expression of a will which is its own law, and which is unaffected by
feeling; but this view rested on erroneous conceptions as to (1) the
relation of religion and morality, (2) the nature of the will, and (3)
the place of feeling in the mental economy.
Religion and morality inseparable in their normal conditions; but not
to be identified, religion being communion with God, while morality
is conformity to a law which is God's will but which may not be
acknowledged to be His will, so that they may and do exist in abnormal
forms apart from each other.
The will has not its law in itself. Kant's errors on this subject.
Feeling is the natural and universal antecedent of action. Kant's
errors on this subject.
23. Dr Brinton (Religious Sentiment, &c., 1876) analyses religion into
emotion and idea--an effective and intellectual element--the latter of
which arises necessarily from the law of contradiction and excluded
middle.
Merits and defects of his theory.
24. The religious process is at once rational, emotional, and
volitional.
Its unity, and the co-operation of knowing, feeling, and willing.
25. Description of (1) its essential contents, (2) its chief forms,
(3) its principal moments or stages, and (4) its manifestations in
spiritual worship and work.
NOTE VIII., page 58.
ARGUMENT E CONSENSU GENTIUM.
Pessimism will be treated of along with other anti-theistic theories.
The fact that religion is a natural and universal phenomenon, as
widespread as humanity and as old as its history, and the fact insisted
on in the lecture, that religion can only realise its proper nature
in a theistic form, give us, when adequately established, the modern
and scientific statement of the old argument--_e consensu gentium_.
This argument, which we already meet with in Cicero (De Nat. Deor.,
i. 17; Tusc. Ques., i. 13; De Leg., i. 8) and Seneca (Epist. 117), in
Clement of Alexandria (Strom., v. 14) and Lactantius (Div. Inst., i.
2), has gradually grown into the science of comparative theology. An
instructive essay might be written on its development.
Mr J. S. Mill, who had obviously no suspicion that there had been
any development of the kind, criticised the argument in his essay
on Theism, pp. 154-160. He was entirely mistaken in representing it
as an appeal to authority--"to the opinions of mankind generally,
and especially of some of its wisest men." It has certainly very
rarely--probably never--been advanced in a form which could justify
such an account of it. He was also mistaken in supposing that it had
any necessary connection with the view which ascribes to men "an
intuitive perception, or an instinctive sense, of Deity." I agree with
his objections to that view; but the argument does not imply it. If it
prove that man's mental constitution is such that, in the presence of
the facts of nature and life, religion necessarily arises, and that
the demands of reason, heart, and conscience, in which it originates,
can only be satisfied by the worship and service of one God, with the
attributes which theism assigns to Him, it has accomplished all that
can reasonably be expected from it.
Mr Mill was, however, it seems to me, perfectly correct in holding
that the mere prevalence of the belief in Deity afforded no ground
for inferring that the belief was native to the mind in the sense of
independent of evidence. In no form ought the argument from general
consent to be regarded as a primary argument. It is an evidence that
there are direct evidences--and when kept in this its proper place it
has no inconsiderable value--but it cannot be urged as a direct and
independent argument. This is a most important consideration, which is
in danger of being overlooked in the present day. Some authors would
actually contrast the argument for theism or Christianity derivable
from the comparative study of religion with the ordinary or formal
proofs, and would substitute it for them, not seeing that, although
powerful in connection with, and dependence on, these proofs, it has
little relevancy or weight when dissociated from them.
The two recent writers who have made most use of the argument are,
perhaps, Ebrard, who has devoted to it the whole of the second volume
of his Apologetics, and Baumstark, whose 'Christian Apologetics on an
Anthropological Basis' has for its exclusive aim to prove that man has
been made for religion, and that the non-Christian religions do not,
while Christianity does, satisfy his religious cravings and needs.
In this country we ought not to forget the service which Mr Maurice
rendered by his 'Religions of the World,' and Mr Hardwicke by his
'Christ and other Masters.'
The position maintained by Sir John Lubbock, that religion is not
a universal phenomenon, and that advocated by Comte, that it is a
temporary and transitional phenomenon, will be examined in the volume
on Anti-theism.
NOTE IX., page 75.
THE THEISTIC EVIDENCE COMPLEX AND COMPREHENSIVE.
Cousin has said, "There are different proofs of the existence of God.
The consoling result of my studies is, that these different proofs are
more or less strict in form, but they have all a depth of truth which
needs only to be disengaged and put in a clear light, in order to give
incontestable authority. Everything leads to God. There is no bad way
of arriving at Him, but we go to Him by different paths."
The truth, that all the faculties of man's being must co-operate in
the formation of the idea of God, is well enforced and illustrated
in an article on "The Origin of the Concept of God," by the Rev.
George T. Ladd, in the 'Bibliotheca Sacra,' vol. xxxiv.; also in
Principal M'Cosh's 'Method of the Divine Government,' B. i., c. i.,
sec. 1, and 'Intuitions of the Mind,' Pt. iii., B. ii., c. v., sec.
2. The following quotation from Mr Ladd's article is a statement of
its central idea: "Nothing is more necessary, in the endeavour to
understand how the concept under consideration originates, than to hold
correct views of the entire relation of man to truth. The view which,
if not held as a theory, is quite too frequently carried out in the
practical search after knowledge, seems to be this one--that truth is
a product of mind wrought out by the skilful use of the ratiocinative
faculties. It follows, then, that the correct working of these
faculties is almost the only important or necessary guarantee of truth.
But it is not any lone faculty or set of faculties which is concerned
in man's reception of truth. The truth becomes ours only as a gift
from without. All truth is of the nature of a revelation, and demands
that the organ through which the revelation is made should be properly
adjusted. The organ for the reception of truth is symmetrically
cultured manhood, rightly correlated action, and balanced capabilities
of man's different powers. The attitude of him who would attain to
truth is one of docility, of receptiveness, of control exercised
upon all the powers of the soul,--so that none of them, by abnormal
development or activity, interfere with the action of all the rest....
If the statements just made are true with regard to human knowledge in
general, they are pre-eminently true with regard to such knowledge as
is presented to the soul in the form of the concept of God. The pure
in heart shall see God; they that obey shall know of the doctrine;
the things of the spirit are spiritually judged of. These statements
are as profound in their philosophic import as they are quickening in
their practical tendencies. This concept comes as God's revelation of
Himself within all the complex activities of the human soul. It is
adapted to man as man in the totality of his being and energies. And
the whole being of man must be co-operative in the reception of this
self-revelation of God, as well as met and filled by the form which the
revelation takes, in order that the highest truth concerning God may
become known.... In his work on Mental Physiology, Dr Carpenter speaks
of certain departments of science 'in which our conclusions rest, not
on any one set of experiences, but upon our _unconscious co-ordination
of the whole aggregate of our experience_; not on the conclusions of
any one train of reasoning, but on _the convergence of all our lines
of thought toward one centre_.' These words, italicised by that author
himself, well represent the form in which the knowledge of God is given
to the human soul. It is the convergence of these lines of thought that
run together from so many quarters which makes a web of argument far
stronger to bind men than any single thread could be. This is a form
of proof which, while it is, when understood aright, overwhelmingly
convincing, gives also to all the elements of our complex manhood
their proper work to do in its reception. In its reception it makes
far greater difference, whether the moral and religious sections of
the whole channel through which the truth flows are open or not, than
whether the faculty of the syllogism is comparatively large or not. Nor
is there any effort to disparage any intellectual processes involved,
in thus insisting upon the complete and co-ordinated activity of the
soul, as furnishing the organon for the knowledge of God. All the
strings of the harp must be in tune, or there will be discord, not
harmony, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it."
That the power of apprehending God is conditioned by the character of
man's nature as a whole, was clearly seen and beautifully expressed
by the ancient Christian apologist, Theophilus. "If thou sayest, show
me thy God, I answer, show me first thy man, and I will show thee my
God. Show me first, whether the eyes of thy soul see, and the ears of
thy heart hear. For as the eyes of the body perceive earthly things,
light and darkness, white and black, beauty and deformity, &c., so the
ears of the heart and the eyes of the soul can perceive divine things.
God is seen by those who can see Him, when they open the eyes of their
soul. All men have eyes, but the eyes of some are blinded that they
cannot see the light of the sun. But the sun does not cease to shine
because they are blind; they must ascribe it to their blindness that
they cannot see. This is thy case, O man! The eyes of thy soul are
darkened by sin, even by thy sinful actions. Like a bright mirror, man
must have a pure soul. If there be any rust on the mirror, man cannot
see the reflection of his countenance in it; likewise if there be any
sin in man, he cannot see God."--Ad Autolycum, i. c. 2.
There is an improper use of the fact that the emotional capacities as
well as the intellectual faculties are concerned in the apprehension of
God. Some persons express themselves as if there was an evidence for
God in the feelings not only as well as in the intellect, but distinct
from, and independent of, the evidence on which the intellect has to
decide. They reason as if although the latter were necessarily and in
its own nature inconclusive, the former might still warrant belief, or
as if at least feelings might so supplement weak arguments as to allow
of their conclusions being firmly held. They virtually acknowledge
that, although it were incontestably proved that the theistic inference
was such as could not reasonably be deemed trustworthy or sufficient
by the intellect, they would believe in the existence of God all the
same in reliance on their feelings, because the heart is as trustworthy
as the head and as well entitled to be heard. This is a very different
doctrine from what I regard to be the true one--namely, that neither
the head nor the heart is a competent witness in the case under
consideration when the one is dissociated from the other. Purity of
heart and obedience to the will of God enable us to see God and to know
His character and doctrine, but they do not dispense with vision and
knowledge, nor do they create a vision and knowledge which are distinct
from, and independent of, reason. The heart must be appealed to and
satisfied as well as the head, but not apart from or otherwise than
through the head, or the appeal is sophistical and the satisfaction
illegitimate. Our feelings largely determine whether we recognise and
assent to reasons or not, but they ought not to be substituted for
reasons, or even used to supplement reasons. The sentimentalism which
pleads feelings in deprecation of the rigid criticism of reasons, or
in order to retain a conviction which it cannot logically justify,
necessarily tends to scepticism, and, indeed, is a kind of scepticism.
NOTE X., page 86.
INTUITION, FEELING, BELIEF, AND KNOWLEDGE IN RELIGION.
There are few who hold in a consistent manner that God is known by
immediate intuition. The great majority of those who profess to
believe this, so explain it as to show that they believe nothing of
the kind. Dr Charles Hodge (Systematic Theology, pt. i. ch. i.) may
be indicated as an example. Professing to hold that the knowledge of
God is innate and intuitive, he so explains and restricts these terms
as would make our knowledge of our fellow-men as much innate and
intuitive as our knowledge of God, or even more so; and even after
all these qualifications finds that nothing more can be maintained
than "that a sense of dependence and accountability to a being
higher than themselves exists in all minds"--which is far from being
equivalent to the conclusion that God is intuitively known. Cousin
is sometimes represented as an advocate of the view in question,
but erroneously. Discounting a few inaccurate phrases, his theory
as to the nature of the theistic process is substantially identical
with that expounded in the lecture. Its purport is not that reason
directly and immediately contemplates the Absolute Being, but that it
is enabled and necessitated by the essential conditions of cognition,
the _a priori_ ideas of causality, infinity, &c., to apprehend Him
in His manifestations. To find intuitionists who in this connection
really mean what they say, we must go to Hindu Yogi, Plotinus and the
Alexandrian Mystics, Schelling, and a few of his followers--or, in
other words, to those who have thought of God as a pantheistic unity
or a Being without attributes.
Many German theologians, unduly influenced by the authority of
Schleiermacher, and destitute of a sound knowledge of psychology, have
rested religion on feeling--mere or pure feeling. Hegel opposed the
attempt to do this, with considerable effect, although on erroneous
principles. Krause exposed it, however, with far more thoroughness
in his 'Absolute Religionsphilosophie.' It is on feeling that belief
is rested by most of the advocates of what is called "the faith
philosophy." With thinkers of this class a man like Cousin must not
be confounded, although he maintained that religion begins with faith
and not with reflection; or like Hamilton, although he denied that the
infinite can be _known_ while affirming that it "is, must, and ought to
be, _believed_." Cousin meant by faith "nothing else than the consent
of reason," and Hamilton meant by belief "assent to the original data
of reason."
The words faith and belief are used in a bewildering variety of senses.
A few remarks will make this apparent.
(_a_) By belief or faith is sometimes meant _reason_ as distinguished
from _understanding_, and sometimes _reason_ as distinguished from
_reasoning_. These two senses are so very closely allied that we may
allow them to count as but a single signification. It is extraordinary
that in either sense belief should be contrasted with reason, as it
is by those who tell us that the infinite is an object only of faith,
and that reason has to do exclusively with the finite, or that first
principles are inaccessible to reason but revealed to faith. To create
an appearance of conflict between reason and faith by identifying
faith with reason in a special sense, and reason with understanding
or reasoning, is unwarranted, if not puerile. What use can there be
in telling us that God cannot be known--cannot be apprehended by
reason--but is only an object of faith, a Being merely to be believed
in, when what is meant is that we have the same immediate certainty of
His existence as of the truth of an axiom of geometry?
(_b_) Belief may be limited to apprehension, and knowledge to
comprehension. It may be said that "we have but faith, we cannot know"
the unseen and infinite, just as it is said that we believe that the
grass grows but do not know how it grows. It is obvious, however, that
if apprehension be knowledge, as it surely is, we believe only what we
know. We know--_i.e._, apprehend--the existence of God and the growth
of the grass, and we believe what we thus know. We do not know--_i.e._,
comprehend--the nature of God or the nature of growth, and what we do
not thus know neither do we believe.
(_c_) At other times faith or belief relates to probable, as opposed
to certain, knowledge. "We do not know this, but we believe it," often
means, "We are not sure of this, but we think it likely." It is not in
this sense, of course, that any one except a religious sceptic will
allow that the existence of God is a matter of faith. A man may admit
that religion and science differ as faith and knowledge, but if he is
willing to understand this as signifying that while science is certain,
religion is at the most merely probable, he must necessarily be a
doubter or an unbeliever.
(_d_) Faith or belief sometimes refers to the knowledge which rests on
personal testimony, Divine or human. Such faith may be more certain
than assent given to the evidence furnished by science. It ought to be
precisely proportioned to the evidence that there is such and such
testimony, and that the testimony is trustworthy.
(_e_) By faith or belief is sometimes meant trust in a person or
fidelity to a truth; the yielding up of the heart and life to the
object of faith. Faith or belief of this kind always involves
"preparedness to act upon what we affirm." It does not appear to me
that such preparedness is, as Professor Bain maintains, "the genuine,
unmistakable criterion of belief" in general. This kind of faith,
like all other faith, ought to rest on the assent of the intellect to
evidence, although what is characteristic of it is to be found not in
the intellect but in the emotions and will. Since it constitutes and
produces, however, spiritual experience, it is a condition and source
as well as a consequence of knowledge. There can be, in fact, no
profound religious knowledge, because there can be no vital religion,
without it.
In religion, as in every other department of thought and life, man is
bound to regulate his belief by the simple but comprehensive principle
that evidence is the measure of assent. Disbelief ought to be regulated
by the same principle, for disbelief is belief; not the opposite of
belief, but belief of the opposite. Unbelief is the opposite both of
belief and disbelief. Ignorance is to unbelief what knowledge is to
belief or disbelief. The whole duty of man as to belief is to believe
and disbelieve according to evidence, and neither to believe nor
disbelieve when evidence fails him.
NOTE XI., page 118.
THE THEOLOGICAL INFERENCE FROM THE THEORY OF ENERGY.
A remarkably clear account of the chief theories as to the nature of
matter will be found in Professor Tait's 'Lectures on some Recent
Advances in Physical Science,' Lect. XII. In Thomson and Tait's
'Natural Philosophy,' Thomson's article on "The Age of the Sun's
Heat" ('Macmillan's Magazine,' March 1862), Tait's 'Thermodynamics,'
Helmholtz's 'Correlation and Conservation of Forces,' Balfour Stewart's
'Treatise on Heat,' &c., the facts and theorems which seem to establish
that the material universe is a temporary system will be found fully
expounded.
I am not acquainted with any more effective criticism of the
argumentation by which the eminent physicists mentioned support their
conclusion than that of the Rev. Stanley Gibson; and, although it
seems to me not to come to very much, I feel bound in fairness to give
it entire. After an exposition of the theory of energy, and of the
reasoning founded on it by which we seem necessitated to infer that
the universe tends at last to be a scene of rest, coldness, darkness,
and death, he thus writes: "Is this reasoning, I ask, open to any
objection? and if not, does it bear out the theological conclusion
here sought to be rested upon it? In attempting to pass a verdict upon
the question here raised, we cannot but feel, not only the grandeur
of the subject before us, but also the imminent risk of its being
affected by considerations unknown to us. We certainly need to judge
with diffidence. Perhaps the first question which arises is, Are we to
take the material universe to be infinite? If it be, and if its stores
of energy, potential and kinetic, have no limit, then it is no longer
clear that the final stage of accumulation need have been reached,
however long its past history may have been; nor yet, I may add, that
it would ever be reached in the future. I may be reminded that at
present, at all events, only finite accumulations have arisen, and that
this is not consistent with an accumulation through a past eternity.
But this objection assumes that there never could have been more than
some assignable degree of diffusion of matter. Why should this be? If
at any past period there was a certain degree of diffusion, why may
there not have been a greater degree at an earlier period? And if so,
why may not this integrating, as I should propose to call it, have been
going on for ever?
"If, on the other hand, the universe be finite, then, according to the
principle of the conservation of energy, reflection of heat must take
place from its boundaries, and there may be reconcentration of energy
on certain points, according to the form of the bounding surface.
"A second inquiry arises thus. If it be impossible to imagine the
present history of the universe continued backward indefinitely under
its present code of laws, are we therefore obliged to assume some
anomalous interference? We speak, of course, of these laws as they are
known to us. Might there not be others, yet unknown, that would solve
the difficulty?
"The history of the universe, as immediately known to us, offers as
its leading feature the falling together of small discrete bodies in
enormous numbers and with great velocities, or the condensation of
very rare and diffused gases. Hence the formation of bodies, some
of vast size, others smaller, but all originally greatly heated.
This process seems to point to an earlier state of things, in which
such accumulations of matter, though sparse even now, were far less
common--a state in which, to use the expression which I have proposed,
matter was far less integrated. It is quite true that the great change
of which we thus obtain a glimpse is not a recurring process. It is
not therefore fitted for eternal repetition and continuance. But it
is a bold thing to say that this earlier state of things may not have
followed from one still older by a natural process, and this again
from one before, and so on through an indefinite regression. We have
seen what an important part the ether plays in the present process of
the dissipation of energy. The existence of that ether, the separation
of matter into two main forms, may have sprung out of some previous
condition of things wholly unknown to us. And so also there may be
forms and stores of energy as yet unknown.