Produced by Michael Madden
REASON AND FAITH; THEIR CLAIMS AND CONFLICTS.
[by Henry Rogers]
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW,
OCTOBER, 1849.
[Volume 90] No. CLXXXII. [Pages 293-356]
Art.I--1. Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte Eighth
edition, pp. 60. 8vo. London. 2. The Nemesis of Faith. By J. A. Froude,
M. A., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. 12mo. London: pp. 227. 3.
Popular Christianity, its Transition State and Probable Development. By
F. J. Foxton, B. A.; formerly of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Perpetual
Curate of Stoke Prior and Docklow, Herefordshire. 12mo. London: pp. 226.
'Reason and Faith,' says one of our old divines, with the quaintness
characteristic of his day, 'resemble the two sons of the patriarch;
Reason is the firstborn, but Faith inherits the blessing. The image is
ingenious, and the antithesis striking; but nevertheless the sentiment
is far from just. It is hardly right to represent Faith as younger
than reason: the fact undoubtedly being, that human creatures trust and
believe, long before they reason or know. But the truth is, that both
reason and Faith are coeval with the nature of man, and were designed to
dwell in his heart together. In truth they are, and were, and, in such
creatures as ourselves, must be, reciprocally complementary--neither
can exclude the other. It is as impossible to exercise an acceptable
faith without reason for so exercising it,--that is, without exercising
reason while we exercise faith*,--as it is to apprehend by our reason,
exclusive of faith, all the truths on which we are daily compelled to
act, whether in relation to this world or the next. Neither is it right
to represent either of them as failing of the promised heritage,
except as both may fail alike, by perversion from their true end, and
depravation of their genuine nature; for it to the faith of which the
New Testament speaks so much, a peculiar blessing is promised, it is
evident from the same volume that it is not a 'faith without reason' any
more than a 'faith without works,' which is approved by the Author of
Christianity. And this is sufficiently proved by the injunction 'to
be ready to give a reason for the hope,'--and therefore for the
faith,--'which is in us.'
____
* Let it be said that we are here playing upon an ambiguity in the
word Reason;--considered in the first clause as an argument; and in the
second, as the characteristic endowment of our species. The distinction
between Reason and Reasoning (though most important) does not affect our
statement; for though Reason may be exercised where there is no giving
of reasons, there can be no giving of reasons without the exercise of
Reason.
____
If, therefore, we were to imitate the quaintness of the old divine, on
whose dictum we have been commenting, we should rather compare Reason
and Faith to the two trusty spies, 'faithful amongst the 'faithless,'
who confirmed each other's report of 'that good land which flowed with
milk and honey,' and to both of whom the promise of a rich inheritance
there was given,--and, in due time, amply redeemed. Or, rather, if we
might be permitted to pursue the same vein a little further, and throw
over our shoulders for a moment that mantle of allegory which none but
Bunyan could wear long and successfully, we should represent Reason and
Faith as twin-born beings,--the one, in form and features the image of
manly beauty,--the other, of feminine grace and gentleness; but to each
of whom, alas! was allotted a sad privation. While the bright eyes of
Reason are full of piercing and restless intelligence, his ear is closed
to sound; and while Faith has an ear of exquisite delicacy, on her
sightless orbs, as she lifts them towards heaven, the sunbeam plays in
vain. Hand in hand the brother and sister, in all mutual love, pursue
their way, through a world on which, like ours, day breaks and night
falls alternate; by day the eyes of Reason are the guide of Faith, and
by night the ear of Faith is the guide of Reason. As is wont with those
who labour under these privations respectively Reason is apt to be
eager, impetuous, impatient of that instruction which his infirmity will
not permit him readily to apprehend; while Faith, gentle and docile, is
ever willing to listen to the voice by which alone truth and wisdom can
effectually reach her.
It has been shown by Butler in the fourth and fifth chapters (Part I.)
of his great work, that the entire constitution and condition of man,
viewed in relation to the present world alone, and consequently all the
analogies derived from that fact in relation to a future world, suggest
the conclusion that we are here the subjects of a probation discipline,
or in a course of education for another state of existence. But it
has not, perhaps, been sufficiently insisted on, that if in the actual
course of that education, of which enlightened obedience to the 'law
of virtue,' as Butler expresses it, or, which is the same thing, to the
dictates of supreme wisdom and goodness, is the great end, we give an
unchecked ascendency to either Reason or Faith, we vitiate the whole
process. The chief instrument by which that process is carried on is
not Reason alone, or Faith alone, but their well-balanced and reciprocal
interaction. It is a system of alternate checks and limitations, in
which Reason does not supersede Faith, nor Faith encroach on Reason. But
our meaning will be more evident when we have made one or two remarks
on what are conceived to be their respective provinces. In the domain
of Reason men generally include, 1st, what are called 'intuitions,'
2d, 'necessary deductions' from them; and 3d, deductions from their own
direct 'experience; while in the domain of Faith are ranked all truths
and propositions which are received, not without reasons indeed, but
for reasons underived from the intrinsic evidence (whether intuitive or
deductive, or from our own experience) of propositions themselves;--for
reasons (such as credible testimony, for example,) extrinsic to the
proper meaning and significance of such propositions: although such
reasons, by accumulation and convergency, may be capable of subduing
the force of any difficulties or improbabilities, which cannot be
demonstrated to involve absolute contradictions.*
____
* Of the first kind of truths, or those received by intuition, we have
examples in what are called 'self-evident axioms,' and 'fundamental
laws' or 'conditions of thought,' which no wise man has ever attempted
to prove. Of the second, we have examples in the whole fabric of
mathematical science, reared from its basis of axioms and definitions,
as well as in every other necessary deduction from admitted premises.
The third virtually includes any conclusion in science based on direct
experiment, or observation; though the belief of the truth even of
Newton's system of the world, when received as Locke says he received
and as the generality of men receive it,--without being able to follow
the steps by which the great geometer proves his conclusions,--may be
represented rather as an act of faith rather than an act of Reason;
as much so as a belief in the truth of Christianity, founded on its
historic and other evidences. The greater part of man's knowledge,
indeed, even of science,--even the greater part of a scientific man's
knowledge of science, based as it is on testimony alone (and which
so often compels him to renounce to-day what he thought certain
yesterday),--may be not unjustly considered as more allied to Faith than
Reason. It may be said, perhaps, that the above classification of the
truths received by Reason and Faith respectively is arbitrary; that
even as to some of their alleged sources, they are not always clearly
distinguishable; that the evidence of experience may in some sort
be reduced to testimony,--that of sense, and testimony reduced to
experience,--that of human veracity under given circumstances; both
being founded upon the observed uniformity of certain phenomena under
similar conditions. We admit the truth of this; and we admit it the more
willingly, as it shows that so inextricably intertwined are the roots
both of Reason and Faith in our nature, that no definitions that can be
framed will completely separate them; none that will not involve many
phenomena which may be said to fall under the dominion of one as much as
the other. We have been content, for our practical purpose, without
any too subtle refinement, to take the line of demarcation which is,
perhaps, as obvious as any, and as generally recognised. Few would say
that a generalised inference from direct experience was not matter of
reason rather than of faith; though an act of faith is involved in
the process; and few would not call confidence in testimony where
probabilities were nearly balanced, by the name of faith rather than
reason, though an act of reason is involved in that process. We are much
more anxious to show their general involution with one another than the
points of discrimination between them.
____
In receiving important doctrines on the strength of such evidence, and
in holding to them against the perplexities they involve, or, what is
harder still, against the prejudices they oppose, every exercise of
an intelligent faith will, on analysis, be found to consist; its only
necessary limit will be proven contradictions in the propositions
submitted to it; for, then, no evidence can justify belief, or even
render it possible. But no other difficulties, however, great, will
justify unbelief, where man has all that he can justly demand,--evidence
such in its nature as he can deal with, and on which he is accustomed
to act in his most important affairs in this world (thus admitting
its validity), and such in amount as to render it more likely that the
doctrines it substantiates are true, than, from mere ignorance of the
mode in which these difficulties can be solved, he can infer them to be
false. 'Probabilities,' says Bishop Bulter, 'are to us the very guide
to life; and when the probabilities arise out of evidence which we
are competent to pronounce, and the improbabilities merely from our
surmises, where we have no evidence to deal with, and perhaps, from the
limitation of our capacities, could not deal with it, if we had it, it
is not difficult to see what course practical wisdom tells man he ought
to pursue; and which he always does pursue, whatever difficulties beset
him,--in all cases except one!
Such is the strict union--that mutual dependence of Reason and
Faith--which would seem to be the great law under which the moral school
in which we are being educated is conducted. This law is equally, or
almost equally, its characteristic, Whether we regard man simply in
his present condition, or in his present in relation to his future
condition,--as an inhabitant only of this world, or a candidate for
another; and to this law, by a series of analogies as striking as any
of those which Butler has pointed out (and on which we heartily wish his
comprehensive genius had expended a chapter or two), Christianity,
in the demands it makes on both principles conjointly, is evidently
adapted.
Men often speak, indeed, as if the exercise of faith was excluded from
their condition as inhabitants of the present world. But it requires
but a very slight consideration to show that the boasted prerogative of
reason is here also that of a limited monarch; and that its attempts to
make itself absolute can only end in its own dethronement, and, after
successive revolutions, in all the anarchy of absolute pyrrhonism.
For in the intellectual and moral education of man, considered merely
as a citizen of the present world, we see the constant and inseparable
union of the two principles, and provision made for their perpetual
exercise. He cannot advance a step, indeed without both. We see faith
demanded not only amidst the dependence and ignorance in which childhood
and youth are passed; not only in the whole process by which we acquire
the imperfect knowledge which is to fit us for being men; but to
the very last we may be truly said to believe far more than we know.
'Indeed,' said Butler, 'the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence with
which we are obliged to take up in the daily course of life, is scarce
to be expected.' Nay, in an intelligible sense, even the 'primary
truths,' or 'first principles,' or 'fundamental laws of thought,' or
'self-evident maxims,' or 'intuitions,' or by whatever other names
philosophers have been pleased to designate them, which, in a special
sense, are the very province of reason, as contra-distinguished from
'reasoning' or logical deduction, may be said almost as truly to depend
on faith as on reason for their reception.* For the only ground for
believing them true is that man cannot help so believing them! The same
may be said of that great fact, without which the whole world would
be at a stand-still--a belief in the uniformity of the phenomena of
external nature; that the same sun, for example, which rose yesterday
and to-day, will rise again tomorrow. That this cannot be demonstrated,
is admitted on all hands; and that it is not absolutely proved from
experience is evident, both from the fact that the uniformity supposed
is only accepted as partially and transiently true; the great bulk
of mankind, even while they so confidently act upon that uniformity,
rejecting the idea of its being an eternal uniformity. Every theist
believes that the order of the universe once began to be; and every
Christian and most other men, believe that it will also one day cease to
be.
____
* Common language seems to indicate this: Since we call that disposition
of mind which leads some men to deny the above fundamental truths (or
affect to deny them), not by a word which indicates the opposite of
reason, but the opposite of faith,--Scepticism, Unbelief, Incredulity.
____
But perhaps the most striking example of the helplessness to which man
is soon reduced if he relies upon his reason alone, is The spectacle
of the issue of his investigations into that which one would imagine he
must know most intimately, if he knows anything; and that is, his own
nature--his own mind. There is something, to one who reflects long
enough upon it, inexpressibly whimsical in the questions which the mind
is for ever putting to itself respecting itself; and to which the said
mind returns from its dark caverns only an echo. We are apt, when we
speculate about the mind, to forget for the moment, that it is at once
the querist and the oracle: and to regard it as something out of itself,
like a mineral in the hands of the analytic chemist. We cannot fully
enter into the absurdities of its condition, except by remembering that
it is our own wise selves who so grotesquely bewilder us. The mind, on
such occasions, takes itself (if we may so speak) into its own hands,
turns itself about itself, listens to the echo of its own voice, and
is obliged, after all, to lay itself down again with a very puzzled
expression--and acknowledge that of its very self, itself knows little
or nothing! 'I am material,' exclaims one of those whimsical beings,
to whom the heaven-descended 'Know thyself' would seem to have been
ironically addressed. 'No!--immaterial,' says another. 'I am both
material and immaterial,' exclaims, perhaps, the very same mind at
different times. 'Thought itself may be matter modified,' says one.
'Rather,' says another of the same perplexed species, 'matter is
thought modified; for what you call matter is but a phenomenon.' But are
independent and totally distinct substances, mysteriously, inexplicably
conjoined,' says a third. 'How they are conjoined we know no more than
the dead. Not so much, perhaps.' 'Do I ever cease to think,' says the
mind to itself, 'even in sleep? Is not my essence thought?' 'You
ought to know your own essence best,' all creation will reply. 'I am
confident,' says one, 'that I never do cease to think,--not even in the
soundest sleep.' 'You do, for a long time, every night of your life,'
exclaims another, equally confident and equally ignorant. 'Where do I
exist?' it goes on. 'Am I in the brain? Am I in the whole body? 'Am I
anywhere? Am I nowhere?' 'I cannot have any local existence, for I know
I am immaterial,' says one. 'I have a local existence, because I am
material,' says another. 'I have a local existence, though I am not
material,' says a third. 'Are my habitual actions voluntary,' it
exclaims, 'however rapid they become; though I am unconscious of these
volitions when they have attained a certain rapidity; or do I become a
mere automaton as respects such actions? and therefore an automaton nine
times out of ten, when I act at all?' To this query two opposite answers
are given by different minds; and by others, perhaps wiser, none at all;
while, often, opposite answers are given by the same mind at different
times. In like manner has every action, every operation, every emotion
of the mind been made the subject of endless doubt and disputation.
Surely if, as Soame Jenyns imagined, the infirmities of man, and even
graver evils, were permitted in order to afford amusement to superior
intelligences, and make the angels laugh, few things could afford them
better sport than the perplexities of this child of clay engaged in the
study of himself. 'Alas,' exclaims at last the baffled spirit of this
babe in intellect, as he surveys his shattered toys--his broken theories
of metaphysics, 'I know that I am; but what I am--where I am--even how
I act--not only what is my essence, but what even my mode of
operation,--of all this I know nothing; and, boast of reason as I may,
all that I think on these points is matter of opinion--or is matter
of faith!' He resembles, in fact, nothing so much as a kitten first
introduced to its own image in a mirror: she runs to the back of it,
she leaps over it, she turns and twists, and jumps and frisks, in all
directions, in the vain attempt to reach the fair illusion; and, at
length, turns away in weariness from that incomprehensible enigma--the
image of herself.
One would imagine--perhaps not untruly--that the Divine Creator had
subjected us to these difficulties--and especially that incomprehensible
trilemma,--that there is an union and interaction of two totally
distinct substances, or that matter is but thought, or that thought is
but matter,--one of which must be true, and all of which approach as
near to the mutual contradictions as can well be conceived,--for the
very purpose of rebuking the presumption of man, and of teaching him
humility; that He had left these obscurities at the very threshold--nay,
within the very mansion of the mind itself,--for the express purpose of
deterring man from playing the dogmatising fool when he looked abroad.
Yet, in spite of his raggedness and poverty at home, no sooner does man
look out of his dusky dwelling, than, like Goldsmith's little Beau,
who, in his garret up five pair of stairs, boasts of his friendship with
lords, he is apt to assume airs of magnificence, and, glancing at
the infinite through his little eye-glass, to affect an intimate
acquaintance with the most respectable secrets of the universe!
It is undeniable, then, that the perplexities which uniformly puzzle
man in the physical world, and even in the little world of his own mind,
when he passes a certain limit, are just as unmanageable as those found
in the moral constitution and government of the universe, or in the
disclosures of the volume Revelation. In both we find abundance of
inexplicable difficulties sometimes arising from our absolute
ignorance, and perhaps quite as often from our partial knowledge. These
difficulties are probably left on the pages of both volumes for some of
the same reasons; many of them, it may be, because even the commentary
of the Creator himself could not render them plain to finite
understanding, though a necessary and salutary exercise of our humility
may be involved in their reception; others, if not purely (which seems
not probable) yet partly for the sake of exercising and training that
humility, as an essential part of the education of a child; others,
surmountable, indeed, in the progress of knowledge and by prolonged
effort of the human intellect, may be designed to stimulate that
intellect to strenuous action and healthy effort--as well as to supply,
in their solution, as time rolls on, an ever-accumulating mass of proofs
of the profundity of the wisdom which has so far anticipated all the
wisdom of man; and of the divine origin of both the great books which
he is privileged to study as a pupil, and even to illustrate as a
commentator,--but the text of which he cannot alter.
But, for submitting to us many profound and insoluble problems, the
second of the above reasons--the training of the intellect and heart of
man to submission to the Supreme Intelligence alone be sufficient.
For it; as is indicated by every thing in human nature, and by the
representations of Scripture, which are in analogy with both, the
present world is but the school of man in this the childhood of his
being, to prepare him for the enjoyment of an immortal manhood in
another, everything might be expected to be subordinated to this
great end; and as the end of that education, can be no other than an
enlightened obedience to God, the harmonious and concurrent exercise
of reason and faith becomes absolutely necessary--not of reason to the
exclusion of faith, for otherwise there would be no adequate test of
man's docility and submission; nor of a faith that would assert itself,
not only independent of reason, but in contradiction to it,--which
would not be what God requires, and what alone can quadrate with that
intelligent nature He has impressed on His offspring--a reasonable
obedience. Implicit obedience, then, to the dictates of an all-perfect
wisdom, exercised amidst many difficulties and perplexities, as so many
tests of sincerity, and yet sustained by evidences which justify the
conclusions which involve them, would seem to be the great object of
man's moral education here; and to justify both the partial evidence
addressed to his reason, and the abundant difficulties which it leaves
to his faith. 'The evidence of religion,' says Butler, 'is fully
sufficient for all the purposes of probation, how far soever it is from
being satisfactory as to the purposes of curiosity, or any other: and,
indeed, it answers the purposes of the former in several respects which
it would not do if it were as over-bearing as is required.'* Or as
Pascal beautifully puts it:--'There is light enough for those whose
sincere wish is to see,--and darkness enough to confound those of an
opposite disposition.'+
____
* Analogy, part 2. chap. viii. + Pensees. Faugere's edition, tom. ii. p.
151. The views here developed will be found an expansion of some brief
hints at the close of the article on Pascal's 'Life and Genius' (Ed.
Review, Jan. 1847), though our space then prevented us from more than
touching these topics. We may add that we gladly take this opportunity
of pointing the attention of our readers to a tract of Archbishop
Whately's, entitled 'The example of children as proposed to Christians,'
which his Grace, having been struck with a coincidence between some of
the thoughts in the tract and those expressed in the 'Review,' did us
the favour to transmit to us. Had we seen the tract before, we should
have been glad to illustrate and confirm our own views by those of this
highly gifted prelate. We earnestly recommend the tract in question
(as well as the whole of the remarkable volume in which it is now
incorporated, 'Essays on some of the Peculiarities of the Christian
Religion') to the perusal of our readers, and at the same time venture
to express our conviction (having been led by the circumstances above
mentioned to a fuller acquaintance with his Grace's theological writings
than we had previously possessed) that, though this lucid and eloquent
writer may, for obvious reasons, be most widely known by his 'Logic and
'Rhetoric,' the time will come when his Theological works will be,
if not more widely read, still more highly prized. To great powers of
argument and illustration, and delightful transparency of diction and
style, he adds a higher quality still--and a very rare quality it is--an
evident and intense honesty of purpose, an absorbing desire to arrive at
the exact truth, and to state it with perfect fairness and with the
just limitations. Without pretending to agree with all that Archbishop
Whately has written on the subject of theology (though be carries
his readers with him as frequently as any writer with whom we are
acquainted) we may remark that in relation to that whole class of
subjects, to which the present essay has reference, we know of no
writer of the present day whose contributions are more numerous or more
valuable. The highly ingenious ironical brochure, entitled 'Historic
Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte;' the Essays above mentioned, 'On
some of the Peculiarities of the Christian Religion;' those 'On some of
the Dangers to Christian Faith,' and on the 'Errors of Romanism;' the
work on the 'Kingdom of Christ,' not to mention others, are well worthy
of universal perusal. They abound in views both original and just,
stated with all the author's aptness of illustration and transparency of
language. We may remark, too, that in many of his occasional sermons,
he has incidentally added many most beautiful fragments to that ever
accumulating mass of internal evidence which the Scriptures themselves
supply in their very structure, and which is evolved by diligent
investigation of the relation and coherence of one part of them with
another. We are also rejoiced to see that a small and unpretending, but
very powerful, little tract, by the same writer, entitled 'Introductory
Lessons on Christian Evidences.' has passed through many editions, has
been translated into most of the European languages, and, amongst
the rest, very recently into German, with an appropriate preface,
by professor Abeltzhauser, of the University of Dublin. It shows
to demonstration that as much of the evidence of Christianity as is
necessary for conviction may be made perfectly clear to the meanest
capacity' and that, in spite of the assertions of Rome and of Oxford to
the contrary, the apostolic injunction to every Christian to be ready
to render a reason 'for the hope that is in him,'--somewhat better than
that no reason of the Hindoo or the Hottentot, that he believes what he
is told, without any reason except that he is told it,--is an injunction
possible to obey.
____
As He 'who spake as never man spake' is pleased often to illustrate
the conduct of the Father of Spirits to his intelligent offspring by
a reference to the conduct which flows from the relations of the
human parent to his children, so the present subject admits of similar
illustration. What God does with us in that process of moral education
to which we have just adverted, is exactly what every wise parent
endeavours to do with his children,--though by methods, as we may
well judge, proportionably less perfect. Man too instinctively, or by
reflection, adapts himself to the nature of his children; and seeing
that only so far as it is justly trained can they be happy, makes the
harmonious and concurrent development of their reason and their faith
his object; he too endeavours to teach them that without which they
cannot be happy,--obedience, but a reasonable obedience He gives them,
in his general procedure and conduct, sufficient proof of his superior
knowledge, superior wisdom, and unchanging love; and secure in the
general effect of this, he leaves them to receive by faith many things
which he cannot explain to them if he would, till they get older; many
things which he can only partially explain; and others which he might
more perfectly explain, but will not, partly as a test of their docility
and partly to invite and necessitate the healthy and energetic exercise
of their reason in finding out the explanation for themselves. Confiding
in the same general effect of his procedure and conduct, he does not
hesitate, when the foresight of their ultimate welfare justifies it, to
draw still more largely on their faith, in acts of apparent harshness
and severity. Time, he knows, will show, though perhaps not till his
yearning heart has ceased to beat for their welfare, that all that all
he did, he did in love. He knows, too, that if his lessons are taken
aright, and his children become the good and happy men he wishes them to
be, they will say, as they visit his sepulchre, and recall with sorrow
the once unappreciated love which animated him,--and perhaps with a
sorrow, deeper still, remember the transient resentments caused by a
solitary severity: 'He was indeed a friend; he corrected us not for his
pleasure, but for our profit; and what we once thought was caprice or
passion, we now know was love.'
These analogies afford a true, though most imperfect, representation of
the moral discipline to which Supreme Wisdom is subjecting us; and as we
are accustomed to despair of any child with whom parental experience and
authority go for nothing, unless he can fully understand the intrinsic
reasons for every special act of duty which that experience and
authority dictate; as we are sure that he who has not learned to obey
when young will never, when of age, know how to govern either himself
or others: so a singular conduct in all the children of dust towards the
Father of Spirits justifies a still more gloomy augury; inasmuch as the
difference between the knowledge of man and the ignorance of a child,
absolutely vanishes, in comparison with that interval which must ever
subsist between the knowledge of the Eternal and the ignorance of man.
The remarks that have been made are not uncalled for in the present day.
For unfortunately, it is now easy to detect in many classes of minds
a tendency to divorce Reason from Faith, or Faith from reason; and to
proclaim that 'what God hath joined together' shall henceforth exist in
alienation. We see this tendency manifested in relation both to Natural
Theology, and to Revealed Religion. The old conflict between the claims
of these two guiding principles of man (in no age wholly suppressed)
is visibly renewed in our day. In relation to Christianity especially,
there are large classes amongst us who press the claims of faith so far,
that it would become, if they had their will, an utterly unreasonable
faith; some of whom do not scruple to speak slightingly of the evidences
which substantiate Christianity; to decry and depreciate the study of
them; to pronounce that study unnecessary; and even in many cases
to insinuate their insufficiency. They are loud in the mean time in
extolling a faith which, as Whately truly observes, is no whit better
than the faith of a heathen; who has no other or better reason to offer
for his religion than that his father told him it was true! But
this plainly is not the intelligent faith which, as we have seen, is
everywhere inculcated and applauded in the Scriptures; it is not 'that
faith by which Christianity, appealing In the midst of a multitude of
such traditional religions, to palpable evidence addressed to man's
senses and understandings (in a way no other religion ever did)
everywhere destroyed the systems for which their votaries could only say
that their fathers told them they were true. And yet this blind belief
in such tradition, many advocates of Christianity would now enjoin us to
imitate! It might have occurred to them, one would think, that, on their
principles, Christianity never could have succeeded; for every mind must
have been hopelessly pre-occupied against all examination of its claims.
It is, indeed, incomparably better that a man should be a sincere
Christian even by an utterly unreasoning and passive faith (if that be
possible), than no Christian at all; but at the best, such a man is a
possessor of the truth only by accident: he ought to have, and, if he
be a sincere disciple of truth, will seek, some more solid grounds for
holding it. But it is but too obvious, we fear, that the disposition to
enjoin this obsequious mood of mind is prompted by a strong desire
to revive the ancient empire of priestcraft and the pretensions of
ecclesiastical despotism; to secure readmission to the human mind of
extravagant and preposterous claims, which their advocates are sadly
conscious rest on no solid foundation. They feel that reason is not with
them, it must be against them: and reason therefore they are determined
to exclude.
But the experience of the present 'developments' of Oxford teaching
may serve to show us how infinitely perilous is this course; and how
fearfully, both outraged reason and outraged faith will avenge the
wrongs done them by their alienation and disjunction. Those results,
indeed, we predicted in 1843; before a single leader of the Oxford
school had gone over to Rome, and before any tendencies to the opposite
extreme of Scepticism had manifested themselves. We then affirmed that,
on the one hand, those who were contending for the corruptions of
the fourth century could not possibly find footing there, but must
inevitably seek their ultimate resting place in Rome--a prediction which
has been too amply fulfilled; and that, on the other, the extravagant
pretensions put forth on behalf of an uninquiring faith, and the
desperate assertion that the 'evidence for Christianity' was no stronger
than that for 'Church Principles,' must, by reaction, lead on to an
outbreak of infidelity. That prophecy, too, has been to the letter
accomplished. We then said,--
"We have seen it recently asserted by some of the Oxford school that
there is as much reason for rejecting the most essential doctrines of
Christianity--nay Christianity itself--as for rejecting their "church
principles." That, in short, we have as much reason for being infidels
as for rejecting the doctrine of Apostolical succession! What other
effect such reasoning can have than that of compelling men to believe
that there is nothing between infidelity and popery, and of urging them
to make a selection between the two, we know not .... Indeed, we fully
expect that, as a reaction of the present extravagancies, of the revival
of obsolete superstition, we shall have ere long to fight over again the
battle with a modified form of infidelity, as now with a modified form
of popery. Thus, probably, for some time to come, will the human
mind continue to oscillate between the extremes of error; but with a
diminished are at each vibration; until truth shall at last prevail, and
compel it to repose in the centre."*
____
* Oxford Tract School, Ed. Rev., April, 1843. ____
The offensive displays of self-sufficiency and flippancy, of ignorance
and presumption, found in the productions of the apostles of the
new infidelity of Oxford, (of which we shall have a few words to say
by-and-by) are the natural and instructive, though most painful, result
of attempting to give predominance to one principle of our nature, where
two or more are designed reciprocally to guard and check each other; and
such results must ever follow such attempts. The excellence of man--so
complexly constituted is his nature--must consist in the harmonious
action and proper balance of all the constituents of that nature; the
equilibrium he sighs for must be the result of the combined action of
forces operating in different directions; of his reason, his faith, his
appetites, his affections, his emotions; when these operate each in
due proportion, then, and then only, can he be at rest. It may, indeed,
transcend any calculus of man to estimate exactly the several elements
in this complicated polygon of forces; but we are at least sure that,
if any one principle be so developed as to supersede another, no safe
equipoise will be attained. We all know familiarly enough that this is
the case when the affections or the appetites are more powerful than the
reason and the conscience, instead of being in subjection to them: but
it is not less the case, though the result is not so palpable, when
reason and faith either exclude one another, or trench on each other's
domain; when one is pampered and the other starved.* Hence the perils
attendant upon their attempted separation, and the ruin which results
from their actual alienation and hostility. There is no depth of
dreary superstition into which men may not sink in the one case, and no
extravagance of ignorant presumption to which they may not soar in the
other. It is only by the mutual and alternate action of these different
forces that man can safely navigate his little bark through the narrow
straits and by the dangerous rocks which impede his course; and if Faith
spread not the sail to the breeze, or if Reason desert the helm, we are
in equal peril.
____
* It has been our lot to meet with disciples of the Oxford Tract School,
who have, by a fatal indulgence of an appetite of belief; brought
themselves to believe any mediaeval miracle, nay, any ghost story,
without examination, saying, with a solemn face, 'It is better to
believe that to reason.' They believe as they will to believe; and thus
is reason avenged. Reason, similarly indulged, believes, with Mr. Foxton
and Mr. Froude, that a miracle is even an impossibility; and this is the
'Nemesis' of faith.
____
If it be said that this is a disconsolate and dreary doctrine; that man
seeks and needs a simpler navigation than this troublesome and intricate
course, by star and chart, compass and lead line; and that this
responsibility, of ever
'Sounding on his dim and perilous way,'
is too grave for so feeble a nature; we answer that such is his actual
condition. This is a plain matter of fact which cannot be denied. The
various principles of his constitution, and his position in relation to
the external world, obviously and absolutely subject him to this very
responsibility throughout his whole course in this life. It is never
remitted or abated: resolves are necessitated upon imperfect evidence;
and action imperatively demanded amidst doubts and difficulties in which
reason is not satisfied, and faith is required. To argue therefore,
that God cannot have left man to such uncertainty, is to argue, as the
pertinacious lawyer did, who, on seeing a man in the stocks, asked him
what he was there for; and on being told, said, 'They cannot put you
there for that.' 'But I am here,' was the laconic answer.
The analogy, then, of man's whole condition in this life might lead us
to expect the same system of procedure throughout; that the evidence
which substantiates religious truth, and claims religious action, would
involve this responsibility as well as that which substantiates other
kinds of truth, and demands other kinds of action. And after all, what
else, in either case, could answer the purpose, if (as already said)
this world be the school of training of man's moral nature? How else
could the discipline of his faculties, the exercise of patience,
humility, and fortitude, be secured? How, except amidst a state of
things less than certainty--whether under the form of that passive faith
which mimics the possession of absolute certainty, or absolute certainty
itself--could man's nature be trained to combined self-reliance and
self-distrust, circumspection and resolution, and, above all, to
confidence in God? Man cannot be nursed and dandled into the manhood of
his nature, by that unthinking faith which leaves no doubts to be felt,
and no objections to be weighed; Nor can his docility ever be tested,
if he is never called upon to believe any thing which it would not be
an absurdity and contradiction to deny. This species of responsibility,
then, not only cannot be dispensed with, but is absolutely necessary;
and, consequently, however desirable it may appear that we should
have furnished to us that short path to certainty which a pretended
infallibility* promises to man, or that equally short path which leads
to the same termination, by telling us that we are to believe nothing
which we cannot demonstrate to be true, or which, a priori, we may
presume to be false, must be a path which leads astray. In the one
case, how can the 'reasonable service' which Scripture demands--the
enlightened love and conscientious investigation of truth--its
reception, not without doubts, but against doubts--how could all this
co-exist with a faith which presents the whole sum of religion in
the formulary, 'I am to believe without a doubt, and perform without
hesitation. whatever my guide, Parson A. tells me?' Not that, even in
that case (as has often been shown), the man would be relieved form the
necessity of absolutely depending on the dreaded exercise of his private
judgment; for he must at least have exercised it once for all (unless
each man is to remit his religion wholly to the accident of his birth),
and that on two of the most arduous of all questions: first, which of
several churches, pretending to infallibility, is truly infallible? And
next, whether the man may infallibly regard his worthy Parson A. as
an infallible expounder of the infallibility. But, supposing this
stupendous difficulty surmounted, though then, it is true, all may seem
genuine faith, in reality there is none: where absolute infallibility
is supposed to have been attained (even though erroneously), faith, in
strict propriety--certainly that faith which is alone of any value as an
instrument of man's moral training--which recognises and intelligently
struggles with objections and difficulties--is impossible. Men may be
said, in such case, to know, but can hardly be said to believe. Before
Columbus had seen America, he believed in its existence; but when he
had seen it, his faith became knowledge. Equally impossible, and for the
same reason, is any place for faith on the opposite hypothesis; for if
man is to believe nothing but what his reason can comprehend, and to act
only upon evidence which amounts to certainly, the same paradox is true;
for when there is no reason to doubt, there can be none to believe.
Faith ever stands between conflicting probabilities; but her position
is (if we may use the metaphor) the centre of gravity between them, and
will be proportionally nearer the greater mass.
____
* See Archbishop Whately's admirable discourse, entitled 'The Search
after Infallibility, considered in reference to the Danger of Religious
Errors arising within the Church, in the primitive as well as in all
later Ages.' He here makes excellent use of the fruitful principle of
Butler's great work, by showing that, however desirable, a priori, an
infallible guide would seem to fallible man, God in fact has every where
denied it; and that, in denying it in relation to religion, he has acted
only as he always acts.
____
In the mean time, that arduous responsibility which attaches to man, and
which is obviated neither by an implicit faith in a human infallibility,
nor an exclusive reference of that faith to cases in which reason is
synonymous with demonstration, that is, to cases which leave no room
for it, is at once relieved, and effectually relieved, by the maxim--the
key-stone of all ethical truth--that only voluntary error condemns
us;--that all we are really responsible for, is a faithful, honest,
patient, investigation and weighing of evidence, as far as our abilities
and opportunities admit, and a conscientious pursuit of what we
honestly deem truth, wherever it may lead us. We concede that a really
dispassionate and patient conduct in this respect is what man is too
ready to assume he has practised,--and this fallacy cannot be too
sedulously guarded against. But that guilty liability to selfdeception,
does not militate against the truth of the representation now made. It
is his duty to see that he does not abuse the maxim,--that he does not
rashly acquiesce in any conclusion that he wishes to be true, or which
he is too lazy to examine. If all possible diligence and honesty have
been exerted in the search, the statement of Chillingworth, bold as
it is, we should not hesitate to adopt, in all the rigour of his own
language. It is to the effect, that if 'in him alone there were a
confluence of all the errors which have befallen the sincere professors
of Christianity, he should not be so much afraid of them, as to ask
God's pardon for them;' absolutely involuntary error being justly
regarded by him as blameless.
On the other hand, we firmly believe, from the natural relations of
truth with the constitution of the mind of man, that, with the exception
of a very few cases of obliquity of intellect, which may safely be left
to the merciful interpretations and apologies of Him who created such
intellects, those who thus honestly and industriously 'seek' shall
'find;'--not all truth, indeed, but enough to secure their safety; and
that whatever remaining errors may infest and disfigure the truth they
have attained, they shall not be imputed to them for sin. According to
the image which apostolic eloquence has employed, the Baser materials
which unavoidable haste, prejudice, and ignorance may have incorporated
with the gold of the edifice, will be consumed by the fire which 'will
try every man's work of what sort it is,' but he himself will be saved
amidst those purifying flames. Like the bark which contained the Apostle
and the fortunes of the Gospel, the frail vessel may go to pieces on
the rocks, 'but by boat or plank' the voyager himself shall 'get safe to
shore.'
It is amply sufficient, then, to lighten our responsibility, that we are
answerable only for our honest endeavours to discover and to practise
the truth; and, in fact, the responsibility is principally felt to be
irksome, and man is so prompt by devices of his own, to release himself
from it, not on account of any intrinsic difficulty which remains after
the above limitations are admitted, but because he wishes to be exempt
from that very necessity of patient and honest investigation. It is not
so much the difficulty of finding, as the trouble of seeking the truth,
from which he shrinks; a necessity, however, from which, as it is an
essential instrument of his moral education and discipline, he can never
be released.