[1887]
If there is any truth in the old adage that a burnt child dreads the
fire, I ought to be very loath to touch a sermon, while the memory of
what befell me on a recent occasion, possibly not yet forgotten by the
readers of the _Nineteenth Century_, is uneffaced. But I suppose that
even the distinguished censor of that unheard-of audacity to which not
even the newspaper report of a sermon is sacred, can hardly regard a
man of science as either indelicate or presumptuous, if he ventures to
offer some comments upon three discourses, specially addressed to the
great assemblage of men of science which recently gathered at
Manchester, by three bishops of the State Church. On my return to
England not long ago, I found a pamphlet[28] containing a version,
which I presume to be authorised, of these sermons, among the huge
mass of letters and papers which had accumulated during two months'
absence; and I have read them not only with attentive interest, but
with a feeling of satisfaction which is quite new to me as a result of
hearing, or reading, sermons. These excellent discourses, in fact,
appear to me to signalise a new departure in the course adopted by
theology towards science, and to indicate the possibility of bringing
about an honourable _modus vivendi_ between the two. How far the three
bishops speak as accredited representatives of the Church is a
question to be considered by and by. Most assuredly, I am not
authorised to represent any one but myself. But I suppose that there
must be a good many people in the Church of the bishops' way of
thinking; and I have reason to believe that, in the ranks of science,
there are a good many persons who, more or less, share my views. And
it is to these sensible people on both sides, as the bishops and I
must needs think those who agree with us, that my present observations
are addressed. They will probably be astonished to learn how
insignificant, in principle, their differences are.
It is impossible to read the discourses of the three prelates without
being impressed by the knowledge which they display, and by the spirit
of equity, I might say of generosity, towards science which pervades
them. There is no trace of that tacit or open assumption that the
rejection of theological dogmas, on scientific grounds, is due to
moral perversity, which is the ordinary note of ecclesiastical
homilies on this subject, and which makes them look so supremely silly
to men whose lives have been spent in wrestling with these questions.
There is no attempt to hide away real stumbling-blocks under
rhetorical stucco; no resort to the _tu quoque_ device of setting
scientific blunders against theological errors; no suggestion that an
honest man may keep contradictory beliefs in separate pockets of his
brain; no question that the method of scientific investigation is
valid, whatever the results to which it may lead; and that the search
after truth, and truth only, ennobles the searcher and leaves no doubt
that his life, at any rate, is worth living. The Bishop of Carlisle
declares himself pledged to the belief that "the advancement of
science, the progress of human knowledge, is in itself a worthy aim of
the greatest effort of the greatest minds."
How often was it my fate, a quarter of a century ago, to see the whole
artillery of the pulpit brought to bear upon the doctrine of evolution
and its supporters! Any one unaccustomed to the amenities of
ecclesiastical controversy would have thought we were too wicked to be
permitted to live. But let us hear the Bishop of Bedford. After a
perfectly frank statement of the doctrine of evolution and some of
its obvious consequences, that learned prelate pleads, with all
earnestness, against
a hasty denunciation of what _may_ be proved to have at
least some elements of truth in it, a contemptuous rejection
of theories which we _may_ some day learn to accept as
freely and with as little sense of inconsistency with God's
word as we now accept the theory of the earth's motion round
the sun, or the long duration of the geological epochs (p.
28).
I do not see that the most convinced evolutionist could ask any one,
whether cleric or layman, to say more than this; in fact, I do not
think that any one has a right to say more, with respect to any
question about which two opinions can he held, than that his mind is
perfectly open to the force of evidence.
There is another portion of the Bishop of Bedford's sermon which I
think will be warmly appreciated by all honest and clear-headed men.
He repudiates the views of those who say that theology and science
occupy wholly different spheres, and need in no way
intermeddle with each other. They revolve, as it were, in
different planes, and so never meet. Thus we may pursue
scientific studies with the utmost freedom and, at the same
time, may pay the most reverent regard to theology, having
no fears of collision, because allowing no points of contact
(p. 29).
Surely every unsophisticated mind will heartily concur with the
Bishop's remark upon this convenient refuge for the descendants of
Mr. Facing-both-ways. "I have never been able to understand this
position though I have often seen it assumed." Nor can any demurrer be
sustained when the Bishop proceeds to point out that there are, and
must be, various points of contact between theological and natural
science, and therefore that it is foolish to ignore or deny the
existence of as many dangers of collision.
Finally, the Bishop of Manchester freely admits the force of the
objections which have been raised, on scientific grounds, to prayer,
and attempts to turn them by arguing that the proper objects of prayer
are not physical but spiritual. He tells us that natural accidents and
moral misfortunes are not to be taken for moral judgments of God; he
admits the propriety of the application of scientific methods to the
investigation of the origin and growth of religions; and he is as
ready to recognise the process of evolution there, as in the physical
world. Mark the following striking passage:--
And how utterly all the common objections to Divine
revelation vanish away when they are set in the light of
this theory of a spiritual progression. Are we reminded that
there prevailed, in those earlier days, views of the nature
of God and man, of human life and Divine Providence, which
we now find to be untenable? _That_, we answer, is precisely
what the theory of development presupposes. If early views
of religion and morality had not been imperfect, where had
been the development? If symbolical visions and mythical
creations had found no place in the early Oriental
expression of Divine truth, where had been the development?
The sufficient answer to ninety-nine out of a hundred of the
ordinary objections to the Bible, as the record of a divine
education of our race, is asked in that one
word--development. And to what are we indebted for that
potent word, which, as with the wand of a magician, has at
the same moment so completely transformed our knowledge and
dispelled our difficulties? To modern science, resolutely
pursuing its search for truth in spite of popular obloquy
and--alas! that one should have to say it--in spite too
often of theological denunciation (p. 53).
Apart from its general importance, I read this remarkable statement
with the more pleasure, since, however imperfectly I may have
endeavoured to illustrate the evolution of theology in a paper
published in the _Nineteenth Century_ last year,[29] it seems to me
that in principle, at any rate, I may hereafter claim high theological
sanction for the views there set forth.
If theologians are henceforward prepared to recognise the authority of
secular science in the manner and to the extent indicated in the
Manchester trilogy; if the distinguished prelates who offer these
terms are really plenipotentiaries, then, so far as I may presume to
speak on such a matter, there will be no difficulty about concluding a
perpetual treaty of peace, and indeed of alliance, between the high
contracting powers, whose history has hitherto been little more than a
record of continual warfare. But if the great Chancellor's maxim, "Do
ut des," is to form the basis of negotiation, I am afraid that
secular science will be ruined; for it seems to me that theology,
under the generous impulse of a sudden conversion, has given all that
she hath; and indeed, on one point, has surrendered more than can
reasonably be asked.
I suppose I must be prepared to face the reproach which attaches to
those who criticise a gift, if I venture to observe that I do not
think that the Bishop of Manchester need have been so much alarmed, as
he evidently has been, by the objections which have often been raised
to prayer, on the ground that a belief in the efficacy of prayer is
inconsistent with a belief in the constancy of the order of nature.
The Bishop appears to admit that there is an antagonism between the
"regular economy of nature" and the "regular economy of prayer" (p.
39), and that "prayers for the interruption of God's natural order"
are of "doubtful validity" (p. 42). It appears to me that the Bishop's
difficulty simply adds another example to those which I have several
times insisted upon in the pages of this Review and elsewhere, of the
mischief which has been done, and is being done, by a mistaken
apprehension of the real meaning of "natural order" and "law of
nature."
May I, therefore, be permitted to repeat, once more, that the
statements denoted by these terms have no greater value or cogency
than such as may attach to generalisations from experience of the
past, and to expectations for the future based upon that experience?
Nobody can presume to say what the order of nature must be; all that
the widest experience (even if it extended over all past time and
through all space) that events had happened in a certain way could
justify, would be a proportionally strong expectation that events will
go on happening, and the demand for a proportional strength of
evidence in favour of any assertion that they had happened otherwise.
It is this weighty consideration, the truth of which every one who is
capable of logical thought must surely admit, which knocks the bottom
out of all _à priori_ objections either to ordinary "miracles" or to
the efficacy of prayer, in so far as the latter implies the miraculous
intervention of a higher power. No one is entitled to say _à priori_
that any given so-called miraculous event is impossible; and no one is
entitled to say _à priori_ that prayer for some change in the ordinary
course of nature cannot possibly avail.
The supposition that there is any inconsistency between the acceptance
of the constancy of natural order and a belief in the efficacy of
prayer, is the more unaccountable as it is obviously contradicted by
analogies furnished by everyday experience. The belief in the efficacy
of prayer depends upon the assumption that there is somebody,
somewhere, who is strong enough to deal with the earth and its
contents as men deal with the things and events which they are strong
enough to modify or control; and who is capable of being moved by
appeals such as men make to one another. This belief does not even
involve theism; for our earth is an insignificant particle of the
solar system, while the solar system is hardly worth speaking of in
relation to the All; and, for anything that can be proved to the
contrary, there may be beings endowed with full powers over our
system, yet, practically, as insignificant as ourselves in relation to
the universe. If any one pleases, therefore, to give unrestrained
liberty to his fancy, he may plead analogy in favour of the dream that
there may be, somewhere, a finite being, or beings, who can play with
the solar system as a child plays with a toy; and that such being may
be willing to do anything which he is properly supplicated to do. For
we are not justified in saying that it is impossible for beings having
the nature of men, only vastly more powerful, to exist; and if they do
exist, they may act as and when we ask them to do so, just as our
brother men act. As a matter of fact, the great mass of the human race
has believed, and still believes, in such beings, under the various
names of fairies, gnomes, angels, and demons. Certainly I do not lack
faith in the constancy of natural order. But I am not less convinced
that if I were to ask the Bishop of Manchester to do me a kindness
which lay within his power, he would do it. And I am unable to see
that his action on my request involves any violation of the order of
nature. On the contrary, as I have not the honour to know the Bishop
personally, my action would be based upon my faith, in that "law of
nature," or generalisation from experience, which tells me that, as a
rule, men who occupy the Bishop's position are kindly and courteous.
How is the case altered if my request is preferred to some imaginary
superior being, or to the Most High being, who, by the supposition, is
able to arrest disease, or make the sun stand still in the heavens,
just as easily as I can stop my watch, or make it indicate any hour
that pleases me?
I repeat that it is not upon any _à priori_ considerations that
objections, either to the supposed efficacy of prayer in modifying the
course of events, or to the supposed occurrence of miracles, can be
scientifically based. The real objection, and, to my mind, the fatal
objection, to both these suppositions, is the inadequacy of the
evidence to prove any given case of such occurrences which has been
adduced. It is a canon of common sense, to say nothing of science,
that the more improbable a supposed occurrence, the more cogent ought
to be the evidence in its favour. I have looked somewhat carefully
into the subject, and I am unable to find in the records of any
miraculous event evidence which even approximates to the fulfilment of
this requirement.
But, in the case of prayer, the Bishop points out a most just and
necessary distinction between its effect on the course of nature,
outside ourselves, and its effect within the region of the
supplicator's mind.
It is a "law of nature," verifiable by everyday experience, that our
already formed convictions, our strong desires, our intent occupation
with particular ideas, modify our mental operations to a most
marvellous extent, and produce enduring changes in the direction and
in the intensity of our intellectual and moral activities. Men can
intoxicate themselves with ideas as effectually as with alcohol or
with bang, and produce, by dint of intense thinking, mental conditions
hardly distinguishable from monomania. Demoniac possession is
mythical; but the faculty of being possessed, more or less completely,
by an idea is probably the fundamental condition of what is called
genius, whether it show itself in the saint, the artist, or the man of
science. One calls it faith, another calls it inspiration, a third
calls it insight; but the "intending of the mind," to borrow Newton's
well-known phrase, the concentration of all the rays of intellectual
energy on some one point, until it glows and colours the whole cast of
thought with its peculiar light, is common to all.
I take it that the Bishop of Manchester has psychological science with
him when he insists upon the subjective efficacy of prayer in faith,
and on the seemingly miraculous effects which such "intending of the
mind" upon religious and moral ideals may have upon character and
happiness. Scientific faith, at present, takes it no further than the
prayer which Ajax offered; but that petition is continually granted.
Whatever points of detail may yet remain open for discussion, however,
I repeat the opinion I have already expressed, that the Manchester
sermons concede all that science, has an indisputable right, or any
pressing need, to ask, and that not grudgingly but generously; and, if
the three bishops of 1887 carry the Church with them, I think they
will have as good title to the permanent gratitude of posterity as the
famous seven who went to the Tower in defence of the Church two
hundred years ago.
Will their brethren follow their just and prudent guidance? I have no
such acquaintance with the currents of ecclesiastical opinion as would
justify me in even hazarding a guess on such a difficult topic. But
some recent omens are hardly favourable. There seems to be an
impression abroad--I do not desire to give any countenance to it--that
I am fond of reading sermons. From time to time, unknown
correspondents--some apparently animated by the charitable desire to
promote my conversion, and others unmistakably anxious to spur me to
the expression of wrathful antagonism--favour me with reports or
copies of such productions.
I found one of the latter category among the accumulated arrears to
which I have already referred.
It is a full, and apparently accurate, report of a discourse by a
person of no less ecclesiastical rank than the three authors of the
sermons I have hitherto been considering; but who he is, and where or
when the sermon was preached, are secrets which wild horses shall not
tear from me, lest I fall again under high censure for attacking a
clergyman. Only if the editor of this Review thinks it his duty to
have independent evidence that the sermon has a real existence, will
I, in the strictest confidence, communicate it to him.
The preacher, in this case, is of a very different mind from the three
bishops--and this mind is different in quality, different in spirit,
and different in contents. He discourses on the _à priori_ objections
to miracles, apparently without being aware, in spite of all the
discussions of the last seven or eight years, that he is doing battle
with a shadow.
I trust I do not misrepresent the Bishop of Manchester in saying that
the essence of his remarkable discourse is the insistence upon the
"supreme importance of the purely spiritual in our faith," and of the
relative, if not absolute, insignificance of aught else. He obviously
perceives the bearing of his arguments against the alterability of
the course of outward nature by prayer, on the question of miracles in
general; for he is careful to say that "the possibility of miracles,
of a rare and unusual transcendence of the world order is not here in
question" (p. 38). It may be permitted me to suppose, however, that,
if miracles were in question, the speaker who warns us "that we must
look for the heart of the absolute religion in that part of it which
prescribes our moral and religious relations" (p. 46) would not be
disposed to advise those who had found the heart of Christianity to
take much thought about its miraculous integument.
My anonymous sermon will have nothing to do with such notions as
these, and its preacher is not too polite, to say nothing of
charitable, towards those who entertain them.
Scientific men, therefore, are perfectly right in asserting
that Christianity rests on miracles. If miracles never
happened, Christianity, in any sense which is not a mockery,
which does not make the term of none effect, has no reality.
I dwell on this because there is now an effort making to get
up a non-miraculous, invertebrate Christianity, which may
escape the ban of science. And I would warn you very
distinctly against this new contrivance. Christianity is
essentially miraculous, and falls to the ground if miracles
be impossible.
Well, warning for warning. I venture to warn this preacher and those
who, with him, persist in identifying Christianity with the
miraculous, that such forms of Christianity are not only doomed to
fall to the ground; but that, within the last half century, they have
been driving that way with continually accelerated velocity.
The so-called religious world is given to a strange delusion. It
fondly imagines that it possesses the monopoly of serious and constant
reflection upon the terrible problems of existence; and that those who
cannot accept its shibboleths are either mere Gallios, caring for none
of these things, or libertines desiring to escape from the restraints
of morality. It does not appear to have entered the imaginations of
these people that, outside their pale and firmly resolved never to
enter it, there are thousands of men, certainly not their inferiors in
character, capacity, or knowledge of the questions at issue, who
estimate those purely spiritual elements of the Christian faith of
which the Bishop of Manchester speaks as highly as the Bishop does;
but who will have nothing to do with the Christian Churches, because
in their apprehension and for them, the profession of belief in the
miraculous, on the evidence offered would be simply immoral.
So far as my experience goes, men of science are neither better nor
worse than the rest of the world. Occupation with the endlessly great
parts of the universe does not necessarily involve greatness of
character, nor does microscopic study of the infinitely little always
produce humility. We have our full share of original sin; need,
greed, and vainglory beset us as they do other mortals; and our
progress is, for the most part, like that of a tacking ship, the
resultant of opposite divergencies from the straight path. But, for
all that, there is one moral benefit which the pursuit of science
unquestionably bestows. It keeps the estimate of the value of evidence
up to the proper mark; and we are constantly receiving lessons, and
sometimes very sharp ones, on the nature of proof. Men of science will
always act up to their standard of veracity, when mankind in general
leave off sinning; but that standard appears to me to be higher among
them than in any other class of the community.
I do not know any body of scientific men who could be got to listen
without the strongest expressions of disgusted repudiation to the
exposition of a pretended scientific discovery, which had no better
evidence to show for itself than the story of the devils entering a
herd of swine, or of the fig-tree that was blasted for bearing no figs
when "it was not the season of figs." Whether such events are possible
or impossible, no man can say; but scientific ethics can and does
declare that the profession of belief in them, on the evidence of
documents of unknown date and of unknown authorship, is immoral.
Theological apologists who insist that morality will vanish if their
dogmas are exploded, would do well to consider the fact that, in the
matter of intellectual veracity, science is already a long way ahead
of the Churches; and that, in this particular, it is exerting an
educational influence on mankind of which the Churches have shown
themselves utterly incapable.
Undoubtedly that varying compound of some of the best and some of the
worst elements of Paganism and Judaism, moulded in practice by the
innate character of certain people of the Western world, which, since
the second century, has assumed to itself the title of orthodox
Christianity, "rests on miracles" and falls to the ground, not "if
miracles be impossible," but if those to which it is committed prove
themselves unable to fulfil the conditions of honest belief. That this
Christianity is doomed to fall is, to my mind, beyond a doubt; but its
fall will be neither sudden nor speedy. The Church, with all the aid
lent it by the secular arm, took many centuries to extirpate the open
practice of pagan idolatry within its own fold; and those who have
travelled in southern Europe will be aware that it has not extirpated
the essence of such idolatry even yet. _Mutato nomine_, it is probable
that there is as much sheer fetichism among the Roman populace now as
there was eighteen hundred years ago; and if Marcus Antonius could
descend from his horse and ascend the steps of the Ara Coeli church
about Twelfth Day, the only thing that need strike him would be the
extremely contemptible character of the modern idols as works of art.
Science will certainly neither ask for, nor receive, the aid of the
secular arm. It will trust to the much better and more powerful help
of that education in scientific truth and in the morals of assent,
which is rendered as indispensable, as it is inevitable, by the
permeation of practical life with the products and ideas of science.
But no one who considers the present state of even the most developed
countries can doubt that the scientific light that has come into the
world will have to shine in the midst of darkness for a long time. The
urban populations, driven into contact with science by trade and
manufacture, will more and more receive it, while the _pagani_ will
lag behind. Let us hope that no Julian may arise among them to head a
forlorn hope against the inevitable. Whatever happens, science may
bide her time in patience and in confidence.
But to return to my "Anonymous." I am afraid that if he represents any
great party in the Church, the spirit of justice and reasonableness
which animates the three bishops has as slender a chance of being
imitated, on a large scale, as their common sense and their courtesy.
For, not contented with misrepresenting science on its speculative
side, "Anonymous" attacks its morality.
For two whole years, investigations and conclusions which
would upset the theories of Darwin on the formation of coral
islands were actually suppressed, and that by the advice
even of those who accepted them, _for fear of upsetting the
faith and disturbing the judgment formed by the multitude
on the scientific character--the infallibility--of the great
master_!
So far as I know anything about the matters which are here referred
to, the part of this passage which I have italicised is absolutely
untrue. I believe that I am intimately acquainted with all Mr.
Darwin's immediate scientific friends: and I say that no one of them,
nor any other man of science known to me, ever could, or would, have
given such advice to any one--if for no other reason than that, with
the example of the most candid and patient listener to objections that
ever lived fresh in their memories, they could not so grossly have at
once violated their highest duty and dishonoured their friend.
The charge thus brought by "Anonymous" affects the honour and the
probity of men of science; if it is true, we have forfeited all claim
to the confidence of the general public. In my belief it is utterly
false, and its real effect will be to discredit those who are
responsible for it. As is the way with slanders, it has grown by
repetition. "Anonymous" is responsible for the peculiarly offensive
form which it has taken in his hands; but he is not responsible for
originating it. He has evidently been inspired by an article entitled
"A Great Lesson," published in the September number of this Review.
Truly it is "a great lesson," but not quite in the sense intended by
the giver thereof.
In the course of his doubtless well-meant admonitions, the Duke of
Argyll commits himself to a greater number of statements which are
demonstrably incorrect and which any one who ventured to write upon
the subject ought to have known to be incorrect, than I have ever seen
gathered together in so small a space.
I submit a gathering from the rich store for the appreciation of the
public.