wording of the subjects as that taken by the Bishop of Peterborough; and
I may say that those who charge me with misquoting the Bishop, will
probably think differently when I say that I have taken fair pains to be
accurate in my representation. I took careful and almost verbatim notes,
and I hold in my hand a transcript of the notes of an independent
shorthand writer, and where these have disagreed, which has been very
seldom, I have checked them by so much of the lecture as appeared
summarised in the _Daily Press_. It appeared to me to be accurate, and I
think there was no ground for saying that I misrepresented the Bishop.
You who think so, had better leave that for him to say, if he thinks it
necessary. He took the instance of Thomas as that of a representative
Sceptic. He was good enough to tell us that the unbelief of Thomas was
not unreasonable, that, on the contrary, it was reasonable and natural
that he should feel some doubt about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I
propose to examine that position. Was it reasonable that Thomas should
doubt? Thomas was a disciple selected by Jesus. He had been present at
the whole of the miracles of Jesus. If the Bishop’s case be true, he had
seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, he had heard Jesus say he came to
die, and to rise again; and I ask you, if it was reasonable for Thomas to
doubt after he had seen a hundred miracles performed, then how much more
reasonable for me to doubt? I have never seen any miracles. But, said
the Bishop, Thomas is a fair example of the Sceptic, for Thomas said, I
will not believe unless I see, &c. This, the Bishop said, is the very
essence of scepticism. Now I don’t know where my Lord Bishop got his
notion of scepticism; I am sure that there is no writer on the side of
the party which permits me to speak for it, who defines scepticism in
that manner. I have here the explanation of Buckle, which I take as that
of a man occupying a position independent of the prejudices attaching to
my extreme heresy. “By Scepticism, I merely mean hardness of belief, so
that an increased Scepticism is an increased perception of the difficulty
of proving assertions, or, in other words, it is an increased application
and an increased diffusion of the laws of evidence. This feeling of
hesitation and of suspended judgment, has in every department of thought
been the invariable preliminary to all the intellectual revolutions
through which the human mind has passed, and without it there could be no
progress, no change, no civilisation. In physics it is the necessary
precursor of science, in politics of liberty, in theology of toleration.”
Now I take leave to say that there is no sceptical writer, neither
Hobbes, nor Hume, nor Locke, nor Berkeley, no sceptical writer either
upon my own side or upon the side of theology, unless you take the
ravings of some wretched madman, who defines Scepticism as my Lord Bishop
defined it. I say it was either a false definition within the knowledge
of the Bishop, or that Dr. Magee was imperfectly acquainted with the
views he proposed to answer. The definition conveys a false notion of
Scepticism, which is really but a word for investigation. The Bishop
draws a distinction, and a correct distinction, between knowledge and
belief, and in that very distinction he annihilated his own definition of
Scepticism. He said, and rightly, When once the senses have taken
cognizance of any phenomenon, that is no longer a matter of belief but a
matter of knowledge. If I sensate any condition of existence, I have
passed the stage of belief and arrived at the stage of knowledge. I now
come to a marvellous position—marvellous as advanced by a bishop—viz.,
that religion or Christianity must be taken as incapable of scientific
demonstration; because, if that be true, what becomes of the arguments of
the Paleys, of the Pye Smiths, and of the Gillespies? Are the volumes of
proofs of the existence of Deity all waste paper? What becomes of the
huge mass yearly issued from the press to prove the truth of
Christianity? I take it that in the opinion of the Bishop every one of
these has hitherto failed, for he says we cannot demonstrate the
existence of a Deity or the truth of the Christian religion so as to
leave no doubt. A demonstration so complete that it leaves no doubt, is
admitted to be impossible; that is an admission for which I thank the
Lord Bishop, because it is a justification to doubters. We have two
admissions, one that the doubt of Thomas is a reasonable doubt, and
another, that Christianity under no circumstances can be rendered free
from doubt. I will thank you to bear those two positions in mind. The
Bishop says we cannot demonstrate the existence of God, and I am inclined
to accept his position, but he gives reasons of the strangest description
to justify his conclusions. He says we cannot prove the existence of God
because he is invisible. Does the Bishop mean that only the things
cognised by sight can be proved? Is it true that he believes in an
invisible God? What say the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church? They
say that Jesus, with body, flesh, and bones, ascended to heaven. Were
these invisible? The Bishop believes what is pictured in the Bible.
Does the Bible teach an invisible God? We read in the twenty-fourth
chapter of Exodus, 9, 10, 11: “Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and
Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and they saw the God of
Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a
sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And
upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand; also they
saw God, and did eat and drink.” I want to know if this God is an
invisible God? I want to know whether the Bishop is on this point an
infidel, and whether he here disbelieves the Bible? The Bible says that
God is not invisible. Which are we to believe?—the Bishop, the Bible, or
the Thirty-nine Articles? We are forbidden to deny either the Bible or
the Thirty-nine Articles under penalty of prosecution. The Bishop said a
Jew is not a sceptic, and the reason given is certainly equally a
marvellous one, for he said the Jew believes in Moses, and therefore
cannot believe in Jesus. Is it logical that any body who believes in
Moses cannot believe in Jesus? Surely the Bishop contradicted himself,
for it is to Moses and the prophets he appeals. It is not true, even
from the Church of England stand-point, that a man disbelieves in Jesus
because he believes in Moses. It is not true that if I believe in the
authenticity of the Pentateuch, it necessarily excludes my belief in the
Gospel, and yet this is the reasoning indulged in by the able and learned
confuter of modern infidelity. The Bishop said that the Deist and the
Pantheist are not sceptics, for they have a belief, nor, he said, are
even those sceptics who say there is no God. I never read, except in
tracts and sermons, and religious essays, of any who say there is no God.
Some persons talk about the fools who say there is no God, and bishops
preach against them, but an Atheist does not say there is no God. The
Atheist says the term “God” conveys no idea to his mind. I have never
yet heard a definition of God from any living man, nor have I read a
definition by dead or living man that was not self-contradictory. I
don’t deny the word “God,” because I don’t know anything about its
meaning. Denial like affirmation must refer to some proposition that is
understood. But the moment you tell me you mean the God of the Bible, or
the God of the Koran, or the God of any particular church, I am prepared
to tell you that I deny that God. So long as the term means your absence
of knowledge as to particular phenomena, and represents the undiscovered,
I am not “fool” enough to say there is no God; and I say the Bishop
should have known that no modern Atheist ever propounded such a
proposition to any one. It is when you tell me of God distinct from the
universe, creating the universe different from himself, and adding to his
own existence, that I am compelled to deny that God. The Bishop said the
sceptic is not only one who denies, but one who asks for evidence of an
unreasonable kind. Suppose myself; am I a sceptic as to the Bible,
according to the Bishop’s notion? When I examine the Bible, I find it is
admitted that the common version is so bad that a better is now in hand.
I find when I refer to the sources of this version there are only three
sources—the Hebrew, the Samaritan, and the Septuagint. When I examine
the Septuagint I find the Protestant writers such as Fulke and Whittaker,
writing against Bellarmine and others, declaring that the Septuagint is
corrupt from beginning to end. Dr. Irons says no one knows where the
so-called Septuagint version was written, when it was written, nor by
whom it was written, and it is clearly the work of different generations.
When I examine the Greek of the Septuagint as against the Hebrew, I find
words and verses in the one that are not in the other. As a sceptic is
it unreasonable for me to ask the Bishop how he knows that one is better
than the other? When I go to the Hebrew the difficulty is still greater.
I say that not even the Bishop knows enough of the Hebrew to guide us
with reasonable explanation. It is not enough to say that mere ignorant
infidels do not know it. I find Spinoza, writing 200 years ago,
declaring that Hebrew was a language utterly dead, that its grammars and
lexicons were lost, that time, the great consumer, had blotted out the
meaning of many words from the memory of man. Suppose that I have
recourse to those professing some knowledge of Hebrew. Gesenius,
Bellamy, Parkhurst, Newman, Eichorn, Bresslau, Ginsburg, give me
different meanings for many of the same words on important points of
theology. How am I to be satisfied? What objections will be reasonable?
Suppose I try to be content with the ordinary Hebrew version, what then?
I find that it is a version written with points, which points have not
existed more than 1250 or 1300 years; and the text itself is of two
characters. That which is written is not always read, and that which is
read is not written. I find a clergyman of the Church like Dr. Irons
admitting that the traditional reading of the Hebrew text is often of
more value than the text. I find Christians saying this Hebrew is an
ancient language, and when I try to trace it I find that before 2500
years back there is no trace of it at all. Moses could not have written
in the Hebrew we have, for what to-day we call the Hebrew did not then
exist. Who is to decide on this point as to the reasonableness of my
scepticism? Am I to decide or my Lord Bishop? Let us consider this a
little more. We have a Samaritan, a Septuagint, and Hebrew Bible, but in
the Samaritan we have only the Pentateuch, and I find words and verses in
the Samaritan not in the Septuagint, and not in the Hebrew, and I find
words and verses in the Hebrew and Septuagint, which are not in the
Samaritan. Is it unreasonable for me to ask how so many blunders have
got into this book, if it contains a revelation from God? Then I come to
try to get a clue from the Gospels, and I find again that no man knows
when they were written, where they were written, or by whom they were
written. Clergymen of the Church have invented arguments from the first
century fathers for the existence of the Gospels. I used to believe that
such testimony existed; I could not suppose that writers like Dr. Paley
had invented testimony of the fathers, but when I went to the great
libraries to verify authorities, and I found that he manufactured
evidence, I ask, was I, as a sceptic, a reasonable man in challenging the
Church? The Bishop says a Sceptic is not to be attacked because he
doubts, but because of his reason for the doubt. I doubt because I
cannot help it. Is that a good reason or not? Is the Church entitled to
say “It is not true, you might believe if you like?” And mark, the
Bishop had the audacity to declare that Christianity is not intolerant of
the doubter, but of the spirit of doubt. The Church used to burn the
doubter, and then it burnt his books, and locked him up in prison. It
now gathers 3,000 people into the nave of the Cathedral to hear the
attack on the doubter, and refuses to grant the use of any place for a
reply. It is not intolerant to the doubter, it is only intolerant of the
spirit of doubt! I learned from the Bishop that a man might be a
religious believer, and at the same time a sceptic, and in explaining
this he used language of an astounding character. He said if a man were
to say, _I_ cannot believe in the existence of God till I have it
demonstrated to me as clearly as that the three angles of a triangle are
equal to two right angles, then he is in principle a sceptic, because if
he had not that sort of proof, he would begin to doubt of the existence
of God; all this time his assent to the existence of God would have
rested on a sceptical foundation. This was one of the most marvellous
pieces of nonsense that any one could talk. How can any one, while
assenting to God’s existence, say, I cannot believe in God till it is
proved to demonstration? He makes the true believer commence by saying
he cannot believe in God till it is proved. If anyone here had used that
language, I should have said that he did not understand what he was
talking about; but when a Bishop, a learned Bishop, the paragon of
eloquence and logic, brought here as more competent than your own Bishop,
talks such nonsense, how am I to reply? Let us take a startling contrast
which the Bishop thought right to give us. He contrasted Thomas the
doubter with Simon Peter the believer. I have read the Bible a little,
and I think that of all the cowardly rascals of whom I ever read, the
greatest rascal was Simon Peter. He was called under great advantages;
he had been out fishing, and he caught nothing, and the Lord helped him
to a good catch of fish; Simon Peter’s wife’s mother was cured of a
fever; Simon Peter was with Jesus when he fed the people with a few
loaves and fishes, and he took part in the collection of the fragments.
He was present at the transmigration. It was to him that Jesus said, “To
thee I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Simon Peter was with the
Lord all through his life; and when Jesus came to trouble, he was the
first who abandoned him and denied him, even with oaths, “I know not the
man;” and that Peter is the model of faith whom the Bishop presents to
you. Of the two I rather prefer Thomas to Peter. Certainly Peter came
back to the Church when he caught more fish. When Jesus rose from the
dead, Peter did not or would not know him, but when Jesus said “Throw in
your net,” and he did so, and caught more fish, then he knew Jesus
directly. I will ask what lesson the Lord Bishop meant to convey by the
contrast between those two? In what sort of way is Peter put in
contrast? Simon Peter was true enough when any profit was to be got by
it; he ran away when danger came. This is the model which the Lord
Bishop puts before you to copy. But Dr. Magee said that Christianity
could not be demonstrated. Christian evidences were of some use as
weapons when believers were exposed to assaults on their faith. If I
thought he had intended to preach a comic sermon instead of a serious
one, I could have heartily laughed at this. He says that the evidences
of Christianity are weapons to put in the hands of every man and woman
when his or her innermost soul is assailed by the enemy with desolating
doubt. Is it true that God permits an enemy to reduce man to the level
of the beast, and to be continually besieging the soul of man? Is it
true that the subtle devil tempts man from the faith? If it be true,
then the devil exists either because God cannot help it, or will not
prevent it; and if he exists because God is powerless to prevent, then
God is not omnipotent; if God wills it, then God consents to—nay, strives
to procure man’s damnation. But, says the Bishop, Christianity does not
repel the doubter, and he even admits the utility of doubt, subject only
to one condition. Before I deal with the Bishop’s condition, permit me
to quote what Buckle has said on the effect of doubt, and I quote him
because he stands in a position entitling him to the attention of the
extreme heterodox, as well as of the extreme orthodox. He says:
“Although the acquisition of fresh knowledge is the necessary
precursor of every step in social progress, such acquisition must
itself be preceded by a love of inquiry, and therefore by a spirit of
doubt, because without doubt there will be no inquiry, and without
inquiry there will be no knowledge, for knowledge is not an inert and
passive principle which comes to us whether we will or no; but it
must be sought before it can be won; it is the product of great
labour, and, therefore, of great sacrifice. And it is absurd to
suppose that men will incur the labour and make the sacrifice for
subjects respecting which they are already perfectly content. They
who do not feel the darkness, will never look for the light. If on
any point we have attained to certainty, we make no further inquiry
on that point, because inquiry would be useless or perhaps dangerous.
The doubt must intervene before the investigation can begin. Here,
then, we have the act of doubting as the originator, or at all events
the necessary antecedent of all progress. Here we have that
scepticism, the very name of which is an abomination to the ignorant,
because it disturbs their lazy and complacent minds; because it
troubles their cherished superstitions; because it imposes on them
the fatigue of inquiry; and because it rouses even sluggish
understandings to ask if things are as they are commonly supposed,
and if all is really true which they from their childhood have been
taught to believe. The more we examine this great principle of
scepticism, the more distinctly shall we see the immense part it has
played in the progress of European civilisation. To state in general
terms, what in this introduction will be fully proved, it may be said
that to scepticism we owe that spirit of inquiry which, during the
last two centuries, has gradually encroached on every possible
subject, has reformed every department of practical and speculative
knowledge; has weakened the authority of the privileged classes, and
thus placed liberty on a surer foundation; has chastised the
despotism of princes; has restrained the arrogance of the nobles, and
has even diminished the prejudices of the clergy. In a word, it is
this which has remedied the three fundamental errors of the olden
time, errors which made the people in politics too confiding, in
science too credulous, in religion too intolerant. We have thus seen
the rise of that scepticism which in physics must always be the
beginning of science, and in religion must always be the beginning of
toleration. There is, indeed, no doubt that in both cases individual
thinkers may by a great effort of original genius, emancipate
themselves from the operation of this law. But in the progress of
nations no such emancipation is possible. As long as men refer the
movements of the comets to the immediate finger of God, and as long
as they believe that an eclipse is one of the modes by which Deity
expresses his anger, they will never be guilty of the blasphemous
presumption of attempting to predict such supernatural appearances.
Before they could dare to investigate the causes of these mysterious
phenomena, it was necessary that they should suspect that the
phenomena themselves were capable of being explained by the human
mind. In the same way until men are content in some degree to bring
their religion before the bar of their own reason, they never can
understand how it is that there should be a diversity of creeds, or
how any one can differ from themselves without being guilty of the
most enormous and unpardonable crime.”
Chillingworth says, “Reason gives us knowledge, while faith only gives us
belief, which is a part of knowledge, and is, therefore, inferior to it.
It is by reason, and not by faith, that we must discriminate in religious
matters, and it is by reason alone that we can distinguish truth from
falsehood.” He solemnly reminds his readers that in religious matters no
one ought to be expected to draw strong conclusions from imperfect
premises, or to credit improbable statements upon scanty evidence; still
less, he says, was it ever intended that men should so prostitute their
reason as to believe with infallible faith that which they are unable to
prove with infallible arguments. The Bishop, agreeing in the utility of
doubt, which he expressed in language nearly as strong as that of Buckle,
says there is one condition without which doubt cannot be useful, and
this condition, being in truth an entire hindrance to doubt, is utterly
unreasonable and impossible. He says the condition on which doubt can be
accepted as useful is that it starts on a certain basis of religious
belief. Now a doubt so based is only a fictitious doubt, a sham doubt, a
hypocritical pretence of doubt. When the Bishop said it was possible to
have a doubt based on belief in the proposition to be doubted, he said
what he could not defend on any platform where reply was permitted. I
feel that in talking of a man in his absence I may be under the
imputation of saying harsh things. The manner in which this debate has
gone on is not one of my fashioning. The Church has taken the pains to
give lectures in the Cathedral where no reply could be offered; but I
promise you that I will endeavour to carry the war into Peterborough, and
see whether the Bishop will attempt an answer under the shadow of his own
cathedral.
I have now to complain of something still worse than that the Bishop
should have forgotten his Bible, entirely ignored the Thirty-nine
Articles, and occasionally in the hurry of rapid speech contradicted his
previous sentences. All these are matters at which in even an
extraordinary man burdened with a bishop’s dignity, we need not wonder at
all; but when we find him blundering in metaphysics, when we find him
making mistakes which a man versed in the merest student’s rudiments of
Mill or the Scotch and German metaphysicians, would not make, when we
find the Bishop so blundering, either wilfully or ignorantly, it puts me
in a position of extreme difficulty. He distinguished between the
Sceptic and the Christian, and said the Christian had a faith in
something underlying all phenomena. The Christian’s faith is nothing of
the kind. I will explain my position, and then that of the Christian.
The position of the Naturist is that there is only one existence. I can
only know that existence as conditioned, as phenomenal. What we call
“things” are modes or conditions of existence, known or distinguished
from other conditions by various characteristics or qualities; we only
know substance or existence as conditioned. We only know the phenomenal
or the conditioned. We affirm one existence, and that all we know is
condition of that one existence. But that is not the Christian’s
position. The Christian says there are two existences, the one what he
calls the material universe, and the other the Deity, distinct and
differing in essence, who is the creator of that universe out of nothing,
and who can be the destroyer of it. When the Bishop tried to make these
two opinions into one, he either did not know what he was talking about,
or he supposed that the people to whom he was talking had not the time to
study. The Bishop defined faith as trust or assent, and he declared that
not only in religion but in all other matters we have faith. He said,
for example, and his illustration appeared to me most unfortunately
chosen, that we trusted in our wives, and children, and friends, that it
was possible that our wives might all the time be unfaithful, our
children unloving, and our friends treacherous. These are not the words,
but they give the exact sense of the words. Now I will explain the
difference between religious faith and the ordinary faith. Our ordinary
faith in one another in every-day life is a confidence founded upon our
own experience and the experience of others; and it is because we find
the unfaithful wives are the fewest in number, and the treacherous
friends the fewest in number, that we trust in our wives and our friends.
But religious faith is something entirely different, it is not only not
founded on experience, but it contradicts experience. Religious belief
is the prostration of the intellect; ordinary every-day trust is the
result of the exercise of the intellect. The Bishop spoke of morality.
He said morality was based upon faith, and he asked, supposing you did
not go to faith, where were you to get your standard of morality? What
is morality, the Bishop did not tell you. With me that is moral which
tends to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, which inflicts
the least injury on any. What is moral the Bible does not tell you, the
Thirty-nine Articles do not tell you, the Creeds do not tell you, the
Nicene Creed does not tell you, the Apostles’ Creed does not tell you.
They say that it is moral not to steal, but you must not say this with
the Bible in your hand, where you find a thief protected and rewarded.
And as to adultery, David got to heaven though he committed adultery, and
planned the most treacherous murder of the dishonoured husband. It is
moral to speak the truth, but Jacob, who lied, got to heaven, and was
loved by God, while his brother was hated, though he appears to have been
the better man of the two. What is the morality of the Athanasian Creed?
You are to believe in a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost, three persons in
one God, and if you do not believe in this, without doubt you are to
perish everlastingly. Is that your morality? He that believes and is
baptised, shall be saved. Is faith in Christ morality? Here it is moral
to eat beefsteaks, but on the banks of the Ganges it is immoral. Where
will you get your guide to morality? No one man, no one book, no one
church, can give it you. Your guide to morality can only be got by
gathering from the wisdom, and availing yourself of the experience of the
greatest minds of past ages and the present times, and thus you may learn
to be moral. I don’t speak to annihilate the Bible. No man can
annihilate a book. If Moses or Isaiah wrote, no man can sweep their work
away from the page of history, but I say that no book should dominate the
world. I am a sceptic, for I deny the absolute authority of one book to
dominate all people. I find among the Brahmins, among the Buddhists,
among the Chinese and Japanese, phases of human truth which in other
lands are almost entirely forgotten, which your Jew books do not contain.
If you want to know how I would make a code of morality, I would make it
as you would a bouquet of flowers: from one plot in a garden you cull the
rose, from another other flowers of sweet perfume, from another the
flowers of brilliant hue, until colour blending with colour and fragrance
aiding, your bouquet presents beauty to the eye and sweet perfume to the
scent; so I would take from Shakspere the fruit of his wide grasping
brains, from Swift his brilliant wit, from Montesquieu his great power of
generalisation, from Voltaire his grand irony, from Rabelais his biting
thought, from Spinoza his grand logic, from John Locke his wise reason, I
would take from Dr. Magee his eloquence, and bring them and the thoughts
of the world’s poets and philosophers together. I would make my bouquet
of thought. I say the Bible is not a book to cast away, but to place on
our shelves beside the Koran, the Vedas, and other old-world books, to
mark how the thought of the world has grown. We know that religion has a
hold upon the mass, but I claim for scepticism a higher morality. The
belief in religion is the wearing the old clothes of a former age, the
swaddling clothes adopted in the childhood of humanity, but scepticism is
the bursting out from these old swaddling clothes. It is the effort of
buried brain to burst its grave and stand out alive for human
deliverance.
THIRD DISCOURSE
OF THE
BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH.
CHRISTIANITY AND FAITH.
ON Thursday evening, March 30th, 1871, the nave of the Cathedral,
Norwich, was much crowded with the citizens of all classes, to hear the
third sermon of the Bishop of Peterborough, on “Christianity and Faith.”
Before the sermon the Bishop prayed specially for the conversion of the
infidels present. He selected his text from the Gospel according to St.
John, xx. 29,
“Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
His Lordship said:
Last night, I endeavoured to show you what scepticism is, and what it
leads to. We saw that scepticism is not simply doubt, but that it is
doubt of a particular kind. It is that state of doubt which arises
from insisting on referring every question for solution to one part,
and one only, of our nature, to the sceptical understanding. It is
that state of doubt which arises from refusing to believe until it
has been made scientifically and mathematically impossible to doubt.
And we saw what this leads to; we saw that it necessarily leads to
the destruction of all belief properly so-called, to the destruction
of every kind of assent, except assent to scientific and demonstrated
facts; that it puts an end to all belief which rests upon moral
certainty, as distinguished from scientific certainty, and therefore
it puts an end to all belief that appeals to any part of our nature
except the understanding; all belief with which the heart and spirit
of man have anything to do; all belief of the higher and nobler kind;
all belief that arises out of the higher and nobler part of our
nature; all belief that is in character and essence moral, and all
the higher and nobler life which arises out of such belief. We saw
that scepticism was essentially fatal to morality; that there is no
scientific demonstration of morality, and that in order to be moral
it is necessary to exercise an act of faith; that morality cannot
justify itself to the sceptical understanding; as we saw that as
religion is not capable of scientific demonstration, as it does
appeal to something else than the logical faculty, as it does appeal
to man’s heart and spirit, it cannot justify itself to the sceptical
intellect; and that scepticism is necessarily as fatal to religion as
it is to morality, and to all belief except scientific belief.
I hope you saw what a waste of time it is to endeavour to satisfy the
consistent sceptic; we have absolutely nothing in common. It is
impossible that religion can silence scepticism, unless it ceases to
be religion. It is just as absurd to object to religion that it is
not science, as to object to science that it is not religion. It is
the wisest course we can take in dealing with sceptics to begin, and
for the most part to end the discussion, by asking this plain
question: You tell us that you are sceptical, and you demand all your
doubts to be satisfied before you believe; we ask you, Do you believe
in anything, and if so, what do you believe in the proper sense of
the word? Do you assent to anything on trust? Do you believe in
anything you cannot demonstrate? If so, you have no right to say to
us that we should not believe a religion. If you say, I believe in
nothing but what can be demonstrated, then we have nothing to answer,
we must leave you to be refuted by the common sense of mankind, and
by every act of your daily life which is based on trust. It would
save a vast deal of wasted time were we to take this course. Let me
advise all Christians; before you allow a sceptic to put you to the
proof, ask, What is it you believe? Do you believe anything in the
matter of religion? and if so, remember you should not bring any
objection against our faith which applies equally to yours. We
cannot allow of faith for all the difficulties of your belief, while
you ask demonstration for all the difficulties of our belief. Faith
for both, or faith for neither; but not faith for one and
demonstration for the other. We seek not to get a logical victory
over our opponents; that is the poorest of all ambitions; but we
recommend such a course for this reason, that you may see that the
very same objections which are brought against our belief, lie
against any belief, and all belief, and so be strengthened in your
faith; for after all man must believe something. There is a
necessity of belief in the soul of man. We ask for the sake of our
opponents, if we throw them back upon considering the basis of their
own belief, and ask them if they are not unconsciously to themselves
in some degree believers while they call themselves sceptics?