objection against their reality. We do not comprehend the manner
even of our own existence, although we are quite certain that we do
exist. Assent, however, has often been refused to _a priori_ theistic
argumentation, not on the ground that it is illogical, but on the
ground that the conclusions inferred are incomprehensible. Thus the
author of whom I have just been speaking urges in favour of the
procedure which he adopts the following argument, in addition to the
one already specified: "Self-existence necessarily means existence
without a beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is
to form a conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no
mental effort can we do this. To conceive existence through infinite
past-time, implies the conception of infinite past-time, which is an
impossibility." "Those who cannot conceive a self-existent universe,
and who therefore assume a creator as the source of the universe, take
for granted that they can conceive a self-existent creator. The mystery
which they recognise in this great fact surrounding them on every
side, they transfer to an alleged source of this great fact, and then
suppose that they have solved the mystery. But they delude themselves.
Self-existence is rigorously inconceivable; and this holds true
whatever be the nature of the object of which it is predicated. Whoever
agrees that the atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves
the impossible idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that the
theistic hypothesis is untenable if it contains the same impossible
idea."
Now, that we can by no mental effort conceive existence without a
beginning is certain, if by conceive be meant to comprehend, or
definitely imagine, or sensibly represent; but that we not only
conceive but cannot avoid conceiving such existence is equally
certain, if by conceive be simply meant to be conscious of, to know
to be true, to be rationally convinced. It is impossible seriously
to doubt that existence was without beginning. Something is, and
something never sprang from nothing. From nothing nothing ever came
or can come. Something always was. Being was without beginning.
Mr Spencer can no more deliver himself from the sublime and awful
necessity of acknowledging an eternal something--a self-existent
reality--underlying the whole universe, than any one else. His own
Absolute is such a something, such a reality; and although, in
accordance with his peculiar use of the words "know" and "conceive,"
he denies that that Absolute can be known or conceived, he admits
that its positive existence is a "necessary datum of consciousness."
Further, no intelligent theist argues "that the atheistic hypothesis is
untenable because it involves the impossible idea of self-existence."
On the contrary, the theist, far from objecting to the idea of
self-existence as impossible, admits it to be a necessary idea. He
recognises that the universe must be allowed to be self-existent until
it is shown to be a creation or event. It is only after an examination
of its character--only after having convinced himself that it is an
effect--that he transfers the attribute of self-existence to its
cause or creator. To say that in doing so he flees from one mystery
to another as great, is a statement which admits of no possible
justification. In a word, Mr Spencer's account of the reasoning of the
theist is an inexplicable caricature.
The _a priori_ reasoning employed in the establishment of theism is
independent of any particular theory as to the origin of our ideas of
infinity. It presupposes merely that these ideas are valid--are not
delusive. It is only as predisposing to, or implying, scepticism, as
to their truth or objective worth, that a theory as to their origin has
a bearing on their application. Such scepticism cannot be logically
limited to the ideas in question. If we do not accept these ideas as
true and trustworthy, absolute scepticism is rationally inevitable. An
examination of the nature and principles of scepticism will make this
manifest, but I cannot enter on that examination at present.
In conclusion, I remark that the conception of any other than an
infinite God--a God unlimited in all perfections--is not only a
self-contradictory but an unworthy conception; it not only perplexes
the intellect but revolts the spiritual affections. The heart can find
no secure rest except on an infinite God. If less than omnipotent,
He may be unable to help us in the hour of sorest need. If less than
omniscient, He may overlook us. If less than perfectly just, we cannot
unreservedly trust Him. If less than perfectly benevolent, we cannot
fully love Him. The whole soul can only be devoted to One who is
believed to be absolutely good.
LECTURE X.
MERE THEISM INSUFFICIENT.
I.
I have endeavoured to show, in the course of lectures which I am now
bringing to a close, that the light of nature and the works of creation
and providence prove the existence, and so far manifest the goodness,
wisdom, and power of God. This truth ought always to be combined with
another--namely, that the light of nature and the works of creation
and providence "are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God,
and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation." Reason sends
forth a true light which is to be trusted and followed so far as it
extends, but which is much more limited than the wants of human nature.
The deepest discoveries and the highest achievements of the unaided
intellect need to be supplemented by truths which can only come to us
through special revelation. The natural knowledge of God which man can
attain by the exercise of his own faculties is not sufficient to make
him feel that the Eternal bears to him fatherly love, or to break the
power of sin within him and over him, or to sustain and develop his
moral and spiritual life. It falls far short of what is required to
enable a human soul, a religious and immortal being, to accomplish its
true destination. It falls far short, in other words, of being what is
"necessary unto salvation," in the broad and comprehensive sense which
the term salvation bears throughout Scripture.
There are those who, instead of regarding theism as simply so much
fundamental truth which Christianity presupposes and applies, would
oppose theism to Christianity, and substitute theism for Christianity.
They would rest in mere theism and would reject Christianity. They
represent theism, dissociated from Christianity, as all-sufficient, and
as the religion to which alone the future belongs. In doing so, these
men--many of them most earnest and excellent men--seem to me to show
great want of reflection, great ignorance of the teachings of history,
and a very superficial acquaintance with human nature.
Atheism, polytheism, and pantheism have always proved stronger than
mere theism--more popular, more influential on ordinary minds. It
is only in alliance with revelation that theism has been able to
cope successfully with these foes. In no land, and in no age, has
a theism resting exclusively on the authority of reason gained and
retained the assent of more than a small minority of the community. Its
adherents may have been men who did credit to their creed--honourable,
high-minded, cultivated men--but they have always been few. In India,
in Persia, in Greece, in Rome, some specially gifted and religious
minds reached, or at least approached, theism; but, on the whole,
the development of belief in all these countries was not towards but
away from theism. The Israelites, although authoritatively taught
monotheism, fell back again and again into polytheism. Mythology is not
merely "a disease of language," but also a testimony to the fact that
the minds and hearts of the mass of mankind cannot be satisfied with
a Deity who is only to be apprehended by abstract thought,--a proof
that while a few speculative philosophers may rest content with the God
discovered by pure reason, the countless millions of their fellow-men
are so influenced by sense, imagination, and feeling, that they have
ever been found to substitute for such a God deities whom they could
represent under visible forms, as subject to the limitations of space
and time, and as actuated by the passions of humanity. Pantheism has
a powerful advantage over theism, inasmuch as it can give a colouring
of religion to what is virtually atheism, and a semblance of reason
even to the most wildly extravagant polytheism. There is no logical
necessity why a mere theist should become an atheist, but the causes
which tend to produce atheism are too strong to be counteracted by any
force inherent in mere theism; and hence, as a matter of historical
fact, mere theism has always, even in modern Christendom, largely given
place to atheism. All the powers of the world above, and of the world
to come, are needed to oppose the powers of the world below, and of
the world which now is. Only a much fuller exhibition of the Divine
character than is presented to us by mere theism can make faith in God
the ruling principle of human life. Mere theism might have sufficed us
had we remained perfectly rational and perfectly sinless; but those who
fancy that it is sufficient for men as they are, only make evident that
they know not what men are. In the state into which we have fallen, we
need a higher light to guide us than any which shines on sea or land;
we need the light which only shines from the gracious countenance of
Christ.
"The world by wisdom knew not God." The whole history of the heathen
world testifies to the truth of this affirmation of St Paul. It
is an indubitable historical fact that, outside of the sphere of
special revelation, man has never obtained such a knowledge of God
as a responsible and religious being plainly requires. The wisdom of
the heathen world, at its very best, was utterly inadequate to the
accomplishment of such a task as creating a due abhorrence of sin,
controlling the passions, purifying the heart, and ennobling the
conduct. Not one religion devised by man rested on a worthy view of the
character of God; not one did not substitute for the living and true
God false and dead idols, or represent Him in a mean and dishonouring
light. We are apt to associate with the religion of Greece and Rome
the religious philosophy of a few eminent Greek and Roman thinkers
who rose above the religion of their age and country. The religion
itself was mainly the creation of imagination, and in various respects
was extremely demoralising in its tendencies. The worshippers of
Jupiter and Juno, of Mars and Venus, and the gods and goddesses who
were supposed to be their companions, must have been very often not
the better but the worse for worshipping such beings. Certainly, they
could find no elevating ideal or correct and consistent rule of moral
life among the capricious and unrighteous and impure objects of their
adoration. It was less from the religion, the idolatrous polytheism,
of Greece and Rome that the human soul in these lands drew spiritual
inspiration, than from philosophy, from reason apprehending those
truths of natural religion which the positive religion concealed and
disfigured and contradicted. If salvation be deliverance from darkness
to light, from sin to holiness, from love of the world to love of God,
no sane man will say that the Greek or Roman religion was the way to
it, or an indication of the way to it.
Did, then, the philosophers discover the way? There is no need that
we should depreciate what they did. Men like Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle, among the Greeks--like Cicero, Epictetus, and Antoninus,
among the Romans--obtained wonderful glimpses of Divine truth, and gave
to the world noble moral instructions, which are of inestimable value
even to this day. But they all failed to effect any deep and extensive
reform. They did not turn men from the worship of idols to the service
of the true God. They were unable to raise any effective barrier either
to superstition or to vice. They were insufficiently assured in their
own minds, and spoke as without authority to others. They saw too
clearly to be able to believe that the popular religion was true, but
not clearly enough to know what to put in its place. In the systems
and lives of the very greatest of them there were terrible defects,
and neither the doctrine nor the conduct of the majority of those
who pretended to follow them, the common specimens of philosophers,
was fitted to improve society. Philosophy found out _many truths_,
but not _the truth_. It did not disclose the holiness and love of
God--discovered no antidote for the poison of sin--showed the soul no
fountain of cleansing, healing, and life.
The true character of the philosophical theism of antiquity has been
admirably described by one of the ablest theologians of the present
day. "Theism was discussed as a philosophical, not as a religious
question, as one rationale among others of the origin of the material
universe, but as no more affecting practice than any great scientific
hypothesis does now. Theism was not a test which separated the orthodox
philosopher from the heterodox, which distinguished belief from
disbelief; it established no breach between the two opposing theorists;
it was discussed amicably as an open question: and well it might be,
for of all questions there was not one which could make less practical
difference to the philosopher, or, upon his view, to anybody, than
whether there was or was not a God. Nothing would have astonished him
more than, when he had proved in the lecture-hall the existence of a
God, to have been told to worship Him. 'Worship whom?' he would have
exclaimed; 'worship what? worship how?' Would you picture him indignant
at the polytheistic superstition of the crowd, and manifesting some
spark of the fire of St Paul 'when he saw the city wholly given to
idolatry,' you could not be more mistaken. He would have said that
you did not see a plain distinction; that the crowd was right on the
religious question, and the philosopher right on the philosophical;
that however men might uphold in argument an infinite abstraction,
they could not worship it; and that the hero was much better fitted
for worship than the Universal Cause--fitted for it not in spite of,
but in consequence of, his want of true divinity. The same question
was decided in the same way in the speculations of the Brahmans. There
the Supreme Being figures as a characterless, impersonal essence, the
mere residuum of intellectual analysis, pure unity, pure simplicity.
No temple is raised to him, no knee is bended to him. Without action,
without will, without affection, without thought, he is the substratum
of everything, himself a nothing. The Universal Soul is the Unconscious
Omnipresent _Looker-on_; the complement, as coextensive spectator, of
the universal drama of nature; the motionless mirror upon which her
boundless play and sport, her versatile postures, her multitudinous
evolutions are reflected, as the image of the rich and changing sky is
received into the passive bosom of the lake. Thus the idea of God, so
far from calling forth in the ancient world the idea of worship, ever
stood in antagonism with it: the idol was worshipped because he was not
God, God was not worshipped because He was. One small nation alone out
of all antiquity worshipped God, believed the universal Being to be a
personal Being. That nation was looked upon as a most eccentric and
unintelligible specimen of humanity for doing so; but this whimsical
fancy, as it appeared in the eyes of the rest, was cherished by it as
the most sacred deposit; it was the foundation of its laws and polity;
and from this narrow stock this conception was engrafted upon the human
race."[50]
[50] Canon Mosley, On Miracles, Lect. IV.
It is historically certain, then, that the world by its unaided wisdom
failed to know God. Of course, it may be said that the experiment was
incomplete; that even if Christianity had not appeared, the human
mind would have found out in process of time all the religious truth
needed to satisfy the human heart, guide human life, and sustain human
society. But such an assertion is quite arbitrary. History gives it
no confirmation. It was only after human wisdom had a lengthened and
unembarrassed opportunity of showing what it could accomplish in the
most favourable circumstances, and after it had clearly displayed its
insufficiency, that Christianity appeared. Christ did not come till it
was manifest that reason was wandering farther and farther away from
God--that religion had no inherent principle of self-improvement--that
man had done his utmost with the unaided resources of his nature to
devise a salvation, and had failed. There was no probability whatever
that a new and higher civilisation would rise on the ruins of that
which fell when the hordes of Northern barbarians subdued and overran
the Roman empire, had not Christianity been present to direct the work
of construction.
We need not, however, discuss what might or might not have happened,
supposing the sun of Christianity had not appeared on the horizon when
that of classical civilisation was hastening to its setting, since
it is obvious that the science and philosophy even of the present
day, dissevered from revelation, can produce no religion capable of
satisfying, purifying, and elevating man's spiritual nature. They are
far advanced beyond the stage which they had reached in the time of St
Paul. Knowledge has since received large accessions from all sides,
and reflection has been taught by a lengthened and varied process
of correction and discipline valuable lessons. In mathematical and
physical science especially there has been enormous progress. The human
mind is now enriched not only with the intellectual wealth which it
has inherited from Greece and Rome, but with that of many ages not
less fruitful than those in which they flourished. Can we accomplish,
then, what the Greeks and Romans so signally failed to achieve? Can
we, with all our knowledge of nature and man, devise a religion which
shall be at once merely rational and thoroughly effective? Can we,
when we set aside Christianity, construct a creed capable of not only
commanding the assent of the intellect, but of attracting and changing
the heart, quickening and guiding the conscience, and purifying and
ennobling the conduct? Can we build a system worthy to be called a
religion on any other foundation than that which has been laid in the
Gospel? If science and philosophy cannot do anything of this kind even
at the present day, we are surely at length entitled to say that the
world needs to know more about God than it can find out for itself. In
proof that they cannot, we would appeal both to facts and reason--both
to the character of what science and philosophy have actually done in
this connection, and to the nature of the task which their injudicious
friends would impose on them.
What, then, even at the present day, do the ablest of those who
reject Christianity propose to offer us instead? Comte would have us
to worship humanity. Can we? Comte himself did not believe that we
can in any but a very partial and insincere way. If we could, would
our worship do either our minds or hearts more good than the worship
of Jupiter and Juno did the Greeks of old? Strauss would have us to
revere the universe. Is that not to go back to fetichism? Might we
not just as wisely and profitably adore a stock or stone? Herbert
Spencer would present to us for God the Unknowable. But what thoughts,
what feelings, can we have about the Unknowable? Might we not as
well worship empty space, the eternal no, or the absolute nothing?
Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Mainlander, and others, would have us to go
back to Buddhism and welcome annihilation. But it is clear as the light
that if the advice were acted on, the springs of intellectual life and
social progress would soon be dried up. The philosophy and science on
which they exclusively rely have enabled none of these men to find out
God; nay, they have left them under the delusion that there is no God
to find out, except those strange gods to which I have referred. And
being without God in the world, these philosophers, with all their
knowledge and accomplishments, are also without any hope of a life
beyond the grave. No man need go to them with the question, "What
shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Among all their differences--and
they are many and radical--on one point they are agreed, and it is
that eternal life is but a dream; that the highest hope even of the
best of mankind is to survive for a time as a memory and an influence
in the minds and conduct of others, after having ceased to be real
and personal beings; that the only form in which the aspiration after
immortality can be rationally cherished is that which the greatest of
contemporary novelists and among the greatest of contemporary poets has
expressed in the words:--
"O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues....
This is life to come,
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow."
It is as true, then, as ever it was, that the world by wisdom knows not
God. The advantages which the eighteen Christian centuries have brought
us only make more manifest the world's inability by its own wisdom
to know God. The longer the trial has lasted, the more manifest has
it become that God's revelation of Himself is indispensable--is what
man can provide no substitute for. The philosophy which sets itself
in opposition to revelation--which professes to supply in another and
better way the spiritual wants to which revelation responds--which
aims at constructing a religion out of the conclusions of science--is
a mournful failure. The only religious constructions which it has been
able to raise, even with all the scientific resources of the nineteenth
century at its command, are simply monuments of human folly.
This is just what was to be expected; for apart from special Divine
teaching, apart from special Divine revelation, man cannot truly know
God, as a sinful being needs to know Him. Apart, for example, from
the revelation which God has made of Himself in Christ, the mind
cannot possibly attain to a sincere and well-grounded conviction even
of that primary truth on which all the perfection of religion and
all the happiness and hopes of mankind depend--the truth that God is
really a Father, with all a Father's love, to the children of men.
There are manifold signs or evidences of God's goodness and bounty in
creation and providence, but, unless seen in the light reflected on
them from redemption, they fall far short of a complete proof of God's
cherishing fatherly love to sinful men. In the light of the Cross
it is otherwise; the man who looks at the works of creation in that
light will unhesitatingly and with full reason say, "My Father made
them all," and will easily and clearly trace in all the dealings of
providence a Father's hand guiding His children. Suppose, however, that
blessed light not shining or shut out, and that creation and providence
are before us in no other light than their own,--what then? What can
creation and providence teach us about God?
Substantially this only: that He has vast power, since He has created
and sustains and controls the whole of this mighty universe; wondrous
wisdom, since He has arranged everything so well and directs everything
so well; and a goodness corresponding to His power and wisdom, since
a beneficent purpose may be detected underlying all His works of
creation and pervading the course of providence. I cannot suppose that
any one will seriously maintain that creation and providence teach
us more than that God is thus powerful and wise and good; and fully
granting that they teach us all this, if any one mean by God being the
Father of men no more than that He is as good as He is powerful and
wise, and that His power and wisdom have been so employed on behalf of
men that good gifts meet them at every step, I readily agree with him
that creation and providence are sufficient to show God to be a Father
in that sense and to that extent.