will, reason, and righteousness--obviously he thinks of Him as bearing
some likeness to himself, as having in an infinite or perfect measure
qualities which human creatures have in a finite and imperfect measure.
This can be no stumbling-block to any one who believes that God made
man in His image, after His likeness. If man be in some respects
like God, God must, of course, be in some respects like man. Power
and freedom, knowledge and wisdom, love, goodness, and justice, are,
according to this view, finitely in man, because they are infinitely
in God. But it is a view which excites in certain minds deep aversion.
There are men who protest, in the name of religion, in the name of
God, against this anthropomorphic theism, as they call it. According
to them, to attribute to God any human qualities, even the highest and
best, is to limit and degrade Him--is contrary to reason and contrary
to piety--is idolatrous and profane. The Psalmist represents the Lord
as reproaching the wicked for supposing that He was like them in their
wickedness--"altogether such an one as themselves;" but the modern
philosophers to whom I am referring are horrified at the thought that
the most righteous man, even in his righteousness, has any likeness
to God. According to them, to think of God as wise is to dishonour
Him, and to declare Him holy is to calumniate Him. To think of Him as
foolish, and to pronounce Him wicked, are, in their eyes, only a little
more irreverent and no more irrational.
"We must not fall down and worship," writes one of these philosophers,
"as the source of our life and virtue, the image which our own minds
have set up. Why is such idolatry any better than that of the old wood
and stone? If we worship the creations of our minds, why not also
those of our hands? The one is, indeed, a more refined self-adoration
than the other; but the radical error remains the same in both. The
old idolaters were wrong, not because they worshipped themselves, but
because they worshipped their creation as if it were their creator; and
how can any anthropomorphic theory 'escape the same condemnation'?"[14]
The writer does not see that God can only be thought of as wise and
righteous and free because the mind of man is His creation, so that
His being thus thought of can be no proof that He is _its_ creation.
The fact that we can think of God as wise and righteous and free is
no evidence that He is an image which our own minds have set up.
The man who draws such an inference from such a premiss can be no
dispassionate reasoner. And certainly the fact that we can think of God
as possessed of intellectual and moral perfections is no reason for our
not falling down and worshipping Him, and no evidence that our doing so
is idolatry. To fall down and worship any being whom we do not know to
possess these characteristics is what would clearly be idolatry. And
this idolatry is what the philosophers to whom I refer are manifestly
chargeable with encouraging. When they have rejected the living,
personal, righteous, loving God, in whom humanity has so long trusted,
they can only suggest as a substitute for Him a mysterious Power which
is wholly unknown, and even unknowable. Great is their simplicity if
they fancy that they can persuade men to receive any such god as that,
or if they fancy that men would be any better for a faith so vague
and empty. To believe in we know not what, is directly contrary to
reason; to worship it would be "an idolatry no better than that of
the old wood and stone." What we know is often not the creation of
our minds: the unknowable is in itself nothing at all to us, and, as
a thought, is always the mere creation of our minds; it is different
for each creature, each mind; it is the mere result and reflection of
our finiteness. There can be no unknown or unknowable to an infinite
mind. To worship what is unknowable would be, therefore, simply to
worship our own ignorance--one of the creations of our minds least
worthy, perhaps, of being worshipped. There is, at least, no kind of
worship less entitled "to escape condemnation," even as anthropomorphic
idolatry, than the worship of the Unknowable,--the god proposed to us
by some as the alone true God, belief in whom--perhaps I should rather
say, belief in which--is to be the final and perfect reconciliation of
science and religion.
[14] Barrett's Physical Ethics, p. 225.
All true theism implies a certain likeness between God and man. It
holds that God is not merely an all-pervading and all-sustaining
Power, but an omniscient Mind and perfectly holy Will. It refuses to
think of Him merely according to the analogies of the physical world,
as if human reason and human love were less worthy expressions of
His perfections than mechanical or brute force. It refers to Him not
only "all the majesty of nature, but all the humanity of man." This
truth--that there is a likeness between God and man--must, however, be
combined with two other truths, otherwise it will lead to the gravest
errors.
The first is, that while God and man are both like each other, in that
both possess certain excellences, they are utterly unlike, in that God
possesses these excellences in all their perfection and in an infinite
measure, while man possesses them in a very small degree and violated
with many flaws and faults. The highest glory which a man can hope for
is, that he should be made wholly into the image of God; but never can
God be rightly thought of as mainly, and still less as merely, in the
image of man. It was the great error of classic heathendom that it thus
conceived of the Divine. "Men," says Heraclitus, "are mortal gods, and
the gods immortal men." And the gods of Greece, as represented by her
poets and adored by her people, were simply magnified and immortal
men--a race closely akin to their worshippers in weaknesses and vices
no less than in powers and virtues. They were supposed to be born as
men are, to have voice and figure, parts and passions, and even at
times to cheat and rail and lie. They reflected all the tendencies of
the Greek mind, both good and evil.
Worshippers of the one God can scarcely fall into the same extravagance
of error in this respect as the Greeks and Romans did, as all
polytheists do; but they can, and often do, fall into the error, and
think of God as subject to limits and defects, which are only in
themselves. For instance, what is called deism, as distinguished from
theism, rests wholly on the conception that the presence and power
of God are limited, and that He acts in the manner to which man as a
finite creature is restricted. The deist thinks of God as outside of
and away from the universe; he thinks of the universe as a mechanism
which God has contrived, and which He has endowed with certain powers,
in virtue of which it is able to sustain itself in existence, and to
perform its work so as to save God, as it were, all further trouble
and labour concerning it. It is a great gain for us to have a machine
doing what we desire without our needing to pay any attention to it or
even to be present where it is, because we cannot give our attention
to more than one object at one and the same instant of time, and
cannot be present at the same time in more places than one; but those
who liken God to man in this respect, divest Him of His omnipresence
and omnipotence, and represent Him as characterised in some measure by
their own impotency. There is a truth which Pantheism often claims as
peculiarly and distinctively its own,--the truth that in God we and all
things live, and move, and have our being--that of Him, and through
Him, and to Him, are all things,--but which theism must sincerely and
fully appropriate as one of its simplest and most certain elements,
otherwise the charge against it of being a false and presumptuous
likening of God to man will be warranted. We must not think of Him as
"an absentee God, sitting idle ever since the first Sabbath, at the
outside of His universe, and 'seeing it go'"--as a God at hand but not
afar off, or afar off but not at hand--as here, not there, or there,
not here; but we must think of Him as everywhere present, everywhere
active--as at once the source of all order, the spring of all life, and
the ground of all affection and thought.
We need to be still more on our guard against limiting His wisdom or
righteousness or love, as it is what we are still more prone to do.
These attributes of God are often thought of in the meanest and most
unworthy ways; and doubtless it has to a large extent been horror at
the consequent degradation of the idea of God which has made some men
refuse to assign to Him any of the properties of humanity, saying,
with Xenophanes, that if the animals could think, they would imagine
the Deity to be in their likeness--and with Spinoza, that if a circle
could think, it would suppose His essence to be circularity. But this
is to flee from one extreme to another extreme, from one error to a
still more terrible error, through utterly failing to distinguish
between perfection and imperfection, between what ought and what ought
not to be ascribed to God. Circularity, animal forms and dispositions,
human limitations--these are imperfections, and we must not refer them
to God; but intelligence, righteousness, love--these are so little
in their own nature imperfections that an intelligent being, however
feeble, would be more excellent than an omnipotent and omnipresent
being destitute of intelligence; and righteousness and love are as much
superior to mere intelligence as it is to mere power and magnitude.
To ascribe these to God, if we only ascribe them to Him in infinite
perfection, is no presumption, no error; not to ascribe them to Him is
the greatest presumption, the most lamentable error.
The second truth necessary to be borne in mind, whenever we affirm the
likeness of God to man, is, that in whatever measure and to whatever
extent God may be known, our knowledge of Him is, and always must
be, very inadequate. In these latter days of science we are proud
of our knowledge of the universe; and yet, although we do know a
little of far-away stars and systems, what is this, after all, but,
as Carlyle says, the knowledge which a minnow in its native creek has
of the outlying ocean? And our knowledge of God must fall unspeakably
farther short of being coextensive with its object. To illustrate
the disproportion there, no comparison can be appropriate. "Canst
thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto
perfection? It is high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell;
what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth,
and broader than the sea." Our idea of God may contain nothing which
is not true of God, and may omit nothing which it is essential for
our spiritual welfare that we should know regarding Him; but it is
impossible that it should be a complete and exhaustive idea of Him. We
have scarcely a complete and exhaustive idea of anything, and least
of all can we have such an idea of the infinite and inexhaustible
source of all being. God alone can have a complete and exhaustive idea
of Himself. There must be infinitely more in God than we have any
idea of. There must be many qualities, powers, excellences, in Divine
nature, which are wholly unknown to men, or even wholly unknowable
by them, owing to their want of any faculties for their apprehension.
And even as to what we do know of God, our knowledge is but partial
and inadequate. We know that God knows, that He feels, that He acts;
but as to how He knows, feels, and acts, as to what is distinctive and
characteristic of His knowing, feeling, and acting, we have little or
no notion. We can _apprehend_ certain attributes of God, but we can
_comprehend_, or fully grasp, or definitely image, not one of them. If
we could find out God unto perfection in any respect, then, either we
must be infinite or God must be finite in that respect. The finite mind
can never stretch itself out in any direction until it is coextensive
with the Infinite Mind. Man is made in the image of God, but he is not
the measure of God.
LECTURE IV.
NATURE IS BUT THE NAME FOR AN EFFECT WHOSE CAUSE IS GOD.
I.
We have now to consider the principle of causality so far as it is
implied in the theistic inference, and the theistic inference so far as
it is conditioned by the principle of causality. It is not necessary to
discuss the nature of the principle of causality in itself or for its
own sake; it is even expedient, I believe, not to attempt to penetrate
farther into its metaphysics and psychology than the work on hand
imperatively requires. We must of course go as far as those have gone
who have maintained on metaphysical or psychological grounds that the
principle of causality warrants no theistic inference; we must show
that their metaphysics and psychology are irrelevant when true, and
false when relevant; but we may be content to stop when we have reached
this result. The truth of theism has been very generally represented,
both by those who admit and by those who deny the validity of the
theistic inference, as much more dependent than it really is on the
truth or falsity of some one or other of the many views which have been
entertained as to the nature of causation, and the origin of the causal
judgment. We are constantly being warned by theists that unless we
accept this or that particular notion of causation, and account for it
in this or that particular manner, we cannot reasonably believe in the
existence of God; we are constantly being assured by anti-theists that
belief in God is irrational, because it assumes some erroneous view
of causation, or some erroneous explanation of the process by which
causation is apprehended. But it will be found that representations
of this kind seldom prove more than one-sidedness and immaturity of
thought in those who make them. An accurate and comprehensive view
of the nature of causation, and of our apprehension of it, will, it
is true, have here as elsewhere great advantages over an erroneous
and narrow one, but hardly any of the theories which have been held
on these points can be consistently argued by those who hold them to
invalidate theistic belief. Even utterly inadequate statements and
explanations of the principle of causality--as, for example, those
of Hume and J. S. Mill--are not more incompatible with the theistic
inference than they are with any other inference which is a real
extension of knowledge. Unless they are understood and applied more
rigidly than by those who propound them, they allow us to draw the
theistic inference; if understood and applied so as to forbid our
drawing it, they logically disallow all scientific inference except
such as is purely formal and deductive. In a word, if compatible with
science they are compatible with theism, and if incompatible with
theism they are incompatible with science.
When we assume the principle of causality in the argument for the
existence of God, what precisely is it that we assume? Only this: that
whatever has begun to be, must have had an antecedent, or ground, or
cause which accounts for it. We do not assume that every existence
must have had a cause. We have no right, indeed, to assume that any
existence has had a cause until we have found reason to regard it as
not an eternal existence, but one which has had an origin. Whatever
we believe, however, to have had an origin, we at once believe also
to have had a cause. The theistic argument assumes that this belief
is true. It assumes that every existence, once new, every event or
occurrence or change, must have a cause. This is certainly no very
large assumption: on the contrary, if any assumption can claim to be
self-evident, it surely may. Thought implies the truth of it every
moment. Sensation only gives rise to thought in virtue of it. Unless
it were true there could be no such thing as thought. To deny that
the principle of causality, understood as has been indicated, is
true, would be to deny that reason is reason; it would be equivalent
to affirming that to seek for a reason is always and essentially an
unreasonable process. And, in fact, so understood, the principle never
has been denied. Hume even did not venture to deny it, although he
ought in consistency to have denied it, and obviously desired to be
able to deny it. He did not, however, deny that every object which
begins to exist must have a cause,--he did not venture to do more than
deny that this is either intuitively or demonstratively certain, and
that any bond or tie can be perceived between what is called a cause
and what is called an effect. The inquiry which he instituted was not
whether we pronounce it necessary that everything whose existence has
a beginning should also have a cause or not, but for what reason we
pronounce it necessary. He assumed that we pronounce it necessary, and
his elaborate investigation into the nature of causation was undertaken
expressly and entirely to discover why we do so. The conclusion to
which he came--viz., that the causal judgment is an "offspring of
experience engendered upon custom"--was not only a very inadequate and
erroneous one in itself, but inconsistent with the reality of what it
professed to explain: still the admission which has been mentioned was
what was professed to be explained.
Now, if it be true at all that every event, whether it be a
new existence or a change in an old existence, presupposes an
explanatory antecedent or cause, there can of course be no accepting
in all its breadth one of the propositions which Hume urges most
strenuously--viz., that the mere study of an event can tell us nothing
about its cause. We may grant that it can tell us very little,--that
Hume performed an immense service in showing how extremely little we
can know of the particular causes of particular events apart from
the study of both in connection, apart from observation, experiment,
and induction,--but we cannot grant that the event itself teaches us
absolutely nothing. If every event must have a cause, every event must
have a sufficient cause. For these two statements, although verbally
different, are really identical. The second seems to mean, but does not
actually mean, more than the first. The whole cause of the elevation
of a weight of ten pounds a foot high cannot be also the whole cause
of the elevation of twenty pounds to the same height, for the simple
reason that in the latter case the elevation of ten pounds--of half
the weight--would be an event which had no cause at all. And this is
universally true. If every event have not a sufficient cause, some
events have no cause at all. This, then, I say, we necessarily know
that the efficient cause of every event is a sufficient cause, however
vague may be our knowledge of efficiency and sufficiency.
If every event--using this term as convenient to denote either a new
existence or a change in some existence--must have a cause, to prove
that the universe must have had a cause we require to prove it to have
been an event--to have had a commencement. Can this be done? That
is _the_ question in the theistic argument from causality. Compared
therewith, all other questions which have been introduced into or
associated with the argument are of very subordinate importance. Now
there is only one way of reasonably answering the question, and that
is by examining the universe, in order to determine whether or not it
bears the marks of being an event--whether or not it has the character
of an effect. We have no right to _assume_ it to be an event, or to
have had a beginning. The entire argument for the Divine existence,
which is at present under consideration, can be no stronger than the
strength of the proof which we can adduce in favour of its having had
a beginning, and the only valid proof of that which reason can hope to
find must be derived from the examination of the universe itself.
What, then, is the result of such an examination? An absolute
certainty that all the things which are seen are temporal,--that
every object in the universe which presents itself to the senses has
had a beginning,--that the most powerful, penetrating, and delicate
instruments devised to assist our senses reach no cause which is
not obviously also an effect. The progress of science has not more
convincingly and completely disproved the once prevalent notion that
the universe was created about six thousand years ago, than it has
convincingly and completely established that everything of which our
senses inform us has had a commencement in time, and is of a compound,
derivative, and dependent nature. It is not long since men had no means
of proving that the rocks, for example, were not as old as the earth
itself--no direct means of proving even that they were not eternal; but
science is now able to tell us with confidence under what conditions,
in what order, and in what epochs of geological time they were formed.
We have probably a more satisfactory knowledge of the formation of
the coal-measures than of the establishment of the feudal system. We
know that the Alps, although they look as if they might have stood
for ever, are not even old, as geologists count age. The morning and
night, the origin and disappearance of the countless species of living
things which have peopled the earth from the enormously remote times
when the rocks of the Laurentian period were deposited down to the
births and deaths of contemporaneous animals, have been again brought
into the light of day by the power of science. The limits of research
are not even there reached, and with bold flight science passes beyond
the confines of discovered life--beyond the epochs of formation even of
the oldest rocks--to a time when there was no distinction of earth and
sea and atmosphere, as all were mingled together in nebulous matter, in
some sort of fluid or mist or steam; yea, onwards to a time when our
earth had no separate existence, and suns, moons, and stars were not
yet divided and arranged into systems. If we seek, then, after what is
eternal, science tells us that it is not the earth nor anything which
it contains, not the sea nor the living things within it, not the
moving air, not the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars. These things when
interrogated all tell us to look above and beyond them, for although
they may have begun to be in times far remote, yet it was within times
to which the thoughts of finite beings can reach back.