The Christian Religion.
First Meditation.
Natural Problems.
From the very origin of the human race, wherever man has existed,
or still exists, certain questions have peculiarly and
irresistibly fixed his attention, and they continue to do so at
the present hour.
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This arises not alone from a feeling of natural curiosity, or the
ardent thirst for knowledge, but from a deeper and more powerful
motive: the destiny of man is intimately involved in these
questions; they contain the secret not only of all that he sees
around him, but of his own being; and when he aspires to solve
them, it is not merely because he desires to understand the
spectacle of which he is a beholder, but because he feels, and is
conscious of being himself an actor in the great drama of
existence, and because he seeks to ascertain his own part there,
and comprehend his own destiny. His present conduct and his
future lot are as much at issue as the satisfaction of his
thought. These great problems are, for man, not questions of
science, but questions of life: in considering them he feels
himself compelled to say, with Hamlet, "To be or not to be, that
is the question."
Whence does the world proceed, and whence does man appear in the
midst of it? What is the origin of each, and whither does each
tend? What are their beginning and their end? Laws there are
which govern them;--is there a legislator?
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Under the empire of these laws, man feels and calls himself free:
is he so in reality? How is his liberty compatible with the laws
which govern him and the world? Is he a passive instrument of
fate, or a responsible agent? What are the ties and relations
which connect him with the Legislator of the world?
The world and man himself present a strange and painful
spectacle. Good and evil, both moral and physical, order and
disorder, joy and sorrow, are here intimately blended and yet in
continual antagonism. Whence come this commingling and this
strife? Is good or is evil the condition and the law of man and
of the world? If good, how then has evil found admission?
Wherefore suffering and death? Why this moral disorder?--the
calamities which so frequently befall the good, and the
prosperity, so abhorrent to our feelings, which attends the
wicked? Is this the normal and definitive state of man and of the
world?
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Man is conscious that he is at the same time great and little,
strong and feeble, powerful and impotent. He finds in himself
matter for admiration and for love, and yet he suffices not to
himself in any respect; he seeks an aid, a support, beyond and
above himself: he asks, he invokes, he prays. What mean these
inward disquietudes,--these alternate impulses of pride and
weakness? Have they, or not, a meaning and an object? Why prayer?
Such are the natural problems, now dimly felt, now clearly
defined, which in all ages and among all nations, in every form
and in every degree of civilization, by instinct or by reflexion,
have arisen, and still arise, in the human mind. I indicate only
the greatest, the most apparent: I might recall many others which
are connected with them.
Not only are these problems natural to man; they appertain to him
alone; they are his peculiar privilege. Man alone, among all
creatures known to us, perceives and states them, and feels
himself imperiously called upon to solve them.
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I borrow the following admirable observations from M. de
Châteaubriand:--"Why does not the ox as I do? It can lie down
upon the grass, raise its head toward heaven, and in its lowings
call upon that unknown Being who fills this immensity of space.
But no: content with the turf on which it tramples, it
interrogates not those suns in the firmament above, which are the
grand evidence of the existence of God. Animals are not troubled
with those hopes which fill the heart of man; the spot on which
they tread yields them all the happiness of which they are
susceptible; a little grass satisfies the sheep; a little blood
gluts the tiger. The only creature that looks beyond himself, and
is not all in all to himself, is man." [Footnote 2]
[Footnote 2: Genie du Christianisme, vol. i. p. 208, edit, of
1831.]
From these problems, natural and peculiar to man, all religions
have sprung. The object of them all is to satisfy man's thirst
for their solution. As these problems are the source of religion,
the solutions they receive are its substance and foundation.
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There prevails in our days a very general tendency to regard
religion as consisting essentially--I might say wholly--in
religious sentiment, in those lofty and vague aspirations which
are termed the poetry of the soul, beyond and above the realities
of life. Through the religious sentiment, the soul enters into
relation with the Divine order of things; and this relation, of a
wholly personal and intimate character, independent of all
positive dogma, of any organized Church, is deemed to be
all-sufficient for man, the true and needful religion.
Unquestionably the religious sentiment, the intimate and personal
relation of the soul with the Divine order, is essential and
necessary to religion; but religion is more than this--much more.
The human soul is not to be divided and restricted to certain
faculties selected and exalted, whilst the rest are condemned to
slumber. Man is not a mere sensitive and poetic being, aspiring
to rise above the present and material world by love and
imagination: he not only feels, but he thinks; he requires to
know and believe as well as love; it is not enough that his soul
should be capable of emotion and aspiration; he requires that it
should be fixed, and rest upon convictions in harmony with his
emotions.
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This it is that man seeks in religion; he requires something more
than a pure and noble rapture; he requires enlightenment, as well
as sympathy. But if the moral problems that beset his thought are
not solved, what he experiences may be poetry,--it is not
religion.
I cannot contemplate unmoved the troubles of men of lofty minds,
seeking in the religious sentiment alone a refuge against doubt
and impiety. It is well to preserve, in the shipwreck of faith
and the chaos of thought, the great instincts of our nature, and
not to lose sight of the sublime requirements which remain
unsatisfied. I know not to what extent, men of eminent minds may
thus compensate, by their sincerity and fervour of sentiment, for
the void in their belief; but let them not deceive themselves;
barren aspirations and specious doubts satisfy a man as little as
to his future spiritual interests as with respect to his
condition in the present life; the natural problems to which I
have alluded will ever be the great weight pressing upon the
soul, and religious sentiment will never alone suffice to be the
religion of mankind.
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Besides this apotheosis of religious sentiment, some at the
present day have essayed a different, a more serious and more
daring theory. Far from sounding the natural problems to which
religions correspond, schools of philosophy, occupying a
prominent intellectual position,--the Pantheistic School, and the
so-called Positive School,--suppress and deny them altogether. In
their view, the world has existed, of itself, from all eternity,
as have the laws also by which it is sustained and developed. In
their elementary principles, and taken altogether, all things
have ever been what they now are, and what they will ever
continue to be. There is no mystery in this universe; there exist
only facts and laws, naturally and necessarily linked together;
and these furnish the field for human science, which, although
incomplete, is yet indefinitely progressive, in its power as well
as in its operations.
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According to these views, Divine Providence and human liberty,
the origin of evil, the commingling and the strife of good and
evil in the world, and in man, the imperfection of the present
order of things, and the destiny of man, the prospect of the
re-establishment of order in the future--these are all mere
dreams, freaks of man's thought: no such questions indeed exist,
inasmuch as the world is eternal, it is in its actual state
complete, normal, and definitive, though at the same time
progressive. The remedy for the moral and physical evils which
afflict mankind, must then be sought, not in any power superior
to the world, but simply in the progress of the sciences and the
advance of human enlightenment.
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I shall not here discuss this system; I do not even qualify it by
its true name; I merely recapitulate its tenets. But, at the
first and simple aspect, what contempt does it manifest of the
spontaneous and universal instincts of man! What heedlessness of
the facts which fill and never cease to characterize the
universal history of the human race!
Nevertheless to this we are come: not a solution, but the
negation of the natural problems, which irresistibly occupy the
human soul, is presented to man for his full satisfaction and
repose. Let him follow the mathematical or physical sciences; let
him be a mechanician, chemist, critic, novelist, or poet; but let
him not enter upon what is termed the sphere of religious and
theological inquiry: here are no real questions to solve, nought
to investigate, nothing to do,--nothing to expect,--absolutely
nothing.
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Second Meditation.
Christian Dogmas.
The Christian religion knows man better, and treats man better:
it has other answers to his questions; and it is between the
absolute negation of the problems of religion and the Christian
solution of these problems that the discussion lies at the
present day.
Some words there are which we now regard with distrust and alarm:
we suspect their masking illegitimate pretensions and tyranny.
Such, in our days, has been the lot of the word _dogma_. To
many this word imparts an imperious necessity to believe, at once
offending and disquieting. Singular contrast! On all sides we
seek for principles, and we take alarm at dogmas.
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This sentiment, however absurd in itself, is in no way strange;
Christian dogmas have served as motive and pretext for so much
iniquity, so many acts of oppression and cruelty, that their very
name has become tainted and suspected. The word bears the penalty
of the reminiscences which it awakens: and justly. All attacks
upon the liberty of conscience, all employment of force to
extirpate or to impose religious belief, is, and ever has been,
an iniquitous and tyrannical act. All powers, all parties, all
churches, have held such acts to be not only permissible, but
enjoined by the Divine Law: all have deemed it not merely their
right, but their duty, to prevent and to punish by law and human
force, error in matters of religion. They may all allege in
excuse, the sincerity of their belief in the legitimacy of this
usurpation. The usurpation is not the less enormous and fatal,
and perhaps indeed it is, of all human usurpations, the one which
has inflicted on men the most odious torments and the grossest
errors.
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It will constitute the glory of our time to have discarded this
pretension: nevertheless it yet exists, with persistency, in
certain states, in certain laws, in certain recesses of the human
soul and of Christian society; and there is, and ever will be,
need to watch and to combat it, to render its banishment
unconditional and without appeal. Subdued, however, it is: civil
freedom in matters of faith and religious life has become a
fundamental principle of civilization and of law. These
questions, affecting the relations of man to God, are no longer
discussed or adjusted in the arena and by a recourse to the hand
of political and executive power; but they are transported to the
sphere of the intellect and left to the uncontrolled working of
the mind itself.
But again, in this sphere of the intellect, these questions still
start up and call loudly for their peculiar solution--that is,
for the fundamental facts and ideas, the principles in effect
which their nature requires. The Christian religion has its own
principles, which constitute the rational basis of the faith it
inculcates and the life which it enjoins. These are termed its
dogmas.
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The
Christian dogmas are the principles of the Christian religion,
and the Christian solutions of the problems of natural religion.
Let men of a serious mind, who have not entirely rejected the
Christian religion, and who still admire it, whilst denying its
fundamental dogmas, beware of this: the flowers whose perfume
captivates them will quickly fade, the fruits they delight in
will soon cease to grow when the axe shall have been applied to
the roots of the tree that bears them.
For myself, arrived at the term of a long life, one of labour, of
reflection, and of trials,--of trials in thought as well as in
action,--I am convinced that, the Christian dogmas are the
legitimate and satisfactory solutions of those religious problems
which, as I have said, nature suggests and man carries in his own
breast, and from which he cannot escape.
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I beg, at the outset, Theologians, whether Catholic or
Protestant, to pardon me. I have no design to cite or to explain,
or to maintain, all the various doctrinal points, all the
articles of faith, which have been included in the term of
Christian dogmas. During eighteen centuries, Christian theology
has very often ventured to advance out of and beyond the limits
of the Christian religion: man has confounded his own labours
with the work of God. It is the natural consequence of the union
of human activity and human imperfection. This same result may be
traced throughout the history of the world, especially in the
history of the society and religion upon which God has grafted
the Christian religion.
At the time when God raised up Jesus Christ among the Jews, the
faith and the law of the Jews were no longer solely and purely
the faith and law which God had given to them by Moses: the
Pharisees, the Sadducees, and many others, had essentially
modified, enlarged, and altered both. Christianity too has had
its Pharisees and its Sadducees; in its turn it has been made to
feel the workings of human thought and the influence of human
passions on its Divine revelation.
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I cannot recognize, in all the uncertain fruits of these labours,
the claim to the title of Christian dogmas. Nevertheless I have
no intention here to specify particularly and to combat such
tenets in the Church and in Christian theology, as I can neither
accept nor defend. It is not for me--and I venture to say, it is
not for any Christian--to scan critically the interior of the
Edifice, at a moment when its foundations are ardently attacked.
Far rather I prefer to rally in a common defence all who abide
within its walls. I shall here allude only to the dogmas common
to them all, which I sum up in these terms:--The Creation,
Providence, Original Sin, the Incarnation, and the Redemption.
These constitute the essence of the Christian religion, and all
who believe in these dogmas I hold to be Christians.
One leading and common characteristic in these dogmas strikes me
at the outset: they deal frankly with the religious problems
natural to and inherent in man, and offer at once the solution.
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The dogma of Creation attests the existence of God, as Creator
and Legislator, and it attests also the link which unites man
with God. The dogma of Providence explains and justifies prayer,
that instinctive recourse of man to the living God, to that
supreme Power which is ever present with him in life, and which
influences his destiny. The dogma of Original Sin accounts for
the presence of evil and disorder in mankind and in the world.
The dogmas of the Incarnation and of Redemption, rescue man from
the consequences of evil, and open to him a prospect in another
life of the re-establishment of order. Unquestionably, the system
is grand, complete, well connected, and forcible: it answers to
the requirements of the human soul, removes the burden which
oppresses it, imparts the strength which it needs, and the
satisfaction to which it aspires. Has it a rightful claim to all
this power? Is its influence legitimate, as well as efficacious?
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In my own mind I have borne the burthen of the objections to the
Christian system, and to each of its essential dogmas; I have
experienced the anxieties of doubt: I shall state how I have
escaped from doubt, and the ground upon which my convictions have
been founded.