Chapter X. Inference And Assent In The Matter Of Religion.

And now I have completed my review of the second subject to which I

have given my attention in this Essay, the connexion existing between

the intellectual acts of Assent and Inference, my first being the

connexion of Assent with Apprehension; and as I closed my remarks

upon Assent and Apprehension by applying the conclusions at which I

had arrived to our belief in the Truths of Religion, so now I ought

to speak of its Evidences, before quitting the consideration of the

dependence of Assent upon Inference. I shall attempt to do so in this

Chapter, not without much anxiety, lest I should injure so large,

momentous, and sacred a subject by a necessarily cursory treatment.

I begin with expressing a sentiment, which is habitually in my

thoughts, whenever they are turned to the subject of mental or moral

science, and which I am as willing to apply here to the Evidences of

Religion as it properly applies to Metaphysics or Ethics, viz. that

in these provinces of inquiry egotism is true modesty. In religious

inquiry each of us can speak only for himself, and for himself he has

a right to speak. His own experiences are enough for himself, but

he cannot speak for others: he cannot lay down the law; he can only

bring his own experiences to the common stock of psychological facts.

He knows what has satisfied and satisfies himself; if it satisfies

him, it is likely to satisfy others; if, as he believes and is sure,

it is true, it will approve itself to others also, for there is but

one truth. And doubtless he does find in fact, that, allowing for the

difference of minds and of modes of speech, what convinces him, does

convince others also. There will be very many exceptions, but these

will admit of explanation. Great numbers of men refuse to inquire at

all; they put the subject of religion aside altogether; others are

not serious enough to care about questions of truth and duty and to

entertain them; and to numbers, from their temper of mind, or the

absence of doubt, or a dormant intellect, it does not occur to inquire

why or what they believe; many, though they tried, could not do so in

any satisfactory way. This being the case, it causes no uneasiness to

any one who honestly attempts to set down his own view of the Evidences

of Religion, that at first sight he seems to be but one among many

who are all in opposition to each other. But, however that may be, he

brings together his reasons, and relies on them, because they are his

own, and this is his primary evidence; and he has a second ground of

evidence, in the testimony of those who agree with him. But his best

evidence is the former, which is derived from his own thoughts; and it

is that which the world has a right to demand of him; and therefore

his true sobriety and modesty consists, not in claiming for his

conclusions an acceptance or a scientific approval which is not to be

found anywhere, but in stating what are personally his own grounds for

his belief in Natural and Revealed Religion,—grounds which he holds to

be so sufficient, that he thinks that others do hold them implicitly

or in substance, or would hold them, if they inquired fairly, or will

hold if they listen to him, or do not hold from impediments, invincible

or not as it may be, into which he has no call to inquire. However,

his own business is to speak for himself. He uses the words of the

Samaritans to their countrywoman, when our Lord had remained with them

for two days, “Now we believe, not for thy saying, for we have heard

Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.”

In these words it is declared both that the Gospel Revelation is

divine, and that it carries with it the evidence of its divinity; and

this is of course the matter of fact. However, these two attributes

need not have been united; a revelation might have been really

given, yet given without credentials. Our Supreme Master might have

imparted to us truths which nature cannot teach us, without telling

us that He had imparted them, as is actually the case now, as regards

heathen countries, into which portions of revealed truth overflow

and penetrate, without their populations knowing whence those truths

came. But the very idea of Christianity in its profession and history,

is something more than this; it is a “Revelatio revelata;” it is a

definite message from God to man distinctly conveyed by His chosen

instruments, and to be received as such a message; and therefore to

be positively acknowledged, embraced, and maintained as true, on the

ground of its being divine, not as true on intrinsic grounds, not as

probably true, or partially true, but as absolutely certain knowledge,

certain in a sense in which nothing else can be certain, because it

comes from Him who neither can deceive nor be deceived.

And the whole tenor of Scripture from beginning to end is to this

effect: the matter of revelation is not a mere collection of truths,

not a philosophical view, not a religious sentiment or spirit, not

a special morality,—poured out upon mankind as a stream might pour

itself into the sea, mixing with the world’s thought, modifying,

purifying, invigorating it;—but an authoritative teaching, which bears

witness to itself and keeps itself together as one, in contrast to the

assemblage of opinions on all sides of it, and speaks to all men, as

being ever and everywhere one and the same, and claiming to be received

intelligently, by all whom it addresses, as one doctrine, discipline,

and devotion directly given from above. In consequence, the exhibition

of credentials, that is, of evidence, that it is what it professes to

be, is essential to Christianity, as it comes to us; for we are not

left at liberty to pick and choose out of its contents according to

our judgment, but must receive it all, as we find it, if we accept it

at all. It is a religion in addition to the religion of nature; and as

nature has an intrinsic claim upon us to be obeyed and used, so what is

over and above nature, or supernatural, must also bring with it valid

testimonials of its right to demand our homage.

Next, as to its relation to nature. As I have said, Christianity is

simply an addition to it; it does not supersede or contradict it; it

recognizes and depends on it, and that of necessity: for how possibly

can it prove its claims except by an appeal to what men have already?

be it ever so miraculous, it cannot dispense with nature; this would

be to cut the ground from under it; for what would be the worth of

evidences in favour of a revelation which denied the authority of that

system of thought, and those courses of reasoning, out of which those

evidences necessarily grew?

And in agreement with this obvious conclusion we find in Scripture our

Lord and His Apostles always treating Christianity as the completion

and supplement of Natural Religion, and of previous revelations; as

when He says that the Father testified of Him; that not to know Him

was not to know the Father; and as St. Paul at Athens appeals to the

“Unknown God,” and says that “He that made the world” “now declareth

to all men to do penance, because He hath appointed a day to judge

the world by the man whom He hath appointed.” As then our Lord and

His Apostles appeal to the God of nature, we must follow them in that

appeal; and, to do this with the better effect, we must first inquire

into the chief doctrines and the grounds of Natural Religion.

§ 1. Natural Religion.

By Religion I mean the knowledge of God, of His Will, and of our duties

towards Him; and there are three main channels which Nature furnishes

for our acquiring this knowledge, viz. our own minds, the voice of

mankind, and the course of the world, that is, of human life and human

affairs. The informations which these three convey to us teach us the

Being and Attributes of God, our responsibility to Him, our dependence

on Him, our prospect of reward or punishment, to be somehow brought

about, according as we obey or disobey Him. And the most authoritative

of these three means of knowledge, as being specially our own, is

our own mind, whose informations give us the rule by which we test,

interpret, and correct what is presented to us for belief, whether by

the universal testimony of mankind, or by the history of society and of

the world.

Our great internal teacher of religion is, as I have said in an earlier

part of this Essay, our Conscience.(34) Conscience is a personal guide,

and I use it because I must use myself; I am as little able to think

by any mind but my own as to breathe with another’s lungs. Conscience

is nearer to me than any other means of knowledge. And as it is given

to me, so also is it given to others; and being carried about by every

individual in his own breast, and requiring nothing besides itself,

it is thus adapted for the communication to each separately of that

knowledge which is most momentous to him individually,—adapted for the

use of all classes and conditions of men, for high and low, young and

old, men and women, independently of books, of educated reasoning, of

physical knowledge, or of philosophy. Conscience, too, teaches us,

not only that God is, but what He is; it provides for the mind a real

image of Him, as a medium of worship; it gives us a rule of right and

wrong, as being His rule, and a code of moral duties. Moreover, it is

so constituted that, if obeyed, it becomes clearer in its injunctions,

and wider in their range, and corrects and completes the accidental

feebleness of its initial teachings. Conscience, then, considered as

our guide, is fully furnished for its office. I say all this without

entering into the question how far external assistances are in all

cases necessary to the action of the mind, because in fact man does not

live in isolation, but is everywhere found as a member of society. I am

not concerned here with abstract questions.

Now Conscience suggests to us many things about that Master, whom

by means of it we perceive, but its most prominent teaching, and

its cardinal and distinguishing truth, is that He is our Judge.

In consequence, the special Attribute under which it brings Him

before us, to which it subordinates all other Attributes, is that of

justice—retributive justice. We learn from its informations to conceive

of the Almighty, primarily, not as a God of Wisdom, of Knowledge, of

Power, of Benevolence, but as a God of Judgment and Justice; as One,

who not simply for the good of the offender, but as an end good in

itself, and as a principle of government, ordains that the offender

should suffer for his offence. If it tells us anything at all of the

characteristics of the Divine Mind, it certainly tells us this; and,

considering that our shortcomings are far more frequent and important

than our fulfilment of the duties enjoined upon us, and that of this

point we are fully aware ourselves, it follows that the aspect under

which Almighty God is presented to us by Nature, is (to use a figure)

of One who is angry with us, and threatens evil. Hence its effect is

to burden and sadden the religious mind, and is in contrast with the

enjoyment derivable from the exercise of the affections, and from

the perception of beauty, whether in the material universe or in the

creations of the intellect. This is that fearful antagonism brought

out with such soul-piercing reality by Lucretius, when he speaks so

dishonourably of what he considers the heavy yoke of religion, and the

“æternas pœnas in morte timendum;” and, on the other hand, rejoices in

his “Alma Venus,” “quæ rerum naturam sola gubernas.” And we may appeal

to him for the fact, while we repudiate his view of it.

Such being the _primâ facie_ aspect of religion which the teachings

of Conscience bring before us individually, in the next place let us

consider what are the doctrines, and what the influences of religion,

as we find it embodied in those various rites and devotions which

have taken root in the many races of mankind, since the beginning

of history, and before history, all over the earth. Of these also

Lucretius gives us a specimen; and they accord in form and complexion

with that doctrine about duty and responsibility, which he so bitterly

hates and loathes. It is scarcely necessary to insist, that wherever

Religion exists in a popular shape, it has almost invariably worn its

dark side outwards. It is founded in one way or other on the sense of

sin; and without that vivid sense it would hardly have any precepts

or any observances. Its many varieties all proclaim or imply that

man is in a degraded, servile condition, and requires expiation,

reconciliation, and some great change of nature. This is suggested

to us in the many ways in which we are told of a realm of light and

a realm of darkness, of an elect fold and a regenerate state. It is

suggested in the almost ubiquitous and ever-recurring institution of

a Priesthood; for wherever there is a priest, there is the notion of

sin, pollution, and retribution, as, on the other hand, of intercession

and mediation. Also, still more directly, is the notion of our guilt

impressed upon us by the doctrine of future punishment, and that

eternal, which is found in mythologies and creeds of such various

parentage.

Of these distinct rites and doctrines embodying the severe side of

Natural Religion, the most remarkable is that of atonement, that is, “a

substitution of something offered, or some personal suffering, for a

penalty which would otherwise be exacted;” most remarkable, I say, both

from its close connexion with the notion of vicarious satisfaction,

and, on the other hand, from its universality. “The practice of

atonement,” says the author, whose definition of the word I have just

given, “is remarkable for its antiquity and universality, proved by the

earliest records that have come down to us of all nations, and by the

testimony of ancient and modern travellers. In the oldest books of the

Hebrew Scriptures, we have numerous instances of expiatory rites, where

atonement is the prominent feature. At the earliest date, to which

we can carry our inquiries by means of the heathen records, we meet

with the same notion of atonement. If we pursue our inquiries through

the accounts left us by the Greek and Roman writers of the barbarous

nations with which they were acquainted, from India to Britain, we

shall find the same notions and similar practices of atonement. From

the most popular portion of our own literature, our narratives of

voyages and travels, every one, probably, who reads at all will be

able to find for himself abundant proof that the notion has been as

permanent as it is universal. It shows itself among the various tribes

of Africa, the islanders of the South Seas, and even that most peculiar

race, the natives of Australia, either in the shape of some offering,

or some mutilation of the person.(35)”

These ceremonial acknowledgments, in so many distinct forms of worship,

of the existing degradation of the human race, of course imply a

brighter, as well as a threatening aspect of Natural Religion; for why

should men adopt any rites of deprecation or of purification at all,

unless they had some hope of attaining to a better condition than their

present? Of this happier side of religion I will speak presently; here,

however, a question of another kind occurs, viz. whether the notion of

atonement can be admitted among the doctrines of Natural Religion,—I

mean, on the ground that it is inconsistent with those teachings of

Conscience, which I have recognized above, as the rule and corrective

of every other information on the subject. If there is any truth

brought home to us by conscience, it is this, that we are personally

responsible for what we do, that we have no means of shifting our

responsibility, and that dereliction of duty involves punishment; how,

it may be asked, can acts of ours of any kind—how can even amendment of

life—undo the past? And if even our own subsequent acts of obedience

bring with them no promise of reversing what has once been committed,

how can external rites, or the actions of another (as of a priest),

be substitutes for that punishment which is the connatural fruit and

intrinsic development of violation of the sense of duty? I think this

objection avails as far as this, that amendment is no reparation, and

that no ceremonies or penances can in themselves exercise any vicarious

virtue in our behalf; and that, if they avail, they only avail in the

intermediate season of probation; that in some way we must make them

our own; and that, when the time comes, which conscience forebodes, of

our being called to judgment, then, at least, we shall have to stand in

and by ourselves, whatever we shall have by that time become, and must

bear our own burden. But it is plain that in this final account, as it

lies between us and our Master, He alone can decide how the past and

the present will stand together who is our Creator and our Judge.

In thus making it a necessary point to adjust the religions of the

world with the intimations of our conscience, I am suggesting the

reason why I confine myself to such religions as have had their rise in

barbarous times, and do not recognize the religion of what is called

civilization, as having legitimately a part in the delineation of

Natural Religion. It may at first sight seem strange, that, considering

I have laid such stress upon the progressive nature of man, I should

take my ideas of his religion from his initial, and not his final

testimony about its doctrines; and it may be urged that the religion

of civilized times is quite opposite in character to the rites and

traditions of barbarians, and has nothing of that gloom and sternness,

on which I have insisted as their characteristic. Thus the Greek

Mythology was for the most part cheerful and graceful, and the new

gods certainly more genial and indulgent than the old ones. And, in

like manner, the religion of philosophy is more noble and more humane

than those primitive conceptions which were sufficient for early kings

and warriors. But my answer to this objection is obvious: the progress

of which man’s nature is capable is a development, not a destruction

of its original state; it must subserve the elements from which it

proceeds, in order to be a true development and not a perversion.(36)

And it does in fact subserve and complete that nature with which man

is born. It is otherwise with the religion of so-called civilization;

such religion does but contradict the religion of barbarism; and since

this civilization itself is not a development of man’s whole nature,

but mainly of the intellect, recognizing indeed the moral sense, but

ignoring the conscience, no wonder that the religion in which it

issues has no sympathy either with the hopes and fears of the awakened

soul, or with those frightful presentiments which are expressed in the

worship and traditions of the heathen. This artificial religion, then,

has no place in the inquiry; first, because it comes of a one-sided

progress of mind, and next, for the very reason that it contradicts

informants which speak with greater authority than itself.

Now we come to the third natural informant on the subject of Religion;

I mean the system and the course of the world. This established order

of things, in which we find ourselves, if it has a Creator, must

surely speak of His will in its broad outlines and its main issues.

This principle being laid down as certain, when we come to apply it

to things as they are, our first feeling is one of surprise and (I

may say) of dismay, that His control of the world is so indirect, and

His action so obscure. This is the first lesson that we gain from the

course of human affairs. What strikes the mind so forcibly and so

painfully is, His absence (if I may so speak) from His own world.(37)

It is a silence that speaks. It is as if others had got possession of

His work. Why does not He, our Maker and Ruler, give us some immediate

knowledge of Himself? Why does He not write His Moral Nature in large

letters upon the face of history, and bring the blind, tumultuous rush

of its events into a celestial, hierarchical order? Why does He not

grant us in the structure of society at least so much of a revelation

of Himself as the religions of the heathen attempt to supply? Why

from the beginning of time has no one uniform steady light guided all

families of the earth, and all individual men, how to please Him? Why

is it possible without absurdity to deny His will, His attributes,

His existence? Why does He not walk with us one by one, as He is said

to have walked with His chosen men of old time? We both see and know

each other; why, if we cannot have the sight of Him, have we not at

least the knowledge? On the contrary, He is specially “a Hidden God;”

and with our best efforts we can only glean from the surface of the

world some faint and fragmentary views of Him. I see only a choice of

alternatives in explanation of so critical a fact:—either there is no

Creator, or He has disowned His creatures. Are then the dim shadows

of His Presence in the affairs of men but a fancy of our own, or, on

the other hand, has He hid His face and the light of His countenance,

because we have in some special way dishonoured Him? My true informant,

my burdened conscience, gives me at once the true answer to each of

these antagonist questions:—it pronounces without any misgiving that

God exists:—and it pronounces quite as surely that I am alienated from

Him; that “His Hand is not shortened, but that our iniquities have

divided between us and our God.” Thus it solves the world’s mystery,

and sees in that mystery only a confirmation of its own original

teaching.

Let us pass on to another great fact of experience, bearing on

Religion, which confirms this testimony both of conscience and of the

forms of worship which prevail among mankind;—I mean, the amount of

suffering, bodily and mental, which is our portion in this life. Not

only is the Creator far off, but some being of malignant nature seems,

as I have said, to have got hold of us, and to be making us his sport.

Let us say there are a thousand millions of men on the earth at this

time; who can weigh and measure the aggregate of pain which this one

generation has endured and will endure from birth to death? Then add to

this all the pain which has fallen and will fall upon our race through

centuries past and to come. Is there not then some great gulf fixed

between us and the good God? Here again the testimony of the system of

nature is more than corroborated by those popular traditions about the

unseen state, which are found in mythologies and superstitions, ancient

and modern; for those traditions speak, not only of present misery, but

of pain and evil hereafter, and even without end. But this dreadful

addition is not necessary for the conclusion which I am here wishing to

draw. The real mystery is, not that evil should never have an end, but

that it should ever have had a beginning. Even a universal restitution

could not undo what had been, or account for evil being the necessary

condition of good. How are we to explain it, the existence of God being

taken for granted, except by saying that another will, besides His, has

had a part in the disposition of His work, that there is an intractable

quarrel, a chronic alienation, between God and man?

I have implied that the laws on which this world is governed do not

go so far as to prove that evil will never die out of the creation;

nevertheless, they look in that direction. No experience indeed of

life can assure us about the future, but it can and does give us means

of conjecturing what is likely to be; and those conjectures coincide

with our natural forebodings. Experience enables us to ascertain the

moral constitution of man, and thereby to presage his future from

his present. It teaches us, first, that he is not sufficient for

his own happiness, but is dependent upon the sensible objects which

surround him, and that these he cannot take with him when he leaves

the world; secondly, that disobedience to his sense of right is even

by itself misery, and that he carries that misery about him, wherever

he is, though no divine retribution followed upon it; and thirdly,

that he cannot change his nature and his habits by wishing, but is

simply himself, and will ever be himself and what he now is, wherever

he is, as long as he continues to be,—or at least that pain has no

natural tendency to make him other than he is, and that the longer he

lives, the more difficult he is to change. How can we meet these not

irrational anticipations, except by shutting our eyes, turning away

from them, and saying that we have no call, no right, to think of them

at present, or to make ourselves miserable about what is not certain,

and may be not true?(38)

Such is the severe aspect of Natural Religion: also it is the most

prominent aspect, because the multitude of men follow their own likings

and wills, and not the decisions of their sense of right and wrong.

To them Religion is a mere yoke, as Lucretius describes it; not a

satisfaction or refuge, but a terror and a superstition. However, I

must not for an instant be supposed to mean, that this is its only, its

chief, or its legitimate aspect. All Religion, so far as it is genuine,

is a blessing, Natural as well as Revealed. I have insisted on its

severe aspect in the first place, because, from the circumstances of

human nature, though not by the fault of Religion, such is the shape

in which we first encounter it. Its large and deep foundation is the

sense of sin and guilt, and without this sense there is for man, as he

is, no genuine religion. Otherwise, it is but counterfeit and hollow;

and that is the reason why this so-called religion of civilization

and philosophy is so great a mockery. However, true as this judgment

is which I pass on philosophical religion, and troubled as are the

existing relations between God and man, as both the voice of mankind

and the facts of Divine Government testify, equally true are other

general laws which govern those relations, and they speak another

language, and compensate for what is stern in the teaching of nature,

without tending to deny that sternness.

The first of these laws, relieving the aspect of Natural Religion, is

the very fact that religious beliefs and institutions, of some kind

or other, are of such general acceptance in all times and places. Why

should men subject themselves to the tyranny which Lucretius denounces,

unless they had either experience or hope of benefits to themselves

by so doing? Though it be mere hope of benefits, that alone is a

great alleviation of the gloom and misery which their religious rites

presuppose or occasion; for thereby they have a prospect, more or less

clear, of some happier state in reserve for them, or at least the

chances of it. If they simply despaired of their fortunes, they would

not care about religion. And hope of future good, as we know, sweetens

all suffering.

Moreover, they have an earnest of that future in the real and recurring

blessings of life, the enjoyment of the gifts of the earth, and of

domestic affection and social intercourse, which is sufficient to

touch and to subdue even the most guilty of men in his better moments,

reminding him that he is not utterly cast off by Him whom nevertheless

he is not given to know. Or, in the Apostle’s words, though the Creator

once “suffered all nations to walk in their own ways,” still, “He left

not Himself without testimony, doing good from heaven, giving rains and

fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.”

Nor are these blessings of physical nature the only tokens in the

Divine System, which in that heathen time, and indeed in every

age, bring home to our experience the fact of a Good God, in spite

of the tumult and confusion of the world. It is possible to give

an interpretation to the course of things, by which every event

or occurrence in its order becomes providential: and though that

interpretation does not hold good unless the world is contemplated

from a particular point of view, in one given aspect, and with certain

inward experiences, and personal first principles and judgments,

yet these may be fairly pronounced to be common conditions of human

thought, that is, till they are wilfully or accidentally lost; and

they issue in fact, in leading the great majority of men to recognize

the Hand of unseen power, directing in mercy or in judgment the

physical and moral system. In the prominent events of the world, past

and contemporary, the fate, evil or happy, of great men, the rise and

fall of states, popular revolutions, decisive battles, the migration

of races, the replenishing of the earth, earthquakes and pestilences,

critical discoveries and inventions, the history of philosophy, the

advancement of knowledge, in these the spontaneous piety of the

human mind discerns a Divine Supervision. Nay, there is a general

feeling, originating directly in the workings of conscience, that a

similar governance is extended over the persons of individuals, who

thereby both fulfil the purposes and receive the just recompenses of

an Omnipotent Providence. Good to the good, and evil to the evil,

is instinctively felt to be, even from what we see, amid whatever

obscurity and confusion, the universal rule of God’s dealings with

us. Hence come the great proverbs, indigenous in both Christian and

heathen nations, that punishment is sure, though slow, that murder will

out, that treason never prospers, that pride will have a fall, that

honesty is the best policy, and that curses fall on the heads of those

who utter them. To the unsophisticated apprehension of the many, the

successive passages of life, social or political, are so many miracles,

if that is to be accounted miraculous which brings before them the

immediate Divine Presence; and should it be objected that this is an

illogical exercise of reason, I answer, that since it actually brings

them to a right conclusion, and was intended to bring them to it, if

logic finds fault with it, so much the worse for logic.

Again, prayer is essential to religion, and, where prayer is, there

is a natural relief and solace in all trouble, great or ordinary:

now prayer is not less general in mankind at large than is faith in

Providence. It has ever been in use, both as a personal and as a social

practice. Here again, if, in order to determine what the Religion of

Nature is, we may justly have recourse to the spontaneous acts and

proceedings of our race, as viewed on a large field, we may safely

say that prayer, as well as hope, is a constituent of man’s religion.

Nor is it a fair objection to this argument, to say that such prayers

and rites as have obtained in various places and times, are in their

character, object, and scope inconsistent with each other; because

their contrarieties do not come into the idea of religion, as such, at

all, and the very fact of their discordance destroys their right to

be taken into account, so far as they are discordant; for what is not

universal has no claim to be considered natural, right, or of divine

origin. Thus we may determine prayer to be part of Natural Religion,

from such instances of the usage as are supplied by the priests of Baal

and by dancing Dervishes, without therefore including in our notions

of prayer the frantic excesses of the one, or the artistic spinning of

the other, or sanctioning their respective objects of belief, Baal or

Mahomet.

As prayer is the voice of man to God, so Revelation is the voice of

God to man. Accordingly, it is another alleviation of the darkness

and distress which weigh upon the religions of the world, that in

one way or other such religions are founded on some idea of express

revelation, coming from the unseen agents whose anger they deprecate;

nay, that the very rites and observances, by which they hope to gain

the favour of these beings, are by these beings themselves communicated

and appointed. The Religion of Nature is not a deduction of reason,

or the joint, voluntary manifesto of a multitude meeting together and

pledging themselves to each other, as men move resolutions now for some

political or social purpose, but it is a tradition or an interposition

vouchsafed to a people from above. To such an interposition men even

ascribed their civil polity or citizenship, which did not originate

in any plebiscite, but in _dii minores_ or heroes, was inaugurated

with portents or palladia, and protected and prospered by oracles

and auguries. Here is an evidence, too, how congenial the notion of

a revelation is to the human mind, so that the expectation of it may

truly be considered an integral part of Natural Religion.

Among the observances imposed by these professed revelations, none is

more remarkable, or more general, than the rite of sacrifice, in which

guilt was removed or blessing gained by an offering, which availed

instead of the merits of the offerer. This, too, as well as the notion

of divine interpositions, may be considered almost an integral part

of the Religion of Nature, and an alleviation of its gloom. But it

does not stand by itself; I have already spoken of the doctrine of

atonement, under which it falls, and which, if what is universal is

natural, enters into the idea of religious service. And what the nature

of man suggests, the providential system of the world sanctions by

enforcing. It is the law, or the permission, given to our whole race,

to use the Apostle’s words, to “bear one another’s burdens;” and this,

as I said when on the subject of Atonement, is quite consistent with

his antithesis that “every one must bear his own burden.” The final

burden of responsibility when we are called to judgment is our own;

but among the media by which we are prepared for that judgment are the

exertions and pains taken in our behalf by others. On this vicarious

principle, by which we appropriate to ourselves what others do for

us, the whole structure of society is raised. Parents work and endure

pain, that their children may prosper; children suffer for the sin of

their parents, who have died before it bore fruit. “Delirant reges,

plectuntur Achivi.” Sometimes it is a compulsory, sometimes a willing

mediation. The punishment which is earned by the husband falls upon

the wife; the benefits in which all classes partake are wrought out by

the unhealthy or dangerous toil of the few. Soldiers endure wounds and

death for those who sit at home; and ministers of state fall victims

to their zeal for their countrymen, who do little else than criticize

their actions. And so in some measure or way this law embraces all of

us. We all suffer for each other, and gain by each other’s sufferings;

for man never stands alone here, though he will stand by himself one

day hereafter; but here he is a social being, and goes forward to his

long home as one of a large company.

Butler, it need scarcely be said, is the great master of this

doctrine, as it is brought out in the system of nature. In answer

to the objection to the Christian doctrine of satisfaction, that it

“represents God as indifferent whether He punishes the innocent or

the guilty,” he observes that “the world is a constitution or system,

whose parts have a mutual reference to each other; and that there is a

scheme of things gradually carrying on, called the course of nature,

to the carrying on of which God has appointed us, in various ways,

to contribute. And in the daily course of natural providence, it is

appointed that innocent people should suffer for the faults of the

guilty. Finally, indeed and upon the whole, every one shall receive

according to his personal deserts; but during the progress, and, for

aught we know, even in order to the completion of this moral scheme,

vicarious punishments may be fit, and absolutely necessary. We see in

what variety of ways one person’s sufferings contribute to the relief

of another; and being familiarized to it, men are not shocked with it.

So the reason of their insisting on objections against the [doctrine

of] satisfaction is, either that they do not consider God’s settled and

uniform appointments as His appointments at all; or else they forget

that vicarious punishment is a providential appointment of every day’s

experience.(39)” I will but add, that, since all human suffering is in

its last resolution the punishment of sin, and punishment implies a

Judge and a rule of justice, he who undergoes the punishment of another

in his stead may be said in a certain sense to satisfy the claims of

justice towards that other in his own person.

One concluding remark has to be made here. In all sacrifices it

was specially required that the thing offered should be something

rare, and unblemished; and in like manner in all atonements and all

satisfactions, not only was the innocent taken for the guilty, but it

was a point of special importance that the victim should be spotless,

and the more manifest that spotlessness, the more efficacious was the

sacrifice. This leads me to a last principle which I shall notice as

proper to Natural Religion, and as lightening the prophecies of evil in

which it is founded; I mean the doctrine of meritorious intercession.

The man in the Gospel did but speak for the human race everywhere, when

he said, “God heareth not sinners; but if a man be a worshipper of God,

and doth His will, him He heareth.” Hence every religion has had its

eminent devotees, exalted above the body of the people, mortified men,

brought nearer to the Source of good by austerities, self-inflictions,

and prayer, who have influence with Him, and extend a shelter and

gain blessings for those who become their clients. A belief like this

has been, of course, attended by numberless superstitions; but those

superstitions vary with times and places, and the belief itself in

the mediatorial power of the good and holy has been one and the same

everywhere. Nor is this belief an idea of past times only or of heathen

countries. It is one of the most natural visions of the young and

innocent. And all of us, the more keenly we feel our own distance from

holy persons, the more are we drawn near to them, as if forgetting that

distance, and proud of them because they are so unlike ourselves, as

being specimens of what our nature may be, and with some vague hope

that we, their relations by blood, may profit in our own persons by

their holiness.

Such, then, in outline is that system of natural beliefs and

sentiments, which, though true and divine, is still possible to us

independently of Revelation, and is the preparation for it; though

in Christians themselves it cannot really be separated from their

Christianity, and never is possessed in its higher forms in any people

without some portion of those inward aids which Christianity imparts

to us, and those endemic traditions which have their first origin in a

paradisiacal illumination.

§ 2. Revealed Religion.

In determining, as above, the main features of Natural Religion, and

distinguishing it from the religion of philosophy or civilization, I

may be accused of having taken a course of my own, for which I have no

sufficient warrant. Such an accusation does not give me much concern.

Every one who thinks on these subjects takes a course of his own,

though it will also happen to be the course which others take besides

himself. The minds of many separately bear them forward in the same

direction, and they are confirmed in it by each other. This I consider

to be my own case; if I have mis-stated or omitted notorious facts in

my account of Natural Religion, if I have contradicted or disregarded

anything which He who speaks through my conscience has told us all

directly from Heaven, then indeed I have acted unjustifiably and have

something to unsay; but, if I have done no more than view the notorious

facts of the case in the medium of my primary mental experiences, under

the aspects which they spontaneously present to me, and with the aid

of my best illative sense, I only do on one side of the question what

those who think differently do on the other. As they start with one

set of first principles, I start with another. I gave notice just now

that I should offer my own witness in the matter in question; though of

course it would not be worth while my offering it, unless what I felt

myself agreed with what is felt by hundreds and thousands besides me,

as I am sure it does, whatever be the measure, more or less, of their

explicit recognition of it.

In thus speaking of Natural Religion as in one sense a matter of

private judgment, and that with a view of proceeding from it to the

proof of Christianity, I seem to give up the intention of demonstrating

either. Certainly I do; not that I deny that demonstration is possible.

Truth certainly, as such, rests upon grounds intrinsically and

objectively and abstractedly demonstrative, but it does not follow

from this that the arguments producible in its favour are unanswerable

and irresistible. These latter epithets are relative, and bear upon

matters of fact; arguments in themselves ought to do, what perhaps in

the particular case they cannot do. The fact of revelation is in itself

demonstrably true, but it is not therefore true irresistibly; else, how

comes it to be resisted? There is a vast distance between what it is in

itself, and what it is to us. Light is a quality of matter, as truth is

of Christianity; but light is not recognized by the blind, and there

are those who do not recognize truth, from the fault, not of truth, but

of themselves. I cannot convert men, when I ask for assumptions which

they refuse to grant to me; and without assumptions no one can prove

anything about anything.

I am suspicious then of scientific demonstrations in a question of

concrete fact, in a discussion between fallible men. However, let those

demonstrate who have the gift; “unusquisque in suo sensu abundet.”

For me, it is more congenial to my own judgment to attempt to prove

Christianity in the same informal way in which I can prove for certain

that I have been born into this world, and that I shall die out of it.

It is pleasant to my own feelings to follow a theological writer, such

as Amort, who has dedicated to the great Pope, Benedict XIV., what

he calls “a new, modest, and easy way of demonstrating the Catholic

Religion.” In this work he adopts the argument merely of the _greater_

probability;(40) I prefer to rely on that of an _accumulation_ of

various probabilities; but we both hold (that is, I hold with him),

that from probabilities we may construct legitimate proof, sufficient

for certitude. I follow him in holding, that, since a Good Providence

watches over us, He blesses such means of argument as it has pleased

Him to give us, in the nature of man and of the world, if we use them

duly for those ends for which He has given them; and that, as in

mathematics we are justified by the dictate of nature in withholding

our assent from a conclusion of which we have not yet a strict logical

demonstration, so by a like dictate we are not justified, in the case

of concrete reasoning and especially of religious inquiry, in waiting

till such logical demonstration is ours, but on the contrary are bound

in conscience to seek truth and to look for certainty by modes of

proof, which, when reduced to the shape of formal propositions, fail to

satisfy the severe requisitions of science.(41)

Here then at once is one momentous doctrine or principle, which enters

into my own reasoning, and which another ignores, viz. the providence

and intention of God; and of course there are other principles,

explicit or implicit, which are in like circumstances. It is not

wonderful then, that, while I can prove Christianity divine to my

own satisfaction, I shall not be able to force it upon any one else.

Multitudes indeed I ought to succeed in persuading of its truth without

any force at all, because they and I start from the same principles,

and what is a proof to me is a proof to them; but if any one starts

from any other principles but ours, I have not the power to change his

principles or the conclusion which he draws from them, any more than

I can make a crooked man straight. Whether his mind will ever grow

straight, whether I can do anything towards its becoming straight,

whether he is not responsible, responsible to his Maker, for being

mentally crooked, is another matter; still the fact remains, that, in

any inquiry about things in the concrete, men differ from each other,

not so much in the soundness of their reasoning as in the principles

which govern its exercise, that those principles are of a personal

character, that where there is no common measure of minds, there is

no common measure of arguments, and that the validity of proof is

determined, not by any scientific test, but by the illative sense.

Accordingly, instead of saying that the truths of Revelation depend

on those of Natural Religion, it is more pertinent to say that belief

in revealed truths depends on belief in natural. Belief is a state

of mind; belief generates belief; states of mind correspond to each

other; the habits of thought and the reasonings which lead us on to a

higher state of belief than our present, are the very same which we

already possess in connexion with the lower state. Those Jews became

Christians in Apostolic times who were already what may be called

crypto-Christians; and those Christians in this day remain Christian

only in name, and (if it so happen) at length fall away, who are

nothing deeper or better than men of the world, _savants_, literary

men, or politicians.

That a special preparation of mind is required for each separate

department of inquiry and discussion (excepting, of course, that of

abstract science) is strongly insisted upon in well-known passages of

the Nicomachean Ethics. Speaking of the variations which are found in

the logical perfection of proof in various subject-matters, Aristotle

says, “A well-educated man will expect exactness in every class of

subjects, according as the nature of the thing admits; for it is much

the same mistake to put up with a mathematician using probabilities,

and to require demonstration of an orator. Each man judges skilfully in

those things about which he is well-informed; it is of these, that he

is a good judge; viz. he, in each subject-matter, is a judge, who is

well-educated in that subject-matter, and he is in an absolute sense

a judge, who is in all of them well-educated.” Again: “Young men come

to be mathematicians and the like, but they cannot possess practical

judgment; for this talent is employed upon individual facts, and these

are learned only by experience; and a youth has not experience, for

experience is only gained by a course of years. And so, again, it would

appear that a boy may be a mathematician, but not a philosopher, or

learned in physics, and for this reason,—because the one study deals

with abstractions, while the other studies gain their principles from

experience, and in the latter subjects youths do not give assent, but

make assertions, but in the former they know what it is that they are

handling.”

These words of a heathen philosopher, laying down broad principles

about all knowledge, express a general rule, which in Scripture

is applied authoritatively to the case of revealed knowledge in

particular;—and that not once or twice only, but continually, as is

notorious. For instance:—“I have understood,” says the Psalmist, “more

than all my teachers, because Thy testimonies are my meditation.”

And so our Lord: “He that hath ears, let him hear.” “If any man will

do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” And “He that is of God,

heareth the words of God.” Thus too the Angels at the Nativity announce

“Peace to men of good will.” And we read in the Acts of the Apostles

of “Lydia, whose heart the Lord opened to attend to those things which

were said by Paul.” And we are told on another occasion, that “as many

as were ordained,” or disposed by God, “to life everlasting, believed.”

And St. John tells us, “He that knoweth God, heareth us; he that is not

of God, heareth us not; by this we know the spirit of truth, and the

spirit of error.”

1.

Relying then on these authorities, human and Divine, I have no scruple

in beginning the review I shall take of Christianity by professing

to consult for those only whose minds are properly prepared for it;

and by being prepared, I mean to denote those who are imbued with the

religious opinions and sentiments which I have identified with Natural

Religion. I do not address myself to those, who in moral evil and

physical see nothing more than imperfections of a parallel nature;

who consider that the difference in gravity between the two is one of

degree only, not of kind; that moral evil is merely the offspring of

physical, and that as we remove the latter so we inevitably remove

the former; that there is a progress of the human race which tends to

the annihilation of moral evil; that knowledge is virtue, and vice is

ignorance; that sin is a bugbear, not a reality; that the Creator does

not punish except in the sense of correcting; that vengeance in Him

would of necessity be vindictiveness; that all that we know of Him, be

it much or little, is through the laws of nature; that miracles are

impossible; that prayer to Him is a superstition; that the fear of Him

is unmanly; that sorrow for sin is slavish and abject; that the only

intelligible worship of Him is to act well our part in the world, and

the only sensible repentance to do better in future; that if we do our

duties in this life, we may take our chance for the next; and that it

is of no use perplexing our minds about the future state, for it is all

a matter of guess. These opinions characterize a civilized age; and if

I say that I will not argue about Christianity with men who hold them,

I do so, not as claiming any right to be impatient or peremptory with

any one, but because it is plainly absurd to attempt to prove a second

proposition to those who do not admit the first.

I assume then that the above system of opinion is simply false,

inasmuch as it contradicts the primary teachings of nature in the human

race, wherever a religion is found and its workings can be ascertained.

I assume the Presence of God in our conscience, and the universal

experience, as keen as our experience of bodily pain, of what we call a

sense of sin or guilt. This sense of sin, as of something not only evil

in itself, but an affront to the good God, is chiefly felt as regards

one or other of three violations of His Law. He Himself is Sanctity,

Truth, and Love; and the three offences against His Majesty are

impurity, inveracity, and cruelty. All men are not distressed at these

offences alike; but the piercing pain and sharp remorse which one or

other inflicts upon the mind, till habituated to them, brings home to

it the notion of what sin is, and is the vivid type and representative

of its intrinsic hatefulness.

Starting from these elements, we may determine without difficulty the

class of sentiments, intellectual and moral, which constitute the

formal preparation for entering upon what are called the Evidences

of Christianity. These Evidences, then, presuppose a belief and

perception of the Divine Presence, a recognition of His attributes

and an admiration of His Person viewed under them, a conviction of

the worth of the soul and of the reality and momentousness of the

unseen world, an understanding that, in proportion as we partake in

our own persons of the attributes which we admire in Him, we are dear

to Him, a consciousness on the contrary that we are far from partaking

them, a consequent insight into our guilt and misery, an eager hope

of reconciliation to Him, a desire to know and to love Him, and a

sensitive looking-out in all that happens, whether in the course of

nature or of human life, for tokens, if such there be, of His bestowing

on us what we so greatly need. These are specimens of the state of mind

for which I stipulate in those who would inquire into the truth of

Christianity; and my warrant for so definite a stipulation lies in the

teaching, as I have described it, of conscience and the moral sense,

in the testimony of those religious rites which have ever prevailed

in all parts of the world, and in the character and conduct of those

who have commonly been selected by the popular instinct as the special

favourites of Heaven.

2.

I have appealed to the popular ideas on the subject of religion, and

to the objects of popular admiration and praise, as illustrating my

account of the preparation of mind which is necessary for the inquirer

into Christianity. Here an obvious objection occurs, in noticing

which I shall be advanced one step farther in the work which I have

undertaken.

It may be urged, then, that no appeal will avail me, which is made

to religions so notoriously immoral as those of paganism; nor indeed

can it be made without an explanation. Certainly, as regards ethical

teaching, various religions, which have been popular in the world, have

not supplied any; and in the corrupt state in which they appear in

history, they are little better than schools of imposture, cruelty, and

impurity. Their objects of worship were immoral as well as false, and

their founders and heroes have been in keeping with their gods. This is

undeniable, but it does not destroy the use that may be made of their

testimony. There is a better side of their teaching; purity has often

been held in reverence, if not practised; ascetics have been in honour;

hospitality has been a sacred duty; and dishonesty and injustice have

been under a ban. Here then, as before, I take our natural perception

of right and wrong as the standard for determining the characteristics

of Natural Religion, and I use the religious rites and traditions which

are actually found in the world, only so far as they agree with our

moral sense.

This leads me to lay down the general principle, which I have all

along implied:—that no religion is from God which contradicts our

sense of right and wrong. Doubtless; but at the same time we ought to

be quite sure that, in a particular case which is before us, we have

satisfactorily ascertained what the dictates of our moral nature are,

and that we apply them rightly, and whether the applying them or not

comes into question at all. The precepts of a religion certainly may

be absolutely immoral; a religion which simply commanded us to lie, or

to have a community of wives, would _ipso facto_ forfeit all claim to

a divine origin. Jupiter and Neptune, as represented in the classical

mythology, are evil spirits, and nothing can make them otherwise. And I

should in like manner repudiate a theology which taught that men were

created in order to be wicked and wretched.

I alluded just now to those who consider the doctrine of retributive

punishment, or of divine vengeance, to be incompatible with the true

religion; but I do not see how they can maintain their ground. In order

to do so, they have first to prove that an act of vengeance must, as

such, be a sin in our own instance; but even this is far from clear.

Anger and indignation against cruelty and injustice, resentment of

injuries, desire that the false, the ungrateful, and the depraved

should meet with punishment, these, if not in themselves virtuous

feelings, are at least not vicious; but, first from the certainty

that, if habitual, it will run into excess and become sin, and next

because the office of punishment has not been committed to us, and

further because it is a feeling unsuitable to those who are themselves

so laden with imperfection and guilt, therefore vengeance, in itself

allowable, is forbidden to us. These exceptions do not hold in the

case of a perfect being, and certainly not in the instance of the

Supreme Judge. Moreover, we see that even men on earth have different

duties, according to their personal qualifications and their positions

in the community. The rule of morals is the same for all; and yet,

notwithstanding, what is right in one is not necessarily right in

another. What would be a crime in a private man to do, is a crime in

a magistrate not to have done; still wider is the difference between

man and his Maker. Nor must it be forgotten, that, as I have observed

above, retributive justice is the very attribute under which God is

primarily brought before us in the teachings of our natural conscience.

And further, we cannot determine the character of particular actions,

till we have the whole case before us out of which they arise; unless,

indeed, they are in themselves distinctively vicious. We all feel

the force of the maxim, “Audi alteram partem.” It is difficult to

trace the path and to determine the scope of Divine Providence. We

read of a day when the Almighty will condescend to place His actions

in their completeness before His creatures, and “will overcome when

He is judged.” If, till then, we feel it to be a duty to suspend our

judgment concerning certain of His actions or precepts, we do no more

than what we do every day in the case of an earthly friend or enemy,

whose conduct in some point requires explanation. It surely is not too

much to expect of us that we should act with parallel caution, and

be “memores conditionis nostræ” as regards the acts of our Creator.

There is a poem of Parnell’s which strikingly brings home to us how

differently the divine appointments will look in the light of day, from

what they appear to be in our present twilight. An Angel, in disguise

of a man, steals a golden cup, strangles an infant, and throws a guide

into the stream, and then explains to his horrified companion, that

acts which would be enormities in man, are in him, as God’s minister,

deeds of merciful correction or of retribution.

Moreover, when we are about to pass judgment on the dealings of

Providence with other men, we shall do well to consider first His

dealings with ourselves. We cannot know about others, about ourselves

we do know something; and we know that He has ever been good to us,

and not severe. Is it not wise to argue from what we actually know

to what we do not know? It may turn out in the day of account, that

unforgiven souls, while charging His laws with injustice in the case of

others, may be unable to find fault with His dealings severally towards

themselves.

As to those various religions which, together with Christianity, teach

the doctrine of eternal punishment, here again we ought, before we

judge, to understand, not only the whole state of the case, but what is

meant by the doctrine itself. Eternity, or endlessness, is in itself

only a negative idea, though punishment is positive. Its fearful force,

as added to punishment, lies in what it is not; it means no change

of state, no annihilation, no restoration. But it cannot become a

quality of punishment, any more than a man’s living seventy years is a

quality of his mind, or enters into the idea of his virtues or talents.

If punishment be attended by continuity, by a sense of duration and

succession, by the mental presence of its past and its future, by

a sustained power of realizing it,(42) this must be because it is

endless and something more; such inflictions are an addition to its

endlessness, and do not necessarily belong to it because it is endless.

As I have already said, the great mystery is, not that evil has no end,

but that it had a beginning. But I submit the whole subject to the

Theological School.

3.

One of the most important effects of Natural Religion on the mind, in

preparation for Revealed, is the anticipation which it creates, that a

Revelation will be given. That earnest desire of it, which religious

minds cherish, leads the way to the expectation of it. Those who

know nothing of the wounds of the soul, are not led to deal with the

question, or to consider its circumstances; but when our attention is

roused, then the more steadily we dwell upon it, the more probable

does it seem that a revelation has been or will be given to us. This

presentiment is founded on our sense, on the one hand, of the infinite

goodness of God, and, on the other, of our own extreme misery and

need—two doctrines which are the primary constituents of Natural

Religion. It is difficult to put a limit to the legitimate force of

this antecedent probability. Some minds will feel it so powerfully,

as to recognize in it almost a proof, without direct evidence, of the

divinity of a religion claiming to be the true, supposing its history

and doctrine are free from positive objection, and there be no rival

religion with plausible claims of its own. Nor ought this trust in a

presumption to seem preposterous to those who are so confident, on _à

priori_ grounds, that the moon is inhabited by rational beings, and

that the course of nature is never crossed by miraculous agency. Any

how, very little positive evidence seems to be necessary, when the mind

is penetrated by the strong anticipation which I am supposing. It was

this instinctive apprehension, as we may conjecture, which carried on

Dionysius and Damaris at Athens to a belief in Christianity, though

St. Paul did no miracle there, and only asserted the doctrines of the

Divine Unity, the Resurrection, and the universal judgment, while, on

the other hand, it had had no tendency to attach them to any of the

mythological rites in which the place abounded.

Here my method of argument differs from that adopted by Paley in his

Evidences of Christianity. This clear-headed and almost mathematical

reasoner postulates, for his proof of its miracles, only thus much,

that, under the circumstances of the case, a revelation is not

improbable. He says, “We do not assume the attributes of the Deity,

or the existence of a future state.” “It is not necessary for our

purpose that these propositions (viz. that a future existence should be

destined by God for His human creation, and that, being so destined,

He should have acquainted them with it,) be capable of proof, or even

that, by arguments drawn from the light of nature, they can be made out

as probable; it is enough that we are able to say of them, that they

are not so violently improbable, so contradictory to what we already

believe of the divine power and character, that [they] ought to be

rejected at first sight, and to be rejected by whatever strength or

complication of evidence they be attested.” He has such confidence in

the strength of the testimony which he can produce in favour of the

Christian miracles, that he only asks to be allowed to bring it into

court.

I confess to much suspicion of legal proceedings and legal arguments,

when used in questions whether of history or of philosophy. Rules

of court are dictated by what is expedient on the whole and in the

long run; but they incur the risk of being unjust to the claims of

particular cases. Why am I to begin with taking up a position not my

own, and unclothing my mind of that large outfit of existing thoughts,

principles, likings, desires, and hopes, which make me what I am? If I

am asked to use Paley’s argument for my own conversion, I say plainly

I do not want to be converted by a smart syllogism;(43) if I am asked

to convert others by it, I say plainly I do not care to overcome

their reason without touching their hearts. I wish to deal, not with

controversialists, but with inquirers.

I think Paley’s argument clear, clever, and powerful; and there is

something which looks like charity in going out into the highways and

hedges, and compelling men to come in; but in this matter some exertion

on the part of the persons whom I am to convert is a condition of a

true conversion. They who have no religious earnestness are at the

mercy, day by day, of some new argument or fact, which may overtake

them, in favour of one conclusion or the other. And how, after all,

is a man better for Christianity, who has never felt the need of it

or the desire? On the other hand, if he has longed for a revelation

to enlighten him and to cleanse his heart, why may he not use, in

his inquiries after it, that just and reasonable anticipation of its

probability, which such longing has opened the way to his entertaining?

Men are too well inclined to sit at home, instead of stirring

themselves to inquire whether a revelation has been given; they expect

its evidences to come to them without their trouble; they act, not

as suppliants, but as judges.(44) Modes of argument such as Paley’s,

encourage this state of mind; they allow men to forget that revelation

is a boon, not a debt on the part of the Giver; they treat it as a mere

historical phenomenon. If I was told that some great man, a foreigner,

whom I did not know, had come into town, and was on his way to call

on me, and to go over my house, I should send to ascertain the fact,

and meanwhile should do my best to put my house into a condition to

receive him. He would not be pleased if I left the matter to take

its chance, and went on the maxim that seeing was believing. Like

this is the conduct of those who resolve to treat the Almighty with

dispassionateness, a judicial temper, clearheadedness, and candour. It

is the way with some men, (surely not a good way,) to say, that without

these lawyerlike qualifications conversion is immoral. It is their way,

a miserable way, to pronounce that there is no religious love of truth

where there is fear of error. On the contrary, I would maintain that

the fear of error is simply necessary to the genuine love of truth.

No inquiry comes to good which is not conducted under a deep sense of

responsibility, and of the issues depending upon its determination.

Even the ordinary matters of life are an exercise of conscientiousness;

and where conscience is, fear must be. So much is this acknowledged

just now, that there is almost an affectation, in popular literature,

in the case of criticisms on the fine arts, on poetry, and music, of

speaking about conscientiousness in writing, painting, or singing; and

that earnestness and simplicity of mind, which makes men fear to go

wrong in these minor matters, has surely a place in the most serious of

all undertakings.

It is on these grounds that, in considering Christianity, I start

with conditions different from Paley’s; not, however, as undervaluing

the force and the serviceableness of his argument, but as preferring

inquiry to disputation in a question about truth.

4.

There is another point on which my basis of argument differs from

Paley’s. He argues on the principle that the credentials, which

ascertain for us a message from above, are necessarily in their nature

miraculous; nor have I any thought of venturing to say otherwise.

In fact, all professed revelations have been attended, in one

shape or another, with the profession of miracles; and we know how

direct and unequivocal are the miracles of both the Jewish Covenant

and of our own. However, my object here is to assume as little as

possible as regards facts, and to dwell only on what is patent and

notorious; and therefore I will only insist on those coincidences

and their cumulations, which, though not in themselves miraculous,

do irresistibly force upon us, almost by the law of our nature, the

presence of the extraordinary agency of Him whose being we already

acknowledge. Though coincidences rise out of a combination of general

laws, there is no law of those coincidences;(45) they have a character

of their own, and seem left by Providence in His own hands, as the

channel by which, inscrutable to us, He may make known to us His will.

For instance, if I am a believer in a God of Truth and Avenger of

dishonesty, and know for certain that a market-woman, after calling

on Him to strike her dead if she had in her possession a piece of

money not hers, did fall down dead on the spot, and that the money was

found in her hand, how can I call this a blind coincidence, and not

discern in it an act of Providence over and above its general laws?

So, certainly, thought the inhabitants of an English town, when they

erected a pillar as a record of such an event at the place where it

occurred. And if a Pope excommunicates a great conqueror; and he,

on hearing the threat, says to one of his friends, “Does he think

the world has gone back a thousand years? does he suppose the arms

will fall from the hands of my soldiers?” and within two years, on

the retreat over the snows of Russia, as two contemporary historians

relate, “famine and cold tore their arms from the grasp of the

soldiers,” “they fell from the hands of the bravest and most robust,”

and “destitute of the power of raising them from the ground, the

soldiers left them in the snow;” is not this too, though no miracle,

a coincidence so special, as rightly to be called a Divine judgment?

So thinks Alison, who avows with religious honesty, that “there is

something in these marvellous coincidences beyond the operation of

chance, and which even a Protestant historian feels himself bound

to mark for the observation of future years.(46)” And so, too, of a

cumulation of coincidences, separately less striking; when Spelman sets

about establishing the fact of the ill-fortune which in a multitude

of instances has followed upon acts of sacrilege, then, even though

in many instances it has not followed, and in many instances he

exaggerates, still there may be a large residuum of cases which cannot

be properly resolved into the mere accident of concurrent causes,

but must in reason be considered the warning voice of God. So, at

least, thought Gibson, Bishop of London, when he wrote, “Many of the

instances, and those too well-attested, are so terrible in the event,

and in the circumstances so surprising, that no considering person can

well pass them over.”

I think, then, that the circumstances under which a professed

revelation comes to us, may be such as to impress both our reason and

our imagination with a sense of its truth, even though no appeal be

made to strictly miraculous intervention—in saying which I do not mean

of course to imply that those circumstances, when traced back to their

first origins, are not the outcome of such intervention, but that the

miraculous intervention addresses us at this day in the guise of those

circumstances; that is, of coincidences, which are indications, to

the illative sense of those who believe in a Moral Governor, of His

immediate Presence, especially to those who in addition hold with me

the strong antecedent probability that, in His mercy, He will thus

supernaturally present Himself to our apprehension.

5.

Now as to the fact; has what is so probable in anticipation actually

been granted to us, or have we still to look out for it? It is very

plain, supposing it has been granted, which among all the religions

of the world comes from God: and if it is not that, a revelation is

not yet given, and we must look forward to the future. There is only

one Religion in the world which tends to fulfil the aspirations,

needs, and foreshadowings of natural faith and devotion. It may be

said, perhaps, that, educated in Christianity, I merely judge of it

by its own principles; but this is not the fact. For, in the first

place, I have taken my idea of what a revelation must be, in good

measure, from the actual religions of the world; and as to its ethics,

the ideas with which I come to it are derived not simply from the

Gospel, but prior to it from heathen moralists, whom Fathers of the

Church and Ecclesiastical writers have imitated or sanctioned; and

as to the intellectual position from which I have contemplated the

subject, Aristotle has been my master. Besides, I do not here single

out Christianity with reference simply to its particular doctrines or

precepts, but for a reason which is on the surface of its history.

It alone has a definite message addressed to all mankind. As far as

I know, the religion of Mahomet has brought into the world no new

doctrine whatever, except, indeed, that of its own divine origin;

and the character of its teaching is too exact a reflection of the

race, time, place, and climate in which it arose, to admit of its

becoming universal. The same dependence on external circumstances is

characteristic, so far as I know, of the religions of the far East; nor

am I sure of any definite message from God to man which they convey

and protect, though they may have sacred books. Christianity, on the

other hand, is in its idea an announcement, a preaching; it is the

depositary of truths beyond human discovery, momentous, practical,

maintained one and the same in substance in every age from its first,

and addressed to all mankind. And it has actually been embraced and

is found in all parts of the world, in all climates, among all races,

in all ranks of society, under every degree of civilization, from

barbarism to the highest cultivation of mind. Coming to set right and

to govern the world, it has ever been, as it ought to be, in conflict

with large masses of men, with the civil power, with physical force,

with adverse philosophies; it has had successes, it has had reverses;

but it has had a grand history, and has effected great things, and is

as vigorous in its age as in its youth. In all these respects it has a

distinction in the world and a pre-eminence of its own; it has upon it

_primâ facie_ signs of divinity; I do not know what can be advanced by

rival religions to match prerogatives so special; so that I feel myself

justified in saying either Christianity is from God, or a revelation

has not yet been given to us.

It will not surely be objected, as a point in favour of some of the

Oriental religions, that they are older than Christianity by some

centuries; yet, should it be so said, it must be recollected that

Christianity is only the continuation and conclusion of what professes

to be an earlier revelation, which may be traced back into prehistoric

times, till it is lost in the darkness that hangs over them. As far

as we know, there never was a time when that revelation was not,—a

revelation continuous and systematic, with distinct representatives and

an orderly succession. And this, I suppose, is far more than can be

said for the religions of the East.

6.

Here, then, I am brought to the consideration of the Hebrew nation

and the Mosaic religion, as the first step in the direct evidence for

Christianity.

The Jews are one of the few Oriental nations who are known in history

as a people of progress, and their line of progress is the development

of religious truth. In that their own line they stand by themselves

among all the populations, not only of the East, but of the West. Their

country may be called the classical home of the religious principle, as

Greece is the home of intellectual power, and Rome that of political

and practical wisdom. Theism is their life; it is emphatically their

national religion, for they never were without it, and were made a

people by means of it. This is a phenomenon singular and solitary in

history, and must have a meaning. If there be a God and Providence, it

must come from Him, whether immediately or indirectly; and the people

themselves have ever maintained that it has been His direct work, and

has been recognized by Him as such. We are apt to treat pretences to a

divine mission or to supernatural powers as of frequent occurrence, and

on that score to dismiss them from our thoughts; but we cannot so deal

with Judaism. When mankind had universally denied the first lesson of

their conscience by lapsing into polytheism, is it a thing of slight

moment that there was just one exception to the rule, that there was

just one people who, first by their rulers and priests, and afterwards

by their own unanimous zeal, professed, as their distinguishing

doctrine, the Divine Unity and Government of the world, and that,

moreover, not only as a natural truth, but as revealed to them by that

God Himself of whom they spoke,—who so embodied it in their national

polity, that a Theocracy was the only name by which it could be called?

It was a people founded and set up in Theism, kept together by Theism,

and maintaining Theism for a period from first to last of 2000 years,

till the dissolution of their body politic; and they have maintained it

since in their state of exile and wandering for 2000 years more. They

begin with the beginning of history, and the preaching of this august

dogma begins with them. They are its witnesses and confessors, even

to torture and death; on it and its revelation are moulded their laws

and government; on this their politics, philosophy, and literature are

founded; of this truth their poetry is the voice, pouring itself out

in devotional compositions which Christianity, through all its many

countries and ages, has been unable to rival; on this aboriginal truth,

as time goes on, prophet after prophet bases his further revelations,

with a sustained reference to a time when, according to the secret

counsels of its Divine Object and Author, it is to receive completion

and perfection,—till at length that time comes.

The last age of their history is as strange as their first. When that

time of destined blessing came, which they had so accurately marked

out, and were so carefully waiting for—a time which found them, in

fact, more zealous for their Law, and for the dogma it enshrined, than

they ever had been before—then, instead of any final favour coming

on them from above, they fell under the power of their enemies, and

were overthrown, their holy city razed to the ground, their polity

destroyed, and the remnant of their people cast off to wander far and

away through every land except their own, as we find them at this day;

lasting on, century after century, not absorbed in other populations,

not annihilated, as likely to last on, as unlikely to be restored, as

far as outward appearances go, now as a thousand years ago. What nation

has so grand, so romantic, so terrible a history? Does it not fulfil

the idea of, what the nation calls itself, a chosen people, chosen for

good and evil? Is it not an exhibition in a course of history of that

primary declaration of conscience, as I have been determining it, “With

the upright Thou shalt be upright, and with the froward Thou shalt be

froward”? It must have a meaning, if there is a God. We know what was

their witness of old time; what is their witness now?

Why, I say, was it that, after so memorable a career, when their sins

and sufferings were now to come to an end, when they were looking

out for a deliverance and a Deliverer, suddenly all was reversed for

once and for all? They were the favoured servants of God, and yet a

peculiar reproach and note of infamy is affixed to their name. It was

their belief that His protection was unchangeable, and that their

Law would last for ever;—it was their consolation to be taught by an

uninterrupted tradition, that it could not die, except by changing into

a new self, more wonderful than it was before;—it was their faithful

expectation that a promised King was coming, the Messiah, who would

extend the sway of Israel over all people;—it was a condition of their

covenant, that, as a reward to Abraham, their first father, the day at

length should dawn when the gates of their narrow land should open,

and they should pour out for the conquest and occupation of the whole

earth;—and, I repeat, when the day came, they did go forth, and they

did spread into all lands, but as hopeless exiles, as eternal wanderers.

Are we to say that this failure is a proof that, after all, there was

nothing providential in their history? For myself, I do not see how a

second portent obliterates a first; and, in truth, their own testimony

and their own sacred books carry us on towards a better solution

of the difficulty. I have said they were in God’s favour under a

covenant,—perhaps they did not fulfil the conditions of it. This indeed

seems to be their own account of the matter, though it is not clear

what their breach of engagement was. And that in some way they did sin,

whatever their sin was, is corroborated by the well-known chapter in

the Book of Deuteronomy, which so strikingly anticipates the nature

of their punishment. That passage, translated into Greek as many as

350 years before the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, has on it the marks

of a wonderful prophecy; but I am not now referring to it as such,

but merely as an indication that the disappointment, which actually

overtook them at the Christian era, was not necessarily out of keeping

with the original divine purpose, or again with the old promise made to

them, and their confident expectation of its fulfilment. Their national

ruin, which came instead of aggrandizement, is described in that book,

in spite of all promises, with an emphasis and minuteness which prove

that it was contemplated long before, at least as a possible issue of

the fortunes of Israel. Among other inflictions which should befall the

guilty people, it was told them that they should fall down before their

enemies, and should be scattered throughout all the kingdoms of the

earth; that they never should have quiet in those nations, or have rest

for the sole of their foot; that they were to have a fearful heart and

languishing eyes, and a soul consumed with heaviness; that they were

to suffer wrong, and to be crushed at all times, and to be astonished

at the terror of their lot; that their sons and daughters were to be

given to another people, and they were to look and to sicken all the

day, and their life was ever to hang in doubt before them, and fear to

haunt them day and night; that they should be a proverb and a by-word

of all people among whom they were brought; and that curses were to

come on them, and to be signs and wonders on them and their seed for

ever. Such are some portions, and not the most terrible, of this

extended anathema; and its partial accomplishment at an earlier date of

their history was a warning to them, when the destined time drew near,

that, however great the promises made to them might be, those promises

were dependent on the terms of the covenant which stood between them

and their Maker, and that, as they had turned to curses at that former

time, so they might turn to curses again.

This grand drama, so impressed with the characters of supernatural

agency, concerns us here only in its bearing upon the evidence for

the divine origin of Christianity; and it is at this point that

Christianity comes upon the historical scene. It is a notorious fact

that it issued from the Jewish land and people; and, had it no other

than this historical connexion with Judaism, it would have some share

in the prestige of its original home. But it claims to be far more

than this; it professes to be the actual completion of the Mosaic Law,

the promised means of deliverance and triumph to the nation, which

that nation itself, as I have said, has since considered to be, on

account of some sin or other, withheld or forfeited. It professes to

be, not the casual, but the legitimate offspring, heir, and successor

of the Mosaic covenant, or rather to be Judaism itself, developed and

transformed. Of course it has to prove its claim, as well as to prefer

it; but if it succeeds in doing so, then all those tokens of the Divine

Presence, which distinguish the Jewish history, at once belong to it,

and are a portion of its credentials.

And at least the _primâ facie_ view of its relations towards Judaism

is in favour of these pretensions. It is an historical fact, that, at

the very time that the Jews committed their unpardonable sin, whatever

it was, and were driven out from their home to wander over the earth,

their Christian brethren, born of the same stock, and equally citizens

of Jerusalem, did also issue forth from the same home, but in order to

subdue that same earth and make it their own; that is, they undertook

the very work which, according to the promise, their nation actually

was ordained to execute; and, with a method of their own indeed, and

with a new end, and only slowly and painfully, but still really and

thoroughly, they did it. And since that time the two children of the

promise have ever been found together—of the promise forfeited and the

promise fulfilled; and whereas the Christian has been in high place,

so the Jew has been degraded and despised—the one has been “the head,”

and the other “the tail;” so that, to go no farther, the fact that

Christianity actually has done what Judaism was to have done, decides

the controversy, by the logic of facts, in favour of Christianity.

The prophecies announced that the Messiah was to come at a definite

time and place; Christians point to Him as coming then and there, as

announced; they are not met by any counter claim or rival claimant on

the part of the Jews, only by their assertion that He did not come at

all, though up to the event they had said He was then and there coming.

Further, Christianity clears up the mystery which hangs over Judaism,

accounting fully for the punishment of the people, by specifying their

sin, their heinous sin. If, instead of hailing their own Messiah,

they crucified Him, then the strange scourge which has pursued them

after the deed, and the energetic wording of the curse before it, are

explained by the very strangeness of their guilt;—or rather, their

sin is their punishment; for in rejecting their Divine King, they

_ipso facto_ lost the living principle and tie of their nationality.

Moreover, we see what led them into error; they thought a triumph and

an empire were to be given to them at once, which were given indeed

eventually, but by the slow and gradual growth of many centuries and a

long warfare.

On the whole, then, I observe, on the one hand, that, Judaism having

been the channel of religious traditions which are lost in the depth

of their antiquity, of course it is a great point for Christianity

to succeed in proving that it is the legitimate heir to that former

religion. Nor is it, on the other, of less importance to the

significance of those early traditions to be able to determine that

they were not lost together with their original store-house, but were

transferred, on the failure of Judaism, to the custody of the Christian

Church. And this apparent correspondence between the two is in itself a

presumption for such correspondence being real. Next, I observe, that

if the history of Judaism is so wonderful as to suggest the presence

of some special divine agency in its appointments and fortunes, still

more wonderful and divine is the history of Christianity; and again

it is more wonderful still, that two such wonderful creations should

span almost the whole course of ages, during which nations and states

have been in existence, and should constitute a professed system of

continued intercourse between earth and heaven from first to last amid

all the vicissitudes of human affairs. This phenomenon again carries on

its face, to those who believe in a God, the probability that it has

that divine origin which it professes to have; and, (when viewed in the

light of the strong presumption which I have insisted on, that in God’s

mercy a revelation from Him will be granted to us, and of the contrast

presented by other religions, no one of which professes to be a

revelation direct, definite, and integral as this is,)—this phenomenon,

I say, of cumulative marvels raises that probability, both for Judaism

and Christianity, in religious minds, almost to a certainty.

7.

If Christianity is connected with Judaism as closely as I have

been supposing, then there have been, by means of the two, direct

communications between man and his Maker from time immemorial down

to this day—a great prerogative such, that it is nowhere else even

claimed. No other religion but these two professes to be the organ of

a formal revelation, certainly not of a revelation which is directed

to the benefit of the whole human race. Here it is that Mahometanism

fails, though it claims to carry on the line of revelation after

Christianity; for it is the mere creed and rite of certain races,

bringing with it, as such, no gifts to our nature, and is rather a

reformation of local corruptions, and a return to the ceremonial

worship of earlier times, than a new and larger revelation. And while

Christianity was the heir to a dead religion, Mahometanism was little

more than a rebellion against a living one. Moreover, though Mahomet

professed to be the Paraclete, no one pretends that he occupies a place

in the Christian Scriptures as prominent as that which the Messiah

fills in the Jewish. To this especial prominence of the Messianic idea

I shall now advert; that is, to the prophecies of the Old Scriptures,

and to the argument which they furnish in favour of Christianity; and

though I know that argument might be clearer and more exact than it is,

and I do not pretend here to do much more than refer to the fact of its

existence, still so far forth as we enter into it, will it strengthen

our conviction of the claim to divinity both of the Religion which

is the organ of those prophecies, and of the Religion which is their

object.

Now that the Jewish Scriptures were in existence long before the

Christian era, and were in the sole custody of the Jews, is undeniable;

whatever then their Scriptures distinctly say of Christianity, if

not attributable to chance or to happy conjecture, is prophetic. It

is undeniable too, that the Jews gathered from those books that a

great Personage was to be born of their stock, and to conquer the

whole world and to become the instrument of extraordinary blessings

to it; moreover, that he would make his appearance at a fixed date,

and that, the very date when, as it turned out, our Lord did actually

come. This is the great outline of the prediction, and if nothing more

could be said about them than this, to prove as much as this is far

from unimportant. And it is undeniable, I say, both that the Jewish

Scriptures contain thus much, and that the Jews actually understood

them as containing it.

First, then, as to what Scripture declares. From the book of Genesis

we learn that the chosen people was set up in this one idea, viz. to

be a blessing to the whole earth, and that, by means of one of their

own race, a greater than their father Abraham. This was the meaning and

drift of their being chosen. There is no room for mistake here; the

divine purpose is stated from the first with the utmost precision. At

the very time of Abraham’s call, he is told of it:—“I will make of thee

a great nation, and in thee shall all tribes of the earth be blessed.”

Thrice is this promise and purpose announced in Abraham’s history; and

after Abraham’s time it is repeated to Isaac, “In thy seed shall all

the nations of the earth be blessed;” and after Isaac to Jacob, when a

wanderer from his home, “In thee and in thy seed shall all the tribes

of the earth be blessed.” And from Jacob the promise passes on to his

son Judah, and that with an addition, viz. with a reference to the

great Person who was to be the world-wide blessing, and to the date

when He should come. Judah was the chosen son of Jacob, and his staff

or sceptre, that is, his patriarchal authority, was to endure till a

greater than Judah came, so that the loss of the sceptre, when it took

place, was the sign of His near approach. “The sceptre,” says Jacob

on his death-bed, “shall not be taken away from Judah, until He come

for whom it is reserved,” or “who is to be sent,” “and He shall be the

expectation of the nations.(47)”

Such was the categorical prophecy, literal and unequivocal in its

wording, direct and simple in its scope. One man, born of the chosen

tribe, was the destined minister of blessing to the whole world; and

the race, as represented by that tribe, was to lose its old self in

gaining a new self in Him. Its destiny was sealed upon it in its

beginning. An expectation was the measure of its life. It was created

for a great end, and in that end it had its ending. Such were the

initial communications made to the chosen people, and there they

stopped;—as if the outline of promise, so sharply cut, had to be

effectually imprinted on their minds, before more knowledge was given

to them; as if, by the long interval of years which passed before the

more varied prophecies in type and figure, after the manner of the

East, were added, the original notices might stand out in the sight of

all in their severe explicitness, as archetypal truths, and guides in

interpreting whatever else was obscure in its wording or complex in its

direction.

And in the second place it is quite clear that the Jews did thus

understand their prophecies, and did expect their great Ruler, in

the very age in which our Lord came, and in which they, on the other

hand, were destroyed, losing their old self without gaining their

new. Heathen historians shall speak for the fact. “A persuasion had

possession of most of them,” says Tacitus, speaking of their resistance

to the Romans, “that it was contained in the ancient books of the

priests that at that very time the East should prevail, and that men

who issued from Judea should obtain the empire. The common people, as

is the way with human cupidity, having once interpreted in their own

favour this grand destiny, were not even by their reverses brought

round to the truth of facts.” And Suetonius extends the belief:—“The

whole East was rife with an old and persistent belief, that at that

time persons who issued from Judea, should possess the empire.” After

the event of course the Jews drew back, and denied the correctness of

their expectation, still they could not deny that the expectation had

existed. Thus the Jew Josephus, who was of the Roman party, says that

what encouraged them in the stand they made against the Romans was “an

ambiguous oracle, found in their sacred writings, that at that date

some one of them from that country should rule the world.” He can but

pronounce that the oracle was ambiguous; he cannot state that they

thought it so.

Now, considering that at that very time our Lord did appear as a

teacher, and founded not merely a religion, but (what was then quite

a new idea in the world) a system of religious warfare, an aggressive

and militant body, a dominant Catholic Church, which aimed at the

benefit of all nations by the spiritual conquest of all; and that

this warfare, then begun by it, has gone on without cessation down

to this day, and now is as living and real as ever it was; that that

militant body has from the first filled the world, that it has had

wonderful successes, that its successes have on the whole been of

extreme benefit to the human race, that it has imparted an intelligent

notion about the Supreme God to millions who would have lived and

died in irreligion, that it has raised the tone of morality wherever

it has come, has abolished great social anomalies and miseries, has

elevated the female sex to its proper dignity, has protected the poorer

classes, has destroyed slavery, encouraged literature and philosophy,

and had a principal part in that civilization of human kind, which,

with some evils still, has on the whole been productive of far greater

good,—considering, I say, that all this began at the destined,

expected, recognized season when the old prophecy said that in one

Man, born of the tribe of Judah, all the tribes of the earth were to

be blessed, I feel I have a right to say (and my line of argument does

not lead me to say more), that it is at the very least a remarkable

coincidence,—that is, one of those coincidences which, when they are

accumulated, come close upon the idea of miracle, as being impossible

without the Hand of God directly and immediately in them.

When we have got as far as this, we may go on a great deal farther.

Announcements, which could not be put forward in the front of the

argument, as being figurative, vague, or ambiguous, may be used validly

and with great effect, when they have been interpreted for us, first by

the prophetic outline, and still more by the historical object. It is a

principle which applies to all matters on which we reason, that what is

only a maze of facts, without order or drift prior to the explanation,

may, when we once have that explanation, be located and adjusted with

great facility in all its separate parts, as we know is the case as

regards the motions of the heavenly bodies since the hypothesis of

Newton. In like manner the event is the true key to prophecy, and

reconciles conflicting and divergent descriptions by embodying them

in one common representative. Thus it is that we learn how, as the

prophecies said, the Messiah could both suffer, yet be victorious; His

kingdom be Judaic in structure, yet evangelic in spirit; and His people

the children of Abraham, yet “sinners of the Gentiles.” These seeming

paradoxes, are only parallel and akin to those others which form so

prominent a feature in the teaching of our Lord and His Apostles.