Hindoo sages, Egyptian priests, English Deists,--that men of all other
religions,--having always had access to the fountain of natural
illumination within, have not also had their "Baxters, Leightons,
Watts, Doddridges"? that the whole style of thought on this subject
is so totally different in them all, by his own confession? If man
possess the "spiritual faculty" attributed to him,--if it be a
characteristic of humanity,--it will be surely generally manifested;
and even if those disturbing causes, which he and Mr. Parker so
plentifully provide, by which the genesis of religion is so
unhappily marred, but which, alas! no revelation from without can
ever counteract--prevent its uniform, or nearly uniform display,
still its principal indications (partial though they may be
everywhere) ought, at least, to be everywhere indifferently
diffused throughout the race. Its manifestation may be sporadic,
but it will be in one race as in another; it will not be suspiciously
confined to one race with a peculiarly felicitous "religious
organization," or to "two books" exclusively originating with that
favored race.
For his "spiritual" illumination, it is easy to see Mr. Newman's
exclusive dependence on that Bible which he abjures as a special
revelation. If it has not been so to mankind, it has, at least, been
so to Mr. Newman. To it he perpetually runs for argument and
illustration. Among those who will accept his infidelity I apprehend
there will be few who will not recoil from his representations of
spiritual experience, so obviously nothing more than a disguised and
mutilated Christianity. They will say, that they do not wish the
"new cloth sewed on to the old garment"; scarcely a soul amongst
them will sympathize with his soul's "sorrows," or share his soul's
"aspirations"!
But, however these things may be, I now proceed to what I acknowledge
is the most weighty topic of my argument; which is to prove that, if
I acquiesce, on Mr. Newman's grounds, in the rejection of the Bible
as a special revelation of God, I am compelled on the very same
principles to go a few steps further, and to express doubts of the
absolutely divine original of the World, and the administration
thereof, just as he does of the divine original of the Bible. If I
concede to Mr. Newman, however we may differ as to the moral and
spiritual faculties of man, that these are yet the sole and ultimate
court of appeal to us; that from our "intuitions" of right and wrong,
of "moral and spiritual, truth," be they more perfect according to him,
or more rudimentary and imperfect according to me, we must form a
judgment of the moral bearings of every presumed external revelation
of God,--I cannot do otherwise than reject much of the revelation of
God in his presumed Works as unworthy of him, just as Mr. Newman
does very much in his supposed Word as equally unworthy of him. Mr.
Newman says, "Only by discerning that God has Virtues, similar in kind
to human Virtues, do we know of his truthfulness and his goodness......
The nature of the case implies, that the human mind is competent to sit
in moral and spiritual judgment on a professed revelation, and to decide
(if the case seem to require it) in the following tone:--'This doctrine
attributes to God that which we should all call harsh, cruel, or unjust
in man: it is therefore intrinsically inadmissible; for if God may be
(what we should call) cruel, he may equally well be (what we should
call) a liar; and, if so, of what use is his word to us?'" (Soul, p. 58)
Similarly Mr. Newman continually affirms that God reveals himself,
when he reveals himself at all, within, and not without; as he says
in his "Phases,"--"Of our moral and spiritual God we know nothing
without,--every thing within. It is in the spirit that we meet him
not in the communications of sense." (p. 52.) If I acquiesce in this
judgment, I must apply the reasoning of the above passage to the
"external revelation" of God in his Works, as well as to that in
his Word; and the above reasoning will be equally valid, merely
substituting one word for the other. We are to decide, if the case
seem to require it, in the following tone:--"These phenomena--this
conduct--implies what we should call in man harsh, or cruel, or
unjust; it is, therefore, intrinsically inadmissible as God's work
or God's conduct."
Acting on his principles, Mr. Newman refuses to "depress" his
conscience (as he says) to the Bible standard. He affirms, that
in many cases the Bible sanctions, and even enjoins, things which
shock his moral sense as flagrantly immoral, and he must therefore
reject them as supposed to be sanctioned by God. He in different
places gives instances;--as the supposed approbation of the
assassination of Sisera by the wife of Heber, the command to Abraham
to sacrifice his son, and the extermination of the Canaanites. Now,
whether the Bible represents God, or not, in all these cases, as
sanctioning the things in question, I shall not be at the pains to
inquire, because I am willing to take it for granted that Mr. Newman's
representation is perfectly correct. I only think that he ought,
in consistency, to have gone a little further. Let him defend, as
in perfect harmony with his "intuitions" of right and wrong, the
undeniably similar instances which occur in the administration of
the universe; or, if it be found impossible to solve those difficulties,
let him acknowledge, either that our supposed essential "intuitions" of
moral rectitude are not to be trusted, as applicable to the Supreme
Being, and that therefore the argument from them against the Bible
is inconclusive; or, that no such being exists; or, lastly, that he
has conferred upon man an intuitive conception of moral equity and
rectitude,--of the just and the unjust,--in most edifying
contradiction to his own character and proceedings!
Here Fellowes broke in:--
"If indeed there be any such instances; but I think Mr. Newman
would reply, that they will be sought for in vain in the 'world,'
however plentiful, as I admit they are, in the Bible."
"I know not whether he would deny them or not," said Harrington;
"but they are found in great abundance in the world notwithstanding,
and this is my difficulty. If Mr. Newman were the creator of the
universe, no question, none of these contradictions between
'intuitions' within, and stubborn 'facts' without, would be found.
He has created a God after his own mind; if he could but have created
a universe also after his own mind, we should doubtless have been
relieved from all our perplexities. But, unhappily, we find in it,
as I imagine, the very things which so startle Mr. Newman in the
Scriptural representations of the divine character and proceedings.
Is he not, like all other infidels, peculiarly scandalized, that God
should have enjoined the extermination of the Canaanites? and yet
does not God do still more startling things every day of our lives,
and which appear less startling only because we are familiar with
them,--at least, if we believe that the elements, pestilence, famine,
in a word, destruction in all its forms, really fulfil his bidding?
Is there any difference in the world between the cases, except that
the terrible phenomena which we find it impossible to account for
are on an infinitely larger scale, and in duration as ancient as the
world? that they have, in fact, been going on for thousands of weary
years, and for aught you or I can tell, and as Mr. Newman seems to
think probable, for millions of years? Does not a pestilence or a
famine send thousands of the guilty and the innocent alike--nay,
thousands of those who know not their right hand from their left--to
one common destruction? Does not God (if you suppose it his doing)
swallow up whole cities by earthquake, or overwhelm them with volcanic
fires? I say, is there any difference between the cases, except that
the victims are very rarely so wicked as the Canaanites are said to
have been, and that God in the one case himself does the very things
which he commissions men to do in the other? Now, if the thing be wrong,
I, for one, shall never think it less wrong to do it one's self than
to do it by proxy."
"But," said Fellowes, rather warmly, for he felt rather restive at
this part of Harrington's discourse, "it is absurd to compare such
sovereign acts of inexplicable will on the part of God with his
command to a being so constituted as man to perform them."
"Absurd be it," said Harrington, "only be so kind as to show it to be
so, instead of saying so. I maintain that the one class of facts are
just as 'inexplicable,' as you call it, as the other, and only appear
otherwise because, in the one case, we daily see them, have become
accustomed to them and, what is more than all, cannot deny them,--which
last we can so promptly do in the other case; for Moses is not here to
contradict us. But I rather think, that a being constituted morally
and intellectually like us, who had never known any but a world of
happiness, would just as promptly deny that God could ever perform
such feats as are daily performed in this world! I repeat, that, if
for some reasons ('inexplicable,' I grant you) God does not mind
doing such things, he is not likely to hesitate to enjoin them; for
reasons perhaps equally inexplicable. I say perhaps; for, as I
compare such an event as the earthquake in Lisbon, or the plague in
London, with the extermination of the Canaanites, I solemnly assure
you that I find a greater difficulty, as far as my 'intuitions' go,
in supposing the former event to have been effected by a divine
agency than the latter. If we take the Scripture history, we must at
least allow that the race thus doomed had long tried the patience
of Heaven by their flagrant impiety and unnatural vices; that they
had become a centre and a source (as we sometimes see collections of
men to be) of moral pestilence, in the vicinage of which it was unsafe
for men to dwell; that, as the Scriptures say (whether truly or falsely,
I do not inquire), they had, filled up the measure of their iniquities.'
Let this be supposed as fictitious as you please, still the whole
proceeding is represented as a solemn judicial one; and supposing the
events to have occurred just as they are narrated, it positively seems
to me much less difficult to suppose them to harmonize with the
character of a just and even beneficent being, than those wholesale
butcheries which have desolated the world, in every hour of its long
history, without any discrimination whatever of innocence or guilty;
which, if they have inflicted unspeakable miseries on the immediate
victims, have produced probably as much or more in the agony of the
myriad myriads of hearts which have bled or broken in unavailing
sorrow over the sufferings they could not relieve. Such things
(I speak now only of what man has not in any sense inflicted) are,
in your view, as undeniably the work of God as is the extermination
of the Canaanites according to the Bible. Why, if God does not mind
doing such things, are we to suppose that he minds on some occasions
ordering them to be done; unless we suppose that man--delicate
creature!--has more refined intuitions of right and wrong, and knows
better what they are, than God himself? Now, Mr. Newman and you
affirm, that to suppose God should have enjoined the destruction of
the Canaanites is a contradiction of our moral intuitions; and that
for this and similar reasons you cannot believe the Bible to be the
word of God. I answer, that the things I have mentioned are in still
more glaring contradiction to such 'intuitions'; than which none
appears to me more clear than this,--that the morally innocent
ought not to suffer; and I therefore doubt whether the above
phenomena are the work of God. I must refuse, on the very same
principle on which Mr. Newman disallows the Bible to be a true
revelation of such a Being, to allow this universe to be so.
In equally glaring inconsistency is the entire administration of
this lower world with what appears to me a first principle of moral
rectitude,--namely, that he who suffers a wrong to be inflicted on
another, when he can prevent it, is responsible for the wrong itself.
The whole world is full of such instances."
"Ay," said Fellowes, eagerly, "we ought to prevent a wrong, provided
we have the right as well as the power to interfere."
"I am supposing that we have the right as well as the power; as, for
example, to prevent a man from murdering his neighbor, or a thief from
entering his dwelling. There are, no doubt, many acts which, from our
very limited right, we should have no business to prevent; as, for
example, to prevent a man from getting tipsy at his own table with his
own wine. But no such limitation can apply to Him who is supposed to
be the Absolute Monarch of the universe; and yet He (according to your
view) notoriously does not interpose to prevent the daily commission of
the most heinous wrongs and cruelties under which the earth has groaned,
and hearts have been breaking, for thousands of years. You will say,
perhaps, that in all such instances we must believe that there are some
reasons for His conduct, though we cannot guess what they are. Ah! my
friend, if you come to believing, you may believe also that the
difficulties involved in the Scriptural representations of the Divine
character and proceedings are susceptible of a similar solution. If you
come to believing, I think the Christian can believe as well as you, and
rather more consistently. But let me proceed." He then read on.
It is plain, that, in accordance with our primitive "moral intuitions"
(if we have any), we should hold him who had the power to prevent a
wrong, and did not use it, as a participator and accomplice in the
crime he did not prevent. Applying, therefore, the principles of
Mr. Newman, I must refuse to acknowledge such conduct on the part of
the Divine Being, and to say, that such things are not done by him.
If I may trust my whisper of him, derived from analogous moral qualities
in myself, I must believe that an administration which so ruthlessly
permits these things is not his work; but that his power, wisdom, and
goodness have been thwarted, baffled, and overmastered by some
"omnipotent devil," to use Mr. Newman's expression; if it be, then that
whisper of him cannot be trusted: the heathen was right, "Sunt superis
sua jura." In other words, I feel that I must become an Atheist, a
Pantheist, a Manichaean, or--what I am--a sceptic.
All these perplexities are increased when I trace them up to that
profound mystery in which they all originate,--I mean the permission
of physical and moral evil. Either evil could have been prevented or
not; if it could, its immense and horrible prevalence is at war with
the intuition already referred to; if it could not, who shall prove it?
I am no more able to contradict the intuitions of the intellect than
those of the conscience; and if any thing can be called a contradiction
of the former, it is to be told that a Being of infinite power, wisdom,
and beneficence could not construct a world without an immensity of evil
in it; no reason being assignable or even imaginable for such a
proposition, except the fact that such a world has not been created!
I am therefore compelled to doubt, whether such a universe be really
the fabrication of such a Being. It is impossible to express my
astonishment at the ease with which Mr. Newman disposes of the
difficulties connected with the origin and perpetuation of physical
and moral evil. His arguments are just two of the most hackneyed
commonplaces with which metaphysicians have attempted to evade these
stupendous difficulties; and it is not too much to say, that there
never was a man who was not resolved that his theory must stand, who
pretended to attach any importance to them. They are most gratuitously
assumed, and even then are most trivial alleviations; a mere
plaster of brown paper for a deep-seated cancer.
I certainly know of no other man who has stood so unabashed in front
of these awful forms. One almost envies him the truly childlike faith
with which he waves his hand to these Alps, and says, "Be ye removed,
and east into the sea"; but the feeling is exchanged for another, when
he seems to rub his eyes, and exclaim, "Presto, they are gone
sure enough!" while you still feel that you stand far within the
circumference of their awful shadows.
As to physical evil, Mr. Newman tells us, "Here may be sufficient to
remark, that the difficulty on the Epicurean assumption, that physical
case and comfort is the most valuable thing in the universe: but that
is not true even with brutes. There is a certain perfection in the
nature of each, consisting in the full development of all their powers,
to which the existing order manifestly tends ...... As for
susceptibility to pain, it is obviously essential to every part of
corporeal life, and to discuss the question of degree is absurd. On the
other hand, human capacity for sorrow is equally necessary to our
whole moral nature, and sorrow itself is a most essential process
for the perfecting of the soul." (Soul, pp. 43, 44.)
This, then, is the fine balm for all the anguish under which the
world has been groaning for these thousands of years! But, first,
how does suffering tend to the perfection of the whole lower creation?
It enfeebles, and at last destroys them, I know; but I am yet to
Learn that it is essential to the perfection of animal life.
Again, how does it minister to that of man, except he be more than
the insect of the day, of which Mr. Newman's theology leaves him in
utter doubt? And if he be immortal, how does it operate beneficially
except as an instrument of moral improvement? And how rarely
(comparatively) do we see that it has that effect! How often is it
most prolonged and torturing in those who seem least to need it, and
in those who are absolutely as yet incapable of learning from it; or,
alas! are too evidently past learning from it! How often do we
see, slowly sinking under the protracted agonies of consumption,
cancer, or stone, all these various classes of mortals, without our
being able to assign, or even conjecture, the slightest reason for
such experiments! I acknowledge freely, all, at we can give no
reasons for them; but it is to mock miserable humanity to give
such reasons as these; doubly to mock it, if men be the ephemeral
creatures which Mr. Newman's theology leaves in such doubt: since
in that case we see not only (what we see at any rate) that physical
evil does not always, nor even in many instances, produce a salutary
moral effect, but that it hardly matters whether it does or not; for
just as the poor patient may be beginning to be benefited by his
discipline, and generally in consequence of it, he is unluckily
annihilated; he dies of his medicine! Surely, if physical evil be
this grand elixir, never was such a precious balm so improvidently
expended. We may well say, only with much more reason, what the Jews
said of Mary's box of ointment,--"Why was all this waste?" To be
sure it is "given" in abundance "to the poor."
And, at the best, this exquisite reasoning gives no account whatever
of that suffering which falls upon innocent infancy and childhood. It
destroys them, however, and effectually prevents their attaining the
"perfection" which it is so admirable an instrument of developing, and
that too before they can be morally benefited by the "salutary" sorrow
it brings!
"Susceptibility to pain," says Mr. Newman, "is essential to corporeal
being."
Yes, susceptibility to pain; just as a created being must be liable to
annihilation. Must he be annihilated? Just as a hungry stomach must be
liable to starvation. Must it be starved? The primary office of
susceptibilities to pain would seem to be to forewarn us to provide
against it. They certainly have that effect. Does it necessarily
follow that they must involve anguish and death? Unless it be supposed,
indeed, that nature, having provided such an admirable apparatus of
"susceptibilities" of pain, thought it a thousand pities that they
should not be employed.
But when it comes to "moral evil," which Mr. Newman acknowledges cannot
be so lightly disposed of, what then?
Why, then he says, "Let the Gordian knot be cut."
Well, what then? Why, then Mr. Newman frankly "assumes" that it is
"transitory and finite," (Soul, p. 45.) and will one day vanish from
the universe, a supposition for which he condescends to give no reason
whatever.
Stat pro ratione voluntas.
That this "moral evil" should have existed at all, much more to so
immense an extent, under the administration of supposed infinite power,
wisdom, and benevolence, is the great difficulty; that it will ever
cease to be, is a pure assumption for the nonce; but if it will one
day entirely vanish, it is gratuitous to suppose it might not have
been prevented.
I, of course, acknowledge that we can give no answer to the questions
involved in this transcendent mystery,--that our ignorance is absolute;
but I do say, that, if I am to trust to those "intuitions" of the
Divine Goodness, on whose warranty Mr. Newman and Mr. Parker reject
the Bible, as containing what is unworthy of their conceptions of God,
I am compelled to proceed further in the same direction; and repudiate,
as unworthy of Him, not merely some of the phenomena of the Book which
men profess to be His word, but also some of the phenomena of that
universe which men profess to be His work. If I can only judge, as
these gentlemen urge, of such a Being by the analogies of my own
nature, no "intuition" of theirs can possibly seem stronger than do
mine, that beings absolutely innocent ought not to suffer; that to
inflict suffering upon them is injustice; that to permit any evils
which we can prevent is in like manner to be accomplices in the
crime. On those very principles of all moral judgment which Mr. Newman
says are innate and our only rule, I say I am compelled to these
conclusions; for if God does those things which are ordinarily
attributed to Him, He acts as much in contravention of these
intuitions as in any acts attributed to Him in the Bible. If it be
said, that there may be reasons for such apparent violations of
rectitude, which we cannot fathom, I deny it not: but that is to
acknowledge that the supposed maxims derived from the analogies of
our own being are most deceptive as applied to the Supreme; it is to
remit us to an act of absolute faith, by which, with no greater effort,
nor so great, we may be reconciled to similar mysteries of the Bible.
But above all is it to do this, to say that the origin and permission
of physical and moral evil are inexplicable; and it is to double this
demand on faith, to declare that it was all necessary, and could not
be evaded in the construction of the universe even by infinite power,
directed by infinite wisdom, and both animated by an infinite benevolence!
As far as I can trust my reason at all, nothing seems more improbable;
and if I receive it by a transcendent exercise of faith, I may, as
before, give the Bible the benefit of a like act. I am compelled,
therefore, on such principles, either to adopt a Manichaean hypothesis
of the universe, or do what I have done,--adopt none at all.
I was talking to a friend on these subjects the other day: "Ah! but,"
said he, "many of those difficulties you mention oppress every
hypothesis,--Christianity just as much as the rest."
This, I replied, is no answer to me nor to you, if you have a
particle of candor; still less is it one to the Christian, who
consistently applies the same principle of absolute faith to things
apparently a priori incredible, whether found in the works or in the
word of God. But if you think the argument of any force, apply it to
the next Christian you meet, and see what answer he will make to you;
it will not trouble him. But it is far more ridiculous addressed to me.
I ask for something in the place of that Bible of which the faithful
application of your own principles deprives me; and when I affirm that
the difficulties of the universe are no less than those of the Bible I
have surrendered, you tell me that the perplexities of my new position
are no greater than those of the old! That clearly will not do. I must
go further. If I am to yield to pretensions of any kind, I would
infinitely prefer the yoke of the Bible to that of Messrs. Parker and
Newman; for it is to nothing else than their dogmatism I must yield,
if I admit that the difficulties which compel me to doubt in the one
case are less than those which compel me to doubt in the other.
But it is not even true that the difficulties in question are left
where they were by the adoption of any such theory as that of either
Mr. Parker or Mr. Newman. I contend that they are all indefinitely
increased. The Bible does at least give me a plausible account of
some of the mysteries which baffle me: it tells me that man was created
holy and happy; that he has fallen from his "excellent estate"; and
hence the misery, ignorance, and guilt in which he is involved, and
which have rendered revelation necessary.