Theist was beset
by uncertainty whether, if he paid thanks and worship
to Jupiter, the god listened to him, or in any sense
�IO
The Two Theisms.
accepted his addresses ; hence, with but few exceptions,
we find no mark of moral contact between the Greek
soul and the soul of the universe.
The prevalent tendency of Greek philosophy to that
which Christians esteem to be pride and self-right
eousness, is perhaps to be ascribed to this cause.
Man stood erect in the presence of man, with whom
alone he recognised moral relations, and was not awed
and abashed by contrasting his own moral imperfection
with the essential holiness of God. Mr F. E. Abbot
probably extols this position of the Greek mind as
manliness ; for in his Impeachment of Christianity, he
has attacked the modern religion vehemently on this
ground. He says: “ It strikes a deadly blow at the
dignity of human nature, and smites men with the
leprosy of self-contempt.” But the phenomenon was
older than Christianity.
I turn to the Hebrew Theism. It recognises all in
God which I have described as Greek Theism, but adds
something more, and that of prime importance. It
does not suppose that he is absorbed, and as it were
exhausted, in general action, but believes that he takes
cognizance of individuals also. When Euripides denies
that Jupiter attends to the sins of individual men, he
argues, as Epicurus after him, that it would give the
god too much trouble. [Melanippe Desmotis.] “ If
Jupiter were to write down the sins of mortals, the
whole heaven would not suffice, nor would he
himself suffice, to look into each case and send its
penalty.” Thus the reluctance of the opposite school
to admit that the Most High attends to details,
really turns upon an ascription of feebleness to him.
The Hebrew Theist maintains that the universal agency
of the Divine Spirit is a fact j and that the division
of his innumerable acts into two classes, those which
we can refer to a definable law and those in which no
general law is discernible by us, is a division made to
aid our finite minds. Again, no one regards it as
�The Two Theisms.
11
partiality and “ favoritism ” in the rays of the sun,
that they act differently on chemical material differently
prepared ; nor does it imply “ mutability ” in God (as
objectors tell us), if he act differently on different
human souls, according to their state. Hence there is
no just a priori objection to hinder and reprove that
instinct of the heart which casts itself on God in
spiritual prayer ; nor is it superstitious to believe that
he will strengthen our virtue when we flee to him
for aid.
To the Hebrew Theist, God is emphatically “ a God
who searches the heart.” He is regarded as dwelling
in its recesses, and having (what can only be called) a
joint-consciousness with the individual man. The wor
ship is prevalently internal and unspoken, however
pleasant the sympathetic enthusiasm of common wor
ship when hearts are in unison. In creatures so im
perfect as we, and especially in the noviciate of heart
religion, no small part oi secret prayer will be, either
petition for more strength to fulfil duty, or expression
of grief for failures. An axiom of the religion is that
God desires from us inward and outward goodness,
holiness, and righteousness ; hence any wilful neglect,
any choice of the baser part instead of the better, is
accounted not merely to be unjust or vicious, but also
to be sin against God. I am aware that in the present
day men calling themselves Christians have pronounced
“ sin against God ” to be an absurd idea, and allege
that one who asks “ forgiveness ” supposes God to
nourish 11 unseemly resentment.” Such objectors
think themselves Christians and are not; nor is the
objection just. The longer any one has cultivated
religion as an inward life,-—the more frequent and
more solemn has been his self-dedication before the
Divine Spirit to all that is holiest and best,—so much
the more certain is he to feel that any wilful deviation
is an offence, not only against his own soul or (it may
be) against a fellow mortal, but also against God. If
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The Two Theisms.
the worshipper on any day have a bad conscience, a
cloud seems to hide the serene and glorious presence.
If then a keen grief seize him, what matters it whether
he use this phrase or that phrase, in seeking to recover
his lost ground ? A child conscious of wrong asks
“pardon” of his father, and does not hereby impute “un
seemly resentment; but he knows he is disapproved, and
he desires to remove disapprobation, which is to happen
through a change in himself, of course, but he is not
just then at leisure to study words accurately, and, it
may be, he blames himself extravagantly. “ We know
not what we should ask for as we ought, but he that
searcheth hearts knoweth what is the mind of the
spirit,” says Paul excellently. Such strivings are not
ineffectual, but eminently conduce to moral culture and
vital power, however much they may be reproved or
disdained by the unsympathising logician, who perhaps
has no personal experience in the matter. Alike
pointless is the sarcasm that it is hoped by prayer to
“ alter the purposes and modify the action ” of God ;
and that prayer “ asks him to work a miracle.” What
ever the weight of this against prayer for things
external, it has no application at all to that prayer
which concerns the heart of the worshipper only.
There is no reason why we should not hope that God will
act differently on souls that pray and on souls that do
not pray ; and wide experience reports that he does so.
Thus also a definite moral relation is recognized between
the Divine Spirit and the soul which seeks his intimate
influence; and (however it may be regretted or reproved
as sectarianism) the sense inevitably springs up that
there is in the human race an interior circle of saints
or “ people of God
insomuch that without being able
strictly to justify every phrase, still this ancient out
pouring of desire sounds as melody to the heart:
“ Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that
doeth righteousness at all times. Remember me, 0
Lord with the favour that thou bearest unto thy
�The Two Theisms.
*3
people. 0 visit me with thy salvation ; that I may
see the good of thy chosen, and rejoice with thine
inheritance."
As two seeds, in aspect alike, grow up into different
trees, so the fundamental difference of Hebrew from
Greek Theism, on a superficial view small, entails vast
moral results. With the Hebrew Theist religion is a
signal aid to morality; with the Greek Theist it is no
aid at all. Duty is everywhere easier to know than to
practise. It is an old complaint, “I see and approve
the better, but I follow the worse.” A Greek Theist
may be an eminently good man, but no thanks to his
religion; for when he encounters temptation, it adds
no strength to him. He does not believe that God
looks on and approves or disapproves his conduct.
But the Hebrew Theist, if he live in the spirit of his
religion, lives under the thought, “Thou, God, seest
me;” and it is harder to go wrong under the eye of a
virtuous friend, though it were but a man. His religion
is emotional, and adds a vital force to morality.
Again: if anyone believe God to love his creatures,
no impediment exists in the inequality of natures to
loving him in return. I know that modern “Greek
Theists” echo Aristotle’s incredulity, and call “love
for Jupiter” a delusion. Yet undoubtedly we love,
for their essential goodness, persons whom we have
never seen, though they may not know of our exist
ence; certainly then, if we believe that God knows
us, and loves us, and every way deserves love, it ought
not to be treated as beyond nature to love him. A
prominent and applicable test of love is pleasure in
anyone’s company-—that is, pleasure in a sense of his
presence. Though we judge God to be alway with us,
yet human society or needful absorption of mind in
business and duty very largely pre-occupies us; but if
at every vacant interval the heart springs back with
delight to the remembrance that God is present, such
a heart may surely be said to love God. Joy in a sense
�14
The Two Theisms.
of his nearness is attested by a long series of votaries
in the Hebrew school, which has propagated itself into
Christendom and Islam. Well-known Hebrew Psalms,
to which countless hearts have thrilled and echoed, pro
claim the blessedness of “ seeing God’s face ” (a strong
metaphor) and living under the light of his countenance.
As the hart pants for the water-brooks, so pants the
“saint” for a sense of his presence, whose loving kind
ness is better than life, whose approval brings fulness
°f j°yThus while Greek Theism is to the individual a
mere theory of the intellect, and possibly a science,
Hebrew Theism must be something else beside science,
namely, a life, dwelling in head and heart alike. It
attributes to God perfect goodness, perfect holiness—
words varying in sense with different minds, yet in all
suggesting something high above what the individual
has attained. Hence, in spite of dull imagination,
low morals, and a necessarily mutilated appreciation
of what God really is, the votary in this religion holds
up to his heart for worship an object far nobler and
purer than himself. If I refer to the poetical tale of
Job, who, on getting a mental sigh! of God, cried out:
“Behold, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes,”
I may justly be told that this is mythological. How
ever, the prophet called Isaiah in our Bibles said in his
own name, “ We are all as an unclean thing, and all
our righteousness is but filthy rags ”—words strangely
treated as a doctrine special to Christians, and tending
to undervalue practical righteousness ! On the con
trary, they are the vehement aspiration of the heart for
a higher goodness than its own—a heart utterly dis
paraging its own attainment in comparison to that
which it sees above it, and longs for. But I suppose
it will be added, “If such self-contempt is real, it is
debasing; it saps the dignity of man.” Yet it is not
visible that Luther, or John Knox, or Oliver Crom
well were deficient in manliness, if even they “ crawled
�The Two theisms.
x5
on the ground” under a sense of their own vileness,
contrasted to God’s purity. I fully admit to objectors
that the inward religion common to Jew and Christian
may become morbid, namely, by assuming an intensity
of grief which (in a weak nature) endangers moral
despair. The ups and downs of a much-tempted,
much-sinning man, often bitterly repenting, often
jubilant with delight—whose sins perhaps (like those
of the poet Cowper) are unknown to all but himself
and hardly believed by others—may entail a mental
malady like Cowper’s; or, in a more robust and carnal
nature, may drive a man into hardened courses. I
wish objectors to understand that I see this danger.
Nevertheless, as fire may burn us, and could not be
the great aid to us that it is if this were impossible, so
judge I of that mental contact between the impure soul
and its far purer object of worship. The humiliation
thus induced forbids a man to despise even the most
sinful and polluted of his race, makes him tender
hearted and forgiving, preparing him to believe that
there is a fertile seed of goodness in those who have
plenty of visible imperfection. I strongly deny that
such humiliation tends to unmanliness, or lessens
human dignity. The vehemence of passion uses
strong language—as in love, so in devotion. The
“self-abhorrence,” which is reproved as debasing, is
felt only in the contrast of our darkness to God’s
purity, and has nothing to do with the comparison of
man with man. To “crawl” before man is a loss of
dignity, but before God we have no dignity to claim.
Surely humility towards God must make us more
amiable to man. “To do justly and love mercy” are
in sweet concord with “ walking humbly with God.”’
If there is any truth in what I have here laid out, a
not unimportant inference seems to follow. A Hebrew
Theist (such as I have described), though he believe
neither in Moses nor in Jesus, finds true co-religionists
in pious Jews and pious Christians; and not in those
�16
The Two Theisms.
only who recognize him as “one of their invisible
church,” but in many who shun him and shudder at
him— many whose religion is disfigured by puerile or
pernicious error. On the other hand, he may regard a
Greek Theist as a good man, a noble man, a man to be
esteemed; but he does not find in him a co-religionist;
nay, rather regards him as “unregenerate” and needing
“conversion.”
So too the Greek Theist evidently
finds nothing in a respectable Atheist, however hard
and scornful, to repel him. The difference between
the two is one of intellectual speculation, and does not
at all touch the heart. Thus, I incline to believe, the
chasm which separates Theists who do not pray and
Theists who pray is the broadest of all dividing lines.
Those on this side are co-religionists with Jews,
Brahmoes, Christians, and Mussulmans; those on the
other side, are co-religionists with Pantheists (?) and
Atheists. When those nurtured in the old national
religions unlearn dogmatic authority, all human nature
may be united in a common belief of Hebrew Theism,
as conscious children of One God. But if we disbelieve
our personal relation to God, Religion has lost alike its
restraining and its uniting power. A Theism which is
a mere speculation of the intellect may indifferently be
asserted or denied. Atheism is morally on a par with
such Theism. Of course this is not adduced as any
disproof, but only as indicating the practical importance
of the controversy.
TURNBULL AND SPEAKS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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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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Title
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The two theisms
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Newman, Francis William [1805-1897]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Date of publication from British Library catalogue. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Publisher's list on numbered pages at the end.
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Thomas Scott
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[1874]
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CT108
G4852
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Theism
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Conway Tracts
Morris Tracts
Theism
Theology
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S'txOASié3l
MORE RATIONAL?
DISOtrSSION
I
BETWEEN
4
Mr. JOSEPH SYMES
GEORGE
■ ♦
LONDON :
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, STONECUTTER STREET
E.C.
�H
�NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
... .IS ATHEISM OR THEISM THE MORE
RATIONAL!
LETTER I.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
Some weeks ago, Mr. St. Clair delivered a discourse in Bir
mingham on “ The Folly of Atheism.” When informed
thereof, I wrote to that gentleman, respectfully inviting him
to a public oral debate on the question now at the head of
this letter. This he courteously declined, but suggested a
written discussion instead. It now falls to my lot to furnish
the first of. twelve letters,, six by each disputant, to appear
alternately at intervals of not more than a fortnight. Mr.
Bradlaugh deserves our best thanks for'So readily opening
the columns of the National Reformer for this discussion.
Without any “ beating about the bush,” I shall at once
proceed to show why I regard Atheism as being more
rational than Theism. Theism is belief in a God, or deus,
or theos. Atheism is the absence of that belief, with the
general implication, as I apprehend, that the individual
destitute of that belief has done his best to weigh the merits
of conflicting theories, to sift the Theistic evidence, and has
logically concluded that Theism is irrational.
Atheism, requires no direct evidence, nor is it susceptible
of "it. It is arrived at,^n the most logical fashion, by a
course of destructive criticism applied to the God-theorjt.
This theory, when fairly examined, crumbles to dust, and
then evaporates, leaving the investigator without a Godiiand
without belief in one.
As I desire this contest to be definite, earnest, and real,
1 will state my objections to Theism plainly and fairly,
'so jthat my opponent may have the best opportunity of
refuting them. And let it be borne in mind that to state
valid objections to Theism is to put forward equally valid
reasons in favor ofAtheism. Now, as Theistic arguments
usually- take two forms, the intellectual and the moral; as
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ATHEISM OR THEISM?
Theism is as much an assertion of or belief in God’s moral
attributes as in his natural attributes or in his bare existence,
I cannot be straying from the subject in discussing the
moral aspects of the question. To show that the moral
attributes of God are fictions will go very far indeed towards
refuting Theism and justifying Atheism. The following
questions will covey most of the ground :—
I. Does there «Assist an infinitely good God ?
II. Does there exist an infinite God whose goodness
exceeds his evilness ?
III. Does there exist an infinitely wise God ?
IV. Does there exist an infinite God whose wisdom exceeds
his folly ?
V. Does there exist a God of absolutely unlimited power?
VI. Does there exist a God whose power exceeds his
weakness ?
VII. Does there exist a God who is in any sense infinite?
VIII. Does there exist any God at all ?
I. The first question, Does there exist an inhnitelugood God?
may be dismissed without any discussion ; for infinite good
ness would render all evil for ever impossible. Infinite
goodness could produce nothing less than infinite good.
Evil, if existent, must limit goodness ; evil does exist; there
fore infinite goodness does not.
II. Does there exist an infinite God whose goodness exceeds
his evilness ? I am sorry to have to use so uncouth a word
as “ evilness,” but I have no other that will so well express
my meaning.
1. It is generally held among Theists that an Infinite God
created all other things. If so, what motive could have
prompted the act ? That motive could not have been an
■exterior one. From the nature of the hypothesisJLit musthave been one confined solely to himself, arising from his
own unrestrained, uninfluenced desires. In a word, he must
ha^made the universe for his own sake, his own ends, his
own pleasure.
Now a being who accomplishes his own pleasure or profit
by or through the pleasure or profit of others, and no ptherwise, must be pronounced just and benevolent. But he who
gains his own ends irrespective of the rights, the profit,
and the pleasure of others, is selfish. He who sends others,
who are helplessly under his sway, on errands for his
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
5
personal advantage alone, and knowing they must suffer
excruciating pain and die in the undertaking, is a horrible
^Tr-is said that an infinite God created the universe, and peopled it with sentient beings. Those sen
tient beings, in the nature of the case, could not
be consulted beforehand: their life, organisation, circum
stances of all kinds were decided for Hem and imposed
upon them. And a being more good than evil would have
felt himself in honor and justice bound to provide for the
happiness of those creatures before giving them life while
a being more evil than good would have consulted his own
pleasure chiefly, if not entirely, and have cared little or
nothing for the happiness of his creatures. The last clause
seeems to me to describe, but partially only, the action of the
hypothetical God who is supposed to have created the uni
verse. For pain and misery have been the cruel lot of
his creatures from the remotest epoch to which geology
carries U8 back.
“The whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together until now.” Want, disappoint
ment, bitter warfare, pain, and death are the normal con
dition of the universe as far as it is known. No natural
law has been more fully ascertained than this :—Life is an
endless strife; and each combatant must must kill or be
killed, must eat or be eaten. Another law is, That victor
and vanquished succumb to another foe and die, despite their
struggle for existence. These laws hold good not merely as
regards individuals: races also die out. And if there be
purpose and plan in nature it can only be such purpose and
plan as uses sentient beings for the pleasure of the creator,
who cai®s no more for their welfare than the worst of slave
owners does for his human chattels.
.
2. Nay! more. According to the creation hypothesis,
every pang endured by the creature must have been fore
seen and provided for beforehand. The man who invents
an infernal taachine, say Thomassen of Bremer Haven
notoriety, must be immensely less selfish than the creator
of the world. Thomassen had some want to supply,,^ome
sort of excuse for his awful deed. But an infinite and
eternal being is without excuse; and a being that does
wrong without excuse, knowing what he is doing, must be
actuated by pure malignity ; especially when, as is the case
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
of all creatures of this hypothetical God, his victims are
absolutely helpless:—they cannot resist him, cannot out
manoeuvre him, and can get no sort of redress for any wrong
they may suffer.
It may perhaps be safely laid down, that he is extremely
good, who does good according to his knowledge and power.
But he “ who know^th to do good and doeth it not, to him
it is sin.” An infinite God knows everything, and his
power is unlimited. Why does he not do good “ as he hath
opportunity ? ”
The only conceivable reason must be
that he is unwilling. He must therefore be extremely evil.
When to this is added the fact that he does immeasurable
evil to helpless beings, we shall at once perceive that the
Theistic object of worship must be totally evil; for even
the seeming good he does is done merely to please himself.
Even if the world contained as much good as evil, theft
would not prove the creator good, for reasons I have given.
But the existence of only one evil would legitimately raise
the suspicion that he was evil, because a moment’s effort on
his part would remove that evil and replace it by good.
But when we find that evil is inseparably mixed with the
universe; when we find that during all its ascertainable
history, and in every direction, at least as much evil as good
has prevailed, we cannot hesitate, except in deference to
old prejudices, to pronounce judgment to the -effect that the
world’s creator is the embodiment of selfishness and ma.bgnity, and destitute of any discoverable redeeming trait in
his character.
It is at present unnecessary to enlarge upon this subject.
But if the goodness of the hypothetical creator cannot
logically be maintained, and if the extreme contrary can be
p logically'and truthfully propounded, as I contend, the next
i question to be answered is,
I
III. Does there exist an infinitely wise God? This, too,
' must be examined and answered by the study of the facts of
Nature ; and it need not delay us longer than did the ques
tion of infinite goodness. If there were infinite wisdom^Mo
such things as fools and folly would exist. These are enor
mously plentiful; whence come they ? Wisdoniicannot
produce folly; a perfectly wise being could not produce a
fool. Some say the great majority of men are fools;
certain it is that large numbers are such. Who made them
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
7
so ? If there be a creator, he makes the philosopher and the
dolt, the mathematician and the idiot. No wise father
would have an idiot son, if he foresaw its possibility and
knew how to prevent it. Yet the great father, as people
call their deity, produces idiots by the score and fools by the ,
million. Infinite wisdom, therefore, is no better than a
myth, nor more accordant with known facts than the infalli
bility of the Pope.
Want of space compels me here to break off my argument abruptly, though I hope to resume it in my next.
LETTER IT.
From Mr. G. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
As I expect to find in Mr. Symes an honest and fair
opponent, I shall not require a definition of all the terms he
uses, but I may point out that if his definition of Atheism
is correct, we shall want some other word to set forth the
denial of God’s existence. Theism is belief in a God ; and,
according to Mr. Symes, Atheism is simply the absence of
that belief, and valid objections to Theism are equally
valid-reasons in favor of Atheism. I should have thought
this more accurately described Agnosticism than Theism;
but as I am equally opposed to both, perhaps it will not
matter. If the Deity is said by one person to be dead, and
by another to be dumb, I confute them both if I prove that
he speaks. It is only fair I should allow that one sentence
of Mr. Symes’s seems to separate the Atheist from the
Agnostic—the sentence, namely, which says that the Atheist
has logically concluded Theism to be irrational. The
Agnostic does not pretend to do that. At the same time
the question is here begged, or else the language is a little
loose, for, if I am right, no individual can logically conclude
that Theism is irrational, but can only come to such a
conclusion illogically.
I am prepared to prove the existence of an intelligent
Creator of man, and to defend his perfect goodness. I shall
not attempt to defend all the positions which Mr. Symes
sets out to assault. His eight questions, which he says will
cover most of the ground, would no doubt do so, and lead
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ATHEISM OR THEISM?
us into oceans of talk as well. I have no desire to meddle
much with the unfathomable and the incomprehensible, and
must decline to be drawn into a discussion of the infinite,
which I do not understand. Six questions out of Mr. Symes’s
eight concern the infinite ! They were, perhaps, prompted
by his idea of what I, as a believer in God, would be likely
to assert; for he says, “It is generally held among Theists
that an Infinite God created all other things.” When he
understands that I maintain a humbler thesis, perhaps he
will withdraw or modify some of these questions. I main
tain that there is an intelligent Creator of Man, against
whose perfect goodness nothing can be proved. If man has
a Creator, that Creator must be called God.; and if there
is a God, the evidence of whose action is to be seen in us
and about us, then Atheism is irrational. It is a larger
question whether God is infinite in all his attributes. It is
another question whether God created all things, matter
and its properties included. I am certainly not going to
maintain that every attribute of God is infinite ; for the
clue and the key to the mystery of evil are to be found in
limitation of power. Like John Stuart Mill, I conceive a
limit to Omnipotence, and that enables me to maintain God’s
perfect goodness. Or rather, I define omnipotence to be the
power of effecting all things which are possible, and I show
that some things are impossible to any worker, because they
involve mathematical or physical contradictions. When,
therefore, Mr. Symes advances to show that “ the moral
attributes of God are fictions,” I have an answer for him
which some Theists have not.
The first question of the eight is in the form, “ Does there
exist an infinitely good God ? ” and in the answer to it there
is a semblance of mathematical demonstration. But I
venture to think that the word “ infinite ” leads to a little
unconscious conjuring. I shall be satisfied to defend God’s
perfect goodness against all attacks. I will not say whether
the goodness is infinite, and what ought, to follow then; but
I calmly assert that the bare fact that “ evil does exist” is
no proof that perfect goodness does not. Mr. Symes con
cludes his demonstration with the Q. E. D. that “ therefore
infinite goodness does not.” I should be glad if he would'
come out of the unfathomable and tell me what he has to
show against perfect goodness. I admit that some evil exists
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
9
but limited evil for a limited time is quite consistent with
perfect goodness. It was consistent with goodness in the
case of a father I knew, who submitted his child to the
operation of tracheotomy in order to save its life. Limited
evil for a limited time is forced upon every child who is
kept to his lessons; and it argues no want of goodness
in the parent, but only a certain intractableness in things,
making it impossible to attain desired results except
by means and methods which may sometimes be a little
unpleasant. I feel myself at liberty to use these human
illustrations because I have left out the word “ infinite ” and
am considering the action of a Deity who creates and educates
man. The Iggfiitions of all work are similar, whether the
worker be human or divine.
Space exists, and matter exists. Mr. Symes must allow
that they can exist without having been created, because he
does not believe in a Creator at all. So far I am inclined
to agree with him that space and matter may always have
existed. But whether matter has been created or not is
of little importance in this discussion, if it be allowed
that without matter and space nothing could be made
and no processes could go on—that for instance there
could be no world like this and no human creatures to com
plain of its arrangements. In fact there could be no
arrangements, if there were nothing to arrange and no space
to arrange it in. The Creator is, we may say, bound to have
matter—whether created or uncreated—if he is to accom
plish anything at all. No blame, therefore, can attach to
him on account of the mere existence of matter. All
depends upon what use he will make of it. Now the mere
existence of matter implies certain properties, such as
extension and impenetrability. Further, nothing can be
done with matter without moving it, to bring its parts and
particles into new positions. But the motion of matter in
space is according to the laws of motion, which cannot well
be imagined to be different from what they are. Without
these laws of motion and properties of matter there could
be no universe and no human life, and no printing of this
discussion in the pages of the National, RefdjSffier. At the
same time the Worker, using these mean^and materials,
does his work under conditions which preclude certain results
as physically impossible, as for instance that there should be
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ATHEISM OR THEISM?
adjacent mountains without a valley ; and which sometimes
involve concomitant results which may not be wished for,
as when a sculptor chisels out a statue but makes a mess of
chippings ¿ha dust. The end desired is achieved, and more
than compensates for the temporary inconvenience. The
inconvenience is no accident and no surprise, but is foreseen
and deliberately accepted, on account of the good that shall
follow.
Seeing that I regard the matter in this way, many things
which Mr. Symes has said shoot wide of my position. I
am not obliged to consider what motive induced the Deity
to create the universe—whether it was an exterior motive
or one confined solely to himself. I maintain that he
Seated man. I allow that he must have found his own end
in doing it. I do not allow that he has done it regardless
of the good of his creatures: else creatures so logical
ought all to commit suicide at once. Mr. Symes defines
the Creator’s obligations to his creatures in a way which
ought to prevent most men from marrying and becoming
fathers. Because sentient creatures suffer pain and misery,
a good Being, he says—even a Being more good than evil—
would have refrained from creating them without consulting
them. The force or weakness of such an argument depends
very much upon the amount of pain and misery compared
with enjoyment, and very much upon the question whether
pain and misery are to be temporary or permanent. On
both points Mr. Symes holds a view which in my estimation
is not justified by the facts. He dwells on the struggle for
existence—which he describes as a law that each combatant
must either kill or be killed, either eat or be eaten—he
describes the strife as prevailing from the earliest geologic
ages ; and he infers that the Creator cares no more for the
welfare of his creatures than the worst of slave owners does
for his human chattels. But here, in the first place, some
illusion is produced by looking down a long vista of pain
and death. When we look along a grove the trees seem to
touch one another; yet in reality the open spaces are more
than the trees. We may, if we choose, look down that vista
of the ages and see young life and happiness, and mother’s
love and joy at every stage. Nor is it the fact that there are
no deaths but such as are violent. Nor is it the case that
violent deaths occasion much pain and misery. Follow the
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
11
life of an individual bird, or dog, or human being, and
inquire whether misery or enjoyment preponderates : that is
the fair way to judge, and not by bringing all the misery of
long ages into a near focus.
And then, as to the permanence of pain, misery, evil, Mr.
Symes declares that “ evil is inseparably mixed with the
universe.” This statement he emphasises, and gives no hint
that he expects evil to work itself out. I should have
thought that, as an Agnostic and an Evolutionist, he would
have followed Herbert Spencer in this as well as in other
things; and Spencer has a chapter to show that evil must be
evanescent. By the law of evolution the human race is
progressive—the purpose of nature (the Creator’s purpose,
as I should say) is being worked out, stage after stage. It
is therefore delusive to judge the present condition of the
world as though it were intended to be final ; it is unfair to
judge the past and present without taking into account the
drift and tendency of things. In a manufactory we don’t
judge in that way of the things which are being made, and
which we chance to see “ in the rough.” If evil is evanes
cent, and the consummation of things is to be glorious, it is
not irrational to believe that present pain is like the tem
porary evil of the sculptor’s chippings, the passing irksome
ness of the school-boy’s discipline, and that “ the sufferings
of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the
glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.”
And here, Mr. Editor, I must break off abruptly, like
Mr. Symes, having come to the end of the space allotted.
Else I could easily double the length of this letter, without
departing from the text Mr. Symes has given me : for he
does at least say something.
LETTER III.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
The first paragraph of Mr. St. Clair’s letter requires no
remark; the second may detain us for a few minutes. The
infinity of deity, it appears, is given up. That being so,
Mr. St. Clair should have clearly defined the term god.
The sense he attaches to the word must be exceedingly
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ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
different from that which Theists in general attach to it;,
and, as I am totally at a loss to know what his god is, I
can neither aecept nor attack his views until he favors me
with them. I shall feel obliged if in his next he will define,
as clearly as possible, “god,” “ creator,” “created,” “intel
ligent creator.” A further favor will be conferred upon me
if Mr. St. Clair will give his reasons in detail for believing
that man was created by “ an intelligent creator,” and also
his grounds for supposing that creator to possess “ perfect
goodness.” At present he merely declares his belief ; I need
his evidence.
Why does my opponent call limited power Omnipotence ?
Is it not equivalent to limited illimitability ? or finite
infinity ?
Mr. St. Clair is prepared to defend the perfect goodness
of man’s creator. But how can a finite, that is, an imperfect
being, be perfect in any respect? My former objections to
infinite goodness press with equal force against perfect good
ness, for perfect and infinite are here the same. Goodness,
perfect or imperfect, finite or infinite, must from its very
nature prevent or remove evil in the direct ratio of its power
or ability. Mr. St. Clair contends that “ limited evil for a
limited time is quite consistent with perfect goodness.” He
may as rationally contend that “limited darkness for a
limited time is consistent with perfect light.” Darkness,
however limited, is incompatible with perfect light; so evil,
though but for a day, and covering but an area of one square
inch, would prove that perfect goodness did not exist. The
illustrations used—the case of tracheotomy and the unplea
sant processes of education—are both as wide of the mark
as possible. They are not cases of perfect goodness resort
ing to temporary evil, but of imperfect goodness and limited
power choosing the less of two evils where it is impossible to
shun both.
“ The conditions of all work are similar, whether theworker be human or divine.” This may, for aught I know,
be true, for I have no notion of a divine worker. But does
Mr. St. Clair mean to say that his god is compelled to
choose between two or more evils, just as we are? If so,
what necessity urges him ? We are driven to labor by
hunger, cold, storms, and innumerable pains and diseases.
Does god, too, labor for his bread, his clothes, shelter, or
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
13
medicine? If not, how are “ the conditions of all labor
similar, whether the worker be human or divine ? ” Will
Mr. St. Clair explain ?
How does my worthy opponent know that evil is limited
as to time ? Can he assure me that any square foot of the
earth’s surface is or ever was totally free from evil ? How
does he know, or why does he assume, that any square foot
of the earth’s surface ever will be entirely free from evil ?
That many evils will diminish in process of time, through
man’s growing wisdom, I cheerfully believe. But, no
thanks to deity for that. Man is improving on god’s
work, and removing evils that ought never to have been in
it. Here the consumer has to labor and suffer and spend
all his energy rectifying the blunders of the manufacturing
deity, or making improvements he never thought of, or else
was too idle, or too weak, or too evil, to introduce.
But does any man conceive that all evil will ever be
removed ? Will the storms be hushed into eternal calm ?
the earthquake heave its final throb and cease for ever ?
the volcano spout no more its terrible agents of destruction?
disease and death prey no longer upon animals and men ?
If these are ever conquered, man must do it, for they are
god’s agents for destroying men—if god there be. Can
Mr. St. Clair name one evil his god ever removed ?
Mr. St. Clair seems to hold the eternity of matter. Is
god also eternal; and if so, how do you ascertain that ?
I am not just now much concerned to inquire whether the
creator found matter ready to his hand, or first made it; but
I contend that he who arranges matter as we find it in
Nature (not in art) is not good. The tree is known by its
fruit. Matter is so arranged as to give pain, produce
misery, and death universal! And if so arranged by an
intelligent creator, he must therefore be more evil than
good. When Mr. St. Clair speaks of the “ end desired ” in
the “ chippings and dust ” of the sculptor, I can pretty well
understand him; but does he know the aim and end of the
creator ? If not, what is the value of his illustration ?
It is of no use to say that creatures “ ought to commit
suicide,” if my contention is correct—ought not to marry,
&c. Has not the creator rendered that impossible for most
men by passion and an invincible love of life ? And is it
kind to stretch a poor wretch longer upon the rack of this
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rude world by so forbidding him to die, though his every
breath is on® of pain ? Goodness never arranged it thus.
I am not concerned with striking the balance between evil
and good; I merely contend that goodness cannot originate
evil, except unwittingly; that perfect goodness would render
all evil impossible. I do not yet see any just cause to retract
or soften a single statement in my first letter; and shall
therefore proceed now to deal with my questions as far as
space will permit.
But Does there exist an infinite god whose wisdom
exceeds his folly ? Wisdom conducts its affairs with reason,
prudence, economy, and directs its energies to the attain
ment of some definite and worthy end. Does any man
know the final cause of the universe, the latest and highest
end aimed at by the creator ? It seems only reasonable that
the Theist should know this before he ventures to attribute
wisdom to his deity.
I grant that if the “ works ” of Nature exhibited evidences
of wisdom as far as men can observe them, and no cases of
evident folly were discoverable, the Theist would have the
best of reasons for assuming that all the universe was equally
well arranged and conducted. But if the known parts of
Nature exhibit folly in its worst conceivable forms, then
the only rational view to take is that the universe at large is
a blunder, and its creator a blunderer.
It is frequently assumed that a fool is reprehensible for
his folly, and that if men are fools, it must be their own
fault. But that cannot be the case, for no man makes him
self. The creator must take all the responsibility. He who
made men made most of them fools ; therefore he must be
more foolish than wise. And man, be it remembered, is
according to Theists the most important part of the creation
hereabouts. Man, they say, is the crowning piece of his
creator’s workmanship; and all else in the solar system is
subservient to his welfare. Be it so ! But what folly to
make all this and then to people the world with fools !
Such folly cannot be excelled, even by the lowest of
intelligent creatures. And my objections to the wisdom or
“ intelligence ” of deity are equally forceful, whether god
be finite or infinite; for I contend that he is far more foolish
than wise.
The folly of the hypothetical creator, whatever his
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15
power, is seen everywhere—at least, I know of no spot free
from it. Here grow beautiful grass, and herbs, and trees ;
and human industry turns the region into a paradise, dotted
over with towns and villages. The people increase rapidly,
and their flocks, and herds, and farm produce keep pace
with them. Civilisation in all its branches rises and pro
gresses. There dawns a day when the sun shines in
splendor, the breezes gently blow, birds pour out their
melody, and man is contented and happy in some degree;
but there comes a dismal sound, and a mysterious shaking;
and ashes, and stones, and dust shower down in torrents
burying all life in a burning tomb. If an “ intelligent
creatoiiS makes men, why does he thus destroy them ? If
they need destroying, why did he make them so ? Those
creatures of his are of all ages from the youngest embryo to
the oldest man. Why destroy what is scarcely begun ?
Why begin what is to be so quickly destroyed ?
This “ intelligent creator ” produces blossoms in spring,
and then nips them by senseless frosts ; he makes the grain
to grow, and then destroys it by wet or a summer storm, or
parches it by drought; splendid crops of potatoes to flourish,
and then turns them to corruption by the fungus known as
“ the diseasethe cattle to multiply, only to die by
pleuro-pneumonia or foot and mouth disease ; a whole human
population to flourish for years, only to die by famine and
fever. And all this is the constant, every-day conduct of
man’s “ intelligent creator ! ”
I am deeply interested and anxious to see how my re
spected opponent will be able to reconcile divine “ intelli
gence ” or goodness with the phenomena of the earth.
The next question I have set down for discussion is:
VI. Does there exist a God whose power exceeds his weak
ness ? This question, to my surprise, has been answered
already by Mr. St. Clair, by implication at least; for he
informs us that, “Like John Stuart Mill, he conceives a
limit to Omnipotence.” That conception, when rendered
into plain English, can only mean that Mr. St. Clair’s god
is of merely finite power ; and as finite power can bear no
comparison with infinite power, we must conclude that Mr.
St. Clair’s deity has infinitely greater weakness than
strength.
If I were contending merely with Mr. St. Clair, I could
�16
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
at once pass on to the next question; but I am attacking
Theism in its broadest sense ; and, with all due respect to
my opponent, must decline to narrow the ground to the
dimensions of his peculiar Theism, except by easy and
logical stages.
I hold the doctrine, that force or power can be measured
only by its effects. A force may produce motion in several
phases, or it may be expended in resistance, stress, etc.
But in every case the effect is exactly equivalent to the
cause. An infinite cause could result in nothing short of
infinite effect. But infinite effect does not exist; nor can
any conceivable sum of finite effects amount to one infinite
effect; therefore no infinite cause or infinite power exists.
Now Theists do not pretend to know their god except as
a cause—unless I am mistaken. But if no infinite cause
exists, their god must be finite. But that which is finite
can bear no comparison with the infinite; therefore the power
of a finite being, however great, must be immensely less
than his weakness.
I will close by asking whether it was good, or wise, or
honest for a being of such limited capital, that is, power,
etc., to undertake so great a work as the creation and
direction of the universe ? Though he may be making his
own fortune and ensuring his own pleasure, he is doing it
by the most reckless expenditure of human and animal life,
and by the infliction of unspeakable misery upon helpless
beings. A god of honor and mercy, it seems to me, must
either have stopped the machine in utter disgust, or else
have committed suicide countless ages ago.
LETTER IV.
From Mr. G-. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
Space did not permit me to deal with the whole of Mr.
Symes’ first letter ; and now I must let it go, because his
second letter gives me text enough for a second reply. In
this discussion I should be glad if a respectful tone can be
observed in speaking about the Deity. It cannot serve the
purpose of my opponent, nor of the Editor, that Theists who
begin to read our arguments should throw down the paper
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
17
in disgust. Mr. Symes expresses himself “ totally at a loss
-to know what my god Is.” I shall be grateffflF if he will
•oblige me by spelling the word with a capital G, because, for
one thing, my God is not the same as Mumbo Jumbo or
any little imaginary divinity worshipped by an African
tribe. Mr. Symes asks for definitions of “ god,” “ creator,”
“ created,” “intelligent creator;” but probably a dictionary
will supply his want at the present stage. In my previous
letter I told him distinctly enough what I understand the
tgrm God to mean: God is the intelligent Creator of man.
This is sufficient for our present purpose. To believe in a
.Creator of man—not a blind force, not an unguided pro
cess wjkich has resulted in his coming into existence, but in
an intcmigent being who made him—this is to be a Theist.
And since the evidence of God’s operation is to be seen in
man’s own frame, this theistic belief is rational, and the
opposite is irrational. This is what we have to argue about,
-and I should be glad if my opponent would keep to the
subject. If it could be shown that the Creator of man is
an evil Being, it might be reasonably maintained that he
ought to be called a Devil instead of a God ; and therefore
I have undertaken to rebut all attacks upon his perfect
goodness. In my last letter I repelled some objections of
this kind, and was enabled to do so successfully, because I
did not foolishly contend that the Deity possesses infinite
power, adequate to the accomplishment of all manner of
impossibilities.
Mr. Symes exclaims, “ The infinity of Deity, it appears,
is given up.” I never maintained it, and therefore I have
not given up anything. It seems to be inconvenient to my
opponent that I do not maintain it. He declines, he says,
“ to be narrowed to my Theism; he attacks Theism in its
broadest sense.” That is to say, he is confident that he
could confute other Theists, but he cannot easily confute
me. I showed him that his eight propositions about the
Infinite, mostly shoot wide of my position ; but he thinks it
well to return to them, and persists in attacking the impos
sible compound which he has set up as the God of those
who believe in God. No doubt he can do some amount of
iconoclastic work here; but what is that to me? If-he
amuses himself and your readers by wasting half the space
at his disposal, perhaps I ought not to complain ; but I am
�18
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
not bound to follow him into this region, and shall only do
so when I can spare the time. I will pursue him just a little
way now. He considers that a Theist ought to know the
final cause of the universe before he ventures to attribute
wisdom to the Deity 1 But surely I may admire the struc
ture of the eye, and perceive it to be well adapted for
seeing, without waiting to examine the heart or learn the
use of the spleen. I may study and admire the human
frame as a whole, and not feel obliged to be dumb concern
ing it because I have not begun the consideration of the
solar system. My opponent wants me to begin at the cir
cumference of the universe, because it has no boundsg and
he wishes to see me bewildered and floundering^ Yet
immediately he himself ventures to judge of the universe as
a whole, and pronounces it a blunder, and its creator a
blunderer, on the strength of some exhibitions of folly (a£
he counts them) in its known parts.
One exhibition of folly, he considers, is the creation of
fools. Repeating a statement of his former letter, he asserts
that most men are fools, and that he who created them so
must himself be more foolish than wise. My reply is that,
whatever the actual proportion of fools, ignorance comes
before knowledge, folly before wisdom, in the natural order
of things. The crude and unfashioned material must date
earlier than the wrought and finished. The educated man
is a production of a more advanced sort than the ignorant
and uncultured man ; he is the same creature in a later stage
of development. But Mr. Symes—whom nothing will satisfy
save impossibilities—demands the later before the earlier.
My opponent thinks that infinite goodness is incompatible
with the existence of the slightest evil at any time. He
imagines that infinite goodness in the creator would prevent
any evil outside of him. To my mind this is not so, unless
the creator, besides being infinitely good, is also omnipotent,
and omnipotent in a sense which enables him to overcome
physical and mathematical contradictions and accomplish
impossibilities. But, to simplify the discussion, I refrain
from contending for infinite goodness, and contend for per
fect goodness. My opponent does not see the difference,
but conceives that his former objections to infinite goodness
press with equal force against perfect goodness. He con
tinues his unconscious legerdemain with the word infinite.
�; ■ w:./ -’
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
•
w’
19
He asks, “ How can a finite, that is, an imperfect being, be
perfect in any respect ? ” Amazing! We am to suppose
there is no perfect circle conceivable unless it be infinite in
its dimensions, and that no man could be perfectly truthful,
no child perfectly innocent, no flower perfect in its beauty.
The flower must be as large as the universe, it seems, before
its beauty can be perfect. The argument against the per
fect goodness of Jesus Christ would have to run in the form
that his body and soul together were not so big in cubic
measure as all the worlds and spaces which make up the
TCT7rai/, or grtffttall! “ Goodness will prevent or remove evil
to the extent of its ability.” Yes; but since no ability
whatever can be sufficient to surmount impossibilities, limited
^evil nifty exist for a limited time, and be subservient to
greater good (like the inconvenience of scaffolding during
the building of a house). Mr. Symes uses what he supposes
to be a parallel, that limited darkness is not consistent with
perfect light. But this shows some obscurity of thought.
Darkness and light are opposites, and so are good and evil ;
but not goodness and evil. I did not say that limited evil
was consistent with perfect good, as an existing condition
of things everywhere; I said it was consistent with perfect
goodness as an element of character existing in the Deity.
With God, in the higher plane of his operations, as with
man on a lower, it may be wise and good to “ choose the
less of two evils where it is impossible to shun both.”
“ How do I know that evil is limited as to time ? ” How
does Mr. Symes know that it is not ? Let him read Herbert
Spencer’s chapter on the “ Evanescence of Evil.” Let him
ask himself what prospect there is of the eternal duration
of a thing which is continually diminishing in amount. He
admits that evils are diminishing through man’s agency,
man’s growing wisdom. So they ought some day to end.
But he declines to give God the glory. Now the Creator of
man is the author of man’s wisdom. He employs man as
his best instrument to improve the face of the earth and
weed out evils from society. To a Theist this is so, of
course; the creator of man’s body is the author of his spirit
and the guide of his course. But with curious blindness to
the Theistic position, Mr. Symes seeks to infer that man is
wiser than his maker. He reckons disease and all destructive
forces as God’s agents for evil, but does not reckon physi
�20
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
cians, philanthropists and reformers as his agents for good.
He fails to see that on the theistic hypothesis the evils which
man remov^God removes.
Mr. Symes contends that “ he who arranged matter as we
find it, is not good,” because it produces pain and other evils.
He would not say this of any human operator. When I
saw him the other day at a public meeting, he complained
of neuralgia and talked of going to a dentist. I am afraid
the dentist would have to arrange matter so as to give tem
porary pain, and yet the dentist might be good and might do
good. It is not the poser which my oppontml thinks it is,
to ask me whether I equally know the end and aim of fhp
Creator. I’m not going to search for it among the infinities.
Looking at the human jaws, and the apparatus of the teeth,
in connexion with food and the digestive organs, I think I
know the aim and end of the Creator in giving us teeth. It
is that we may chew our victuals. And then their occa-wr
sionally aching is an incidental evil, which may have some
bearing on his omnipotence, but does not bear witness against
his goodness. Mr. Symes’ next paragraph is curiously con
tradictory. He considers life a torture, every breath pain,
death preferable ; but does not commit suicide because lie
has an invincible love of life !
I have agreed with Mr. J. S. Mill that physical “ con
ditions ” put some limit to omnipotence as we might other
wise conceive it. Mr. Symes pounces upon this, but does
not seize it well. He says, “ Here is an admission of finite
power, and since finite bears no comparison to infinite we
must conclude that Mr. St. Clair’s deity has infinitely greater
weakness than strength.” Does this sound conclusive ? I
may correspondingly argue as follows,—My God can do
something, therefore his weakness is not utter inability, not
infinite weakness ; it is finite, and bears no comparison with
the infinite, therefore he has infinitely greater strength than
weakness. Why does not Mr. Symes give up dabbling in
this ocean of the infinite, which is too deep for both of us,
but where, if I choose to follow him, I can make quite as
great a show as he of letting down a plumb-line ? He wants
me to tell him—“ Is god eternal, and how do I ascertain
it?” What I think on the subject, I’ll tell him another
time : at present I assert that the human frame had a
creator—it is a designed machine, and machines must have
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
21
intelligent makers—and I challenge him to show that this,
my belief, is irrational.
“ Why do I call limited power omnipotence ? ” If power
to do all possible things is not to be called omnipotence we
must drop the term. I found the term in use and I used it:
but it is not essential to my argument. If Mr. Symes can
imagine the ability to do impossible things, he has powers
of imagination which transcend mine. I do not expect the
Deity to cause two and two to be five, and the whole to be
less than one of its quarters; I do not look for him to
make squares without angles, and a succession of days without
intervening nights. I believe in a Deity who can do all
¿lings not Involving contradictions. Can Mr. Symes show
that this belief of mine is irrational ? The kind of world
which my opponent demands—brand-new and straight off—
would involve impossibilities. His cry is for the moon.
He wants blossoms which never suffer from frost; he asks
for anjunbroken succession of good crops; he desires the
absence of all liability to disease in man and beast. Can
he suggest how a fleshly body, or any animal organism
could be made free from all liability to disease ? His
notion of the universe leaves no room for incidental evils,
necessary concomitants, “ partial evil, universal good ”—in
which I find the explanation of many difficulties.
I have only space to assert afresh that the human
frame is a machine, the human eye is an instrument;
machines and instruments have to be made ; the maker of
man is God; therefore Theism is true and it is rational to
believe it.
LETTER V.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
I cannot say if it was my fault or the printer’s that “God”
was spelt with a small g ; but I am not anxious to be read
by those who would throw down the paper in disgust for
such a trifle. I cannot induce Mr. St. Clair to give me a
sight of his deity, and therefore do not know what it is he
worships. It is not Mumbo Jumbo, nor yet an infinite god;
it is “ the intelligent creator of man,” he informs me. But
�22
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
no such being exists, as far as I can ascertain ; and why
should I give a capital G to a myth ? My opponent is
illogical in demanding honor for his god before he has
proved that he has one worthy of honor, especially when all
known facts are so strongly against his position. I respect
Mr. St. Clair, for I know him ; I don’t know his god ; to
give him capital letters might be construed to signify that
I both knew and honored him.
“The intelligent creator of man” is no more a description
of deity than “the tree that bears oranges” is of the orange
tree. I wish to know what the deity is; he merely speaks
of what he does. What was he before creating man ?
What is he apart from that action altogether ? I cannot
believe Mr. St. Clair knows, nor do I believe he has any
god at all. He can confute and confound me by a real
exhibition of his deity in his next letter.
My opponent rather unceremoniously sends me to “a
dictionary ” for definitions of “ God,” etc. I go. “ GOD,
n. [Sax., god; G., gott; D., god; Sw. and Dan., gud;
Goth., goth or guth.~\ 1. The Supreme Being ; Jehovah ;
the Eternal and Infinite Spirit, the Creator, and the Sove
reign of the Universe,” etc. (Webster’s Improved Diet. ;
Glasgow, W. Mackenzie.) What am I to think of Mr. St.
Clair’s consistency ? In both letters he has, almost indig
nantly and with something akin to sneering, repudiated the
“ infinity ” of god ; and yet I find this attribute duly set
out in the only definition of his deity which he has as yet
condescended so much as to indicate ! I must now pi ess
him to be candid : Is the definition to which he directed me
correct? If so, why does he reject the “infinity” or
decline to “maintain” it? If this definition be incorrect,
why did he refer me to it ?
I will next deal with a few of the fallacies and mistakes
of his second letter. 1. Mr. St. Clair is mistaken in as
suming that he “ successfully repelled ” any objections of
mine to god’s goodness. The strength of my objections
lies in the well-known and horrible facts of nature, which
cannot be explained away. Goodness, finite or infinite,
removes or prevents every evil in its power. Does Mr. St.
Clair venture to assert that there is no evil now in the world
which his deity could remove if he would ? If be cannot
remove so much as one of them—say cancer or neuralgia—
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
23
why call such a weakling god ? If he can and will not,
where is his goodness ? I demand no “ impossibilities ” of
deity, unless he is extremely weak. If he is not able to do
immensely more than I require, he should retire from his
post.
2. Mr. St. Clair, in not “ maintaining ” the infinity of !
I his god, “gives it up”—in the only sense I intended. I
j have suffered no sort of “ inconvenience ” from this. Oh
i dear, no! The only inconvenience I feel in this contest '■
lies in the fact that I have nothing but shadows and tinCertainties to contend with, phantoms,
“That flit e’er you can point the place.”
Would Mr. St. Clair kindly furnish me with one or two
stubborn Theistic facts, if he has them ?
3. It is amusing to learn that I waste “ half my space ”
in demolishing the “infinite” god, the very deity my
opponent sent me to the dictionary for! I presume that
must be his own ? 4. “ Ignorance comes before knowledge,
folly before wisdom.” No doubt. And in many millions
of cases the ignorance and the folly are never superseded by
anything better. Does Mr. St. Clair hold that, “whatever
is best ” ? What point has his remark else ? A perfectly
good and wise god would have permitted no folly, nor have
left his creatures ignorant of anything necessary to be
known. I expect Mr. St. Clair to contend in his next that
folly argues the wisdom, and evil the goodness, of his deity,
while inability to remove evils is proof positive of his
omnipotence.
5. My opponent jumbles mathematics, morality, and
botany in the most edifying manner in his allusion to the
circle, the child, and the flower. Geometrical conceptions
are not “ beings;” they are abstractions. Innocence and
beauty may be perfect in a very imperfect and extremely
limited sense ; is that so with god’s goodness ? Mr. St.
Clair is extremely unfortunate in his analogies. All that
he has yet tried are failures. Or else his god is one of
very slender means. He is a surgeon performing “ tracheo
tomy,” a sculptor chipping stones into shape, a parent
“ educating ” his children, a builder employing “ scaffolds,”
etc. Before he has done, I fear he will rouse my sympathy
for this god as the most unfortunate victim of circumstances
�24
ATHEISM OK THEISM?
that ever lived. The orthodox divinity is certainly superior
to this. He never loses his power, and is self-reliant all
throughout his career. But Mr. St. Clair’s deity is so com
pletely under the control of circumstances, mostly adverse
ones, that I expect my opponent to announce next that a
memorial of condolence is to be despatched to him, and a
subscription opened to replenish his exhausted exchequer.
With the old-fashioned Christian god “ all things were
possible ; ” with Mr. St. Clair’s it seems quite the reverse.
No excuse could possibly be urged for any wrong done by
the orthodox deity ; nothing hut excuses have yet been urged
for this new one. I point out his misdeeds and show up his
criminal conduct. But Mr. St. Clair is ever ready with an
apology—“ Well, yes, but he couldn’t help it.” And this
poor thing must have a capital G-! Well, well. He needs
one!
6. Unless Mr. St. Clair knows that his god has removed
one evil, it is irrational to expect him to remove all. If
evil and good are compatible at all, and “ for a limited
time,” why not for ever ? How long must evil last to be
inconsistent with goodness ? “ Darkness and light are
opposites, so are good and evil; but not goodness and evil.”
Is that “ legerdemain ” or theology? It cannot be called
“ confusion of thought,” for thought is absent. We were
informed in Mr. St. Clair’s first that the conditions of all
labor were the same. What now does he mean by in
sinuating that man works on a “ lower plane ” than god ?
How is that assumption to be reconciled with the further
statement that god works by man ? God’s work is man’s
work, and man’s is god’s, if that be so. I shall be delighted
to be assured that all evil will be removed. But what are
its laws ?—laws of origin, progress, and decay ? Will
death and pain go ? Suppose they did go; the crime of
their introduction or creation remains.
7. God employs man to “ improve the face of the earth
and to weed out evils from society.” Assertion without
evidence. If true, what must be thought of a god that
creates evils and nourishes and perpetuates them for indefinite
periods, and ultimately uses man as his catspaw to remove
them ? How horribly they burn their fingers often in the work!
What confusion of thought and of moral perception must
possess a man who can count the author of all evil good,
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
25
and thank him for removing evils by the agency of human
suffering. What a monument that deity would have if all
the bones of his miserable agents could be collected and
reared into one stupendous pyramid—the bones of the
swarming millions who have perished horribly in removing
divine evils, of the poor blind slaves whipped on by the
crudest taskmaster that ever lived to undo the mischiefs
his folly or malice created. What can be the state of mind .
that supposes the “ physician ” who does his best to heal
sickness to be incited thereto by the author of that sick
ness—that the philanthropist who shelters, feeds, and
clothes the orphan is inspired by the being who murders the
parents ? When you “ gather grapes of thorns or figs of
thistles,” then may the author of evil incite to good deeds.
Or must we suppose the deity to be destitute of moral
qualities, and engaged in supernal legerdemain, throwing
in evils with one hand and removing them by the other, using
men as sentient and suffering marionettes in operating his
play ?
8. A dentist would have no calling if deity had not
“ scamped ” his work. If he inflict more than necessary
pain, he is considered cruel. An infinite god, such as I was
sent to the dictionary for, could have been under no
necessity to inflict any pain. Mr. St. Clair’s god seems able
enough for mischief, but almost powerless for good—a being
that needs endless apologies.
9. If my opponent’s deity renders death infinitely desirable
as a refuge from bis tyranny, and yet blocks the path to
it by inspiring an invincible love of life, wherein lies the
“ contradiction ” of my reference to it ?
10. I must leave my opponent for the present floundering
in the hopeless task of proving that his deity must be infi
nitely powerful because he can do “something.” Not I, '
but he, is the one who “ dabbles in the ocean of the infinite.”
11. Mr. St. Clair seems to hold that omnipotence is equiva
lent to the power to do all possible things. Is that new? I
never heard of its being used to signify the power to do
impossible things. I thought from his former letter that
“ omnipotence ” with him designated limited power ; it now
returns to its old condition, and in this letter signifies what
is indicated above. I wish Mr. St. Claii’ would be a little more
definite. He now “ believes in a deity who can do all things
�26
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
not involving contradictions.” Well, I have asked for no
contradictions, the very reverse. This belief of Mr. St.
Clair’s is highly irrational. You cannot possibly know how
many things could be done not involving contradictions ;
nor can you possibly know what power might be necessary
to perform them ; nor is it possible you should have any
reason for believing your deity to possess such power. If
that confession of faith is not a “ dabbling in an infinite
ocean,” what is it ? It is immensely amusing to see how
Theists and semi-Theists talk ! Their knowledge and ex
perience is about on a par with ours; yet they profess
belief in that into which, in the very nature of the case,
they can have no insight. But faith not founded on know
ledge must be irrational. Thus I show Mr. St. Clair’s creed
to be baseless and destitute of reason.
12. Perhaps my opponent will kindly show that a world
such as I desire would involve “ impossibilities,” or that a
God such as he believes in could not have made such a one ?
I do want “ blossoms that never suffer from frost; ” who
does not ? I do desire “ an unbroken succession of good
crops ; ” will Mr. St. Clair say that he does not ? Else why
is he pleased at the thought that all evil will ultimately
cease ? To judge from my opponent’s remarks, one might
suppose that it were a fault to desire good and not evil. Is
it so ? I hope it is no sign of depravity to hate evil and to
protest against evil-doers, even when they are deities. Does
Mr. St. Clair enjoy evil ? Would he not remove it all, if he
could ? He hates evil as I do ; but, like a lawyer with an
utterly indefensible client, he struggles to show a case
where there is none, and tries to defend an incongruous
rabble of half-formed and contradictory conceptions, mostly
remnants and tatters of old superstitions, loosely and unsymmetrically strung together on verbal threads, and col
lectively called God. It is pitiable to see a man of his
intellect and goodness engaged in hot conflict defending
error against truth, and palliating and excusing all evil for
the sake of the fancied author of it all.
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
27
LETTER VI.
From Mr. G. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
I regret that Mr. Symes should persist in speaking con
temptuously of the Deity. The little matter of the little
g ” in the name of God, if it was the printer’s fault, he
now makes his own. He considers he is not called upon to
give a capital G to a myth. No, but until he has proved God
to be a myth, he must allow the possibility of his existence;
and he ought to speak respectfully. In this third letter he
uses language about the Deity which renders it painful for
me to continue this discussion. It is a smaller matter that
he should forget the courtesy due to an opponent, and
insinuate a want of candour, as he does by “ now pressing
me to be candid.”
The question we were to discuss is set forth thus : “ Is
Atheism or Theism the more rational ? ” As Mr. Symes is
a professed Atheist, one would expect him to advance
reasons for believing that Atheism is rational, that there is
Ho God, and that the word ought to be spelt with a small g.
But it would be a difficult task, and as yet he has not at
tempted it. He would have to explain how things came to
be as they are without any intelligence either originating,
guiding, or controlling. His position is, that the eye was
not made to see with, the teeth were not made for mastica
tion, the human frame was not made at all. Like Topsy,
he “ specks it growed !” He knows that steam-engines do
Hot grow, except under the hand and mind of intelligent
engineers, but he thinks that human bodies do. He is
aware that telescopes and opera glasses have to be fashioned,
but he imagines that that'more wonderful instrument, the
human eye, is a sort of accident. Human intelligence has
grown up out of the dust; and there is no other origin for a
mother’s love or a martyr’s self-devotion. There is intelli
gence in every workshop, and at the head of every successful
business in the world, but none presiding over the universe.
Out of the fountain head have come greater things than
ever were in it. These are a few of the things which Mr.
�28
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
Symes has to defend and show to be rational. No wonder
that he defers the task !
He has not even fairly set about the alternative task of
showing Theism to be irrational. I have let him know
that I believe in an intelligent creator of man, worthy to be
called God because of the greatness of his power and the
goodness displayed in his operations. I have explained that
by “ creator ” of man I mean former of man out of pre
existing materials, and author of him as man. I have
urged that this belief of mine is rational, because the human
frame is a machine—in fact, much more, for it is a compli
cation of machines and instruments—and all machines and
instruments at all comparable to the bodily parts and organs
have required intelligence to form them. Telescopes are made,
and for a purpose; so must eyes have been: steam-engines
are made, and for a purpose, and so is the machine of the
human body. This is my rational belief. To deny these
things is to deny that similar effects require similar causes
to produce them, and is quite irrational. But instead of
showing my Theism to be irrational my opponent sets forth
a form of Theism which is irrational, and, therefore, easy to
refute, and picks out some inconsistencies in that. His
method may be summarised as follows:—“ Theism is belief
in an infinite God, a God of infinite power can do all things,
a God of infinite goodness would do all good things, but all
conceivable good things have not been done, therefore, a
God does not exist.” But this argument is fallacious : all
that follows is that either the power or the goodness of God
is less than infinite, and 1 have shown that we have no
right to credit the Deity with a power of effecting impossi
bilities. Omnipotence must be limited in that sense and to
that extent, and we must not expect to see contradictions
reconciled. God’s goodness I defend, and undertake to
show the inconclusiveness of anything which may be urged
against it. I do not contend for infinite power in the sense
of power to effect impossibilities. I do not deny almightiness if properly defined; though it is not essential to my
argument to contend for it, since something less than
almightiness may have sufficed for the creation of man.
Mr. Symes does waste ink in trying to commit me to his
absurd definition of Deity. The “infinite God” whom he
considers that he demolishes is only the image which he
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
29
himself had set up and wrongly exhibited as mine. I can
not allow it is mine any the more because he has found one
something like it in “Webster’s Dictionary.” Certainly,
when he demanded definitions, I said that a dictionary
might serve his purpose at that stage ; but I did not say it
would serve or satisfy me at all stages. Mr. Symes also
amuses me by his awkward gymnastics in the ocean of the
infinite. I followed him into the deep just to drive him out ;
so now he tries to get to shore before me, and shouts out
that it is I who am dabbling in the bottomless sea. Seeing
that I am leaving the waters, he tries to entice me back
again. He protests that he will now be reasonable. He
will confess himself confuted and confounded if I will afford
him, in my third letter, a real exhibition of my Deity!
Very likely; but I really cannot allow myself to make the
attempt. Regarding myself as only a creature, inferior to
my Creator, I do not presume to comprehend all his great
ness, so as to be able to give an exact description, or paint
an adequate portrait. I have heard of genii being induced
to go into a bottle, and I can imagine a Goliath taking a
Tom Thumb in his hand; but I for my part do not profess
to have th’s superiority over God. To define God would be
to chalk out his limits. As I decline to contend for a Deity
possessing contradictory infinities, my opponent wishes to pin
me to the equally foolish alternative of a God with no infinity
at all, a very limited marionette figure, such as I might
comprehend all round and put forth upon the stage for
Mr. Symes to laugh at. If God is not infinite in all senses,
I am to describe him ! But I do not feel shut up to any
such dilemma. God is the intelligent Being who consciously
and deliberately gave existence to man.
Mr. Symes complains that “ intelligent Creator of man ”
is no description. I have not promised a description, and
my argument does not require it. I judge that man had a
maker, as I judge that Cologne cathedral had an architect.
The architect of that cathedral is not known ; his name has
not come down to us, and no description could be given that
should distinguish him from others ; but the cathedral is
sufficient evidence that he existed. It is more rational to
believe in an architect than to disbelieve. I defend the
rationality of believing in God. I am not bound to give an
exact description of him. The question “ What was he
�30
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
before creating man ? ” I am not obliged to answer. I offer
Mr. Symes the “stubborn Theistic facts” which he asks for.
Human eyes are instruments superior to opera-glasses;
opera-glasses are designed for a purpose, and formed only
under intelligent direction; therefore nothing less than
intelligence will account for the existence of human eyes.
The human frame is a machine, including within itself
several subordinate machines of engines and levers ; repeat "
the above argument. A mother’s affection is intended for !
the good of her offspring, for the preservation of its life, for
securing the succession of generations ; and yet this affection
is not accounted for by saying it is of human origination ;
it owes its origin to the author of life, who planned the
succession of generations. These are Theistic facts, so
stubborn that no Atheist can satisfactorily dispose of them,
if I may judge from such attempts as I have seen As I
gave my opponent two out of these three facts before, he
had no ground for crying out that he has nothing but
shadows to contend with.
I define omnipotence to be the power of doing all things
not involving contradiction and impossibility. Mr. Symes
questions whether this view is new. I am not much con
cerned about that: it is the view I hold and I challenge
him to prove it irrational. He says he never heard of
“ omnipotence ” being used to signify the power to do im
possible things. If, then, my view is the only one he has
ever heard of, why does he ridicule it and allude to it as
semi-theistic? why does he say the orthodox divinity is
superior to mine ? why does he complain that I give him no
sight of the deity I worship ? But in truth my opponent
himself assumes that omnipotent goodness ought to do im
possible things—ought to give us the full-blown flower of
creation before the bud, and accomplish grand results
without processes involving incidental evil. He wishes me
to explain to him how it is that a God, such as I believe in,
cannot make such a world as is asked for. I have only to
say that no God could do it, because all operations must
have a beginning, a process and an end, and no conceivable
power, out of Hibernia, can make the end come before the
beginning. Will my opponent show me how it is to be
done ? Will he state a method by which the earth and
moon may be allowed to keep their present orbits, and light
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
o1
01
remain subject to its present laws, and yet eclipses be
rendered impossible ? Can he devise a human body that
can live and move and yet not be at all composed of flesh
subject to wounds ? Does he not see that a great and good
result may carry some minor undesirable concomitants along
with it ? Does he think he could show that any of the
evils he complains of are not of this sort ?
He seems to have great difficulty in grasping the thought
that all operations imply a process, take up time, and
involve incidental results which are not directly bargained
for. They may not be desired, yet may be foreseen and
accepted, because they lie in the path by which greater good
is to be attained. Mr. Symes says that he points out the
misdeeds and shows up the criminal conduct of God, and that
when he does so I reply, “ Yes, but he couldn’t help it.”
This is my opponent’s way of admitting that when he
charges the sufferings of mortals upon the Deity, as a Being
who could prevent them but will not, I have a reply for
him. I show that instead of limiting God’s good intent and
beneficent action, it is equally a solution of the difficulty if
we suppose a limitation of power. Then I show that limita
tions actually exist, in the ever-present conditions under
which operations are performed and ends wrought out. This
view of mine, which I reverently maintain, the language
of my opponent grossly misrepresents as equivalent to
making God “ the most unfortunate victim of circumstances
that ever lived.” It makes him and it leaves him almighty.
The alternative would have been to maintain that the power
of deity is without limits of any sort—that he can make
squares without angles, or diffuse a limited quantity of
material through a greater space without spreading it thinner.
This might have pleased Mr. Symes, who now parades
“the orthodox divinity who never loses his power, the oldfashioned Christian God with whom all things were pos
sible.” He never heard of any view of omnipotence different
from that which I maintain ; but he has heard of this oldfashioned Christian God so different from mine, and thinks
such a conception of God preferable. Naturally so, because
it is the conception which he feels able to demolish, as it is
composed of inconsistent parts.
Mr. Symes, unable to comprehend the temporary use of
scaffolding, except for human builders, inquires how long
�32
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
evil must last to be inconsistent with goodness ? Probably
as long as the good process which necessitates it as a con
comitant is still proceeding, and has not got beyond the
stage which requires it. I am surprised it should appear1
to Mr. Symes’s intelligence that the evil which is compatible
with goodness for a limited time, may as well be so for ever.
A stormy voyage may be endured because of the desirability
of migrating to a better country; but surely the storms
must be differently regarded if it is known that they are to
be perpetual and there is no port to be reached. Mr. Symes
forms his impression of the storms while he is sea-sick,
and refuses beforehand to find any compensation in reaching
the haven of rest. Suppose the storms go, he maintains
that the crime of their introduction or creation remains.”
He persists in charging all evils upon the Deity as crimes, as
though he knew enough of the ultimate issues of things to
justify him in saying there has been the least departure
from wise and good arrangements. If impossibilities could
be effected we might have the fruit before the bud, and ripe
apples before sour ones. If Mr. Symes is going to be
reasonable he must not ask for such things. He does ask
for them when he demands wisdom before ignorance and
declares that a good and wise God would not have left his
creatures ignorant of anything necessary to be known. And
he does ask for them, in my opinion, when he complains
against God on account of any evil whatever. He cannot
show that whatever is is not best, in the sense of being the
best possible at the present stage of the general progress.
As usual I leave much unsaid for want of space.
LETTER VII.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
Mr. St. Clair’s third is no stronger in facts or arguments
than his two former letters. It would, however, be unkind
to grumble, as he cannot present a strong case for Theism,
for the very sufficient reason that no such case exists.
He complains of my “ language about the deity.” Well,
in that he shows himself as unreasonable, though not so
cruel, as Nebuchadnezzar when he sent the three Hebrews
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
33
to the fiery furnace for refusing to worship his image. Mr.
St. Clair thinks I should “ advance reasons for believing
Atheism to be rational.” Each of my letters has teemed
with such reasons, not one of which has been yet refuted.
Has my opponent read what I have written ? I have also
shown how irrational it is to believe in a good and omni
potent god. The facts of nature proclaim aloud that no
good god exists; and there does not exist one fact, or one
aggregation of facts, to warrant the belief that an omni
potent god lives. Therefore Mr. St. Clair’s belief is
irrational. The believers in Mumbo Jumbo, the infalli
bility of the Pope, transubstantiation, or witchcraft, are not
more irrational than a Theist. They all believe, no doubt,
sincerely enough, but without any adequate reason.
In my last I expressed the anticipation that my opponent
would in his next argue the omnipotence of his deity from
his “ inability to remove evils.” Mr. St. Clair, in the
penultimate paragraph of his third letter, obligingly fulfils
my prediction by affirming that “ a limitation of power ”
, . . “ makes and leaves god almighty.”
Mr. St. Clair takes umbrage at my request that he would
be “ candid.” The request arose from that reference to the
dictionary and its necessary connexions. I do not yet know
whether the dictionary contains a definition he approves.
It seems to me—I may be in error—but it seems to me that
candor would have set me at rest on that before now.
At length Mr. St. Clair plunges into the Design Argu
ment—the most fallacious and ill founded of all the argu
ments for divine existence.
1. Adaptation argues an adapter, and an intelligent one.
Does it? Water is as well adapted for drowning land
animals as it is for marine animals to live in. Fire is
beautifully adapted to burn men; falling stones, trees, etc.,
storms, floods, explosions, fevers, famines, wild beasts, earth
quakes, and a thousand other evils are delightfully fitted to
kill them. Old age, too, will do it equally well. It cannot
be denied that the processes of decay and destruction show
as much regularity of action and as perfect adaptation of
means to ends as the processes which result in life. Perhaps
Mr. St. Clair regards an earthquake, a cantier, or any other
destructive agency as a “ sort of accident;” he fails to see,
probably, how beautifully, cunningly, and maliciously
�34
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
they are fitted for their work of destruction and misery 1
Certain skin diseases, tic-doloreux, sciatica, cramps, the
stone—how beautifully they are all adapted to the work of
inflicting pain ! Racks, wheels, stakes, gyves, “ boots,”
thumbscrews, bastinadoes, swords, guns, etc., are all made,
and argue or imply makers ; but earthquakes, plagues, frost
and snow, floods, famines, wild beasts, fevers, small-pox,
cancer, and what not, are immensely superior as agents of
pain and death, and yet Mr. St. Clair seems to see no design
in them, and fails to recognise the existence of a perfectly
malignant god, who made them all for his own pleasure !
Can perversity of intellect proceed farther? My worthy
opponent can readily enough perceive the design and the
malice of an infernal machine, and yet fails to recognise
the design and the malice of diseases and famines! He
recognises the folly or the malice of warriors, murderers,
and tyrants who kill or torture a few; and yet cannot admit
that there must be an omnipotent god, who cunningly con
trives and maliciously sets in motion the grand and perfect
machinery of nature to destroy all living things 1 He admits
the existence of folly and malice amongst mankind, and yet
refuses to admit that far greater folly and malice “ preside
over the universe ! ”
Of course, it cannot rationally be contended that god is
infinitely foolish and malicious, though he is “ perfectly” so.
He cannot do “ impossibilities,” nor things involving “ con
tradiction.” He found matter to his hand, and had to work
under the “ same condition of labor ” that men work under ;
and so, though the universe is not absolutely and infinitely
bad, yet it is as bad as the deity could possibly make it.
And, further, we are not to argue that because some scraps
of good, or seeming good, really do exist, that therefore the
good is eternal; for “ limited good for a limited time ” may
be consistent with perfect evil, and the deity is working by
various agencies to remove all good from his universe; and
then nought but evil will remain for ever!
There is Mr. St. Clair’s argument simply reversed.
2. But I must notice in detail the very few natural pheno
mena my opponent condescends to mention. The eye he
instances as a proof of design and beneficent divine work
manship. He says it is superior to opera-glasses. The best
eyes, no doubt, are better than opera-glasses. But our best
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
35
telescopes and microscopes far transcend the eye as optical
instruments. Its qualities are coarse and rudimentary com
pared with theirs. Eyes ! They are beautiful and ugly,
of good color and of disagreeable ; there are blear eyes,
goggle eyes, squint eyes, wall eyes ; color-blindness is a
defect observed in many thousands. Millions upon millions
of eyes never see at all. Were they made to see with ?
Had a beneficent creator made eyes, he would have
ensured their good performance. Had he meant them
for human advantage, he would have turned out
respectable workmanship. I wonder he did not do that
for his own credit. What optician could follow his example ?
All over the civilised world are ophthalmic institutions,
where men are constantly engaged patching up, or actually
improving, the work of Mr. St. Clair’s divine manufacturer,
who made eyes of water, jelly and soft fibres, whereas they
should have been made of hard and tough material, so that
disarrangement and destruction were next to impossible.
And these eyes, good, bad, useless, are palmed off upon us
by the maker, whether we like them or not. He gives no
guarantee for their performance either, as a respectable
jnanufacturei’ would, nor does he ever repair them when
dace out of order. There is no sense of honesty, decency or
shame in this deity. If he bestows eyes as a duty, they
ought all to be good ; if out of charity, it is a mockery to
give a poor wretch the eyes we often see !
If the eye is a divinely-manufactured article, as Mr. St.
Clair says (without attempting to prove it), then the worker
knew less of optics than I do, or else carelessly did his
work. The eye is not achromatic, and it has too many
lenses, the many surfaces of which waste light. It has the
defect of astigmatism, which shows that its maker did not
know much of mathematical optics. This grand instru
ment, the crowning work of an almighty god, has two
odd curves in the front—that is, in the cornea.
Everyone knows that the common run of spectacles
have a longer curve horizontally than perpendicularly,
and so has the eye !
Our best lenses are ground to
mathematical correctness, and the same curve prevails all
over the same side ; but the eye is herein defective. Hence
we cannot see, at the distance of clear vision, a horizontal
and perpendicular line distinctly at once : one of them is in
�36
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
focus when the other is out. Had there been a wise and
beneficent creator, he would long since have corrected this
defect, for opticians pointed it out generations ¡fince in
their critiques upon the eye. The eye, therefore, if made at
all, must be considered as the work of a mere amateur, and
-of one who worked more for his own amusement than for
human welfare.
3. The teeth! First of all, we are born without any;
later we “cut” them in misery, convulsions, often at the
expense of life.' The teeth thus cut are not permanent,
after all; in a few years they drop out, or are pushed out
by the so-called permanent teeth. And these!—in many
cases they begin to decay in a very few years ; henceforth
the victim of this dishonest tooth-maker is subject to tooth
ache, neuralgia, and dyspepsia. He also has to go to the
expense of new teeth, stuffing, etc., if he can afford them.
And may I ask my opponent what he would think of a
dentist who furnished him with teeth that ached, and
and decayed, and tumbled out ? What would he say if any
dentist treated him half so badly as his deity treats thousands?
If eyes and teeth are really manufactured by deity, Mr. St.
Clair must refute my criticisms, or admit that his deity is a
clumsy or careless worker, and also very dishonest and cr^jel.
These facts must be met and explained before Theism can
be shown to be rational.
4. But Mr. St. Clair seems to me virtually to give up all
possible right to use the Design Argument by admitting, as
he does, the independent existence of matter. If there be a
mystery in nature, then the existence of matter is that
mystery. And, further, there must be, from the nature of the
case, as much, at least, as much, if not more, design and
adaptation in the very elements of matter as in any living
thing. And, further still, I am not aware that anyone has
yet drawn the line between living matter and non-living
matter, nor have I any reason to suppose such a line
possible. All matter is probably alive, and always was
so, and ever will be so, though in far different degrees.
I affirm, too, that the adaptation between the molecules,
or atoms, or whatever the ultimate elements of matter may
be called, must be more perfect than between the parts of a
man. No man is perfect; nor is his best organ beyond the
range of adverse criticism. No man is perfectly adapted to
�ATHEISM Oli THEISM ?
37
his environment—at best his adaptation is but a makeshift,
a “ roughing it,” a period of unstable equilibrium, a tight
rope dance for dear life, with absolute certainty in every
case of a fatal fall by way of finale.
Turning from man, look at the ocean. Its waves swell
and roar and break a million million times ; but its water
changes not. Its atoms of hydrogen and oxygen are in
perfect equilibrium, in perfect mutual adaptation. So was
it when the first water flowed ; so will it be for ever. And
could that adaptation, so perfect, so absolute, so time-defy
ing, be the result of an accident, or natural result of merely
natural forces, as Mr. St. Clair implies ? And will he con
tend that the most perfect adaptations require no adapter,
while asserting that the imperfect, evanescent, and miserable
adaptations seen in man required for their production
an almighty and intelligent god ? To do so may be
prime theology, but it is not philosophy, nor science, nor
reason.
Mr. St. Clair now admits that he cannot define deity. I
suspected as much—he has no deity to define. Then why
does he contend for what he does not understand ? Like
the woman of Samaria, he “ worships he knows not what.”
“A mother’s affection is intended for the good of her off
spring,” my opponent informs me. It is impossible that he
can know that it is “ intended” for anything; that it does
effect the good of her offspring, though not invariably, is at
once conceded. What more does Mr. St. Clair know about
it ? And what is a mother’s hate “ intended ” for ? And
this hate “ owes its origin to the author of life.” Rabbits
frequently eat their young; is that also at the instigation
of deity ? Such arguments as my opponent deals in are
not “ Theistic facts,” as he supposes; they are merely
superstitious fictions unworthy the respect of a man
like Mr. St. Clair. To talk about deity caring for a
mother’s offspring is to me simply shocking. Who is
it' kills children in millions by measles, whooping cough,
convulsions, fever, small-pox, by earthquake, flood and
famine ? If there really does exist a deity, he kills millions of
children every century by famine. Has Mr. St. Clair ever
reflected on that fact ? Why, if a mother’s love has any
“ intention ” at all, it is to defend her child as long as
possible against the murderous attacks of this very deity,
�88
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
who meets us at every turn and “ seeks to kill us ” at every
stage of life.
Will Mr. St. Clair give me one proved Theistic fact in
his next ?
LETTER VIII.
From Mr. Gr. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
Robinson Crusoe was puzzled as to his whereabouts in the
great ocean, but he was able to explore his little island;
and he might have made canoe voyages and gradually
extended the area of his knowledge, though hopeless of
including all the world. Mankind, in like manner, have
mapped the solar system, and delved down to the Silurian
rocks with their fossils, and they find their knowledge real
and useful, though it brings them no nearer to the beginning
of time or the boundaries of space. Our inability to com
prehend the Infinite is not a reason for undervaluing the
things within our reach. It is foolish to say we explain
nothing, because we cannot fully understand the first origin.
Things are explained, in a degree which gives the mind
some satisfaction, when we trace them back to their causes.
The trade winds, for instance, are accounted for by the
sun’s heat and the earth’s rotation : and this explanation is
not rendered inaccurate by pointing out that the cause of
the earth’s rotation is not known, and that the sun’s heat
itself requires accounting for. I, in my Crusoe fashion,
explore, and am obliged to be content with something less
than infinite knowledge. I trace some things to man’s intel
ligent action as their cause, and am convinced that certain
steam-engines, pumps, microscopes, &c., would not have
existed but for his operation. I find other things which I
can only explain by ascribing them to an intelligence which
is not man’s. The worker is not seen, but the work is seen;
and I know there must have been an architect of the human
frame, as I know there must have been a designer of
Cologne cathedral.
The human eye would be enough evidence if I had no
other. “ Was the eye constructed without skill in optics ? ”
asks that great mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton—“ or the
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
S9
ear without knowledge of sounds ? ” The argument is a
thousand-fold stronger for regarding the human frame as a
designed structure taking it as a whole ; for the eye stands
to the body only as the east window to the cathedral. The
teeth are a beautiful apparatus, surpassing human inven
tions, when we consider their growth, their enamelled pro
tective covering, their office, and their position at the
entrance of the alimentary canal, in proximity to the
tongue and the sources of saliva. The valves in the blood- vessels are so manifestly placed there with a view of securing
the circulation of the blood that Harvey inferred the Crea
tor’s intention, and so was guided to his discovery. It is a
question which all great investigators ask—“ What is the
creative intention in this arrangement ?■ ” for they find it a
clue to discovery. I must not linger over the human body:
let Atheists read Paley, Brougham, and Bell, and some of
them will give up their Atheism and take to refuting Mr.
Symes’s worn-out objections. Every creature is admirably
adapted to its mode of life and to the element in which
it lives. If we desired to give the body of a fish the best
form for moving through the water we should have to
fashion it as a solid of least resistance. “ A very difficult
chain of mathematical reasoning, by means of the highest
branches of algebra, leads to a knowledge of the curve which,
by revolving on its axis, makes a solid of this shape ....
and the curve resembles closely the face or head part of a
fish.” Let the young reader, perplexed by Mr. Symes’s
objections, read more of this in Lord Brougham’s “ Objects,
Advantages and Pleasures of Science.” The feathers of the
wings of birds are found to be placed at the best possible
angle for assisting progress by their action on the air. In
the Duke of Argyll’s “ Reign of Law ” there is a chapter
concerning the admirable mechanism of the bird’s wing. A
bird is heavier than the air in which it is sustained, and it
has to make headway against a resisting atmosphere. Man’s
poor attempts to make wings usually result in the disaster
of Imlac in Dr. Johnson’s “ Rasselas ” ; man’s attempts to
navigate the air by balloons are so poor that the Customs
Officers have no fear of being eluded. If we wish to see
how material laws can be so bent as to effect a designed
purpose we must study the problem of a bird’s flight.
Leaving birds for insects, how marvellous it is that the
�40
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
cabbage butterfly should always lay its eggs on the cabbage,
the leaves of which are so suited for the nourishment of the
young grubs, and will be so much relished! That butter
fly has no taste for cabbage leaves itself, and it will not live
to see its offspring, yet its instinct—which is not of its own
creation—guides it aright. These are samples of Theistic
facts, in one department. When Mr. Symes has dealt with
them I can furnish more.
In my Crusoe fashion, I discern an intelligence at work
which is not my own, nor that of my brother man, which
immensely transcends mine and his, though, with my Crusoe
limitations, I have not the means of deciding the measure
of its greatness. I discern a worker, whether infinite or
not—a worker operating under conditions, whether the con
ditions be self-imposed or not. He accomplishes many
things which I can appreciate ; He seems to be working
out greater purposes which I do but dimly grasp.
As an evolutionist I discern something of a purpose
running through the ages, independent of the will of kings
and legislators. I perceive a gradual advance to higher
platforms of life, at present culminating in man. Man did
not come until the earth had been prepared for him, and
stores of coal and iron laid up for his use. Apparently he
could not come without lower creatures preceding him ;
because he had to be born from them. As a race, we have
had to go through our schooling, for in no other way could
we become educated; our struggle with difficulty makes
men of us, unless we neutralise it by taking the discipline
sulkily. Had the Creator been perpetually at our elbow to
do our lessons for us, to work for us while we slept, and to
help us over all stiles, we should never have attained intel
lectual manhood and moral strength. Man is progressing
still, and therefore will be a nobler creature by and bye.
His surroundings are subject to an evolution and improve
ment, which advances pari passu with himself. He himself
is the Creator’s latest-fashioned and best-adapted instru
ment for effecting these desirable adaptations, commissioned
to carry on and carry out some of the highest purposes of
God. It is a great thing to be conscious of this ; and I am
bold to say that thousands of good people are conscious of
communion with a Higher Soul, of inspirations received
from him, and of tasks assigned by him, the act omplish*
4
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
41
meut of which is another phrase for co-operation with him
and doing his will on earth.
This Divine Worker seems to be limited by “the con
ditions of all work.” rAs regards ourselves and our own
work, we candlbt conceive how we could live at all in a
dreamy, shifting, chance world, not subject to fixed con
ditions. We are finite and conditioned, and cannot realise
an utterly different kind of existence. It would follow from
this alone that anything which the Creater may do with us
or for us must be conformable to the conditions of the
world we live in if it is to be comprehensible to us. Although,
therefore, He be great beyond all assignable limits, he must
necessarily look limited to us. Where we see him operating
we see him making use of natural forces, moulding and
directing them. The natural forces in themselves are neither
moral nor immoral—steam, electricity, and strychnine have
no conscience, and are not to be blamed or praised for their
effects. They may be turned to good uses or to bad uses—
strychnine to poison or to relieve, steam to work a locomo
tive or propel a murderous bullet. We infer a worker and
his moral character from the use made of natural forces.
Mr. Symes does not distinguish between forces working
blindly and forces working under intelligent direction, but
insists on ascribing all results to God, or else none. This
is not what I discern, for I perceive that some things have
been contrived by some Intelligence, and of other things I
do not perceive it.
An enlightened evolutionist ought to know that “ Evil ”
is “ Good in the making.” It has been so in the past,
again and again. Perfect goodness is producing more and
more good constantly (evil, as Spencer shows, is evanes
cent) and may probably produce infinite good in the course
of time. But Mr. Symes is not content to have it produced,
he wants his bread before the cake is baked.
Mr. Symes finishes his last by asking “Will I give him one
proved Theistic fact?” Well, something depends upon
what is allowed to be “ proof,” and that again depends upon
whether you have to convince a man of common sense or a
man of uncommon obstinacy. If folk possess eyes it is no
guarantee that light will reach their minds, if they choose
to live in a camera obscura. My opponent closes the shutters
and then complains that things are dark. What can I do
�42
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
with a man who does not believe that eyes are given him
to see with ? On the same principle his faculties are not
given him to enable him either to reason correctly or to
understand arguments. Perhaps I ought not to be surprised
that my proofs are thrown away upon him.
1 have noticed in going through a cut-glass manufactory
that although the workmen are skilful and the processes are
ingenious by which the crude “ metal” is blown, annealed,
ground on wheels of iron for the pattern, and on wheels of
stone and wood for smoothing and polishing—I have noticed
that accidents are liable to occur at every stage, and some
few cruets, wine-glasses, decanters, etc., get broken and
thrown into the waste tub. But if I want to see what is
being produced, and was designed before it was manufac
tured, I go not to the waste-tub, but to the show-room.
Certainly even a fractured salt-cellar in the waste-tub
would show design—a formative design accidently baulked,
not a design to produce fracture and waste—but a wise man
will rather go to the show-room. Mr. Symes, I imagine,
would go to the waste-tub and refuse to see anything out
side of it. He invites us to contemplate blind eyes, rotten
teeth and people suffering from cancer. He assures us that
had a beneficent Creator made our eyes He would have
ensured their good performance. I should reply that He
does so. “ Not in all cases,” says my querulous friend,
“ why I find squinting eyes and blind eyes, and here are
ophthalmic institutions ! ” True, man’s heart of pity leads
him to heal. Man’s intelligence enables him to understand
something of optics. In both respects he is growing up in
the ways of his Heavenly Father. The modest Newton
admired the Divine skill in optics: but Mr. Symes claims
to “ know more of optics himself,” and to be able to teach
the Creator his business. The eye “ought to have been made
not of water, jelly, and soft fibres, but of hard and tough
material.” Surely Alphonso of Castile has come back again.
That monarch said that had he been of the privy council of
the Deity he could have advised the formation of the solar
system on a better plan ! Had he said this concerning the
actual solar system instead of against the false system of
Ptolemy, it would have been irreverent, not to say blasphe
mous. I count it rather inconsistent in Mr. Symes to want
any uyes at all, as he thinks they were not made to see with
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
43
and are an endlass bother. Perhaps the hard and tough one£
which he would substitute would be faulty in their re
fraction (for all work is conditioned by the material).
Can my opponent assure me that it would not be so ? Has
he got any of these eyes ready-made, and do they answer
perfectly ? or is this an empty boast of his about improving
upon the Creator’s work ? I doubt not that there is a good
reason for employing soft humors and delicate fibres in the
eye, and then I admire the care and wisdom which have
provided so well for the protection of such a delicate organ,
by the position given to it, in a bony socket defended by lids
and lashes and ramparts. “ But the eye lacks achromatism,
and has the defect of astigmatism, and follows the pattern
of inferior spectacle-glasses in having two curves in the
cornea.” Rather random assertions these : take for instance
the first. Chromatism is color-ism; a double convex lens
or magnifying glass causes objects to appear with rainbow
colored fringes. This was a defect for a long time in
telescopes, and telescopes free from the defect are called
achromatic. Well, are we troubled and inconvenienced by
seeing these colored fringes when we use the naked eye ?
Is any reader conscious of it ? Now what is the fact ? All
telescopes were defective in this particular, and Sir I.
Newton had said that there could be no remedy, until it
occurred to an ingenious optician that the difficulty must
have been overcome by the Maker of the eye. So he
examined the eye till he discovered how it was overcome,
and then by imitation of the Creator’s method invented the
first achromatic telescope. I would call my opponent’s
attention to this, but I suppose it is of no use ; he will
persist in regarding the eyes as clumsy workmanship and in
complaining that they are palmed off upon us whether we
like it or not. The traveller Vambery mentions that in
Bokhara they punish slaves by gouging out their eyes. Mr.
Symes, to be consistent, ought not to protest against the
■cruelty, since in his estimation it involves no loss, and the
Chief cruelty is in having the eyes thrust upon us. But in
answer to his astounding assertion that the eye is not
respectable workmanship and that the best telescopes far
transcend it as optical instruments, it is sufficient to say
that we can see with our eyes, unaided by telescopes, whereas
we cannot see with telescopes unaided by eyes.
�44
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
My opponent not only damns his eyes, but curses his
Jreth. First because he is born without them! On his
theory this ought to be an advantage, so far as it goes. But,
considering that other beautiful provision of the beneficent
Creator, which supplies a fountain of milk for the infant
lips to draw from, teeth are not only not required for a milk
diet, but would be inconvenient to the mother. Then Mr.
Symes cries out, “ We cut them in misery! ” He is always
afraid of a little pain. “The first set are not permanent.”
No, becau-e the child will grow, the jaws will lengthen, and
there will be room enough for larger teeth, and for thirtytwo instead of twenty. Mr. Symes, as a child, had less
jaw; which reminds me, however, of a pun made by John
Hunter, the famous surgeon. While he was once lecturing,
and pointing out that in the higher animals the jaw is
shorter, while the intelligence, of course, is greater, his
pupils were chattering nonsense to one another. “ Gentle
men,” said Hunter, “let us have more intellect and less
jaw!” I don’t know whether those young men had attained
their wisdom-teeth. Mr. Symes is annoyed that even the
second set of teeth are subject to neuralgia and decay.
This he considers a great Atheistic fact. The evil appa
ratus of the teeth is thrust upon us in the same cruel
manner as our clumsily-made eyes, and we may any day
have an attack of neuralgia. At length, however, the
teeth decay and leave us, and then what do we do ? Why,
it appears, we have to go to the expense of a new set, so
essential are they, and this is made an additional subject of
complaint! By the bye, I suppose I must not pass over the
question put—what should I say if a dentist supplied me
with teeth that ached ? I should say that he was cleverer
than any other dentist I had met with, for the aching was
proof that he had connected the teeth with nerves, and made
them live. I should say I was glad to have living teeth in.
my mouth, instead of dead ivory, and that I was satisfied
the teeth were contrived for me to eat with, while their very
occasional aching was only an unpleasant incident, and per
haps brought on by my own folly. Careful people will not
often catch cold in the face, and good, moral people will not
so devote themselves to Venus and mercury that their teeth
fall out.
Let us come to adaptations. Of course I am not going.
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
45
to be pinned to any definition which makes adaptation the
same thing as design. Some adaptations may not be
designed. There’s a distinction to be drawn between mere
fitness to produce a result, and purposive fitness which intends
to secure the result. But Mr. Symes as usual does not
perceive distinctions which make all the difference. He
says that water is adapted for drowning and fire for burning.
Granted: but are they purposely adapted, deliberately
designed and fitted ? This is the very essence of the question.
When the jeweller’s boy drops a watch, gravity and “ the
law of falling bodies” are adapted to smash it; but that is
an accidental adaptation, not to be compared with the
adaptation of part to part in the construction of the watch
—not to be compared with it, but rather contrasted.
Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall, and the egg thus smashed
could not say that gravity was unadapted to produce the
result ; but compare this with the purposive adaptation of
an egg, as I will now epitomise it from Professor Owen’s
lecture on “ Design.” An egg is made convex and dome
like, to bear the weight of the sitting bird. It contains a
whitish spot, which is the germ, in which the development
of the chick begins. The germ is on one side of the yolk,
quite near to the shell, for it is necessary that it should be
brought as close as possible to the hot brooding skin of the
sitting hen. Now it is a fact that though you take as many
eggs as you please, and turn them about as often as you
like, you will always find this opaque white spot at the
middle of the uppermost surface of the yolk. Hunter com
pared this phasnomenon to the movements of the needle to
the pole. Of course there is an apparatus -which secures
this result; but it is an apparatus, a piece of machinery.
“ As the vital fire burns up, organic material is reduced to
carbon ; a membrane, over which the blood spreads in a
net-work of minute vessels, like a gill or lung, then extends
from the embryo to the inner side of the shell, between it
and the white; the shell is made porous to allow the air
access to this temporary respiratory organ ; and the oxygen
combining with the carbon, it exhales as carbonic acid. As
the chick approaches the period of its extrication, it is able
to breathe by its proper lungs, and in the vesica aeris, or
collection of air at the great end of the egg, it finds the
wherewithal to begin its feeble inspirations, and to utter the
�46
ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
Jow chirp which may be heard just before it chips the shell.
And how does it effect this ? By means of a hard knob
specially formed upon the end of the upper beak, and which,
after it has done its work, disappears.” All this appears to
me something very different from the adaptedness of the
hard ground to break the egg if it falls; but Mr. Symes
would have us believe that the adaptation is of the same
sort! His words are, “ It cannot be denied that the pro
cesses of decay and destruction show as perfect adaptation i
of means to ends as processes which result in life.”
He argues that if anything is designed, earthquakes,
plagues, cancer, etc., are designed to cause pain, and must
be regarded as proving a malignant God. But can he show
that the fitness or adaptation in these agencies is purposive ?
I can see design in an infernal machine ; oh yes ! but I am
not convinced that earthquakes are an infernal arrangement,
much less that teeth are a diabolical invention because
they sometimes ache. The adaptedness of the teeth for
mastication bears the appearance of a good purpose; the
adaptedness of an earthquake to rock down houses is
not clearly purposive at all. There are influences of
destruction and of decay, I admit; but the constructive
operations are what I see design in. If I don’t attribute
the former to God, my opponent must not object, since he
does not either.
I have a word to say which must be fatal to this idea
that the forces of decay and destruction are purposive, if
any are, and prove a malignant deity. A malignant deity
finding pleasure in destruction, would soon destroy every
thing. But, in fact, the agencies which build up are
stronger than the agencies which destroy; construction
gains upon decay, good gains upon evil. For evil is evanes
cent as Herbert Spencer shows, in a chapter which Mr.
Symes will not deal with. Even if destruction had to be
ascribed to a destroying deity, construction would have to be
ascribed to a deity engaged in building up. Then, as the
same being would hardly build up with one hand and destroy
with the other, Mr. Symes would be landed in Dualism, or
the old Persian belief in two Gods. The further fact that
construction is gaining upon decay, good gaining upon evil,
would force him to admit that the good deity was the
stronger. The way out of this difficulty is only to be found
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
47
fai Theism as I advocate it—one God, operating under con|
ditions. One proof and test of this Theism consists in the
fact that evil and decay do not carry purpose on the face of
them, while organised adaptations do.
If the reader grasps this fact he will see through my
opponent’s curious attempt to turn my argument round and
make it appear equally good for proving the existence of a
malignant deity. He suggests such a being, “ laboring
under conditions ” which prevent infinite evil from being
effected at once, but “ working by various agencies to remove
all good from his universe.” He does not seem to see
that this implies a universe of “ good ” to begin with, and
that this is another form of his irrational demand that the
finished thing should exist before the crude and unwrought,
the perfect v^ork before there has been time for its elabora
tion. He wants his cake before it is baked, before the flour
is kneaded, before the wheat is grown.
LETTER IX.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
Mr. St. Clair says he “ knows ” there must have been
an “ architect of the human frame,” as he knows there
must have been “ a designer of Cologne Cathedral.” Well,
then, the human frame must be an architectural production,
or building. Of what Order, of what Style is it ? I never
saw it described in any book on Architecture : how is that ?
So baseless is my opponent’s Theism that he confounds
language in order to support it. If he will prove that
man’s frame is an architectural structure, I will prove
Cologne Cathedral to be a mushroom, of an edible sort, too.
Mr. St. Clair having no case, no real god, no facts to
support his superstition, cherishing a blind belief in an
impossibility, resorts to the unconscious legerdemain of
deceiving himself and his readers by the use of poetical and
mythical language, in which the distinction between natural
objects and human manufactures is ignored, and a potato
is dubbed a building and a building designated a turnip.
This is what the “Design argument” resolves itself into;
and under its witchery, men, not otherwise unfair or
�4 <8
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
^logical, run through fantastic mazes of bewilderment,
vainly persuading themselves that they are reasoning, when
they arc only floundering in “ Serbonian bogs,” following
the Theistic will-o’-the-wisp, manifestly benighted and lost,
and yet assuring you with the utmost gravity that they and
they alone are perfectly self-possessed and well know their
whereabouts, and whither they are tending.
With Mr. St. Clair, teeth are yet a beautiful apparatus
designed and intended for mastication. Has he never
reflected that nutrition is totally independent of mastication
and teeth in countless millions of beings ? The child lives
without teeth, so does many an old man ; sheep and cows
have no front teeth in the upper jaw; the whale, the
dugong, the ornithorhynchus, ant-eaters, and all birds are
destitute of teeth. If presence of teeth argues design, what
does their absence argue ? If ^od gives a man teeth to eat
with, I presume he means him to cease eating when he
destroys them. Instead of that, my opponent and other
irreverent and disobedient Theists, either misunderstanding
or disregarding the divine intimation, rush away to the
dentist and get other teeth wherewith to obstruct the divinf
intentions ! Will he explain his conduct?
Of course, I admit that nature can in some departments
immensely exceed man, but that does not prove any exis
tence ctbopc nature. The valves of the blood-vessels are
manifestly placed there to secure the circulation of the
blood, says my opponent. He might as well affirm that a
river-bed is manifestly placed where it is to secure the flow
of the river that way. Which existed first, rivers or river
beds? Which existed first, valves or blood-circulation?
There is in the animal world abundant circulation without
valves or veins. The cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises,
&c.) have no valves in their veins; and yet, I presume,
their blood circulates as well as ours. Circulation goes on
in a speck of protoplasm where there is no structure at all.
Even in organisms, the heart may be very diverse, and yet
serve the owner as well as we are served. In frogs, toads,
&c., there is but one ventricle; in most fish there is but one
auricle and one ventricle; in the lancelet there is but a
single tube. But their blood circulates as well as ours.
Had Mr. St. Clair’s deity felt any deep concern for
human welfare, he would have placed, had it occurred to
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
49
him, valves in the deep arteries, so that the poor wretcH
who ruptures one of them should not bleed to death.
I grew out of Paley, Brougham, and Bell’s theology years
ago. What naturalist or physiologist to-day shows any
respect to their crude Design argument ? Besides, Mr. St.
Clair has no right to refer to them; his god is not theirs—
theirs was almighty and infinitely wise; his a poor puny
thing for whom his single high priest is ever making
apologies.
If every creature were adapted, !< admirably ” or not, “to
the element in which it lives,” it wmuld never die. Geological
strata furnish absolute proofs that no creatures, no race of
creatures, were ever yet “ admirably adapted to their con
ditions.” Whole races have died out. Will my opponent
kindly explain ? Has he ever read of famines, coal-pit
disasters, earthquakes? What sort of a world does he live in?
Has he never passed a shambles or a cemetery ? Do the
creatures of his marvellously concocted god die of excessive
adaptation to their environments, or what ?
The fish is of just the right shape—the solid of hast
resistance fits it for its element. This looks learned and
imposing. But are all inhabitants of the water of one shape?
How is the solid of least resistance realized in the spermaceti
whale, with its big, blunt, square-fronted head ? In the
hammer-head? In the “ Portuguese man-of-war ? ” In
those slow ones that fall a prey to the swift ? Mr. St. Clair
reminds me of that venerable lady who could not sufficiently
admi re the ■wisdom of god in making rivers run down hill
and along the valleys. That, certainly, is a very strong
proof of divine existence; for rivers would run the other
way if there were no god, just as surely as fishes would be
of divers shapes, instead of being all of one pattern as they
now are, if there were not a god to make them all in his own
image.
The feathers of a bird’s wings are placed, I am informed,
at the “ best possible angle for assisting progress,” etc.
And cold is found in the best possible conditions for freezing
the early buds and blossoms and for killing men and children
exposed to it. Heat is well adapted to warming purposes.
Had there been no god, heat would probably freeze things,
and frost would roast, boil, or burn them. There is as much
design in the one case as in the other. Mr. St. Clair may
�50
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
next tell us the design in the wings of a penguin, a moa, or
an apteryx.
The cabbage butterfly deposits its eggs by instinct, says my
opponent. How does he know that sight or smell does not
guide it ? Has he consulted the insect ? What is instinct ?
And what right has Mr. St. Clair’s god to destroy my cabbages
by the disgusting caterpillars which spring from those eggs ?
Gardeners kill those caterpillars by myriads every year; but
the real destroyer of our gardens is Mr. St. Clair’s god.
Whose instinct or instigation leads the ichneumon to deposit
its eggs right in the body of a caterpillar, so that its
murderous brood should eat up their living host ? Whose
instinct guides the tapeworm to a human body ? Whose
instinct guides the locusts to lay waste a country and produce
a famine ?
My opponent says that butterflies and other objects men
tioned in his second paragraph are “ samples of theisti®'
facts.” So much the worse for deity and Theism, if true. I
had supposed, however, that Mr. St. Clair knew the differ
ence between Theology and Natural Science 1 Must I
enlighten him ? The eye and the circulation of the blood
are anatomical and physiological facts, not Theistic; birds
and fishes are subjects in zoology, and insects belong to the
sub-science of entomology. Cannibalism is as much, possibly
more, a Theistic fact as any yet named. Though if my
opponent will claim for his god the credit of creating all
noxious and destructive pests, including fleas, bugs, tape
worms, etc., I suppose an Atheist need not complain.
What my opponent says of “ discerning an intelligence
at work,” a “ worker .... whether infinite or not,” a
“ purpose running through the ages,” etc., is no doubt
borrowed from one of his discourses; and sure I am it
edified all the devout who listened to it. But discussion is
not a devotional exercise exactly, and I must beg him to
translate those liturgical scraps into plain language,
specially that about the “purpose running through the
ages.” The language is good ; I wonder if the purpose is.
I am in a fever-heat of anxiety to hear what it is my
opponent discerns, whether anyone else may get a glimpse
of it—at not too great a cost. The man that can “ discern
a purpose running through the ages ” of human history
must be either very much clearer sighted or immensely
�ATHEISM OB THEISM ?
51
more superstitious than anyone that I know. Indeed, I
must, till evidence be forthcoming, regard the boast as
nothing more than a rhetorical flourish. Is Mr. St. Clair a
clairvoyant, I wonder, or subject to second sight ?
“Man,” we are gravely told, “did not come until the earth
had been prepared for him.” Neither did the tapeworm, till
man had been prepared for him. It is worthy of note, too, that
pickpockets, forgers, swindlers, fortunetellers, inquisitors,
aristocrats, and vermin generally “ did not come till the
«
earth had been prepared for them.” And, who would credit
it ? there never was a chimney sweep till chimneys existed !
In that fact “ I discern ” a profound “ purpose ” of a two
fold nature:—1st. Chimneys were intended and designed to
be swept, and to this end divine Providence made coals
black and sooty, else sweeps would never have had any
work; 2nd. He made the sweeps in order to clear the flues
of their foulness. Mr. St. Clair may close his eyes to these
facts as long as he pleases ; they are Theistic facts—if any
and are a most remarkable proof of design and
intelligence. It was just as impossible for man to antedate
his necessary epoch, or to postpone it, as for sweeps to precede chimneys. Man’s coming was the natural and inevitable Outcome or result of all the phænomena that preceded
him io-flis own line of development. You have no better
proof that water is a natural product than that man is such.
He had nbJntelligent creator, nor was one required. Man
is a natural, not supernatural, phænomenon. His so-called
creator is Really his creation, a fancy, a bugbear, and
nothing more. It is high time for Atheists, I think, to
cease beating about the bush, and tell the Theist bluntly
that his gods are figments neither useful nor ornamental,
th® offspring of ignorance, fear, and slavery—to-day mere
grim and curious survivals of the epochs when superstition
was unchecked in its growth and sway.
Mr. St. Clair at length takes refuge in inspiration and
. infallibility. “ I am bold to say,” says he, “ that thousands
of good people are conscious of communion with a higher
soul, of inspirations received from him, and of tasks assigned
by him.” Here my opponent chooses for his comrades the
phrenzied prophets and priestesses of ancient superstitions ;
the hysterical nuns who converse with Mary at Lourdes and
where not; Johanna Southcott, Joseph Smith Edward
�52
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
Irving, Brigham Young, Mother Girling, et hoc genus
omne, whose name is legion, whose “ inspirations ” and god
given “ tasks ” have been “ thick as autumnal leaves in
Vallombrosa,” and have included every absurdity and every
crime known to history. What has god not “inspired?”
What has he not imposed as a task? “I could a tale
unfold,” but space forbids.
Will my opponent name one syllable of truth or an original
idea that either he or any other person ever derived from
“inspiration” or in “communion” with this higher soul?
Ah, me! This world is very wonderful. Socrat^ had a
deemon, Prospero was served by Ariel, Faust had his Mephistopheles, and Mr. St. Clair has his “ higher soul,” spelt with
initial capitals ! This higher soul of his—I may speak
with some authority—is but himself, in dim, shadowy, and
magnified outline, a very Brocken Spectre, projected on the
soft clouds of his superstition. I once had the diswg^
badly, but recovered long since. Do not despair, good sir;
the rising sun of common-sense and healthy Atheistic
thought will soon fling his powerful beams on the very spot
where your magnified and ghostly shadow now sits, and the
mists which form the throne of your deity will rarify and
vanish along with the occupant!
But to claim inspiration is to claim infallibility. If you
are sure you have communion with some one, to discuss the
question of his existence, to ask if belief in it is rational, are
highly improper—you have settled the matter by fact, and
there is an end of it. There is no arguing with an inspired
man ; nor should he himself attempt reason, it is unneces
sary. An inspired man should merely dogmatise—as Mr.
St. Clair does. He never argues, he merely states. I under
stand him now; he is weak in logic, but invincible in
faith. Men who hold communion with higher souls rarely
argue well. The reason is obvious:—no man that can
reason well and has a good case ever thinks of rushing into
inspiration. Inspiration is the despair of logic; it is the
refuge of those who are bankrupt of reason. Mr. St. Clair
must no more grumble with the Pope and his infallibility ;
he claims it too, and for exactly the same reasons. Had
the Pope been able to prove his other claims, he would have
had no excuse for claiming infallibility and “ communion
with the higher souls.” Just so, if Mr. St. Clair had been
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
53
able to make out even a passable, lame, blind, and limping
case in this discussion, we should have heard nothing about
inspiration and “ consciousness ” of deity. Any devout
worshipper can extort just as much real inspiration from
old clouts and mouldy bones as my opponent derives from
his god. Of course there is no arguing with this new
Moses—he is up among the crags of Sinai contemplating his
god, speaking to him face to face, reflecting on his feet, or
viewing other “ parts ” of his splendid person. I hope he
will publish his inspirations when he descends.
I should not show any respect to Mr. St. Clair were I to
notice some few sentences in his letter, one close to the end
for example. No man not near his wit’s end could permit
himself deliberately to publish that about gouging out
eyes, &c.
Lastly, Mr. St. Clair has written four out of his six
betters, and yet no shadow of a Theistic fact. Assertions
—-bold enough many of them—we have had in abundance,
but no sound reasoning, no evidence of a divine existence
yet. Is he reserving his arguments and facts for his last
letter, and does he intend to overwhelm me then without
leaving me the possibility of reply? I should like to know
what his god is. Has he not yet made up his mind about
him ?
____
Postscriptum.—I have now, Friday evening, seen the
conclusion of Mr. St. Clair’s long letter. I understood
we were to confine ourselves to two columns and a-half each
letter; but here is one from my opponent of nearly five
columns. If his logic were equal to the length of his
epistles, I should soon be hors de combat, but the logic is in
the inverse ratio of the cubes of the lengths, and so I have
but little to do.
The first sentence of his supplement seems very much like
swearing. I do not “ damn eyes ” or “ curse teeth ; ” I
point out their faults and thus damn their maker, if there be
one. All I have done is to employ fair and honest criticism
respecting the manufactures of this new deity manufactured
by Mr. St. Clair. The really good things of Nature I no
more ignore nor despise than my opponent; I merely show
what sort of a god he has, if he has one. The excuses and
apologies he makes for his most unfortunate deity sufficiently
�54
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
show that Mr. St. Clair feels what I say and cannot refute
my criticisms. This is all I desire of him. He cannot deny
my facts, nor can he successfully defend his poor god upon
one single point, except by representing him as being weak
to contempt. Why contend for such a god ?
Considering how much Mr. St. Clair can write without
saying anything to the point, how long are his letters, how
weak his arguments, how many his words, how few his facts,
and how pointless even those are which he produces, it seems
to me that Hunter’s joke about the “ Jaw ” should have
been reserved for his own behoof. I have nothing at all to
do with the size of the jaw. If the deity made the jaw toe
small for its purpose, my opponent will need to make another
apology for him. I beg to ask : could Mr. St. Clair’s deity
have made the jaw and teeth so that they could grow at an
equal rate, or could he not? Could he have given every
person a good set of teeth that would do their work without
aching, or could he not ? Does he know when producing a
set of teeth that they will begin to decay almost as soon as
completed ? Does he intend them to do so ? Does he intend
them to give pain, or not ? I ask the same about the eyes.
Does this poor deity know when making a pair of blind eyes
that they will never see? Does he intend them to see, or
not? Mr. St. Clair will not answer these questions; his
false position will not allow him.
He would like a dentist who could give him an aching set
of teeth! I have long suspected him of joking, now I am
sure of it. If two of his new teeth pinched his gum, he
would return to the dentist to have them rectified. It is
only when Quixotically defending his poor god that he
pretends to despise pain. It seems to me very heartless to
speak of “ Venus and Mercury ” as he does when he must
know that many people, children for example, who devote
themselves to neither, suffer horrible pain both in connexion
with teeth and eyes—ay, every organ of the body. Is
human suffering a thing to be joked with? Evidently
“ communion with that higher soul ” whom he supposes to
have made this dreadful world, has produced its natural
effects and rendered my opponent callous to the sufferings
around him. Of course, it is only when the spirit of the
lord is upon him and he rises in wrath to do battle for his
deity that he feels no sympathy for human pain. It was
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
i
1
5S
converse with fancied deities that led to all the atrocit’js
of the middle ages. Once believe in a god that inflicts pain,
that makes people deformed, sickly, that afflicts them with
all the horrible diseases that flesh is heir to, and you make
, light of all pain but your own, out of sympathy for your
god and in acquiescence with his supposed intentions. This,
1 I fear, is my opponent’s condition. During this discussion
' he has persevered in ignoring suffering, and has spoken of
all evils as if they were flea-bites. It is, I am sure, his
irrational Theism that makes him do so.
The egg is descanted upon by my opponent. Well, did it
never occur to him that, here, as in every other case he can
mention, the creator, if such there be, must have made the
necessity for his design and adaptation before meeting that
necessity by contrivances? Young are produced in a great
variety of ways. Was it necessary that eggs should be
laid and then brooded over for weeks by the bird ? If so,
whence came that necessity? And does the deity know
whe# he is so carefully constructing an egg that it will
never be laid ? that fowl and egg will both die and rot
together? Or does he know that Mr. St. Clair will eat
g it for breakfast ? What a silly deity to manufacture such
countless millions of eggs, eggs of fishes, and eggs of fowls,
for the purpose of developing them into animals, when he
knows all the while that only a very few of them can
possibly reach their destination ! If he does not know their
destiny, he must be equally contemptible.
Mr. St. Clair tries to establish a distinction between
a mere fitness to produce a result, and purposive fitness
which intends to secure the result. This is a bold flight.
He won’t be “ pinned to definitions,” but he will assume
ability to distinguish between accidents and purposed events
in Nature. I presume his “ communion with the higher
soul ” must have been exceedingly close to authorise him to
speak thus. Is he the grand vizier of his deity, or who ?
Does he suppose his god would overdo his adaptation?
The destructive forces and processes of nature are just as
much organised and arranged for the set purpose of destroy
ing as anything that can be named. To the point: Does
Mr. St. Clair argue or hold that all pain is accidental?
That death is not intended, not designed ? Will he venture
to give a direct answer to these questions ? Are the teeth
�56
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
of cats, tigers, lions, etc., less evidently adapted to their
work of killing than the egg for its supposed intention ? Is
an earthquake less adapted to the destruction of life than
warmth and eggs are to produce or extend it ? Is a famine
less adapted to destroy than a harvest to sustain ? Is the
Spring more fit to produce blossoms than the frost is to nip
them ?
No; a malignant deity would not at once destroy every
thing, for two reasons : 1st. He might be too weak, as Mr. St.
Clair’s is ; 2nd. He would lose most of his horrible pleasure.
Malignancy would do just what my opponent’s god is doing,
raise up generation after generation, as long as he is able,
for the gratification of torturing and destroying them. No .
doubt, if Theism be at all rational, Dualism is the only '
logical form it can take. I am neither Monotheist nor
Duotheist: the whole belief appears to me so irrational and
absurd that I cannot think that civilised men of to-day
would be swayed by it, were their minds not perverted in
that direction in early life.
Indeed, it vastly surprises me to find a partial sceptic,
like my opponent, resuscitating the Design Argument,
which the “ Bridgewater Treatises ” so long ago elaborated
to death. I wish he would say a word or two on the tape
worm, the trichina, and other pests. It is so delightfully
amusing to me to hear a Theist expatiating on the goodness
of deity as displayed in the evils of life 1 “Evil and decay
do not carry purpose on the face of them, while organised
adaptations do.” Indeed 1 What would become of all new
organisms if the old were not cleared off by decay and
death? Beasts, birds, and fishes of prey, are not then
organised to destroy ? The wings of the hawk, the legs of
the tiger, the shape and tail of the dolphin were not
organised to enable them to destroy their prey ? The smut,
a fungus that destroys wheat, the dry rot, barnacles that
eat ships to destruction, locusts, caterpillars, phylloxera,
the empusa muscoo, a fungus that kills flies, the botrytis
bassiana, a fungus which attacks the silkworms, and reduced
the annual production of cocoons in France between the
years 1853 and 1865 from 65,000,000 to 10,000,000; thepotato disease, which caused such suffering and misery in
Ireland—these fungi are not organised, Mr. St. Clair, by im
plication, affirms! What will not Theism lead a man to say?
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
57
He quotes Professor Owen—Does he not know that Owen
and other great Naturalists can tell by the examination of
a tooth whether an unknown animal was a carnivore or a
vegetarian, etc. ? Were the teeth, muscles, viscera, etc.,
of a carnivore “purposively” adapted for killing, tearing,
, and digesting other animals, or not ? Yes, or no ? pray.
!■
My opponent must try again—I wish to encourage him.
He has not yet laid the first stone of rational Theism. No
Theistic fact has he given us yet, no argument or criticism
of mine has he upset so far. I don’t blame him. He has
undertaken an impossible work. All material, all force,
all arrangements (except those of art), all causes, all effects,
all processes, are natural; the supernatural is but a dream.
LETTER X.
From Mr. G-. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
Mr. Symes, in his postscript, again tilts at somebody who
believes in the supernatural. When I spoke of conscious
jbommunion with a Higher Soul, and inspirations received
from Him, I knew 1 was saying something the seeming
refutation of- which was easy; sol prefaced it with—“I
am bold to say.” No doubt all sorts of fanatics have
claimed inspiration. But I do not contend for the divine
ness of phrensies, nor argue for the special inspiration of the
Hebrew prophets. I hold reasonably that all new light of
knowledge and all new impulse to duty is inspiration. Tracing
effects back to causes, I come at last to One Divine Fount.
To Him I ascribe all life, all faculty in man, all insight
into truth, and all the development, improvement and refine
ment which are synonymous with progressive civilisation.
So, when I am requested to name one syllable of truth or a
single original idea derived from inspiration, I name all, for
there is not one which has had any othei’ ultimate source.
I may be referred to secondary or proximate sources, but
that would be like referring me to the printer’s types and
the compositor’s muscular exertions as an explanation of
Tennyson’s poem on “ Despair ” in the November number
of the Nineteenth Century. I am told that the Higher Soul
of which I speak is but myself projected in magnified form
�58
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
on a cloud, and there is just that modicum of truth in as
sertions of this sort which serves to lead some persons into
Atheism. Mr. Symes need not address me as though I were
ignorant of all that has been urged in the way of proving
that “ man makes God in his own image.” I believe man
has often done so, and I employ myself sometimes in destroy
ing such images. But just as there is true astronomy,
notwithstanding early and still-lingering superstitions of
astrology, so there is a true theology. I have shown that
there are evidences of purpose in nature—proofs of a Mind
at work—and there is a mind in man which reads and
understands the realised thoughts in nature and the designs
in progress. Hence it is true to say there is a God, and
that man, intellectually, is made after his likeness.
The closing paragraph of the postscript shows again how
Mr. Symes mistakes the issue. He says: “ All material,
all force, all arrangements (except those of art), all causes,
all effects, all processes, are natural; the supernatural is but
a dream.” Is this supposed to be good against me? I might
almost claim it as my own. My opponent denies the dis
tinction between the natural and the supernatural. So do I,
unless you define “ supernatural” to be the action of mind,
whether human or divine. He maintains a distinction be
tween the natural and the artificial. So do I. I perceive
for myself, and I point out to him, that all “ arrangements ”
made by man, and therefore called artificial, are effected by
the use of “ material ” and “ forces ” and “ causes ” ; so
that to judge whether they be artificial or not we have to
look for evidences of mind, purpose, design. Then I point
out that, judged in this way, the human eye is an artificial
production ; yet not a production of man’s art, and therefore
must be the work of some other Artificer. For similar
reasons, I am forced to the same conclusion regarding many
other things, and in a general way regarding the evolution
of the human race and the progress of the world,
“ I see in part
That all, as in some piece of art,
Is toil co-operant to an end.”
I don’t call these works supernatural; but seeing that they
are superhuman I reckon them as divine art. But Mr.
Symes, because it is po-sible to distinguish between divine
art and human, denies all resemblance; as though that
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
59
followed ! In his first paragraph, flippant and foolish, be
cause he does not find the human frame classed with orders
of architecture, he objects to my saying it has been built
up. He ought to have read a little book called “ The
House I live in”—a work on the human body. But he
would like, if he could, to laugh my legitimate analogies out
of court.
Paley, Brougham, and Bell—my God is not theirs. If
he means that my theology is not quite the same as theirs,
I assent, for I take into account Evolution, which they, in
their day, could not do. The arguments of Paley only
want restating in terms of the Evolution theory. The
machinery, and arrangements, and adaptations which Paley
ascribed to the Creator, some Atheists now ascribe to Evo
lution, as though Evolution were an intelligent creative
entity. Mr. Symes has been slow in launching this
boomerang, probably being little familiar with it, or know
ing it to be ineffective against Theism as I defend Theism ;
but now, for lack of better missiles he hurls it, though
timidly, as one who fears it will come back upon himself.
He disputes my argument that the valves in the blood
vessels are intended to secure the circulation of the blood,
OD the ground that a river makes its own channel. A few
zoological facts are adduced to support the inference, I
imagine, that the blood has constructed the blood-vessels
and given them a gradually increasing complication as we
advance from protoplasm through animals of low organisa
tion, up to man. This is an argument from Evolution.
So there is a gradual advance, is there? with increasing
Complication in the apparatus, and with the noble frame of
man as the result, and yet no design in any of it! Topsy
’spects it comes of itself! natural causes account for it!
Topsy does not comprehend that in divine art, as well as
in human, what is designed by the mind has to be accom
plished by the aid of ‘‘natural” instruments. All that the
eye can see is the instrument and the process; for the
existence of the originating mind has to be mentally
inferred, the guiding and governing spirit is only spiritually
discerned.
Alphonso suggests an improvement in the circulating
apparatus ; he would “ place valves in the deep arteries, so
that the poor wretch who ruptures one of them should not
�60
ATHEISM OK THEISM?
bleed to death.” It seems that valves in the blood-vessels'
might be placed there for a purpose if Alphonso were taken
into counsel! Now there are valves in the arteries, which
allow the blood to flow out from the heart, through the
system, and prevent its regurgitating. If this is the very
thing which Alphonso considers a wise arrangement, why
does he object to it when I call it wise? Or would he make
them to open the reverse way ? Then certainly the heart’s
blood would not pour through an accidental rupture, but
neither would it flow through the system at all, and there
fore we could not live. The arrangement suggested for the
arteries is that which does prevail in the veins; and there
fore there is much less danger from a ruptured vein than
from a ruptured artery. But how could you have circula
tion, if both sets of valves were adapted for sending blood
to the heart, and neither set would allow it to come away ?
Alphonso here shows himself very wise indeed. He is
again asking for contradictory arrangements; he again
fails to see that the Creator is working under conditions.
Mr. Symes, who has not a syllable to say in the way of
proving his Atheism to be rational, can only find material
for his letters by drawing out his opponent—“ Could God
make jaws and teeth in a certain way?” .“What isinstinct?” “Will I make plainer the purpose running
through the ages ? ” etc. Though aware of the trick, I will
say as much as my space allows, about Evolution. Briefly,.
Evolution explains the introduction of new species on to
this planet, in the following way. Taking some alreadyexisting species, the offspring inherit the parental likeness
with variations ; afterwards, in their individual life, they
may undergo modifications, which in turn they transmit to
their offspring. The particular varieties best suited to
external conditions, survive, and leave offspring equally
well suited, or even better suited. Variation upon variation,
in successive generations, causes the difference from the
original to become great, and the creatures are then classed
as a distinct species. In this way one species is born from
another, as truly as an individual is born of its parents.
This inheritance with modifications, is creation by birth.
If external conditions change, the modification takes a
direction which adapts the creature to them. If the crea
ture changes its habits, or migrates and comes under new
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
61
conditions, the modification takes the form of increased
growth in the organs and parts now especially called into
use, and diminished growth of the parts disused. It is no
poser for Mr. Symes to ask me the design of the wings of
the penguin, the moa and the apteryx: their wingshave
become reduced to remnants too small to fly with, because
they changed their habits, because they found a paradise
and preferred not to fly away from it. The wings of their
progenitors served their purpose well; inheritance repro
duced them as long as they were wanted; and when new
conditions or changed habits demanded the greater growth
of other organs, the forces of development were turned in
that direction. Could any self-acting arrangement be more
beautiful ? This is creation from age to age. This is part
of the method by which the purpose of the ages is being
elected. I am not contending for the supernatural instan
taneous creation of elephants with tusks full grown, but for
creation by natural means ; and here we see it going on.
Does Mr. Symes know anything at all about Evolution ?
Has he even read Darwin and Herbert Spencer? His
notion of creation seems to exclude evolution, and his
notion of evolution to exclude creation : but there are two
things he cannot do.: (1) explain any possible process of
creation without evolution, (2) explain how Evolution got
itself into geai’ without a Creator—I mean into such gear
as we find, when its machinery produces organised creatures
of higher and higher sort, culminating in man ; yes, in man,
with his marvellous frame and flesh, blood and brain, reason
and conscience, heart and hopes.
God created man; that is to say, the human race
has been born in fulfilment of the divine purpose. The
i idividual, tracing his parentage backwards, must pass
beyond “Adam” to some creature who was the common
progenitor of men and apes. Of course, man could no
more antedate his necessary epoch and come before his
time than sweeps could precede chimneys, to' use Mr.
Symes’s sooty illustration. I will grant Mr. Symes that; I
will grant him that man could not be born before his parents.
With equal readiness I assent to the proposition that, just as
with the individual infant, the human race was the necessary
result of the phenomena which preceded it in its own line of
development. That is to say, man is a product of natural
�62
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
causes, “ a natural and not a supernatural phenomenon.”
But if this is supposed to exclude a creative Mind, which
designed and fashioned man, I need only ask whether the
statue of Priestley, in Mr. Symes’s town of Birmingham, is
not at once the production of the sculptor’s design and the
inevitable result of particular movements of chisels upon a /'■
block of marble. There is no human production except by
the agency of natural causes ; there are no marks of inten
tion stamped upon such productions without a mind to give 5
them origin and authorship.
Mr. Symes, because I twitted him for crying so much
about his toothache, wrongfully represents me as being
callous to human sufferings. I think, if he had studied
Evolution, he would hardly speak of “ a God that inflicts
pain .... and afflicts people with all the horrible diseases
that flesh is heir to.” He wishes to know, “ Do I hold that
all pain is accidental ? and will I venture to give a direct
answer ? ” Of course I will. As I understand this discus
sion, Mr. Symes does hold that all pain is accidental.
Topsy ’spects that all pain comes of its own self. I, for my
part, have no hesitation in saying that the capacity to suffer
pain is deliberately designed, is manifestly for the gcod of
the individual, and a necessary factor in the evolution of
the higher animals. It may seem a paradox to say that
pain, when it occurs, is a good thing, and yet that it should
be removed as quickly as possible. Nevertheless I say it,
and can show it to be true. If you rest your hand on a
heated iron plate, it will disorganise the flesh. That is un
desirable, because it deprives you of a handy servant. The
pain which tells you that you are running this risk is no
evil, but a sentinel’s warning, a red-light danger signal, a
telegraphic intimation to use caution. We should be badly
off without the capacity for pain, while we should be want
ing in sense not to try and get rid of it by removing its
cause. Returning to “ the purpose runuing through the ,
ages,” it will be found that the animals with the most highly
developed nervous system and greatest capacity for pain
have become the higher animals in other respects, and are
classed high by the naturalist. Sensibility to pain has saved
theii’ progenitors from many dangers, has given them an
advantage in the “ struggle for existence,” and has promoted
their upward evolution in proportion to its acuteness.
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
63
Mr. Symes, who, two or three letters back, thought life
not worth living, has a great objection to death. I thought
so, because when I showed that he ought logically to commit
suicide it was not agreeable to him. When he passes a
cemetery, or reflects that whole races of creatures have died
out, he is much concerned, and marvels that I can retain
my Theism. As with pain, so with death, he demands to
know, “ Do I hold that death is not intended or designed ? ”
and how about beasts of prey—“Yes or no, pray ”? This
peremptory attitude, when used on a platform, might cow a
timid man, and at all events helps to produce an impression
that he is shirking a difficulty. To shirk difficulties is not
my custom. But when Mr. Symes adduces the earthquake
as apparently designed to destroy men, I cannot accept the
instance, because I cannot see that earthquakes are pur
posely adapted to rock down cities. Having some idea of
geological facts, I believe that earthquakes were before
cities in the order of time, and men in their ignorance have
built their cities on the earthquake lines. But the tiger’s
claws and fangs I accept as being plainly designed to fit the
animal for catching and tearing prey. I have before asserted-—and my opponent cannot disprove it—that every
organ is for the good of its possessor. If any exceptions
can be brought forward, I will show that they literally
prove the rule. The tiger’s organs are for the tiger’s
advantage ; so far there is design, and even beneficence.
It is equally true, of course, that the tiger’s claws are a dis
advantage to the tiger’s prey—to the individuals which fall
victims. This has been a great difficulty to the minds of
many good people who have not ransacked nature to find
atheistic arguments. I have only space to say that the
weeding-out of inferior and ill-adapted animals, with the
survival of the fittest, who leave offspring “fit” as them
selves, is a necessary part of the machinery for the evolu
tion of the higher animals. Without this arrangement
there never would have been a race of mankind. It ill
becomes us to quarrel with the process which gave us birth.
The death of those weak individuals is for the good of the
species, and the entire arrangement adds to the sum of
animal enjoyment. Death, in the form in which it comes
to the lower animals, is generally unexpected and seldom
painful; death, as it comes to man, is no evil if it be the
�64
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
portal to higher life. But Atheists, of course, are without
hope. The moral difficulties of the “ struggle for life ” are
dealt with in a volume which may be seen in the British
Museum and in the Birmingham Free Library—a volume
called “ Darwinism and Design,” written by George St.
Clair.
LETTER XI.
From Mr. J. Symes to Mr. G. St. Clair.
Mr. St. Clair entered upon this discussion with the
ostensible object of showing that Theism is rational and
more rational than Atheism. But either he has never
seriously engaged in the work or else has wofully failed in
spite of honest and earnest effort. • What a iheos, deus, or
god is has yet to be learned—my opponent has no settled
opinions upon the subject. If he has, why does he not
straightforwardly state the proposition he intends to main
tain, and then allege only such facts and employ only such
reasoning as may tend to establish his theory ?
His Theism has evidently never been thought out ; he has
adopted it as he adopted the fashion of his coat, and has
never investigated the one or the other critically. If he has
investigated his Theism and really does understand its
nature, ramifications, and bearings, he most scrupulously
keeps it all secret, as Herodotus did much of what he was
told about the gods in Egypt—the most secret mysteries he
refused, from the most pious motives, to reveal. This is to
be regretted, especially as my opponent has so much to
reveal, if he could be induced to do it, being imbued with
plenary inspiration. Though, like most modest men, now
that I ask him to let us know what his god has told him, I
find his bashfulness so overpowers him that he cannot
summon up sufficient courage to give the world a single
syllable of what he heard or saw on Horeb or in the third
heaven. It is a pity the deity did not select a more appro
priate prophet ; but the ways of divine providence are
notoriously odd, capricious, uncertain, contradictory, and
insane.
Mr. St. Clair asks if I know anything of evolution. No
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
65
doubt that is intended to be a tit for some tat of
mine,
I may say that I understand Darwin and the
resMf the evolutionists sufficiently to know that evolution
is purely Atheistic, that nature is all-sufficient for all her
operations; that no god is wanted, needed, or desirable for
‘ any of her processes. I am obliged to Mr. St. Clair for
calling attention to his own book on the subject, though fir
the purposes of this discussion it was unnecessary ; and, if
Mr. St. Clair does not understand Darwin far better than
he does his poor deity, the book cannot be worth reading.
A man who can write five long letters on Theism without
naming one Theistic fact, or attempting a logical or rational
argument in support of his position—five letters full of
irrelevancies, side-issues, platitudes, uncertainties apologies
for deity, misrepresentation of natural facts, pompous
boasts of divine inspiration, and ability to “ discern the
purpose” of god “running through the ages,” and the dis
tinction between accidents and “purposive” events in
nature—whatever knowledge such a man may have, his
temper and disposition, his total want of ballast and critical
acumen must unfit him entirely for writing a work on
-evolution or any other philosophical subject.
If nature operates her own changes, evolution is a
beautiful theory ; but admit a god who works by means of
evolution, and the whole aspect of the subject is changed;
evolution becomes the most perfect system of red-tapism
that can be conceived. If evolution results in good, all
that good was as much needed millions of years back as
now; but red-tape decided that whole generations must
perish, that evils and abuses could not be removed, except
by an interminable and bewildering and murderous process,
complex beyond expression or thought—whereas an honest
■ and able god would have done the work out of hand and
i shown as much respect for the first of his children as for
later ones. But Mr. St. Clair’s murders generation after
J generation of his family for the sake of working out some
change, the evolution of a new organ, the gradual atrophy
or decay of old ones, the rise of a new species or the
destruction of aboriginal races.
I shall not further follow up Mr. St. Clair’s remarks.
They are not to the point, even approximately. He con
founds language and mingles art and nature, and thus
�66
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
bewilders his unwary reader instead of informing him. Long
since I should have ignored what my opponent says, only
my action would have been misunderstood. To prove
Theism rational one must prove that there is a god. This
has not been done. Then you must connect god and nature.
This has not been done; in fact, Mr. St. Clair is reduced to
the necessity of admitting that his god is weak and even a
part of nature—a big, stupid giant, most probably living in
that region to which the celebrated Jack climbed up by a
bean-stalk.
Here follow some positive evidences that there is no god
existing, except the mere idols and fictions of worshippers,
etc.—
1. No trace of one has been observed, no footstep, copro
lite, or what not. The only life of which mankind has any
knowledge is animal life and vegetable life; and it is in
conceivable that there should be any other.
2. The world was never made, nor any natural product
in it ; and therefore a maker is impossible.
3. The universe, so far as it is known, is not conducted
or governed, nor is any department of it, except those de
partments under the influence of living beings. Nature’s
processes consist in the interaction, attraction, repulsion,
union and disunion of its parts and forces, and of nothing
else.
4. All known substances and materials have definite and
unalterable quantities and attributes or qualities. Their
only changes are approximation, recession, combination, and
disunion; and all the phenomena of nature are the sole re
sults of these, one class of phenomena being no more
accidental or designed than another. Design is nowhere
found beyond the regions of animal action, and animal
action is nothing more nor anything less than the outcome
or the result, however complex, of the total forces and
materials which alternately combine and segregate in all
animals. An animal is what he is by virtue of his ante
cedents, his physical combinations and disunions, and his
environments.
All known facts lead logically to the above conclusions,
and it is naught but superstition or irrational belief that
assumes or predicates the contrary. Nor is any honest result
ever gained by assuming the existence of a god: it explains
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
67
nothing, it leads to nothing but confusion. More than that,
it is an attempt to explain nature’s mystery by creating a
still ^eater mystery, which is unphilosophical. Further
still, it is an attempt to expound nature by (1) that which
is not nature, or (2) by a natural phenomenon or set of
phenomena; for your god must be either natural, super1 natural, or artificial. Mr. St. Clair’s is not supernatural,
but natural. Very well; if it be natural, as he says, it is
an unknown phenomenon, or substance, or force ; and there
fore cannot be utilised in any way by reason. A false
philosophy or imposture may appeal to the unknown to
explain difficulties ; the whole round of religion consists of
nothing else than examples of it. But true philosophy
never attempts to explain the known by the unknown.
5. Mr. St. Clair believes in evolution, and yet holds the
dogma of a former creation. That is to play fast and loose
with reason; for why do you ascribe any power to physical
causes, if you refuse to regard them as sufficiently power
ful to originate, as well as to develope the phsenomena of
Nature ? Mr. St. Clair ascribes all the evils of life to
second causes, all its goods to deity. That is good Theology,
but the worst Philosophy. If life is physically sustained,
developed, and modified, it must be physically originated.
The only logical conclusion to be drawn from Theistic pre
misses is that each event, each phenomenon, each change is
the work of a separate god, or fairy, or devil—beings of
whom nothing is known beyond the fact that everyone of
them was created by man for the express purpose of creating
and governing the world or parts of it. But the philosopher
will never think of using them in any way till their real
existence and action have been placed beyond a doubt.
6. If the world was really made, it was not intelligently
made,, for it is chiefly a scene of confusion, strife, folly,
insanity, madness, brutality, and death. No intelligent
creator could endure the sight of it after making it:—be
would put his foot on it and crush it, or else commit suicide
in disgust. In geology the world is but a heap of ruins ; in
astronomy an unfortunate planet, so placed as regards the
sun that one part roasts while another freezes.
7. Men talk of the wisdom and goodness seen in God’s
creation ! He made man, and left him naked and houseless,
ignorant of nearly all he needed to know, a mere brute. He
�68
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
showed neither goodness nor wisdom here. It is only by a
painful process “ running through the ages,” a prqgtes of
blood, murder, starvation, and the death of millions %pon
millions that our civilisation has been achieved; and what
is it even now ? A civilisation of fraud, brutality slightly
veiled, hypocrisy wholesale, superstitions the most costly
and profound, a civilisation that houses the dead better than
the living, that pauperises survivors to bestow costly tombs
upon the dead, that builds splendid temples for gods and
priests to sport in, and leaves men and women to rot physi
cally, mentally and morally, in dens !
8. But this god never interferes for human good. This
governor of men never governs. He might prevent all
crime ; he prevents none. What is the use of a god who
could not or would not prevent the murder of Lincoln, Gar
field, and thousands of others ? If he could, and was by,
he is an accessory or worse ; if he couldn’t, he has in man
a creature he cannot control, and is therefore contemptible.
9. I am aware that some Theists urge that god could not
interfere, as I suggest, without violating man’s free-agency.
Whether Mr. St. Clair holds that opinion I cannot just now
say; but all along I have aimed at a much wider Theism
than that of Mr. St. Clair, and shall therefore make a remark
or two on this subject.
(1.) All government interferes with free-agency. And no
one complains that a government should try to prevent
crime. Indeed, that is one of its main functions. And a
government that does not, to its utmost knowledge and
power, prevent crime, is a bad government. Well, the socalled divine government prevents none ; what is its use?
Not to prevent crime is to encourage its commission. This
the divine government does.
(2) The free-agency plea is silly. Every murderer, every
tyrant destroys the free-agency of his victim. Does god
respect the free-agency of the victim less than that of the
villain ? Does he scrupulously refrain from checking the
latter while he inflicts wrong and death upon the former ?
Human laws are professedly (many of them really) framed
to protect the innocent and weak, and to restrain the strong
and vicious; divine laws must have a contrary intention, if
the free-agency plea is correct.
Finally.
I am well aware that my style of treating thia
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
69
subject must be very offensive to some. But I make no
apoloev for it. I adopt it deliberately and of set purpose.
I regard Theism as immensely stupid, so much so that
serious argument is wasted upon it, just as it would be
waste labor to try to disprove transubstantiation or to
show that Laputa could not fly as Gulliver describes.
Uncompromising ridicule seems to me the best weapon
wherewith to attack this miserable fetishism of my
opponent. I have used it unsparingly and heartily, and hope
my opponent has enjoyed the discussion as much as I
have.
I close without a spark of ill-will towards Mr. St. Clair,
and beg to express the opinion that his failure is not due
to any intellectual defect in him, but to the utterly im
possible proposition he undertook to defend. It is no
disgrace to fail where success is impossible. Nor do I
claim any credit to myself—Atheism is so easy to defend
that I must have been totally excuseless to have failed in it.
LETTER XII.
Fi‘‘om Mr. G. St. Clair to Mr. J. Symes.
Mr. Symes goes off the platform with a laugh, and tells the
audience he has won a victory ; but he must be conscious
all the time that he has not dislodged his antagonist from
his entrenchments. I have been disappointed in my op
ponent. His first letter confirmed the assurance which he
had given to me privately—that this discusssion should be
“ definite, earnest, real ”—but his last contains the con
fession that he has deliberately adopted an offensive style
and dealt in uncompromising ridicule, because he considers
that serious argument would be wasted upon so stupid a
subject as Theism.
All through this discussion I have only used half the
notes made on a first reading of Mr. Symes’s letters, and
now, in order to find room for a general summing up, I
must withhold the detailed reply which I could give to his
last. It is annoying to have to leave so many fallacies
unanswered ; but I think I have replied to most statements
which could claim to be arguments, as far as my space
allowed.
�70
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
Mr. Symes opened the discussion, and ought to have
advanced some reasons for considering Atheism rational;
but he confessed at once that he had nothing positive to
urge in favor of his negative, but should confine himself to
picking holes in Theistic arguments. His letters have
abounded with peremptory questions, and every answer I
have given has afforded material to tear to pieces or snarl
at. My opponent began by asking eight questions, six of
which involved a discussion of the infinite, the infinite being
easy to juggle with. The definition of God which he pre
ferred was the vulgar definition, which involves a contradic
tion, and would therefore have given him an opportunity of
dialectical victory. He wished me to say that God is a
Being infinite in power and infinite in goodness, and he
wanted the former part of this definition to mean that the
power of Deity is adequate to accomplish things which are
in their very nature impossible. Then he would have argued
that infinite goodness would desire to free the world at once
from all evil, pain and inconvenience; that infinite power
could accomplish this ; but that it is not done, and there
fore no God exists. I refused to define Deity in the way
dictated to me, but it was all the same to my opponent—
his arguments were only good against the vulgar definition,
and so he attacked that. He set forth at large that there
was a good deal of pain and trouble in the world, which, to
his mind, must be inconsistent with the existence of an
infinite God. Of course, it is not really so unless, besides
possessing infinite goodness of nature, the Creator possesses
unlimited power, and that in a mathematical sense. Now, I
have shown that the Creator cannot possess unlimited power
in this sense, and therefore my opponent’s objection to God’s
existence on the ground that “ evils ” exist is not conclusive.
The analogy of human labor employed in building a
cathedral shows us that a fine pile may be completed in the
course of time. It leads us to compare past phases of the
world with the present, that we may discover the movement
and tendency of things, for
“We doubt not, through the ages one increasing purpose runs.”
We go as deep down into the past as Evolution will enable
us to do, and, beginning at the lowliest forms of life, we
find a gradually ascending series. At length we come to
�ATHEISM OR THEISM?
71
man, who, even as a savage, is superior to all that went
be£a^. But the savage, as Gerald Massey says in his
“TSe of Eternity,” is only the rough-cast clay model of the
perfect statue. The savage advances into the condition of
a barbarian, and the barbarian, in time, becomes civilised.
But God has not yet finished the work of creating man into
his own image. It is astonishing that any student of Evolu
tion, possessing two eyes, should go to the quarry and fetch
out fossils for the purpose of showing that creatures have
suffered and died, and should fail to get any glimpse of “ a
purpose running through the ages.” But this is the case
with my opponent, to whose eye Evolution “ is purely
atheistic.” He also fails to see that, on this rational view
of creation, evils may be only temporary ; nay, more, that
they are certainly diminishing, and tend to vanish altogether.
I have invited my opponent three times over to find any
flaw in the reasoning of Herbert Spencer, where he main
tains that evil is evanescent; but it would have suited him
better if he could have quoted Spencer in a contrary sense.
The Creator’s power is exerted under conditions and
limitations arising out of the mathematical relations of
space “and time. It is, therefore, not “ in fining’ in the
vulgar sense. The vulgar definition of God wants mending;
and this is about all that Mr. Symes has been able to show.
As I, for my part, never put forth the vulgar definition, he
ought not to have given us a panorama of the evils of the
world, much less have made it revolve ad nauseam. The
rational Theism which I hold is not overturned by the
temporary occurrence of evil. But, when Mr. Symes found
this out, he took to ridiculing my God as a being who is
less than infinite in the vulgar sense, and professed to find
the orthodox God immensely superior.
Besides exposing the fallacy of the chief objections
brought against the existence of a Divine Being, I have
advanced positive proofs, from the marks of design in his
works. I lay stress on the fact that organs such as the
eye, and organisms such as the body, are instruments and
machines comparable to those designed and made by man,
and which never come into existence except when contrived
by intelligence. We never see the human mind going
through the process of designing. We never see the mind
at all. We have to look for marks of design in the work.
�72
ATHEISM OR THEISM?
It is the same with regard to the Divine Spirit. Objection
is made to Design, on the ground that Evolution explains
all things without a Creator; but I have shown that this is
not the case. Mr. Symes has hunted up all the blind eyes
he can find, and the perverted instincts, which do not effect
their asserted purpose, and is daring enough to say that
eyes are not made to see with. The difficulty is fully
explained by what I have said of the analogy between
divine and human work, performed under conditions, and
with concomitants of evil. I have challenged our clever
Alphonso to show us a pair of those superior eyes which he
says he could make, but he does not do so. He had only
made an empty boast.
Connected with Design is Adaptation. Mr. ¡Etames is
irrational enough to say that if anything is designed all
things are designed, and if Adaptation is seen in anything
it is seen iu all things. He sees it as much in the accidental
smashing of an egg as in the wonderful formation of the
egg to be the ark of safety for an embryo chick. This
astounding nonsense is forced upon him by his Atheism,
and must be charged to the irrational theory rather than to
the man4 But in seeking to bolster it up, Mr. Symes made
use of one argument which might seem to possess force un
less I exposed its weakness, and I had no space to do that
in reply to his fourth letter. He said that if there be design
anywhere it must be in the elements of matter especially,
where I do not seem to see it, as I bring forward organised
structures, living things. He says all matter is probably
alive—“ probably ! ” An instance of modesty in Mr. Symes,
though immediately afterwards he becomes positive again,
and says “ I affirm.” He affirms something about invisible
atoms, namely, that there is adaptation between the atoms,
and “ an equilibrium stable, perfect, time-defying,” far
superior to the unstable adaptation of living creatures to
their surroundings. My reply must be brief. An atom is
that which has no parts. It cannot therefore have any
organs, nor be an organism, nor possess life. Out of atoms,
as out of bricks, larger things are built up, and in some of
them I discern a certain architecture which speaks of Design.
Whether the bricks themselves are a manufactured article
does not affect my conclusion. The “ adaptation between
the atoms ” which Mr. Symes discerns and affirms cannot be
�ATHEISM OR THEISM ?
73 ’
in their interiors, for they are without parts. If he means
an adaptation of atom to atom, as in the chemistry of water,
I ne«d not deny it, though two or three bricks in combina
tion don’t impress me like the cathedral of the human body;
and as to the “ perfect, time-defying equilibrium ” of the
atoms of oxygen and hydrogen which form water, electricity
will unsettle it at once.
Has Mr. Symes proved Atheism to be rational? He
began by declaring that “ Atheism requires no direct evi
dence,” which I must interpret to mean it has none to offer.
What he now pretends to offer in his last comes late, and is
not good. Has he disproved the rationality of Theism ?
No, not as I present Theism to him. He said, very early,
that he “ must decline to narrow the ground ” to Theism as
I preset it, and, accordingly, what he has chiefly attacked
has be$n the vulgar definition of Theism. Now the dictionary
definition may go as far as I am concerned, but God remains.
If there are some difficulties on the theory of Theism,
they are only increased when we fly to Atheism. Atheism
accounts for nothing. Pain and misery, which are so much
complained of, are just as much facts whether there be a
God or no. Atheism does nothing to explain them, to
release us from them, to help us to bear them. An en
lightened Theism shows that sensibility to pain is a gracious
provision, warning us in time to escape greater evils and
contributing to our upward evolution. Evil is accounted
for as “ good in the making” or the necessary accompani
ment of greater good, or the temporary inconvenience lying
in the path to some glorious goal. Whatever is, is the best
possible at the present stage, if only all the relations of
things were known to us. Death enters into the great
scheme, for, by the removal of the aged, room is made for
younger life, and the total amount of enjoyment is increased.
At the same time, this is no hardship to those who pass
away, for the life of the individual soul is continued here
after and carried higher. This belief brightens the whole
of life and gives a very different aspect to pain and trouble and
death, which might fairly cause perplexity if death were the
final end.
The one advantage I derive from Mr. Symes’s letters is
that they seem to show me how men become Atheists.
There are certain questions which cannot be answered, and
�74
ATHEISM OK THEISM?
they are always asking those questions. There are certain
difficulties of belief, and these they cherish in preference to
the stronger reasons for faith and hope. There is sunshine
and shadow in the world, and they prefer to dwell in the
gloom. They search out all the crudities and failures, stinks
and sores, diseases and evils which the world affords, or ever
has afforded, and look at them through a magnifying glass.
Impressed with the magnitude of the loathsome heap, and
oblivious of everything else in creation, they presume to
think they could have advised something better if the
Creator had only consulted them. Had there been a wise
Creator he surely would have done so 1 Henceforth they
shriek out that there is no God; and nevertheless, illogical
as they always are, they whimper at pain instead of bearing
it, and complain of evils as though therewere some God
who was inflicting them. They complain that life is not
worth living, and yet speak of death as though it were
maliciously desigued and the greatest evil of all. They
have got into a world which is “ a fatherless Hell, “ all
massacre, murder and wrong,” and ought logically to commit
suicide, like the couple of Secularists in Mr. Tennyson’s
“ Despair!’ But, alas ! not even death will land them in
any better place. They are
• “ Come from the brute, poor souls—no souls
—and to die with the brute 1 ”
Yet that couple cherished love for one another and pity for
all that breathe, and ought to have inferred thence that
unless a stream can rise higher than its source, there must
be much more pity and love in the Great Fount and Heart
of All Things.
�Three Hundred and. Seventy-second Thousand.
January, 1882.
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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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Is atheism or theism more rational? A discussion between Mr. Joseph Symes and Mr. George St. Clair
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Symes, Joseph [1841-1906]
Saint Clair, George
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 74 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's list, dated January 1882, on pages at the end numbered [1]-8 and 17-22, i.e. p.9-16 are missing. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh.
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Freethought Publishing Company
Date
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1882
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RA1777
N631
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Atheism
Theism
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Is atheism or theism more rational? A discussion between Mr. Joseph Symes and Mr. George St. Clair), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Atheism
NSS
Theism
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Text
THE GENERAL MEETING
OF
THE THEISTIC SOCIETY
HELD
FREEMASONS’
AT
THE
HALL,
LONDON
ON
Wednesday, July 20th, 1870
AND
STATEMENT
OF
THE
COMMITTEE
APPOINTED BY THE MEETING
bg ©rber of
Committee
LONDON
LONGMANS,
GREEN,
1870
AND
CO.
�LONDON : PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
�CONTENTS.
PAGE
Report of the General Meeting ....
1
Resolutions passed at the General Meeting
71
Statement of the Committee
72
�I
•I
�PROCEEDINGS OF THE GENERAL MEETING
HELD AT
ON
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1870.
MR. WILLIAM SHAEN IN THE CHAIR.
The Chairman.—Ladies and Gentlemen, I will state,
in opening the meeting, the course of business which
has been proposed by the Committee. In the first
place, our Honorary Secretary, Mr. E. II. Busk, will read
a report from the Provisional Committee ; that report
will conclude with a set of resolutions which have been
prepared by the Committee. It will then be my duty,
on behalf of the Committee, to move the reception of the
report. If it is your pleasure, after hearing the report, to
receive it, there are three or four resolutions, which have
been prepared, which will be moved and seconded ; and
upon those any observations can be made and any dis
cussion can be taken.
The Honorary Secretary then read the following
report :—
The Provisional Committee appointed at the meeting
held on June 6, 1870, have communicated with persons
who might be supposed willing to aid in the formation of
a Theistic Society, and now submit the following report
of their proceedings, and of the information so collected
by them.
B
�Q
The Committee met shortly after the meeting, at which
they were appointed, and prepared a circular, in which
was inserted the provisional statement of the objects and
means of the Society, which they were instructed to cir
culate with their suggestions.
The following is a copy of the circular, which was pre
ceded by a list of the Provisional Committee.
1. The objects of the Society are to unite men, notwithstanding any
differences in their religious creeds, in a common effort to attain and
diffuse purity of Spiritual Life by (i.) investigating religious truth ;
(ii.) cultivating devotional feelings; and (iii.) furthering practical
morality.
2. The Society seeks to attain these objects by the following means:—
(1) By holding meetings for the reading of papers, and for
conference.
(2) By holding and encouraging meetings for the united worship
of God.
(3) By helping its members to ascertain and discharge their
personal and social duties.
(4) By the formation of similar Societies with the same objects
in various parts of the British Empire and other countries.
(5) By correspondence with those who may be supposed willing
to assist in the objects of this Society.
(6) By the issue of publications calculated to promote the above
purposes.
This Society is offered as a means of uniting all those who believe
in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, in the endeavour
to supplement their individual efforts towards goodness and truth by
mutual sympathy; to intensify their trust in and love to God by
fellowship in worship; and to aid each other in the discovery and
propagation of Spiritual Truth, that thus they may attain to the more
complete observance of the Divine Laws of Human Nature.
A meeting will be held at the Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street,
on Wednesday, July 20, 1870, at 7 p.m., for the purpose of definitely
constituting the Society. Your attendance at this meeting is requested.
In the meantime you are invited to communicate to the Provisional
Committee your opinion, and any information you can give on the
following subjects :—
a. The expediency of forming the proposed Society.
b. The best name for the proposed Society.
c. The names and addresses of persons or societies likely to be
interested in such a body.
�(1. The number likely to join in your neighbourhood.
e. Any practical suggestions as to the formation, objects, and modes
of action of the proposed Society.
The Committee invited suggestions and information on
various subjects, and have received, in answer to about
2,200 copies which have been circulated, upwards of 100
replies.
The suggestions and information that have been received
may be arranged under the four following heads :—
I. The expediency or inexpediency of forming the
proposed Society.
II. The best name for the proposed Society.
III. The number of persons likely to join in different
towns and districts.
IV. Practical suggestions as to the formation, objects,
and modes of action of the proposed Society.
I. The answers that have been received to the ques
tion whether it is or is not expedient to form the pro
posed Society have comprised every shade of feeling. They
may be roughly classified in the following manner :—
Those who think it expedient (including 5, who
merely express a desire for its formation) . . . 83
Those who think it inexpedient.................................... 17
Those who think the expediency doubtful....
7
107
These numbers do not include the members of the Pro
visional Committee.
The Provisional Committee are of opinion that these
answers afford sufficient encouragement to justify the
formation of the proposed Society.
II. The following names have been suggested for the
o
oo
proposed Society :—
‘ The Association for Promoting Practical Religion.’
‘ The Association for Promoting True Religion.’
B 2
�I
4
4 The Association for the Promotion of Practical Re
ligion.’
4 The Society for the Discovery and Propagation of
Spiritual Truth.’
4 An Association for Developing true Christian Charity
in St. Paul’s Sense.’
4 The Brotherhood of Faith.’
4 The Religious Brotherhood.’
4 The Brotherhood of all Religions.’
4 The Brethren of Progress.’
4 The Progressive Brotherhood.’
■ 4 The Fraternal Union.’
4 The Society of Human Brotherhood.’ 2.
4 The Brotherhood of Love.’ 2.
4 The British Free Church.’
4 The Church of all Religions.’
4 The Church Reform Society.’
4 The Open Church.’
4 The Church of the True God.’
4 The Church of Progress.’
4 The Free Catholic Church.’
4 The Universal Church.’
4 The Church of the Future.’
4 The Church of Religious Progress.’
4 The Church of the Law.’
4 The Church of all Faiths.’
4 The Church Founded on First Principles.’
4 The Universal Church of the Law.’
4 The English Branch of the Bralimo Somaj.’
4 The Friends.’
4 The Progressive Friends.’
4 The Moralists.’
4 The Free Religious Union.’ 3.
4 The Free Religious Society.’
4 The Free Religious Association.’ 2.
4 The Religious Union.’ 2.
�5
4 A Practical Religions Union.’
4 The Religions Alliance Association.’
4 The Religious Society of all People and of all
Nations.’
4 The Religious Liberal Association.’
4 The Society for the Promotion of Religious Liberty.’
4 The Modern Religious Society.’
4 The Rational Religious Society.’
4 The Common Brotherhood Religious Society.’
4 The Theo-Philosophical Society.’
4 The Universalist Society.’
4 The Universal Brotherhood.’ 2.
4 Sons and Daughters of God.’
4 The Universal Family of God.’
4 The Universal Family.’
4 The Christo-Theistic Society.’
4 The Christian Theists.’ 2.
4 The Eisotheistic Society.’
4 The Theistic Brotherhood.’ 2.
4 The Theistic Church.’
4 The Theistic Society.’ 3.
4 The Society of Theists.’
4 The Theistic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.’
4 The Theistic Theological Society.’
4 The Free Theistic Union.’
4 Theistic Christianity.’
4 The Deistic Society.’
Fifteen correspondents, therefore, have proposed names
in which the term Theistic occurs. On the other hand,
nineteen correspondents have declared themselves op
posed to that name, assigning various reasons for their
opposition ; and many others have proposed the other
names above reported, because they prefer them to the
epithet Theistic, which appeared in the heading of the
circular.
�6
III. The Provisional Committee beg to report that
they have received the following information as to the
persons likely to join in the movement.
The Committee have received the names of 245 persons
in various parts of the United Kingdom, as likely to co
operate, of whom ninety-eight have answered, expressing
themselves favourably towards the movement. Of these
persons, eighty-nine reside in the metropolis.
The Provisional Committee beg to report further, that
in addition to the names of individuals which are in
cluded in the foregoing numbers, they have received an
intimation, that at Edinburgh a congregation belonging
to a chapel, of which Dr. Page is the minister, and com
prising about one hundred members, will be likely to co
operate, and that in the same city there are about twenty
other persons who cordially desire such a Society.
These latter people formed a Society under the leader
ship of Mr. Cranbrook, but have become disunited in
consequence of the death of that gentleman, about a
year ago.
Mr. Walter Rew, of Sandgate, is the president of a
society, calling itself the ‘ Social Progress Association,’
and he has informed the Committee, that if the objects of
their proposed Society are sufficiently practical, he will
be happy to propose the amalgamation with it of his own
Association.
The Rev. W. J. Lake, of Leamington, is forming a
society in the Midland Counties, called the ‘Brotherhood
of Religious Reform,’ and has forwarded to the Com
mittee a copy of his programme. He has informed the
Committee that he will work with them, if their objects
are similar. The following is a copy of his programme :—
It is intended to form a Society, to be called ‘The
Brotherhood of Religious Reform,’ whose object shall be
to unite in a common religious fellowship, all who believe
�7
in the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man,
irrespective of all other beliefs they may hold, and by
this union of spirit to put an end to religious sectarianism
and to religious strife, and thus to lay a foundation for
the eventual building up of the one great church of the
living God, which shall be wide as the common need of
humanity, and which shall own as its members all who
love God, and who strive to lead a righteous and loving
life.
The operations of this Society will consist—
1. In the promotion of absolute religious equality ; to
be effected in this country mainly by the nationalisation
of the Established Church.
N.B. By the nationalisation of the Established Church
is meant, the abolition of the Act of Uniformity, and
of all compulsory belief or teaching. Also the establish
ment of a parishioner suffrage, by which the residents in
each parish shall be at liberty to select, from properly
educated and qualified candidates, their own minister,
and to determine the form and character of their worship.
2. It will be the business of this Society to investigate
the popular and accredited forms of religious belief, so
that, through the scholarly and scientific methods which
are now able to be employed, the absolute religious truth
may as nearly as possible be attained.
3. It will undertake the formation of public opinion
in accordance with these ascertained results, by the de
livery of lectures, and the promotion of controversy, the
issue of publications calculated to spread information on
these subjects among the people, and by all other likely
and appropriate methods.
4. It will undertake the immediate establishment of
a church or churches for the worship of God, in accord
ance with the fundamental elements of religious belief
before stated, and the maintenance of these by voluntary
effort, till such time as the national church shall be set
�8
free from the compulsory profession of sectarian dogmas
and mediæval creeds, and shall be thrown open, when
the majority of parishioners shall desire it, to the teach
ing and worship which sum up all the essential truth and
duty of religion in the simple requirements of love to
God as our father, and love to man as our brother.
IV. Among the suggestions that the Committee have
received in reply to their request for suggestions as to
the formation, objects, and modes of action of the pro
posed Society, are the following :—
As to the formation of the Society : That there shall
be, independently of the Society or Societies established
in London, a central Committee, which shall have for its
object the formation and encouragement of independent
branch Societies elsewhere, and shall serve as a means of
communication between such Societies, so as to preserve
union without compulsory uniformity of thought or action.
That admission to any of the affiliated Societies shall
be as wide as humanity itself, and with this view, that
there shall be no compulsory entrance fee or subscription.
The following suggestion has also been received, as
many persons cannot attend the meeting on July 20,
1870,—that the resolutions then passed shall be printed,
and votes taken from all the country correspondents who
have advocated the movement, before such resolutions
are finally adopted.
The following suggestions have been received as to
the objects of the proposed Society : —
Several correspondents approve of the statement of
objects contained in the circular.
One has suggested that the first object shall be ex
tended, so as to include the investigation of scientific as
well as religious truth.
It has been suggested that the Society ought to have
in view the two additional objects of :—
�9
I. Furthering education ; and,
II. Helping liberal churchmen.
Several correspondents have approved of the statement
contained in the circular of the modes of action proposed
for the Society.
One correspondent considers them too abstract and
indefinite ; on the other hand, another correspondent
recommends the adoption of as few rules as possible, and
seems to fear that these paragraphs will be found re
strictive.
None of the correspondents have objected to means
No. 1 (the holding of meetings for the reading of papers
and for conference), while several have written in favour
of it.
There has been much correspondence and difference of
opinion with reference to means No. 2 (the holding and
encouragement of meetings for the united worship of
God), the numbers for and against its adoption being
almost equally balanced.
There is a good deal of opposition to means No. 3 (the
helping of its members to ascertain and discharge their
personal and social duties), many persons believing that
it cannot be adopted as a mode of action without in
terfering with the individual conscience. It would appear,
therefore, that some of this opposition was occasioned by
a misapprehension of the aim of this paragraph.
No correspondent has expressed himself as opposed to
means No. 4 (the formation of similar Societies, with the
same objects, in various parts of the British Empire and
other countries) ; several, on the other hand, have advo
cated its adoption. It has been suggested that the action
of the central Committee in London should be supple
mented by the action of influential and energetic mem
bers, who should visit different provincial towns, and
stimulate to action those who feel the want of such a
Society as it is proposed to establish.
�10
Much has been written in favour of means No. 6 (the
issue of publications calculated to promote the above
purposes).
One or two think that the action of the Society in this
respect should be restricted to reprinting already existing
works or articles in periodicals which expound the prin
ciples of the Society.
Several suggest that a periodical or periodicals, monthly
or weekly, should be established for the diffusion of the
principles of the Society, for correspondence, and for the
information of country members.
In addition to the six modes of action proposed by the
circular, the three following modes of action have been
suggested, viz. :—
7. That lists of the members should be prepared and
circulated from time to time.
8. That the Society should assist in the formation of
libraries in various towns.
9. That there should be lectures given at fixed times
and places, accompanied by classical music, sacred or
otherwise.
The Committee have also received a pamphlet, con
taining very valuable practical suggestions, from Mr.
S. Prout Newcombe, of Croydon.
The variety of suggestions contained in the corre
spondence, of which the foregoing statement is an
analysis, as to the organisation of the proposed Society,
makes it desirable, in the opinion of the Committee, that
this subject should be further considered.
They will, therefore, invite the meeting to appoint a
Committee, by whom a scheme for the organisation of the
Society may be elaborated, and who shall report the
result of their labours to a meeting to be held early in
the ensuing year ; and they will request this meeting to
confine itself at present to resolutions by which the
�11
Society shall be constituted and its name determined, in
accordance with the general character proposed to be
given to it by the circular which has led to this meeting.
On the question of name, the Committee wish to report
that, although a majority has agreed upon a name which
will be proposed to the meeting, yet they have not
arrived at any unanimous conclusion. This result was
one that might be expected, having regard to the number
of different names suggested by their correspondents.
The Committee have found in this matter (as will
doubtless be found in many other cases) an occasion for
exercising that mutual deference of each for the opinion
of others which the proposed Society especially seeks to
cultivate, and without which it cannot exist.
The Chairman.—Ladies and gentlemen, I should have
hesitated to accept the responsible post of chairman of
this meeting if it had been intended to be anything in the
nature of a public manifestation; but we are met here
simply to have a friendly conference upon the very im
portant subjects which have been touched upon in the
printed circular which all of you have received, and
which have also been referred to in the report. I trust,
before the end of the meeting, we shall not only have
had a profitable and friendly conference, but really shall
have performed some practical business. Beyond that I
do not think it would be wise for us to attempt anything
at present. The facts which have been stated in the
report show what we have done to elicit opinions, and
what a large amount of sympathy with our views has
been expressed from all parts of England, and that there is
also, as might have been expected, a very wide diversity
of opinion expressed by our correspondents. I think it
is clear that, as we may, on the one hand, draw the con
clusion that a sufficient number of persons feel there
is a good work to be done by a society based on the
�12
principles which we have put forth to justify our proposing
to you that such a Society should now be founded, so, on
the other hand, it would be very unwise at the present
stage of proceedings to put the Society into a fixed and
crystallised condition. We must feel our way, gradually
establishing that which we feel ought to be established,
and leaving, as far as possible, the Society, when formed,
in an elastic state, to assume such a shape and adopt such
modes of action as it may from time to time find best
fitted to attain its objects. Probably many of those who
are here present may not be aware of the steps which
have led to the present meeting, and it may be well for
me, therefore, to refer shortly to them. This movement,
then, owes its origin to the arrival in this country of a
gentleman whom we already rejoice to call our friend—
Mr. Kesliub Chunder Sen. Since he came here, all of us,
I think I may say, who heard him speak at the meeting
held to receive him at the Hanover Square Rooms, or
who have from time to time since that meeting heard
him preach, have felt that in all its essentials the religion
of Mr. Sen was our religion ; and yet, on the other hand,
it is a remarkable fact that he did not find existing in this
country any religious organisation in which he could simply
feel himself to be at home. The feeling on the part of
his friends that there was something wrong in this state
of things led to a series of extremely interesting private
meetings, which were held at his house ; and in the
course of those meetings, the whole of which I had the
pleasure of attending, we found, as was to be expected,
that very similar thoughts had been excited in many
different minds, not only by his visit, but also by many
other circumstances which have occurred of late years.
Everybody seemed to be agreed that, somehow or other,
the religious organisations existing in England have for
the most part failed in their professed object—that reli
gion is, after all, nothing unless it is a uniting principle ;
�13
and yet, while everybody agrees in that opinion, some
how or other the actual religion professed in England
succeeds chiefly in keeping people apart, in marking
them off into separate bodies, and, when they are so
marked off, keeping them entirely asunder.
Then, looking at the subject from another point of
view, we all of us also felt that while, according to the
principles of our religion which we all accept, we ought
to consider ourselves one large human family, yet that, if
we looked into what was passing around us in our great
cities, throughout our country, and throughout the world,
we seemed to be acting in a very curious way when the
matter was considered from a family point of view. The
extraordinary contrast between the professed principles
of the religious organisations of civilised Europe, and the
actual practice of the most highly civilised nations, never,
perhaps, has received a more striking and melancholy
illustration than that which has taken place, even since
this meeting was summoned, in the terrible war which now
has actually commenced, and which, if we are a human
family, is, as all wars must be, a fratricidal war. In
trying to find out what was the cause of the two facts to
which I have alluded, we were pretty well agreed so far
as principle is concerned. With regard to the question
of religious organisations, it seemed to all of us, I believe,
that if we want to let religion do its proper work amongst
us, we must strip off the weeds and briars of multiplied
and complicated dogma which have encumbered and
choked the good seed of central religious truth. We
must get back, if we can, to that which is the foundation
of all religions, and in which we are all agreed. In this
attempt we find very little difficulty in accepting, as a
statement of that upon which we can all agree, the decla
ration that universal religion finds its sufficient foundation
in the two great truths of the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man. Again, looking at the question
�14
from a practical point of view, it seemed also clear that
if we could, instead of wasting our time in barren con
troversies, apply ourselves to deduce from those two
central truths practical laws for the conduct of human
life, and make the entire round of human life impli
citly obedient to the laws which those central truths
teach, we should then not only succeed in giving, within
the range of our own people, the proper work to religious
organisations so founded, but we should also have esta
blished a society in which no friendly stranger, like Mr.
Sen, coming among us could ever feel himself to be a
stranger. It might be very possible—in fact it would be
certain—that among us there would be developed a large
amount of honest and earnest difference as to detailed
truths and subordinate principles of deep interest and
importance. But we thought there would be a very
large number who would feel that a common belief in,
and a common acknowledgment of, the fatherhood of
God and the brotherhood of man is sufficient to form
the basis of a religious union, and that in that religious
union all those who agreed in those two principles might
comfortably, cordially, and fraternally find a place.
We determined to see whether we could at once evoke
a sufficient amount of sympathy with those views to
justify us in attempting to found such a society. We
drew up the circular which has been sent about England
to the extent, as the report informs you, of about 2,200
copies. To those circulars we have received rather more
than 100 replies. If we compare the number of replies
with the number of circulars sent out, it certainly seems
very small. On the other hand, I myself consider that
it is an encouraging, and, on the whole, a satisfactory
result. We had no time, and had no very good oppor
tunity, of making a careful selection of the persons who
should be sent to. We took two or three lists, which
were accessible to us, of persons who had either sub
�15
scribed to some fund or some society which seemed to us
to indicate sentiments somewhat kindred to our own, and
we addressed our circulars to every name appearing on
those lists. It is very likely that the whole subject may
have been quite strange to some of them, and a very large
number of persons in England, and probably elsewhere,
take a long time to answer circulars, so that it by no
means follows that, even of those who have not replied,
the majority do not take an interest in the subject. On
the other hand, those circulars have elicited, as you
have heard, from a large and widely-scattered body, a
considerable amount of real sympathy. I was very glad
to see that the meeting seemed to receive with a welcome
the declaration in the report of the Provisional Committee,
that in our opinion the amount of sympathy we had
evoked is sufficient to justify us in founding the Society.
It will be necessary of course to consider very carefully
how far we shall go to-night, and what we shall declare
to be the nature and objects and modes of action of the
Society. On that point, my own belief is that we ought
to proceed carefully and slowly, and that it is much more
important that every step we take should be such as
will excite as much sympathy as possible among all our
friends, than that we should proceed in a hurry to do
something which might seem to have a more complete
appearance. I am afraid of being in too great a hurry to
draw up rules or to do anything more than declare our
general principles. It is quite clear that among the
friends who have signified their sympathy with us we
shall find a very large amount of difference of opinion,
and, in point of fact, the foundation of that sympathy
conies from two different sides. I shall be extremely
sorry if we are not ultimately able to combine the sym
pathy which has been evoked on both sides. I refer
especially to what I may call the speculative side of the
question—free thought; and the practical side of the
�question—the religious life. A very large number of
people who find themselves dissatisfied with the creeds
and customs of religious organisations express themselves
ready to join any society which, throwing off all shackles
of that kind, simply determines to pursue truth, wherever
truth may lie ; and I heartily sympathise with them, and
shall heartily rejoice if we find in our future Society the
means of assisting every earnest attempt at the investi
gation of truth in the freest possible way.
But, on the other hand, I take a still deeper interest in
the other side of the question, the practical application of
the principles we have accepted to the formation of a
religious life. It seems to me that the social evils of the
day may all be traced to the fact that there is such a wide
divorce between the principles which we profess when
we speak religiously, and the every-day practice of our
lives. I think, therefore, that while, as I have said, I
have the deepest sympathy with and shall always be ex
tremely glad to join in any free investigation of specula
tive truth, it will come more home to us as real pressing
business at the present time to see what we can do in
helping each other to ascertain what are the rules to
which we ought to render our daily lives subject, in order
that we may literally live upon this earth as a family of
God’s children ought to live.
Now, the wide differences which appear to exist and
the various shades of opinion which are prevalent among
our friends have been singularly and rather amusingly
illustrated by the long list of proposed names for this
Society which has been read to you by our Honorary
Secretary. It may be said that it makes very little dif
ference by what name we call ourselves, and that prac
tically the work which we do is the all-important subject.
No doubt that is so in the long run. Yet I am quite
sure that the feeling of our correspondents, which has led
them to lay great stress on the wise selection of a name,
�17
is, on the whole, a true one. Our name will be at
once the flag and the motto we display to the world,
and it is really of importance that we should adopt a
name which, while clearly expressing our principles, shall
attract as much and repel as little as possible. There
are many names which I could heartily accept, if there
were not already attached to them some unfortunate
association ; and I think it is important for us to avoid
any name which has already associated with it thoughts
and feelings and actions with which we should not wish
in any way to be identified. When we discussed this
question among ourselves in committee, even in a meeting
of from nine to a dozen, we found that we had the most
curiously varied associations with several of the names
which have been read to you. Among others I may
mention the term ‘Theistic.’ This term is one which, in
the mind of our friend Mr. Chundcr Sen, signifies every
thing which is most delightful and most religious and
devout. For my own part I have long looked upon it as
a word closely connected with all that I most value in
free religious thought—thought which is free, and, at the
same time, really religious; but yet I find that that is by
no means the case with many of those with whom it is
very important that we should be able to work in this
movement. We find among our correspondents that the
term is distinctly disliked and dreaded by a considerable
number. I mention this because it is the term I should
myself have by far preferred to any other, and yet it is
one as to which 1 have come to the conclusion that it
would be unwise in the Society to adopt it. You have
heard that, among the resolutions to be submitted to you
presently, is one for a name for the Society, and that that
name was not arrived at unanimously by the Committee.
In accordance with a common custom in such cases, it
was understood that we should not come down as a
committee and request you to accept the name proposed,
c
�18
.
but that tlic question should be left entirely free and un
shackled, that it should be discussed here and voted upon
without any weight being given to the accident that
there happened to be in the Committee a majority in
favour of a particular name. Accordingly, an amend
ment to that resolution will be moved. It is an amend
ment to the effect that it would be wise in us, on the
present occasion, to avoid pledging ourselves to any
name at all, and that the name, like the further details of
the Society, should be postponed to be further considered,
first by the Committee, whom we shall ask you to appoint
to-night, and afterwards by a meeting of the Society to
whom the Committee will report. I shall say no more
on that subject now, because it will have to be fully laid
before you at a later period of the evening.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is one point referred to
in the report, upon which there has been a good deal
of misapprehension among our correspondents, and on
which, therefore, I would say one word. It is with
regard to the third of what we have called the means
which the Society proposes to adopt, and which is worded
as follows : ‘ By helping its members to ascertain and dis
charge their personal and social duties.’ For my own
part, I consider, as I have already intimated, that that is
perhaps the most interesting and the most important
subject to which our attention can be directed, and I am,
therefore, extremely anxious that it should not in any
way be misunderstood. Some of our correspondents
have objected to that proposal, on the ground that it
would be impossible to adopt any practical measures for
giving it effect without infringing the rights of individual
conscience. It would be suicidal for a Society like ours,
which intends, as far as it can, to be an embodiment of
freedom with order, to do anything which could be open
to the accusation of infringing the rights of individual
conscience ; and the idea must have arisen, I think, from
�19
the supposition, that, under that head, it was intended to
adopt personal and social regulations which should be
binding upon the members of the Society. Nothing of
the kind has ever been contemplated by the Committee,
and I am quite sure nothing of the kind would be accepted
by the Society. One of the great rocks upon which, as I
think, the existing religious organisations of the country
have split, and are splitting, is what they call ‘ church
discipline.’ I trust that our Society will never attempt
to establish anything in the shape of church discipline.
While, however, everybody is absolutely free to do that
which is in accordance with his own conscience, it
seems to me that we should be abdicating what is the
great privilege of a religious fraternity, if we were to
shrink from discussing the question of personal and social
duties with those who may be willing to discuss them
with us. I trust we shall find it possible in an earnest
and faithful manner to assist each other in the attempt to
investigate in what way the principle of the brotherhood
of man ought to be applied to our daily life, in order to
produce the effects which we feel ought to follow from it,
but which we see around us at the present time do not
follow from it. I hope, therefore, the Society will accept
that as one of the most important branches of its ope
rations, at the same time being extremely careful that
nothing whatever shall be done, which can, in any way, be
said to be even an attempt to infringe individual liberty.
There is only one other point to which I need advert.
I think it would be wise to agree not only that a consi
derable part of the details of the working regulations of
this Society should be left in a provisional state, but that
we should express, in the constitution of the Society, the
idea that we can never expect to arrive at perfection,
and that the Society itself, therefore, is one of indefinite
progress. I, with some of those who are now present,
took a part in the attempt, which has come to an untimely
c 2
�20
end, to found what was called the ‘ Free Christian Union.’
From the first it seemed to me there were fatal errors in
the constitution of that Society, and I think the most fatal
of all was the declaration that any attempt to change
the programme, or the statement of the principles upon
which the Society was founded, should be considered
ipso facto a dissolution of the Society. In my view,
no Society is worthy of permanent existence which does
not embody in itself the idea of progressive development.
I do not, of course, mean that we are always to be
seeking change, but that we should always feel that
what we hold is good only until we see something better.
I should very much prefer to see in the constitution of,
our Society a distinct declaration, that once in five years
or once in a certain term of years, the whole constitution
should be submitted to the members of the Society for the
purpose of seeing whether suggestions could not be made
for improvement, rather than to see there anything like
a declaration, that, when we have once come to a con
clusion, we are to bind ourselves for all future time to
that conclusion, and that not only we ourselves for the
rest of our lives, but also those who may come after us,
are to agree with our present opinions.
I will not detain you, ladies and gentlemen, any longer.
I must express my great thanks for the kindness with
which you have listened to what I have said, and I will
now in conclusion move that the report which has been
read be received.
The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried
unanimously.
The Rev. J. E. Odgers.—Mr. Chairman, ladies and
gentlemen, I feel that the motion, which I have to re
commend to the meeting, follows with peculiar fitness
after the speech which has been just delivered, and is, in
point of fact, but the natural consequence which will
�21
suggest itself to every person who has heard you, Sir, with
sympathetic feeling. The resolution which I have to
propose is this—‘ That in the opinion of this meeting it is
desirable to form a Society to unite men, notwithstanding
any differences in their religious creeds, in a common
effort to attain and diffuse purity of spiritual life, by,
first, investigating religious truth ; secondly, cultivating
devotional feelings; and, thirdly, furthering practical
morality.’ I trust, Sir, that thus far the feeling of the
meeting will support both you and myself, and that the
applause which followed the statement in the report, that
the Committee felt justified in the formation of this Society,
is but the token of a wide and large sympathy both in
this room and outside it. For myself, I am only a country
minister, and I feel at present the strongest hope, from
this meeting, from the words you have uttered, from the
collection of opinion which has passed through the hands
of the Committee, that we may have a Society which shall
furnish those who labour for the principles of attaining
and diffusing spiritual life with a strong motive for ac
tion ; and by those means we shall bind those who
spiritually labour into one common bond of sympathy,
and give them at once that breadth of view and that as
surance of brotherly spirit of which they oftentimes feel
sorely in need. At the same time I rejoice to find that
this sympathy is a sympathy of spirit, and does not ne
cessarily involve an agreement in dogmatic propositions—that this Society proposes to take in all those who cordially
have those three objects in view, notwithstanding any
difference in their religious creed. While we are labour
ing, perhaps each in our several spheres, to support the
thought which is trusted to us, to cultivate and encourage
the life which we most deeply approve, and are perhaps
joined with some dogmatic body for the spread of the
theological views which commend themselves to us,
putting our hands to the plough as far as we can, and
�22
striving by association to make the truth, dear to us, per
fectly common to all mankind,—I feel that there is a need,
not only beyond that, but rendered necessary by those
associations, that we should go somewhere where a larger
and wider field would be open to us, where we should
escape at once from the doctrines which do attend sincere
individual labour in the search after, and propagation of
truth, and also which, in a double measure, attend the
religious associations of those who dogmatically agree.
Therefore, I look forward with the greatest pleasure to
joining and supporting, as far as in me lies, an association
where those, who theologically and religiously differ, may
come, and, taking their stand upon the first article of any
religious creed, however dogmatic, namely, 41 believe
in one God, the Father Almighty,’ may there get glimpses
of sides of religious life which have hitherto been closed
to them ; may find further views of religious truth shining
in on their minds as to those who are, generally speaking,
in time and place separated from them, and return to
their individual work of ascertaining and maintaining the
truth, and spreading, by teaching and example, practical
morality, with their minds refreshed by heartfelt com
munion with others, who bid them God speed across the
barriers of divergent theological theory, and, at the same
time, gaining that outlook into ultimate truth which the
naturally prophetic tendency of the mind does gain for
itself after having every opportunity of hearing the sincere
enunciation of opinion, which is at the present time broken
and varied as the truth reflects itself through the souls of
individuals.
I therefore submit most heartily, and with the strongest
individual feeling, this resolution to the meeting, and I
trust that what I have said will not be thought unprac
tical in itself, or as warring against the practical aims and
objects of the Society. If I, looking at it from my own
point of view, put the speculative side—the subjective
�23
side—first, I do not wish in the least to depreciate any
enumeration of practical ends, however various they
may be. The letters which I have received from my
own correspondents when I have sent them the circulars
of this Society mention very many practical aims, all of
which are in themselves most desirable, and may well
call for religious co-operation; but, at the same time, I
feel that these are early days to speak of the practical
aim of the Society. The great thing is to feel that we
are individually working only for those particular aims
which are dear to us who have communion, in the
highest and deepest sense, with others who are far off,
who are working for the same objects that we all pledge
ourselves to work for, and I feel at the same time that
ends will present themselves—they must follow out of
such communion of thought as I trust will be charac
teristic of this Society, and that we shall gain from this
Society ardour and heartiness of spirit, that we shall re
turn not pledged to any kind of mechanism or organisa
tion which is to hide the fact, that whatever good we do
must come from the determination and aspiration of the
soul, and will, therefore, be strengthened both for thought
and for work by the Association, the formation of which I
most heartily commend to this meeting. Therefore I beg
to propose to the meeting the resolution which I have
already read.
The Chairman.—Ladies and gentlemen, I have the
greatest possible pleasure in saying that this resolution
will be seconded by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. I must be
allowed to say that, not only because Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell is a valued personal friend of my own, but
because her taking part in this meeting I look upon as a
practical illustration of a great principle.
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.—Ladies and gentlemen, I
second this resolution. Its object is union—the union
of all those who heartily love God. It is union for a
�24
practical purpose, viz., the attainment and diffusion of
pure spiritual life; a life which will express itself by
earnestly striving to carry out God’s Will in every action.
There is great necessity for such union. God has given
us enough glorious truth—moral, religious, and scientific
—to regenerate the world, if we would but put that
truth into practice; but we do not know how to shape
into deeds the teaching we get from pulpit, lecture-room,
and book ; this is not taught us. We allow ourselves to
float down the current of evil customs, shutting our eyes
to some, growing indifferent to others, because alone we
do not know how to avoid doing what everybody else
does. We thus become partakers in all the evils that exist
around us, and drunkenness, immorality, destitution, dis
honesty, crime, all have their roots in our own daily life.
There is no escaping from this terrible but grand brother
hood which binds us all together. Single-handed we cannot
resist the overwhelming force of social evils, but united we
may. With the strength of union we may insist upon a
truer education for our children; wTe may teach prac
tically habits of simplicity and industry to youth ; we
may carry out business honesty ; wTe may create a purer
social atmosphere around us. Such effort to regenerate
practical daily life, it appears to me, is the common
meeting-ground of all religious persons. We, with an
earnest Christian faith, can here joyfully meet all those
who love God and seek to obey his laws ; and in this
united effort to realise God’s laws we shall found the
Universal Church. I have great pleasure, therefore, in
seconding this resolution.
The Chairman.—I would now invite any lady or gentle
man to express any opinion on this matter. I hope it
will not be considered necessary, in order that an opinion
may be expressed, that it should be different from those
which we have already heard, for we should be just as
glad to hear additional reasons on our side of the ques
�25
tion, as wo should be ready to hear any opinion not
agreeing with ours. We should be very glad if those
friends from a distance, especially, would say what they
think on the matter.
Mr. F. Wilson.—Sir, I should just like to ask a ques
tion of the gentleman who proposed this resolution, and
it is this—how can people who differ in theological
matters agree to assemble under the proposition he
suggested ? We must have an individual and responsible
idea common to all the members of the Society, or else
the thing cannot work. We must have a centre, and
then you may widen the circumference to any extent
you please, but this centre must be universally recog
nised as a substantial starting-point.
The Chairman.—I don’t know whether Mr. Odgcrs
would wish to answer that question himself, but I must
say I myself consider that it is impossible for men to
unite for any good purpose, unless they also unite in
some common definite belief. On the other hand, I am
certain, from practical experience, that it is very possible
to unite people who combine with that common belief
quite an indefinite amount of theological difference. I
think, therefore, there is no reason at all why we should
despair of uniting in our Society people who, agreeing in
the two principles which we have adopted, namely, the
Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man, yet add to
those principles a very indefinite amount, and possibly a
wide amount, of divergent belief on other points. Cer
tainly we should wish that the question whether they
could or could not unite with ns should be determined
by each individual for himself or herself.
Mr. Wade.—Sir, you were good enough to send to me
a circular stating to me the objects of the proposed
Society. I must say I was much puzzled to give an
answer to the questions which were asked, and I came
here to-night to hear some further elucidation from you.
�26
But I am puzzled now to know in which direction any
superfluous energies one might have can be thrown,
which might not be given to any existing free Chris
tian Church. I had hoped, sincerely hoped, since I
gathered from the Chairman that the old Free Christian
Union is dead, or must die, that we might probably
strike out some new course which, in consequence of the
desire for union among the various churches, and among
those outside the churches, might have drawn together
numbers of persons who, religiously speaking, have no
homes. The Chairman said we need not be agreed as to
a name to-night, but that is to be left open, and then the
following speaker who proposed the first resolution
ignores practicalities altogether. So far as I could follow
him, we might just as well be a corporation to propagate
moonshine as to ignore practicalities. Will you give me,
if you please, something upon which to act ? You ask
me to join you. Will you give me some definite notion
of what this Society is doing, or proposes to do, over and
above what any other Christian church is doing and may
do, such a church as that of Mr. James Martineau or such
as that of Mr. Conway ? We are asked to join with some
other rational beings in doing some work which those
churches are not doing. Show me, if you please, in what
way I can put my hand to the plough. My friend, who
spoke to the resolution, invited us to lay hold of, not a
real plough, but some speculative plough which he had in
his mind. Will you show me a real plough, which I can
lay hold of and work some great furrows, but do not let
us drive off into mere generalities, for that is the rock on
which many associations have split. I am a member of
the Free Christian Union, and I have asked what am I to
do in it. I have got no answer beyond paying my sub
scription to the Society from year to year, and receiving
a pamphlet, which of course, I am delighted to have. If
there is no work to be done, what on earth is a union re
ll
�27
quired for? Ought it not to do something to put into
practice that which stands as the second article of your
creed, that is, love towards man ? Surely that is not a
very difficult thing to do. Either you have got some
thing to do beyond what the other churches are en
deavouring to do or you have not. If you have, let us
know it. If you have not, what good will this Society
do ? If you will be so good as to enlighten my ignorance
on that point I shall be glad. I believe I do not stand
alone in that matter by a good many. We should be
glad to hear, since the mover of the resolution said he
ignored practicalities, some one who would tell us in
what way we can unite to do a work which is not being
done by any other Christian church in the country.
The Chairman.—I think I may make one very short
reply to the kindly criticism, with which we have been
favoured by the gentleman who has just sat down. In
the first place, I did not understand Mr. Odgers to ignore
practicalities. In the printed statement which is before
the meeting, there are three objects stated. The first
is, investigating religious truth. The second, cultivating
devotional feelings. The third, furthering practical
morality; and in the last paragraph those same general
objects are slightly modified and altered in their order.
They are there stated as follows : that the ‘ Society is
offered as a means of uniting all those who believe in the
Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, in the
endeavour to supplement their individual efforts towards
goodness and truth by mutual sympathy;’—that corre
sponds with that which is put third in the paragraph
above, namely, ‘ furthering practical morality.’ Then, ‘ to
intensify their trust in and love to God by fellowship in
worship ;’ that is, in other words, the second object stated
in the first paragraph, namely, ‘ cultivating devotional
feelings.’ Then, ‘ to aid each other in the discovery and
propagation of spiritual truth, that thus they may attain
�28
to the more complete observance of the Divine laws of
human nature.’ That which is there put last corresponds,
I take it, to that which is put first in the first paragraph,
namely, ‘ investigating religious truth.’ I think the only
difference between the mover and seconder of the
resolution was, that Mr. Odgers distinctly stated that he
was more drawn by his sympathy for what is stated
first in the first enumeration of the objects of the Society
and last in the second enumeration of those objects,
namely, ‘ investigating religious truth,’ and less to the
practical part; whereas Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell stated that
her great interest was in furthering practical morality,
which is put last in the first and first in the second enu
meration of the objects of the Society, namely to supple
ment individual efforts towards goodness and truth, by
mutual sympathy.
Then, with regard to the question, whether our friend
should join us or not; of course we invite everybody to
join us who wishes to do so. But for my own part I do
not imagine that we shall be joined by a great many of
those who are in the happy position of belonging to a
society which entirely satisfies them. If any member of
the Portland Street congregation, or the South Place
congregation feels that either of those particular churches
completely satisfies all his desires for religious fellowship,
let him remain and be satisfied. We do not seek to
render him dissatisfied, but it is a fact which we find
existing, that there is a large number who do feel dis
satisfied, and who want something more. We offer our
organisation as an attempt to find out among ourselves
the causes and nature of our own dissatisfaction, and the
best practical mode of getting satisfied. Whether any
particular individuals, ladies or gentlemen, should join us
or not is, as I said before, a question which must be left
entirely for themselves to settle. For my part, I think
the enumeration of means under the second head of our
�29
printed circular holds out a prospect, if we can succeed in
getting the Society formed, of a good deal of practical
work which is not much done by any existing church
that I know of. The very first is this, ‘ Holding meetings
for the reading of papers and for conference.’ I am not
aware of any church that attempts anything of that kind
—certainly, neither of the two which have been referred
to does so. Then, secondly, ‘ Holding and encouraging
meetings for the united worship of God.’ That of course
is done by every church. But, taken in connection with
our avowed intention to endeavour to unite those who
belong to the various great branches of monotheistic
theology—Christians, Brahmos, Jews, Parsees, Mohamme
dans, it offers a work that has not yet been attempted, as
far as I know, by any existing church, whether orthodox
or free. Then, thirdly, ‘ Helping its members to as
certain and discharge their personal and social duties.’
No doubt the minister does something towards helping
the members of his congregation to ascertain and dis
charge their duties; but there is very little mutual
fraternal help arising out of the fellowship of the
scattered congregations with which I am acquainted in
London. Those three objects, to say nothing of corre
spondence and the issuing of publications, seem to me
to point out a very large field of practical work. I am
glad that all these questions should be asked, because the
more carefully the matter is considered the better it will
be for us. But we can only lay before you, as I said
before, that which is in our own minds and hearts ; and
if you find that you are perfectly satisfied without any
thing we have to offer, we cannot ask you to join us.
If, however, what we do place before you does seem to
you to be attractive, and to hold out some hope of
useful action on your part, then we ask you to join us.
Mr. Edward Webster.—Sir, I wish to make a few ob
servations with reference to what fell from the gentleman
�30
at the other end of the room (Mr. Wade). I would, in the
first place, ask those who are present, whether an Asso
ciation of this description is, or is not, a necessity of the
age, or rather of the intellectual religion which is so
rapidly spreading throughout the country ? If it be not
a necessity, then this Association will exist but a very
short time, notwithstanding the ability with which I am
quite sure its concerns will be conducted, from what I
have already heard from the Chairman to-night. But if
it be, as I for one undoubtedly think it is, a necessity of
the age, then you will go on, and you will establish
practically the most important religious principles that
have ever yet been communicated to the world. It
is impossible for any person who is at all connected
with the current literature of the age—with what is
going on in general society—I may say, in all ranks of
society, from the highest to the lowest—not to be aware
that doctrines and rules, in connection with religion,
which only twenty-five years ago were received as in
violable, arc now openly questioned—openly questioned,
not for the purpose of depreciating Christianity or re
ligion, but for the noble and exalted purpose of arriving
at truth, and that truth the most important of any. What
are we, and whither are we going ? what is to become
of the undying soul which every one in this room pos
sesses ? Hitherto science has not been applied to religion.
Look at all the religions of the world, and you will find
that science has had nothing whatever to do with them.
But that wondrous intellect of man, which has given us the
electric telegraph, which has enabled us as it were to fly
more speedily than the dove—that intellect is now being
applied to religion, and the consequence is, that there will
be new revelations of the dispensations of Almighty God
to man, and what hitherto have been considered penalties
and punishments will be found to be constructed upon
laws, spiritual, physical, and moral, absolutely perfect in
�31
their conception, and which have never required, and
never will require change, or amendment, or superses
sion, but by certain operations, slow to us but sure, are
effecting the ultimate social and religious civilisation of
the world. Gentlemen, union is strength ; and to tell
me that we are to stop because we cannot this evening
fix upon a name, is absurd. We shall have a name soon
enough, and such a name, I hope, as will unite very
many in supporting this Society. I do not hesitate to
say, and I am not a very young man, that the institution
of this Society has caused me more satisfaction than the
institution of any Society I ever heard of. Its importance
cannot be exaggerated. There is as yet no religion intro
duced into the world, which answers the conceptions of a
highly intelligent, highly cultivated, and highly benevolent
man. Therefore, Sir, I give you all the support I can, and
I most heartily hope that this Society is the commencement
of a thorough religious civilisation, and that it will end in
establishing universally, not only the worship of God, but
the brotherhood of man. Then, Sir, we shall not hear of
men armed to the teeth, and applying that noble mind
which God has given us, not for the purpose of insuring
human happiness, but for the purpose of destroying each
others’ lives. Christianity, as developed, has totally failed
to regenerate mankind. Eeligion founded on man’s in
tellect only will regenerate it, and that religion I trust
you are going to inaugurate this evening.
Mr. James Burns.—Mr. Chairman, and friends, I do
not rise to criticise the objects stated in the programme
of this Society, but rather to suggest something of a
practical character. I am already connected with a body
of people in this kingdom, numbering perhaps 20,000,
who are already endeavouring to do what this Society
contemplates. I see a number of those persons in this
room, and from them we can have practical suggestions
and sympathy. Now, Sir, there are several things con
�32
nected with religion. In the first place, there is senti
ment. We hear a great deal too much of that. In the
second place, there is faith; there is a great deal too
little of that. Then we have corresponding belief. Re
ligion is full of belief, but we put action out of view.
Then again, we have got dogmas or principles, but we
have not got objects. We cannot get all people to believe
alike, because every man will believe in accordance with
his culture and organisation. But there is one thino- we
can get all people to do, and that is, to move with one
beneficial object, namely, human happiness—an object of
all minds above idiocy. But we can never get two
minds to entertain the same conception of the same thing.
Even as to colours, if the organisation of vision is defec
tive, many persons entirely differ. I have to tell you,
ladies and gentlemen, that this Society is the expression
of that which has been going on among some people for
many years past, and all the things considered in your
programme are already at work in this kingdom. We
have Sunday meetings, where papers are read, and where
there is free conference. We have churches, where
there is no toll at the door, and no card for admission on
the platform. Again, we have religion in this country
which may be called scientific religion. What is meant
by that ? Simply, that there is no belief in a religion
which is not founded on facts. A scientific religion re
quires to be based upon man, and not upon God. What
do we know about God? We know nothing about God
further than what He has revealed of Himself, through
human consciousness. Let us realise the great fact of
human consciousness, and then I say all that we know
about God or anything else we can know only by careful
and intelligent investigation, and there are many things
which we can never tell with any degree of certainty.
To try to do so is unphilosophical, and can lead to nothing
but dogmatism. Why should we have dogmatism at all,
�33
where there is intelligence? Intelligence supersedes
dogma. Let us never name the word again, because it
is the sunken rock on which every ship has foundered
which has professed to take mankind to a religious haven.
What do we require to know ? We want to know what
constitutes human happiness. We want to know what
are the objects of human existence. Suppose it is im
mortality. The great object of scientific religion is to
liscover the fact of immortality—what becomes of men
after they leave off their mortality ? In what condition
lo they exist, and what is the relation of the present life
so the future life ? If you can answer those questions,
you know how to found a scientific religion, because you
?annot have a religion made up of mere morality;
morality is not religion—morality is only the performance
>f the various duties of life—
The Chairman.—Allow me, Mr. Burns, to suggest to
7ou that we are rather wandering to subjects which will
>ccupy a great deal of time, and I should like to
‘onfine the discussion to the resolution, which has been
noved and seconded, and to know whether or not we
hould adopt it.
Mr. A. C. Swinton.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlelen, among the objects of the proposed Theistic Society,
s stated in the prospectus issued by the Provisional
ommittee, is, ‘ To unite men, notwithstanding any differnces in their religious creeds, in a common effort to
ttain and diffuse purity of spiritual life.’ The question
now feel it my duty to put, in the presence of this
ssembly, is, Does this proposed Association mean to live
ccording to the divine laws of human nature, as that
reat example among men, Jesus Christ, lived? If so, of
>urse it must thoroughly renounce the present un•otherly system of life, and all that pertains to it. And
ch Theist, as a true child of God, and in His name,
ill proclaim by every deed of his daily life the falseness
D
�34
and criminality of the present system—a system based
on animalism, by which the millions of our actually de
serving fellow-creatures are forced by those who are
more powerful and cunning than themselves to be life
long slaves, and are thereby persecuted in the cruellest
manner, body and soul, to the present injury, and far
greater sin, of both oppressor and oppressed. If, there
fore, this proposed Theistic Society, despite its name and
provisions to the contrary, does not mean to supplant
this brutalising wrongdoing by the pure spiritual life its
Committee proposes to practise, then I say that far more
than is at present done by all the anti-Christian Churches,
and people falsely called Christians, is its dishonour of
God and its mockery of humanity. A few freed souls
have been striving to plant on earth that spiritual life
which the gentle and all-loving Nazarene, amid the
greatest opposition, many centuries since, heroically
proved to the world all might live, if they determined to
cast aside sensual selfishness, which blinds them, and
trust to the guidance of the divine soul within each one
of us for happiness, ever increasing and eternal. More
of these efforts may be heard of from me at the close of
this meeting, if it is desired, or of the Editor of the
‘Alpha,’ 15 Southampton Row, Holborn.
Mr. J. Baxter Langley.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and
gentlemen, I rise with very great hesitation, because I
feel the question which I raise is one upon which there
is a great difference of opinion among those who desire
earnestly to co-operate in a religious movement of the
kind to be inaugurated here. The word ‘devotional’
occurs in the resolution, and I am sure it will convey to
many minds, as it did to mine, the idea of prayer
in public worship and prayer in the sense of petitioning
to the Deity. I believe that there are a very large num
ber of persons who are animated by religious sentiment,
who nevertheless believe that prayer in that sense is not
�35
part of our religious duty, and that it places both man
and God in a wrong position. Therefore I know that,
supposing the resolution were carried with the word
‘ devotional ’ included in it, it would drive away from you
many of those whom I should like to see united with
you—namely, those who philosophically object to the
word ‘ devotional ’ as relating to a form of prayer. I
simply wish to raise the question, whether that word
must be regarded as an essential part of the resolution.
If so, it will exclude myself and those with whom I
am accustomed to co-operate among the advanced
Unitarians.
The Chairman.—We have been desirous so to pre
pare our resolutions as to cause as little difference as
possible ; but I have no doubt it would be quite im
possible to draw up any resolution, and it would be use
less if we could succeed in doing it, which would exclude
nobody. There must be a certain amount of community
of feeling, as I have said already in answering a previous
question. I can only say that the phrase which has been
objected to expresses one of the main objects of the
Society. The cultivation of devotional feeling was a sub
ject which was well considered and very deliberately and
unanimously adopted by the Provisional Committee;
and on the part of that Committee, I have no hesi
tation in saying that they intend to adhere to that phrase.
With regard to what it applies to, or what it means, I
have no authority to enter into that question at all; each
person must judge for himself as to the phrase itself.
The Committee who have called this meeting, and who
have hitherto acted in this movement, heartily adhere
to it.
Mr. E. D. Darbisiiire.—Sir, I feel very much interest
in the programme which I hold in my hand, but I have
very great doubts as to the object of the proposed
Society, much as we have heard of it. I have taken
p 2
�much pains to form my own opinion upon those subjects
mentioned in the circular. I am in doubt at this moment
whether the object of the Society is to unite men or to
make a common effort to attain and diffuse purity of
spiritual life. If the object of the Society is to unite men,
I am afraid the Committee, in their efforts to unite, will
lose that precision of thought, and that resoluteness of prin
ciple, which always disappear from attempts at compro
mise. The object of the Society, so far as I have heard
from the speakers to-night, is a common effort to attain
and diffuse purity of life ; not to unite men. We do not
care for the mere fact of uniting men. The mere fact of
uniting men is of no use. If they are heartily unanimous
in their object—if they are prepared to pledge them
selves to join together—if they hail with the sincerest
thankfulness the authority of the moral law, recognising
similar devotion on the part of their members, whom
they did not know before, as they themselves feel—they
will gather strength from knowing that others have the
same aspiration and the same longing with themselves,
and they will earnestly unite for such a purpose. That
is all our resolution proposes, as it seems to me—that the
Society shall be formed for a common effort to attain
purity of life, and not to unite men.
The Chairman.—Mr. Darbishire is. undoubtedly quite
correct in what he has said. The object of the Society is
a common effort, and it is to unite men only so far as is
necessary to carry out that common effort. Of course
there can be no common effort without union. The
object of the union, no doubt, is not as an end, but
simply as a means — the end being the common
effort.
The resolution was then put to the meeting, and
carried, with four dissentients.
�37
Mr. Vansittart Neale.— Mr. Chairman, ladies, and
gentlemen, the resolution which I have been asked to
propose is, that the name of the Society be ‘The Uni
versal Religious Association.’ Before I address myself to
the resolution distinctly before you, I wish to disclaim,
in my own name, any notion that I am speaking for any
body except myself. I infer it is one of the charac
teristics of the Society which I hope to see formed, that
in it we should feel that we are not bound by the
opinions of other people ; that we do not pledge our
selves to accept the opinions of all those with whom we
may be associated in this Society, or whom we may ask
to join in the Society ; nor are we to ask them, or require
them, to accept our opinions. But we do ask, and we
hope it may be possible to show, that there should be a
common basis of union, defined, distinct, and practical,
so far as such union can be practical, upon which we may
act, preserving to ourselves that individuality of opinion
without which I myself am convinced it is perfectly im
possible that mankind could ever arrive at a general
acceptance of any religious truth as something in which
they commonly agree.
Now, Sir, as to the name. I have heard, what I was not
aware of before, that it is intended to propose that the
question of the name to be given to this proposed Society
should be deferred for further consideration. I confess
my own opinion is that it would be a great mistake to do
so. Unless it should appear to-night that there is an
irreconcilable diversity of opinion as to what the name
ought to be, I think that the not adopting a name would
be as much as to say we do not ourselves clearly under
stand what we want, we have no distinct idea what the
Society is to exist for, and therefore it is impossible for
us to give it any title which would enable any other
people to tell what it is we ask them to join in. I myself
have a very distinct idea of a principle up >n which I
�38
think it is possible to form the Society, and perhaps I
may be allowed very shortly to fall back upon what has
already been said as to the question which has been
asked, because I think the conclusive answer has not yet
been given—I mean the question as to what such a
Society as this can do which any other free Christian
Church cannot do. I say the answer to that question is
this : it can unite those persons who, having a deep reli
gious feeling, cannot join any Christian Church. That is
what it can do. It can unite the gentleman wrhom I
have the honour to see to-night on my left (Mr. Sen) ; it
will unite the Mohammedan and the Parsee; and it will
unite gentlemen like the author of ‘ The Phases of Faith ; ’
it will unite numbers of those who are now balancing
between Pantheism and the acceptance of that which we
have called Theism. It may unite all those who cannot
and will not join any Christian Church, and in doing that
you will do much to make all those who are members of
Christian Churches understand what it is they ought to
aim at. That is the principle on which I would support
this Society. That is what I think this name, which I
propose, expresses. I think it is apparent, from the list
of names read to you from the report to-night, that there
are at least three different views or heads of what the
name for such a Society as this should be, all of which, I
think, are mistaken ones. There are certain persons who
think that the Society should come out with a definition
of what they call absolute or universal religion, and thus
place itself in a species of critical antagonism to all ex
isting forms of faith. I think that would be a very great
mistake. The object of the Society, I consider, is to bring
men into that state of mind towards each other in which
it may be possible for them thoroughly, fairly, and calmly
to investigate and to judge of what there is which is true
and what there is which is not true in different religious
faiths. Until they have brought themselves into that
�39
state of mind they cannot be in a state of mind to define
in a satisfactory manner what are the religious truths
which they themselves coincide with, and which they
seek to inculcate. Again, there are certain persons who
would suggest apparently that the Society should put
itself under the protection of some existing religious in
stitution, or under some form of Christianity. Here again
I consider we should start upon a great mistake if we did
that. I myself do accept individually that truth as to
which others differ ; for I do accept, and hold, and believe
in the truth of that which has been considered by many
persons to be altogether contrary to reason, that which
has been the foundation of what is called the Catholic faith,
upon which Christianity has been historically founded.
I accept it entirely, although I am not going, of course,
to occupy the meeting with any discussion upon that
point. But I consider that there is no religion, there is
no faith, there is no religious dogma whatever, which
is not influenced by the myths and legends or notions
with which it has been associated. No society which
could hope to bring man generally to the acceptance of a
faith that should extend all over the world can exist at
all if it does not leave itself open to the true, careful,
calm investigation and examination of all those matters
that may be contemned, or may be insufficiently founded
on facts in the existing creeds. Then again there is
another idea which has been prevalent to a certain extent
in America—namely, that the Society is to meet and say,
‘ We hold a number of very different opinions, and we
simply agree to come together and tell each other that
we differ.’ I think that would be an extremely unsatis
factory foundation on which to form the Society. I
cannot imagine that the Society would attain any valuable
action if it were to adopt that as its sole basis. What is
it that the Society ought to stand upon ? I consider that
the Society aims at doing this : it aims, or should aim,
�40
according to my idea, to unite men within their different
faiths by leading them to feel that all of them are, to use
a Biblical phrase, the sheep of one Master, although they
may be separated for the present in many different folds ;
to lead them to believe that there is a spirit common to,
pervading all religions, even those which we most gene
rally condemn as false religions ; there is a spirit per
vading them all, which is the profound spirit of religion,
a part of which each one of the special creeds has
more or less ambiguously given utterance to, but to which
it is our object to bring them back, saying to men, ‘You
remember that all your own acts, all your own dogmas,
all that you, in your own particular religious creeds, may
endeavour to insist upon, they are only helps, and should
be regarded only as helps, to the development of a com
mon foundation which may be said to be the manifesta
tion of the really divine and universal religion of man.’
I consider that every religion has, more or less, been
founded upon trust in God. It is perfectly true that the
idea of trust has been embarrassed by a great deal of
distrust; it is quite true that men are continually talking
as if they were, and imagined themselves to be, in an
tagonism to God, and God in antagonism to them, and
they suppose that it is necessary to put an intervening
mediator between themselves and God, in order to relieve
that antagonism which they imagine exists. But this
mediator and the system of mediation have been intro
duced because they have got in their minds, in spite of
all this intellectual trust, a profound feeling of distrust in
the Being who is the Author of their own lives and the
Author of this wonderful world, and because they wish
to get rid of and relieve any element of distrust, and to
give vent to the confidence in the Being on whom their
lives depend.
Then I say that every religion has, more or less, sought
to affirm fellowship among men. There again we have
�41
the same sort of error. That fellowship lias been limited
to the fellowship of some particular nation, or the fellow
ship of those belonging to some particular sect, or hold
ing some particular set of opinions. There has been a
failure in establishing a feeling of fellowship among men
by having a common relation to the Great Being to whom
they owe their existence. The third great element has
been this : that religion is a matter of revelation ; it is
not an invention of man’s imagination only, but that it is
something which man, through his imagination, appre
hends as the action of God towards him, by means of
which man is brought, through the action of God, to the
apprehension of those deep and spiritual truths upon
which his whole life depends. Here again we have had
the same sort of mixture of error with truth which we
have found in other cases. Here again it is our object
to eliminate that error. Men have generally supposed
that the idea of a revelation was something authoritatively declared at some part of the remote past, and
which for ever after was to be accepted upon certain
grounds with the same evidence. There is another and
grander idea of revelation, wdiich has been imputed to
the Roman Catholic Church—the revelation of a con
tinuous progress, or something going on from the begin
ning of the world, and which will never terminate till the
world itself is terminated—a continual manifestation of
God to man by means of which man is brought into a
more thorough appreciation of his relation towards God,
and, therefore, his relation towards himself. It is the
belief in this system of revelation of continual progress
which I say we substitute for the idea of the authorita
tive revelation, and it is that which completes the scheme.
The third great principle which lies at the bottom of all
religions, and which it is the object of this Society to call
forth and bring out in its purity------ I do not wish to
occupy your time much longer, but these considerations
�42
appear to me very essential to bring before the Society
(although I have been able to do so only in a very im
perfect manner), in order to make you share my convic
tion that the Society has a distinct object on which it
may be formed, and which it may express by its name.
I think the name suggested is one which meets all those
views as well as any name that can be suggested. ‘ The
Universal Religious Association ’ expresses, I think, all
those convictions. It expresses by the word ‘ universal ’
a desire to take in all mankind, that we regard the pro
cess of revelation as something carried on among all
nations throughout all ages, and that we go to all of
them, in order to invite all to join us, and gather from
all of them those signs and features of truths which they
have adopted. Again, it is to be a religious association.
It is to be a union of trust in God; and it affirms the
fellowship of men one with another, which is the second
great principle upon which true religious faith is founded.
I say, therefore, that this name seems to me to express
the object of the Society, such as I conceive it to be, as
fully as any name could express it; and I have, there
fore, no hesitation in recommending to this meeting that
that name should be adopted.
Mr. Andrew Leighton.—Mr. Chairman, I will consult
the desire of the meeting by exceeding brevity, and I
will simply formally second this resolution, reserving to
myself the opportunity of making any remarks at the
close of the discussion if it should be necessary, but not
otherwise.
The Chairman.—As I know there is an amendment to
be moved to this resolution, perhaps it would be con
venient that that should be proposed before any general
discussion takes place.
Mr. Edward Henry Busk.—As you, Sir, have called
upon me to move the amendment at once, I certainly
will do so. Taking as I do so great an interest in this
�43
Society, I move any amendment upon a resolution which
the Provisional Committee has thought fit to bring before
the meeting to-night with the greatest regret. It is from
no wish to force upon the Committee, or upon the Society
which this meeting has declared its desire to found, any
name of my own selection. It is, perhaps, not even
from any feeling that the name which the majority of the
Committee desire to recommend to-night is in itself very
objectionable, but it is from a great desire on my part to
prevent the Society from being misconstrued unneces
sarily by those who have not joined it. The name itself
may seem a very unimportant matter; but, in fact, the
name is the only thing which comes before persons who
are not members of the Society. The name to them re
presents the Society. It is a very important thing, there
fore, that the name should represent the object of the
Society, and, as far as possible, be kept free from being mis
represented and misunderstood. At the same time, it is
not at all important, in my view, that a name should be
speedily fixed upon. We have already passed, almost
unanimously, a resolution which states in very distinct
terms the objects which it is proposed that this Society
shall have in view. It cannot, therefore, be said that, in
thus declining to choose a name to-night, this meeting is
forming a Society without having any distinct object. It
has three very distinct objects ; but at the same time the
name, the short placard which will set before the external
world the objects which we have in our hearts and minds,
is a thing, in my judgment, requiring careful considera
tion. It is not, of course, my place to make known to
the meeting everything that has passed in committee, but
I think I may inform the meeting that the list of names
I have read in the report only came before the Committee
last Monday, and they had then and there to select a
name. Therefore I do think there was very little time
for thought as to the best name to be selected. There
�44
was not unanimity at our committee meeting, as you,
Sir, have said ; and I feel that the subject of choosing a
name is so important, as compared with the fact of being
without a name for four or five months, that I do earnestly
entreat the meeting to consider whether the choice of a
name ought not to be deferred until we have had a longer
time to consider. It is in itself a matter of detail, and,
as the chairman has already informed you, it is the inten
tion of the members of the Provisional Committee to brine»o
before this meeting a resolution to the effect that it
should be referred to a Committee to complete the or
ganisation of this Society, to form rules as to member
ship and as to the management of the Society, and various
questions of that kind which cannot be gone into at a
meeting of this general nature. I therefore move the
amendment, ‘ That this meeting do not commit itself to the
choice of a name, but that the choice of a name be re
ferred, together with the other details of completing the
organisation of the Society, to the Committee,’ which I
hope this meeting will soon appoint.
I will not detain the meeting one instant more. I
wished merely to put before you, as shortly as possible,
the extreme importance of the choice of an appropriate
name, and the desirability of not taking any step which
we should at any time wish to retract, and which we
should regret having taken hastily and without due con
sideration.
Mr. Armstrong.—I beg leave to second the amend
ment, not exactly in the same interest in which it has
been moved by Mr. Busk, but because a name has been
running in my own head which has not been mentioned,
and which I cannot help thinking would recommend
itself to a large number of persons; and, in order that
that name may have a chance of being considered by
the Provisional Committee, I rise to second Mr. Busk’s
amendment. I suppose that the liuc of thought and
�45
feeling which has led the gentlemen forming the Pro
visional Committee to call us together to-night has
been, at any rate, a certain dissatisfaction with the
general lines of religious thought existing around us.
Thought on serious matters seems at the present day to
be running chiefly in two channels: the one is the
ancient channel which regards certain dogmatic beliefs,
whatever they may be, as essential to salvation, and
insists that all men must come to one dogmatic belief in
order that they may be saved; the other is the reaction
on that old belief, which is beginning to overthrow all
distinctively religious thought, and to teach us that man
need not look to anything higher than himself for instruc
tion and light, and that all that has been accustomed to
go by the name of religion may be entirely abandoned.
I apprehend the desire of the Committee would be to
take a medium course; and while rejecting the notion
that any special dogmatic belief, be it Ritualistic, Evan
gelical, or otherwise, is necessary to salvation, nevertheless
they would contend that some religious belief, or, at any
rate, some religious life, is necessary to salvation in its
highest sense—that salvation is an assimilation with the
Divine Being, whom they believe to govern the universe;
and the great religious work before us is to draw man
nearer to that Divine Being. Whether these thoughts
ran in the mind of the Committee or not I cannot tell.
I can only judge from the internal evidence which I find
in the prospectus. I have only endeavoured, as I sup
pose all who received this circular have, to get out of my
brain some name to express this object. I entirely agree
with Mr. Busk, that our name is an exceedingly im
portant point. By our name we shall stand or fall ; by
our name we shall be judged by Saturday Reviewers and
all that tribe ; and if they can find anything to ridicule
in our name, we shall find it hard to contend against it.
But of the names our secretary read, every one con
�46
tained either the word ‘ Religious’ or the word ‘ Theistic.’
Objections have been urged to both those names, the
objection to ‘ Theistic’ being, I presume, that, however
grand and noble the word may be in itself, it may give
rise to certain prejudice, and is not generally understood
in its proper and primary sense. A Theist is a person
who believes in a God. Nevertheless, I have spoken to
many Christian persons of various Churches who were
quite shocked at my notion that they were Theists. I
think, therefore, it would be well if we could find some
other name than ‘Theistic’ by which we could express
our objects, and which there would be no objection to
our adopting. On the other hand, the objection to the
word ‘ Religious,’ to my mind, is that there are things
professed as religious which I, for my own part, am not
inclined to recognise as religious in the proper sense of
the word. The Secularists and the Positivists tell us of
Secular religion and Positive religion. I have no objec
tion either to Secularists or Positivists. I believe many
of them are good and earnest men, but at the same time
I do not think we should find it practicable to work in a
religious association with them. I do not think we
should find we had a common aim and object, and I
doubt whether a society such as that would be found to
be practically useful. I would, therefore, suggest that
the Committee do consider the word ‘ Monotheistic.’ The
word is a very long one, and it may sound too learned.
At the same time I think it combines all that one under
stands by Theism, without having any accretion around
it such as gathers around the word ‘Theistic.’ I sup
pose you do not contemplate being Polytheists, and
therefore I do not think, by adding the word ‘ Mono ’ to
‘ Theistic,’ that you will practically narrow your Society
at all. Monotheistic may seem to be a word out of place
in England; you may say that, by taking the name of
Monotheistic, it is implied there is a Polytheistic Society
�47
against whom we are engaged. But this Society is
not an English Society; it is not even a European
Society; but it is to be a world-wide Society, if the
world will join us. Polytheism is not yet eradicated
from the world ; it still exists in many countries in the
East; and I think by adopting such a name as Mono
theistic we should avoid all prejudice such as gathers
around the word ‘ Theistic.’ We should be distinct and
precise, and not misunderstood by any party ; not lay
ourselves open to ridicule, but express exactly what are
the objects of the majority of the members of the Pro
visional Committee. I have great pleasure, therefore, in
seconding Mr. Busk’s amendment.
Mr. Owex.—Sir, I would support the amendment, and
merely observe that the suggestion made by the last
speaker is one I approve of, although I should like it
better were the title to be ‘ Monotheistic Brotherhood.’ I
was heartily pleased and delighted when I read the pro
spectus, and I thought if a name could be selected in
which both points might be embraced, that of the father
hood of God and the brotherhood of man, it would be
very desirable. I think this comes nearer to it than any
name which I have yet heard. For that reason I sup
port, or rather endorse, what the last speaker has said. I
regret to find that there should be any division to-night.
I believe that in spirit we all agree. I think Mr. Swinton
ought to be satisfied with what this Society intends to do.
It is what I have desired to see for a long time—namely,
a broad platform where any man might stand upon equal
terms with others. I have had much experience with
different denominations, those who profess the popular
Evangelical views and others, and I do not question the
reality of their convictions and enjoyment, although I do
not agree with them. I say there is a reality among
them, and I respect them, and I want to be able to stand
>n the platform side by side with them. I give them
�48
credit for their sincerity, and can understand them when
they say they can realise acceptance with God. I can
appreciate the worthy stranger to whom I have listened
with satisfaction and delight, though introducing views so
different, when he took for his text, ‘ God is love,’ and
when he illustrated that love by referring to the return
ing prodigal. I thought then it was time we had a
movement such as is now being inaugurated, and I hope
those of my friends who have not gone cordially with the
votes will reconsider it, and will not act in opposition, but
in concert. There will be opportunities afforded for con
ference and for the reading of papers, and the Society
will afford them an opportunity of submitting any views
which they may desire to bring before us. I have very
frequently said, and I wish you to bear it in mind (and I
have been labouring outside for many years in attempt
ing such an object), that the things you are now suggest
ing I have attempted to do. I have referred to the
Catholic Church. They have one grand idea, but their
mistake is that they want every one to be of one mind.
But cannot we have all under one Shepherd? Cannot
we have all in one fold, and be looked upon as one
Church ? As things are now, a premium is paid on
hypocrisy. We want each man to be true to himself.
In opening associations like this there will be every
scope offered for humility, as there is a bare possibility
that we may be wrong. When we establish a Society
like this, if any member has anything to communicate,
he will be in a position to do so more than he is now,
when the different sects stand at daggers’ points.
Air. E. Webster.—Sir, I think it would be wise to post
pone the final resolution of this Society with regard to
the name, because I think the name in itself is very im
portant indeed. Moreover, I should object to the name
that has been mentioned, because it is too vague. ‘ The
Universal Religious Society ’ would not carry to ordinary
�49
minds the true nature of this Association. I presume, of
course, when the Society comes to be organised it will
have some system of public worship, because, unless it
applies to the spiritual sentiment of human nature, it will
at last merely become an institution for the circulation of
papers on theological subjects. Man is, by nature, a
gregarious creature, and more especially in matters con
nected with religion, and unless you have some system of
public worship I venture to predict your Society will
ultimately fail. The words ‘ Religious Association ’ do
not point to religious public worship at all. If you had
some such name as this, 4 The Church of God for all
People of all Nations,’ the word 4 Church ’ would in
this Christian country carry with it an idea of public
worship. I do not mean to say that that is a better
name than that which is mentioned in the resolution. I
should like to know very much from our Asiatic friends
what the meaning of the word 4 Theistic ’ is, as understood
in that part of the world, but the word throughout
Christendom has a certain definite meaning. I mention
that now for the purpose of showing my reasons for
voting for the amendment. I think the name has never
been sufficiently considered, and I am not content with
the name that has been mentioned, because it is much
too vague.
Mr. Charles Pearce.—Mr. Chairman, brothers, and sis
ters, I shall support the amendment, but not for the same
reasons for which my friend opposite (Mr. Armstrong)
supported it; and, before I make a very few remarks, I
should like to clear away one or two difficulties which
probably his remarks have made. He suggested a name
in his own mind as one which was suitable to this
Society—that is, Monotheistic, if I understood him aright,
because in the world there were many gods, or rather
there was worship of what are supposed to be numerous
gods. Without entering into any theological discussion,
E
�50
I desire simply to carry your minds back some 4,000 years
since, and to remind you that all the efforts of Moses
were to destroy the worship of gods and to enunciate the
worship of the one true God. Therefore I earnestly
hope you will dismiss from your minds at once any idea
of adopting such a name. We do not want to have this
country and the world embroiled, as were the nations
around the Children of Israel, for the purpose of putting
down the worship of many gods. Our brother’s obser
vations would not apply, for he said we have Positivists
and Secularists ; and I do not think that the name pro
posed, of ‘The Universal Religious Association,’ would be
a name under which we could unite with Positivists and
Secularists. I gathered from his remarks (I do not wish
to do him any injustice) that he would not unite with
Positivists and Secularists. Now, if he did say so, he at
once condemns himself as being unfit to join this Associa
tion. For I take it that if we believe in the fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of man, if a man be a
Positivist because he has by using his intellect become a
Positivist, he is still a child of God and still a brother ;
and it is just the same if he be a Secularist. I say, all
honour to the noble Secularist of Manchester who chal
lenged his lordship the Bishop to meet him on some fair
platform. They are men and they are brothers.
Now I will state my reason for not agreeing with the
name ‘ Universal Religious Association.’ My reason is
simply this, that no one attempts to define religion. Mr.
Vansittart Neale says, if we ask what is the meaning of
the term ‘ religious,’ we must criticise all religions. Of
course we must. There is only one religion, and that is
very easily found if you are desirous of finding it—it is
the religion of love. It was professed by Jesus Christ
1,800 years ago. It was professed by Confucius nearly
3,000 years since. It was professed by Brahma and
Buddha. It was professed by all the Reformers. We
�51
do not want the religion of love hampered up with doc
trines or dogmas at all. Then we must say what is the
meaning of the word ‘ religious.’ If you can apprehend
thoroughly your relationship to God, or to the cen
tral source of life, call that central source by any name
you please, if you once recognise that from the central
source you issue, then you are a child of the central
source; and every man, woman, and child, no matter
where they are, or in what condition or circumstance,
are your brothers and sisters, and that is the religion of
love. I only support the amendment upon the name to
night that there may be some time to think of the name.
The name proposed is a very fine name, and it is one of
the most suitable you could think of, if you could only
well define in your own mind what religion is. When I
sent in my reply, I thought no name was so suitable as
‘ Theistic Union,’ if Theism were thoroughly exemplified.
I only oppose the carrying of the resolution and support
the amendment that you may think over it, and come
better prepared at the next meeting to vote as to the
name to be given to this Association.
Now let me ask you just to consider one statement.
You say you are here with the desire to associate to
gether as brothers and sisters in forming this Association,
and if you form it under the title of a ‘ Universal Religious
Association,’ you accept the definition of religion that it
is your duty to God, knowing your relationship to Him,
and you accept the duties which devolve upon you when
you meet your brothers. This is important ; and please
to listen to it fairly and in the same spirit in which I offer
it to you. Do you think that the Divine Being is a
respecter of persons? No, you do not. Do you think
the Divine Being gives one man 800,000/., and gives
800,000 men nothing a year ? Certainly not, and He
never intended it. If we are going to work, and not to
talk, one of our efforts will be to carry into daily life that
E 2
�52
precept laid down by the Nazarene Carpenter, ‘ As you
would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto
them.’
Mr. Baxter Langley.—I should like to say a word
or two with regard to the name to be given to the Asso
ciation. I am still in hopes that, as the Society was itself
open to discussion and consideration, it may hereafter
amend the first resolution and adopt some other prin
ciple. I submit for your consideration, and with due
respect, that you will find by experience that you cannot
do by the resolution what I had hoped you intended to
do. I wish to say one or two words as to this Society
being called ‘ The Universal Religious Association.’ I want
to show you, in one or two brief sentences, that it cannot
be universal if you adhere to your first resolution. As I
understand, we came here together to-night to bring as
large a number as possible into religious association ; and
the gentleman at the bottom of the room, very early in
the meeting, said with great force, as I thought, that the
Society must offer something beyond that offered by other
Churches. The question is whether, having adopted the
platform you have to-night, and having determined to
adhere to it, you are not, by calling yourselves ‘ The Uni
versal Religious Association,’ placing the Society in an
equally absurd position as if you called yourself the
Catholic Church. With all respect to the gentlemen who
have spoken, I hold that there are a very large number
of Secularists who are tired and worried to death with
discussions, disputations, and debates upon dogmatic reli
gion who would gladly have welcomed a meeting of this
kind if it had been of such a nature as to present a
platform which was unobjectionable to them. I believe
it was quite possible to adopt a platform which, while it
would have included those connected with Christian
Churches, would yet have been so adapted to the wants of
the age as to have included all those men who are animated
�53
by deep religious feeling and desire religious co-operation.
The orthodox Churches are admitted to have failed, and
a great number have admitted that many of the heterodox Churches have failed. It is a fact that I very
much regret. Having been identified with the Unitarian
Churches, I can say that they are comparatively desolate
and deserted. They are only filled when there is some
man of remarkable ability and eloquence who calls to
gether a congregation simply by the dramatic character
of his eloquence. They have all been rendered desolate
by the fact that they have determined to have as a basis
of worship that there should be a certain creed ; that
lies at the root of the whole of this evil. If you could
adopt such a platform as would be truly universal
then you would bring in a very large number of
people—some of those speculative persons who have
been alluded to in terms hardly so respectful as ought to
have been used—you would bring in a large number of
earnest Secularists who desire to join in what is commonly
known as Christian work and benevolent enterprise.
Now, what are the two ideas which you have embodied
in your programme which would prevent, I believe, the
possibility of this union ? I know that many persons
adhere to the idea of a personal God as being essential
to true religion. I am not an atheist myself, but I claim
that there is a religious spirit existing in the minds of
those who differ from me and from you on that essential
point. I believe there is an enormous amount of useful
effort to be carried on in the world without any dogma
of that kind. And it is a dogma with regard to the
personal existence of the Deity. The other idea to which
I have alluded is that which may be said to have been
embodied in George Coombe’s ‘ Constitution of Man ’—a
work written by a man of the highest ability, of great
earnestness, and of deep religious feeling. His chapter
on Prayer has been adopted and accepted by a large
*
�54
number of persons calling themselves Christians. If you
are to adopt the two ideas to which I have referred, you
cannot get a basis of union which will embrace persons
other than those embraced in the existing Churches;
the Church in South Place includes a very large
number of persons who go the length to which I have
referred to-night. There are other persons who go the
same length among Unitarian ministers. There are very
broad and liberal views preached from their churches,
and I would point to Mr. Mark Wilks, of Holloway, where
discourses of the most profound character are delivered
from the pulpit. It is a matter of grave importance
that you should not hastily take a name because it adds
one more difficulty which you will throw in the way of
adapting yourselves to the wants of the present age. I
am convinced myself, from my knowledge of the common
people (not such as those we see in this room to-night),
many of whom hunger and thirst after some notion of
this kind—I am quite sure you will not bring them on
your platform unless you are careful to avoid the difficul
ties attaching to other Churches, one of which I think
you have thrown in your way by adopting the resolution
you have to-night. I beseech you, therefore, not to
throw a further difficulty in the way by adopting an un
suitable name, because if you do it will only add one more
to the difficulties already existing.
The Chairman.—I think it must be quite clear that
the meeting is not prepared, at any rate unanimously, to
accept a name to-night. On the other hand, we are ex
tremely anxious to get to the next resolution, to which
our friend Mr. Sen will speak. Under those circum
stances, I have the permission of the mover and the
seconder of the resolution to withdraw the resolution
in favour of the amendment, and if that is done we
may at once dispose of this question, and shall be able
to proceed with a more interesting discussion.
�55
Mr. Leighton.—I desire to say one word before you
withdraw the resolution. I was myself asked to second
this resolution on coining into the room to-night, but
have had no time for its consideration. From the
general sense of the meeting, I think it would be desir
able that further consideration should be given. I am
quite willing, and am glad that the mover of the resolu
tion is also, that it should be withdrawn. I want the
meeting to give their sanction to the proposition that the
name, whatever it be, shall be made as broad as possible
—to include all humanity. The question I have been
considering in my own mind is whether even the term
Theistic, broad as that is, would not exclude some who
ought to be included. The religious sentiment is a com
mon principle; all people have it, Secularists as well as
others; and some Secularists I have found to be morp
intrinsically religious than many professing Christians. A
name, therefore, which would include such persons should
surely be the one adopted by such a society as ours.
Mr. Leighton then controverted Mr. Baxter Langley’s
objections to the word ‘ devotional,’ holding that the
question raised was simply one of definition, which each
person must settle for himself, just as each had to define
for himself what was meant by religion.
Mr. Cunnington.—I hope I shall not be considered to
intrude if I occupy your attention for a moment, being
the individual who had the honour of proposing to the
Provisional Committee the name which has been so much
controverted. I do not rise for the purpose of justifying
the name or recommending it, seeing what the present
feeling of the meeting is, but merely for the purpose of
presenting what I think may be a practical inconvenience.
We must have, as it seems to me, some designation in
order that our friend Mr. Busk may be communicated
with. If you have no name it might be temporarily the
Nameless Society. You must have some name, or you
�56
cannot address our friend Mr. Busk. If you cannot agree
upon the name of the Society, let it be ‘The Nameless
Society,’ or something that would prevent the practical
inconvenience of having no title.
The Chairman.—I do not think practical inconvenience
would be at all felt. We came here to-night as a pro
posed Theistic Society, and until something else is adopted
you have that name upon the prospectus, which, I think,
will answer all practical purposes. The resolution now
before the meeting is that the subject of the name be
referred to the Committee to be appointed to complete
the organisation of the Society.
The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried
unanimously.
Baboo Kesiiub Chunder Sen.—Sir, before I introduce
the resolution with which I have been entrusted, I re
quest your permission to say a few words. I have always
felt strongly the importance and necessity of establishing
spiritual fellowship and union among all classes and races
of men. That there should be political and social differ
ences among mankind is not at all surprising ; but that
men and women should fight with each other in the name
of religion and God is really painful and surprising. The
true object of religion is to bind mankind together, and
to bind them all to God. If we see that in the name of
religion, men, instead of promoting peace on earth and
goodwill among men, are trying to show their antagonism
and animosity towards each other, then certainly we must
stand forward with our voice of protest and say religion
is defeating its own legitimate object. I have always
been distressed to find in my own country how many of
the Hindoo sects in India fight with each other, and how
they combine to war with Mohammedans and Christians,
whom they look upon and hate as their enemies. It is
far more painful to see how that spirit of bitterness
�57
and sectarian antipathy has been persistently manifested
towards the Hindoos by many professing Christians.
None preached so eloquently and so ably the doctrine
of the true love of God and the love of man as Jesus
Christ. It is, therefore, extremely unpleasant to us all
to see those who profess to be his disciples hate the
Hindoo as a heathen who has no hope of salvation,
and who has not one single spark of truth in his own
mind. Narrowness of heart has oftentimes its origin in
narrowness of creed. Men hate each other, men con
taminate their hearts with sectarian bitterness, because
they believe that there is no truth beyond the pales of
their own denominations and churches. This is a fatal
mistake, and to this may be attributed all those feelings
of bitterness and mutual recrimination which have con
verted the religious world into a painful scene of war and"
even bloodshed. Religion is essentially universal. If
God is our common Father, His truth is our common pro
perty. But the religious world may be likened to a vast
market; every religious sect represents only a portion of
truth; religion is many-sided; each individual, each
nation, oftentimes adopts and represents only one side of
religion. In different times and in different countries,
therefore, we see not the entire religious life, but only
partial religious life. The Hindoo represents religion
in his peculiar way, the Christian in his. The men
of the first century represented religion in their own way
according to the circumstances in which they lived ; and
so the men who are blessed with modern civilisation re
present religious life in their own way. If we desire to
adopt religious life in its entirety and fulness, we must
not, we cannot, reject or ignore any particular nation or
any branch of God’s vast family. If we embrace all
nations and races from the beginning, from the creation
of man down to the present moment; if we can take in
all religious scriptures, all so-called sacred writings ; if we
�58
are prepared to do honour to all prophets and the great
men of all nations and races, then certainly, but not till
then, can we do justice to universal and absolute religion
such as exists in God. To prove true to Him, to prove true
to humanity, we must do justice to all the departments of
man’s religious life as they are manifested in different ages
and in different parts of the world. The English Chris
tian has no right to hate the Hindoo heathen, nor has the
Hindoo heathen any right to treat the English Christian
with sectarian antagonism and hatred. Both must em
brace each other in the fulness of truth and in the fulness
of brotherly love. I rejoice heartily to see such a thing
foreshadowed in the constitution of the Society about to
be organised. I feel that modern nations and races are
getting their eyes opened to the catholicity of true reli
gion, after centuries of spiritual despotism and sectarian
warfare. Men are beginning to feel that, in order to be
true to nature and true to God, they must cast away
sectarianism and protest against spiritual tyranny and
kiss freedom and peace. The object of this resolution is
to bring together religious men in India, America, Ger
many, France, and in other parts of the world, into one
Monotheistic brotherhood, so that they may all recognise,
love, and worship God as their common Father. The time
has come when such a movement ought to be practically
organised, when all nations and races should be brought
together into one fold. English Christians ought to ex
tend their right hand of fellowship to my countrymen,
and my countrymen ought to extend their right hand of
fellowship to all those who stand beyond the pales of
Hindoo orthodoxy; so that, while they differ from each
other on certain dogmatic questions of theology, they
still recognise each other as brethren, and show their pre
paredness to vindicate the unity of the human race in the
face of the existing conflicting chorus of theological
opinions. It is impossible to establish unanimity of
�59
opinion among mankind, and those who have tried to
bring about such unanimity have always failed. I hope,
therefore, the friends and promoters of this movement
will not commit that great mistake. Let individual
liberty be recognised ; let every individual right be vin
dicated and respected; but still at the same time, while
we recognise differences of opinion, let us feel, and let
us declare, that it is possible to have a common platform
of action, where we can exchange our sympathies with
each other as brethren. There is another mistake which
I hope this Society will not commit, and that is, ever
to assume an arrogant and hostile attitude towards exist
ing sects. We should always assume a humble position.
We must stand at the feet of our ancestors, all those who
have gone before us, and who have left for our enjoy
ment precious legacies of religious life and religious
thought. All honour to such men. Hindoo, Christian,
Chinese, Buddhist, Greek, and Roman—men of all nations
and races—men of all ages—who have in any way
laboured successfully to promote the religious, and moral,
and social amelioration of mankind, are entitled to the
undying gratitude of all succeeding ages. In forming a
Society like that whose formation we contemplate at
present, we feel morally constrained to honour those
spiritual and moral benefactors to whom we owe “ a debt
immense of endless gratitude.” At their feet we sit
to-day, and to them we desire to offer our hearts’ thanks
givings, and we desire to recognise them individually
and unitedly, as those friends and brothers who have
directly or indirectly brought us into that position in
which we feel enabled to establish and organise a Society
like this. It is on account of the light which we have
received from them through succeeding generations that
we are prepared to come forward to-night and stand
before the world as a Theistic brotherhood. We cannot
dishonour them; though they belong to different nation
�60
alities, though they may be of different times and races,
we cannot for one moment dishonour them. We cannot
with pride and arrogance say we do not owe anything to
the Christian Scriptures, we owe nothing to the Hindu
Scriptures, we owe nothing to Confucius. We owe much
to all these sources of religious revelation and inspiration.
To their lives, as the lives of great men, we owe a great
deal. Our attitude, therefore, must be an attitude of
humility towards those who have gone before, an attitude
of thankful recognition; and towards existing Churches
also we must assume the same attitude. If there are
friends around us who think it their duty to criticise
severely our proceedings, to hold us up to public derision
and contempt, they are quite welcome to do so; but let
us not, as members of this Society, for one moment
cherish in our hearts unbrotherly feelings against them.
Our mission is a mission of love, and goodwill, and peace.
We do not stand forward to fan the flame of religious
animosity, but our desire is to extinguish the flame of
sectarian antipathy, if it is possible for us to do so. We
go forth as ministers of peace ; we shall love all sects ;
Christians and Hindoos we shall look upon as brothers,
as children of the same Father ; their books we shall read
with profound reverence ; their priests we shall honour
with thanksgivings ; and to all those around us who desire
to treat us as men who have no hopes of salvation, even
to them we must show charity and brotherly love. I
hope, therefore, not a single member of this Society will
ever think it right or honourable to manifest the bitter
spirit of sectarianism towards any religious denomination.
There are in England at present, I understand, nearly
300 religious sects into which the Christian Church has
been divided. That such a thing should exist in the
midst of Christendom is indeed painful, I may say fright
ful. Let us do all in our power to bring together these
various religious denominations. I do not see why we
�61
should not exercise our influence on Christian ministers
to exchange pulpits with each other. Why should not
the people of one congregation visit the church of another
congregation ? Why should not the various preachers of
the Christian Churches try to harmonise with each other ?
Christian people sometimes go the length of thinking
that the whole religious life is monopolised by themselves.
During my short stay in this country I have been struck
with the fact that English Christian life, however grand
and glorious it may be—and it certainly is in many of its
aspects and features—is sadly deficient in devotional fer
vour in the world ; deficient in feelings such as those
which a deep and trustful reliance upon a personal and
loving God alone can inspire, support, and sustain. Some
thing like that is to be found in India. I do honestly
believe that in India there is such a thing as spirituality.
In England there is too much materialism. That is my
honest conviction. If England and India were to unite
and receive from each other the good things they ought
to receive from each other, we should be able to form a
true Church, where spiritual fervour and the activity of
material life would harmonise, in order to form the unity
of religious life. Whether, therefore, we come to Eng
land, America, Germany, or France, or any other country
where similar religious movements are going on, we ask
them to co-operate with us; we ask the whole world to
treat us as fellow-disciples, to give unto us all the good
things they possess and enjoy for our benefit, that we
may thus collect materials from all existing churches
and religious denominations in order, in the fulness of
time, to construct and uprear the future Church of the
world.
Friends, these are the words that I intended to say
to-night, with a view to invite you all to look upon this
Society as an association of love, and peace, and humility,
not of hatred, mutual persecution, and sectarianism. If
�G2
this Society should live long—and why should it not live
if it is God’s Church and God’s society?—if this Society
be spared to continue in a career of honourable useful
ness, it will bless our hearts ; it will bless your country
and my country; it will bless the whole world. I need
not soar into regions of imagination and fancy in order
to depict in glowing colours the future Church of the
world ; but this I must say, that from the time the light
of religion dawned on my mind, up to the present moment,
I have always been an advocate of the glorious principle
of religion which is summed up in these two great doc
trines, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
man ; and so long as I am enabled to work, whether here
or in my own country or elsewhere, it shall be my duty
to speak, and feel, and labour in such a way that not
only my own countrymen may, under the guidance of
God’s Spirit, and with God’s help, be brought into one
fold, but that all nations and races, so far as is possible
with my humble resources and powers, may be influenced
to feel the necessity of bringing themselves into one
vast family. Oh! may that blessed day soon come
when the earth, untrod by sect, or creed, or clan, shall
own the two great principles — the universal father
hood of God and the brotherhood of man ! I beg to
propose this resolution to the meeting: 4 That in the
opinion of this meeting it is desirable that the Society
should correspond without delay with similar societies in
India, America, Germany, France, and elsewhere, as
suring them of our sympathy and fellowship.’
Mr. Cunnington.—Ladies and gentlemen, I have had
the honour of being asked to second this resolution. I shall
not be so presumptuous as to attempt to add anything to
what Mr. Sen has said, and I shall occupy your time but a
few moments. Mr. Sen has dwelt very forcibly, and very
properly, on the obligations we are under to those who
have preceded us in the discovery and propagation of
�63
religious truth. There is a further idea which strikes me
as being also important, seeing that in Ilim whom I
recognise as the Deity there is neither variableness nor
shadow of turning ; there is no change in His laws, and
the same element, or the same disposition, exists in
humanity now as in former times; and while we ap
preciate at its proper value the truth which has been
handed down to us by past generations, we do not lose
sight of the importance of recognising the inspiration of
the present day. I am one of those who think there
cannot be any difference or clashing between the advocates
of physical science or truths that relate to matter, and
those who are the advocates of truths which relate to
spiritual things, or to the mind. All truth must be in
harmony if it is rightly understood. Both matter and
mind have, according to my conception, been given to us
by the same Being, who is perfect, and in whom there
can be no imperfection. It is on account of our not
sufficiently comprehending the laws of that Being that we
see around us the lamentable and degrading state of society
which exists. I take it that if the interests of society had
been more practically insisted upon there would have been
comparatively less difference of opinion than there is and
less importance attached to the name, which there is, as
it seems to me, a difficulty in accepting. When we see
about us the want of common honesty, the want of truth
fulness, the physical degradation which exists amongst so
many of our fellow-creatures, whilst we are living in a
land groaning, I may say, under its wealth—if the
principle was recognised that property has its duties as
well as its rights, it would go, I think, far towards
remedying the evil which exists in society ; and whatever
name we give to our Society, whatever our aims may be,
unless they are brought to have a practical bearing on
the ills which are patent to all of us, it will be of but little
use. Our object must be to give it a practical direction;
�64
we must make up our minds to act upon the simple
principle, as between man and man, of doing unto others
as we would be done by. I will not attempt to analyse,
or to dilate upon the two grand principles which have
been referred to, of the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man. It is because, as I think, those two
principles, rightly understood, are sufficient to unite the
whole of us, while we have our own individual opinions,
and hold them sincerely, earnestly, and ardently, that
we may be in a position to join those who may differ
from us, and to give them credit for the same sincerity
which we claim for ourselves.
But, Sir, I am not speaking to the resolution, which is,
that this Society should put itself in communication with
similar societies in all parts of the world. I firmly
believe, using the language of our great poet, that
‘ one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,’ and
I believe that the religious element in some shape or
other exists in all conscious humanity. It is believing
that, that I cordially sympathise with, and second, the
resolution which has been proposed.
The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried
unanimously.
Mr. Conway.—Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen,
I rise for the purpose of moving a resolution to the
effect ‘ That a Committee of twelve be appointed, with
power to add to their number, to complete the organisa
tion of the Society, and for the present to manage its
affairs; of this Committee, five to be a quorum ; and that
this Committee report to a future general meeting, to be
held as early as they can arrange.’
At this late stage of the meeting I do not feel inclined
to occupy the attention of the audience very long. For
myself, Sir, I would rather sit silent and see this move
ment go on, having perfect faith in the soundness of the
�Go
sped which we tire engaged in planting to-night. 1
believe it to be seed falling into honest soil, and I have
so many opportunities of appealing to the public, and
expressing my opinions, and even of monopolising the
expression of opinion, that I should be much more
pleased to hear some of the rest speak. I will not,
ho wever, let a movement, from which I hope great
things, pass without stating that it has my entire
sympathy, and I heartily approve of it, although, of
course, in many details, it does not exactly express my
particular ideas. I have my own peculiar views about
what constitutes devotion. I do not believe in that which
is called private or public prayer. I am not willing,
with others, to be called a Christian in the usual accepta
tion of the word, because I think I love and admire Jesus
Christ too much for that. I have my various feelings, of
course. Something fell from our chairman which looked
as if he believed we were not quite satisfied with our
respective local associations, and therefore came hither.
I do not agree with that. I think we may be perfectly
well satisfied in our local congregational arrangements,
and at the same time feel there is room for a larger
association with people who disagree with us and people
who are far removed from our ideas ; and the presence
of disagreement, and the presence of misgiving, and the
variety of ways of looking at things which have been
manifested in this meeting to-night are the most hopeful
signs we have ; they show that we are beginning to launch
out into something wider than the little associations
which we have with our own sects, and, instead of heaping
up sect upon sect, we shall come in contact with other
ways of looking at things throughout the world. I believe,
Sir, this Society will stand related to religion exactly as
the British Association of Science stands with regard to
science. There is a Royal Institution for teaching
science, and there is a Jermyn Street School, and there
F
�66
is the Ethnological Society—all practical institutions for
teaching science ; and also there is a great movement in
this country, and in every country where there are
scientific societies, devoted to the union of scientific men
for great purposes, and for the prosecution of vaster dis
coveries than any one society could accomplish by itself ;
and exactly as the Social Science Association stands
related to particular institutions, or the British Associa
tion stands related to a particular scientific association,
so I understand this Association to stand related to any
special religious movement. I should have been glad
were it openly called, what I believe it substantially is,
a Religious Science Association, and that we should an
nually have our meetings for the study of such things
and furtherance of such ends, just as people meet an
nually at Social Science or British Scientific Associations.
However, Sir, I candidly endorse the idea that this meeting
is practically tentative, and the object of this resolution
is to further that idea. It is a seed which we arc
planting, and we propose to appoint a Committee, in order
that they may cultivate that seed through the tenderest
part of its existence—namely, its gradual first growth,
its first tender blade, before it has got the sturdiness
and strength to which it can grow of itself. I think it
is clear that it would be impossible to decide what shall
be the practical mission of an association like this. It
is manifestly impossible for us to decide on the emer
gencies of the future, the exigencies which are to come,
the great demands which are to be made on the united
religious heart and free thought of this country. We
cannot decide till occasions arise, for new occasions teach
new duties, and there is not in this world a limb of any
animal, or form of any plant, that did not come into
being because there was a need which arose for the exist
ence of such animal or plant : every limb, every tree,
every leaf, every lin, in this world was created because
�G7
it was wanted by the surroundings, the great practical
results and emergencies of life. Our movement, then,
must be considered as a small egg, and it is to be formed
in this world as every other organic form has been con
stituted in obedience to the requirements which call
forth the vital germ and give it shape. As it lives,
as it grows, the light which will shine upon it will
give it its proper powers ; the rain which will fall will
clothe it with exactly the duties it needs, and the objects
it should have in view. We must trust this seed to the
eternal elements of this world ; we must trust it to God ;
we cannot decide at present everything it is to do, for
there may arise in distant years some great question upon
which it may be desirable, or even necessary, to call a
special meeting and take some united action. There may
be some other Oriental brother or brothers to wel
come, and then this Society will be here to open its arms
to such a brother, and not to let him wander about to be
tossed hither and thither, and to be preached at at my
lord’s table by his chaplain. He will not be left to be
called a Pagan here and there ; and there will be a large
welcome and a large hearing wherever there is a Society
which regards him as a true, devout, and religious teacher.
And, Sir, there may arise great questions of religious free
dom—questions arising touching religious movements,
national religious establishments, and many other things
in this world, where it will be necessary for people united
in some great salient points to take some practical action ;
and that practical action will decide what limbs, what
shape, what features, we shall have; for it is clear that,
if you try to do too much by giving this Society a
distinct shape beforehand, if you try to make a machine
answer all your ends before you know what those ends
are, if you make your machine without reference to
what may happen in the future, if you do that, you
will find, I think, that the machine will become very
F 2
�68
tiresome, very bungling, mid, in the end, useless. I
repeat, I would rather begin low down, where all things
in nature begin—first of all the mere blade, and let that
grow as the Eternal Tower shall decide and the course
of events shall determine. That is all I have to say, and
that is why it seems to me eminently proper that we
should have a Committee to watch over us, to avail them
selves of every ray of light which shall foil upon our
effort, to avail themselves of all suggestions which may
be made from whatever quarter, to see that we start
well, to see that the first beginnings of this seedling
shall be well cultured, well pruned of all that is ex
traneous, so that we shall see that in the end it is fit
for the garner. Those twelve gardeners who will con
stitute the Committee, those twelve horticulturalists
who are to tend this seed and to watch over it, should,
I think, be appointed by us, and, therefore, I most cor
dially move, with the highest hopes as to the progress
of this Society in the future, that this Committee be
appointed.
Mr. Kisto Gobindo Gupta.—Ladies and gentlemen,
I cannot speak very much. But I have much pleasure in
seconding the resolution which has just been put forward
as to the necessity of the proposed Association, and as to
the necessity for a Committee to manage its business.
Much has been already said upon the subject, and I can
only add my voice to say that I have personally felt the
necessity of such an association, more perhaps than any
body else in the room. In India we have similar associ
ations, but here some of my friends and myself do not
find any distinct association where we can feel ourselves
quite at home. So, if the proposed Association should
be formed, it will be a welcome place to all of us. I
have, therefore, much pleasun1 in seconding the reso
lution.
�69
Mr. Owen.—The last speaker said that he and his
associates have not been able to feel themselves at home
in any association now existing in this country. There
is a class who have not felt themselves at home in any
of the Churches, and hence the question was raised, Why
do not the working classes go to church ? If you arc
going to form a Committee, take heed to that, have regard
to that; do not disregard the working classes ; do not get
a highly respectable and a thoroughly English Committee.
I do not think anyone has attached more importance to
the visit of our distinguished Indian friend than I have;
but what has been his work in India ? He has been
endeavouring to deal a death-blow against caste. Have
any of those associated with him said one word about
the caste which exists in England? And is not that the
curse of our country? And so long as that exists all
that we have said simply amounts to nothing, and
there can be no religious union. I want to test the
matter; and if you are in earnest, I will promise you
that thousands will back you in your work. I have
addressed, I may say, hundreds of thousands of people in
this metropolis, and I have scarcely ever opened mv lips
without advocating the same principles that you have
advanced to-night. I hope, therefore, you will be explicit
on this one point, and don’t let us have a respectable
Committee. I am sure you do not misunderstand me.
I mean that the working classes have not felt them
selves at home, because they are not what is considered
the respectable class. I believe that Jack is as good as
his master, and in fact a good deal better. The working
classes are the industrious bees, and they are better than
the drones any day. I have the greatest respect for
every gentleman present; but I only ask you to be considerative, and to do something worthy of the name of
Chunder Sen. He has the noblest spirit I have seen. I
�70
doubt whether I ever heard a man open his lips in my
life for whom I have a greater veneration. I hope, there
fore, we shall do something worthy of such a man.
After some further discussion, the resolution was put
to the meeting and carried unanimously; and the Com
mittee was subsequently named.
A vote of thanks to the chairman terminated the pro
ceedings.
©
�RESOLUTIONS PASSED AT A GENERAL MEETING
HELD AT
THE FREEMASONS’ 11ALL, LONDON,
ON
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1870.
MR. WILLIAM SIIAEN IN TIIE CHAIR.
1. That, in the opinion of this meeting, it is desirable
to form a Society to unite men, notwithstanding any
differences in their religious creeds, in a common effort
to attain and diffuse purity of spiritual life by, (1) in
vestigating religious truth, (2) cultivating devotional
feelings, and (3) furthering practical morality.
2. That the subject of the name of the Society be
referred to the Committee to be appointed to complete
the organisation of the Society.
3. That, in the opinion of this meeting, it is desirable
that the Society should correspond without delay with
similar societies in India, America, Germany, France, and
elsewhere, assuring them of our sympathy and fellowship.
4. That a Committee of twelve be appointed, with
power to add to their number, to complete the organisa
tion of the Society, and for the present to manage its
affairs ; of this Committee, five to form a quorum ; and
that this Committee report to a future general meeting,
to be held as early as they can arrange.
A Committee of twelve ladies and gentlemen was then
ippointed, of whom the following have consented to act :
—Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Ananda M. Bose, Edward
Henry Busk, Moncure D. Conway, George Hickson,
Andrew Leighton, Miss E. A. Manning, S. Prout New•ombe, William Sliaen, and Edward Webster.
�72
STATEMENT OF THE COMMITTEE.
— ♦----
The Committee have begun the task committed to
them by the general meeting, and have agreed upon the
following statement for immediate publication :—
The Committee fully recognise and appreciate the
innumerable efforts which have been made by eminently
religious and good men for the amelioration of mankind,
physically, intellectually, and morally, and acknowledge
that a large debt of gratitude is due to these earnest
and devoted men ; but at the same time they feel that
the results of all the efforts which have been made leave
abundant room for, and encourage, fresh exertions upon a
basis as broad and comprehensive as possible.
It is felt that a belief in the two great principles of the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men forms a
sufficient basis for religious communion and united action.
This Society is offered as a means of uniting all who
share this feeling, in the endeavour to supplement their
individual efforts towards goodness and truth by mutual
sympathy; to intensify their trust in and love to God by
fellowship in worship; and to aid each other in the dis
covery and propagation of spiritual truth ; that thus they
may attain to the more complete observance of the
divine laws of human nature.
It is. intended to seek the attainment of those objects
by the following means, namely—
1. The holding of meetings for the reading of papers
and for conference.
2. The holding and encouragement of meetings for
the united worship of God.
�73
3. The helping its members t<> ascertain and dis
charge their personal and social duties.
4. The formation of similar societies, with the same
objects, in various parts of-the British Empire and other
countries.
5. Correspondence with those who may be supposed
willing to assist in the objects of this Society.
6. The issue of publications calculated to promote
the above purposes.
The Committee now invite all persons who concur in
the views thus expressed to join the Society. Any person
may become a member by communicating his or her
name and address in writing to the honorary secretary,
in the form appended to this statement.
It is not proposed to have any compulsory subscription’
but all members are invited to contribute to the funds
of the Society.
In the resolution, under which the Committee arc
acting, the objects of the Society are declared to be,
the investigation of religious truth, the cultivation of
devotional feelings, and the furtherance of practical
morality.
With reference to the investigation of religious truth,
the Committee feel that it is desirable that meetings for
the reading of papers and for conference should be
established as soon as possible, and intend to organise
such meetings in the autumn of this year.
The Society will also, with a view to the attainment of
this object, aid in the study of already existing works,
reprinting them when necessary, and will assist in pub
lishing original works.
Under this head will also stand the task of compiling
a collection of the purely religious passages from all the
different Bibles or Sacred Scriptures to which access can
be obtained. The compilation of this work may be begun
without delay.
It is hoped that the Society may soon be in a position
�74
to aid in the establishment in many towns and villages of
libraries in which those books shall find a place which
arc calculated to disseminate the principles of the Society,
and in the publication of works specially intended for the
young.
As to the second of the three objects of the Society,
devotional feelings may be indirectly cultivated in a
variety of ways, such as by a sincere study of science, by
art, or by literature. In fact, all the higher pursuits of
the intellect and imagination, and all developments of
pure social, and domestic affections materially tend to the
increase of the feeling of devotion.
These various means may be encouraged, but can
hardly, at least at present, be actually employed by the
Society. But the Society can hold meetings for the worship
of God, and thereby give such of its members as desire to
attend a means of directly aiding each other in the culti
vation of feelings of devotion.
These meetings, while strengthening and elevating the
spiritual communion between each member and God, will
afford opportunities of public worship to those who feel
themselves excluded from meetings for worship based on
dogmatic theology, and will practically demonstrate the
possibility and desirability of the union for public wor
ship of persons holding different creeds.
The Committee intend, therefore, to arrange, in the
autumn of the present year, meetings of the Society for
united worship.
Another means of furthering this object, which may be
at once begun by the Society, is the collection of a book
of prayer and praise, to contain passages from already
known books and hymns, as well as prayers, meditations,
and hymns which may from time to time be contributed
by members. This book, subject to continual revision,
will be valuable both as an aid in the conduct of meet
ings for united worship and for private use by individual
members.
�75
The third object, namely the furthering of practical
morality, naturally branches off in two directions—the
personal and social.
Under the first head, the aid to be afforded by the
Society will consist principally of the mutual countenance
and support which the members will afford each other in
the endeavour to carry out into their daily life, whether
in the family, society, or in their public or commercial
avocations, the principles of high and pure morality.
It is, perhaps, needless to remark that nothing in the
nature of Church discipline is contemplated or will be
established.
Besides this mutual support among the members, the
Society may itself aid in the realisation by them of a pure
spiritual life by means of its meetings and conferences,
where, by reading papers and by friendly discussion, ques
tions relating to the conduct of life may be treated and
developed.
In connection with the social branch of this subject,
such meetings as are last described will be most useful,
and these subjects will be considered in the meetings to
be organised by the Committee in the autumn of the
present year.
The number of problems to be dealt with under this
head is enormous : and whether or no it will be found
advisable for the Society, as a society, to take any active
part in directly attempting to mitigate the evils which
attach to our present civilisation, such as pauperism, war,
intemperance, &c., or itself to attempt any philanthropic
object ; yet there can be no doubt that the Society can
and ought at the earliest possible moment to afford ample
and frequent opportunities for the reunion of its members,
whereby their individual views may be widened and
defined, and their individual action may consequently be
rendered more intelligent, useful, and energetic.
�76
A list of the members will shortly be printed and cir
culated among the members of the Society.
The time and place, at which the proposed meetings
for united worship and for friendly conference will be
held, will be announced to all the members.
Additional copies of the foregoing pamphlet entire, or
of the concluding portion alone, containing the resolutions
adopted at the general meeting and the statement of
the Committee, can be obtained on application to the
honorary secretary, Edward IIexry Busk, Highgate, N.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
STOTTISWOODK AND CO., NEW-STREET SQtTARtt
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
��187
To Edward Henry Busk, Esq.
Dear Sir,
Please to add my name to the List of Members of the
Society which was founded at the. General Meeting held at the
Freemasons’ Hall, London, on July 20, 1870, for the purpose
of uniting men, notwithstanding any differences in their
religious creeds, in a common effort to attain and diffuse
purity of spiritual life by (fY) investigating religious truth,
(2) cultivating devotional feelings, and (3) furthering prac
tical morality.
L am, dear Sir,
Yours truly,
Name in full
Address__ ____________
I
���
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Dublin Core
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Proceedings of the general meeting of the Theistic Society held at Freemasons' Hall, London on Wednesday, July 20th, 1870 and statement of the Committee appointed by the meeting
Creator
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Theistic Society
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 76, [2] p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Printed by Spottiswoode and Co., London. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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Longmans, Green, and Co.
Date
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1870
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G5174
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Theism
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Proceedings of the general meeting of the Theistic Society held at Freemasons' Hall, London on Wednesday, July 20th, 1870 and statement of the Committee appointed by the meeting), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Theism