recognised on all sides as final--viz. that the finite intellect
cannot transcend the conditions of finitude, and cannot therefore
reach, or even conceive itself as reaching, an absolute, or, in
Kantian phraseology, a speculative knowledge of the beginning of
things. Whatever strides science may make in time to come towards
decomposing atoms and forces into simpler and yet simpler elements,
those elements will still have issued from a secret laboratory into
which science cannot enter, and the human mind will be as far as ever
from knowing what they really are. Further, this initial limitation
must of necessity qualify our knowledge in its every stage. If we
cannot know the secret of the elements in their simplicity, neither
can we know the secret of their successive combinations. Before the
beginning of our present system, and behind the whole course of its
continuous development, there is a vast region of possibility, which
lies wholly and for ever beyond the power of science to affirm or to
deny. It is in this region that Christian theology claims to have its
roots, and of this region that it professes to give its adherents
certitude, under conditions and by methods of its own. And of those
conditions and methods it fearlessly asserts that they are nowise
inconsistent with any ascertained or ascertainable result of secular
philosophy.
As regards the origin of things, this is obvious. Science may resolve
the complicated life of the material universe into a few elementary
forces, light and heat and electricity, and these perhaps into
modifications of some still simpler energy; but of the origin of
energy (τὸ πρῶτον κινοῦν) it knows no more than did the Greeks of
old. Theology asserts that in the beginning was the Word, and in Him
was life, the life of all things created: in other words, that He is
the source of all that energy, whose persistent, irresistible
versatility of action is for ever at work moulding and clothing and
peopling worlds. The two conceptions are complementary, and cannot
contradict each other.
But to pass from the origin to the development of things: the new way
of looking at nature was thought at first both by its adherents and
opponents alike to be inimical to the doctrine of final causes. And
here was a direct issue joined with Theology at once: for the presence
of final causes or design in the universe has not only been in all
ages one of the strongest supports for natural religion; it is
contained in the very notion of a rational creation, a creation by an
Eternal Reason. And this was supposed to be directly negatived by the
doctrine of the survival of the fittest through natural selection: for
if of a thousand forms, which came by chance into existence, the one
which happened to correspond best with its environment survived, while
the remainder disappeared, the adaptation of the survivor to its
circumstances would have all the appearance of design, while in
reality due to accident. If, therefore, this principle acted
exclusively throughout the universe, the result would be a semblance
of design without any of its reality, from which no theological
inference could be drawn. But this consequence of natural selection
obviously depends upon the exclusiveness of its action. If it is only
one factor among many in the world's development; while there are
instances of adaptation in nature, and those the more numerous, for
which it fails to account, what has been called its dysteleological
significance is at an end. Now its own author soon saw and admitted
the inadequacy of the theory of natural selection, even in biology,
the field of its first observation, to account for all the facts:
while countless phenomena in other regions, such as the mechanical
principles involved in the structure of the universe, the laws of
crystallography and chemical combination, the beauty of nature taken
in connection with its effect upon the mind, irresistibly suggest
design, and render the alternative hypothesis, from its mere
mathematical improbability, almost inconceivable. And there is now,
therefore, a general disposition to admit that the force of this
particular attack upon the doctrine of final causes has been
considerably overstated.
But in the course of its discussion an important difference has been
brought to light between external and internal purposes or ends. The
kind of design in nature which first arrested early thinkers was its
usefulness to man. Even in scenery, it has been suggested, they saw
the utility before the beauty. And so they came to look upon all
natural phenomena as having for their final cause the good of man; and
the world as a machine, a contrivance of which the parts have no value
except as contributing to the work of the whole, and the whole exists
only to produce a result outside and independent of itself, an
external end, as if corn should exist solely to provide food for man.
This was not an untrue conception; a shallow thing to say of the
reason for which Socrates believed in God; but it was partial and
inadequate, as Bacon and Spinoza shewed. And we have now come to
regard the world not as a machine, but as an organism, a system in
which, while the parts contribute to the growth of the whole, the
whole also reacts upon the development of the parts; and whose primary
purpose is its own perfection, something that is contained within and
not outside itself, an internal end: while in their turn the myriad
parts of this universal organism are also lesser organisms, ends in
and for themselves, pursuing each its lonely ideal of individual
completeness. Now when we look at nature in this way, and watch the
complex and subtle processes by which a crystal, a leaf, a lily, a
moth, a bird, a star realize their respective ideals with undisturbed,
unfailing accuracy, we cannot help attributing them to an intelligent
Creator. But when we further find that in the very course of pursuing
their primary ends, and becoming perfect after their kind, the various
parts of the universe do in fact also become means, and with infinite
ingenuity of correspondence and adaptation, subserve not only one but
a thousand secondary ends, linking and weaving themselves together by
their mutual ministration into an orderly, harmonious, complicated
whole, the signs of intelligence grow clearer still. And when, beyond
all this, we discover the quality of beauty in every moment and
situation of this complex life; the drop of water that circulates from
sea to cloud, and cloud to earth, and earth to plant, and plant to
life-blood, shining the while with strange spiritual significance in
the sunset and the rainbow and the dewdrop and the tear; the universal
presence of this attribute, so unessential to the course of nature,
but so infinitely powerful in its appeal to the human mind, is
reasonably urged as a crowning proof of purposeful design.
The treatment which these various aspects of teleology have received,
during the last few years, may be fairly called exhaustive: and the
result of all the sifting controversy has been to place the evidence
for design in nature on a stronger base than ever: partly because we
feel that we have faced the utmost that can be urged against it;
partly because, under scientific guidance, we have acquired a more
real, as distinct from a merely notional apprehension of the manifold
adaptations of structure to function, which the universe presents; and
these adaptations and correspondences, when grasped in their infinite
multiplicity, furnish us with a far worthier and grander view of
teleology than the mechanical theory of earlier days.
All this is in perfect harmony with our Christian creed, that all
things were made by the Eternal Reason; but more than this, it
illustrates and is illustrated by the further doctrine of His
indwelling presence in the things of His creation; rendering each of
them at once a revelation and a prophecy, a thing of beauty and
finished workmanship, worthy to exist for its own sake, and yet a step
to higher purposes, an instrument for grander work.
God tastes an infinite joy
In infinite ways--one everlasting bliss,
From whom all being emanates, all power
Proceeds: in whom is life for evermore,
Yet whom existence in its lowest form
Includes; where dwells enjoyment, there is He:
With still a flying point of bliss remote,
A happiness in store afar, a sphere
Of distant glory in full view.
And science has done us good service in recalling this doctrine to
mind. For it has a religious as well as a theological importance,
constituting, as it does, the element of truth in that higher
Pantheism which is so common in the present day. Whether the term
higher Pantheism is happily chosen or not, the thing which it denotes
is quite distinct from Pantheism proper, with its logical denial of
human personality and freedom. It is the name of an emotion rather
than a creed; that indescribable mystic emotion which the poet, the
artist, the man of science, and all their kindred feel in
contemplating the beauty or the wonder of the world. Vague as it is,
and indefinite, this sentiment is still one of the strongest of which
our nature is susceptible, and should be recognised, as an integral
element in all true religion. Yet for want of such recognition on the
part of Christians it is often allowed to gravitate nearer and nearer
to pure Pantheism, with which it has, in reality, no essential
affinity. We cannot therefore over-estimate the importance of
restoring to its due place in theology the doctrine of the Divine
immanence in nature, to which this sentiment is the instinctive
witness. Fathers, schoolmen, mystics, who were quite as alive to any
danger of Pantheism as ourselves, yet astonish us by the boldness of
their language upon this point; and we need not fear to transgress the
limits of the Christian tradition in saying that the physical
immanence of God the Word in His creation can hardly be overstated, as
long as His moral transcendence of it is also kept in view.
'God dwelleth within all things, and without all things, above all
things and beneath all things[207],' says S. Gregory the Great.
'The immediate operation of the Creator is closer to everything than
the operation of any secondary cause,' says S. Thomas[208].
And Cornelius a Lapide, after comparing our dependence upon God to
that of a ray on the sun, an embryo on the womb, a bird on the air,
concludes with the words, 'Seeing then that we _are_ thus united to
God physically, we _ought_ also to be united to Him morally[209].'
Here are three typical theologians, in three different ages, not one
of them a mystic even, using as the language of sober theology words
every whit as strong as any of the famous Pantheistic passages in our
modern literature; and yet when met with in that literature they are
commonly regarded as pleasing expressions of poetic dreams, very far
away from, if not even inconsistent with what is thought to be
dogmatic Christianity.
To sum up then, the reopening of the teleological question has not
only led to its fuller and more final answer, but has incidentally
contributed to revive among us an important aspect of the Theology of
the Word.
The next point upon which the theory of evolution came in contact with
received opinion, was its account of the origin of man. Man, it was
maintained, in certain quarters, was only the latest and most complex
product of a purely material process of development. His reason, with
all its functions of imagination, conscience, will, was only a result
of his sensibility, and that of his nervous tissue, and that again of
matter less and less finely organized, till at last a primitive
protoplasm was reached; while what had been called his fall was in
reality his rise, being due to the fact that with the birth of reason
came self-consciousness; or the feeling of a distinction between self
and the outer world, ripening into a sense, and strictly speaking an
illusory sense of discord between the two.
Theologians first thought it necessary to contest every detail of this
development, beginning with the antiquity of man; and some are still
inclined to intrench themselves in one or two positions which they
think impregnable, such as the essential difference in kind between
organized and inorganic matter, or again between animal instinct and
the self-conscious reason of man: while others are content to assume a
sceptical attitude and point to the disagreement between the men of
science themselves, as sufficient evidence of their untruth. But none
of these views are theologically needed. The first is certainly, the
second possibly unsound, and the third, to say the least of it,
unkind. It is quite true that the evolution of man is at present
nothing more than an hypothesis, and an hypothesis open to very grave
scientific objections. The attempts to analyse reason and conscience
back into unconscious and unmoral elements, for all their unquestioned
ingenuity, are still far from being conclusive; and then there is the
geological admissibility of the time which it would require, and that
is still a matter of hopeless controversy between scientific experts.
And even if these and numerous kindred difficulties were to be removed
in time to come, the hypothesis would still be no nearer
demonstration; for the only evidence we can possibly obtain of
prehistoric man is his handiwork of one kind or another, his
implements or pictures, things implying the use of reason. In other
words, we can only prove his existence through his rationality;
through his having been, on the point in question, identical in kind
with what now he is. And suspense of judgment therefore upon the whole
controversy is, at present, the only scientific state of mind.
But there are facts upon the other side; the undoubted antiquity of
the human race; the gradual growth which can be scientifically traced,
in our thought and language and morality, and therefore, to the extent
that functions react upon their faculties, even in our conscience and
our reason too; and then the immense presumption from the gathering
proofs of all other development, that man will be no exception to the
universal law. All these positive indications at least suggest the
possibility that the difficulties of the theory may one day vanish,
and its widest chasms close. And we cannot therefore be too emphatic
in asserting that theology would have nothing whatever to fear from
such a result. When we see energy and atoms building up an harmonious
order, we feel there is an inner secret in the energy and atoms, which
we cannot hope to penetrate by merely watching them at work. And so,
when we see human minds and wills weaving a veil over the universe, of
thought and love and holiness, and are told that all these things are
but higher modes of material nature, we only feel that the inner
secret of material nature must be yet more wonderful than we supposed.
But though our wonder may increase, our difficulties will not. If we
believe, as we have seen that Christian Theology has always believed,
in a Divine Creator not only present behind the beginning of matter
but immanent in its every phase, and co-operating with its every
phenomenon, the method of His working, though full of speculative
interest, will be of no controversial importance. Time was when the
different kinds of created things were thought to be severed by
impassable barriers. But many of these barriers have already given way
before science, and species are seen to be no more independent than
the individuals that compose them. If the remaining barriers between
unreason and reason, or between lifelessness and life should in like
manner one day vanish, we shall need to readjust the focus of our
spiritual eye to the enlarged vision, but nothing more. Our Creator
will be known to have worked otherwise indeed than we had thought, but
in a way quite as conceivable, and to the imagination more
magnificent. And all is alike covered by the words 'without Him was
not anything made that was made: and in Him was life.' In fact the
evolutionary origin of man is a far less serious question than the
attack upon final causes. Its biblical aspect has grown insignificant
in proportion as we have learned to regard the Hebrew cosmology in a
true light. And the popular outcry which it raised was largely due to
sentiment, and sentiment not altogether untinged by human pride.
We may pass on therefore from the evolution of man and his mind in
general, to his various modes of mental activity in science and
philosophy and art. Here the Christian doctrine is twofold: first,
that all the objects of our thought, mathematical relations,
scientific laws, social systems, ideals of art, are ideas of the
Divine Wisdom, the Logos, written upon the pages of the world; and
secondly, that our power of reading them, our thinking faculty acts
and only can act rightly by Divine assistance; that the same 'motion
and power that impels' 'all objects of all thought' impels also 'all
thinking things.' And both these statements are met by objection. In
the first place, it is urged, there is no fixity in the universe, and
it cannot therefore be the embodiment of Divine ideas. All things live
and move under our eyes. Species bear no evidence of having been
created in their completeness; on the contrary they are perpetually
undergoing transmutation, and cannot therefore represent ideas, cannot
have been created on a plan. For ideas, in proportion to their
perfection, must be definite, clean-cut, clear. The answer to this
objection is contained in what has been already said upon the subject
of organic teleology. But an analogy drawn from human thinking may
illustrate it further. It is in reality the ideas which our mind has
done with, its dead ideas which are clean-cut and definite and fixed.
The ideas which at any moment go to form our mental life are quick and
active and full of movement, and melt into each other and are ever
developing anew. A book is no sooner finished and done with, than it
strikes its author as inadequate. It becomes antiquated as soon as its
ideas have been assimilated by the public mind. And that because the
thought of author and public alike is alive, and ever moving onward;
incapable of being chained to any one mode of expression; incapable of
being stereotyped. The highest notion we can frame therefore of a mind
greater than our own is of one that has no dead ideas, no abstract or
antiquated formulae, but whose whole content is entirely, essentially
alive. And the perpetual development which we are learning to trace
throughout the universe around us would be the natural expression
therefore of that Logos Who is the Life.
But when we turn from the objective to the subjective side of
knowledge, we are met with a second objection. The doctrine that the
Divine Logos co-operates with the human reason, is supposed to be
inconsistent with the undoubted fact that many earnest and successful
thinkers have been if not atheistic, at least agnostic; unable, that
is, to attain to the very knowledge to which, as it would seem on the
Christian hypothesis, all intellectual effort should inevitably lead.
But this difficulty is only superficial. When we say that the Divine
reason assists, we do not mean that it supersedes the human. An
initiative still lies with man; and he must choose of his own accord
the particular field of his intellectual pursuit. When he has chosen
his line of study, and followed it with the requisite devotion, he
will arrive at the kind of truth to which that particular study leads,
the physicist at laws of nature, the philosopher at laws of thought,
the artist at ideal beauty, the moralist at ethical truth: and in each
case, as we believe, by Divine assistance, his discoveries being in
fact revelations. But the method, the education, the experience
involved in different studies are so distinct, that few in a lifetime
can reach the eminence that teaches with authority, or even the
intelligence that thoroughly appreciates, more than one department of
the complex world of thought. And if a man wanders from his own
province into unfamiliar regions, he naturally meets with failure in
proportion to his hardihood. In the case of the special sciences this
is universally recognised. No astronomer would think of dogmatizing on
a question of geology, nor a biologist on the details of chemistry or
physics. But when it is a question between science and philosophy, the
rule is often forgotten; and the spectacle of scientific specialists
blundering about in metaphysics is painfully common in the present
day: while strange to say, in the case of theology this forgetfulness
reaches a climax, and men claim casually to have an opinion upon
transcendent mysteries, without any of the preparation which they
would be the first to declare needful for success in the smallest
subsection of any one of the branches of science.
Nor is preparation all that is wanted. Science is impossible without
experiment, and experiment is the lower analogue of what in religion
is called experience. As experiment alone gives certainty in the one
case, so does experience alone in the other. And it is only the man
who has undergone such experience, with all its imperative demands
upon his whole character and life, that can justly expect satisfaction
of his religious doubts and needs; while only those who, like S. Paul
or S. Augustine, have experienced it in an exceptional degree, are
entitled to speak with authority upon the things to which it leads.
Here again a human analogy may help us. For in studying a human
character there are different planes upon which we may approach it.
There are the external aspects of the man, the fashion of his
garments, the routine of his life, the regulation of his time, his
official habits; all which, it may be noted in passing, in the case of
a great character, are uniform, not because they were not once the
free creation of his will, but because he knows the practical value of
uniformity in all such things; and all these externals are open to the
observation even of a stranger. Then there are the man's thoughts,
which may be withheld or revealed at his pleasure; and these can only
be understood by kindred minds, who have been trained to understand
them. Lastly, there are his will and affections, the region of his
motives, the secret chamber in which his real personality resides; and
these are only known to those intimate friends and associates whose
intuition is quickened by the sympathy of love. Now all these stages
are gone through in the formation of a friendship. First we are struck
by a man's appearance, and so led to listen to his conversation, and
thence to make his acquaintance, and at last to become his friend. And
so with the knowledge of God. The man of science, as such, can
discover the uniformities of His action in external nature. The moral
philosopher will further see that these actions 'make for
righteousness' and that there is a moral law. But it is only to the
spiritual yearning of our whole personality that He reveals Himself as
a person. This analogy will make the Christian position intelligible;
but for Christians it is more than an analogy. It is simply a
statement of facts. For, to Christians, the Incarnation is the final
sanction of 'anthropomorphism,' revealing the Eternal Word as strictly
a Person, in the ordinary sense and with all the attributes which we
commonly attach to the name[210].
Consequently, upon all this we are quite consistent in maintaining
that all great teachers of whatever kind are vehicles of revelation,
each in his proper sphere, and in accepting their verified conclusions
as Divinely true; while we reject them the moment they transgress
their limits, as thereby convicted of unsound thinking, and therefore
deprived of the Divine assistance which was the secret of their
previous success. And though such transgression may in many cases
involve a minimum of moral error, there are abundant instances in the
history of thought that it is not always so. Francis Bacon, and the
penitent, pardoned Abelard are typical, in different degrees, of a
countless multitude of lesser men.
'For our knowledge of first principles,' says S. Augustine, 'we have
recourse to that inner truth that presides over the mind. And that
indwelling teacher of the mind is Christ, the changeless virtue and
eternal wisdom of God, to which every rational soul has recourse. But
so much only is revealed to each as his own good or evil will enables
him to receive[211].'