Your grounds of objection appear to be now changed. You say you do not
understand my position with regard to Evolution, as I described it
before, and referred to it in my last letter. If I admit Evolution, you
ask how I can consistently deny that every nation and every individual,
Israel and Christ included, “proceeded from material causes by necessary
sequence according to fixed laws;” and in that case what becomes of such
metaphors as “the regulating hand of God,” “God the Ruler of the
Universe” and the like? It is a common saying, you tell me, among those
of your companions who have a turn for science, that “Evolution has
disposed of the old proofs of the existence of a God:” and you ask me
how I meet this objection.
I meet it by asking you another question exactly like your own. I take a
lump of clay and a potter’s wheel, and “from these material causes by
necessary sequence according to fixed laws” I mould a vessel; is there
no room in this process for “the regulating hand of man” and for “man
the creator of the vessel”? In other words, may not these “fixed laws,”
and that “necessity” of which you admit the existence, represent the
perpetual pressure of the Creator’s hand, or will, upon the Universe?
By Evolution is meant that all results are evolved from immediate
causes, which are evolved from distant causes, which are themselves
evolved from more distant causes; and so on. In old times, men believed
that God made the world by a number of isolated acts. Now, it is
believed that He made a primordial something, say atoms, out of which
there have been shaped series upon series of results by continuous
motion in accordance with fixed laws of nature. But neither the isolated
theory nor the continuous theory can dispense with a Creator in the
centre. We speak of the “chain of creation;” and we know that in old
days men recognized few links between us and the Creator. Now, we
recognize many. But, because a chain has more links than we once
supposed, are we excused for rejecting our old belief in the existence
of a chain-maker? Whether things came to be as they are, by many
creations, or by one creation and many evolutions, what difference does
it make? In the one case, we believe in a Creator and Sustainer: in the
other case, in a Creator and Evolver. In either case, do we not believe
in a God?
What then do your young friends mean—for though they express themselves
loosely, I think they do mean something and are not merely repeating a
cant phrase—when they say that Evolution has “disposed of the old proofs
of the existence of a God”? I think they mean that Evolution is
inconsistent with the existence of _such a God as the Christian religion
proclaims, that is to say, a Father in heaven_. The old theory of
discontinuous creation (in its most exaggerated form) maintained that
everything was created for a certain benevolent purpose—our hair to
shelter our heads from the weather, our eyebrows and eyelashes to keep
off the dust and the sun, our thumbs to give us that prehensile power
which largely differentiates us from apes; in a word, paternal despotism
was supposed to do everything for us with the best of intentions. The
new theory says there is no sufficient evidence of such paternal
benevolence. Our hair and our eyebrows and eyelashes and thumbs came to
us in quite a different fashion. Life, ever since life existed, has been
one vast scramble and conflict for the good things of this world: those
beings that were best fitted for scrambling and fighting destroyed those
that were unfit, and thus propagated the peculiarities of the conquerors
and destroyed the peculiarities of the conquered. Thus the
characteristics of body or brain best fitted for the purpose of life
were developed, and the unfit were destroyed. Although therefore a
purpose was achieved, it was not achieved as a purpose, but as a
consequence. There is no room, say the supporters of Evolution, in such
a theory as this for the hypothesis of an Almighty Father of mankind, or
even of a very intelligent Maker. What should we think of a British
workman who, in order to make one good brick, made a hundred bad ones,
or of a cattle-breeder whose plan was to breed a thousand inferior
beasts on inadequate pasture, in order ultimately to produce, out of
their struggles for food, and as a result of the elimination of the
unfittest, one pre-eminent pair?
When he expresses himself in this way, my sympathies go very far with
the man of science, if only he could remember that he is protesting, not
against Christ’s teaching about God, but against some other quite
different theory. Though God is called “Almighty” in the New Testament,
we must remember that it is always assumed that there is an opposing
Evil, an Adversary or Satan, who will ultimately be subdued but is
meantime working against the will of God. The origin of this Evil the
followers of Christ do not profess to understand but we believe that it
was not originated by God and that it is not obedient to Him. We cannot
therefore, strictly speaking, say that God is the Almighty ruler of “the
Universe _as it is_.” God is King _de jure_, but not at present _de
facto_ (metaphors again! but metaphors expressive of distinct
realities). His kingdom is “to come:” He will be hereafter recognized as
Almighty; He cannot be so recognized at present.
I know very well that I can give no logical or consistent account of
this mysterious resistance to the Supreme God. But I am led to recognize
it, first, by the facts of the visible world; secondly, by the plain
teaching of Christ Himself. Surely the authority of Christ must count
for something with Christians in their theorizing about the origin of
evil. Would not even an agnostic admit that as, in poetry, I should be
right in following the lead of a poet, so in matters of spiritual belief
(if I am to have any spiritual belief at all) I am right in deferring to
Christ? It is a marvel to me how some Christians who find the
recognition of miracles inextricably involved in the life and even in
the teaching of Christ, nevertheless fail to see, or at all events are
most unwilling to confess, that the recognition of an evil one, or
Satan, is an axiom that underlies all His doctrine. In the view of
Jesus, it is Satan that causes some forms of disease and insanity; Satan
is the author of temptation, the destroyer of the good seed, the sower
of tares, the “evil one”—so at least the text of the Revisers tells
us—from whom we must daily pray to be delivered. The same belief
pervades the writings of St. Paul. Yet if you preach nowadays this plain
teaching of our Lord, the heterodox shrug their shoulders and cry
“Antediluvian!” while the orthodox think to dispose of the whole matter
in a phrase, “Flat Manichæism!” But to the heterodox I might reply that
Stuart Mill (no very antiquated or credulous philosopher) deliberately
stated that it was more easy to believe in the existence of an Evil as
well as a Good, than in the existence of one good and all-powerful God;
and the orthodox must, upon reflection, admit that in this doctrine
about Satan Christ’s own teaching is faithfully followed.
Of course if any one replies, “Christ was under an illusion in believing
in the existence of Satan,” I have no means of logically confuting him.
But I think there must be many who would say, with me: “If I am to have
any theory in matters of this kind which are entirely beyond the sphere
of demonstration, I would sooner accept the testimony of Christ than the
speculations of all the philosophers that ever were or are. Christ was
possibly, or even probably, ignorant (in His humanity) of a great mass
of literary, historical, physiological, and other scientific facts
unknown to the rest of the Jews. But we cannot suppose Him to be
spiritually ignorant; least of all, so spiritually ignorant as to
attribute to the Adversary what ought to have been attributed to God the
Father in Heaven.”
It would be easy for you to shew that any theory of Satan is absurdly
illogical; nobody can be convinced of that more firmly than I am
already. Whether Satan was good at first and became evil without a
cause; or was good at first and became evil from a certain cause (which
presupposes another pre-existing Satan); or was evil from the beginning
and created by God; or evil from the beginning and not created by God—in
all or any of these hypotheses I see, as clearly as you see, insuperable
difficulties. If you cross-examine me, I shall avow at once a logical
collapse, after this fashion: “Were there then two First Causes?” I
believe not. “Did the Evil spring up after the Good?” I believe so. “Did
the first Good create the Evil?”[5] I believe not. “Did the Evil then
spring up without a cause?” I cannot tell. “Did the Good, when He
created the Goodness that issued in Evil, know that he, or it, contained
the germ of evil, and would soon become wholly evil?” I do not believe
this. “Whence then came the Evil, or the germ of the Evil?” I do not
know. “Are you not then confessing that you believe, where you know
nothing?” Yes, for if I knew, there would be no need to believe.
Here you have a sufficiently amusing exhibition of inconsistency and
ignorance; but this seems to me of infinitely little concern where I am
dealing not with matters that fall within the range of experience, but
with spiritual and supernatural things that belong to the realm of
faith, hope, and aspiration. I could just as easily turn inside out my
cross examiner if he undertook to give me a scientific theory on the
origin of the world. No doubt he might prefer having no theory about the
origin of the world, and might recommend me to imitate him by having no
theory about the origin of Evil, or about the nature of the Supreme
Good. But my answer would be as follows: “I have a certain work to do in
the world, and I cannot go on with my work without having some theories
on these subjects. Most men feel with me that they must have some answer
to these stupendous problems of existence. As the senses are intended to
be our guide in matters of experience, so our faculty of faith seems to
me intended to guide us in matters quite beyond experience.” There is
another answer which I hardly like to give because it seems brutal; but
I believe it to be true, and it is certainly capable of being expressed
in the evolutionary dialect so as to commend itself to the scientific
mind: “An agnostic nation will find itself sooner or later unsuited for
its environment, and will either come to believe in some solution of
these spiritual problems or stagnate and perish. And something of the
same result will follow from agnosticism in the family and in the
individual.”
From this doctrine of Christ then I am not to be dislodged by any
philosophic analysis demonstrating that good and evil so run into one
another that it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other
begins. “Is all pain evil? Is it an evil that a sword’s point pains you?
Would it not be a greater evil that a sword should run you through
unawares because it did not pain you? Is not the pain of hunger a useful
monitor? Has not pain in a thousand cases its use as a preservative? Is
not what you call ‘sin’ very often misplaced energy? If a child is
restless and talkative and consequently disobedient, must you
consequently bring in Satan to account for the little one’s
peccadilloes? If a young man is over-sanguine, reckless, rash,
occasionally intemperate, must all these faults be laid upon the back of
an enemy of mankind? Is animal death from Satan, but vegetable death
from God? And is the death of a sponge a half and half contribution from
the joint Powers? And when I swallow an oyster, may I give thanks to
God? but when a tiger devours a deer, or an eagle tears a hare, or a
thrush swallows a worm, are they doing the work of the Adversary? Where
are you to begin to trace this permeating Satanic agency? Go back to the
primordial atom. Are we to say that the Devil impelled it in the selfish
tangential straight line, and that God attracts it with an unselfish
centripetal force, and that the result is the harmonious curve of
actuality? If you give yourself up to such a degrading dualism as this,
will you not be more often fearing Satan than loving God? Will you not
be attributing to Satan one moment, what the next moment will compel you
to attribute to God? Where will you draw the line?” To all this my
answer is very simple: “I shall draw the line where the spiritual
instinct within me draws it. Whatever I am forced to pronounce contrary
to God’s intention I shall call evil and attribute to Satan.” Herein I
may go wrong in details, and I may have to correct my judgments as I
grow in knowledge; but I am confident that, on the whole, I shall be
following the teaching of Christ. My spiritual convictions accord with
the teaching of that ancient allegory in the book of Genesis, which
tells us that Satan, not God, brought sin and death into the world.
There was a Fall somewhere, in heaven perhaps as well as on earth—“war
in heaven” of the Evil against the Good—a declension from the divine
ideal, a lapse by which the whole Universe became imperfect. It has been
the work of God, not to create death, but upon the basis of death to
erect a hope and faith in a higher life; not to create sin, but out of
sin, repentance, and forgiveness, to elicit a higher righteousness than
would have been possible (so we speak) if sin had never existed.
Similarly of disease, and pain, and the conflict in the animal world for
life and death: good has resulted from them; yet I cannot think of them,
I cannot even think of change and decay, as being, so to speak, “parts
of God’s _first intention_.” Stoics, and Christians who imitate Stoics,
may call these things “indifferent:” I cannot. And even if I could, what
of the ferocity, and cruelty, and exultation in destruction, which are
apparent in the animal world? “Death,” say the Stoics, “is the mere exit
from life.” Is it? I was once present at a theatre in Rouen where the
hero took a full quarter of an hour to die of poison, and the young
Normans who sat round me expressed their strenuous disapprobation:
“C’est trop long,” they murmured. I have made the same remonstrance in
my heart of hearts, ever since I was a boy and saw a cat play with a
mouse, and a patient stoat hunt down and catch at last a tired-out
rabbit: “It is too long,” “It is too cruel.” “Did God ordain this?”—I
asked: and I answered unhesitatingly “No.” These are but small phenomena
in Nature’s chamber of horrors: but for me they have always been, and
will always remain, horrible. I believe that God intends us to regard
them with horror and perhaps to see in them some faint reflection of the
wantonly destructive and torturing instinct in man.