incomplete expressions, confined exclusively to the doctrine of a future
life, but it is at least equally applicable to the belief in a God who
rules and governs. We can of course conceive of supernatural beings who
do not interfere with us, who do not care for us, who do not help us, who
have no connection with our moral life, who do good to no one, who do
evil to no one. Such were the gods of Lucretius, the most fascinating of
pure inventions; but such gods are not the gods of religion. The ancient
Epicurean, in times when obscure difficulties were discussed in plainer
words than is now either possible or advisable, expressly defended
them on that ground. He did not want his gods to interfere with him;
he thought it would impair the ideal languor of their life, as well as
the inapprehensive security of his own life. They lived ‘self-scanned,
self-centred, self-secure,’ and he was, in so far as was possible, to
do so also. He did not wish the voluptuaries of heaven to become the
busybodies of earth. He liked to have a pleasant dream of the upper
world, but he did not wish it to descend and rule him. But as soon as
we abandon the natural fiction of the voluptuous imagination; as soon
as we accept the idea of a God who is a providence in the universe, and
not an idol in heaven; as soon as we allow that He loves good and hates
evil; as soon as we are sure that He is our Father, and chastises us
as children; as soon as we acknowledge a God such as the human heart
and conscience crave for, the God of Christianity,—we at once reach the
primitive difficulty. Here is a Being whom _we know_ will reward the
good and punish the evil; how can we do good without reference to that
supernatural recompense, or evil without shrinking from that apprehended
penalty?
Nor is it for this purpose in the least material, though for many other
purposes it is very material, whether we consider God as acting by
irrevocable laws fixed once for all, or upon a system which (though
foreseen and immutable to Him, to whom all the future is as present
as all the past) is according to our view of it,—to our translation of
it, so to speak, into our limited capacities,—capable of flexibility at
His touch, and of modification at His pleasure. If we know that we are
rewarded and punished, it matters little, as respects our hope and our
apprehension, whether that punishment be inflicted by a machine or by a
person; in one case we shall shun the contact with the lacerating wheel,
in the other we shall dread a blow from the punitive hand. But in either
case the pain will be the determining motive, the deterring thought. We
shall act as we do act, not from a disinterested intention to do our
duty whatever be the consequences, but from a sincere wish to get off
patent and proximate suffering. The difficulty of reconciling a true
morality with a true religion is not confined to that part of religion
which relates to the anticipated life of man hereafter, but extends to
the very idea of a superintending providence and preadjusting Creator, in
whatever mode we conceive that superintendence to be exercised, and that
adjustment to have been made.
The answer most commonly given to this difficulty is unquestionably
fallacious. It is said that the desire of eternal life for ourselves is
a motive far greater and far better than the desire of anything else,
either for ourselves or for others. It is not conceived as a form of
selfishness at all—at least, not when regarded in this connection, and
employed to solve this problem. At other times, indeed, divines are ready
enough to twist the argument the other way. They will expand at length
the notion that there is a ‘common sense’ in the Gospel; that it appeals
to ‘business-like motives;’ that there is nothing ‘high-flown’ about
it; that it aims to persuade sensible men of this world, on sufficient
reasons of sound prudence, to sacrifice the present world in order to
gain the invisible one; that, whatever sentimentalists may assert, it
is reward which incites to achievement, and fear that restrains from
misdoing. Sermons are written in consecrated paragraphs, each of which is
sufficient to itself, and the connection between which is not intended
to be precisely adjusted; each has an edifying tendency, and the writer
and the hearer wish for no more. Otherwise it would not be possible, as
it often is, to hear religion commended in the same discourse at one time
as self-sacrificing, and at another as prudential; to have a eulogium on
disinterestedness in the exordium, and an appeal to selfishness at the
conclusion. A mode of composition which less disguised the true ideas
of the composer, would show that many divines really believe a desire
for a long pleasure in heaven, to be not only more longsighted and
sensible, but intrinsically higher, nobler, and better than a desire
for a short happiness on earth. Yet, when stated in short sentences and
plain English, the idea is palpably absurd. The ‘wish to come into a good
thing’ is of the same ethical order, whether the good thing be celestial
or be terrestrial, be distantly future, or be close at hand.
A second mode of solving the difficulty, though more ingenious, and in
every way far better, is erroneous also. It is said, ‘men generally
act from mixed motives, and they do so in this case. They are partly
disinterested, and partly not disinterested. They are desirous of doing
good because it is good, and they are desirous also of having the reward
of goodness hereafter. They wish at the very same time to benefit their
neighbour in this world, and also to benefit themselves in the world
to come.’ The reply is ingenious, but it overlooks the point of the
difficulty; it mistakes the nature of mixed motives. The constitution
of man is such that if you strengthen one of two co-operating motives,
you weaken, other things being equal, the force of the other: the lesser
impulse tends always to be absorbed in the stronger, and it may pass
entirely out of thought if the stronger is strengthened, if the greater
become more prominent. We see this in common life; it is undoubtedly
possible for a statesman to act at the same moment both from the love
of office and from the love of his country; from a wish to prolong
his power and a wish to benefit his nation. But strengthen one of
these motives, and, _cæteris paribus_, you weaken the other. Make the
statesman love office more, you thereby make him love his country less;
he will be readier to sacrifice what he will call a ‘vague theory and
an impracticable purpose’ for the sake of the power which he loves;
he will cease to care to do what he ought, from a wish to retain the
capacity of doing something. Or, suppose a further case: there have
been many times and countries where the loss of office was equivalent
to the loss of liberty, perhaps to that of life. In one age of English
history, one great historian says, ‘There was but a single step from the
throne to the scaffold.’ In another age, another great historian says,
‘It was as dangerous to be leader of opposition as to be a highwayman.’
The possessors of power in those times, upon principle, destroyed or
endeavoured to destroy their predecessors. Such a prospect would induce
a statesman to love office for its own sake. It would absorb the whole
of his attention; he could hardly be asked to think of his country.
Extraordinary men would do so, but ordinary men would be overwhelmed
by the ‘violent motive’ of personal fear; they would only be thinking
of themselves even when they were doing what in truth and fact was
beneficial to their country.
The case is similar to the ‘violent motive,’ as Paley calls it, of
religion, when presented in the same manner in which Paley presents it.
If you could extend before men the awful vision of everlasting perdition,
if they could see it as they see the things of earth—as they see Fleet
Street and St. Paul’s; if you could show men likewise the inciting vision
of an everlasting heaven, if they could see that too with undeniable
certainty and invincible distinctness,—who could say that they would have
a thought for any other motive? The personal incentive to good action,
and the personal dissuasion from bad action, would absorb all other
considerations, whether deterrent or persuasive. We could no more break
a divine law than we could commit a murder in the open street. The fact
that men act from mixed motives is no explanation of the great difficulty
with which we started; for the precise peculiarity of that difficulty is
to raise one of those mixed motives to an intensity which seems likely to
absorb, extinguish, and annihilate the other.
The true explanation is precisely the reverse. The moral part of
religion—the belief in a moral state hereafter, dependent for its nature
on our goodness or our wickedness, the belief in a moral Providence, who
apportions good to good, and evil to evil—does not annihilate the sense
of the inherent nature of good and evil because it is itself the result
of that sense. Our only ground for accepting an ethical and retributive
religion is the inward consciousness that virtue being virtue must
prosper, that vice being vice must fail. From these axioms we infer,
not logically, but practically, that there is a continuous eternity, in
which what we expect will be seen, that there is a Providence who will
apportion what is good, and punish what is evil. Of the mode in which
we do so we will speak presently more at length; but granting that this
description of our religion is true, it undeniably solves our difficulty.
Our religion cannot by possibility swallow up morality because it is
dependent for its origin—for its continuance—on that morality.
Suppose a person, say in a prison, to have no knowledge by the senses
that there was such a thing as human law; suppose that he never saw
either the judicial or the executive authorities, and that no one ever
told him of their existence; suppose that by a consciousness of the
inherent nature of good and evil, the fact that such an institution
_must_ exist should dawn upon his mind,—of course it would not, but
imagine that it should,—it is absurd to suppose that he would feel his
power of doing what is right _because_ it is right diminished. When
he goes out into the world, when he hears his judge, when he sees the
policeman, when he surveys the intrusive, the incessant, the pervading
moral apparatus of human society,—_then_ he would be able to disregard
and to forget what is due to intrinsic goodness and what is to be feared
from intrinsic evil. No one will or can say that he now abstains from
stealing oranges under a policeman’s eyes from any motive, good or bad,
save fear of the policeman; that motive is so evident, so pressing, so
irresistible, that it becomes the only motive. But if he only thought the
policeman _must_ exist because he believed stealing oranges to be wrong,
he would feel it quite possible to abstain from stealing oranges out of
pure and unselfish considerations.
Assume that a person only knows a particular fact from a certain
informant, and suppose that on a sudden he doubts that informant, of
course his confidence in the communicated fact ceases, or is diminished.
So, _if_ all our knowledge of the religious part of morality be derived
from the intrinsic impression of morality, as soon as we question the
accuracy of the informant, that instant we must be dubious of the
information. The derivative cannot be stronger than the original; cannot
overpower it; must grow when it grows, and wane when it wanes.
But is our knowledge of the moral part of religion thus derivative and
dependent? Two classes of disputants will deny it entirely: one class
will say they derive their knowledge from Natural Theology; another
will say they derive it from Revelation; and until the arguments of
both classes are examined, the subject must remain in partial darkness.
Natural theology is the simplest of theologies; it contains only a single
argument, and establishes but one conclusion. Observing persons have
gone to and fro through the earth, and they have accumulated a million
illustrations of a single analogy. They have accumulated indications
of design from all parts of the universe. They have not, indeed, shown
that _matter_ was created; the substance of matter, if there be a
substance, shows no structure, no evidence of design: according to all
common belief, according to the admission of such scientific men as
admit its existence, that matter is unorganised. By its nature it is a
raw material; it is that to which manufacture, manipulation, design—call
it what you like—is to be applied; necessarily therefore it shows no
indication of design itself. The reasoners from the workmanship of man
to that of God must always fail in this: man only adapts what he finds:
God creates what He uses. But within its legitimate limits the argument
from design has been most effectual for two thousand years. On a certain
class of purely intellectual minds, who think more than they live, who
reason more than they imagine, it has produced the strongest and most
vivid conception of God which, with their experience and their mental
limitation, they are capable of receiving. It has shown that _out of the
causes we know_, none is so likely to have worked up the substance of
matter into its present form as a designing and powerful mind. _Subject
to this assumption_, it shows that this mind intended to erect that
mixed, composite, involved human society which we see. These theologians
prove, for example, that man has a structure of body which enables him to
be what he is, which prevents his being in appearance, and in most real
particularities, different from what he is. They show that the physical
world is constructed so as to enable man to be what he is, and to show
what he is, so as to limit his power of being greatly different, or of
seeming so. They show, in fact, that, if the expression be allowed, we
live, as far as _they_ can tell us, in a factory, the builder of which
projected certain results, contrived certain large plans, devised certain
particular machines, foresaw certain functions, which he meant for us,
which he made our interest, which he gave us wages to perform. They show
not, indeed, that an omnipotent Being created the universe, but that an
able being has been (so to say) about it. They do not demonstrate that an
infinite Being created all things, but they _do_ show, and show so that
the mass of ordinary men will comprehend and believe it, that a large
mind has been concerned in manufacturing most things.
But these results do not constitute the interior essence; scarcely,
indeed, begin the exterior outwork of a substantial religion. They touch
neither that part of it which moves men’s hearts, nor that part which
occasions our primary difficulty. They do not show us an eternal state
of man hereafter, in which the anomalies of this world may be rectified
and recompensed; they do not show us an infinite Perfection, distributing
just reward with an omniscient accuracy, according to a perfect law.
It is not, indeed, to be expected that natural philosophy should prove
the immortality of man, since it does not prove the immortality of God.
It shows that an artful and able designer has been concerned in the
construction of the strange existing world; but may it not have been
the last work of the great artist? There is nothing in contriving skill
to evince immortality; nothing to prove that the ‘great artificer’ has
always been or is always going to be. Of his moral views we collect from
natural theology as much as this. There are certain laws of the physical
universe which cannot be broken without pain, which avenge themselves
on those who overlook, neglect, or violate them. These were presumedly
designed (according to the moral assumption of natural theology) for the
end which they effect; they were doubtless meant to accomplish that which
they conspicuously do. On a disregard of such laws, natural theology
shows that the Providence of which it speaks has imposed a penalty; the
_contriving_ God (so to speak, for it is necessary to speak plainly) is
opposed to recklessness. He does not wish His devices to be impaired
or His plans neglected. Every animal has in natural theology, if not a
mission, at least a function. There are certain results which a polyp
must produce or die; certain others which a horse must effect, or it
will be first in pain and then die too; certain other and more complex
results which man must produce, or he also will suffer and perish.
But recklessness is only a single form of vice: a watchful, heedful
selfishness is another form. For the latter, there is no indication
in natural theology of any divine disapprobation, or of any impending
penalty. A heedful being contriving for himself, living in the framework
of, adjusting himself with nice discernment and careful discretion to,
the laws of the visible world, incurs no censure from the theology
of design. On the contrary, he could justly say he had done what was
required of him. He had studiously observed, he could say, the rules of
the factory in which he lived; he had finished his own work; he had not
hindered any others from accomplishing theirs; he had complied with the
arrangements of the establishment: natural theology seems to require no
more. Self-absorbed foresight and contriving discretion may not be great
virtues according to a high morality, or according to a true religion;
but they are profitable in the visible world. They are the virtues of
men skilful in what they see. Accordingly, they suit a theology which is
exclusively based upon an analysis of the visible world, which computes
physical profits and sensible results, which aims to show that Providence
is prudent, that God is wise in His generation.
Natural theology, therefore, contains nothing to disturb the explanation
we have given of our original difficulty. The most cursory examination
of it would show as much. We have only to open the well-known volumes
in which the munificence of a former generation has embalmed the most
striking arguments of a theology which that generation valued at more
than it is worth. We find there pictures of a bat’s wing, of the human
hand, of a calf’s eye; and we are told how ingenious, how clever, so to
say,—for it is the true word—these contrivances are. But no one could
learn, or expect to learn, from a calf’s eye, that the Creator is pure,
just, merciful; that He is eternal or omnipotent; that he rewards good,
and punishes evil. Throughout all the physical world He sends rain upon
the just and the unjust; and no refined analysis of that world will
detect in it a preference of the former to the latter. As it is with the
moral holiness of God, so it is with the immortality of man: no one could
expect to discover by a minute inspection of the perishable body, what
was the fate of the imperceptible soul. Physical science may examine the
structure of the brain, but it cannot foresee the fortunes of the mind.
What, then, of Revelation? Does this informant disturb the solution of
our problem? The change from the world of natural theology to that of
any revelation is most striking. The most impressive characteristic of
natural theology is its bareness. It accumulates facts and proves little;
it has voluminous evidences and a short creed. Accordingly, the reason
why it does not disturb our philosophy is that its communications are
insufficient. It does not impart to us _such_ a knowledge of a divine
rewarder and punisher, of future human punishment and future human
reward, as would render it impossible to be disinterested and hardly
possible not to be foreseeing and selfish, because it communicates _no_
knowledge on the subject. It does not teach the divine characteristic
which involves the difficulty; it does not tell, either, that part of
man’s future fate which involves it likewise. With revelation it is
far otherwise. That informant is precise, full, and clear. It tells us
plainly what God is; it warns us what may happen, and easily happen, to
ourselves. We learn from it that God is the divine ruler; we learn from
it that we are punishable creatures, whose fate depends on ourselves. The
observations which have been justly made on natural theology are here
entirely inapplicable. We have passed from a _vacuum_ into a _plenum_.
The real reason why revealed religion does not invalidate our
pre-existing moral nature, is because it is itself dependent on that
nature. When we examine the evidence for revelation we alight at once on
a great and fundamental postulate; we assume that God is veracious; we
are so familiar with this great truth, that we hardly think of it save
as an axiom; both the readers of the treatises on the evidences and the
writers of them pass rapidly and easily over it. But, putting aside for a
moment the evidence of our inner consciousness, and regarding the subject
with the pure intellect and bare eyes, the assumption is an audacious
one. How do we know that it is true? We have proved by natural theology
that a designing Being, of great power, considerable age, ingenious
habits, and benevolent motives, somewhere exists; but how do we know
that Being to be ‘veracious’? We see that among human beings, the class
of intellectual beings of whom we know most, and whom we can observe
best, veracity is a rare virtue. We know that some nations seem wholly
destitute of it, and that one sex in all countries is deficient in it.
We know that a human being may have great power, and not tell the truth;
ingenious habits, and not tell the truth; kind intentions, and not tell
the truth. Why may not a superhuman Being be constituted in the same way,
possess a character similarly mixed, be remarkable not only for morals
similar to man’s, but also for defects analogous to his? Our inner nature
revolts at the supposition; but we are not now concerned with our inner
nature; we have, for the sake of distinctness, abstracted and left it
on one side. We are dealing now not with the evidence of the heart, but
with the evidence of the eyes; we are discussing not what really is, but
what would seem to be—what is all we could know to be, if we had only
five senses and a reasoning understanding. From these informants, how
could we know enough of the ingenious unknown Being, who is so useful
in the world, as to be confident He would tell us the truth in every
case? How could we presume to guess His unexperienced speech, His latent
motives, His imperceptible character? Our knowledge of the moral part of
the Divine character, of His veracity,—as well as of His justice,—comes
from our own moral nature. We feel that God is holy, just as we feel
that holiness _is_ holiness; just as we know by internal consciousness
that goodness is good in itself, and by itself; just as we know that God
in Himself is pure and holy. We feel that God is true, for veracity is
a part of holiness and a condition of purity. But if we did not think
holiness to be excellent in itself, if we did not feel it to be a motive
unaffected by consequences and independent of calculation, our belief in
the Divine holiness would fade away, and with it would fade our belief in
the Divine veracity also.
Revelation, therefore, cannot undermine the very principle upon which it
is itself dependent. Our notion of the character of God being revealed
to us by our moral nature, cannot impair or weaken the conclusion of
that nature. This is the meaning of the profound saying of Coleridge,
that ‘_all_ religion is revealed.’ He meant that all knowledge of God’s
character which is worth naming or regarding, which excites any portion
of the religious sentiment, which excites our love, our awe, or our fear,
is communicated to us by our internal nature, by that spirit within us
which is open to a higher world, by that spirit which is in some sense
God’s Spirit. True religion of this sort does not impair the moral spirit
which revealed it; it does not dare do so, for it knows that spirit to be
its only evidence.
But all religion is not true. A superstitious mind permits a certain
aspect of God’s character, say its justice, to obtain an exclusive hold
on it, to tyrannise over it, to absorb it. The soul becomes bound down by
the weight of its own revelation. Conscience is overshadowed, weakened,
and almost destroyed by the very idea which it originally suggested,
and of which it is really the only reliable informant. Such minds are
incapable of true virtue. The essential opposition which is alleged to
exist between morality and _all_ religion does exist between morality and
_their_ religion. They have a selfish fear of the future, which destroys
their disinterestedness, and almost destroys their manhood.