[Ingersoll-Gladstone.]
COLONEL INGERSOLL ON CHRISTIANITY; SOME REMARKS ON HIS REPLY TO DR.
FIELD.
By Hon. Wm. E. Gladstone.
AS a listener from across the broad Atlantic to the clash of arms in the
combat between Colonel Ingersoll and Dr. Field on the most momentous
of all subjects, I have not the personal knowledge which assisted these
doughty champions in making reciprocal acknowledgments, as broad as
could be desired, with reference to personal character and motive. Such
acknowledgments are of high value in keeping the issue clear, if not
always of all adventitious, yet of all venomous matter. Destitute of
the experience on which to found them as original testimonies, still,
in attempting partially to criticise the remarkable Reply of Colonel
Ingersoll, I can both accept in good faith what has been said by Dr.
Field, and add that it seems to me consonant with the strain of the
pages I have set before me. Having said this, I shall allow myself the
utmost freedom in remarks, which will be addressed exclusively to the
matter, not the man.
Let me begin by making several acknowledgments of another kind, but
which I feel to be serious. The Christian Church has lived long enough
in external triumph and prosperity to expose those of whom it is
composed to all such perils of error and misfeasance, as triumph
and prosperity bring with them. Belief in divine guidance is not of
necessity belief that such guidance can never be frustrated by the
laxity, the infirmity, the perversity of man, alike in the domain of
action and in the domain of thought. Believers in the perpetuity of the
life of the Church are not tied to believing in the perpetual health
of the Church. Even the great Latin Communion, and that communion even
since the Council of the Vatican in 1870, theoretically admits, or does
not exclude, the possibility of a wide range of local and partial error
in opinion as well as conduct. Elsewhere the admission would be more
unequivocal. Of such errors in tenet, or in temper and feeling more
or less hardened into tenet, there has been a crop alike abundant and
multifarious. Each Christian party is sufficiently apt to recognize this
fact with regard to every other Christian party; and the more impartial
and reflective minds are aware that no party is exempt from mischiefs,
which lie at the root of the human constitution in its warped, impaired,
and dislocated condition. Naturally enough, these deformities help
to indispose men towards belief; and when this indisposition has been
developed into a system of negative warfare, all the faults of all the
Christian bodies, and sub-divisions of bodies, are, as it was natural
to expect they would be, carefully raked together, and become part and
parcel of the indictment against the divine scheme of redemption. I
notice these things in the mass, without particularity, which might be
invidious, for two important purposes. First, that we all, who hold by
the Gospel and the Christian Church, may learn humility and modesty, as
well as charity and indulgence, in the treatment of opponents, from
our consciousness that we all, alike by our exaggerations and our
shortcomings in belief, no less than by faults of conduct, have
contributed to bring about this condition of fashionable hostility to
religious faith: and, secondly, that we may resolutely decline to be
held bound to tenets, or to consequences of tenets, which represent not
the great Christendom of the past and present, but only some hole and
corner of its vast organization; and not the heavenly treasure, but the
rust or the canker to which that treasure has been exposed through the
incidents of its custody in earthen vessels.
I do not remember ever to have read a composition, in which the
merely local coloring of particular, and even very limited sections of
Christianity, was more systematically used as if it had been available
and legitimate argument against the whole, than in the Reply before us.
Colonel Ingersoll writes with a rare and enviable brilliancy, but also
with an impetus which he seems unable to control. Denunciation, sarcasm,
and invective, may in consequence be said to constitute the staple of
his work; and, if argument or some favorable admission here and there
peeps out for a moment, the writer soon leaves the dry and barren
heights for his favorite and more luxurious galloping grounds beneath.
Thus, when the Reply has consecrated a line (N. A. R., No. 372, p. 473)
to the pleasing contemplation of his opponent as "manly, candid, and
generous," it immediately devotes more than twelve to a declamatory
denunciation of a practice (as if it were his) altogether contrary to
generosity and to candor, and reproaches those who expect (_ibid._) "to
receive as alms an eternity of joy." I take this as a specimen of
the mode of statement which permeates the whole Reply. It is not the
statement of an untruth. The Christian receives as alms all whatsoever
he receives at all. _Qui salvandos salvas gratis_ is his song of
thankful praise. But it is the statement of one-half of a truth, which
lives only in its entirety, and of which the Reply gives us only a
mangled and bleeding _frustum_. For the gospel teaches that the faith
which saves is a living and energizing faith, and that the most precious
part of the alms which we receive lies in an ethical and spiritual
process, which partly qualifies for, but also and emphatically composes,
this conferred eternity of joy. Restore this ethical element to the
doctrine from which the Reply has rudely displaced it, and the whole
force of the assault is gone, for there is now a total absence of point
in the accusation; it conies only to this, that "mercy and judgment are
met together," and that "righteousness and peace have kissed each other"
(Ps. lxxxv. 10).
Perhaps, as we proceed, there will be supplied ampler means of judging
whether I am warranted in saying that the instance I have here given
is a normal instance of a practice so largely followed as to divest
the entire Reply of that calmness and sobriety of movement which are
essential to the just exercise of the reasoning power in subject matter
not only grave, but solemn. Pascal has supplied us, in the "Provincial
Letters," with an unique example of easy, brilliant, and fascinating
treatment of a theme both profound and complex. But where shall we find
another Pascal? And, if we had found him, he would be entitled to point
out to us that the famous work was not less close and logical than it
was witty. In this case, all attempt at continuous argument appears to
be deliberately abjured, not only as to pages, but, as may almost be
said, even as to lines. The paper, noteworthy as it is, leaves on my
mind the impression of a battle-field where every man strikes at every
man, and all is noise, hurry, and confusion. Better surely had it been,
and worthier of the great weight and elevation of the subject, if the
controversy had been waged after the pattern of those engagements where
a chosen champion on either side, in a space carefully limited and
reserved, does battle on behalf of each silent and expectant host. The
promiscuous crowds represent all the lower elements which enter
into human conflicts: the chosen champions, and the order of their
proceeding, signify the dominion of reason over force, and its just
place as the sovereign arbiter of the great questions that involve the
main destiny of man.
I will give another instance of the tumultuous method in which the
Reply conducts, not, indeed, its argument, but its case. Dr. Field had
exhibited an example of what he thought superstition, and had drawn a
distinction between superstition and religion. But to the author of
the Reply all religion is superstition, and, accordingly, he writes as
follows (p. 475): "You are shocked at the Hindoo mother, when she gives
her child to death at the supposed command of her God. What do you think
of Abraham? of Jephthah? What is your opinion of Jehovah himself?"
Taking these three appeals in the reverse order to that in which they
are written, I will briefly ask, as to the closing challenge, "What
do you think of Jehovah himself?" whether this is the tone in which
controversy ought to be carried on? Not only is the name of Jehovah
encircled in the heart of every believer with the profoundest reverence
and love, but the Christian religion teaches, through the Incarnation,
a doctrine of personal union with God so lofty that it can only be
approached in a deep, reverential calm. I do not deny that a person
who deems a given religion to be wicked may be led onward by logical
consistency to impugn in strong terms the character of the Author and
Object of that religion. But he is surely bound by the laws of social
morality and decency to consider well the terms and the manner of his
indictment. If he founds it upon allegations of fact, these allegations
should be carefully stated, so as to give his antagonists reasonable
evidence that it is truth and not temper which wrings from him a
sentence of condemnation, delivered in sobriety and sadness, and
not without a due commiseration for those, whom he is attempting to
undeceive, who think he is himself both deceived and a deceiver, but who
surely are entitled, while this question is in process of decision, to
require that He whom they adore should at least be treated with those
decent reserves which are deemed essential when a human being, say
a parent, wife, or sister, is in question. But here a contemptuous
reference to Jehovah follows, not upon a careful investigation of the
cases of Abraham and of Jephthah, but upon a mere summary citation of
them to surrender themselves, so to speak, as culprits; that is to say,
a summons to accept at once, on the authority of the Reply, the view
which the writer is pleased to take of those cases. It is true that he
assures us in another part of his paper that he has read the scriptures
with care; and I feel bound to accept this assurance, but at the same
time to add that if it had not been given I should, for one, not
have made the discovery, but might have supposed that the author had
galloped, not through, but about, the sacred volume, as a man glances
over the pages of an ordinary newspaper or novel.
Although there is no argument as to Abraham or Jephthah expressed upon
the surface, we must assume that one is intended, and it seems to be of
the following kind: "You are not entitled to reprove the Hindoo mother
who cast her child under the wheels of the car of Juggernaut, for
you approve of the conduct of Jephthah, who (probably) sacrificed his
daughter in fulfilment of a vow (Judges xi. 31) that he would make a
burnt offering of whatsoever, on his safe return, he should meet coming
forth from the doors of his dwelling." Now the whole force of this
rejoinder depends upon our supposed obligation as believers to approve
the conduct of Jephthah. It is, therefore, a very serious question
whether we are or are not so obliged. But this question the Reply does
not condescend either to argue, or even to state. It jumps to an extreme
conclusion without the decency of an intermediate step. Are not such
methods of proceeding more suited to placards at an election, than to
disquisitions on these most solemn subjects?
I am aware of no reason why any believer in Christianity should not
be free to canvass, regret, condemn the act of Jephthah. So far as the
narration which details it is concerned, there is not a word of sanction
given to it more than to the falsehood of Abraham in Egypt, or of
Jacob and Rebecca in the matter of the hunting (Gen. xx. 1-18, and Gen.
xxiii.); or to the dissembling of St. Peter in the case of the Judaizing
converts (Gai. ii. 11). I am aware of no color of approval given to
it elsewhere. But possibly the author of the Reply may have thought he
found such an approval in the famous eleventh chapter of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, where the apostle, handling his subject with a discernment
and care very different from those of the Reply, writes thus (Heb. xi.
32):
"And what shall I say more? For the time would fail me to tell of
Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah: of David also, and
Samuel, and of the prophets."
Jephthah, then, is distinctly held up to us by a canonical writer as an
object of praise. But of praise on what account? Why should the Reply
assume that it is on account of the sacrifice of his child? The writer
of the Reply has given us no reason, and no rag of a reason, in support
of such a proposition. But this was the very thing he was bound by every
consideration to prove, upon making his indictment against the Almighty.
In my opinion, he could have one reason only for not giving a reason,
and that was that no reason could be found.
The matter, however, is so full of interest, as illustrating both the
method of the Reply and that of the Apostolic writer, that I shall enter
farther into it, and draw attention to the very remarkable structure of
this noble chapter, which is to Faith what the thirteenth of Cor. I. is
to Charity. From the first to the thirty-first verse, it commemorates
the achievements of faith in ten persons: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham,
Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses (in greater detail than any one
else), and finally Rahab, in whom, I observe in passing, it will hardly
be pretended that she appears in this list on account of the profession
she had pursued. Then comes the rapid recital (v. 31), without any
specification of particulars whatever, of these four names: Gideon,
Barak, Samson, Jephthah. Next follows a kind of recommencement,
indicated by the word also; and the glorious acts and sufferings of the
prophets are set forth largely with a singular power and warmth, headed
by the names of David and Samuel, the rest of the sacred band being
mentioned only in the mass.
Now, it is surely very remarkable that, in the whole of this recital,
the Apostle, whose "feet were shod with the preparation of the gospel
of peace," seems with a tender instinct to avoid anything like stress
on the exploits of warriors. Of the twelve persons having a share in the
detailed expositions, David is the only warrior, and his character as
a man of war is eclipsed by his greater attributes as a prophet, or
declarer of the Divine counsels. It is yet more noteworthy that Joshua,
who had so fair a fame, but who was only a warrior, is never named in
the chapter, and we are simply told that "by faith the walls of Jericho
fell down, after they had been compassed about seven times" (Hebrews
xi. 30). But the series of four names, which are given without any
specification of their title to appear in the list, are all names
of distinguished warriors. They had all done great acts of faith
and patriotism against the enemies of Israel,--Gideon against the
Midianites, Barak against the hosts of Syria, Samson against the
Philistines, and Jephthah against the children of Ammon. Their tide to
appear in the list at all is in their acts of war, and the mode of their
treatment as men of war is in striking accordance with the analogies
of the chapter. All of them had committed errors. Gideon had again and
again demanded a sign, and had made a golden ephod, "which thing became
a snare unto Gideon and to his house" (Judges viii. 27). Barak had
refused to go up against Jabin unless Deborah would join the venture
(Judges v. 8). Samson had been in dalliance with Delilah. Last came
Jephthah, who had, as we assume, sacrificed his daughter in fulfilment
of a rash vow. No one supposes that any of the others are honored by
mention in the chapter on account of his sin or error: why should that
supposition be made in the case of Jephthah, at the cost of all the
rules of orderly interpretation?
Having now answered the challenge as to Jephthah, I proceed to the
case of Abraham. It would not be fair to shrink from touching it in
its tenderest point. That point is nowhere expressly touched by the
commendations bestowed upon Abraham in Scripture. I speak now of the
special form, of the words that are employed. He is not commended
because, being a father, he made all the preparations antecedent to
plunging the knife into his son. He is commended (as I read the text)
because, having received a glorious promise, a promise that his wife
should be a mother of nations, and that kings should be born of her
(Gen. xvii. 6), and that by his seed the blessings of redemption should
be conveyed to man, and the fulfilment of this promise depending solely
upon the life of Isaac, he was, nevertheless, willing that the chain of
these promises should be broken by the extinction of that life, because
his faith assured him that the Almighty would find the way to give
effect to His own designs (Heb. xi. 17-19). The offering of Isaac is
mentioned as a completed offering, and the intended blood-shedding, of
which I shall speak presently, is not here brought into view.
The facts, however, which we have before us, and which are treated in
Scripture with caution, are grave and startling. A father is commanded
to sacrifice his son. Before consummation, the sacrifice is interrupted.
Yet the intention of obedience had been formed, and certified by a
series of acts. It may have been qualified by a reserve of hope that God
would interpose before the final act, but of this we have no distinct
statement, and it can only stand as an allowable conjecture. It may be
conceded that the narrative does not supply us with a complete statement
of particulars. That being so, it behooves us to tread cautiously in
approaching it. Thus much, however, I think, may further be said: the
command was addressed to Abraham under conditions essentially different
from those which now determine for us the limits of moral obligation.
For the conditions, both socially and otherwise, were indeed very
different. The estimate of human life at the time was different. The
position of the father in the family was different: its members were
regarded as in some sense his property. There is every reason to suppose
that, around Abraham in "the land of Moriah," the practice of human
sacrifice as an act of religion was in vigor. But we may look more
deeply into the matter. According to the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve
were placed under a law, not of consciously perceived right and wrong,
but of simple obedience. The tree, of which alone they were forbidden to
eat, was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Duty lay for them
in following the command of the Most High, before and until they,
or their descendants, should become capable of appreciating it by an
ethical standard. Their condition was greatly analogous to that of the
infant, who has just reached the stage at which he can comprehend that
he is ordered to do this or that, but not the nature of the thing
so ordered. To the external standard of right and wrong, and to the
obligation it entails per se, the child is introduced by a process
gradually unfolded with the development of his nature, and the opening
out of what we term a moral sense. If we pass at once from the epoch
of Paradise to the period of the prophets, we perceive the important
progress that has been made in the education of the race. The Almighty,
in His mediate intercourse with Israel, deigns to appeal to an
independently conceived criterion, as to an arbiter between His people
and Himself. "Come, now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord"
(Isaiah i. 18). "Yet ye say the way of the Lord is not equal. Hear now,
O house of Israel, is not my way equal, are not your ways unequal?"
(Ezekiel xvii. 25). Between these two epochs how wide a space of moral
teaching has been traversed! But Abraham, so far as we may judge from
the pages of Scripture, belongs essentially to the Adamic period, far
more than to the prophetic. The notion of righteousness and sin was not
indeed hidden from him: transgression itself had opened that chapter,
and it was never to be closed: but as yet they lay wrapped up, so to
speak, in Divine command and prohibition. And what God commanded, it was
for Abraham to believe that He himself would adjust to the harmony of
His own character.
The faith of Abraham, with respect to this supreme trial, appears to
have been centered in this, that he would trust God to all extremities,
and in despite of all appearances. The command received was obviously
inconsistent with the promises which had preceded it. It was also
inconsistent with the morality acknowledged in later times, and perhaps
too definitely reflected in our minds, by an anachronism easy to
conceive, on the day of Abraham. There can be little doubt, as between
these two points of view, that the strain upon his faith was felt
mainly, to say the least, in connection with the first mentioned.
This faith is not wholly unlike the faith of Job; for Job believed, in
despite of what was to the eye of flesh an unrighteous government of
the world. If we may still trust the Authorized Version, his cry was,
"though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" (Job xiii. 15). This cry
was, however, the expression of one who did not expect to be slain; and
it may be that Abraham, when he said, "My son, God will provide Himself
a lamb for a burnt offering," not only believed explicitly that God
would do what was right, but, moreover, believed implicitly that a way
of rescue would be found for his son. I do not say that this case is
like the case of Jephthah, where the introduction of difficulty is only
gratuitous. I confine myself to these propositions. Though the law
of moral action is the same everywhere and always, it is variously
applicable to the human being, as we know from experience, in the
various stages of his development; and its first form is that of
simple obedience to a superior whom there is every ground to trust. And
further, if the few straggling rays of our knowledge in a case of this
kind rather exhibit a darkness lying around us than dispel it, we do
not even know all that was in the mind of Abraham, and are not in a
condition to pronounce upon it, and cannot, without departure from sound
reason, abandon that anchorage by which he probably held, that the law
of Nature was safe in the hands of the Author of Nature, though the
means of the reconciliation between the law and the appearances have not
been fully placed within our reach.
But the Reply is not entitled to so wide an answer as that which I
have given. In the parallel with the case of the Hindoo widow, it
sins against first principles. An established and habitual practice
of child-slaughter, in a country of an old and learned civilization,
presents to us a case totally different from the issue of a command
which was not designed to be obeyed and which belongs to a period when
the years of manhood were associated in great part with the character
that appertains to childhood.
It will already have been seen that the method of this Reply is not to
argue seriously from point to point, but to set out in masses, without
the labor of proof, crowds of imputations, which may overwhelm an
opponent like balls from a _mitrailleuse_. As the charges lightly run
over in a line or two require pages for exhibition and confutation, an
exhaustive answer to the Reply within the just limits of an article is
on this account out of the question; and the only proper course left
open seems to be to make a selection of what appears to be the favorite,
or the most formidable and telling assertions, and to deal with these in
the serious way which the grave interests of the theme, not the manner
of their presentation, may deserve.
It was an observation of Aristotle that weight attaches to the
undemonstrated propositions of those who are able to speak on any given
subject matter from experience. The Reply abounds in undemonstrated
propositions. They appear, however, to be delivered without any sense of
a necessity that either experience or reasoning are required in order
to give them a title to acceptance. Thus, for example, the system of
Mr. Darwin is hurled against Christianity as a dart which cannot but be
fatal (p. 475):
"His discoveries, carried to their legitimate conclusion, destroy the
creeds and sacred Scriptures of mankind."
This wide-sweeping proposition is imposed upon us with no exposition
of the how or the why; and the whole controversy of belief one might
suppose is to be determined, as if from St. Petersburgh, by a series of
_ukases_. It is only advanced, indeed, to decorate the introduction of
Darwin's name in support of the proposition, which I certainly should
support and not contest, that error and honesty are compatible.
On what ground, then, and for what reason, is the system of Darwin fatal
to Scriptures and to creeds? I do not enter into the question whether
it has passed from the stage of working hypothesis into that of
demonstration, but I assume, for the purposes of the argument, all that,
in this respect, the Reply can desire.
It is not possible to discover, from the random language of the Reply,
whether the scheme of Darwin is to sweep away all theism, or is to be
content with extinguishing revealed religion. If the latter is meant, I
should reply that the moral history of man, in its principal stream,
has been distinctly an evolution from the first until now; and that the
succinct though grand account of the Creation in Genesis is singularly
accordant with the same idea, but is wider than Darwinism, since it
includes in the grand progression the inanimate world as well as the
history of organisms. But, as this could not be shown without much
detail, the Reply reduces me to the necessity of following its own
unsatisfactory example in the bald form of an assertion, that there
is no colorable ground for assuming evolution and revelation to be at
variance with one another.
If, however, the meaning be that theism is swept away by Darwinism, I
observe that, as before, we have only an unreasoned dogma or dictum to
deal with, and, dealing perforce with the unknown, we are in danger of
striking at a will of the wisp. Still, I venture on remarking that the
doctrine of Evolution has acquired both praise and dispraise which
it does not deserve. It is lauded in the skeptical camp because it is
supposed to get rid of the shocking idea of what are termed sudden acts
of creation; and it is as unjustly dispraised, on the opposing side,
because it is thought to bridge over the gap between man and the
inferior animals, and to give emphasis to the relationship between them.
But long before the day either of Mr. Darwin or his grandfather, Dr.
Erasmus Darwin, this relationship had been stated, perhaps even more
emphatically by one whom, were it not that I have small title to deal
in undemonstrated assertion, I should venture to call the most cautious,
the most robust, and the most comprehensive of our philosophers.
Suppose, says Bishop Butler (Analogy, Part 2, Chap. 2), that it were
implied in the natural immortality of brutes, that they must arrive at
great attainments, and become (like us) rational and moral agents; even
this would be no difficulty, since we know not what latent powers and
capacities they may be endowed with. And if pride causes us to deem it
an indignity that our race should have proceeded by propagation from an
ascending scale of inferior organisms, why should it be a more repulsive
idea to have sprung immediately from something less than man in brain
and body, than to have been fashioned according to the expression in
Genesis (Chap. II., v. 7), "out of the dust of the ground?" There are
halls and galleries of introduction in a palace, but none in a cottage;
and this arrival of the creative work at its climax through an ever
aspiring preparatory series, rather than by transition at a step from
the inanimate mould of earth, may tend rather to magnify than to
lower the creation of man on its physical side. But if belief has
(as commonly) been premature in its alarms, has non-belief been more
reflective in its exulting anticipations, and its paeans on the assumed
disappearance of what are strangely enough termed sudden acts of
creation from the sphere of our study and contemplation?
One striking effect of the Darwinian theory of descent is, so far as I
understand, to reduce the breadth of all intermediate distinctions
in the scale of animated life. It does not bring all creatures into a
single lineage, but all diversities are to be traced back, at some point
in the scale and by stages indefinitely minute, to a common ancestry.
All is done by steps, nothing by strides, leaps, or bounds; all from
protoplasm up to Shakespeare, and, again, all from primal night and
chaos up to protoplasm. I do not ask, and am incompetent to judge,
whether this is among the things proven, but I take it so for the sake
of the argument; and I ask, first, why and whereby does this doctrine
eliminate the idea of creation? Does the new philosophy teach that if
the passage from pure reptile to pure bird is achieved by a spring (so
to speak) over a chasm, this implies and requires creation; but that
if reptile passes into bird, and rudimental into finished bird, by a
thousand slight and but just discernible modifications, each one of
these is so small that they are not entitled to a name so lofty, may be
set down to any cause or no cause, as we please? I should have supposed
it miserably unphilosophical to treat the distinction between creative
and non-creative function as a simply quantitative distinction. As
respects the subjective effect on the human mind, creation in small,
when closely regarded, awakens reason to admiring wonder, not less than
creation in great: and as regards that function itself, to me it appears
no less than ridiculous to hold that the broadly outlined and large
advances of so-called Mosaism are creation, but the refined and stealthy
onward steps of Darwinism are only manufacture, and relegate the
question of a cause into obscurity, insignificance, or oblivion.
But does not reason really require us to go farther, to turn the tables
on the adversary, and to contend that evolution, by how much it binds
more closely together the myriad ranks of the living, aye, and of all
other orders, by so much the more consolidates, enlarges, and enhances
the true argument of design, and the entire theistic position? If orders
are not mutually related, it is easier to conceive of them as sent at
haphazard into the world. We may, indeed, sufficiently, draw an argument
of design from each separate structure, but we have no further title to
build upon the position which each of them holds as towards any other.
But when the connexion between these objects has been established, and
so established that the points of transition are almost as indiscernible
as the passage from day to night, then, indeed, each preceding stage is
a prophecy of the following, each succeeding one is a memorial of the
past, and, throughout the immeasurable series, every single member of
it is a witness to all the rest. The Reply ought surely to dispose of
these, and probably many more arguments in the case, before assuming
so absolutely the rights of dictatorship, and laying it down that
Darwinism, carried to its legitimate conclusion (and I have nowhere
endeavored to cut short its career), destroys the creeds and Scriptures
of mankind. That I maybe the more definite in my challenge, I would,
with all respect, ask the author of the Reply to set about confuting the
succinct and clear argument of his countryman, Mr. Fiske, who, in the
earlier part of the small work entitled _Man's Destiny_ (Macmillan,
London, 1887) has given what seems to me an admissible and also striking
interpretation of the leading Darwinian idea in its bearings on the
theistic argument. To this very partial treatment of a great subject I
must at present confine myself; and I proceed to another of the notions,
as confident as they seem to be crude, which the Reply has drawn into
its wide-casting net (p. 475):
"Why should God demand a sacrifice from; man? Why should the Infinite
ask anything from the finite? Should the sun beg of the glow-worm, and
should the momentary spark excite the envy of the source of light?"
This is one of the cases in which happy or showy illustration is, in the
Reply before me, set to carry with a rush the position which argument
would have to approach more laboriously and more slowly. The case of the
glow-worm with the sun cannot but move a reader's pity, it seems so
very hard. But let us suppose for a moment that the glow-worm was so
constituted, and so related to the sun that an interaction between them
was a fundamental condition of its health and life; that the glowworm
must, by the law of its nature, like the moon, reflect upon the sun,
according to its strength and measure, the light which it receives,
and that only by a process involving that reflection its own store of
vitality could be upheld? It will be said that this is a very large
_petitio_ to import into the glowworm's case. Yes, but it is the very
_petitio_ which is absolutely requisite in order to make it parallel to
the case of the Christian. The argument which the Reply has to destroy
is and must be the Christian argument, and not some figure of straw,
fabricated at will. It is needless, perhaps, but it is refreshing, to
quote the noble Psalm (Ps. 1. 10, 12, 14, 15), in which this assumption
of the Reply is rebuked. "All the beasts of the forest are mine; and so
are the cattle upon a thousand hills.... If I be hungry I will not tell
thee; for the whole world is mine, and all that is therein.... Offer
unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the Most Highest, and call
upon Me in the time of trouble; so will I hear thee, and thou shalt
praise Me." Let me try my hand at a counter-illustration. If the Infinite
is to make no demand upon the finite, by parity of reasoning the great
and strong should scarcely make them on the weak and small. Why then
should the father make demands of love, obedience, and sacrifice, from
his young child? Is there not some flavor of the sun and glow-worm here?
But every man does so make them, if he is a man of sense and feeling;
and he makes them for the sake and in the interest of the son himself,
whose nature, expanding in the warmth of affection and pious care,
requires, by an inward law, to return as well as to receive. And so God
asks of us, in order that what we give to Him may be far more our own
than it ever was before the giving, or than it could have been unless
first rendered up to Him, to become a part of what the gospel calls our
treasure in heaven.
Although the Reply is not careful to supply us with whys, it does not
hesitate to ask for them (p. 479):
"Why should an infinitely wise and powerful God destroy the good and
preserve the vile? Why should He treat all alike here, and in another
world make an infinite difference? Why should your God allow His
worshipers, His adorers, to be destroyed by His enemies? Why should He
allow the honest, the loving, the noble, to perish at the stake?"
The upholders of belief or of revelation, from Claudian down to Cardinal
Newman (see the very remarkable passage of the _Apologia pro vita sua_,
pp. 376-78), cannot and do not, seek to deny that the methods of divine
government, as they are exhibited by experience, present to us many and
varied moral problems, insoluble by our understanding. Their existence
may not, and should not, be dissembled. But neither should they be
exaggerated. Now exaggeration by mere suggestion is the fault, the
glaring fault, of these queries. One who had no knowledge of mundane
affairs beyond the conception they insinuate would assume that, as a
rule, evil has the upper hand in the management of the world. Is this
the grave philosophical conclusion of a careful observer, or is it a
crude, hasty, and careless overstatement?
It is not difficult to conceive how, in times of sadness and of storm,
when the suffering soul can discern no light at any point of the
horizon, place is found for such an idea of life. It is, of course,
opposed to the Apostolic declaration that godliness hath the promise
of the life that now is (1 Tim. iv. 8), but I am not to expect such a
declaration to be accepted as current coin, even of the meanest value,
by the author of the Reply. Yet I will offer two observations founded
on experience in support of it, one taken from a limited, another from
a larger and more open sphere. John Wesley, in the full prime of his
mission, warned the converts whom he was making among English laborers
of a spiritual danger that lay far ahead. It was that, becoming godly,
they would become careful, and, becoming careful, they would become
wealthy. It was a just and sober forecast, and it represented with
truth the general rule of life, although it be a rule perplexed with
exceptions. But, if this be too narrow a sphere of observation, let
us take a wider one, the widest of all. It is comprised in the brief
statement that Christendom rules the world, and rules it, perhaps it
should be added, by the possession of a vast surplus of material as well
as moral force. Therefore the assertions carried by implication in the
queries of the Reply, which are general, are because general untrue,
although they might have been true within those prudent limitations
which the method of this Reply appears especially to eschew.
Taking, then, these challenges as they ought to have been given, I admit
that great believers, who have been also great masters of wisdom and
knowledge, are not able to explain the inequalities of adjustment
between human beings and the conditions in which they have been set down
to work out their destiny. The climax of these inequalities is perhaps
to be found in the fact that, whereas rational belief, viewed at large,
founds the Providential government of the world upon the hypothesis of
free agency, there are so many cases in which the overbearing mastery
of circumstance appears to reduce it to extinction or paralysis. Now,
in one sense, without doubt, these difficulties are matter for our
legitimate and necessary cognizance. It is a duty incumbent upon us
respectively, according to our means and opportunities, to decide for
ourselves, by the use of the faculty of reason given us, the great
questions of natural and revealed religion. They are to be decided
according to the evidence; and, if we cannot trim the evidence into a
consistent whole, then according to the balance of the evidence. We are
not entitled, either for or against belief, to set up in this province
any rule of investigation, except such as common-sense teaches us to
use in the ordinary conduct of life. As in ordinary conduct, so in
considering the basis of belief, we are bound to look at the evidence as
a whole. We have no right to demand demonstrative proofs, or the removal
of all conflicting elements, either in the one sphere or in the other.
What guides us sufficiently in matters of common practice has the very
same authority to guide us in matters of speculation; more properly,
perhaps, to be called the practice of the soul. If the evidence in the
aggregate shows the being of a moral Governor of the world, with the
same force as would suffice to establish an obligation to act in a
matter of common conduct, we are bound in duty to accept it, and have no
right to demand as a condition previous that all occasions of doubt or
question be removed out of the way. Our demands for evidence must be
limited by the general reason of the case. Does that general reason of
the case make it probable that a finite being, with a finite place in
a comprehensive scheme, devised and administered by a Being who is
infinite, would be able either to embrace within his view, or rightly to
appreciate, all the motives and the aims that may have been in the
mind of the Divine Disposer? On the contrary, a demand so unreasonable
deserves to be met with the scornful challenge of Dante (Paradise xix.
79):
Or tu chi sei, che vuoi sedere a scranna
Per giudicar da lungi mille miglia
Colla veduta corta d'una spanna?
Undoubtedly a great deal here depends upon the question whether, and in
what degree, our knowledge is limited. And here the Reply seems to be
by no means in accord with Newton and with Butler. By its contempt for
authority, the Reply seems to cut off from us all knowledge that is not
at first hand; but then also it seems to assume an original and first
hand knowledge of all possible kinds of things. I will take an instance,
all the easier to deal with because it is outside the immediate sphere
of controversy. In one of those pieces of fine writing with which the
Reply abounds, it is determined _obiter_ by a backhanded stroke (N. A.
R., p. 491) that Shakespeare is "by far the greatest of the human
race." I do not feel entitled to assert that he is not; but how vast and
complex a question is here determined for us in this airy manner! Has
the writer of the Reply really weighed the force, and measured the sweep
of his own words? Whether Shakespeare has or has not the primacy of
genius over a very few other names which might be placed in competition
with his, is a question which has not yet been determined by the general
or deliberate judgment of lettered mankind. But behind it lies another
question, inexpressibly difficult, except for the Reply, to solve. That
question is, what is the relation of human genius to human greatness.
Is genius the sole constitutive element of greatness, or with what other
elements, and in what relations to them, is it combined? Is every man
great in proportion to his genius? Was Goldsmith, or was Sheridan,
or was Burns, or was Byron, or was Goethe, or was Napoleon, or
was Alcibiades, no smaller, and was Johnson, or was Howard, or was
Washington, or was Phocion, or Leonidas, no greater, than in proportion
to his genius properly so-called? How are we to find a common measure,
again, for different kinds of greatness; how weigh, for example, Dante
against Julius Caesar? And I am speaking of greatness properly so
called, not of goodness properly so called. We might seem to be dealing
with a writer whose contempt for authority in general is fully balanced,
perhaps outweighed, by his respect for one authority in particular.
The religions of the world, again, have in many cases given to many men
material for life-long study. The study of the Christian Scriptures,
to say nothing of Christian life and institutions, has been to many and
justly famous men a study "never ending, still beginning"; not, like
the world of Alexander, too limited for the powerful faculty that ranged
over it; but, on the contrary, opening height on height, and with deep
answering to deep, and with increase of fruit ever prescribing increase
of effort. But the Reply has sounded all these depths, has found them
very shallow, and is quite able to point out (p. 490) the way in which
the Saviour of the world might have been a much greater teacher than
He actually was; had He said anything, for instance, of the family
relation, had He spoken against slavery and tyranny, had He issued a
sort of _code Napoleon_ embracing education, progress, scientific truth,
and international law. This observation on the family relation seems to
me beyond even the usual measure of extravagance when we bear in mind
that, according to the Christian scheme, the Lord of heaven and earth
"was subject" (St. Luke ii. 51) to a human mother and a reputed human
father, and that He taught (according to the widest and, I believe, the
best opinion) the absolute indissolubility of marriage. I might cite
many other instances in reply. But the broader and the true answer to
the objection is, that the Gospel was promulgated to teach principles
and not a code; that it included the foundation of a society in which
those principles were to be conserved, developed, and applied; and that
down to this day there is not a moral question of all those which
the Reply does or does not enumerate, nor is there a question of duty
arising in the course of life for any of us, that is not determinable
in all its essentials by applying to it as a touchstone the principles
declared in the Gospel. Is not, then, the _hiatus_, which the Reply has
discovered in the teaching of our Lord, an imaginary _hiatus_? Nay, are
the suggested improvements of that teaching really gross deteriorations?
Where would have been the wisdom of delivering to an uninstructed
population of a particular age a codified religion, which was to serve
for all nations, all ages, all states of civilization? Why was not
room to be left for the career of human thought in finding out, and in
working out, the adaptation of Christianity to the ever varying
movement of the world? And how is it that they who will not admit that a
revelation is in place when it has in view the great and necessary work
of conflict against sin, are so free in recommending enlargements of
that Revelation for purposes, as to which no such necessity can be
pleaded?
I have known a person who, after studying the old classical or Olympian
religion for the third part of a century, at length began to hope that
he had some partial comprehension of it, some inkling of what it meant.
Woe is him that he was not conversant either with the faculties or with
the methods of the Reply, which apparently can dispose in half an hour
of any problem, dogmatic, historical, or moral: and which accordingly
takes occasion to assure us that Buddha was "in many respects the
greatest religious teacher this world has ever known, the broadest, the
most intellectual of them all" (p. 491). On this I shall only say that
an attempt to bring Buddha and Buddhism into line together is far beyond
my reach, but that every Christian, knowing in some degree what Christ
is, and what He has done for the world, can only be the more thankful if
Buddha, or Confucius, or any other teacher has in any point, and in
any measure, come near to the outskirts of His ineffable greatness and
glory.
It is my fault or my misfortune to remark, in this Reply, an inaccuracy
of reference, which would of itself suffice to render it remarkable.
Christ, we are told (pp. 492, 500), denounced the chosen people of God
as "a generation of vipers." This phrase is applied by the Baptist to
the crowd who came to seek baptism from him; but it is only applied
by our Lord to Scribes or Pharisees (Luke iii. 7, Matthew xxiii. 33,
and xii.34), who are so commonly placed by Him in contrast with the
people. The error is repeated in the mention of whited sepulchres. Take
again the version of the story of Ananias and Sapphira. We are told
(p. 494) that the Apostles conceived the idea "of having all things in
common." In the narrative there is no statement, no suggestion of
the kind; it is a pure interpolation (Acts iv. 32-7). Motives of a
reasonable prudence are stated as a mattei of fact to have influenced
the offending couple--another pure interpolation. After the catastrophe
of Ananias "the Apostles sent for his wife"--a third interpolation. I
refer only to these points as exhibitions of an habitual and dangerous
inaccuracy, and without any attempt at present to discuss the case, in
which the judgments of God are exhibited on their severer side, and in
which I cannot, like the Reply, undertake summarily to determine for
what causes the Almighty should or should not take life, or delegate the
power to take it.
Again, we have (p. 486) these words given as a quotation from the Bible:
"They who believe and are baptized shall be saved, and they who believe
not shall be damned; and these shall go away into everlasting fire,
prepared for the devil and his angels."
The second clause thus reads as if applicable to the persons mentioned
in the first; that is to say, to those who reject the tidings of the
Gospel. But instead of its being a continuous passage, the latter
section is brought out of another gospel (St. Matthew's) and another
connection; and it is really written, not of those who do not believe,
but those who refuse to perform offices of charity to their neighbor in
his need. It would be wrong to call this intentional misrepresentation;
but can it be called less than somewhat reckless negligence?
It is a more special misfortune to find a writer arguing on the same
side with his critic, and yet for the critic not to be able to
agree with him. But so it is with reference to the great subject of
immortality, as treated in the Reply.
"The idea of immortality, that, like a sea, has ebbed and flowed in the
human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear beating against
the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of
any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection; and it
will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mist and clouds of doubt and
darkness, as long as love kisses the lips of death" (p. 483).
Here we have a very interesting chapter of the history of human opinion
disposed of in the usual summary way, by a statement which, as it
appears to me, is developed out of the writer's inner consciousness.
If the belief in immortality is not connected with any revelation
or religion, but is simply the expression of a subjective want, then
plainly we may expect the expression of it to be strong and clear in
proportion to the various degrees in which faculty is developed
among the various races of mankind. But how does the matter stand
historically? The Egyptians were not a people of high intellectual
development, and yet their religious system was strictly associated
with, I might rather say founded on, the belief in immortality. The
ancient Greeks, on the other hand, were a race of astonishing, perhaps
unrivalled, intellectual capacity. But not only did they, in prehistoric
ages, derive their scheme of a future world from Egypt; we find
also that, with the lapse of time and the advance of the Hellenic
civilization, the constructive ideas of the system lost all life and
definite outline, and the most powerful mind of the Greek philosophy,
that of Aristotle, had no clear perception whatever of a personal
existence in a future state.
The favorite doctrine of the Reply is the immunity of all error in
belief from moral responsibility. In the first page (p. 473) this is
stated with reserve as the "innocence of honest error." But why such a
limitation? The Reply warms with its subject; it shows us that no
error can be otherwise than honest, inasmuch as nothing which involves
honesty, or its reverse, can, from the constitution of our nature, enter
into the formation of opinion. Here is the full blown exposition (p.
476):
"The brain thinks without asking our consent. We believe, or we
disbelieve, without an effort of the will. Belief is a result. It is the
effect of evidence upon the mind. The scales turn in spite of him who
watches. _There is no opportunity of being honesty or dishonest, in
the formation of an opinion_. The conclusion is entirely independent of
desire."
The reasoning faculty is, therefore, wholly extrinsic to our moral
nature, and no influence is or can be received or imparted between them.
I know not whether the meaning is that all the faculties of our nature
are like so many separate departments in one of the modern shops that
supply all human wants; that will, memory, imagination, affection,
passion, each has its own separate domain, and that they meet only for a
comparison of results, just to tell one another what they have severally
been doing. It is difficult to conceive, if this be so, wherein consists
the personality, or individuality or organic unity of man. It is not
difficult to see that while the Reply aims at uplifting human nature,
it in reality plunges us (p. 475) into the abyss of degradation by the
destruction of moral freedom, responsibility, and unity. For we are
justly told that "reason is the supreme and final test." Action may be
merely instinctive and habitual, or it may be consciously founded
on formulated thought; but, in the cases where it is instinctive and
habitual, it passes over, so soon as it is challenged, into the other
category, and finds a basis for itself in some form of opinion. But,
says the Reply, we have no responsibility for our opinions: we cannot
help forming them according to the evidence as it presents itself to us.
Observe, the doctrine embraces every kind of opinion, and embraces all
alike, opinion on subjects where we like or dislike, as well as upon
subjects where we merely affirm or deny in some medium absolutely
colorless. For, if a distinction be taken between the colorless and the
colored medium, between conclusions to which passion or propensity or
imagination inclines us, and conclusions to which these have nothing to
say, then the whole ground will be cut away from under the feet of the
Reply, and it will have to build again _ab initio_. Let us try this by
a test case. A father who has believed his son to have been through
life upright, suddenly finds that charges are made from various quarters
against his integrity. Or a friend, greatly dependent for the work
of his life on the co-operation of another friend, is told that that
comrade is counterworking and betraying him. I make no assumption now
as to the evidence or the result; but I ask which of them could approach
the investigation without feeling a desire to be able to acquit? And
what shall we say of the desire to condemn? Would Elizabeth have had
no leaning towards finding Mary Stuart implicated in a conspiracy? Did
English judges and juries approach with an unbiassed mind the trials for
the Popish plot? Were the opinions formed by the English Parliament on
the Treaty of Limerick formed without the intervention of the will? Did
Napoleon judge according to the evidence when he acquitted himself in
the matter of the Due d' Enghien? Does the intellect sit in a solitary
chamber, like Galileo in the palace of the Vatican, and pursue celestial
observation all untouched, while the turmoil of earthly business is
raging everywhere around? According to the Reply, it must be a mistake
to suppose that there is anywhere in the world such a thing as bias, or
prejudice, or prepossession: they are words without meaning in regard to
our judgments, for even if they could raise a clamor from without, the
intellect sits within, in an atmosphere of serenity, and, like Justice,
is deaf and blind, as well as calm.
In addition to all other faults, I hold that this philosophy, or
phantasm of philosophy, is eminently retrogressive. Human nature, in its
compound of flesh and spirit, becomes more complex with the progress of
civilization; with the steady multiplication of wants, and of means for
their supply. With complication, introspection has largely extended, and
I believe that, as observation extends its field, so far from isolating
the intelligence and making it autocratic, it tends more and more to
enhance and multiply the infinitely subtle, as well as the broader and
more palpable modes, in which the interaction of the human faculties is
carried on. Who among us has not had occasion to observe, in the course
of his experience, how largely the intellectual power of a man is
affected by the demands of life on his moral powers, and how they open
and grow, or dry up and dwindle, according to the manner in which those
demands are met.
Genius itself, however purely a conception of the intellect, is not
exempt from the strong influences of joy and suffering, love and hatred,
hope and fear, in the development of its powers. It may be that Homer,
Shakespeare, Goethe, basking upon the whole in the sunshine of life,
drew little supplementary force from its trials and agitations. But
the history of one not less wonderful than any of these, the career of
Dante, tells a different tale; and one of the latest and most searching
investigators of his history (Scartazzini, Dante Alighieri, _seine zeit,
sein leben, und seine werkes_, B. II. Ch. 5, p. 119; also pp. 438,
9. Biel, 1869) tells and shows us, how the experience of his life
co-operated with his extraordinary natural gifts and capabilities to
make him what he was. Under the three great heads of love, belief, and
patriotism, his life was a continued course of ecstatic or agonizing
trials. The strain of these trials was discipline; discipline was
experience; and experience was elevation. No reader of his greatest work
will, I believe, hold with the Reply that his thoughts, conclusions,
judgments, were simple results of an automatic process, in which the
will and affections had no share, that reasoning operations are like the
whir of a clock running down, and we can no more arrest the process
or alter the conclusion than the wheels can stop the movement or the
noise.*
* I possess the confession of an illiterate criminal, made,
I think, in 1834, under the following circumstances: The new
poor law had just been passed in England, and it required
persons needing relief to go into the workhouse as a
condition of receiving it. In some parts of the country,
this provision produced a profound popular panic. The man in
question was destitute at the time. He was (I think) an old
widower with four very young sons. He rose in the night and
strangled them all, one after another, with a blue
handkerchief, not from want of fatherly affection, but to
keep them out of the workhouse. The confession of this
peasant, simple in phrase, but intensely impassioned,
strongly reminds me of the Ugolino of Dante, and appears to
make some approach to its sublimity. Such, in given
circumstances, is the effect of moral agony on mental power.
The doctrine taught in the Reply, that belief is, as a general, nay,
universal law, independent of the will, surely proves, when examined, to
be a plausibility of the shallowest kind. Even in arithmetic, if a boy,
through dislike of his employment, and consequent lack of attention,
brings out a wrong result for his sum, it can hardly be said that his
conclusion is absolutely and in all respects independent of his will.
Moving onward, point by point, toward the centre of the argument, I will
next take an illustration from mathematics. It has (I apprehend) been
demonstrated that the relation of the diameter to the circumference of
a circle is not susceptible of full numerical expression. Yet, from time
to time, treatises are published which boldly announce that they set
forth the quadrature of the circle. I do not deny that this may be
purely intellectual error; but would it not, on the other hand, be
hazardous to assert that no grain of egotism or ambition has ever
entered into the composition of any one of such treatises? I have
selected these instances as, perhaps, the most favorable that can be
found to the doctrine of the Reply. But the truth is that, if we
set aside matters of trivial import, the enormous majority of human
judgments are those into which the biassing power off likes and dislikes
more or less largely enters. I admit, indeed, that the illative faculty
works under rules upon which choice and inclination ought to exercise no
influence whatever. But even if it were granted that in fact the
faculty of discourse is exempted from all such influence within its own
province, yet we come no nearer to the mark, because that faculty has
to work upon materials supplied to it by other faculties; it draws
conclusions according to premises, and the question has to be determined
whether our conceptions set forth in those premises are or are not
influenced by moral causes. For, if they be so influenced, then in vain
will be the proof that the understanding has dealt loyally and exactly
with the materials it had to work upon; inasmuch as, although the
intellectual process be normal in itself, the operation may have been
tainted _ab initio_ by coloring and distorting influences which have
falsified the primary conceptions.
Let me now take an illustration from the extreme opposite quarter to
that which I first drew upon. The system called Thuggism, represented
in the practice of the Thugs, taught that the act, which we describe
as murder, was innocent. Was this an honest error? Was it due, in its
authors as well as in those who blindly followed them, to an automatic
process of thought, in which the will was not consulted, and which
accordingly could entail no responsibility? If it was, then it is plain
that the whole foundations, not of belief, but of social morality, are
broken up. If it was not, then the sweeping doctrine of the present
writer on the necessary blamelessness of erroneous conclusions tumbles
to the ground like a house of cards at the breath of the child who built
it.
In truth, the pages of the Reply, and the Letter which has more recently
followed it,* themselves demonstrate that what the writer has asserted
wholesale he overthrows and denies in detail.
* North American Review for January, 1888, "Another Letter
to Dr. Field."
"You will admit," says the Reply (p. 477), "that he who now persecutes
for opinion's sake is infamous." But why? Suppose he thinks that by
persecution he can bring a man from soul-destroying falsehood to
soul-saving truth, this opinion may reflect on his intellectual
debility: but that is his misfortune, not his fault. His brain has
thought without asking his consent; he has believed or disbelieved
without an effort of the will (p. 476). Yet the very writer, who has
thus established his title to think, is the first to hurl at him an
anathema for thinking. And again, in the Letter to Dr. Field (N. A. R.,
vol. 146, p. 33), "the dogma of eternal pain" is described as "that
infamy of infamies." I am not about to discuss the subject of future
retribution. If I were, it would be my first duty to show that this
writer has not adequately considered either the scope of his own
arguments (which in no way solve the difficulties he presents) or the
meaning of his words; and my second would be to recommend his perusal of
what Bishop Butler has suggested on this head. But I am at present on
ground altogether different. I am trying another issue. This author says
we believe or disbelieve without the action of the will, and,
consequently, belief or disbelief is not the proper subject of praise or
blame. And yet, according to the very same authority, the dogma of
eternal pain is what?--not "an error of errors," but an "infamy of
infamies;" and though to hold a negative may not be a subject of moral
reproach, yet to hold the affirmative may. Truly it may be asked, is not
this a fountain which sends forth at once sweet waters and bitter?
Once more. I will pass away from tender ground, and will endeavor to
lodge a broader appeal to the enlightened judgment of the author. Says
Odysseus in the Illiad (B. II.) [--Greek--]: and a large part of the
world, stretching this sentiment beyond its original meaning, have held
that the root of civil power is not in the community, but in its head.
In opposition to this doctrine, the American written Constitution, and
the entire American tradition, teach the right of a nation to
self-government. And these propositions, which have divided and still
divide the world, open out respectively into vast systems of
irreconcilable ideas and laws, practices and habits of mind. Will any
rational man, above all will any American, contend that these
conflicting systems have been adopted, upheld, and enforced on one side
and the other, in the daylight of pure reasoning only, and that moral,
or immoral, causes have had nothing to do with their adoption? That the
intellect has worked impartially, like a steam-engine, and that
selfishness, love of fame, love of money, love of power, envy, wrath,
and malice, or again bias, in its least noxious form, have never had
anything to do with generating the opposing movements, or the frightful
collisions in which they have resulted? If we say that they have not, we
contradict the universal judgment of mankind. If we say they have, then
mental processes are not automatic, but may be influenced by the will
and by the passions, affections, habits, fancies that sway the will; and
this writer will not have advanced a step toward proving the universal
innocence of error, until he has shown that propositions of religion are
essentially unlike almost all other propositions, and that no man ever
has been, or from the nature of the case can be, affected in their
acceptance or rejection by moral causes.*
* The chief part of these observations were written before I
had received the January number of the Review, with Col.
Ingersoll's additional letter to Dr. Field. Much, of this
letter is specially pointed at Dr. Field, who can defend
himself, and at Calvin, whose ideas I certainly cannot
undertake to defend all along the line. I do not see that
the Letter adds to those, the most salient, points of the
earlier article which I have endeavored to select for
animadversion.
To sum up. There are many passages in these noteworthy papers, which,
taken by themselves, are calculated to command warm sympathy. Towards
the close of his final, or latest letter, the writer expresses himself
as follows (N. A. R., vol. 146, p. 46.):
"Neither in the interest of truth, nor for the benefit of man, is it
necessary to assert what we do not know. No cause is great enough to
demand a sacrifice of candor. The mysteries of life and death, of good
and evil, have never yet been solved." How good, how wise are these
words! But coming at the close of the controversy, have they not some of
the ineffectual features of a death-bed repentance? They can hardly
be said to represent in all points the rules under which the pages
preceding them have been composed; or he, who so justly says that we
ought not to assert what we do not know, could hardly have laid down
the law as we find it a few pages earlier (ibid, p. 40) when it is
pronounced that "an infinite God has no excuse for leaving his children
in doubt and darkness." Candor and upright intention are indeed every
where manifest amidst the flashing corruscations which really compose
the staple of the articles. Candor and upright intention also impose
upon a commentator the duty of formulating his animadversions. I sum
them up under two heads. Whereas we are placed in an atmosphere of
mystery, relieved only by a little sphere of light round each of us,
like a clearing in an American forest (which this writer has so well
described), and rarely can see farther than is necessary for the
direction of our own conduct from day to day, we find here, assumed by
a particular person, the character of an universal judge without appeal.
And whereas the highest self-restraint is necessary in these dark but,
therefore, all the more exciting inquiries, in order to maintain the
ever quivering balance of our faculties, this rider chooses to ride an
unbroken horse, and to throw the reins upon his neck. I have endeavored
to give a sample of the results.
W. E. Gladstone.