some noble or generous act. But what is wanted of us is to do no wrong
ones. It may be, for instance, in many eyes, a laudable thing to amass
a colossal fortune by acts not in all cases of quite unimpeachable
integrity, and then to expend it in magnificent benevolence. But the
really good thing is _not_ to make the fortune. Thorough honesty
and plain undeviating integrity--these are our real needs; on these
substructions only can the fabric of individual or national well-being
safely be reared. ‘Other foundation can no man lay.’ Common men, who,
in their petty daily acts, maintain these ordinary unostentatious
truths, are the real benefactors of mankind, the real pillars of the
State, are the apostles and champions of--something not to be named
within a few pages of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, the Solidarity
of the Peoples, and the Universal Republic.
NOTES
ON
THE RELIGIOUS TRADITION.[23]
It is impossible for any scholar to have read, and studied, and
reflected without forming a strong impression of the entire uncertainty
of history in general, and of the history of Christianity in particular.
It is equally impossible for any man to live, act, and reflect without
feeling the significance and depth of the moral and religious teaching
which passes amongst us by the name of Christianity.
The more a man feels the value, the true import of this, the more
will he hesitate to base it upon those foundations which as a scholar
he feels to be unstable. Manuscripts are doubtful, records may be
unauthentic, criticism is feeble, historical facts must be left
uncertain.
Even in like manner my own personal experience is most limited,
perhaps even most delusive: what have I seen, what do I know? Nor
is my personal judgment a thing which I feel any great satisfaction
in trusting. My reasoning powers are weak; my memory doubtful and
confused; my conscience, it may be, callous or vitiated.
I see not how it is possible for a man disinclined to adopt arbitrarily
the watchword of a party to the sacrifice of truth--indisposed to set
up for himself, and vehemently urge some one point--I see not what
other alternative any sane and humble-minded man can have but to throw
himself upon the great religious tradition.
But I see not either how any upright and strict dealer with
himself--how any man not merely a slave to spiritual appetites,
affections, and wants--any man of intellectual as well as moral
honesty--and without the former the latter is but a vain thing--I see
not how any one who will not tell lies to himself, can dare to affirm
that the narrative of the four Gospels is an essential integral part of
that tradition. I do not see that it is a great and noble thing, a very
needful or very worthy service, to go about proclaiming that Mark is
inconsistent with Luke, that the first Gospel is not really Matthew’s,
nor the last with any certainty John’s, that Paul is not Jesus, &c. &c.
&c. It is at the utmost a commendable piece of honesty; but it is no
new gospel to tell us that the old one is of dubious authenticity.
I do not see either, on the other hand, that it can be lawful for
me, for the sake of the moral guidance and the spiritual comfort, to
ignore all scientific or historic doubts, or if pressed with them to
the utmost, to take refuge in Romish infallibility, and, to avoid
sacrificing the four Gospels, consent to accept the legends of the
saints and the tales of modern miracles.
I believe that I may without any such perversion of my reason, without
any such mortal sin against my own soul, which is identical with
reason, and against the Supreme Giver of that soul and reason, still
abide by the real religious tradition.
It is indeed just conceivable that the Divine Orderer of the universe,
and Father of our spirits, should have so created these and ordered
that, as that the one should be directly contradictory to the other. It
may be that the facts which we, by the best force of our intellects,
discern, are by His ordinance delusions, intended of a set purpose
to tempt us from our highest path, that of His love and the worship
of Him. It is conceivable that he has subtly arranged that two and
two should be four (by delusion) everywhere, that our faith (the
one reality) may be tried when we propose to harmonise it with this
fallacy. It is possible that as our senses and appetites would make
us believe bad things, because pleasant, therefore good, so also our
reason may cheat us to believe wrong things, because reasonable,
therefore right. The rule which He has placed to measure all things by,
and bid us trust in them implicitly, may be, by His special purpose,
false for the highest things. What in our solemn courts of justice we
should call false witness, may be in the Church to decide our verdict;
what in the exchange would be imposture, may be in the sanctuary pure
truth. I say, this thing is conceivable, yet it is conceivable also
that sense and mind, that intellect and religion, things without and
things within, are in harmony with each other. If it is conceivable
that the earth in the natural world goes round the sun, delusively
to tempt us from the revealed act of the supernatural world that the
sun goes round the earth, it is also conceivable that the heavens, as
astronomically discerned, declare the glory of God, and the firmament
showeth His handywork.
It is conceivable that religious truths of the highest import may grow
up naturally, and appear before us involved in uncertain traditions,
with every sort of mere accessory legend and story attached to them and
entangled with them.
It may be true that as the physical bread has to be digested and the
nutritive portion separated from the innutritive, so may it also be
with the spiritual. It may be true that man has fallen, though Adam and
Eve are legendary. It may be a divine fact that God is a person, and
not a sort of natural force; and it may have happened that the tales of
His personal appearance to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were the means
of sustaining and conveying down to posterity that belief, and yet that
He never sat in the tent on the plains of Mamre, nor wrestled with
Jacob by night, nor spoke with Moses in the mount.
Where then, since neither in Rationalism nor in Rome is our refuge,
where then shall we seek for the Religious Tradition?
Everywhere; but above all in our own work: in life, in action, in
submission, so far as action goes, in service, in experience, in
patience, and in confidence. I would scarcely have any man dare to
say that he has found it, till that moment when death removes his
power of telling it. Let no young man presume to talk to us vainly and
confidently about it. Ignorant, as said Aristotle, of the real actions
of life, and ready to follow all impressions and passions, he is hardly
fitted as yet even to listen to practical directions couched in the
language of religion. But this apart--everywhere.
The Religious Tradition--as found everywhere--as found not only among
clergymen and religious people, but among all who have really tried to
order their lives by the highest action of the reasonable and spiritual
will. I will go to Johnson; I will go to Hume, as well as to Bishop
Butler. The precepts with which our parents often startle our religious
instincts, and our companions revolt our young moral convictions, these
also are in some sense to be considered in the religious and moral
tradition. Every rule of conduct, every maxim, every usage of life
and society, must be admitted, like Ecclesiastes of old in the Old
Testament, so in each new age to each new age’s Bible.
Everywhere--to India, if you will, and the ancient Bhagvad Gita and
the laws of Menu; to Persia and Hafiz; to China and Confucius; to the
Vedas and the Shasters; to the Koran; to pagan Greece and Rome; to
Homer; to Socrates and Plato; to Lucretius, to Virgil, to Tacitus. Try
all things, I do not imagine that any spiritual doctrine or precept of
life found in all that travel from east to west and north to south will
disqualify us to return to what _prima facie_ does appear to be, not
indeed the religion of the majority of mankind, but the religion of the
best, so far as we can judge in past history, and despite of professed
infidelity of the most enlightened of our own time.
Whether Christ died upon the Cross, I cannot tell; yet I am prepared to
find some spiritual truth in the doctrine of the Atonement. Purgatory
is not in the Bible; I do not therefore think it incredible.
There is only one theory or precept which must be noticed ere I end.
It is said that each of us is born with a peculiar nature of his own,
a constitution as it were for one form of truth to the exclusion
of others; that we must each look for what will suit us, and not
be over-solicitous for wide and comprehensive attainments. What is
one man’s food is another’s poison. Climate, parentage, and other
circumstances are too strong for us; it is impossible for the Italian
to be Protestant, or for the sons of New England Puritans to turn Roman
Catholics to any great extent.
I do not doubt that the Protestant has excluded himself (necessary
perhaps it was that he should so do) from large religious experience
which the Roman Catholic preserves. I am convinced again that the
Unitarian is morally and religiously only half educated compared with
the Episcopalian. Modern Unitarianism is, I conceive, unfortunate
on the one hand in refusing to allow its legitimate force to the
exercise of reason and criticism; on the other hand, in having by its
past exercise of reason and criticism thrown aside treasures of pure
religious tradition because of their dogmatic exterior.
I do acquiesce in this humble doctrine; I do believe that, strive as
I will, I am restricted, and grasp as I may, I can never hold the
complete truth. But that does not the least imply that I am justified
in shutting the eyes of my understanding to the facts of science, or
its ears to the criticisms of history, nor yet in neglecting those
pulsations of spiritual instinct which come to me from association at
one time with Unitarians, at another with Calvinists, or again with
Episcopalians and Roman Catholics.
I cannot see beyond the horizon; but within the natural horizon am I to
make an unnatural new horizon for myself? I cannot be in two places at
once; shall I therefore refuse to visit them at different times?
This doctrine may indeed lead to one conclusion; but it can lead justly
to one only, and that I think is a very harmless one--namely, that when
we have done all, we are unprofitable servants; when we have tried all
things, what we held fast is not the entire truth; when we have seen
all we can, there is still more that we cannot do.
Thus far I am most content to accept it. But it is no excuse to the
Italian for refusing to study the religious views of Englishmen, nor to
the Unitarian for believing that Calvinism is nonsense; nor to any one
for refusing to think.
It is very true that, speaking generally, to a certain extent, we must
all of us be of the religion of our fathers; we are so whether we
like it or not; whether we say we are, or say we are not. It is very
true, nevertheless, that we cannot refuse to know, when we are told on
good authority that there are many more Buddhists in the world than
Christians.
And it appears to me that it is much more the apparent dispensation of
things that we should gradually widen, than that we should narrow and
individualise our creeds. Why are we daily coming more and more into
communication with each other, if it be not that we learn each other’s
knowledge and combine all into one? I feel more inclined to put faith
in the currents of the river of things, than because it runs one way to
think I must therefore pull hard against it to go the other.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Head of St. John’s, and at that time Vice-chancellor.
[2] Afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, at that time fellow and tutor
of Balliol College.
[3] Meaning the day of Lawrence Sheriffe, which is the foundation day
of the school.
[4] Near Conway, a house on the seashore belonging to an uncle.
[5] The Rugby bookseller.
[6] Clough at this time was with a reading party, which furnished him
with many of the scenes and characters afterwards reproduced in his
poem of the _Bothie_.
[7] This was the scene of another reading party--
‘Up on the side of Loch Ness, in the beautiful valley of Urquhart.’
[8]
‘The inn by the Foyers Fall, where
Over the loch looks at you the summit of Mealfourvonie.’
_The Bothie_, Part iii.
[9] This volume appeared in 1849, under the name of _Ambarvalia_.
[10] After resigning his Fellowship and Tutorship at Oriel, Clough had
accepted the Headship of University Hall in London, and this letter
was written in consequence of a request which had been made him by the
authorities.
[11] The following letters from Rome were written during a tour he took
in Italy before settling at University Hall. It was in the course of
this tour that he wrote _Amours de Voyage_ and _Easter Day_.
[12] _Amours de Voyage_, canto ii. letter v.
[13] Afterwards best known as Margaret Fuller Ossoli.
[14] _Amours de Voyage._
[15] On Retrenchment at Oxford.
[16] Before going to America, in October 1852.
[17] Clough’s _Plutarch_. _Life of Sylla_, vol. iii. p. 157.
[18]
From the Acrocorinth watched the day
Light the eastern and the western bay.--_Mari Magno._
[19]
With wonder in the spacious gloom
Stood of the Mycenæan tomb.--_Mari Magno._
[20] _Mari Magno: My Tale._
[21] _Mari Magno: My Tale._
[22] The word _spoom_, which Dryden uses as the verb of the substantive
_spume_, occurs also in ‘Beaumont and Fletcher.’ Has Keats employed it?
It seems hardly to deserve reimpatriation.
[23] In the MS. Mr. Clough has written the first five stanzas of the
poem entitled ‘Through a Glass darkly’ (ii. 93), at the head of the
fragment. Though there is no date to the MS., it may with safety be
referred to the last period of his life.
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
Italics are represented thus _italic_.