"It is of importance here to remark that the enlargement of our
knowledge in all the natural sciences, so far from adding to
our presumption, should only give a profounder sense of our
natural incapacity and ignorance in reference to the science of
theology. It is just as if in studying the policy of some
earthly monarch we had made the before unknown discovery of
other empires and distant territories whereof we knew nothing
but the existence and the name. This might complicate the study
without making the object of it at all more comprehensible, and
so of every new wonder which philosophy might lay open to the
gaze of inquirers.
{119}
It might give us a larger perspective of the creation than
before, yet, in _fact_, cast a deeper shade of obscurity
over the counsels and ways of the Creator. We might at once
obtain a deeper insight into the secrets of the workmanship,
and yet feel, and legitimately feel, to be still more deeply
out of reach, the secret purposes of Him who worketh all in
all. Every discovery of an addition to the greatness of his
works may bring with it an addition to the unsearchableness of
his ways. ....
"That telescope which has opened our way to suns and systems
innumerable, leaves the moral administration connected with
them in deepest secrecy. It has made known to us the bare
existence of other worlds; but it would require another
instrument of discovery ere we could understand their relation
to ourselves, as products of the same Almighty Hand, as parts
or members of a family under the same paternal guardianship.
This more extended survey of the Material Universe just tells
us how little we know of the Moral or Spiritual Universe.
{120}
It reveals nothing to us of the worlds that roll in space, but
the bare elements of Motion, and Magnitude, and Number--and so
leaves us at a more hopeless distance from the secret of the
Divine administration than when we reasoned of the Earth as the
Universe, of our species as the alone rational family of God
that He had implicated with body, or placed in the midst of a
corporeal system. ...
"To know that we cannot know certain things, is in itself
positive knowledge, and a knowledge of the most safe and
valuable nature. ... There are few services of greater value to
the cause of knowledge than the delineation of its boundaries."
[Footnote 22]
[Footnote 22: Chalmers's Works: Natural Theology, pp. 249-265;
Glasgow.]
In holding this language, what in effect is Dr. Chalmers doing?
He is separating what is finite from what is infinite, the thing
created from the Creator, the world subject to government from
the Sovereign that governs it; and in marking this line of
demarcation, he says in his modesty to science, what God in his
power says to the ocean: "Thus far shalt thou go, and no
farther."
{121}
Doctor Chalmers was right; the limits of the finite world are
those also of human science: how far within these vast limits
science may extend her empire, who shall affirm? But what we
certainly may assert is, that she never can exceed them. The
finite world alone is within her reach, the only world that she
can fathom. It is only in the finite world that man's mind can
fully grasp the facts, observe them in all their extent, and
under all their aspects, discriminate their relations and their
laws (which constitute also a species of facts), and so verify
the system to which they should be referred. This it is that
makes what we term scientific processes and labour, and human
sciences are the results.
What need to mention that in speaking of the finite world, I do
not mean to speak of the material world alone? Moral facts there
also are which fall under observation, and enter into the domain
of science.
{122}
The study of man in his actual condition, whether considered as
an individual or as forming a member of a nation, is also a
scientific study, subject to the same method as that of the
material world: and it is its legitimate province also to detect
in the actual order of this world the laws of those particular
facts to which it addresses itself.
But if the limits of the finite world are those of human science,
they are not those of the human soul. Man contains in himself
ideas and ambitious aspirations extending far beyond and rising
far above the finite world, ideas of and aspirations towards the
Infinite, the Ideal, the Perfect, the Immutable, the Eternal.
These ideas and aspirations are themselves realities admitted by
the human mind; but even in admitting them man's mind comes to a
halt; they give him a presentiment of, or to speak with more
precision, a revelation of, an order of things different from the
facts and laws of the finite world which lies under his
observation; but whilst man has of this superior order the
instinct and the perspective, he can have of it no positive
knowledge.
{123}
It proceeds from the sublimity of his nature if he has a glimpse
of Infinity--if he aspires to it; whereas it results from the
infirmity of his actual condition if his positive knowledge is
limited by the world in which he exists.
I was born in the south, under the very sun. I have yet, for the
most part, lived in regions either of the north, or bordering
upon the north, regions so frequently immersed in mists. When
under their pale sky we look towards the horizon, a fog of
greater or less density limits the view; the vision itself might
penetrate much farther, but an external obstacle arrests it; it
does not find there the light it needs. Regard now the horizon
under the pure and brilliant sky of the south; the plains,
distant as well as near, are bathed in light; the human eye can
penetrate there as far as its organization permits. If it pierces
no farther, it is not for want of light, but because its proper
and natural force has attained its limit: the mind knows that
there are spaces beyond that which the eye traverses, but the eye
penetrates them not.
{124}
This is an image of what happens to the mind itself when
contemplating and studying the universe: it reaches a point where
its clear sight, that is to say its positive appreciation, halts,
not that it finds there the end of things themselves, but the
limit of man's scientific appreciation of them; other realities
present themselves to him; he has a glimpse of them; he believes
in them spontaneously and naturally; it is not given to him to
grasp them and to measure them; but he can neither ignore them,
nor know them, neither have positive knowledge of them, nor
refrain from having faith in them.
I cannot deny myself the pleasure of citing what I wrote thirteen
years ago upon the same subject, when philosophically examining
the real meaning of the word _faith_. "The object of every
religious belief," said I, "is in a certain, a large measure,
inaccessible to human science. Human science may establish that
object's reality; it may arrive at the boundary of this
mysterious world; and assure itself of the existence there of
facts with which man's destiny is connected; but it is not given
to it so to attain the facts themselves as to subject them to its
examination.
{125}
"Their incapacity to do so has struck more than one philosopher,
and has led them to the conclusion that no such reality exists,
that every religious belief contemplates subjects simply
chimerical. Others, shutting their eyes to their own
incompetency, have dashed daringly forwards towards the sphere of
the supernatural; and just as if they had succeeded in
penetrating into it, they have described its facts, resolved its
problems, assigned its laws. It is difficult to say who shows
more foolish arrogance, the man who maintains that that of which
he cannot have positive knowledge has no real existence, or the
man who pretends to be able to know everything that actually
exists. However this may be, mankind has never for a single day
assented to either assertion: man's instincts and his actions
have constantly disavowed both the negation of the disbeliever
and the confidence of the theologian.
{126}
In spite of the former, he has persisted in believing in the
existence of the unknown world, and in the reality of the
relations which connect him with it: and notwithstanding the
powerful influences of the latter, he has refused to admit their
having attained their object--raised the veil; and so man has
continued to agitate the same problems, to pursue the same
truths, as ardently and as laboriously as at the first day, just
as if nothing had been done at all." [Footnote 23]
[Footnote 23: Meditations et Êtudes Morales,
p. 170. Paris, 1851.]
I have just read again the excellent compendium given by M.
Cousin in his _General History of Philosophy from the most
Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century_. He
establishes that all the philosophical labours of the human
understanding have terminated in four great systems--sensualism,
idealism, scepticism, and mysticism--the sole actors in that
intellectual arena where, in all ages and amongst all nations,
they are in turn in the position of combatants and of sovereigns.
{127}
And, after having clearly characterised in their origin and their
development these four systems, M. Cousin adds, "As for their
intrinsic merits, habituate yourselves to this principle: they
have existed; therefore they had their reason to exist; therefore
they are true at least in part. Error is the law of our nature:
to it we are condemned; and in all our opinions and all our words
there is always a large allowance to be made for error, and too
often for absurdity. But absolute absurdity does not enter into
the mind of man; it is the excellence of man's thought, that
without some leaven of truth it admits nothing, and absolute
error is impossible. The four systems which have just been
rapidly laid before you have had each their existence; therefore
they contain truth, still without being entirely true. Partially
true, and partially false, these systems reappear at all the
great epochs. Time cannot destroy any one of them, nor can it
beget any new one, because time develops and perfects the human
mind, though without changing its nature and its fundamental
tendencies.
{128}
Time does no more than multiply and vary almost infinitely the
combinations of the four simple and elementary systems. Hence
originate those countless systems which history collects and
which it is its office to explain." [Footnote 24]
[Footnote 24: Histoire Générale de la Philosophic depuis les
temps les plus anciens jusqu'à la fin du XVIII Siècle, par M.
Victor Cousin, pp. 4-31. 1863.]
M. Cousin excels in explaining these numberless philosophical
combinations, and in tracing them all back to the four great
systems which he has defined; but there is a fact still more
important than the variety of these combinations, and which calls
itself for explanation. Why did these four essential
systems--sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and mysticism, appear
from the most ancient times? why have they continued to reproduce
themselves always and everywhere, with deductions more or less
logical, with greater or less ability, but still fundamentally
always and everywhere the same? Why, upon these supreme
questions, did the human mind achieve at so early a period, what
may be termed, it is true, but essays at a solution, but which
essays in some sort have exhausted the mind rather than satisfied
it?
{129}
How is it that these different systems, invented with such
promptitude, have never been able either to come to an accord,
nor has any one been able to prevail decidedly against another
and to cause itself to be received as the truth? Why has
philosophy, or, to speak more precisely, why have metaphysics,
remained essentially stationary; great at their birth, but
destined not to grow: whereas the other sciences--those styled
natural sciences--have been essentially progressive: at first
feeble, and making in succession conquest after conquest; these
they have been able to retain, until they have formed a domain
day by day more extended and less contested?
The very fact that suggests these questions contains the answer
to them. Man has, upon the fundamental subject of metaphysics, a
primitive light, rather the heritage and dowry of human nature,
than the conquest of human science.
{130}
The metaphysician appropriates it as a torch to lighten him on
his obscure and ill-defined path. He finds in man himself a point
of departure at once profound and certain; but his aim is God;
that is to say, an aim above his reach.
Must we, then, renounce the study of the great questions which
form the subject of metaphysics as a vain labour, where the human
mind is turning indefinitely in the same circle, incapable not
only of attaining the object which it is pursuing, but of making
any advance in its pursuit?
Often, and with more ability than has been evinced by the
Positive school of the present day, has this judgment been
pronounced against metaphysics. But that judgment man's mind has
never accepted, and never will accept; the great problems which
pass beyond the finite world lie propounded before him; never
will he renounce the attempt to solve them; he is impelled to it
by an irresistible instinct, an instinct full of faith and of
hope, in spite of the repeated failure of his efforts.
{131}
As man is in the sphere of action, so is he also in that of
thought; he aspires higher than it is possible to achieve: this
is his nature and his glory; to renounce his aspirations would be
declaring his own forfeiture. But without any such abdication, it
is still necessary that he should know himself, it is necessary
that he should understand that his strength here below is
infinitely less than his ambition, and that it is not given him
to have any positive scientific knowledge of that infinite and
ideal world towards which he dashes. The facts and the problems
which he there encounters are such, that the methods and the laws
which direct the human mind in the study of the finite world are
inapplicable. The infinite is for us the object not of science
but belief, and it is alike impossible for us either to reject or
penetrate it.
{132}
Let man, then, feel a profound sentiment of that double truth:
let him, without sacrificing the ambitious aspirations of his
intelligence, recognise the limits imposed upon his achievements
in science; he will not then be long in also recognising that, in
the relations of the finite with the infinite--of himself with
God--he stands in need of superhuman assistance, and that this
does not fail him. God has given to man what man never can
conquer, and revelation opens to him that world of the infinite
over which, by its own exertions and of itself alone, man's mind
never could spread light. The light man receives from God
himself.
{133}
Fifth Meditation.
Revelation.
When it was objected to Leibnitz "that there is nothing in the
intelligence that has not first been in the sense," Leibnitz
replied, "if not the intelligence itself." [Footnote 25]
[Footnote 25: Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit
in sensu.--Nisi intellectus ipse.]
In the answer of Leibnitz I will change but a single word, and
substitute for _intelligence, soul_. _Soul_ is a term
more comprehensive and more complete than _intelligence;_ it
embraces everything in the human being that is not body and
matter; it is not the mere intelligence, a special faculty of
man; it is all the intellectual and moral man.
{134}
The soul possesses itself and carries with it into life native
faculties and an inborn light: these manifest and develop
themselves more and more as they come into relation with the
exterior world; but they had still an existence prior to those
relations, and they exercise an important influence upon what
results. The external world does not create nor essentially
change the intellectual and moral being that has just come into
life, but it opens to it a stage where that being acts in
accordance at once with its proper nature, and the conditions and
influences in the midst of which the action takes place. The
hypothesis of a statue endowed with sensibility is a
contradiction; in seeking to explain man's first growth, it loses
sight of the entire intellectual and moral being.
When, as I said before, man first entered the world, he did not
enter it, he could not enter it, as a new-born babe, with the
mere breath of life; he was created full grown, with instincts
and faculties complete in their power and capable of immediate
action.
{135}
We must either deny the creation and be driven to monstrous
hypotheses, or admit that the human being who now develops
himself slowly and laboriously, was at his first appearance
mature in body and in mind.
The creation implies then the Revelation, a revelation which
lighted man at his entrance into the world, and qualified him
from that very moment to use his faculties and his instincts. Do
we, can we, picture to ourselves the first man, the first human
couple, with a complete physical development, and yet without the
essential conditions of intellectual activity, physically strong
and morally a nonentity, the body of twenty years and the soul in
the first hour of infancy? Such a fact is self-contradictory, and
impossible of conception.
What was the positive extent of this primal revelation, the
necessary attendant upon creation, which occurred in the first
relation of God with man? No man can say. I open the book of
Genesis and there I read:
{136}
"And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of
Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the
man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not
eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man
should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of
the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and
every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he
would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living
creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all
cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the
field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And
the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept:
and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead
thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made
he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
{137}
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my
flesh. ... Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."
[Footnote 26]
[Footnote 26: Genesis ii. 15-24.]
According, then, to the Bible, the primitive revelation
essentially bore upon the three points,--marriage, language, and
the duty of man's obedience to God his Creator: Adam received at
the hand of God the moral law of his liberty, the companion of
his life, and the faculty by which he was enabled to name the
creatures that were around him: in other words, the three sources
of religion, of family, and of science were immediately unclosed
to him. It is not necessary here to enter upon any of the
questions which have been raised, as to the human origin of
language, the primitive language, or the formation of families,
with their influence upon the great organisation of society: the
limits of the primitive revelation cannot be determined
scientifically; the fact of the revelation itself is certain.
{138}
This is the light which lighted the first man from his first
entrance upon life, and without which it is impossible to
conceive that he could have survived.
The primitive revelation did not abandon mankind on its
development and dispersion; it accompanied it everywhere, as a
general and permanent revelation. The light which had lighted the
first man spread amongst all nations and throughout all ages,
assuming the character of ideas, universal and uncontested; of
instincts, spontaneous and indestructible. No nation has been
without this light, none left to its own unassisted efforts to
grope its way through the darkness of life. Let not the human
understanding pride itself too much upon its works; the glory
does not belong to it alone: what it has accomplished it has
accomplished by aid of the primitive principles received from
God; in all his works and all his progress man has had for point
of departure and support that primitive revelation.
{139}
All the grand doctrines, all the mighty institutions, which have
governed the world, whatever intermixture of monstrous and fatal
errors they may have contained, have preserved a trace of the
fundamental verities which were the dowry of humanity at its
birth. God has forsaken no portion of the human race; and not
less amidst the errors into which it has fallen, than in the
noble developments which constitute its glory, we recognise signs
of the primitive teaching derived from its Divine Author.
After the revelation made to the first man, and in the midst of
the general revelation diffused over all mankind, a great event
occurs in history: a special revelation takes place, and has for
its seat the bosom of an inconsiderable nation, that had been
shut in during sixteen centuries in a little corner of the world;
and it was thence that, nineteen centuries ago, that revelation
proceeded to enlighten and to subdue, according to the
predictions of its Author, all the human race.
{140}
A man of an imagination as fertile as his knowledge is profound,
who, with an admirable candour has in his works associated
hypothesis and faith, M. Ewald, professor at the University of
Göttingen, has recently thus characterised this event:--"The
history of the old Jewish people is fundamentally the history of
the true religion, proceeding from step to step to its complete
development, rising through all kinds of struggles, until it
achieves a supreme victory, and finally manifesting itself in all
its majesty and power, in order to spread irresistibly, by its
proper virtue, so as to become the eternal possession and
blessing of all nations." [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 27: H. Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, bis
Christus. 2nd ed., vol. i. p. 9. Göttingen, 1851. ]
How is the great event thus characterised by M. Ewald proved? By
what marks can we distinguish the Divine origin of this special
revelation that became the Christian religion? What does it
affirm itself in support of its claim to the moral conquest of
mankind?
{141}
At the very outset, in proving her dogmas and precepts to have
come from God, the Christian revelation asserts that the
documents in which it is written are themselves of divine origin.
The divine inspiration of the sacred volume is the first basis of
the Christian Faith, the external title of Christianity to
authority over souls. What is the full import of this title? What
the signification of the inspiration of the sacred volumes?
{142}
Sixth Meditation.
The Inspiration Of The Scriptures.
I have read the sacred volumes over and over again, I have
perused them in very different dispositions of mind, at one time
studying them as great historical documents, at another admiring
them as sublime works of poetry. I have experienced an
extraordinary impression, quite different from either curiosity
or admiration. I have felt myself the listener of a language
other than that of the chronicler or the poet; and under the
influence of a breath issuing from other sources than human. Not
that man does not occupy a great place in the sacred volumes; he
displays himself there, on the contrary, with all his passions,
his vices, his weaknesses, his ignorance, his errors; the Hebrew
people shows itself rude, barbarous, changeable, superstitious,
accessible to all the imperfections, to all the failings, of
other nations.
{143} But the Hebrew is not the sole actor in his history; he has
an Ally, a Protector, a Master, who intervenes incessantly to
command, inspire, direct, strike, or save. God is there, always
present, acting--
"Et ce n'est pas un Dieu comme vos dieux frivoles,
Insensibles et sourds, impuissants, mutilés,
De bois, de marbre, ou d'or, comme vous le voulez." [Footnote 28]
"Not such a god as are _your_ friv'lous gods,
Insensible and deaf, weak, mutilated,
Of wood, or stone, or gold, as _you_ will have them."
[Footnote 28: Corneille, Polyeucte, acte iv. sc. 3.]
It is the God One and Supreme, All Powerful, the Creator, the
Eternal. And even in their forgetfulness and their disobedience,
the Hebrews believe still in God: He is still the object at once
of their fear, of their hope, and of a faith that persists in the
midst of the infidelity of their lives. The Bible is no poem in
which man recounts and sings the adventures of his God combined
with his own; it is a real drama, a continued dialogue between
God and man personified in the Hebrews; it is, on the one side,
God's will and God's action, and, on the other, man's liberty and
man's faith, now in pious association, now at fatal variance.
{144}
The more I have perused the Scriptures, the more surprised I feel
that earnest readers should not have been impressed as I have
been, and that several should have failed to see the
characteristic of divine inspiration, so foreign to every other
book, so remarkable in this one. That men who absolutely deny all
supernatural action of God in the world, should not be more
disposed to admit it in the sources of the Bible than elsewhere,
is perfectly comprehensible; but the attack upon the divine
inspiration of the sacred books has another motive, and one more
likely to prove contagious. It is not without deep regret that I
proceed in this place to contradict ancient traditions, at once
respected and respectable, and perhaps to offend sober and
sincere convictions. But my own conviction is stronger than my
regret, and it is still more so because accompanied by another
conviction, which is, that the system that it is my intention to
contest, has occasioned, continues to occasion, and may still
occasion, an immense ill to Christianity.
{145}
Whoever reads without prejudice in the Hebrew and Greek the
original texts of the Scriptures, whether of the Old or New
Testament, meets there often in the midst of their sublime
beauties, I do not say merely faults of style, but of grammar, in
violation of those logical and natural rules of language common
to all tongues. Are we to infer that these faults have the same
origin as the doctrines with which they are intermixed, and that
they are both divinely inspired? [Footnote 29]
[Footnote 29: I indicate, in a note placed at the end of this
volume, some instances of these grammatical faults met with
in the Scriptures, and to which it is impossible to assign
the character of divine inspiration.]
And yet this is what is pretended by fervent and learned men, who
maintain that all, absolutely all, in the Scriptures is divinely
inspired--the words as well as the ideas, all the words used
upon all subjects, the material of language as well as the
doctrine which lies at its base.
{146}
In this assertion I see but deplorable confusion, leading to
profound misapprehension both of the meaning and the object of
the sacred books. It was not God's purpose to give instruction to
men in grammar, and if not in grammar, neither was it, any more
God's purpose to give instruction in geology, astronomy,
geography, or chronology. It is on their relations with their
Creator, upon duties of men towards Him and towards each other,
upon the rule of faith and of conduct in life, that God has
lighted them by light from heaven. It is to the subject of
religion and morals, and to these alone, that the inspiration of
the Scriptures is directed.
Amongst the principal arguments alleged to prove that everything
in the sacred volumes is divinely inspired, particular use has
been made of the Second Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy, where in
effect we find the passage:--
"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness:
"That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto
all good works." [Footnote 30]
[Footnote 30: 2 Timothy iii. 16, 17.]
{147}
Is it possible to determine in words of greater precision the
religious and moral object of the inspiration?
Appeal is made to a consideration of a different description. If,
it is said, we at the same time admit, on the one side, the
inspiration of the sacred books, and on the other, that this
inspiration is not universal and absolute, who shall make the
selection between these two parts?--who mark the limit of the
inspiration?--who say which texts, which passages are inspired,
and which are not? So to divide the Holy Scriptures is to strip
them of their supernatural character, to destroy their
authenticity, by surrendering them to all the incertitudes, all
the disputes of men: a complete and uninterrupted inspiration
alone is capable of commanding faith.
{148}
Never-dying pretension of man's weakness! Created intelligent and
free, he proposes to use largely his intelligence and his
freedom; at the same time, conscious how feeble his means are,
how inadequate to his aspirations, he invokes a guide, a support;
and from the very moment that his hope fixes upon it, he will
have it immutable, infallible. He searches a fixed point to which
to attach himself with absolute and permanent assurance. In
creating man, God did not leave him without fixed points; the
Divine revelation, and the inspiration of the Scriptures, had
precisely for object and effect to supply these, but not on all
subjects alike and without distinction. I refer here again to
what I lately said respecting the separation of the finite and
the infinite, of the world created, and of its Creator. At the
same time that the limits of the finite world are those of human
science, it is to human study and human science that God has
surrendered the finite world; it is not there that God has set up
his divine torch; He has dictated to Moses the laws which
regulate the duties of man towards God, and of man towards man;
but He has left to Newton the discovery of the laws which preside
over the universe.
{149}
The Scriptures speak upon all subjects; circumstances connected
with the finite world are there incessantly mixed with
perspectives of infinity; but it is only to the latter, to that
future of which they permit us to snatch a view, and to the laws
which they impose upon men, that the divine inspiration addresses
itself; God only pours his light in quarters which man's eye and
man's labour cannot reach; for all that remains, the sacred books
speak the language used and understood by the generations to whom
they are addressed. God does not, even when He inspires them,
transport into future domains of science the interpreters He
uses, or the nations to whom He sends them; He takes them both as
He finds them, with their traditions, their notions, their degree
of knowledge or ignorance as respects the finite world, of its
phenomena and its laws.
{150}
It is not the condition, the scientific progress of the human
understanding; it is the condition and moral progress of the
human soul which are the object of the Divine action, and God
requires not for the exercise of his power on the human soul,
science either as a precursor or a companion; He addresses
himself to instincts and desires the most intimate and most
sublime as well as the most universal in man's nature, to
instincts and desires of which science is neither the object nor
the measure, and which require to be satisfied from other
sources. Whatever true or false science we find in the Scriptures
upon the subject of the finite world, proceeds from the writers
themselves or their contemporaries; they have spoken as they
believed, or as those believed who surrounded them when they
spoke: on the other hand, the light thrown over the infinite, the
law laid down, and the perspective opened by that same light,
these are what proceed from God, and which He has inspired in the
Scriptures. Their object is essentially and exclusively moral and
practical; they express the ideas, employ the images, and speak
the language best calculated to produce a powerful effect upon
the soul, to regenerate and to save it. I open the Gospel
according to St. Luke, and I there read the admirable parable:--
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"There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and
fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:
"And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid
at his gate, full of sores,
"And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the
rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
"And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by
the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and
was buried;
"And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth
Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
"And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and
send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water,
and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
"But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime
receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things;
but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
"And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf
fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot;
neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
"Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou
wouldest send him to my father's house:
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"For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest
they also come into this place of torment.
"Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let
them hear them.
"And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them
from the dead, they will repent.
"And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
[Footnote 31]
[Footnote 31: Luke xvi. 19-31.]
Was it the intention of Jesus, and of the Evangelist who has
repeated his words, to describe, as they really are, the
condition of men after their earthly existence, their positive
local position after God's judgment, and their relations either
with each other or with the world which they have quitted?
Certainly not; the material circumstances intermixed with this
dialogue are only images borrowed from actual common life. But
what images so strike, so penetrate the soul? What more solemn
warning addressed to men in this life, to rouse them to a sense
of their duties towards God and their fellow creatures, in the
name of the mysterious future that awaits them?
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Nothing is further from my thought than to see in the sacred
books mere poetical images and symbols; those books are really,
with respect to the religious problems that beset man's thoughts,
the Light and the voice of God; still, that Light only lights,
that voice only reveals revelations of God with man, duties which
God enjoins men in the course of their present life, and
prospects which He opens to them beyond the imperfect and limited
world where this life passes. As for this life itself, it is the
object of human study and science, not of the inspiration of the
sacred Scriptures. In disregarding this limit, in pretending to
attribute to the language of the Scriptures, used with reference
to the phenomena of the finite world, the character of divine
inspiration, men have fallen with respect both to thought and act
into deplorable errors. Hence proceeded the trial of Galileo, and
numerous other controversies, numerous other condemnations still
more absurd, still more to be regretted, in which Christianity
was immediately placed in opposition to human science, and
constrained to inflict or receive remarkable disavowals.
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The same is the case at the present day with respect to numerous
objections made in the name of the natural sciences to
Christianity, and which from the learned circles where they have
their birth, spread over a world at once curious and frivolous,
where they cause the Christian faith itself to be regarded as
ignorant credulity. Nothing of this kind could ever occur, no
necessity of such conflict could await the Christian religion, if
on the one side the limits of human science, and on the other
those of divine inspiration, were recognised as they really are,
and respected according to their rightful claims.
I might cite in aid of the opinion I support numerous and great
authorities. I will refer to but three, appealed to by Galileo
himself in 1615 in his letters to the Grand Duchess Christina of
Lorraine" [Footnote 32]--(who could appeal to authorities more
august?)--"Many things," says St. Jerome, "are recounted in the
Scriptures according to the judgment of the times when they
happened, and not according to the truth." [Footnote 33]
[Footnote 32: Opere Complete di Galileo-Galilei, t. ii. chap.
ii. pp. 26-64. Florence, 1843.]
[Footnote 33: OEuvres de St. Jérôme, Comment, in Jeremiam, ed.
Vallars. t. ix. p. 1040.]
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"The purpose of the Holy Scriptures," says the Cardinal
Baronius, "is to teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the
heavens go." "This," says Kepler, "is the counsel I give to the
man so ill informed as not to understand the science of
astronomy, or so weak as to regard adhesion to Copernicus as
proof of want of piety:--Let him at once leave the study of
astronomy and the examination of the opinions of philosophers;
instead of devoting himself to those arduous researches, let
him remain at home, till his fields, and occupy himself with
his proper business; and thence, raising towards the admirable
vault of heaven his eyes, which constitute for him his sole
mode of vision, let him pour forth his heart in thanksgivings
and praises to God his Creator. He may rest assured that he is
thus rendering to God a worship as perfect as that of the
astronomer himself, to whom God has accorded the gift of seeing
clearer with the eyes of his intelligence; but who, above all
the worlds and all the heavens that he attains, knows and wills
to find his God." [Footnote 34]
[Footnote 34: Kepler, Nova Astronomia, Introductio, p. 9.
Prague, 1609.]
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I discard, then, as absolutely foreign to the grand question that
occupies me, all the difficulties suggested to the Scriptures in
the name of those sciences whose province is finite nature. I
seek and consider in these books only what is their sole
object,--the relations of God with man, and the solution of those
problems which these relations cause to weigh upon the human
soul. The deeper we go in the study of the sacred volumes,
restored to their real object, the more the divine inspiration
becomes manifest and striking. God and man are there ever both
present, both actors in the same history. Of this history it is
my present object to illustrate the grand features.
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Seventh Meditation.
God According To The Bible.
It is far from my intention to evade the questions which concern
the authenticity of the Bible, and of the respective books which
compose it. I shall enter upon them in the second series of these
_Meditations_, when I touch upon the history of the
Christian religion. Those questions, however, have no bearing
upon the subject which occupies me at the present moment; the
Bible, whatever its antiquity, whatever the comparative antiquity
of its different parts, has been ever that witness of God in
which the Hebrews believed, and under the law of which they
lived, the great monument of the religion in the bosom of which
the Christian religion took its birth. It is this God of whom in
the Bible, and in the Bible alone, it is my purpose to seek the
peculiar and true character.
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The nations of Semitic origin have been honoured for their
primitive and persistent faith in the unity of God. Under
different forms, and amidst events very dissimilar, nearly all
nations have been polytheistic; the Semitic nations alone have
believed firmly in the one God. This great moral fact has been
attributed to different and to complex causes; but the fact
itself is generally acknowledged and admitted.
In two respects in this assertion there is exaggeration. On one
side, among the nations of Semitic origin, several were
polytheistic; the descendants of Abraham, the Hebrews, and the
Arab Ishmaelites, alone remained really monotheistic; on the
other side, the idea of the unity of God was not entirely strange
even to the polytheistic nations. The greater part, like the
Hindoos and the Greeks, admitted one sole and primordial Power
anterior and superior to their gods;--idea, vague and searched
from afar, derived from the instinct of man or the reflection of
the philosopher, and which amongst those nations became neither
the basis of any religion that deserves the name, nor any
efficacious obstacle to idolatry.
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The God of the Bible is no such sterile abstraction; He is the
one God at the present time as in the origin of all things, the
personal God, living, acting, and presiding efficiently over the
destinies of the world that He has created.
He has besides another characteristic, one far more striking,
which belongs to Him more exclusively than that of Unity. The
gods of the polytheistic nations have histories filled with
events, vicissitudes, transformations, adventures. The mythology
of the Egyptians, of the Hindoos, of the Greeks, of the
Scandinavians, and numerous others, is but the poetical or
symbolical recital of the varied and agitated lives of their
gods. We detect in these recitals sometimes the personification
of the fancies of nations described in accordance with their
actual phenomena, some times the reminiscences of human
personages who have struck the imagination of the people.
{160}
But whatever their origin, whatever their name, each of those
gods has his individual history more or less overladen with
incidents and acts, now heroic, now licentious, now elegantly
fantastic, now grossly eccentric. All the polytheistic religions
are collections of biographies, divine or legendary, allegorical
or completely fabulous, in which the careers and the passions,
the actions and the dreams of men, reproduce themselves under the
forms and names of deities.
The God of the Bible has no biography, neither has He any
personal adventures. Nothing occurs to Him and nothing changes in
Him; He is always and invariably the same, a Being real and
personal, absolutely distinct from the finite world and from
humanity, identical and immutable in the bosom of the universal
diversity and movement. "I Am That I Am," is the sole definition
that He vouchsafes of himself, and the constant expression of
what He is in all the course of the history of the Hebrews, to
which He is present and over which He presides without ever
receiving from it any reflex of influence.
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Such is the God of the Bible, in evident and permanent contrast
with all the gods of polytheism, still more distinct and more
solitary by his nature than by his Unity.
This is, indeed, so peculiarly the proper and essential character
of the God of the Bible, that this character has passed into the
very language of the Hebrews, and has become there the very name
of God. Several words are employed in the Bible as appellations
of God. One of these _El, Eloah,_ in the plural
_Elohïm_, expresses force, _creative power_, and is
applied to the manifold gods of Paganism as well as to the one
God of the Hebrews. _El Shaddaï_ is translated by _the
all-powerful_. _Adonai_ signifies _Lord_. The word
_Yahwe_ or _Yehwe_, which becomes in Hebrew
pronunciation _Jehovah_, means simply _He is_, and
means self-existence, the Being Absolute and Eternal.
{162}
This name occurs in no other of the Semitic languages, and it is
at the epoch of Moses that it appears for the first time amongst
the Hebrews: "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am
the Eternal" (_Yahwe, Jehovah_). "And I appeared unto
Abraham, Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of the All-powerful
(_El Shaddaï_), but by my name Eternal was I not known to
them." [Footnote 35 ] _Yahwe, Jehovah_, is at once the true
God and the national God of Israel. [Footnote 36]
[Footnote 35: Exodus vi. 2, 3.]
[Footnote 36: I have consulted respecting the precise sense
and the different shades of meaning of the terms expressing
God in Hebrew, my learned _confrère_ at the Academy of
Inscriptions, M. Munk, who has replied to all my inquiries
with as much clearness as courtesy.]
The history of the Hebrews is neither less significant nor less
expressive than their language; it is the history of the
relations of the God, One and Immutable with the people chosen by
Him to be the special representative of the religious principle,
and the regenerating source of religious life in the human race.
{163}
This people undergoes the destiny and trials common to all
nations; it demands, and becomes subject to, a variety of
different governments; it falls into the errors and faults usual
to nations; it frequently succumbs to the temptations of
idolatry; like the others, it has its days of virtue and of vice,
of prosperity and of reverses, of glory and of abasement. Amidst
all the vicissitudes and errors of the people of the Bible, the
God of the Bible remains invariably the same, without any
tincture of anthropomorphism, without any alteration in the idea
which the Hebrews conceive of his nature, either during their
fidelity or disobedience to his Commandments. It is always the
God who has said, "I Am That I Am," of whom his people demand no
other explanation of himself, and who, ever present and
sovereign, pursues the designs of his providence with men, who
either use or abuse the liberty of action which that God had
accorded to them at their creation. I wish to retrace, according
to the Bible, the principal phases and the principal actors in
this history.
{164}
The more I study, the more I feel that I am watching, as M. Ewald
has expressed it, "the career of the true religion, advancing
step by step to its complete development," that is to say, that I
am there observing the action of God upon the first steps and
upon the religious progress of the human race.