I have been very much pained by your sprightly account of the lively and
witty conversation between you and your clever young friends, —— and ——,
on the proofs of the existence of a God. Bear with me if I assure you
that discussions in that spirit are likely to be fatal to real faith.
They may often be far more dangerous than a serious collision between
untrained faith and the most highly educated scepticism. I do not
deprecate discussion, but I do most earnestly plead for reverence.
Young men at the Universities stand in especial need of this warning
because their studies lead them to be critical; and habits of criticism
may easily weaken the habit of reverence. I remember once being shewn
over a great public school by the Headmaster, justly celebrated as a
Headmaster once, and much more celebrated since in another capacity. It
was a grand school, though a little too ecclesiastical to suit my taste.
While we were in the chapel my friend spoke earnestly of the pleasure it
gave him on Sundays to see in the chapel the familiar faces of the old
boys who came to revisit the old place. At the same time he deplored the
contrast between those who went into the army, and those who went to the
Universities: “The army fellows,” he said, “almost always come to
Communion, the university fellows almost always stop away.” These words
made an indelible impression on my mind, “Who is to blame, or praise,
for this?” asked I, on my journey homeward. “Is it the army that is to
be praised for its inculcation of discipline and self-subordination,
helping the young fellows to realise the meaning of self-sacrifice? Or
is it the University that is to be blamed for its negative and
destructive teaching? Or can it be that the school is in part to blame
for teaching the boys to believe too much; and the University in part to
blame for teaching the young men to criticize too much?”
Over and over again, since that time, I have asked myself these same
questions about many other young men from many other public schools. I
honour the army as much as most men, more perhaps than many do: but
after all the profession of a soldier is the profession of a
throat-cutter; throat-cutting in an extensive, expeditious, and
honourable way,—throat-cutting in one direction often undertaken merely
to prevent throat-cutting in another direction—but still throat-cutting
after all: and it seemed very hard to believe that the profession of
throat-cutting is, and ought to be, a better preparation than the
pursuit of learning at the Universities, for participation in the Holy
Communion. On the whole I was led to the conclusion that the young men
in the army had retained and deepened the instinctive obedience to
authority, the sense of the need of the subordination of the individual
to the community, and perhaps also the feeling of reverence, while they
had not been taught so fully to appreciate all that was implied in
attendance at Communion or to realize the intellectual difficulties
presented by the New Testament. In other words—to put it briefly and
roughly—the young cadets and officers came to Communion because they had
been taught to feel and not taught to think; and the University men
stayed away because they had been taught to think and not to feel. Now I
will ask you to excuse me if I suggest that the principal danger to your
character at present arises from the want of such discipline as may be
obtained by some in the army, and by others in the practical work of
life. You need some emotional and moral exercise to counterbalance your
mental and intellectual training. You are not aware how much of the most
valuable knowledge, conviction, certainty—call it what you will, but I
mean that kind of moral and spiritual knowledge which is the basis of
all right conduct—springs in the main from spiritual and emotional
sources.
In the present letter I should like to confine myself to this subject,
the culture, if I may so say, of Christian faith. Let me then ask you
first to clear your mind by asking yourself what is the essence of the
faith which you would desire to retain. It is (is it not?) a faith or
trust in the fatherhood of God. This surely is the Gospel or Good News
for which Christ lived and died, in order that He might breathe it into
the hearts of men. “Fatherhood”—some of your young friends will
exclaim—“What an antiquated notion! Flat anthropomorphism!” By
“anthropomorphism” they mean a tendency to make God in human shape; just
as Heine’s four-legged poetic Bruin makes God to be a great white Polar
Bear, and the frogs of Celsus imagine Him to be a gigantic Frog. No
doubt, this is very funny; but the decryers of anthropomorphism who
venture on any conception of a God—are they any less funny? Do not they
shew a similar disposition to make God in the shape of human works or
human experiences? Shall I be exploring a nobler path of spiritual
speculation if I say God is a Rock or a Buckler, or a Centre, or a
Force, than if I say God is a Father in heaven? Ask your sceptical
companions what conception of God they can mention which is not open to
objection, and they will perhaps reply “An Eternal, or a Tendency, not
ourselves, which makes for righteousness.” Now to reply “an Eternal,”
appears to me to be taking a rather mean and pedantical advantage of the
uninflected peculiarities of English (and Hebrew), which leave it an
open question whether you mean your “Eternal” to be masculine, or
neuter. And “Tendency”—what is it? Is it not a “stretching,” or
“pulling,” or partially neutralised force—a common human experience? Now
we are dealing with the accusation of limiting our conception of God to
our experiences as men. And, so far as this charge is concerned, what is
the difference between calling God a “Tendency,” or a “Rock,” or a
“Shield,” or a “House of Defence,” as the old Psalmist does? Are not all
these names mere metaphors derived from human experience? In the same
way to call God a Father is (no doubt) a metaphor: but is it more a
metaphor than to call Him a Tendency?
Some metaphors, which describe God by reference to the relations of man
to man, may be called anthropomorphic; others, which describe Him by
reference to implements (such as a Shield) may be called organomorphic;
others, which assimilate Him to lifeless and inorganic objects (such as
a Hill) may be called by some other grand name, such as apsychomorphic;
others, which would subtilize Him down to a thought, or a mind, or a
spirit, may be called phronesimorphic, noumorphic, pneumatomorphic; but
in the name of common sense—or in the name of that sense which ought to
be common, and which ought to revolt against bondage to mere words—what
is there in that termination “morphic” which should stagger a seeker
after divine truth? Do we not all recognize that all terms applied to
the supreme God are “morphisms” of various kinds? And the question is
not how we can avoid a “morphism”—for we cannot avoid it—but how or
where we can find the noblest and most spiritually helpful “morphism.”
And as between the ancient and the modern metaphors just set before you
can you entertain a moment’s doubt? Might we not imagine the question
put—after the old Roman authoritative fashion—to an assembly of the
consciences of universal mankind: “Christ says that God is a Father in
heaven; refined thinkers say that He is a Tendency; _utri creditis,
gentes_?” To which I seem to hear the answer of the Universe come back,
“We will have no Tendencies seated on the throne of Heaven. Give us a
Father, or we will have nothing.” And you, my dear friend, how is it
with you? _Utri credis_?
But perhaps you complain, or some of your friends might complain, that
this is not treating the question fairly. “The doctrine of the
Fatherhood of God,” they may say, “is to be discussed like any other
proposition, upon the evidence.” I entirely deny it, if from your
“evidence” you intend to exclude the witness of Imagination expressed in
Faith and Hope. I assert, on the contrary, that it is to be believed in,
against what may be called quasi-evidence. It cannot be demonstrated to
be either true or false. Do not misunderstand me. There is abundant
evidence of a certain kind—as I will hereafter shew—for the Fatherhood
of God; but there is also evidence against it: and what I mean is, that
the mind is not to sit impartially and coldly neutral between the two
testimonies, but is to grasp the former and hold it fast and keep it
constantly in view, while it lays less stress on and (after a time) puts
on one side the latter. I have shewn you that many of our deepest and
most vital convictions are based less upon Reason than upon Imagination.
Why then should we be surprised if the most profound convictions of all,
our religious certainties, rest upon that imaginative desire to which we
have given the name of Faith?[4] If an archangel (robed in light) were
to step down to me this moment and were to cry aloud, “Verily there is
no God,” I should reply, or ought to reply, “Verily thou art a devil.”
If the same archangel were to come in the same way and to say “Verily
there is a God,” I should reply, “I felt sure there was; and now I am
more sure than ever.” How unfair, how illogical, if our belief is to be
a matter of mere evidence! But it is not to be a matter of mere
evidence. It is to be a struggle against an evil thought—shall I not say
an evil being?—that is perpetually attempting to slander God to men by
representing Him as permitting or originating evil.
Does this startle you—this suggestion of an evil being—as being too
old-fashioned for an educated Christian? Well then, put it aside for the
time (though it is indeed Christ’s doctrine): and merely assume as a
temporary hypothesis that the essence of Christ’s Gospel is a trust in
the Fatherhood of God. Now, if this be so, and if this trust or faith is
to be kept pure and strong, must it not be regarded with reverence and
reserve as being (what indeed it is) a kind of private, domestic, and
family relation? Is it to be made the subject for light, casual,
frivolous discussions; epigrammatic displays; cut-and-thrust exhibitions
of word-fence; logical or rhetorical symposia? What would you say of a
young man who should allow his relations with his father and mother to
be discussed with humour and epigram on every light occasion? Would he
be likely long to retain the bloom of domestic affection unimpaired? I
remember reading about some well-educated and enlightened free-thinker—I
fancy it was Bolingbroke—on whose table a Greek Testament was regularly
placed by the side of the port when the cloth was drawn, and whose
favourite topic for discussion after dinner was the existence and
attributes of the Deity. Does not your instinct teach you that from such
discussions as these no good could possibly come, nothing but a
hardening of the conscience, a fatal familiarity with sacred things
regarded with a view to witticism—that kind of familiarity which too
surely breeds contempt? What a terrible contrast it is—complacent
Bolingbroke at his wine, analysing the attributes of God, and the
all-pitying Father looking down from heaven and pleading, through
Christ, not to be analysed but to be loved and trusted!
May we not go a step further and say that Christian Faith or trust—if it
be once recognized as faith or trust, altogether distinct from the kind
of assent which we give to a proposition of Euclid—needs not only to be
protected from certain evil influences but also to be subjected to
certain good influences? It is a kind of plant, and requires its
spiritual soil, air, rain and sunshine; in other words it needs good
thoughts, noble aspirations, and unselfish acts, to keep it alive. You
may retort perhaps that Faith itself ought to produce these results, and
not to be produced by them. But I reply that, though Faith does tend to
produce these results, it is strengthened by producing them; and it is
weakened and finally extinguished by not producing them. “Our faith” has
been described as “the victory that hath overcome the world.” What is
there in the world that it should need to be “overcome”? I suppose the
writer meant that this present, visible, tangible, enjoyable system of
things—which was meant by the Supreme to be a kind of glass through
which we might discern something of the greatness and order of the Maker
has been converted, partly by our selfishness, partly by some Evil in
the world outside us, into a mirror shutting out all glimpse of God and
giving us back nothing but the reflection of ourselves. On the other
hand, there is a different way of regarding the world when, our eyes
being opened like the eyes of Aeneas amid burning Troy, we discern in
the midst of this present condition of things a great conflict between
Good and Evil, and on the side of goodness, we see the forms of
Righteousness, Justice and Truth, supported by Faith, Hope, and Charity;
amid the smoke and roar of battles and revolutions, the destructions of
nations, and the downfall of empires and of churches, we realise that
these are abiding influences; that either in this world, or in some
other, these things shall ultimately prevail, because these are the
Angels that stand about the throne of the Ruler of the Universe. This
state of mind is Faith, and it is to be nurtured by effort, partly in
action, partly in thought. Bacon bids us nurture it by “cherishing the
good hours of the mind.” St. Paul says nearly the same thing in
different words: “Whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,
whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if
there be any praise, _think on these things_.”
Are you surprised at this? Does faith seem to you, on these terms, a
possession of little worth—this quicksilver quality which varies with
every variation of our spiritual atmosphere? Why surely everything that
lives and grows is liable to flux. You do not disparage bodily health
because it is dependent on supports and influences, and liable to
changes; why then disparage spiritual health because it is similarly
dependent? No doubt one would not be willingly a religious
valetudinarian; a man’s spiritual constitution ought not to be at the
mercy of every slight and passing breeze of circumstance; but at present
there is little danger of spiritual valetudinarianism. Physical
“sanitation” is on every one’s tongue; but no one thinks of the
necessity of good spiritual air and of the evils of bad spiritual
drainage. We do not recognize that there are laws of our spiritual as
well as of our material nature. We wilfully narrow our lives to the
sabbathless pursuit of gain or pleasure—self everywhere, God nowhere—and
then go about hypocritically whining that the age of faith has passed
and that we have lost the power of believing. With our own hands we put
the stopper on the telescope and then complain that we cannot see!
Do not however, suppose that I call upon you, because hope is the basis
of Christian belief, on that account to hope against the truth and to
believe against reason. I bid you believe in the Fatherhood of God,
first because your conscience tells you that this is the best and
noblest belief, but secondly also because this belief—although it may be
against the superficial evidence of the phenomena of the Universe—is in
accordance with these phenomena when you regard them more deeply and
when you include in your scope the history of Christianity.
I admit that we have to fight against temptations in order to retain
this belief; and sometimes I ask myself, “If I and my children had been
slaves in one of the Southern States of America; or if I and my family
had suffered such indelible outrages as were recently inflicted by the
Turks upon the Bulgarians; or if I were at this moment a matchbox-seller
or a father of ten children (girls as well as boys) in the East of
London—should I find it so easy to believe that God is our Father in
heaven?” And I am obliged to reply, “No, I should not find it easy;” I
fear that I might be tempted to say, as a workman did not long ago to a
lecturer on co-operation who mentioned the name of God: “Oh, no; no God
for us; the workman’s God deserted him long ago.” And perhaps you
yourself may remember the answer of one of those wretched Bulgarians to
some newspaper correspondent who endeavoured to console him in his
anguish by the reflection that “After all there is a God that governs
the world:” “I believe you,” was the reply; “there is indeed a God; and
he governs the world indeed; and he is the Devil.” Or take a spectacle
of the Middle Ages as a problem. In the lists are two armed knights; on
the one side a man of might and muscle, exulting in conflict; on the
other, a slight, weak creature, who never fights save on compulsion, and
is to fight now on sternest compulsion, being accused (though innocent)
of some gross crime by yonder man of flesh, who combines scoundrel,
liar, traitor, oppressor, thief, and adulterer, all in one; and the
fight is to begin under the sanction of the Church of Christ. As the
trumpets sound, while the heralds are still calling on God to “shew the
right,” the two men meet, and “the right” is cast to the ground,
trampled on by his enemy, and dragged from the lists to the neighbouring
gallows, while the muscular scoundrel wipes his forehead and receives
congratulations. Do you suppose that the innocent man’s wife, if she
were looking on, would be able easily to say at that moment, “Verily
there is a God that judgeth the earth”?
Can I possibly put the case for scepticism more strongly? I would fain
put it with all the force in my power in order to convince you that I
have thought often over these matters, and that, although my own life
may have been happy and free from stumbling-blocks, I have at least
tried to understand and sympathize with those who find it very hard to
believe that there is a God. But, in the presence of such monstrous
evils as these, I take refuge in a belief and in a fact; first, in the
belief (which runs through almost every page of the Gospels and has
received the sanction of Christ Himself) that there is an Evil Being in
the world who is continually opposing the Good but will be ultimately
subdued by the Good; secondly, in the fact that in one great typical
conflict between Good and Evil,—where apparently God did not “shew the
right,” and where, in appearance, there was consummated the most brutal
triumph of Evil over Good that the world ever witnessed—there the Good
in reality effected its most signal triumph. The issue of the conflict
on the Cross of Christ is my great comfort and mainstay of faith, when
my heart is distracted with the thought of all the spurns, buffets, and
outrages, endured by much-suffering humanity. “At last, far off,” I cry,
“the right will be shewn, even as it was in the contest on the Cross.”
You see then the nature of the conflict of faith. It is a struggle of
hope against fear, trustfulness against trustlessness, where strict
logical proof is impossible. But I do not call you to set Faith against
Reason, or to make hope trample on the understanding, or to shut your
eyes to the presence or absence of historical evidence. If religion
comes down from the region of hope and aspiration into the region of
fact and evidence, and asserts that this or that fact happened at this
or that time and place, then, so far, it appeals to evidence, and by
evidence it must be judged.
Half the earnest scepticism of the present day is not really spiritual
scepticism but simply doubt about historical facts. Distinguish
carefully and constantly between two terms entirely different but
continually confused—the _super-natural_ and the _miraculous_.
In the super-natural every rational man must believe, if he knows what
is meant by the term; for every rational man must acknowledge that the
world had either a beginning or no beginning, a First Cause or no First
Cause; and either hypothesis is altogether above the level of natural
phenomena, and therefore supernatural. The theist and the atheist are
alike believers in the supernatural. The agnostic, poised between the
two, admits that some supernatural origin of the world is necessary, but
is unable to decide which of the two is the more probable. All alike
therefore believe in the supernatural; but the important difference is
that some take a hopeful or faithful, others a hopeless or faithless,
view of the supernatural. Proof in this region is not possible, unless
the testimony of the conscience may be accepted as proof. If Jesus were
to appear to-morrow sitting on the clouds of heaven and testifying that
there is a Father in heaven, I can imagine some men of science replying,
“This is a mere phantom of the brain,” or, “This is the result of
indigestion,” or “Assertion is not proof.” Mere force of logical proof
or personal observation can convince no one that there is a God or that
Jesus is the Eternal Son of God; such a conviction can only come from a
leaping out of the human spirit to meet the Spirit of God; and hence St.
Paul tells us that “no man can say”—that is, “say sincerely”—“that Jesus
is the Lord _save by the Spirit_.” Here therefore, in this region of the
indemonstrable, I can honestly use an effort of the will to ally myself
with the spirit of faith. “I will pray to God; I will cling to God; will
refuse to doubt of God; refuse to listen to doubts about God (except so
far as may be needful to do it, in order to lighten the doubts of
others, and then only as a painful duty, to be got through with all
speed); I am determined (so help me God) to believe in God to the end of
my days:” resolving thus I am not acting insincerely nor shutting my
eyes to the truth, but taking nature’s appointed means for reaching and
holding fast the highest spiritual truth.
But I do not feel justified in thus using my will to constrain myself to
believe in the miraculous; for here God has given me other means—such as
history, experience, and evidence—for arriving at the truth. Nor does a
belief in the super-natural in the least imply a belief in the
miraculous also. I may believe that God is continually supporting and
impelling on its path every created thing; but I may also believe that
there is no evidence to prove that His support and impulsion have ever
been manifested save in accordance with that orderly sequence which we
call Law. I may even believe that the Universe is double, having a
spiritual and invisible counterpart corresponding to this visible and
material existence, so that nothing is done in the world of flesh below
which has not been first done in the world of spirit above; yet even
this latitude of spiritual speculation would not in the least establish
the conclusion that the observed sequence of what we call cause and
effect in the material world has ever been violated. To take a
particular instance, I may be convinced, that Jesus of Nazareth was the
Eternal Word of God, made flesh for men; and yet I may remain
unconvinced that, in thus taking flesh upon Him, He raised Himself above
the physical laws of humanity. In other words I may, with the author of
the Fourth Gospel, heartily believe in the supernatural Incarnation
while omitting from my Gospel all mention of the Miraculous Conception.
Nay, I may go still further. While cordially accepting the divine nature
of Christ, I may see such clear indications and evidences of the manner
in which accounts of miracles sprang up in the Church without foundation
of fact, that I may be compelled not merely to omit miracles from my
Gospel and to confess myself unconvinced of their truth, but even to
avow my conviction of their untruth. But into this negative aspect of
things I do not wish now to enter. I would rather urge on you this
positive consideration, that, since our recognition of the Laws of
Nature themselves, depends in a very large degree upon faith, we ought
not to be surprised if our acknowledgment of the Founder of these Laws
rests also on the same basis. And, if this be so, we cannot speak
accurately about the “evidence” for the existence of a God, unless we
include in that term the aspirations of the human conscience toward a
Maker and Ruler and Father of all.
Footnote 4:
Faith is “desire (approved by the Conscience) of which we imagine the
fulfilment, while putting doubt at a distance”: see the _Definitions_
at the end of the volume.
VIII
FAITH AND DEMONSTRATION