We have another reply to Ingersoll in a pamphlet of twenty pages, issued
in Toronto, with the following modest title:--"A Refutation of Col. R.
G. Ingersoll's Lectures, by 'A Rationalist.'" This proemial announcement
is certainly calculated to excite high expectations; but it is only
necessary to look into the rational (?) "refutation" (?) to see that the
names the writer has given himself and pamphlet are both misnomers. How
such an irrational jumble of orthodoxy, heterodoxy, obsolete philosophy,
and moribund metaphysics could by any possibility pass for rationalism,
even in the eyes of its author, is one of those profound mysteries which
"no fellah can understand." Is it not a little singular that all these
"replies" and "refutations" from the orthodox side come from theological
nondescripts--from men who are but half orthodox (the other half not
being recognizable), and not one reply from a thoroughly orthodox
champion? A correlative fact, not without much significance, is that,
though no argument comes from the orthodox side, the denunciations all
come from that source. On the other hand in proportion as the opposing
champion is unorthodox, in that ratio is he tolerant, courteous, and
in favor of free speech and equal rights. "A Rationalist's" essay is
pervaded by the kindliest spirit personally towards his opponent, and
this, in a measure, redeems its literary and logical defects.
Though "Rationalist" zealously defends the Bible, and argues for a God,
it is impossible to tell how much of the Bible he accepts, or what
God he believes in. He says, "every jot and tittle of the Bible is
inspired," yet in another place tells us, "The Apostle Paul is not
one of the inspired writers," as "His words will not bear a spiritual
interpretation." It would, therefore, seem that no part of the Bible
is inspired except that which will stand this method of "spiritual
interpretation." To get rid of the numerous errors, absurdities, and
immoralities contained in the Bible, "Rationalist" spiritualizes them.
He has a first-class recondite and spiritual meaning for every one of
them, which seems to be entirely satisfactory--to himself. With the
utmost facility everything is explained away; and armed with his occult
style of Bible exegesis he can laugh at the infidel scientist. He says
we must "rub off the literal meaning" in order to get at the spiritual,
and by this convenient method every difficulty between the two sacred
lids vanishes into thin air. This "rubbing off" business he also
applies to the God of the Bible, whose characteristic _anthropomorphism_
"Rationalist," of course, rubs all off, even his _intelligence_. So that
there would seem to be little more left of the Jewish Jehovah, under
modern scriptural exegesis, than what Beecher describes as a "dim and
shadowy influence." "Rationalist" divests Deity of intelligence to
escape the effects of the following argument:--
Intelligence presupposes a greater intelligence,
God has intelligence,
Therefore, there must be an intelligence greater than God.
Seeing the logical force of this, he quibbles thus: "We do not say that
God _has_ intelligence, but that God _is_ wisdom in form and love in
essence, and therefore the infinite source of all intelligence." This
will not do, Mr. "Rationalist!" It is entirely too vague. You must
either contend for a personal or an impersonal God. Give us either Deism
or Pantheism, and not an incongruous mixture, and then we will know on
what ground to meet you. If you mean that God is simply the aggregate,
or even the essence, of all intelligence, all love, all good, why this
is a mere abstraction, and even an Atheist might accept it; but if you
are contending for anything like the Christian's God, as set forth in
the Bible, you will have to alter your definitions very materially.
As a specimen illustration of "Rationalist's" spiritual method of
resolving Scriptural difficulties I give below his version of the story
of Elisha, the children, and the bears, under the "rubbing off" process.
We, Freethinkers, he says, will not "object to the bears" when we
understand what the story means, and here is his elucidation, _verbatim
et literatim_:--
"Elisha represents the external or literal words of Holy Writ on
which the mantle of spiritual truth still rests. Children represent
affections--don't fond mothers even yet call them 'little loves?'--They
also correspond to the opposite, and so evil loves which destroy
obedience to the external life of goodness, taught in, at least, some
of the literal words of Scripture, naturally mock at the baldness of
Elisha. Baldness, since it refers to the head, and the head corresponds
to that union of will and intellect in man which rules, and is, the
life, and ultimates in the very extreme of its very minute external,
corresponds to the most external of the will and thought of Elisha, who
represents the literal meaning of Scripture. So this incident means that
evil loves could see no ultimate good to _themselves_ in the doing
of any good in a practical every-day way even where that was clearly
enjoined, and rendered as beautiful externally as hair is, and therefore
mocked at it, or rather at what seemed to them the lack of it. Then the
bears, which correspond to the animal passions of the animal man, came
out of the woods--woods correspond to the natural perceptions of natural
truth in man--and utterly destroyed these evil loves out of the life.
Again you see we find the same truth; that the Lord implants remains of
goodness and truth in every degree of man's life, even in the natural
man, fitted to cope with and conquer his evils, if man himself will but
permit it."
There's a sample of "spiritual interpretation" for you! And what
_clearness_ is there, dear reader! Just return to the fourth sentence of
the above extract, commencing with "Baldness," and re-read it, and see
if you can make anything out of it. What the sentence does really
mean is to me as profound a mystery as the incantations of a Gypsy
thaumaturgist. It would be interesting to get "Rationalist" to try his
hand at spiritualizing some of the following passages of Holy Writ:--
"In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired,"
&c. "And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him"
(Moses) "and sought to kill him." "I have seen God face to face." _Per
Contra_: "No man hath seen God at any time." "I am the Lord, I change
not, I will not go back, neither will I repent." _Per Contra_: "And God
repented of the evil that he said he would do unto them, and he did it
not." "There is no respect of persons with God." _Per Contra_: "Jacob
have I loved, and Esau have I hated." "I am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquities of the fathers upon the children." _Per Contra_: "The son
shall not bear the iniquity of the father." "It is impossible for God
to lie." _Per Contra_: "If the Prophet be deceived when he hath spoken
a thing, I the Lord have deceived that Prophet." "Be not afraid of them
that kill the body." _Per Contra_: "And after these things Jesus would
not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him." "And the anger
of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them
to say, 'Go number Israel.'" _Per Contra_: "And Satan provoked David to
number Israel." "I bear witness of myself, yet my record is true." _Per
Contra_: "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true." "A man
is not justified by the works of the law." _Per Contra_: "Ye see, then,
how that by works a man is justified." "There shall no evil happen to
the just." _Per Contra_: "All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall
suffer persecution." "Wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness and all
her paths are peace." _Per Contra_: "In much wisdom is much grief and he
that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." "It shall not be well with
the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days." _Per Contra_: "Wherefore
do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power." "Thou shalt
not: commit adultery." _Per Contra_: "Then said the Lord unto me, 'Go
get, love a woman, an adulteress.'"
Here, certainly, is ample scope for exegetical ingenuity. The passages
quoted, besides scores of others, many of them too indecent for these
pages, would seem to require the touch of "Rationalist's" spiritual
interpretation wand. When the literal meaning is "rubbed off," the
occult, spiritual meaning will appear.
As a sample of "Rationalist's" metaphysical philosophy I give the
following:--
"Will and love are identical... Will or love is life. A man cannot
think unless he wills to think; and he can only think that which he
wills--only that and nothing more. He can only do what he wills and
thinks. There is no action which is not the effect of will and its
thought. A man wills in order to think," etc. He also tells us that God
gave man a will "as _free_ as His own." Matter is spoken of as "mere
dead inert matter."
Is more evidence than this needed that "Rationalist" is living in the
past, and has utterly failed to grasp modern thought? His philosophy is
bad, but his metaphysics is worse. Any man who at this day attempts to
"refute" Materialists should at least be somewhat acquainted with the
results of modern thought and scientific research; but "Rationalist" has
apparently advanced no further than the occult Swedenborgian mysticism
of the last century. Further, to talk to-day of "dead inert matter," is
to talk the language of an obsolete philosophy of the past; for modern
science and philosophy alike agree that matter is not "that mere empty
_capacity_ which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal
mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb." As
Pope says:--
"See thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth, All matter quick and
bursting into birth."
Equally absurd is this talk about "Free Will" and "Free Moral Agency."
These metaphysico-theological dogmas have melted in the light of
mental science, and are now as "dead as a door nail," of which fact
"Rationalist" will be convinced if he will take the trouble to look into
Hamilton, Combe, Mill, Buckle, Lewes, Spencer, Huxley and Tyndall, and
he will then, probably, write no more such nonsense as quoted above. It
is not necessary, however, for any observant and thoughtful man to go to
any authorities outside his own mind to be convinced of the fallacy of
the "Free Will" dogma, for his own observation and reflection will do
it. And "Rationalist" can have the same conviction without the aid of
science or philosophy,--without even observation or reflection. Let him
turn to his Bible, which he champions, and read it, and he will find
abundant proof (such as it is) that man's will is not free. Let him read
the 8th, 9th and 11th Chapters of Romans. Let him then read Phil. 2, 13,
"For it is God which worketh in you _both to will and to do_ of His good
_pleasure_." Then read Isaiah, 46, 910, "I am God and there is none like
me, _declaring the end from the beginnings_ and from ancient times _the
things_ that are not _yet_ done, saying, my council shall stand, and I
will do all my _pleasure_."
Now, I submit that if an omnipotent and omniscient God has "declared the
end from the beginning," and ordered all "the things that are not yet
done" (and you have his word for it here) how is it possible for
mortal and finite man to do any thing contrary to the thing ordered,
or accomplish any "end" but the one "declared from the beginning?" Here
you, who believe in God and the Bible, have his word for it that he has
declared all things "from the beginning." Man then _must_ do and think
as God has declared, and can do nothing else, hence he is _not free_.
The idea that "a man cannot think unless he wills to think" is too
preposterous (laying the Bible aside) for any reasonable man to accept
who is not a slave to creeds and dogmas. Let "Rationalist," after
reading this sentence, stop reading, and assume a quiescent state (for
of course _his free will_ will enable him to do this)--a state of mental
passivity, as it were,--let him _will nothing_ for the time being,--and
then see if thoughts of some kind do not spontaneously arise in his
mind. And then let him _will_ to have _no thoughts_ for the space
of five minutes, and see if the thoughts do not steal into his brain
(providing of course he has one) unbidden, and in spite of him--in spite
of all his boasted freewill power. Let any reader put this impossible
and absurd dictum of "Rationalist" to the test, and he will have a
living demonstration in his own brain, which will render any further
argument on this point entirely superfluous.
"Rationalist" worries himself into inextricable confusion over causes
and effects, first causes, first causes and last effects, etc., etc.
Because Ingersoll has said "a first cause is just as impossible as a
last effect," Rationalist well nigh swamps himself in a most ludicrous
"muss-of-a muddle-of-a-jerry-cum-tumble" of bad diction and worse logic
to prove that by such reasoning as Ingersoll's we come to "chaos" and
to "nothing," (hasn't the gentleman himself come to chaos if not to
nothing?) We reason everything out of existence, he says, and just now
we will have left "no nature, no God, no man, no matter" (it would be
_no matter_ if some _bipids_ were gone) "no force," no "nothing"--
"literally nothing." Shades of Bacon! let us take breath; for this would
certainly be a very bad state of things, from which "good Lord deliver
us!" It would be nearly as bad as before the "creation," when nothing
existed throughout the infinite realms of space save Jehovah himself.
I will endeavor to make what materialists mean by the impossibility of
a first cause or last effect clear to "Rationalist." We believe in one
existence, and only one--the universe--which, though never itself having
been created or brought into existence (being eternal), is the primal
(or "first" if you like) cause of all phenomena Rationalist will thus
see that in one sense there is no _first came_ as the universe is
eternal, yet in another sense there _is_ a first cause, viz.: the
universe, as it is the primal cause of all phenomena. As to a "last
effect," it should be obvious to every _rational_ mind that as matter
and force are indestructible, and hence eternal in duration, there can
be no last effect; for as long as matter and force exist effects must of
necessity ensue.