side to which some moderns beckon us? Shall we suppose that as men
have given up the lower for the higher forms of polytheism, and then
abandoned polytheism for theism, so they may now surrender theism
itself for systems like the positivism of Comte or the new faith
of Strauss? No. And for two reasons. First, so far as there is any
religion in these systems there is no advance on theism in them but the
reverse. Comte strives to represent humanity, and Strauss to represent
the universe, as a god, by imaginatively investing them with attributes
which do not inherently and properly belong to them; but with all their
efforts they can only make of them fetich gods; and Europeans, it is
to be hoped, will never fall down and worship fetiches, however big
these fetiches may be, and whoever may be willing to serve them as
prophets or priests. Humanity must be blind to its follies and sins,
insensible to its weakness and miseries, and given over to the madness
of a boundless vanity, before it can raise an altar and burn incense to
its own self. "Man," says an eloquent author, "is great is sublime,
with immortal hope in his heart and the divine aureole around his brow;
but that he may preserve his greatness let us leave him in his proper
place. Let us leave to him the struggles which make his glory, that
condemnation of his own miseries which does him honour, the tears shed
over his faults which are the most unexceptionable testimony to his
dignity. Let us leave him tears, repentance, conflict, and hope; but
let us not deify him; for no sooner shall he have said, 'I am God,'
than, deprived that instant of all his blessings, he shall find himself
naked and spoiled."[9] Man, I may add, if his eyes be open and capable
of vision, can still less worship the universe than he can worship
himself. Mind can never bow down to matter except under the influence
of delusion. Man is greater than anything he can see or touch; and
those who believe only in what they can see and touch, who have what
Strauss calls a feeling for the universe, but no true feeling for what
is spiritual and divine, must either worship humanity or something even
less worthy of their adoration. There is thus no advance on this side
either, even if the systems which we are invited to adopt could be
properly regarded as religious. But, secondly, we may safely say that
so far as they are theories based on science, there is no religion in
them; and that, consequently, to give up a religion for them would be
to give up not one form of religion for another, a lower for a higher,
but would be to give up religion for what is not religion, or, in other
words, would be to cast off religion altogether. And to cease to be
religious can surely never be to advance in religion. Positivism and
materialism are not stages beyond theism, for they are not on the same
road. They are not phases in the development of religion; they are
forms of the denial of religion. The grossest fetichism has more of
religion in it than either of them can consistently claim on scientific
grounds. There is nothing in science, properly so called, which
justifies the exaltation either of matter or man to the rank of gods
even of the lowest fetich order.
[9] E. Naville, 'The Heavenly Father,' pp. 283, 284.
It is only, then, by keeping within the limits of theism that further
religious progress is possible. If we would advance in religion, it
must be, not by getting rid of our belief in God, but by getting deeper
and wider views of His character and operations, and by conforming
our hearts and lives more sincerely and faithfully to our knowledge.
There is still ample room for religious progress of this kind. I do not
say, I do not believe indeed, that we shall find out any absolutely
new truth about God. Were a man to tell me that he had discovered a
Divine attribute which had never previously been thought of, I should
listen to him with the same incredulous pity as if he were to tell
me that he had discovered a human virtue which had escaped the notice
of all other men. In a real and important sense, the revelation of
God made in Scripture, and more particularly and especially the
revelation of God in Jesus Christ, is most justly to be regarded as
complete, and incapable of addition. But there may be no limits to the
growth of our apprehension and realisation of the idea of God there
set before us perfectly as regards general features. To perceive the
mere general outline and general aspect of a truth is one thing, and
to know it thoroughly, to realise it exhaustively--which is the only
way thoroughly to know it--is another and very different thing; and
centuries, yea, millenniums without number, may elapse between the
former and the latter of these two stages, between the beginning and
the end of this process. Thousands of years ago there were men who
said as plainly as could be done or desired that God was omnipotent;
but surely every one who believes in God will acknowledge, that the
discoveries of modern astronomy give more overwhelming impressions
of Divine power than either heathen sage or Hebrew psalmist can be
imagined as possessing. It is ages since men ascribed perfect wisdom
to God; but all the discoveries of science which help us to understand
how the earth is related to other worlds--how it has been brought into
its present condition--how it has been stocked, adorned, and enriched
with its varied tribes of plants and animals--and how these have been
developed, distributed, and provided for,--must be accepted by every
intelligent theist as enlarging and correcting human views as to God's
ways of working, and consequently as to His wisdom. The righteousness
of God has been the trust and support of men in all generations; but
history is a continuous unveiling of the mysteries of this attribute:
through the discipline of Providence individuals and nations are ever
being more thoroughly instructed in the knowledge of it. I have,
indeed, heard men say--I have heard even teachers of theology say--that
the knowledge of God is unlike all other knowledge, in being unchanging
and unprogressive. To me it seems that of all knowledge the knowledge
of God is, or at least ought to be, the most progressive. And that for
this simple reason, that every increase of other knowledge,--be it the
knowledge of outward nature, or of the human soul, or of history--be
it the knowledge of truth, or beauty, or goodness,--ought also to
increase our knowledge of Him. If it do not, it has not been used
aright; and the reason why it has not been so used must be that we have
looked upon God as if He were only one among many things, instead of
looking upon Him as the One Being of whom, through whom, and to whom
are all things; and that we have, in consequence, kept our knowledge
of Him wholly apart from our other knowledge, instead of centring all
our knowledge in it, because we feel it to be "the light of all our
seeing," as well as "a lamp to our feet." In other words, our knowledge
of God is in this case not a living, all-diffusive knowledge. Only a
dead knowledge of Him is an unprogressive knowledge. That, I admit, is
unprogressive. It may fade away and be effaced, but it does not grow,
does not absorb and assimilate, and thereby transmute and glorify all
our other knowledge.
Growth in the knowledge of God is a kind of progress which can have
absolutely no end, for the truth to be realised is infinite truth;
truth unlimited by time or space; truth involved in all actual
existence, and containing the fulness of inexhaustible possibilities.
It is, I shall conclude by adding, a kind of progress which underlies
and determines all other progress. Whenever our views of truth, of
righteousness, of love, of happiness rise above experience; whenever
we have ideals of existence and conduct which transcend the actual
world and actual life; whenever we have longings for a perfection and
blessedness which finite things and finite persons cannot confer upon
us,--our minds and hearts are really, although it may be unconsciously,
feeling after God, if haply they may find Him. It is only in and
through God that there is anything to correspond to these ideals and
longings. If man be himself the highest and best of beings, how comes
it that all the noblest of his race should be haunted and possessed
as they are by aspirations after what is higher and better than
themselves--by visions of a truth, beauty, and holiness which they have
not yet attained--by desires for a blessedness which neither earth
nor humanity can bestow? Must not, in that case, his ideals be mere
dreams--his longings mere delusions? Pessimists like Schopenhauer and
Hartmann and their followers, openly avow that they believe them to
be so; that the history of the world is but the series of illusions
through which these ideals and longings have impelled humanity; that
our ideals never have been and never will be realised; that our
longings never have been and never will be satisfied, for, "behold, all
is vanity." I believe them to be quite logical in thinking so, seeing
that they have ceased to believe in God, who is the ideal which alone
gives meaning to all true ideals, who can alone satisfy the deeper
spiritual longings of the heart, and likeness to whom is the goal of
all mental, moral, and religious progress. Of course, if the pessimists
can persuade mankind that the sources of progress are not the truths
and affections by which Infinite Goodness is drawing men to itself, but
mere fictions of their own brains and flatteries of their own hearts,
progress must soon cease. When a delusion is seen through, the power
of it is gone. But the pessimists will not, we may trust, succeed.
They will mislead for a time, as they are now misleading, certain
unstable minds; but the main result of their activity must be just the
opposite of what they anticipate. It must be that men will prize more
the doctrines the most opposite to the dreary view of life and history
which they propagate. Pessimism must send the philosophical few back
with deepened reverence and quickened insight to Plato, in order to
master more thoroughly, and take to heart more seriously, his great
message to the world, that the actual and the ideal meet and harmonise
in God, who is at once the First and the Final Cause, the Absolute
Idea, the Highest Good; and it must increase the gratitude of the many,
whether learned or unlearned, for the Gospel which has taught them
that to glorify God is an end in which there is no illusion, and to
enjoy Him a good which never disappoints. God, as the presupposition of
all elevating ideals, and the object of all ennobling desires, is the
primary source and the ultimate explanation of all progress.[10]
[10] See Appendix VIII.
LECTURE III.
THE NATURE, CONDITIONS, AND LIMITS OF THEISTIC PROOF.
I.
If we believe that there is one God--the Creator, Preserver, and
Ruler of all finite beings--we ought to have reasons or grounds for
this belief. We can have no right to believe it simply because we
wish or will to believe it. The grounds or reasons which we have for
our belief must be to us proofs of God's existence. Those who affirm
that God exists, and yet deny that His existence can be proved, must
either maintain a position obviously erroneous, or use the term proof
in some extraordinary sense, fitted only to perplex and mislead. True
and weighty, therefore, seem to me these words of one of the most
distinguished of living German philosophers: "The proofs for the
existence of God, after having long played a great part in philosophy
and theology, have in recent times, especially since Kant's famous
critique, fallen into disrepute. Since then, the opinion has been
widely spread, both among believers and unbelievers, that the existence
of God does not admit of being proved. Even theologians readily assent
to this opinion, deride the vain attempts, and imagine that in so doing
they are serving the faith which they preach. But the proofs for the
existence of God coincide with the grounds for the belief in God; they
are simply the real grounds of the belief established and expounded in
a scientific manner. If there be no such proofs, there are also no such
grounds; and a belief which has no ground, if possible at all, can be
no proper belief, but an arbitrary, self-made, subjective opinion. Yes,
religious belief must sink to the level of the mere illusion or fixed
idea of a mind which is insane, if contradicted by all reality, all
facts scientifically established, and the theory of the universe which
such facts support and justify."[11]
[11] Ulrici, Gott und die Natur, i.
The proofs of God's existence must be, in fact, simply His own
manifestations; the ways in which He makes Himself known; the phenomena
on which His power and character are imprinted. They can neither be,
properly speaking, our reasonings, nor our analyses of the principles
involved in our reasonings. Our reasonings are worth nothing except in
so far as they are expositions of God's modes of manifestation; and
even when our reasonings are correct, our analyses of them, supposing
we attempt to analyse them, may be erroneous. The facts,--the works
and ways of God--which are the real evidences of His existence and the
true indications of His character,--may raise countless minds to God
which can give no general description of the process by which they are
thus elevated, and are still less capable of resolving it into its
principles. It is late in the history both of the individual mind and
of the collective mind before they can so reflect on their own acts, so
distinguish them one from another, and so discern the characteristics
of each, as to be able even to give a clear and correct account of
them; and it is much later before they can detect their conditions and
laws. The minds of multitudes may therefore readily be supposed to rise
legitimately from perception of the visible universe to apprehension
of the invisible personal Creator, although either wholly unconscious
or only dimly and inaccurately aware of the nature of the transition,
and although, if called on to indicate the conclusion at which they had
arrived, they would employ far weaker reasons in words than those by
which they were actually convinced in thought. The principles of the
theistic inference may be very badly determined, and yet the theistic
inference itself may be perfectly valid.
If the real proofs of God's existence are all those facts which cannot
be reasonably conceived of as other than the manifestations of God--His
glory in the heavens, His handiwork on the earth, His operations in
the soul, His ways among the nations--and if the task of the theist
is to trace out these facts, and to show that they cannot reasonably
be denied to be marks or impressions of Divine agency, then must a
theist, when seeking or expounding the reasons for his belief, feel
that his mind is conversant not with mere thoughts of his own, but
with the manifested thoughts or acts of God Himself. He must carry
into his inquiry the consciousness that he is not simply engaged in
an intellectual process, but is trying to apprehend and actually
apprehending the Divine Being. To him, therefore, the inquiry as to the
ultimate source and reason of things must be an essentially solemn and
awe-inspired one. To the atheist it must, of course, be much less so;
but even he ought to feel it to be not only a most important inquiry,
but one which carries him into the presence of a vast, eternal, and
mysterious power--a power in darkness shrouded, yet on which hang all
life and death, all joy and woe.
According to the view just stated, the evidences or proofs of God's
existence are countless. They are to be found in all the forces, laws,
and arrangements of nature--in every material object, every organism,
every intellect and heart. At the same time, they concur and coalesce
into a single all-comprehensive argument, which is just the sum of the
indications of God given by the physical universe, the minds of men,
and human history. Nothing short of that is the full proof. There may
be points in space and instants in time where creative and sustaining
power appear to our narrow and superficial intellects to have been
strangely limited, but surely we ought not so to concentrate our
attention on any such points or instants as to be unable to take in
a general impression of the immeasurable power displayed throughout
the realms of space and the ages of time. It may be possible to show
that many things which have been regarded as evidences of intelligence
or wisdom are not really so, and yet the universe may teem with the
manifestations of these attributes. Faith in the righteousness and
moral government of God must be able to look over and to look beyond
many things calculated to produce doubt and disbelief. No man can judge
fairly as to whether or not there is a God, who makes the question turn
on what is the significance of a few particular facts, who is incapable
of gathering up into one general finding the results of innumerable
indications. A true religious view of the world must be a wide, a
comprehensive view of it, such as demands an eye for the whole and not
merely for a part--the faculties which harmonise and unify, and not
merely those which divide and analyse. A part, a point, the eye of an
insect, the seed of a fruit, may indeed be looked at religiously, but
it must be in the light of the universe as a whole, in the light of
eternity and infinity.
"Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies;
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."
In another respect the theistic proof is exceedingly complex and
comprehensive. It takes up into itself, as it were, the entire wealth
of human nature. The mind can only rise to the apprehension of God
by a process which involves all that is most essential in its own
constitution. Thus the will is presupposed. Theistic inference clearly
involves the principle of causality. God can only be thought of in
the properly theistic sense as the cause of which the universe is the
effect. But to think of God as a cause--to apprehend the universe
as an effect,--we must have some immediate and direct experience of
causation. And such experience we have only in the consciousness
of volition. When the soul wills, it knows itself as an agent, as
a cause. This is the first knowledge of causation which the mind
requires, and the most perfect knowledge thereof which it ever
requires. It is a knowledge which sheds light over all the regions
of experience subsequently brought under the principle of causality,
which accompanies the reason in its upward search until it rests in
the cognition of an ultimate cause, and which enables us to think of
that cause as the primary, all-originating will. If we did not know
ourselves as causes, we could not know God as a cause; and we know
ourselves as causes only in so far as we know ourselves as wills.
But the principle of causality alone or by itself is quite insufficient
to lead the mind up to the apprehension of Deity; and an immediate and
direct consciousness of far more within us than will is required to
make that apprehension possible. The evidences of intelligence must
be combined with the evidences of power before we can be warranted
to infer more from the facts of the universe than the existence of
an ultimate force; and no mere force, however great or wonderful,
is worthy to be called God. God is not only the ultimate Cause, but
the Supreme Intelligence; and as it is only in virtue of the direct
consciousness of our volitions that we can think of God as a cause, so
is it only in virtue of the direct consciousness of our intellectual
operations that we can think of Him as an intelligence. It is not
from the mere occurrence of a change, or the mere existence of a
derivative phenomenon, that we infer the change or phenomenon to be
due to an intelligent cause, but from the mode of the occurrence
or the character of the phenomenon being such that any cause but an
intelligent cause must be deemed an insufficient cause. The inference
supposes, however, that we already have some knowledge of what an
intelligent cause is--that we have enough of knowledge of the nature of
intelligence to convince us that it alone can fully account for order,
law, and adjustment. Whence do we get this knowledge? We have not far
to seek it; it is inherent in self-consciousness. We know ourselves as
intelligences, as beings that foresee and contrive, that can discover
and apply principles, that can originate order and adjustment. It is
only through this knowledge of the nature of intelligence that we can
infer our fellow-men to be intelligent beings; and not less is it an
indispensable condition of our inferring God to be an intelligence.
Then, causality and design, and the will and intelligence within us
through which they are interpreted, cannot, even when combined, enable
us to think of the Creative Reason as righteous; although obviously,
until so thought of, that reason is by no means to be identified with
God. The greatest conceivable power and intelligence, if united with
hatred of righteousness and love of wickedness, can yield us only
the idea of a devil; and if separated from all moral principle and
character, good or bad, only that of a being far lower than man, which
might have reason for worshipping man, but which man cannot worship
without degrading himself. The existence, however, of a moral principle
within us, of a conscience which witnesses against sin and on behalf
of holiness, is of itself evidence that God must be a moral being, one
who hates sin and loves holiness; and the light of this, "the candle of
the Lord," in the soul, enables us to discover many other reasons for
the same conclusion in the constitution of society and the course of
history. But if we had no moral perceptions on the contemplation of our
own voluntary acts, we certainly would not, and could not, invest the
Divine Being with moral perfections because of His acts.
There is still another step to be taken in order to obtain an
apprehension of God; and it is one where the outward universe fails us,
where we are thrown entirely, or nearly so, on our internal resources.
The universe, interpreted by the human mind in the manner which has
been indicated, may warrant belief in a Being whose power is immense,
whose wisdom is inexpressibly wonderful, and whose righteousness is to
be held in profoundest admiration and reverence, notwithstanding all
the clouds and darkness which may in part conceal it from our view; but
not in a Being whose existence is absolute, whose power is infinite,
whose wisdom and goodness are perfect. We cannot infer that the author
of a universe which is finite, imperfect, and relative, and all the
phenomena of which are finite, imperfect, and relative, must be, in the
true and strict sense of the terms, infinite, perfect, and absolute.
We cannot deduce the infinite from the finite, the perfect from the
imperfect, the absolute from the relative. And yet it is only in the
recognition of an absolute Being of infinite power, who works with
perfect wisdom towards the accomplishment of perfectly holy ends, that
we reach a true knowledge of God, or, which is much the same thing,
a knowledge of the true God. Is there, then, any warrant in our own
nature for thinking of God as infinite, absolute, and perfect, since
there seems to be little or none in outward nature? Yes, there are
within us necessary conditions of thought and feeling and ineradicable
aspirations which force on us ideas of absolute existence, infinity,
and perfection, and will neither permit us to deny these perfections to
God nor to ascribe them to any other being.