_LIMITS OF DEMONSTRABLE THEISM._
Thought without Reverence is barren. The man who cannot wonder, who
does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he president of
innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole _Mecanique
Celeste_ and Hegel's _Philosophy_, and the epitome of all
laboratories and observatories with their results, in his single
head, is but a pair of spectacles, behind which there is no eye.
Let those who have eyes look through him; then he may be
useful.--_Sartor Resartus._
'I wouldn't mind,' said once a representative of extreme heterodoxy, in
debate with a champion of its diametrical opposite--'I wouldn't mind
conceding the Deity you contend for, were it not for the use commonly
made of him after he is conceded.' And no doubt that use is such as
might well provoke a saint, provided the saint were likewise a
philosopher. To whatever extent it be true that man was created in the
image of God, it is certain that in all ages and countries God has been
created in the image of man, invested with all human propensities,
appetites, and passions, and expected to demean himself on all occasions
as men would do in like circumstances. As popularly conceived, so long
as sensual gratification was esteemed to be the _summum bonum_, he
wallowed in all manner of sensual lust; when some of his more fervent
worshippers turned ascetics out of disgust with fleshly surfeit, he
became ascetism personified: at every stage his great delight has been
flattery, and his still greater, revenge; in the exercise of power he
has always been capricious and often wanton--ruthlessly vindictive
against impugners of his honour and dignity, unspeakably barbarous to
unbelievers in his reality. Now, as knowledge advanced, unbelief in a
God so much below the level of ordinarily virtuous men advanced equally,
quickening its pace, too, as the particular branch of knowledge styled
'physics' spread, and, spreading, exposed the utter impossibility of
many of the fables in which theological views had been expressed.
Wherefore, theological oracles have in every age and country been apt to
confound scientific inquisitiveness with unbelief, and to denounce
_physical_ science especially as a delusion and a snare, and its
cultivators as impostors none the less mischievous for being at the same
time dupes. Of course, the latter have not been slow to return the
compliment. Hearing the truths discovered by them stigmatised as
falsehoods, they naturally enough retorted the charge of falsity against
the divine authorities in whose name it was made. Finding war waged
against them by every religion with which they were acquainted, they
naturally enough in turn declared war against all religion, even with
that form thereof which underlies every other except when sufficing to
itself for superstructure as well as base. Natural enough this, for
_humanum est errare_; but very humanly erroneous withal, for to include
Deity itself in the same denial with pseudo-divine attributes is about
as sagacious a proceeding as to refuse to recognise the sun at midday on
account of his not appearing in Phoebus's chariot and four.
When religion on the defensive declares herself opposed to reason, so
much the worse for religion. She is thereby virtually surrendering at
discretion, since to appeal to her only other resource--revelation--is
to beg the whole subject in dispute. Similarly, the worse and still less
excusable is it for science to declare herself irreconcileable with
religion, for she, too, is thereby slighting reason. It is only by
forsaking the single guide in whom she professes to trust, and blindly
giving herself up to angry prejudice, that she can fail to discover the
rational solidity of so much of every religion as consists of theism.
For this, as we have seen, the argument from design abundantly suffices,
although the only absolute certainty thence deducible be that the
universe must have an author or authors fully equal to its original
construction, its subsequent development, and its continued maintenance.
Even if it be not inconceivable, notwithstanding that the chances to the
contrary be many times infinity to one, that the mere restlessness of
some utterly unintelligent force may have fabricated all material
structures, and imparted to all their movements certain orderly
successions, it is still manifestly impossible for unintelligence to
have brought forth intelligence--for the speculative, critical, carping
spirit of man to have been generated by that which has no speculation in
its eyes, nor any eyes, to have speculation in; impossible, in short,
for the creature to be more richly endowed than its creator. Since
numerous embodied intelligences actually exist, they must have been
preceded by intelligence capable of creating them and all other existing
intelligences that have not eternally existed; and it is simply
impossible that creative intelligence, whose creatures owe to it
whatever intelligence they possess, should on any occasion have
exhibited a want of intelligence which they are competent to detect.
But although it be thus demonstrably certain that an author of the
universe exists, it does not follow that there is only one. As to this
no proof positive, only probabilities, can be adduced; but the
probabilities are of an amount all but equivalent to certainty. They are
forcibly urged by Mr. Mill. Many exactly uniform occurrences, he
observes, are more naturally referred to 'a single, than to a number of
wills precisely accordant.' But the classes of uniform occurrences being
exceedingly numerous, if there were a separate will for each class,
there would be equally numerous wills, and 'unless all these wills were
in complete harmony (which would itself be the most difficult to credit
of all cases of invariability, and would require beyond anything else
the ascendancy of a supreme Deity),' it would be 'impossible that the
course of phenomena under their government should be invariable.' Every
fresh appearance of resemblance extending through all nature 'affords
fresh presumption that the whole is the work, not of many, but of the
same hand, and renders it vastly more probable that there should be one
indefinitely foreseeing Intelligence and immoveable Will than that there
should be hundreds and thousands of such.'[50] I will not run the risk
of weakening this reasoning by expansion. Its obvious inference that,
there being a God, there cannot be more than one, could not be set forth
more irresistibly.
That the wisdom of the Creator cannot be less than the amount thereof
manifested in His works is a self-evident proposition, which none will
be hardy enough directly to dispute. There is, however, one critic, of
great ability and yet greater daring, who appears to doubt whether the
wisdom manifested in the universe is anything to speak of. Mr. Lewes'
faculty of veneration is, I suspect, but imperfectly developed, since
'the succession of phases which each (animal) embryo is forced to pass
through,' is sufficient to give its action pause. 'None of these
phases,' he remarks, 'have any adaptation to the future state of the
animal, but are in positive contradiction to it, or are simply
purposeless; _many_ of them have no adaptation even to its embryonic
state; whereas _all_ show stamped on them the unmistakable characters of
_ancestral_ adaptations and the progressions of organic evolution.'
'What,' he asks, 'does this fact imply?' 'There is not,' he continues,
'a single known example of an organism which is not developed out of
simpler forms. Before it can attain the complex structure which
distinguishes it, there must be an evolution of forms which distinguish
the structures of organisms lower in the series.... On the hypothesis of
a plan that pre-arranged the organic world' (by no means, however,
necessarily in types that could not change, but rather in types adapted
and calculated to change), 'nothing,' he considers, 'could be more
unworthy of a supreme intelligence than this _inability_ to construct an
organism at once without making several _tentative_ efforts, undoing
to-day what was so carefully done yesterday, and repeating for centuries
the same _tentatives_ and the same _corrections_ in the same
succession.' 'Anthropomorphists,' he says, 'talk of "The Great
Architect," emphasising the name with capitals,' but 'what should we say
to an architect who was unable, or, being able, was obstinately
unwilling, to erect a palace except by first using his materials in the
shape of a hut, then pulling it down and rebuilding them as a cottage,
then adding storey to storey and room to room, not with any reference to
the ultimate purposes of the palace, but wholly with reference to the
way in which houses were constructed in ancient times? What should we
say to the architect who could not form a museum out of bricks and
mortar, but was forced to begin as if going to build a mansion, and,
after proceeding some way in this direction, altered his plan into a
palace, and that again into a museum? Would there be a chorus of
applause from the Institute of Architects, and favourable notices in the
newspapers of this profound wisdom?'[51]
Notwithstanding the exulting tone in which these questions are put, and
which seems to imply that in their proposer's opinion they are
unanswerable, they may, I think, be very summarily disposed of. Whatever
other comments might be made on the conduct of an architect who should
build in the complex manner suggested, surely the very last thing said
would be that he did not know how to build in simpler wise. His having
actually built a palace would be decisive proof of his knowing how to
build a palace; and of all queer reasons for questioning his possession
of that much architectural knowledge, about the queerest would be the
fact of his having built, not a palace only, but a hut and cottage in
addition. And if, adopting a still more complicated style, he should
begin by so constructing a hut that, if left to itself, it would draw up
brick and mortar from the earth, and grow into a cottage, and then go on
growing and adding storey to storey till it became a palace, this surely
would be a proof not of less, but of infinitely more, architectural
knowledge than if he had commenced and completed the palace with his own
hands. Not unwarrantably, perhaps, may Mr. Lewes, reflecting that his
own and every other human organism's genesis has consisted of at least
three stages, oval, foetal, and infantine, wonder why he was not
formed all at once, 'as Eve was mythically affirmed to be taken from
Adam's rib, and Minerva from Jupiter's head,' and why he was not brought
forth full dressed in an indefinitely expansible suit of clothes. Not
quite inexcusably, perhaps, might he conceive the reason to be some mere
whim or humour of his Maker, though there might be more gratitude in
conjecturing that the triple process was adopted for the purpose of
assisting biological enquirers like himself in their special researches.
From so practised a logician, however, about the very last thing to have
been here expected was that he should suggest creative 'ignorance and
incompetence' as the only apparent alternative to denying a Creator
altogether, as if incapacity for a comparatively easy process were a
likely reason for choosing one greatly more difficult. It might have
occurred to Mr. Lewes that, if there were any absurdity in the choice,
the Being who made him and bestowed on him the faculty of perceiving the
absurdity, could not have failed himself likewise to perceive it and
consequently to avoid it.
Of divine power, the measure or measurelessness is obviously identical
with that of divine wisdom. Both attributes must be at least
co-extensive with the universe; both consequently illimitable. Divine
goodness, moreover, inasmuch as the creature's moral ideal cannot be
superior to his Creator's, must be at least as vast as human
imagination: God must be at least as good as man can conceive Him. But
how, by goodness so transcending, conjoined with immeasurable might, can
the co-existence of evil be tolerated? To this last, and perhaps
greatest, among the many great questions brought forward for renewed
discussion in these pages, I have long had by me an attempt at a reply,
which, finding myself unable either to strengthen or shorten it by
turning it into prose, I venture to submit in its original rhythmical
form.
A Voice came to me as I sate apart,
Pondering the burthen of life's mystery,
In dim perplexity, with troubled heart.
With whisper weak and faint it came to me,
Like feeble glimmer of the struggling moon
To wildered mariner on midnight sea:
With whisper weak at first, but strengthening soon,
Like the moon's beam when filmy clouds disperse,
And through my scattered doubts, with quiet tune,
Uttering in clear, apocalyptic verse,
Truth, which for comfort and monition sent,
E'en as the voice revealed, do I rehearse.
'What art thou? Whence derived? With what intent
Placed where perpetual hindrances exhaust
Thy wasted strength, in baffled effort spent?
Where in blind maze, with crafty windings crossed,
With stumbling-blocks beset, with pitfalls strewed,
Thou wanderest, in endless error lost;
Athirst beside glad rivers that elude,
With mocking lapse, thy tantalized pursuit,
And hungering where gilded husks delude
With bitter ashes as of Dead Sea fruit,
Ashes of Hope, but seed of Discontent,
That rears its upas growth from blighted root?
Around, thou hear'st Creation eloquent,
Hymning creative attributes, and seest
The starry marvels of the firmament,
And marvels of the nearer earth, released
By impulse from within, not dimly shown,
Nor plainlier in the greatest than the least:
And, through the known discovering the unknown,
Acknowledgest thy Maker, power supreme,
Might, and dominion, deeming His alone.
Nor His the lax dominion mayst thou deem
That builds up empire, and when built, neglects.
Lo! where, afar, sidereal orbits gleam,
What first impelled, impelling still, directs:
Urges and guides each solar chariot,
The mundane mass of every globe connects,
By its own energy cohering not,
E'en as dead leaves, decaying languidly,
Not from themselves derive the force to rot.
'All-strengthening, all-sustaining Deity,
Diffused throughout the infinite, abides,
Dwells and upholds:--then, haply, dwells in thee?
Yea, verily. Within thy frame resides
What, by its movement only mayst thou know.
The circling blood, thy being's ambient tides,
Is't thine own will that bids them ebb and flow,
And from their inundating flood depose
Organic germs, whence health and vigour grow?
Yet though such witness serve thee to disclose
In human tenement divine abode,
Not thine be the material creed that shows
The spirit's birthplace in the moulded clod;
Not thine the pantheist raving, that because
God dwelleth with thee, thou thyself art God.
Bethink thee--is't self-reverence that o'erawes
Thy prostrate soul, and from thy faltering tongue,
Subdued, involuntary homage draws?
And when by harrowing pang thine heart is wrung,
Is't for self-aid thy wandering eyes inquire,
Heavenward, at length, in fervid suppliance flung?
And from thy native slough of sensual mire,
Is't to the mark of thine own purity
Thy loftier aims and holier hopes aspire?
Harshly thy fleshly fetters bear on thee,
In dark and dreary prison-house confined,
Cramped and diseased with long captivity,
And hath divine Intelligence designed
That noisome dungeon for her own restraint--
By her own act to galling bonds consigned,--
Self-doomed, with wilful purpose, to acquaint
Herself with sin and sorrow, and pollute
Aethereal essence with corporeal taint?
How doth thy helpless misery confute
That frantic boast of vain conceit, untaugh
The paltriest of its plans to execute!
Hast thou the art to add, by taking thought,
One cubit to thy stature? and hast thou,
Or such as thou, Nature's whole fabric wrought?
Not thine such vaunt--not thine to disavow
The lustre of thy genuine origin.
To the Most Highest, as thine author, bow
With rapture of exulting faith, wherein
Devotion's cravings their desire achieve,
The bright ideal that they imaged, win.
Rejoice that thus 'tis given thee to believe,--
To recognise transcending majesty,
Worthy all praise--all honour to receive:
Rejoice in that high presence, gratefully
Offering the vows that thy full heart dilate:
Rejoice that thence there floweth light, whereby
Thy emulative quest to elevate
Thitherward, where unblemished holiness
Irradiates sovereignty, benign as great.
'But here thou pausest, scrupling to confess
A providence of aspect all benign.
Fear not that sceptic scruple to express.
Of truth, Almighty Goodness could assign
Good only to the work of His own hand,
Warmed into life by His own breath divine:
And, where unchecked Beneficence had planned
A home for creatures of a fragile race,
Evoked from nothingness at His command,
Nor care, nor want, nor anguish should have place,
Nor fraud betray, nor violence oppress,
Nor hate inflame, nor wallowing lust debase,
Nor aught be found, save what conspired to bless
The sentient clay, wrought surely for that end,--
For wherefore wrought, if not for happiness?
'Not, as some teach, for mastery to contend
With fate,--in doubtful conflict to engage,--
Struggling, in pain and peril, to ascend
Slowly, through this probationary stage,
Sore let, but tried and chastened, and thereby
Earning on earth a heavenly heritage.
Was there then need that prescience should try,
By ordeal pitiless, assured event,
Disclosed beforehand to prophetic eye?
Need was there, by austere experiment,
To test the frailty and the fall foreknown
Of man, beneath o'erwhelming burthen bent?
In this was tutelar prevision shown?
Hardly may he, in such belief confide,
Who sees his fellow myriads left to groan
In barren penance, without light or guide,
E'en from their birth by fostering vice controlled,
Doomed as they cross life's threshold--doomed untried.
'As hardly, too, may he the dogma hold
That fetters reason with a graduate chain
Of beings, linked in order manifold,
Where, to each link, 'tis given to sustain
A part subservient to the general weal,--
Duly to share the mutual burthen's strain:--
Though who from such allotment would appeal,
Could it be truth that wisdom's masterpiece
Such aid could lack, such feebleness conceal,
Suing its own constituents for release
From wrong innate, throughout its texture wove,
By hard necessity, not light caprice?
But to what purport could premonished Love
A system twined with mutual suffering weave,
When but a word all suffering would remove?
And wherefore yet delayeth the reprieve
Of Love, that doth not willingly afflict
Its children, neither wantonly aggrieve?
Can aught the gracious purpose interdict
Of Him, whose piercing eye, whose boundless sway,
No cloud can dim, no barrier restrict?
Say'st thou, "By path inscrutable, and way
Past finding out, perchance, may mercy bend
To its own use, whate'er its course would stay,
And through the labouring world high mandate send
That all things work together unto good,
Work, though by means corrupt, to righteous end?"
Beware how such conjectures must conclude.
Can means impure Omnipotence befit,
And clog the range of its solicitude?
Can finite bonds confine the Infinite?
Though man, by choice of ill, must needs offend,
Need God do ill that good may come of it?
Must havoc's mad typhoon perforce descend?
May naught else serve to fan the stagnant air?
Must captive flame earth's quaking surface rend,
Or seek escape in lava flood? and ere
Effete society new structure raise,
Must dearth or pestilence the ground prepare?
Thus is it that a parent's care purveys
His bounty, and, exacting rigorously
The price in tears, each boon's full cost defrays?
Thus, with vain thrift withholding the decree,
That from his treasury's exhaustless store
To all could grant unbought felicity?
'But haply still 'tis reasoned (and with more
Of reason's semblance were the plea maintained),
That higher yet would life's ambition soar,
Not for mere scheme of happiness ordained,
But for advance in virtue,--for the growth
By patient zeal and meek endurance gained:
That, at the table of voluptuous sloth,
Though banqueted on sweets without alloy,
Unsated were a generous nature, loth
To feast where unearned lusciousness would cloy,
Faint with the tedium of unbroken rest,
Sick with the sameness of unruffled joy:
That for more poignant pleasure, and of zest
Heightened and edged by healthful exercise,--
For scope wherein her conscious strength to test
In keen pursuit and venturous enterprise,
For dear exemplars, in whose course serene
Affection's tearful warmth might sympathise,
For these the yearning mind would languish, e'en
Though with all else that wish could name endued,
While, in her striving for self-discipline,
Foiled, and with fervid impulses imbued
Vainly, where neither aught could valour dare
Nor aught confront and challenge fortitude:
And where no outward token could declare
The hidden worth congenial heart would hail,
Hail with each kindred chord vibrating there;d
Since virtue wakes not but when griefs assail,
Or travail burthens, or temptations try,
Slumbering supine, till roused by adverse gale,
In the deep sleep of moral lethargy,
Joy's fullest cup, by hope or doubt unstirred,
Curdling the while to dull satiety.
'Thus haply some have reasoned, undeterred
By reasoning, with equal emphasis
But counter aim, as readily preferred:
Since Heaven's perfection striveth not, nor is
In peril lest it lapse to apathy,
Or lassitude invade its tranquil bliss.
And were it as they deem, and righteously
Were man adjudged with his brow's sweat to eat
Bread leavened with embittering misery,
E'en then affliction's measure to complete,
Amply might pain, and want, and death suffice,
And feeling's blight, and baffled love's defeat,
And, on the altar of self-sacrifice,
Hope's withered blooms by resignation laid:
Nor were it needed that incarnate vice,
In human mould, in the same image made,
Trampled with iron hoof his fellow man,
Virtue's chastised development to aid.
For whence was Vice derived? Ere life began,
For His own offspring could their Maker trace
Their loathsome office, and beneath his ban
Place them, accurst (creating to debase),
And doom as fuel for the flames that test
A favoured few, elect by partial grace?
Elect or outcast--if alike confessed
Of the same parent, sons--brethren who bear
No differing lineaments, save those imprest
By his prevision--in their parent's care
Should not all be partakers? Should not all
Freely, alike, his nurturing guidance share?
Are any worthier? 'Tis that warning's call
Extends to them alone--'tis that to them
Alone is given vigour, wherewithal
Temptation's fraudful violence to stem--
And how shall He, who needful strength denies,
Weakness for its predestined fall condemn?
How, when the creature of His wrath replies
With feeble wail and inarticulate moan,
The sighing of that contrite heart despise?
What man amongst thy fellows hast thou known
Who, if his son ask fish, will jeeringly
Give him a serpent, or for bread a stone?
If ye, being evil, at your children's cry
Know how to give good gifts, should not much more
Your heavenly Father His good things supply
To them who ask Him? Should He not restore
A cleansed heart within them, and renew
An upright spirit? not, what they implore
Reversing, and restraining, lest they do
The good they would,--constraining them withal
To do the evil they would fain eschew?
How wilt thou to the same original
Whence all just thoughts and pure desires proceed,
Impute corrupt imaginings, whose thrall
Enslaves anew the soul but newly freed
From their pollution? Can a hybrid growth
Arise spontaneous from unmingled seed?
Are grapes upon the bramble borne, or doth
The fig bear olive berries? Canst thou show
Twin waters, sweet and bitter, issuing both
From the same fountain? Neither should there flow
Blessing and cursing from one mouth, nor yet
From the same Providence both weal and woe.
'Vile as thou art, ofttimes in thee have met
Mercy and Truth--and Peace and Righteousness
Have kissed each other; and thine heart is set
Ofttimes to follow what is just, redress
Where thou hast trespassed, rendering; ofttimes, too,
Forgiving other's trespass: to distress
Thou grudgest not its sympathetic due
Of kindly deed, or word, or mutual tears,
Nor in vain wholly labourest to subdue
The hydra host whose foul miasm blears
Thy vision, and the distant gleam obscures
That dimly through thy prison casement peers.
E'en to the darkened dungeon that immures
Thy soul, some feeble glimmer finds its way.
Crushed beneath earthly durance, still endures
Some lingering fire below that weight of clay,
Some generous zeal, some honest hardihood,
Some faith--some charity.--And whence are they?
If not of Him whose quickening breath endued
All things with life,--and, when he looked upon
What He had made, beheld that all was good:
All good,--but chiefly man, in whom alone
Some likeness of Himself--some clouded light,
From His own countenance reflected, shone.
Doth not the sun outshine the satellite?
And shall not He who in the murkiest hour
Of sin's defilement, streaks thy dreary night
With beams that bid thee, lower yet and lower
Descending, hope, perchance, to rise again,--
Say--shall not He in holiness as power
Transcend the creature whom His gifts sustain!
And here, if sneering casuist blaspheme,
And to divided nature's sovereign,
Ascribe, in nature's opposite extreme
Like eminence, and nature's God aver
In evil, even as in good, supreme,--
Heed not, or ask if man's Artificer
With His own work, in virtue matched, can prove
At once more holy and unholier?
'Yet since all good is fruit of love, and love
Worketh no ill, how still doth ill abound?
Is't haply that with love a rival strove?
Mark well this parable. In chosen ground
Only good seed a husbandman had sown,
Yet when the blade sprang up, therewith he found
Tares that amid the stifled wheat had grown.
Then knew he well, how, entering unawares,
This, while men slept, an enemy had done.
And 'tis an enemy who, scattering tares
Amid the corn sown in Creation's field,
With deadly coil the growing plant ensnares.
And no mean enemy, nor one unsteeled
For bold defiance, nor reduced to cower
Ever in covert ambuscade concealed,
But at whose hest the ravening hell-hounds scour
A wasted world, while himself prowls to seek,
Like roaring lion, whom he may devour,
And upon whom his rancorous wrath to wreak,
Sniffing the tainted steam of slaughter's breath,
And lulled by agony's despairing shriek.
For it is he who hath the power of death,
Even the devil, by whom entereth sin
Into the world, and death engendereth:
Yea! by whom entereth whatsoe'er within
Warreth against the spirit,--sordid greed,
Pride, carnal lust, envy to lust akin,
And malice, and deceit, whose treacheries breed
Strife between brethren, and the faith o'erthrow
Of many, and the duped deserters lead,
Beneath the banner of their deadliest foe,
In rebel arms a Parent to defy,
Whom, by His gifts alone, His children know.
'Not less that Parent marks with pitying eye
The blinded rage that rivets its own chain:
Not less to His own glorious liberty
Seeks, from corruption's bondage, to regain
His erring children,--by device, or lewd,
Or threatening, lured, or goaded to their bane:
Not less to overcome evil with good
Labours, and shall therewith all things subdue
Unto Himself--but hath not yet subdued.
And wherefore? wherefore tarrieth He, while through
Eden, by daring foray oft defaced,
Marauding fiends malignant raid pursue,
Winging the turbid whirlwind's frantic haste,
Pointing the levin's arrowy effluence,
Over the mildewed harvest's hungry waste,
Breathing the fetid breath of pestilence,
And crying havoc to the dogs of war,
Let slip on unresisting innocence?
Why suffereth He that thus a rival mar
His cherished work--through devastated fields
Borne on triumphant in ensanguined car?--
Him, who with power to rescue, tamely yields
His helpless charge to persecuting hate,
Nor His own offspring from the torturer shields,
But sits aloof, callously obdurate,
While but the will is lacking to redeem,--
Him, how shall fitting stigma designate?
'But 'tis not thus thy calmer doubts esteem
The loving-kindness that with open hand
Dispenses bounty in perennial stream.
Oft hast thou proved, while in a foreign land
A sojourner, as all thy fathers were,
Thou pacest painfully the barren sand,
How o'er thy path watches a Comforter,
And scatters manna daily for thy food,
And bids the smitten rocks that barrier
The arid track, well out with gurgling flood,
And oft to shade of green oasis leads,
And, from pursuer thirsting for thy blood,
Such scanty shelter as is thine provides:
And though full oft that shelter fails, and though
Its torn defence demoniac glee derides,
Yet not for this the cheerful faith forego,
That memory of uncounted benefits
And conscious instinct's still, small tones bestow.
Charge not thy God with aught that unbefits
Tenderest compassion, nor believe that He
With hardened apathetic scorn commits
A favoured people throughout life to be
Subject to bondage. Doubt not of His will
To rescue from that galling tyranny.
Yet, if in His despite creation still
In thraldom groan and travail--what remains?
What but that strength is wanting to fulfil
His scheme of mercy? What but that He reigns,
Not as sole wielder of omnipotence,
But, o'er a world unconquered yet, maintains
Encounter with opposing influence,
Which He shall surely quell, but which can stay,
Awhile unquelled, His mightier providence.
'And doth this sadden only, or dismay?
Grieves it that He, whose follower thou art,
Rules not supreme with unresisted sway?
Or that, the progress of His grace to thwart,
Satanic might the host of hell arrays?
And doth it not a thrill of joy impart
That not alone need barren prayer and praise
Thine homage be,--thy choicest offering
The formal dues prescribed obedience pays?
Henceforth with firmer step approach thy King.
Some puny succour, thou, in thy degree,
Some feeble aid, thou, even thou, mayst bring!
In the fell conflict raging ceaselessly
Around, thou, too, mayst join--thou, too, engage
In that dread feud, twin with eternity,
Which faithful angels and archangels wage
Against the powers of darkness, to extend,
O'er realms retained in demon vassalage,
Their sovereign's pure dominion,--and to blend
All worlds beneath one righteous governance,
Into one kingdom which shall have no end.
'Wouldst thou, if haply so thou mayst, advance
That blessed consummation? Wouldst thou speed
The lingering hour of Earth's deliverance?
Arise--the naked clothe, the hungry feed,
The sick and wounded tend,--soothe the distressed.
If thy weak arm cannot protect, yet plead
With bold rebuke the cause of the oppressed,
Kindling hot shame in Mammon's votaries,
Abashed, at least, in lucre's grovelling quest;
And, in the toil-worn serf, a glad surprise
Awakening--when, from brute despondency,
Taught to look up to heaven with dazzled eyes.--
Thus mayst thou do God service,--thus apply
Thyself, within thy limit, to abate
What wickedness thou seest, or misery:
Thus, in a Sacred Band, associate
New levies, from the adverse ranks of Sin
Converted,--against Sin confederate.
Or--if by outward act to serve, or win
Joint followers to the standard of thy Lord,
Thy lot forbid,--turn, then, thy thought within:
Be each recess of thine own breast explored:
There, o'er thy passions be thy victories won:
There, be the altar of thy faith restored,
And thou, a living sacrifice, thereon
Present thyself.--This ever mayst thou do,
Nor, doing this, wilt aught have left undone.'
Here ceased the Voice, commissioned to renew
Truth, which, of old, when Bactrian sage began
Nature's dim maze to thread with slenderest clue,
Its doubtful scope and dark design to scan,
With inward whisper, hopeful witness bare,
And justified the ways of God to man.
And suddenly its warning ceased, but ere
It ceased, the scales had fallen from my eyes,
And I beheld, and shall I not declare
What my uncurtained vision testifies?
Shall coward lips the word of life suppress?
The oracle vouchsafed from Heaven disguise?
Nay, as one crying in the wilderness,
Where none else hearken, to the vacant air
And stolid mountains utters his distress,
E'en so will I too cry aloud, 'Prepare
Before Him the Lord's way. Make His path straight,'
Nor heed though none regard me, nor forbear
Though all revile, but patiently await
Till, like light breath that panting meads exhale,
And scornful zephyrs lightly dissipate,
But which, full surely, down the echoing vale,
Shall roll with sounding current, swift and loud,
My slighted message likewise shall prevail,
Entering the heart of many a mourner, bowed
Beneath despair, and with inspiring voice
Calling to hope to cleave her midnight cloud,
And bidding grief, in hope's new dawn, rejoice.
This is a creed which long since came to me after earnest inward
communings, and which, though subsequent reflection has in some few
particulars modified it, I still in substance hold, clinging to it with
a grateful consciousness of ever-multiplying obligations. For in it the
soul has free scope for its loftiest aspirations and its widest and
deepest sympathies, strongest incentives to zeal, surest guidance for
activity, solace in every distress, support under every difficulty,
added cause for exultation in every success, renewed resolution in every
defeat. Still, it is here offered, not as ascertained truth, but merely
as a sample of those guesses at truth by which alone ordinary mortals
need hope to promote the common cause of humanity in any of its higher
bearings. Such guesses, however, when harmonising with all the
conditions of their subject-matter, may fairly claim to be provisionally
regarded as truths--nay, to be adopted as working hypotheses until
superseded by new hypotheses capable of doing the same work better; in
which supercession none ought to rejoice, nor, if sincere truth-seekers,
will rejoice, more cordially than the propounders of the discredited
doctrines. It is in this spirit and with these reservations that the
articles of faith above recited are submitted for consideration. How
much soever they may fall short of the truth, they are, I feel, in the
absence of any nearer approach to the truth, capable of rendering
excellent service. However faintly and hazily the outlines of Deity be
shown in them, the Deity whom they so imperfectly delineate is yet one
to whom may justly be ascribed glory in the highest, one worthy of all
trust, love, and adoration--of an adoration, too, inclusive not more of
praise than prayer.
If the divine claim to the last-named tribute be disputed, it had better
be by arguments other than those on which certain writers, with Mr.
Galton for their leader and Professor Tyndall for their backer, have
been recently expending much misapplied ingenuity. If the efficacy of
prayer be, as the foremost of these declares it to be, 'a perfectly
appropriate and legitimate subject of scientific enquiry,' the enquiry
ought at least to be conducted according to scientific rules. On this
point Mr. Galton himself lays much stress, intimating that whereas an
unscientific reasoner may be expected to be 'guided by a confused
recollection of crude experience, a scientific reasoner will scrutinise
each separate experience before he admits it as evidence, and will
compare all the cases he has selected on a methodical system.'
Nevertheless, a brief examination of the experiences on which he and his
principal associate rely, may suggest some doubt as to which of the two
specified classes of reasoners it is that they themselves belong.
The facts or fancies cited by Mr. Galton in proof that praying is of no
use are the following: 1. 'Sick people who pray or are prayed for do not
on the average recover more rapidly than others.' 2. Although 'the
public prayer for the sovereign of every state, Protestant or
Catholic, is and has been in the spirit of our own--"Grant her in health
long to live"--sovereigns are literally the shortest-lived of all
persons who have the advantage of affluence.' 3. The 'clergy are a far
more prayerful class' than either lawyers or medical men, it being
'their profession to pray,' and 'their practice that of offering morning
and evening family prayers in addition to their private devotions,' yet
'we do not find that the clergy are in any way more long-lived in
consequence;' rather, there is room for believing their class to be the
'shortest-lived of the three.' Nay, even missionaries, eminently
prayerful as they are themselves, and prayed for as they are with
especial earnestness by others, 'are not supernaturally endowed with
health,' and 'do not live longer than other people.' 4. 'The proportion
of deaths at the time of birth is identical among the children of the
praying and the non-praying classes.' 5. Though 'we pray in our Liturgy
that "the nobility may be endowed with grace, wisdom, and
understanding,"' our 'nobility are peculiarly subject to insanity;' as
are likewise, indeed, 'very religious people of all denominations,'
'religious madness being very common indeed.' 6. So far from 'religious
influences' appearing to have 'clustered in any remarkable degree round
the youth of those who, whether by their talents or their social
position, have left a mark upon English history,' 'remarkable devotional
tendencies' have been conspicuous chiefly by their absence from 'the
lives either of our Lord Chancellors or of the leaders of our great
political parties;' while, out of our twenty-three extant dukes, four at
least, if not five, are descended from mistresses of Charles II., not a
single one of them, on the other hand, being known to Mr. Galton to be
of 'eminently prayerful qualities.' 7. In respect of those
'institutions, societies, commercial adventures, political meetings and
combinations of all sorts' with which England so much abounds, and of
which 'some are exclusively clerical, some lay, and others mixed,' Mr.
Galton 'for his own part never heard a favourable opinion of the value
of the preponderating clerical element in their business committees.'
'The procedure of Convocation which, like all exclusively clerical
meetings, is opened with prayer, has not inspired the outer world with
much respect.' Nay, 'it is a common week-day opinion of the world that
praying people are not practical.' 8. In those numerous instances in
which an enterprise is executed by the agency of the profane on behalf
not of the profane themselves but of pious clients, 'the enterprises are
not observed to prosper beyond the average.' Underwriters recognise no
difference in the risks run by missionary ships and by ordinary traders,
nor do life insurance companies, before they accept a life, introduce
into their 'confidential enquiries into the antecedents of the
applicant' any 'such question as "Does he habitually use family prayers
and private devotions?"' Neither are the funds of devout shareholders
and depositors at all safer than those of the profane when entrusted to
the custody of untrustworthy directors, not even though the day's work
of the undertaking commence, as that of the disastrous Royal British
Bank used to do, with solemn prayer.[52]
Two or three minutes' attention to the grounds for, and the
circumstances connected with, these statements, may assist us in
appreciating Mr. Galton's notion of the difference between confusedly
recollected experiences and experiences properly scrutinised and
methodically selected.
For the statement first on the list, some negative evidence is
considered to be afforded by the absence of any 'single instance in
which papers read before Statistical Societies have recognised the
agency of prayer either in disease or in anything else.' The chief
authority for it, however, is the eloquent silence of medical men 'who,
had prayers for the sick any notable effect, would be sure to have
observed it,' seeing that they are 'always on the watch for such
things.' But are they really, in every case of recovery from illness
that comes under their notice, so particular and so successful in their
enquiries whether any, and, if so, how much, prayer has been offered on
behalf of the patient, as to be qualified to judge whether prayer has
had anything to do with the cure? If not, although they may be showing
their discretion by not speaking on the point, the 'eloquence of their
silence' must not be too hastily interpreted. For doctors, of all men,
should be the last to deny, as an abstract proposition, the efficacy of
prayer in disease, knowing, as they do, how great is the curative
influence of prayer when addressed to themselves. How, they may
naturally ask, is it to be expected that sickness should be cured unless
properly treated? and how can it be properly treated without a doctor?
and how can a doctor be expected to attend unless he be asked? Upon
which very natural queries others naturally follow. What would be the
good of the doctor's coming unless he prescribed judiciously? and will
he not more certainly prescribe judiciously if his judgment be guided by
special interposition of divine grace? and if prayer to himself has
plainly been one condition of his coming, why may not prayer to God
have been one condition of his judgment having been rightly guided? Will
it be pretended that God's proceedings are abjectly submissive to
inexorable laws from which those of the doctor are exempt, and that
though the latter would certainly not have attended unless he had been
asked, the grace of God, if given at all, must have been given equally
whether asked for or not?
Statements 2 and 3 are founded on a memoir by Dr. Guy, purporting to
show the 'Mean Age attained by males of various classes who had survived
their 30th year from 1758 to 1843,' and whose deaths were not caused by
violence or accident. According to this table, the average age of 97
members of royal houses was only 64.04, while that of 1,179 members of
the English aristocracy was 67.31, and that of 1,632 gentlemen commoners
70.22; the proportion between the total number of royal, and that of
noble and gentle, personages who died within the period specified, being
apparently supposed to be as 97 to 2811, or as 1 to about 29. Except
upon this supposition, Mr. Galton could not with any consistency have
appealed to these figures, for he had previously announced his intention
to be 'guided solely by broad averages and not to deal with isolated
instances.' He seems, however, to forget this judicious rule when he
comes to treat of the clergy, of whom 945 are compared in the table with
294 lawyers and 244 medical men. Here, he says, 'the clergy as a whole
show a life value of 69.49 against 68.14 for lawyers, and 67.31 for
medical men;' but then, he adds 'this difference is reversed' when the
comparison is made between members of the three classes sufficiently
distinguished to have had their lives recorded in Chalmers'
Biographical Dictionary or the Annual Register, the value of life among
clergy, lawyers, and medical men then appearing as 66.42, 66.51 and
67.34 respectively. Whether, of the distinguished professional men
concerned in this second comparison, the parsons were distinguished for
their prayerfulness and the lawyers and doctors for their
prayerlessness, Mr. Galton omits to state; and still more serious
omissions on his part are those of not mentioning in what part of our
Liturgy we are accustomed to pray that it may be granted to the Queen,
not simply long to live, but also to live longer than other people;
likewise in which of 'the numerous published collections of family
prayers' that have undergone his scrutiny, is to be found a petition
that parsons may live longer than lawyers or doctors; and, yet again,
since an _average_, falling short of threescore years and ten by little
more than three and a half, is so contemptuously rejected by him, what
is the precise number of years that would be accepted by him as a
liberal compliance with prayer for long life?
While deducing his argument from clergymen, Mr. Galton makes repeated
and particular reference to the clerical _sub-genus_, missionaries,
treating it as the more remarkable that these should not enjoy
comparative immunity from disease, because, as he suggests, it would
have been so easy for God to have made them a favoured class in respect
of health: to wit, by the notable expedient of dissuading them from
exposing themselves to any of the risks peculiarly attendant on
missionary enterprise. 'Tropical fever, for example, is due to many
subtle causes which are partly under man's control. A single hour's
exposure to sun, or wet, or fatigue, or mental agitation will determine
an attack.' What more simple than for God so to 'act on the minds of
the missionaries as to disincline them to take those courses which might
result in mischance, such as the forced march, the wetting, the
abstinence from food, or the night exposure?' What more simple, either,
it may be added, than for God to save prayerful soldiers from ever being
killed in battle by merely putting it into their minds to desert
whenever they are ordered upon active service?
That 'the distribution of still-births is wholly unaffected by piety'
Mr. Galton has satisfied himself by finding, 'on examination of a
particular period, that the proportion of such births published in the
'Record' newspaper and in the 'Times' bore an identical relation to the
total number of deaths.' He had previously, we must suppose, satisfied
himself that advertisers in the 'Times' never say their prayers.
For the asserted commonness of religious madness Mr. Galton cites no
evidence whatever, and, to judge from the sympathies and antipathies of
which one of his avowed opinions may be supposed to be the subject and
the object, speaks probably on this point solely from hearsay. Very
possibly, however, his assurance of the extraordinary prevalence of
insanity among British noblemen may be based on personal observation,
as, of course, is that regarding the prayerlessness of his own ducal
acquaintances. Birds of a feather, proverbially, flock together, and the
same touch of irreligion may quite possibly suffice to make certain
dukes and certain commoners kin.
Against the inefficiency, however notorious, of the clerical element in
business committees, ought in fairness to be set the equally notorious
efficiency of Jesuits in whatever they undertake, the signal statecraft
displayed by the Wolseys, the Richelieus, and the Ximenes's of the days
in which cardinals and archbishops were permitted to take a leading
part in executive politics, and the very respectable figure still
presented by the lords spiritual, beside the lords temporal of the
British House of Peers. As for 'the common week-day opinion that praying
people are not practical,' those by whom it is entertained, of course,
mentally except praying Quakers.
The fact that insurance offices do not attempt to distinguish between
the prayerful and the prayerless, but, treating both classes as liable
to the same risks, exact from both the same premiums, proves, I submit,
nothing against the efficacy of prayer, not even that the managers of
insurance offices do not believe in it. The statement that prayerful and
prayerless, when placing their money in the same dishonest keeping, or
engaging in the same bad speculations, suffer losses, bearing exactly
the same proportion to their respective ventures, although most probably
quite true, is also one which Mr. Galton has neglected to verify by the
application to it of any test, scientific or other. Finally, if the
disasters of the Royal British Bank are to be ascribed to its custom of
opening business with prayer, not only ought the cackle of Convocation
to be attributed to a similar cause, but also all the legislative
botchery of the House of Commons, and the abolition of prayer before
debate should be treated as the most urgently needed of those further
parliamentary reforms with which the fertile brains of certain eminent
statesmen are suspected to be teeming.
Thus much by way of intimation that there would be no excessive temerity
in encountering Mr. Galton even on the ground of his own choosing, were
that ground really worth contending for. But baseless and exorbitant as
all Mr. Galton's postulates are, there is not one of them to which he
might not be made heartily welcome, for any effect its surrender could
have upon the real issue, the true nature whereof both Mr. Galton and
his principal coadjutor have, with marvellous sleight of eye, contrived
completely to overlook. Such Pharisees in science, such sticklers for
rigorously scientific method, might have been expected to begin by
authenticating the materials they proposed to operate upon, and, when
professing to experiment upon pure metal, at least to see that it was
not mere dross they were casting into the crucible. Plainly, however,
they despise any such nice distinctions. The most earnest prayer and the
emptiest ceremonial prate are both alike to them. What sort of a process
they imagine prayer to be may be at once perceived from the sort of
trials to which they desire to subject it.
'After much thought and examination,' the coadjutor aforesaid--a bashful
Teucer, over whom Professor Tyndall has, like a second Ajax Telamon,
extended, with chivalrous haste, the shelter of his shield--does 'not
hesitate to propose that one single ward or hospital under the care of
first-rate physicians or surgeons, containing a number of patients
afflicted with those diseases which have been best studied, and of which
the mortality rates are best known, should be, during a period of not
less than three to five years, made the object of special prayer by the
whole body of the faithful, and that, at the end of that time, the
mortality rates should be compared with the past rates, and also with
those of other leading hospitals similarly well managed during the same
period.'[53] In suggesting this experiment, termed by himself
'exhaustive and complete,' its propounder imagines himself to be
offering to the faithful 'an occasion of demonstrating to the faithless
an imperishable record of the real power of prayer.' If, however, he
were himself petitioning for the reprieve of a condemned criminal, he
would scarcely expect to succeed, even with so tender-hearted a minister
as Mr. Bruce, if he were to let out in the course of his supplications,
that he did not care whether he succeeded or not, and was asking for the
reprieve solely for the purpose of ascertaining whether the head of the
Home Office is really invested with the prerogative of mercy. Yet no
suspicion crosses his mind that the Searcher of Hearts may possibly be
displeased with prayers addressed to Him by the lips of those who were,
all the while, saying in their hearts that they did not want their
prayers to be granted, but only wanted to satisfy their curiosity to
know whether they would be granted or not. Equally remarkable is the
trustfulness of Mr. Galton, in opining that 'it would be perfectly
practicable to select out of the patients at different hospitals under
treatment for fractures, or amputations, or other common maladies, whose
course is so well understood as to admit of accurate tables being
constructed for their duration and result, two considerable groups, the
one consisting of markedly religious and piously befriended individuals,
the other of those who were remarkably cold-hearted and neglected; and
that, then, an honest comparison of their respective periods of
treatment, and the result, would manifest a distinct proof of the
efficacy of prayer, if it existed to even a minute fraction of the
amount that religious teachers exhort us to believe.' Evidently, he
imagines that it would be sufficient for the hospital authorities to
advertise--not of course, in the 'Times,' but in the 'Record'--and
that, thereupon, whoever, having entered into his closet and shut the
door, had, on behalf of any of the patients experimented upon, prayed to
the Father who seeth in secret, would at once come forth and proclaim
openly how he had been engaged. Not by 'arguments' of no greater
'cogency' than that of any based upon results thus obtainable, need
either of the two experimentalists expect to persuade praying people
that prayer is, 'in the natural course of events,' doomed to become
'obsolete, just as the Waters of Jealousy and the Urim and Thummin of
the Mosaic Law did in the times of the later Jewish Kings.' Not quite so
easily will they cause it to be 'abandoned to the domain of recognised
superstition,' just as belief in witches and in the Sovereign's touch as
a cure for scrofula, and 'many other items of ancient faith have already
successively been.' Both of them have, it seems, yet to learn that the
only prayer which is believed by people of some little enlightenment to
be of any avail, is the 'fervent, effectual prayer of a righteous man,'
prayer that cometh from 'a pure heart fervently,' prayer that is made
'with the spirit and with the understanding also.' Prayer of this sort
is not to be discredited by any abundance of statistical testimony to
the futility of cold lip-worship, or by any number of fresh examples of
the generally recognised fact that the children of this world are wiser
in their generation than the children of light. The recovery from the
very jaws of death of King Hezekiah, of Louis XV. of France, while as
yet undetected and _bien-aime_, and of the present Prince of Wales, may,
none the less probably, have been in part due to the prayers offered up
for the first by himself, for the second, according to President Henault
and Mr. Carlyle, by all Paris, and, for the third, by the whole British
empire, because _lessons_ appointed to be regularly said or _sung_ in
churches for the prolongation of the Sovereign's life, and said and sung
by the congregations to whom they are set, with equal regularity,
whether the Sovereign be well or ill, detested or beloved, are to all
appearance disregarded. Modern believers in prayer are well aware that,
although they ask, they may not receive if they ask amiss, and would
accept this as fully adequate explanation of the disappointment of
anyone, who had the face to pray that he might grow as rich as the late
Mr. Brassey, or be created a duke, or appointed Lord Chancellor, or
supplant Mr. Gladstone in the premiership, or Mr. D'Israeli in the
leadership of Her Majesty's Opposition. Moreover, the spirit, duly
seasoned with understanding, in which alone true prayer can be made, is
one, not of presumptuous dictation to a Heavenly Father, but of sincere
and grateful recognition that 'He knoweth better than ourselves what is
for our good.' Far from praying for selfish aggrandisement, we cannot,
if we pray aright, pray that, whether from ourselves or others, the cup
of affliction may pass away, without adding, 'Nevertheless, not as I
will, but as Thou wilt.' The only gifts that can with propriety be
prayed for unconditionally are gifts spiritual--cleansing of the
thoughts of the heart, strength to resist temptation, strength to endure
trials, strength to perform our appointed work; and whoever may think
fit to make these the subjects of statistical inquiry, may depend upon
being assured by everyone experimentally qualified to reply, that they
are never asked for faithfully without being obtained effectually;
together with large measure, if not of the cheerfulness, at least of the
patience, of hope.
FOOTNOTES:
[50] 'Auguste Comte and Positivism,' pp. 25-8.
[51] 'Fortnightly Review' for June 1868, 'Mr. Darwin's Hypotheses.'
[52] 'Statistical Enquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer,' by Francis
Galton, in Fornightly Review,' for August 1872.
[53] 'Contemporary Review,' July 1872. 'The Prayer for the Sick. Hints
towards a serious attempt to estimate its value.' Communicated by Prof.
Tyndall.
_EPILOGUE._
If with rash step, or with presumptuous word
I have transgressed, or with unshrinking eye
Have sought to pierce the awful mystery
That veils thy Godhead, yet forgive me, Lord!
Thou knowest that I sought not to draw nigh
Thy Throne, save that my witness might record
More truly of Thine attributes, whereby
On Earth, e'en as in Heaven, might be adored
The fulness of Thy glory. Not in wrath
His trespass wilt Thou judge, whom, licence, bred
Of zeal, though blinded, yet devout, betrays,
Nor scorn the unconscious wanderer from Thy path,
Nor leave me hopeless, if indeed misled
By thirst for truth, more deep in error's maze.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
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