I earnestly entreat the reader to pause awhile, and to join with me in
reflecting on the preceding Aphorism. It has been my aim throughout
this work to enforce two points: 1. That MORALITY arising out of the
Reason and Conscience of Men, and PRUDENCE, which in like manner flows
out of the Understanding and the natural Wants and Desires of the
Individual, are two distinct things. 2. That Morality with Prudence as
its instrument has, considered abstractedly, not only a value but a
_worth_ in itself. Now the question is (and it is a question which
every man must answer for himself)--From what you know of yourself; of
your own heart and strength; and from what history and personal
experience have led you to conclude of mankind generally; dare you
_trust_ to it? Dare _you_ trust to it? To _it_, and to it alone? If
so, well! It is at your own risk. I judge you not. Before Him, who
cannot be mocked, you stand or fall. But if not, if you have had too
good reason to know, that your heart is deceitful and your strength
weakness: if you are disposed to exclaim with Paul--the Law indeed is
holy, just, good, spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin: for that
which I do, I allow not; and what I would, that I do not!--in this
case, there is a voice that says, _Come unto me: and I will give you
rest_. This is the Voice of Christ: and the conditions, under which
the promise was given by him, are that you believe _in_ him, and
believe his words. And he has further assured you, that _if_ you do
so, you will obey him. You are, in short, to embrace the _Christian_
Faith as your Religion--those Truths which St. Paul believed _after_
his conversion, and not those only which he believed no less
undoubtingly while he was persecuting Christ, and an enemy of the
Christian Religion. With what consistency could I offer you this
volume as Aids to Reflection, if I did not call on you to ascertain in
the first instance what these truths are? But these I could not lay
before you without first enumerating certain other points of belief,
which though truths, indispensable truths, and truths comprehended or
rather presupposed in the Christian scheme, are yet not _these_
truths. (John i. 17.)
While doing this, I was aware that the Positions, in the first
paragraph of the preceding Aphorism, to which the numerical _marks_
are affixed, will startle some of my Readers. Let the following
sentences serve for the notes corresponding to the marks:
1 _Be you holy: even as God is holy._--_What more does he require of
thee, O man! than to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the
Lord thy God?_[87] To these summary passages from Moses and the
Prophets (the first exhibiting the closed, the second the expanded,
Hand of the Moral Law) I might add the Authorities of Grotius and
other more orthodox and not less learned Divines, for the opinion that
the Lord's Prayer was a _selection_, and the famous passage [The hour
is now coming, &c., John v. 28, 29.] a _citation_ by our Lord from the
liturgy of the Jewish Church. But it will be sufficient to remind the
reader, that the apparent difference between the prominent _moral_
truths of the Old and those of the New Testament results from the
latter having been written in Greek; while the conversations recorded
by the Evangelists took place in Hebrew or Syro-Chaldaic or
Aramaic.--Hence it happened that where our Lord cited the original
text, his biographers substituted the Septuagint version, while our
English version is in _both_ instances immediate and literal--in the
Old Testament from the Hebrew Original, in the New Testament from the
freer Greek translation. The text, _I give you a new commandment_, has
no connection with the present subject.
2 There is a current mistake on this point likewise, though this
article of the Jewish Belief is not only asserted by St. Paul, but is
elsewhere spoken of as common to the Twelve Tribes. The mistake
consists in supposing the Pharisees to have been a distinct _sect_,
and in strangely over-rating the number of the Sadducees. The former
were distinguished not by holding, as matters of religious belief,
articles different from the Jewish Church at large; but by their
pretences to a more rigid orthodoxy, a more scrupulous performance.
They were, in short (if I may dare use a phrase which I dislike as
profane, and denounce as uncharitable), the _Evangelicals_ and strict
_professors_ of the day. The latter, the Sadducees, whose opinions
much more nearly resembled those of the _Stoics_ than the Epicureans
(a remark that will appear paradoxical to those only who have
abstracted their notions of the Stoic Philosophy from Epictetus, Mark
Antonine, and certain brilliant inconsistencies of Seneca), were a
handful of rich men, _Romanized_ Jews, not more numerous than infidels
among us, and holden by the People at large in at least equal
abhorrence. Their great argument was: that the belief of a future
state of rewards and punishments injured or destroyed the purity of
the Moral Law for the more enlightened classes, and weakened the
influence of the Laws of the Land for the people, the vulgar
multitude.
* * * * *
I will now suppose the reader to have thoughtfully re-perused the
paragraph containing the tenets peculiar to Christianity, and if he
have his religious principles yet to form, I should expect to overhear
a troubled murmur: How can I comprehend this? How is this to be
proved? To the first question I should answer: Christianity is not a
Theory, or a Speculation; but a _Life_;--not a _Philosophy_ of Life,
but a Life and a living Process. To the second: TRY IT. It has been
eighteen hundred years in existence: and has one individual left a
record, like the following? "I tried it; and it did not answer. I made
the experiment faithfully according to the directions; and the result
has been, a conviction of my own credulity." Have you, in your own
experience, met with any one in whose words you could place full
confidence, and who has seriously affirmed:--"I have given
Christianity a fair trial. I was aware, that its promises were made
only _conditionally_. But my heart bears me witness, that I have to
the utmost of my power complied with these conditions. Both outwardly
and in the discipline of my inward acts and affections, I have
performed the duties which it enjoins, and I have used the means,
which it prescribes. Yet my assurance of its truth has received no
increase. Its promises have not been fulfilled: and I repent me of my
delusion!" If neither your own experience nor the History of almost
two thousand years has presented a single testimony to this purport;
and if you have read and heard of many who have lived and died bearing
witness to the contrary: and if you have yourself met with some _one_,
in whom on any other point you would place unqualified trust, who has
on his own experience made report to you, that He is faithful who
promised, and what he promised He has proved Himself able to perform;
is it bigotry, if I fear that the Unbelief, which prejudges and
prevents the experiment, has its source elsewhere than in the
uncorrupted judgment; that not the strong free mind, but the enslaved
will, is the true original infidel in this instance? It would not be
the first time, that a treacherous bosom-sin had suborned the
understandings of men to bear false witness against its avowed enemy,
the right though unreceived owner of the house, who had long _warned
it out_, and waited only for its ejection to enter and take possession
of the same.
I have elsewhere in the present work explained the difference between
the Understanding and the Reason, by reason meaning exclusively the
speculative or scientific power so called, the νους or _mens_ of the
ancients. And wider still is the distinction between the Understanding
and the Spiritual Mind. But no gift of God does or can contradict any
other gift, except by misuse or misdirection. Most readily therefore
do I admit, that there can be no contrariety between Revelation and
the Understanding; unless you call the fact, that the skin, though
sensible of the warmth of the sun, can convey no notion of its figure
or its joyous light, or of the colours, which it impresses on the
clouds, a contrariety between the skin and the eye; or infer that the
cutaneous and the optic nerves _contradict_ each other.
But we have grounds to believe, that there are yet other rays or
effluences from the sun, which neither feeling nor sight can
apprehend, but which are to be inferred from the effects. And were it
even so with regard to the Spiritual Sun, how would this contradict
the Understanding or the Reason? It is a sufficient proof of the
contrary, that the mysteries in question are not _in the direction_ of
the understanding or the (speculative) reason. They do not move on the
same line or plane with them, and therefore cannot contradict them.
But besides this, in the mystery that most immediately concerns the
believer, that of the birth into a new and spiritual life, the common
sense and experience of mankind come in aid of their faith. The
analogous facts, which we know to be true, not only facilitate the
apprehension of the facts promised to us, and expressed by the same
words in conjunction with a distinctive epithet; but being confessedly
not less incomprehensible, the certain _knowledge_ of the one disposes
us to the _belief_ of the other. It removes at least all objections to
the truth of the doctrine derived from the mysteriousness of its
subject. The life, we seek after, is a mystery; but so both in itself
and in its origin is the life we have. In order to meet this question,
however, with minds duly prepared, there are two preliminary inquiries
to be decided; the first respecting the _purport_, the second
respecting the _language_ of the Gospel.
First then of the _purport_, namely, what the Gospel does _not_, and
what it _does_ profess to be. The Gospel is not a system of Theology,
nor a _syntagma_ of theoretical propositions and conclusions for the
enlargement of speculative knowledge, ethical or metaphysical. But it
is a history, a series of facts and events related or announced. These
do indeed involve, or rather I should say they at the same time _are_,
most important doctrinal Truths; but still _Facts_ and Declaration of
_Facts_.
Secondly of the _language_. This is a wide subject. But the point, to
which I chiefly advert, is the necessity of thoroughly understanding
the distinction between _analogous_, and _metaphorical_ language.
_Analogies_ are used in aid of _Conviction_: Metaphors, as means of
_Illustration_. The language is analogous, wherever a thing, power, or
principle in a higher dignity is expressed by the same thing, power,
or principle in a lower but more known form. Such, for instance, is
the language of John iii. 6. _That which is born of the flesh, is
flesh; that which is born of the Spirit, is Spirit._ The latter half
of the verse contains the fact _asserted_; the former half the
_analogous_ fact, by which it is rendered intelligible. If any man
choose to call this _metaphorical_ or figurative, I ask him whether
with Hobbes and Bolingbroke he applies the same rule to the moral
attributes of the Deity? Whether he regards the divine Justice, for
instance, as a _metaphorical_ term, a mere figure of speech? If he
disclaims this, then I answer, neither do I regard the words, _born
again_, or _spiritual life_, as figures or metaphors. I have only to
add, that these analogies are the material, or (to speak chemically)
the _base_, of Symbols and symbolical expressions; the nature of which
is always _tau_tegorical, that is, expressing the _same_ subject but
with a _difference_, in contra-distinction from metaphors and
similitudes, that are always _alle_gorical, that is, expressing a
_different_ subject but with a resemblance.
Of _metaphorical_ language, on the other hand, let the following be
taken as instance and illustration. I am speaking, we will suppose, of
an act, which in its own nature, and as a producing and efficient
_cause_, is transcendent; but which produces sundry _effects_, each of
which is the same in kind with an effect produced by a cause well
known and of ordinary occurrence. Now when I characterize or
designate this transcendent act, in exclusive reference to these its
_effects_, by a succession of names borrowed from their ordinary
causes; not for the purpose of rendering the act itself, or the manner
of the agency, conceivable, but in order to show the nature and
magnitude of the benefits received from it, and thus to excite the due
admiration, gratitude, and love in the receivers; in this case I
should be rightly described as speaking _metaphorically_. And in this
case to confound _the similarity_, in respect of the effects
relatively to the recipients, with _an identity_ in respect of the
causes or modes of causation relatively to the transcendent act or the
Divine Agent, is a confusion of metaphor with analogy, and of
figurative with literal; and has been and continues to be a fruitful
source of superstition or enthusiasm in believers, and of objections
and prejudices to infidels and sceptics. But each of these points is
worthy of a separate consideration: and apt occasions will be found of
reverting to them severally in the following Aphorisms, or the
comments thereto attached.
[84 and 85] These reference marks are the author's own, for which,
however, he supplied no notes here; but further on, in the Comment, at
pp. 132-3, he gives them _in the text_.--ED.
[86] See Comment on Moral and Religious Aphorism VI., p. 45.--ED.
[87] Lev. xix. 2, and Micah vi. 8.--ED.