Produced by Al Haines
This is one of a series of evidential books drawn up at the
instance of the _Christian Evidence Society_.
GOD AND THE WORLD
A SURVEY OF THOUGHT
BY
ARTHUR W. ROBINSON, D.D.,
Warden of the College of Allhallows Barking
With a Prefatory Note by SIR OLIVER LODGE
LONDON:
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C., 43 QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.
BRIGHTON: 129 NORTH STREET
NEW YORK: E. S. GORHAM
1913
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFATORY NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
I. THE OLDER ORTHODOXY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
II. THE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
III. THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
IV. THE COUNTER-ARGUMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
V. THE COUNTER-ARGUMENTS (_continued_) . . . . . . . . 46
VI. THE COUNTER-ARGUMENTS (_continued_) . . . . . . . . 53
VII. LATER SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
VIII. LATER SCIENCE (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
IX. LATER SCIENCE (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
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PREFATORY NOTE
I have read what Dr. Arthur Robinson has written, and find it a most
interesting, singularly fair, and I may add, within its limits, able
and comprehensive survey of the thoughts of the past and passing age.
I commend it to the coming generation as a useful means of acquiring
some notion of the main puzzles and controversies of the strenuous time
through which their fathers have lived. Fossil remains of these
occasionally fierce discussions they will find embedded in literature;
and although we are emerging from that conflict, it can only be to find
fresh opportunities for discovery, fresh fields of interest, in the
newer age. Towards a wise reception of these discoveries, as they are
gradually arrived at in the future, this little book will give some
help.
OLIVER LODGE.
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GOD AND THE WORLD
INTRODUCTION
A man, so it has been said, is distinguished from the creatures beneath
him by his power to ask a question. To which we may add that one man
is distinguished from another by the kind of question that he asks. A
man is to be measured by the size of his question. Small men ask small
questions: of here and now; of to-day and to-morrow and the next day;
of how they may quickest fill their pockets, or gain another step upon
the social ladder. Great men are concerned with great questions: of
life, of man, of history, of God.
So again, the size of an age can be determined by the size of its
questions. It has been claimed that the age through which we have
passed was a great age, and tried by this test we need not hesitate to
admit the claim. It was full of questions, and they were great
questions. As never before, the eyes of men strained upwards and
backwards into the dim {8} recesses of the past to discover something,
if it might be, of the beginnings of things: of matter and life; of the
earth and its contents; of the solar system and the universe. We know
with what interest inquiries of this sort were regarded, and how ready
the people were to read the books that dealt with them; to attend
lectures and discussions about them, and to give their money for the
purposes of such research. It was a great age that could devote itself
so eagerly to questions of this importance and magnitude.
But as men cannot live upon appetite, so neither can they be for ever
satisfied with questions. Hence it follows that a period of
questioning is ordinarily followed by another, in which the accumulated
information is sorted and digested and turned to practical account; a
time in which constructive work is attempted, and some understanding is
arrived at as to the relation that exists between the old knowledge and
the new. It looks as if we were nearing such a time, when, for a while
at all events, there will be a pause for reconsideration and
reconstruction, and the human spirit will gather strength and
confidence before again setting out upon its quest of the Infinite.
Already we are asked to give attention to statements that are intended
to review the whole situation and to summarise, provisionally at {9}
all events, the results that have been attained. Each of these
attempts will, in its turn, be superseded by something that is wider in
its outlook and wiser in its verdicts. This little book is an effort
of this nature, and it is offered in the hope that it may serve some
such useful and temporary purpose.
Much more competent writers than its author might well apologise for
consenting to enter upon the task which he has been invited to
undertake. All that he can say, by way of excuse for his boldness in
complying, is that for many years he has endeavoured to follow the
trend of modern thinking, and that the growing interest with which he
has done this encourages him to hope that he may be able to make what
he has to tell about it both intelligible and interesting to others.
He does not imagine that he can escape mistakes, and he will most
gladly submit himself to the correction of others who know better and
see more clearly than he does. He only begs that those who disagree
with his judgments will try to give him credit for a sincere desire to
be true to facts, and to welcome the light, from whatever quarter it
may have come.
When we speak of the age that is passing, we shall have in mind what
may roughly be reckoned as the last hundred years. That space
includes, for those of us who are not in our first youth, the time of
our {10} parents, and even, it may be, of our grandparents. The period
has a certain distinctiveness of character in spite of superficial
diversities. It was marked, as we have said, by the intelligence and
vigour of its questionings. It was a time of intellectual movement and
turmoil. It witnessed a succession of wonderful discoveries leading on
to ever bolder investigations. Rapid generalisations were advanced, to
be often as quickly abandoned. Only by degrees was it possible to see
the new facts in their proper proportion and significance. Nor was it
at all easy for men to keep their discussions free from heat and
bitterness, when the most deeply-rooted convictions appeared to be
assailed, and the most sacred associations to be regarded as of little
account. Looking back, as we can, it is possible to see that in spite
of the eddies and backwaters a steady progress was made. And it is of
that progress that it will now be our endeavour to speak.
We know how it has happened to us over and over again in our own
individual experiences to have been made conscious of a gradual
modification of our opinions as new evidence has reached us, and we
have had time to relate it to our previous understanding and knowledge.
We have had our first thoughts, and our second thoughts, and then there
have come third thoughts, which were the ripest {11} and soundest of
all. Just such a process of which we can mark the stages in ourselves
is to be seen on a larger scale--in bigger print, as it were--in the
thought movements of an age. In the case of the period which we are to
review, the three stages have been more than commonly clear, as we
shall aim to shew in the survey we are to make.
We shall begin with the First thoughts, which were those of what may be
termed the older orthodoxy. These were very generally accepted;
indeed, they were regarded as for the most part beyond the reach of
serious contradiction. Then we shall pass to the Second thoughts,
which were forced upon an astonished and bewildered generation by the
onslaughts upon traditional views that were made from the side of
physical science. For fifty years or more the debate went on, with
challenge and counter-challenge, and much noise and dust of
controversy. They were great days, and in them great men fought with
great courage in great issues. We shall seek to do justice to both
sides, to those who dared to proclaim and suffer for the new, and to
those who shewed an equal courage in their resolute determination to be
loyal to what they held to be the truth of the old.
Then, finally, it will be our difficult task to discriminate between
the surging thoughts of that {12} second period and those of the Third
stage, through which we are advancing, and to shew what can already be
made out of a common ground of agreement and co-operation, now much
more likely to be reached than could at one time have been foreseen by
the most optimistic imagination.
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CHAPTER I
THE OLDER ORTHODOXY
Never had there been greater unanimity of opinion in England in regard
to the religious interpretation of the world than that which prevailed
at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The excesses on the
Continent which had accompanied the advocacy of free thought had
disposed men's mind to fall back upon authority, and most of all in
matters that affected the basis on which the continuance of social
order and moral conduct depended. The general position was clearly
apprehended, and was accepted as if beyond dispute. Men spoke and
thought of the Order of Nature. The world was a Cosmos, a regulated
system. Order implied an Orderer. It was regarded by them as obvious
that there must have been a First Cause, a great Architect and Maker of
the Universe. They agreed with Aquinas that "things which have no
perception can only tend toward an end if directed by a conscious and
intelligent being. Therefore there is an {14} Intelligence by which
all natural things are ordered to an end."[1] They were fully prepared
to endorse the indignant protest of Bacon: "I had rather believe all
the folly of the 'Legend,' and the 'Talmud,' and the 'Alcoran,' than
that this universal frame is without a mind."[2] In fact no other
hypothesis seemed to them thinkable.
If at any time they felt a need for a more elaborate justification of
their conviction, they had it ready to their hand in the familiar
argument from design. Paley, when he set this out in his famous
_Natural Theology_ (1802), was only expressing with conspicuous ability
the view that was then accepted in all circles from the highest to the
lowest. He was preaching to those who were already in the fullest
accord with his doctrine. They followed with eager approbation his
reasoning about the watch that he supposed himself to have found on the
heath. According to his assumption he had never seen a watch made, nor
known of anyone capable of making such a thing. He concludes,
nevertheless, that it must have been made by someone. "There must have
existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or
artificers who formed it for {15} the purpose which we find it actually
to answer; who comprehended its structure, and designed its use."
"Neither would it invalidate our conclusion that the watch sometimes
went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The purpose of the
machinery, the design and the designer, might be evident in whatever
way we accounted for the irregularity of the movement, or whether we
could account for it at all." "Nor would it bring any uncertainty into
the argument if there were a few parts of the watch concerning which we
could not discover, or had not yet discovered, in what manner they
conducted to the general effect; or even some parts concerning which we
could not ascertain whether they conducted to that effect in any manner
whatever." Least of all could it be sufficient to explain that the
watch was "nothing more than the result of the laws of metallic
nature." "It is a perversion of language to assign any law as the
efficient operative cause of any thing. A law presupposes an agent,
for it is only the mode according to which our agent proceeds: it
implies a power, for it is the order according to which that power
acts. Without this agent, without this power, which are both distinct
from itself, the law does nothing, is nothing."
From the watch we are led on to the eye, which exhibits a skill of
design not less, but far greater, {16} than that of the man who gave us
the telescope. Then follows a detailed examination of the use of the
various bodily organs, the contrivances to be met with in vegetables
and animals, the marvellous adaptations of anatomical structure, the
provisions for the flight of birds, and for the movements of fishes;
with instances of arrangements to suit particular conditions--the long
neck of the swan, the minute eye of the mole, the beak of the parrot,
the sting of the bee--all furnishing an ever accumulating body of
irrefutable evidence to attest the existence and operation of an
intelligent Author of Nature.
That these arrangements had been expressly intended to meet the
circumstances of each particular case was assumed as necessarily
involved in the acceptance of any design at all. It is interesting to
observe that Paley did not think it improbable that the Deity may have
committed to another being--"nay, there may be many such agents and
many ranks of them"--the task of "drawing forth" special creations out
of the materials He had made and in subordination to His rules. This,
he thought, might in some degree account for the fact that contrivances
are not always perfected at once, and that many instruments and methods
are employed.
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Of the goodness of the Creator no manner of doubt was entertained. For
proof of it attention was called to the fact that "in a vast plurality
of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the
contrivance is beneficial," and to the further fact that "the Deity has
superadded pleasure to animal sensations beyond what was necessary for
any other purposes or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary,
might have been effected by the function of pain." Venomous animals
there were, no doubt, but the fang and the sting "may be no less
merciful to the victim, than salutary to the devourer"; and it was to
be noted "that whilst only a few species possess the venomous property,
that property guards the whole tribe." Then again, before we condemn
the ordering whereby animals devour one another we must consider what
would happen if they did not. "Is it to see the world filled with
drooping, superannuated, half-starved, helpless and unhelped animals,
that you would alter the present system of pursuit and prey?" "A hare,
notwithstanding the number of its dangers and its enemies, is as
playful an animal as any other." "It is a happy world after all. The
air, the earth, the water teem with delighted existence. In a spring
noon, or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes myriads of
happy beings crowd upon my {18} view. 'The insect youth are on the
wing.' Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air.
Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity,
their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their
joy, and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered
faculties.... The whole winged insect tribe, it is probable, are
equally intent upon their proper employments, and under every variety
of constitution, gratified, and perhaps equally gratified, by the
offices which the Author of their nature has assigned to them." Where
it might have been imagined that there were to be seen miscarriages of
the Creator's intentions, these were to be attributed to the presence
and influence of mysterious forces of evil. Such attempts to hinder or
frustrate the workings of good might be part of a purpose of good
because they only afforded fresh opportunities for a display of the
Divine wisdom, whose ordinary interventions were accepted as
Providences, whilst Miracles supplied the rarer exhibitions of its
power.
For the rest, it was our duty to remember that such difficulties as
might still be felt must be largely the result of our ignorance. With
patience we should learn to know more. A day was coming when much that
is now hidden would be made clear, and when the greatness and wisdom
and justice {19} of the Almighty Ruler would be wonderfully and
fearfully revealed.
It is not intended to suggest that there were no dissentients ready to
bring forward objections to these almost unanimously accepted
doctrines. We know that there were such, if only because it was deemed
worth while to argue against them. Kepler and Newton had stirred men's
minds by their account of the prodigious scale upon which the mechanism
of the Universe was constructed, and Laplace had already enunciated the
theory according to which the cosmic bodies were originally formed in
obedience to the law of gravitation by the condensation of rotating
nebulous spheres. And there were those who used these discoveries of
astronomy to cast doubts upon the likelihood that the Divine attention
would be concentrated upon the concerns of so tiny a speck as this
planet of ours. There were others who maintained that the unbroken
persistency of the order of Nature was evidence enough to shew that it
had no beginning and could have no end.
Against both these objectors the irony and the oratory of a Chalmers
was directed with what was held to be overwhelming effect. If the
telescope had shewn us wonderful things, there was another instrument,
he said, which had been given to us {20} about the same time. If by
the telescope we had been led to see "a system in every star," it was
no less true that the microscope had disclosed "a world in every atom,"
thus proving to us that "no minuteness, however shrunk from the notice
of the human eye, is beneath the notice of His regard."
So again, in an oration upon "The constancy of Nature," the thesis is
most eloquently defended that "the strict order of the goodly universe
which we inhabit" is nothing else than "a noble attestation to the
wisdom and beneficence of its great Architect."[3]
Little did men dream at that time of the wealth of other discoveries
that was soon to increase enormously the complexity of their problems;
or of the inferences that would be drawn from them with an ingenuity
and an assurance that would task to the utmost the ability and the
patience of the defenders of the old beliefs.
It is of the new facts disclosed and of the further thoughts suggested
by them that we must next proceed to tell.
[1] _Summa_, I., ii. 3.
[2] Essay on "Atheism and Superstition."
[3] _Astronomical Discourses_ (1817), pp. 80, 211.
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