THEISM
BEING
The Baird Lecture for 1876
BY
ROBERT FLINT, D.D., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH AUTHOR OF 'THE
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN EUROPE,' ETC.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXVII
PREFATORY NOTE.
The Lectures in this volume have been delivered in Glasgow, St Andrews,
and Edinburgh, in connection with the Lectureship founded by the late
Mr James Baird of Auchmedden and Cambusdoon. They will be followed by a
volume on Anti-theistic Theories, containing the Baird Lectures for 1877.
The author has to thank the Baird Trustees for having twice appointed
him Lecturer, and for much indulgence extended to him during his tenure
of office. His special thanks are due to James A. Campbell, Esq.,
LL.D., of Stracathro, for kindly revising the sheets of this volume,
and for suggesting many corrections and improvements.
JOHNSTONE LODGE, CRAIGMILLAR PARK,
EDINBURGH, _22d August 1877_.
CONTENTS.
LECT. PAGE
I. ISSUES INVOLVED IN THE QUESTION TO BE DISCUSSED--WHENCE
AND HOW WE GET THE
IDEA OF GOD, 1
II. GENERAL IDEA OF RELIGION--COMPARISON OF
POLYTHEISM AND PANTHEISM WITH THEISM--THE
THREE GREAT THEISTIC RELIGIONS COMPARED--NO
RELIGIOUS PROGRESS BEYOND
THEISM, 30
III. THE NATURE, CONDITIONS, AND LIMITS OF THEISTIC
PROOF, 59
IV. NATURE IS BUT THE NAME FOR AN EFFECT
WHOSE CAUSE IS GOD, 96
V. THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER, 131
VI. OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER
EXAMINED, 169
VII. MORAL ARGUMENT--TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE
AND HISTORY, 210
VIII. CONSIDERATION OF OBJECTIONS TO THE DIVINE
WISDOM, BENEVOLENCE, AND JUSTICE, 233
IX. _A PRIORI_ THEISTIC PROOF, 264
X. MERE THEISM INSUFFICIENT, 302
APPENDIX.
NOTE PAGE
I. NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION, 323
II. INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON MORALITY, 329
III. ETHICS OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY, 335
IV. TRADITIVE THEORY OF RELIGION, 338
V. NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY, 340
VI. DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION BY THE HIGHEST
TYPE, 342
VII. PSYCHOLOGICAL NATURE OF RELIGION, 343
VIII. ARGUMENT _E CONSENSU GENTIUM_, 348
IX. THE THEISTIC EVIDENCE COMPLEX AND COMPREHENSIVE, 350
X. INTUITION, FEELING, BELIEF, AND KNOWLEDGE IN
RELIGION, 355
XI. THE THEOLOGICAL INFERENCE FROM THE THEORY
OF ENERGY, 359
XII. THE HISTORY OF THE ÆTIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, 364
XIII. MATHEMATICS AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT, 367
XIV. ASTRONOMY AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT, 369
XV. CHEMISTRY AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT, 373
XVI. GEOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, ETC., AND THE DESIGN
ARGUMENT, 375
XVII. THE ORGANIC KINGDOM AND DESIGN, 378
XVIII. EVIDENCES OF DESIGN IN ORGANISMS, 380
XIX. PSYCHOLOGY AND DESIGN, 383
XX. HISTORY AND DESIGN, 386
XXI. HISTORY OF THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, 387
XXII. CREATION AND EVOLUTION, 390
XXIII. THEOLOGICAL INFERENCES FROM THE DOCTRINE
OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, 394
XXIV. DARWIN AND PALEY, 396
XXV. KANT'S MORAL ARGUMENT, 397
XXVI. DR SCHENKEL'S VIEW OF CONSCIENCE AS THE
ORGAN OF RELIGION, 400
XXVII. CHALMERS AND ERSKINE ON THE ARGUMENT
FROM CONSCIENCE, 401
XXVIII. ASSOCIATIONIST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIENCE, 403
XXIX. CHALMERS AND BAIN ON THE PLEASURE OF MALEVOLENCE, 403
XXX. HISTORY OF THE MORAL PROOF, 406
XXXI. DEFECTS IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD, 413
XXXII. NO BEST POSSIBLE CREATED SYSTEM, 417
XXXIII. DEFECTS IN THE ORGANIC WORLD, 418
XXXIV. EPICUREAN DILEMMA, 420
XXXV. GOD AND DUTY, 422
XXXVI. HISTORIES OF THE THEISTIC PROOFS, 423
XXXVII. _A PRIORI_ PROOF NOT PROOF FROM A CAUSE, 424
XXXVIII. SOME _A PRIORI_ ARGUMENTS, 425
THEISM.
LECTURE I.
ISSUES INVOLVED IN THE QUESTION TO BE DISCUSSED--WHENCE AND HOW WE GET
THE IDEA OF GOD.
I.
Is belief in God a reasonable belief, or is it not? Have we sufficient
evidence for thinking that there is a self-existent, eternal Being,
infinite in power and wisdom, and perfect in holiness and goodness,
the Maker of heaven and earth, or have we not? Is theism true, or is
some antagonistic, some anti-theistic theory true? This is the question
which we have to discuss and to answer, and it seems desirable to
state briefly at the outset what issues are involved in answering it.
Obviously, the statement of these issues must not be so framed as
to create prejudice for or against any particular answer. Its only
legitimate purpose is to help us to realise aright our true relation
to the question. We can never in any investigation see too early or
too clearly the true and full significance, the general and special
bearings, of the question we intend to study; but the more important
and serious the question is, the more incumbent on us is it not to
prejudge what must be the answer.
* * * * *
It is obvious, then, in the first place, that the inquiry before us
is one as to whether or not religion has any reasonable ground, any
basis, in truth; and if so, what that ground or basis is. Religion,
in order to be reasonable, must rest on knowledge of its object. This
is not to say that it is exclusively knowledge, or that knowledge
is its one essential element. It is not to say that feeling and
will are not as important constituents in the religious life as
intellectual apprehension. Mere knowledge, however clear, profound,
and comprehensive it may be, can never be religion. There can be no
religion where feeling and affection are not added to knowledge. There
can be no religion in any mind devoid of reverence or love, hope or
fear, gratitude or desire--in any mind whose thinking is untouched,
uncoloured, uninspired by some pious emotion. And religion includes
more even than an apprehension of God supplemented by feeling--than the
love or fear of God based on knowledge. It is unrealised and incomplete
so long as there is no self-surrender of the soul to the object of its
knowledge and affection--so long as the will is unmoved, the character
and conduct unmodified. The importance of feeling and will in religion
is thus in no respect questioned or denied when it is maintained that
religion cannot be a reasonable process, a healthy condition of mind,
if constituted by either feeling or volition separate from knowledge.
Some have represented it as consisting essentially in the feeling of
dependence, others in that of love, and others in fear; but these are
all feelings which must be elicited by knowledge, and which must be
proportional to knowledge in every undisordered mind. We can neither
love nor fear what we know nothing about. We cannot love what we do
not think worthy of love, nor fear unless we think there is reason for
fear. We cannot feel our dependence upon what we do not know to exist.
We cannot feel trustful and confiding dependence on what we do not
suppose to have a character which merits trust and confidence. Then,
however true it may be that short of the action of the will in the
form of the self-surrender of the soul to the object of its worship
the religious process is essentially imperfect, this self-surrender
cannot be independent of reason and yet reasonable. In order to be
a legitimate act it must spring out of good affections,--and these
affections must be enlightened; they must rest on the knowledge of an
object worthy of them, and worthy of the self-sacrifice to which they
prompt. Unless there be such an object, and unless it can be known, all
the feeling and willing involved in religion must be delusive--must be
of a kind which reason and duty command us to resist and suppress.
But religion is certainly a very large phenomenon. It is practically
coextensive, indeed, with human life and history. It is doubtful if
any people, any age, has been without some religion. And religion has
not only in some form existed almost wherever man has existed, but
its existence has to a great extent influenced his whole existence.
The religion of a people colours its entire civilisation; its action
may be traced on industry, art, literature, science, and philosophy,
in all their stages. And the question whether there is a God or not,
whether God can be known or not, is, otherwise put, whether or not
religious history, and history so far as influenced by religion, have
had any root in reason, any ground in fact. If there be no God, or if
it be impossible to know whether there be a God or not, history, to
the whole extent of its being religious and influenced by religion,
must have been unreasonable. Perhaps religion might still be conceived
of, although it is difficult to see how it could be so conceived of on
consistent grounds, as having done some good: and one religion might
be regarded as better than another, in the sense of doing more good
or less evil than another; but no religion could be conceived of as
true, nor could one religion be conceived of as truer than another. If
there be no God to know, or if God cannot be known, religion is merely
a delusion or mental disease--its history is merely the history of a
delusion or disease, and any science of it possible is merely a part of
mental pathology.
Further, whether Christianity be a reasonable creed or not obviously
depends on whether or not certain beliefs regarding God are reasonable.
If there be no God, if there be more Gods than one, if God be not the
Creator and Upholder of the world and the Father of our spirits, if
God be not infinite in being and perfection, in power, wisdom, and
holiness, Christianity cannot possibly be a thing to be believed. It
professes to be a revelation from God, and consequently assumes that
there is a God. It demands our fullest confidence, on the ground of
being His word; and consequently assumes that He is "not a man that
He should lie," but One whose word may be trusted to the uttermost.
It professes to be a law of life, and therefore assumes the holiness
of its author; to be a plan of salvation, and therefore presupposes
His love; to be certain of final triumph, and so presupposes His
power. It presents itself to us as the completion of a progressive
process of positive revelation, and therefore presupposes a heavenly
Father, Judge, and King. The books in which we have the record of this
process--the books of the Old and New Testaments--therefore assume,
and could not but assume, that God is, and that He is all-powerful,
perfectly wise, and perfectly holy. They do not prove it, but refer us
to the world and our own hearts for the means and materials of proof.
They may draw away from nature, and from before the eyes of men, a veil
which covers and conceals the proof; they may be a record of facts
which powerfully confirm and largely supplement what proof there is in
the universe without and the mind within: but they must necessarily
imply, and do everywhere imply, that a real proof exists there. If what
they in this respect imply be untrue, all that they profess to tell us
of God, and as from God, must be rejected by us, if we are to judge and
act as reasonable beings.[1]
[1] See Appendix I.
For all men, then, who have religious beliefs, and especially for all
men who have Christian beliefs, these questions, What evidence is
there for God's existence? and, What is known of His nature? are of
primary importance. The answers given to them must determine whether
religion and Christianity ought to be received or rejected. There can
be no use in discussing other religious questions so long as these
fundamental questions have not been thoughtfully studied and distinctly
answered. It is only through their investigation that we can establish
a right to entertain any religious belief, to cherish any religious
feeling, to perform any religious act. And the result to which the
investigation leads us must largely decide what sort of a religious
theory we shall hold, and what sort of a religious life we shall lead.
Almost all religious differences of really serious import may be traced
back to differences in men's thoughts about God. The idea of God is
the generative and regulative idea in every great religious system and
every great religious movement. It is a true feeling which has led to
the inclusion of all religious doctrines whatever in a science which
bears the name of theology (discourse about God, [Greek: logos peri
tou theou]), for what is believed about God determines what will be
believed about everything else which is included either under natural
or revealed religion.
* * * * *
In the second place, the moral issues depending on the inquiry before
us are momentous. An erroneous result must, from the very nature of
the case, be of the most serious character. If there be no God, the
creeds and rites and precepts which have been imposed on humanity in
His name must all be regarded as a cruel and intolerable burden. The
indignation which atheists have so often expressed at the contemplation
of religious history is quite intelligible--quite natural; for to them
it can only appear as a long course of perversion of the conscience
and affections of mankind. If religion be in its essence, and in all
its forms and phases, false, the evils which have been associated with
it have been as much its legitimate effects as any good which can be
ascribed to it; and there can be no warrant for speaking of benefits
as its proper effects, or uses and mischiefs as merely occasioned by
it, or as its abuses. If in itself false, it must be credited with
the evil as well as with the good which has followed it; and all the
unprofitable sufferings and useless privations--all the undefined
terrors and degrading rites--all the corruptions of moral sentiment,
factitious antipathies, intolerance, and persecution--all the spiritual
despotism of the few, and the spiritual abjectness of the many--all
the aversion to improvement and opposition to science, &c., which
are usually referred to false religion and to superstition,--must be
attributed to religion in itself, if there be no distinction between
true and false in religion--between religion and superstition. In
that case, belief in God must be regarded as really the root of all
these evils. It is only if we can separate between religious truth
and religious error--only if we can distinguish religion itself from
the perversions of religion--that we can possibly maintain that the
evils which have flowed from religious error, from the perversions of
religion, are not to be traced to the religious principle itself.[2]
On the other hand, if there be a God, he who denies His existence,
and, in consequence, discards all religious motives, represses all
religious sentiments, and despises all religious practices, assuredly
goes morally far astray. If there be a God--all-mighty, all-wise, and
all-holy--the want of belief in Him must be in all circumstances a
great moral misfortune, and, wherever it arises from a want of desire
to know Him, a serious moral fault, necessarily involving, as it
does, indifference to one who deserves the highest love and deepest
reverence, ingratitude to a benefactor whose bounties have been
unspeakable, and the neglect of those habits of trust and prayer by
which men realise the presence of infinite sympathy and implore the
help of infinite strength. If there be a God, the virtue which takes
no account of Him, even if it were otherwise faultless, must be most
defective. The performance of personal and social duty can in that
case no more compensate for the want of piety than justice can excuse
intemperance or benevolence licentiousness.
[2] See Appendix II.
Besides, if God exist--if piety, therefore, ought also to exist--it
can scarcely be supposed that personal and social morality will not
suffer when the claims of religion are unheeded. It has seemed to
some that morality rests on religion, and cannot exist apart from it.
And almost all who believe that there are religious truths which men,
as reasonable beings, are bound to accept, will be found maintaining
that, although morality may be independent of religion for its mere
existence, a morality unsupported by religion would be insufficient to
satisfy the wants of the personal and social life. Without religion,
they maintain, man would not be able to resist the temptations and
support the trials of his lot, and would be cut off from the source
of his loftiest thoughts, his richest and purest enjoyments, and his
most heroic deeds. Without it nations, they further maintain, would
be unprogressive, selfish, diseased, corrupt, unworthy of life,
incapable of long life. They argue that they find in human nature and
in human history the most powerful reasons for thinking thus; and
so much depends upon whether they are right or wrong, that they are
obviously entitled to expect that these reasons, and also the grounds
of religious belief, will be impartially and carefully examined and
weighed.
It will be denied, indeed, by no one, that religious belief influences
moral practice. Both reason and history make doubt on this point
impossible. The convictions of a man's heart as to the supreme object
of his reverence, and as to the ways in which he ought to show his
reverence thereof, necessarily affect for good or ill his entire mind
and conduct. The whole moral life takes a different colour according
to the religious light which falls upon it. As the valley of the Rhone
presents a different aspect when seen from a summit of the Jura and
from a peak of the Alps, so the course of human existence appears very
different when looked at from different spiritual points of view.
Atheism, polytheism, pantheism, theism, cannot regard life and death
in the same way, and cannot solve in the same way the problems which
they present to the intellect and the heart. These different theories
naturally--yea, necessarily--yield different moral results. Now, doubt
may be entertained as to whether or not we can legitimately employ the
maxim, "By their fruits ye shall know them," in attempting to ascertain
the truth or falsity of a theory. The endeavour to support religion
by appealing to its utility has been denounced as "moral bribery and
subornation of the understanding."[3] But no man, I think, however
scrupulous or exacting, can doubt that when one theory bears different
moral and social fruits than another, that fact is a valid and weighty
reason for inquiring very carefully which of them is true and which
false. He who believes, for example, that there is a God, and he who
believes that there is no being in the universe higher than himself--he
who believes that material force is the source of all things, and he
who believes that nature originated in an intelligent, holy, and loving
Will,--must look upon the world, upon history, and upon themselves so
very differently--must think, feel, and act so very differently--that
for every man it must be of supreme importance to know which of these
beliefs he is bound in reason to accept and which to reject.
[3] By J. S. Mill, in the very essay in which he assailed religion by
trying to show that the world had outgrown the need of it.
* * * * *
Then, in the third place, the primary question in religion is
immediately and inseparably connected with the ultimate question of
science. Does the world explain itself, or does it lead the mind
above and beyond itself? Science cannot but suggest this question;
religion is an answer to it. When the phenomena of the world have
been classified, the connections between them traced, their laws
ascertained, science may, probably enough, have accomplished all that
it undertakes--all that it can perform; but is it certain that the
mind can ascend no further? Must it rest in the recognition of order,
for example, and reject the thought of an intelligence in which that
order has its source? Or, is this not to represent every science as
leading us into a darkness far greater than any from which it has
delivered us? Granting that no religious theory of the world can be
accepted which contradicts the results established by the sciences, are
we not free to ask, and even bound to ask--Do these results not, both
separately and collectively, imply a religious theory of the world, and
the particular religious theory, it may be, which is called theism? Are
these results not the expressions of a unity and order in the world
which can only be explained on the supposition that material nature,
organic existences, the mind and heart of man, society and its history,
have originated in a power, wisdom, and goodness not their own, which
still upholds them, and works in and through them? The question is one
which may be answered in various ways, and to which the answer may be
that it cannot be answered; but be the answer that or another--be the
answer what it may--obviously the question itself is a great one,--a
greater than any science has ever answered--one which all science
raises, and in the answering of which all science is deeply interested.
No scientific man can be credited with much insight who does not
perceive that religious theory has an intimate and influential bearing
on science. There are religious theories with which science cannot
consistently coexist at all. Where fetichism or polytheism prevails,
you cannot have science with its pursuit of general laws. A dualistic
religion must, with all the strength it possesses, oppose science
in the accomplishment of its task--the proof of unity and universal
order. Even when the conception of One Creative Being is reached, there
are ways of thinking of His character and agency which science must
challenge, since they imperil its life and retard its progress. The
medieval belief in miracles and the modern belief in law cannot be held
by the same mind, and still less by the same society.
We have no reason, however, to complain at present that our scientific
men are, as a class, wanting in the insight referred to, or that the
truth just indicated is imperfectly realised by them. Perhaps such
complaint was never less applicable. It is not long since it was the
fashion among men of science to avoid all reference to religion--to
treat religious theory and scientific theory as entirely separate
and unconnected. They either cared not or dared not to indicate how
their scientific findings were rationally related to current religious
beliefs. But within the last few years there has been a remarkable
change in this respect. The attitude of indifference formerly assumed
by so many of the representatives of science towards religion has been
very generally exchanged for one of aggression or defence. The number
of them who seem to think themselves bound to publish to the world
confessions of their faith, declarations of the religious conclusions
to which their scientific researches have led them, is great, perhaps,
beyond example in any age. They are manifesting unmistakably the most
serious interest in the inquiry into the foundation of religion, and
into the relationship of religion to science. The change is certainly
one for the better. It is not wholly good only because scientific men
in their excursions into the domain of religion are too frequently
chargeable with a one-sidedness of view and statement which their
scientific education might have been hoped to make impossible--only
because they too seldom give to religious truths the patient and
impartial consideration to which these are entitled. But most deserving
of welcome is every evidence on their part of the conviction that
when science goes deep enough it cannot but raise the questions to
which religion professes to be an answer; so that the mind, instead
of getting free from religious reflection by advancing in scientific
inquiry, finds such reflection only the more incumbent on it the
farther it advances--a conviction which falls short of, indeed, but is
closely allied to, the belief so aptly expressed by Lord Bacon, "that
while a slight taste of philosophy may dispose the mind to indifference
to religion, deeper draughts must bring it back to it; that while on
the threshold of philosophy, where second causes appear to absorb the
attention, some oblivion of the highest cause may ensue, when the mind
penetrates deeper, and sees the dependence of causes and the works of
Providence, it will easily perceive, according to the mythology of the
poets, that the upper link of nature's chain is fastened to Jupiter's
throne." Men of science are simply exercising a right to which they
are fully entitled when they judge of religion by what they find to be
ascertained in science; and no class of men is more likely than they
are to open up the way to points of view whence religious truth will be
seen with a clearness and comprehensiveness greater than any to which
professional theologians could hope of themselves to attain. He can be
no wise theologian who does not perceive that to a large extent he is
dependent on the researches of men of science for his data, and who,
firm in the faith that God will never be disgraced by His works, is
not ready to accept all that is truly discovered about these works, in
order to understand thereby God's character.
* * * * *
The greatest issues, then, are involved in the investigation on which
we enter. Can we think what these are, or reflect on their greatness,
without drawing this inference, that we ought, in conducting it, to
have no other end before us than that of seeking, accepting, and
communicating the truth? This is here so important that everything
beside it must be insignificant and unworthy. Any polemical triumphs
which could be gained either by logical or rhetorical artifices would
be unspeakably paltry. Nothing can be appropriate in so serious a
discussion but to state as accurately as we can the reasons for our own
belief in theism, and to examine as carefully and impartially as we
can the objections of those who reject that belief, and their reasons
for holding an opposite belief. It can only do us harm to overrate the
worth of our own convictions and arguments, or to underrate the worth
of those of others. We must not dare to carry into the discussion
the spirit of men who feel that they have a case to advocate at all
hazards. We must not try to conceal a weakness in our argumentation
by saying hard things of those who endeavour to point it out. There
is no doubt that character has an influence on creed--that the state
of a man's feelings determines to a considerable extent the nature of
his beliefs--that badness of heart is often the cause of perversity of
judgment; but we have no right to begin any argument by assuming that
this truth has its bright side--its side of promise--turned towards
us, and its dark and threatening side turned towards those who differ
from us. If we can begin by assuming our opponents to be wicked, why
should we not assume them at once to be wrong, and so spare ourselves
the trouble of arguing with them? It will be better to begin by
assuming only what no one will question--namely, that it is a duty to
do to others as we would have others do to us. When a man errs, it
is a kindness to show him his error--and the greater the error, the
greater the kindness; but error is so much its own punishment to every
ingenuous nature, that to convince a person of it is all that one
fallible person ought to do to another. The scoff and the sneer are out
of place in all serious discussion; especially are they out of place
when our minds are occupied with thoughts of Him who, if He exist, is
the Father and Judge of us all, who alone possesses the full truth, and
who has made us that we might love one another.[4]
[4] See Appendix III.
II.
Theism is the doctrine that the universe owes its existence, and
continuance in existence, to the reason and will of a self-existent
Being, who is infinitely powerful, wise, and good. It is the doctrine
that nature has a Creator and Preserver, the nations a Governor, men a
heavenly Father and Judge. It is a doctrine which has a long history
behind it, and it is desirable that we should understand how we are
related to that history.
Theism is very far from coextensive with religion. Religion is spread
over the whole earth; theism only over a comparatively small portion of
it. There are but three theistic religions--the Mosaic, the Christian,
and the Mohammedan. They are connected historically in the closest
manner--the idea of God having been transmitted to the two latter,
and not independently originated by them. All other religions are
polytheistic or pantheistic, or both together. Among those who have
been educated in any of these heathen religions, only a few minds
of rare penetration and power have been able to rise by their own
exertions to a consistent theistic belief. The God of all those among
us who believe in God, even of those who reject Christianity, who
reject all revelation, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. From
these ancient Jewish fathers the knowledge of Him has historically
descended through an unbroken succession of generations to us. We
have inherited it from them. If it had not thus come down to us,
if we had not been born into a society pervaded by it, there is no
reason to suppose that we should have found it out for ourselves, and
still less that we should merely have required to open our eyes in
order to see it. Rousseau only showed how imperfectly he realised the
dependence of man on man, and the extent to which tradition enters
into all our thinking, when he pretended that a human being born on
a desert island, and who had grown up without any acquaintance with
other beings, would naturally, and without assistance, rise to the
apprehension of this great thought. The Koran well expresses a view
which has been widely held when it says, "Every child is born into
the religion of nature; its parents make it a Jew, a Christian, or
a Magian." The view is, however, not a true one. A child is born,
not into the religion of nature, but into blank ignorance; and, left
entirely to itself, it would probably never find out as much religious
truth as the most ignorant of parents can teach it. It is doubtless
better to be born into the most barbarous pagan society than it would
be to be born on a desert island and abandoned to find out a religion
for one's self.
The individual man left to himself is very weak. He is strong only
when he can avail himself of the strength of many others, of the
stores of power accumulated by generations of his predecessors, or
of the combined forces of a multitude of his contemporaries. The
greatest men have achieved what they have done only because they have
had the faculty and skill to utilise resources vastly greater than
their own. Nothing reaches far forward into the future which does not
stretch far back into the past. Before a tragedy like 'Hamlet,' for
example, could be written, it was requisite that humanity should have
passed through ages of moral discipline, and should be in possession
of vast and subtle conceptions such as could only be the growth of
centuries, of the appropriate language at the appropriate epoch of
its development, and of a noble style of literary workmanship. "We
allow ourselves," says Mr Froude, "to think of Shakespeare, or of
Raphael, or of Phidias as having accomplished their work by the power
of their individual genius; but greatness like theirs is never more
than the highest degree of perfection which prevails widely around it,
and forms the environment in which it grows. No such single mind in
single contact with the facts of nature could have created a Pallas,
a Madonna, or a Lear." What the historian has thus said as to art is
equally true of all other forms of thinking and doing. It is certainly
true of religious thought, which has never risen without much help to
the sublime conception of one God. It is, in fact, an indisputable
historical truth that we owe our theism in great part to our
Christianity,--that natural religion has had no real existence prior to
or apart from what has claimed to be revealed religion--and that the
independence which it now assumes is that of one who has grown ashamed
of his origin.
It does not in the least follow that we are to regard theism as
merely or even mainly a tradition--as a doctrine received simply
on authority, and transmitted from age to age, from generation to
generation, without investigation, without reflection. It does not
follow that it is not a truth the evidence of which has been seen in
some measure by every generation which has accepted it, and into the
depth and comprehensiveness and reasonableness of which humanity has
obtained a constantly-growing insight. There have, it is true, been
a considerable number of theologians who have traced all religious
beliefs to revelation, and who have assigned to reason merely the
function of passively accepting, retaining, and transmitting them.
They have conceived of the first man as receiving the knowledge of God
by sensible converse with Him, and of the knowledge thus received as
transmitted, with the confirmation of successive manifestations, to
the early ancestors of all nations. The various notions of God and a
future state to be found in heathen countries are, according to them,
broken and scattered rays of these revelations; and all the religious
rites of prayer, purification, and sacrifice which prevail among savage
peoples, are faint and feeble relics of a primitive worship due to
divine institution. This view was natural enough in the early ages of
the Christian Church and in medieval times, when the New World was
undiscovered and a very small part of either Asia or Africa was known.
It was consonant also to the general estimate of tradition as a means
of transmitting truth, entertained by the Roman Catholic Church; but
it is not consistent with the Protestant rejection of tradition, and
it is wholly untenable in the light of modern science, the geography,
ethnology, comparative mythology, &c., of the present day. A man who
should thus account for the phenomena of the religious history of
heathen humanity must be now as far behind the scientific knowledge
of his age regarding the subject on which he theorises, as a man who
should still ascribe, despite all geological proofs to the contrary,
the occurrence of fossils in the Silurian beds to the action of the
Noachian deluge.[5]
[5] See Appendix IV.
Theism has come to us mainly through Christianity. But Christianity
itself rests on theism; it presupposes theism. It could only manifest,
establish, and diffuse itself in so far as theism was apprehended. The
belief that there is one God, infinite in power, wisdom, and goodness,
has certainly not been wrought out by each one of us for himself, but
has been passed on from man to man, from parent to child: tradition,
education, common consent, the social medium, have exerted great
influence in determining its acceptance and prevalence; but we have
no right to conceive of them as excluding the exercise of reason and
reflection. We know historically that reason and reflection have not
been excluded from the development of theistic belief, but have been
constantly present and active therein; that by the use of his reason
man has in some countries gradually risen to a belief in one God; and
that where this belief existed, he has, by the use of his reason, been
continuously altering, and, it may be hoped, extending and improving
his views of God's nature and operations. We know that in Greece,
for example, the history of religion was not a merely passive and
traditional process. We know as a historical fact that reason there
undermined the polytheism which flourished when Homer sang; that it
discovered the chief theistic proofs still employed, and attained
in many minds nearly the same belief in God which now prevails. The
experience of the ancient classical world is insufficient to prove
that a purely rational philosophy can establish theism as the creed
of a nation; but it is amply sufficient to prove that it can destroy
polytheism, and find out all the principal arguments for theism. We
know, further, that in no age of the history of the Christian Church
has reason entirely neglected to occupy itself in seeking the grounds
on which the belief of God can be rested. We know that reason is
certainly not declining that labour in the present day. The theistic
belief, although common to the whole Christian world, is one which
every individual mind may study for itself, which no one is asked to
accept without proof, and which multitudes have doubtless accepted
only after careful consideration. It comes to us so far traditionally,
but not nearly so much so as belief in the law of gravitation. For
every one who has examined the evidences for belief in the law of
gravitation, thousands on thousands have examined the evidences for the
existence of God.
Tradition, then, does not necessarily exclude private judgment,
and private judgment does not necessarily imply the rejection of
tradition--that is, of transmitted belief. The one does not even
necessarily confine or restrict the activity of the other. They are
so far from being essentially antagonistic, that they may co-operate,
may support and help each other; nay, they must do, if religious
development is to be natural, easy, peaceful, and regular. This is
but saying in another form that religious development, when true and
normal, must combine and harmonise conservatism and progress. All
development must do that, or it will be of an imperfect and injurious
kind. In nature the rule of development is neither _revolution_ nor
_reaction_, but _evolution_--a process which is at once conservative
and progressive, which brings the new out of the old by the continuous
growth and elaboration of the germs of life into organic completeness.
All that is essential in the old is retained and perfected, while
the form is altered to accord with new circumstances and to respond
to new wants. It should not be otherwise in the moral and social
worlds. The only true progress there, also, is that continuous
and consistent development which can only be secured through true
conservatism--through retaining, applying, and utilising whatever
truth and goodness the past has brought down to the present; and the
only true conservatism is that which secures against stagnation and
death by continuous progress. Therefore it is that, alike in matters
of civil polity, of scientific research, and of religious life, wisdom
lies in combining the conservative with the progressive spirit, the
principle of authority with the principle of liberty, due respect to
the collective reason in history with due respect to the rights of
the individual reason. The man who has not humility enough to feel
that he is but one among the living millions of men, and that his
whole generation is but a single link in the great chain of the human
race--who is arrogant enough to fancy that wisdom on any great human
interest has begun with himself, and that he may consequently begin
history for himself,--the man who is not conservative to the extent
of possessing this humility, and shrinking from this arrogance, is no
truly free man, but the slave of his own vanity, and the inheritance
which his fathers have left him will be little increased by him. The
man, on the other hand, who always accepts what is as what ought to
be; who identifies the actual with the reasonable; who would have
to-morrow exactly like to-day; who would hold fast what Providence is
most clearly showing ought to pass away, or to pass into something
better,--the man, in a word, who would lay an arrest on the germs
of life and truth, and prevent them from sprouting and ripening--is
the very opposite of genuinely conservative--is the most dangerous
of destructives. There is nothing so conservative against decay and
dissolution as natural growth, orderly progress.
The truth just stated is, as I have said, of universal application.
But it is nowhere more applicable than in the inquiry on which we are
engaged. The great idea of God--the sublimest and most important of
all ideas--has come to us in a wondrous manner through the minds and
hearts of countless generations which it has exercised and sustained,
which it has guided in darkness, strengthened in danger, and consoled
in affliction. It has come to us by a long, unbroken tradition; and
had it not come to us, we should of a certainty not have found it out
for ourselves. We should have had to supply its place, to fill "the
aching void" within us caused by its absence, with some far lower idea,
perhaps with some wild fiction, some foul idol. Probably we cannot
estimate too humbly the amount or worth of the religious knowledge
which we should have acquired, supposing we acquired any, if we had
been left wholly to our own unaided exertions--if we had been cut off
from the general reason of our race, and from the Divine Reason, which
has never ceased to speak in and to our race.
While, however, the idea of God has been brought to us, and is not
independently wrought out by us, no man is asked to accept it blindly
or slavishly; no man is asked to forego in the slightest degree,
even before this the most venerable and general of the beliefs of
humanity, the rights of his own individual reason. He is free to
examine the grounds of it, and to choose according to the result of
his examination. His acceptance of the idea, his acquiescence in the
belief, is of worth only if it be the free acceptance of, the loving
acquiescence in, what his reason, heart, and conscience testify to be
true and good. Therefore, neither in this idea or belief itself, nor
in the way in which it has come to us, is there any restriction or
repression of our mental liberty. And the mere rejection of it is no
sign, as some seem to fancy, of intellectual freedom, of an independent
judgment. It is no evidence of a man's being freer from incredulity
than the most superstitious of his neighbours. "To disbelieve is to
believe," says Whately. "If one man believes there is a God, and
another that there is no God, whichever holds the less reasonable of
these two opinions is chargeable with credulity. For the only way to
avoid credulity and incredulity--the two necessarily going together--is
to listen to, and yield to the best evidence, and to believe and
disbelieve on good grounds." These are wise words of Dr Whately.
Whenever reason has been awakened to serious reflection on the subject,
the vast majority of men have felt themselves unable to believe that
this mighty universe, so wondrous in its adjustments and adaptations,
was the product of chance, or dead matter, or blind force--that the
physical, mental, and moral order which they everywhere beheld implied
no Supreme Intelligence and Will; and the few who can believe it,
have assuredly no right, simply on the ground of such ability, to
assume that they are less credulous, freer thinkers, than others. The
disbelief of the atheist must ever seem to all men but himself to
require more faith, more credulity, than the beliefs of all the legends
of the Talmud.[6]
[6] See Appendix V.
LECTURE II.
GENERAL IDEA OF RELIGION--COMPARISON OF POLYTHEISM AND PANTHEISM WITH
THEISM--THE THREE GREAT THEISTIC RELIGIONS COMPARED--NO RELIGIOUS
PROGRESS BEYOND THEISM.
I.
There are three great theistic religions. All of them can scarcely be
supposed to be perfect. It is most unlikely that they should all be
equal in rank and value. But to determine the position and worth of a
religion, whether theistic or non-theistic, it is indispensable that we
have some notion of what religion is in itself.
It is very difficult to give a correct definition or accurate
description of religion. And the reason is that religion is so wide
and diversified a thing. It has spread over the whole earth, and it
has assumed an almost countless variety of forms. Some sense of an
invisible power or powers ruling his destiny is manifested by man
alike in the lowest stages of barbarism and in the highest stages of
civilisation, but the rude savage and the cultured thinker conceive
very differently of the powers which they adore. The aspects of
religion are, in fact, numerous as the phases of human life and the
steps of human progress. It extends its sway over all lands, ages,
and peoples, and yet it is the same in no two countries, no two
generations, no two men even. There is, accordingly, of necessity a
great difficulty in finding an expression which will comprehend and
suit the vast variety of forms assumed by the religious life. Instead
of trying to find an expression of the kind, many, I might almost say
most, theologians are content silently to substitute for religion
the phases of it with which they are most familiar, and instead of a
definition of religion, to give us, say, a definition of theism, or
even of Christianity. It is the rule and not the exception to find the
same theologians who define religion as the communion of man with God,
or the self-surrender of the soul to God, arguing that religion is
common to all races and peoples. Of course, this is self-contradictory.
Their definitions identify religion with monotheism, and their
arguments assume it to include pantheism, polytheism, fetichism, &c.
Belief in the one God and the worship of Him are very far from being
universal even at the present day. If there be no other religion--if
nothing short of that be religion--there are still vast continents and
populous nations where religion is unknown.
A definition of religion must completely circumscribe religion; it must
not be applicable merely to one religion, or at the most to several out
of the vast host of religions which are spread over the earth; it must
draw a boundary line which includes all religions, the lowest as well
as the highest, and which excludes all things else.[7] A definition
thus extensive cannot be, in logical language, very comprehensive; to
include all religions, it must not tell us much about what any religion
is; in significance it can be neither rich nor definite. Perhaps if we
say that religion is man's belief in a being or beings, mightier than
himself and inaccessible to his senses, but not indifferent to his
sentiments and actions, with the feelings and practices which flow from
such belief, we have a definition of the kind required. I fear at least
that any definition less abstract and vague will be found to apply only
to particular forms or special developments of religion. Religion is
man's communion, then, with what he believes to be a god or gods; his
sense of relationship to, and dependence on, a higher and mysterious
agency, with all the thoughts, emotions, and actions which proceed
therefrom. The communion may be dark and gross, and find expression
in impure and bloody rites, or it may be in spirit and in truth, and
expressed in ways which educate and elevate both mind and heart. The
belief may rest on wild delusions, on authority blindly accepted, or
on rational grounds. The god may be some personified power of nature,
some monstrous phantom of the brain, some imaginary demon of lust or
cruelty; or it may be He in whom all truth, wisdom, goodness, and
holiness have their source. But whatever be the form or character which
religion presents, it always and everywhere involves belief in a god
or object of worship, and feelings and actions corresponding to that
belief. It is always and everywhere a consciousness of relationship to
a worshipped being.
[7] See Appendix VI.
Is there any truth which can be affirmed to belong universally to this
consciousness? If there be, it will hold good universally of religion,
and the recognition of it will advance us a step in the knowledge of
the nature of religion. One such truth at least, it appears to me,
there is--viz., that the religious consciousness, or the frame and
condition of spiritual life distinctive and essential in religion, is
not peculiar to some one province of human nature, but extends into all
its provinces. This truth has been often contradicted in appearance,
seldom in reality. The seat of religion, as I indicated in last
lecture, has been placed by some in the intellect, by others in the
affections, and by others still in the will. It has been represented
as knowing, or feeling, or doing. When we examine, however, the
multitude of, at first glance, apparently very conflicting views which
have originated in thus fixing upon some single mental faculty as the
religious faculty, the organ and seat of religion, we soon find that
they are not so discordant and antagonistic as they seem to be.