various physical theories, more or less extensive, on the perspicuous
metaphysics of their countrymen, were confident that, if they had not
hit on the modes which Supreme Wisdom had adopted, their modes were
yet very excellent modes; and they were absolutely clamorous that their
experiments should begin. But, alas! many of them stood but little
chance of being ever tried, for the very same reason which prevented
the disciple of Leibnitz from obtaining his 'Monads'; their authors
could not make their meaning intelligible to the delegated omniscience.
As to some of the metaphysicians, since their theories embraced nothing
less than the evolution of the 'totality' of the universe, the 'infinite'
and the 'absolute' included, it was of course impossible that they
could be tried. But it was thought an appropriate punishment for them
to be condemned to write on till they had made their meaning intelligible.
Some have labored with incredible industry to comply with this very
reasonable request, but their notions seem to grow darker and darker
at every step; and one in particular has written a huge folio, in which,
by universal consent of men and angels, there is not the smallest
glimmer of meaning from one end to the other. Another even complains in
private of the want of philosophical genius in the court of celestial
criticism, and declares that in Germany they could have constructed ten
theories of the universe and given twenty solutions of the 'infinite'
and the 'absolute' in the time he has been vainly endeavoring to
explain his meaning to personages so deplorably deficient in
metaphysical acumen."
He was going on with some other details of the hapless philosophers.
"I would much rather hear from you," said I, "for it is a subject in
which I take a far deeper interest, how those have sped who have objected
to the Revelation with which God has favored man, on the ground that
it cannot be true, else it would have been more unexceptionably framed
or more wisely promulgated. I take it for granted that these have not
been destitute of opportunities of trying their experiment."
"Surely not," replied my new acquaintance. "'The Paradise of Fools'
is well stocked with creatures of this description. Many of the
experiments which required time to test them were commenced hundreds
of years ago, and are completed. Others are still unfinished while
there have been many which required only to be commenced and they were
completed instantly, to the confusion of their authors."
"I should much like," said I, "to hear an account of some of these
experiments."
"Willingly," answered he; "only you must bear in mind that they were all
to be performed under certain limitations, without which no revelation
which God can give to man would be of the slightest value."
He then informed me, that the evidence afforded must not be such as to
annihilate the conditions on which man is to be made virtuous and happy,
if he is to be made so at all. It must not be inconsistent with the
exercise of either his reason or his faith, nor prevent the play of
his moral dispositions, nor triumph by mere violence over his
prejudices; it must not operate purely upon the passions or the senses,
nor overhear all possibility of offering resistance,--as would be
the case, for example, if a man were placed on the edge of a precipice,
and told that he would immediately be thrown over it if he transgressed
the rules of temperance or chastity. The happiness, he said, which
God originally designed for his intelligent and moral creatures was a
voluntary happiness, springing out of the well-balanced and well-directed
activity of all the principles of their nature. Any revelation, therefore,
must proceed on the same basis, both as regards itself and the mode in
which it is given. Arguments and motives morally sufficient, but not
more than sufficient, must be addressed to the intellect and the
conscience. All this is necessary to render the felicity and perfection
of man stable and permanent; for without such a trial, triumphantly
sustained, he would have no security that, in the presence of objects
which tend to exert an overpowering influence on his senses or his
feelings, he might not at some period of the unknown future be impelled
to take a wrong path, and err and be miserable. This ordeal, originally
designed for man and not superseded by revelation, must be continued
long enough to render the principles on which he ought to act practical
habits; after which he may go forth (sublime and glorious privilege!) to
any part of this world, or of any world to which God may call him,
master of himself and his destiny; not afraid lest temptations should
warp him from a steadfastness that is founded on the decisions of an
inflexible will, itself directed by enlightened intelligence and moral
rectitude; in a word, in possession of the appropriate and alone
appropriate happiness of an intellectual and moral agent; an image
of the felicity of the great Creator himself. This condition, he
said, of giving a revelation, so far from being a hardship, is not
only in harmony with the nature of things, but is itself an expression
of the Divine Beneficence; which designed for man no casual,
precarious safety, as the result of transient external violence
to the principles of his nature, but a permanent and inviolable
equilibrium of the powers within him. "Heaven itself," he concluded,
"can be heaven only to those who are internally prepared for it."
"Were there many," I cried, "who were willing to make the experiment
of giving a revelation more unexceptionably than it has been given,
on the proposed conditions?"
"Not very many, as you may well suppose," said he; "but if objectors
had been unwilling, they would have been compelled to make it."
"But upon whom were the experiments to be made?" said I; "for
unless they were beings of the same intellectual and moral condition
as themselves, I see not how aught could come of it."
"O, be satisfied," he replied; "the beings who are provided for
these Projectors are as like the inhabitant of your world as one
egg is like another. They are men themselves; communities made up
of those who have lived in your world, and who have gone out of it
with the same thoughts, passions, and emotions as they had on earth;
many of them having rejected or disregarded the true revelation, and
others never having had that revelation to reject. Of course they
are ignorant, in this intermediate state, of the tricks which these
experimenters play with them, till they are concluded; but in
rejecting the new revelations, many of them reject the very conditions
of belief which when on earth they said would have been sufficient,
while the result in those who make the experiment and in those on
whom the experiment is made is to 'vindicate the ways of God to man.'"
There is a wonderful power in getting over trifling difficulties in
our dreams, or I should certainly have demurred to some parts of this
statement. Instead of that, I let my mind, as usual in such cases,
dwell on a point which was no difficulty at all. "If," said I, "they
are dead, they are probably very different beings from what they were
when alive."
"And do you think," said he, with an unpleasant half-sneer, "that mere
change of place makes any difference in man, or that the merely physical
effects of death operate a magical change on his intellect, affections,
emotions, and volitions, or can render him a more reasonable creature
than he was before?"
"I did not mean exactly that," said I; "but surely it is not possible
that the soul without the body can be exactly like the soul with it."
"Have not your philosophers," said he, "often founded, or pretended to
found, scepticism on the argument that it is difficult to tell whether
life itself may not be a series of illusions like those in dreams?
Have they not even declared, that, as in dreams all seems to be real,
so in their waking moments all may be no more than a dream? nay, have
not some said that it is impossible to tell which is the real and
which the dreaming part of their existence?"
"There have been such," said I, "but I never knew any one convinced by
their reasoning."
"Perhaps not," he answered, "but it may be of use to show you, that
in that intermediate state men may, as in dreams, be capable of a
series of thoughts and emotions exactly similar to what they experienced
in this world; quite as vivid, and," he added with a quiet smile,
"perhaps as rational."
"But they must be more coherent than those which now visit our
slumbers," said I.
"It is hardly worth while to contend about the difference," he
replied, with a sarcastic expression which I did not much like.
"It is sufficient to say, however, that these projectors have no
reason to complain; for with whatever show of reason men think or
act here, so under exactly the same laws of thought and emotion do
those shadows act there."
"But I, who am now awake and perfectly sensible--"
He laughed outright. "Are you so sure," said he, "that you are awake.
How do you know it?"
"Because I am conscious of it," said I.
"And this too, I suppose, is a philosopher," he muttered to himself.
"Well," he continued aloud, "we must not discuss these matters just now;
you must believe me when I say that the communities to which our
experimenters go to work, on their own hypotheses, are just as capable
of ingenious reasoning and impartial and candid deliberation, as you are
now in your present waking moments. You wish to hear a few of these
experiments?"
I nodded.
"Well, then, first, there was one worthy philosopher, who, having seen
the advantages which infidelity has gained from the discrepancies and
other difficulties occasioned by the varied testimonies which the
evangelical historians have left behind them, resolved, after having
wrought a number of splendid miracles (uniformly affirmed and never
denied by the parties in whose presence they were performed), that
they should all be consigned to one single history., so admirably
constructed that there was not a single discrepancy from beginning
to end."
"And what was the effect?"
"Why, in the first place, you must recollect that, according to that
or any other mode of authenticating a divine communication by miracles,
there were a great many more of those who never saw the miracles than
of those who did; for if miracles had been common, they would have
ceased to be miracles. There were vast numbers, therefore, who, even
in the age in which they were performed, never believed them; but,
what is more, in four generations there was not a soul that did
not treat them as old wives' fables."
"Surely they were very unreasonable," I said.
"Not at all; it was inevitable; for it was asked (and every one assented
to it), whether it was reasonable that a story so marvellous, and so
contrary to experience, should be believed on any single testimony,
however unexceptionable? There were also keen critics who said, that,
as there was proof that in the very age in which the miracles were
wrought there were many who did not believe the message which they
professedly confirmed, it was a strong indication that the whole was a
fiction; while some others of still greater acumen discovered that the
very freedom from all discrepancies and contradictions in the account
itself smelt very strongly of art and design; that this perfection of
consistency was not the characteristic of any history ever written by
an honest man, and that no doubt it had been elaborately contrived by
a single highly inventive mind."
"The idiots!" I exclaimed. "Why, this very circumstance ought surely
to have led them to argue the other way."
"They thought otherwise; and I must say I think they argued very
plausibly, and that very much is to be said for them. They thought
that perfect self-consistency might possibly be obtained by a single
mind of highly inventive power, and they preferred believing that,
to receiving such wonderful things supported by any single testimony."
"But did none attempt to remedy this defect of the unhappy speculator?"
"O, yes; another attempted to establish in a second community of our
reasonable shadows a revelation on the same basis of miracles; but
instead of trusting to one witness, he recorded the results by ten;
and with such perfection of art, that all the ingenuity of all the
critics of succeeding ages could not detect a single variation other
than in language; the records themselves and their contents were
precisely the same.
"And what was the result."
"Much the same as before; for this identity of substance and almost
of manner showed most evidently, said the critics, that there had
been collusion between the several parties who had framed the
revelation:--and in the course of three or four generations it was
universally rejected, as totally unworthy of belief."
"I see not, then, how a revelation by any such means could be
authenticated at all?"
"Why, our reasonable creatures require a great deal of management,
--that is the truth. There is no way in which you cannot prove to your
own satisfaction, that no one of any divine communications (given
under the conditions aforesaid) is to be believed; but perhaps after
all, the method would have been more sure, had these sages confined
these communications to different testimonies, in which the general
harmony and undesigned coincidences should be manifest, but which
should contain slight discrepancies, and even some apparent
contradictions, which the parties, if there had been collusion, would
certainly have obviated. This would, perhaps, have been the best
guaranty that there could not be any fraud in the case."
"But this," I remarked, "was just the mode in which the Gospels of
Christ were consigned to mankind."
"And you see with what mixed result. It was sufficient, indeed, to
justify the method, if it was attended with less disastrous effects
than any other mode. For it is a problem of limits even at the
very best."
Prompted, I suppose, by some recollection of Woolston's opinion,
that the miracles of Jesus Christ would have been better worthy
of attention, and more likely to be credited by posterity, if they
had been performed on royal or notable public characters, or in
their presence, I felt curious to know if any one had been
determined to guard against a similar error. I was told that there
had been; and for a time every thing went on well. This sage's
doctrine and pretensions were rapidly propagated within certain
limits of space and time. But alas! while even in his lifetime the
zeal of some of the royal or noble converts caused the doctrine to
be regarded with considerable suspicion among the rival great, to
whom the fame of the miracles was known only by hearsay, its early
success proved an insurmountable objection in a few generations;
for several learned infidels showed to the satisfaction of the
entire community, that the pretended revelation could have been
nothing else than a conspiracy of crafty statesmen for political
purposes. It was sagely remarked, that it was not wonderful that a
doctrine had been believed, and had rapidly diffused itself, which
had all the prestige of rank, and power, and statesmanship in
its favor; that if, indeed, it had appeared amongst the poor and
ignorant portion of mankind, and the had been witnessed by such as
from their situation were rather likely to be persecuted by the
great and powerful than to be favored by them; and lastly, if the
pretended revelation had vanquished such resistance instead of
being suspiciously allied with it, something more might be said in
its behalf; but as it was, the whole thing was evidently--a lie.
"Really," said I, "it seems a more difficult thing for God to make
known his will to mankind than I had supposed."
"It is," said he, "on those conditions to which his wisdom for man's
own sake has restricted him, and apart from which condition I have
already stated that a revelation would be worthless. It is a far
more difficult matter than those who have not reflected upon the
subject would suppose, and you would have more reason to say so
still, if you knew, as I do, how ludicrously, as well as how utterly,
many other attempts have failed."
He then amused me with an account of a sage, who, seeing the ill
consequences which had followed from the very local or limited
character of miracles (when a few generations had passed by),
resolved to remedy this by a series of wonders so stupendous and
magnificent, that the very echo of them, as it were, should
reverberate through the hollow of future ages, and so impress all
tradition as to render them independent of the voice of individual
historians. He accordingly passed to the very extreme limit (if he
did not go beyond it) by which a miracle is necessarily restricted,--
that of not disturbing general laws. He succeeded perfectly in the
place in which these phenomena were witnessed; though, as there were
multitudes who knew nothing of the operator, but were only conscious
that nature was playing some strange pranks, no connection was
established in their minds between the doctrine and the miracles.
But the consequences in the future were the direct contrary of what
the sanguine philosopher had contemplated. If the impression of
those who saw these splendid wonders could have been prolonged,
all had been well; but so far from the report of them conciliating
the regard of posterity, their very grandeur and vastness were the
principal arguments against them, and condemned them to universal
rejection. Who could believe, men said, that phenomena so strange
and so portentous--not only so different from, and so contrary to,
the uniform course of nature, but so much beyond the limited purpose
which must have been contemplated by a truly miraculous
interposition--had ever happened? If they had been single events,
very transient and local disturbances of the laws of nature for a
high object, the case, they candidly avowed, would have been wholly
different; but such wholesale infractions of the fixed laws of the
universe were at once to be summarily rejected. They were
unquestionably the offspring of an age of fable and superstition.
It did not fare much better with another miracle-monger of the
same species. In one community, which he had engaged to instruct in
the mysteries of his revelation, the wonders he wrought extended to
such large classes of phenomena, and for a time were so constant,
that they ceased to be miracles at all. As he could not add ubiquity
to his other attributes, few attached any importance to his declaration
that he was the author of such vast and distant operations, and fewer
absolutely believed him. Moreover, men became accustomed to phenomena
which they daily witnessed; for such, it seems, is the constitution of
human nature in any world, that things cease to be wonderful when they
cease to be novel. Were it otherwise, men would be always wondering;
for no miracles are more wonderful than the phenomena of every day
in every part of the universe. Not a few wise men, therefore, in this
community, succeeded in giving a perfectly plausible account of these
wholesale infractions of the uniformity of nature. Nature, it was said,
was unquestionably uniform, but only in the several larger portions
of her operations; that within certain cycles she varied her operations,
as was clearly seen in the introduction of new races, and so forth;
that the generation which had just witnessed such departures from what
seemed the established order of things were doubtless living at an
epoch in which the huge evolution of the universe was about to exhibit
one of these new phases, and that the series of sequences to which they
were just becoming accustomed would afterwards continue uniform for a
number of ages; that such things were no miracles, but merely
indicated that nature was, within certain limits, only variably uniform,
though she was also, within certain limits, uniformly invariable.
After this very clear deliverance of philosophy, few people troubled
themselves about the claims of this seer, and were so fast getting
accustomed to the new uniformity, that it seemed highly probable that
the very next generation, or at most the second, would begin to prate
in the old style about the invariable uniformity of nature, and to
treat all the ancient order of things which their progenitors had
seen changed as a lying fable of those remote ages. Enraged at such
an unexpected result of his operations, the projector changed his plan,
and broke in upon nature with such a startling explosion of single
miracles, that there could be no longer any doubt that nature was
neither 'variably uniform' nor 'uniformly invariable': the only
question was, whether nature was not 'uniformly variable.' He set
the sun spinning through the heavens at such a rate, or rather at
such a jaunty pace, that no one knew when to expect either light or
darkness; men now froze with cold, and now melted with heat; the
seasons seemed playing one grand masquerade; the longest day and the
shortest day, and no day at all, succeeded one another in rapid
succession, and the whole universe seemed threatened with ruin and
desolation. Now, he thought, was the time to put an end to all this
strange disorder, and avow himself the great agent in all these marvels!
But he found, to his chagrin, that, so far from having convinced men
of the being and attributes of God, and of the truth of the revelation
which he had brought them, they were never less disposed to listen to
any such story; and, in fact, that the very few whose terror had
left them at all in possession of their senses, had become perfectly
convinced that the universe was under the dominion of Chance; and that
the only orthodox belief in such a world was stark Atheism. As there
will always be men who will speculate upon chance itself, there were
not wanting philosophers who concocted admirable theories of all this
disorder, but not one of them dreamed of the true. They all agreed,
however, that the state of things admitted of no remedy from any gods,
celestial or infernal; for if a divine artificer had existed, they said,
it could not have occurred. And thus the miracles which were designed
by this great man to convince the world of a God, served for a
demonstration that there was and could be none! They equally served
also to stifle the sage's claims to be considered God's messenger,
for, unhappily exhorting a large crowd to believe that he was the
cause of all the misery and terror which they had suffered, they were
so exasperated that they took summary vengeance on him: upon which
the sun resumed his wonted quiet pace again through the heavens, and
every thing fell into the old harmonious jogtrot of uniformity.
Philosophers who lived at a distance from the scene of the prophet's
exit quietly adjusted their old theory to the new phenomena, and showed
most conclusively that the whole train of things had been just what
must necessarily have been, and could not but have happened, without
the most serious consequences; while those who lived near to the scene
aforesaid, and were privy to the circumstances, speculated upon the
curious coincidence between the impostor's death and the return of
nature to her order. It was well, they said, that such things did not
happen often, or they could not fail to give rise to some superstitious
notions as to some law of causation between ignorant fanaticism and the
sublimest phenomena of the universe.
I asked my visitor how it fared with the many who have objected to the
clearness and force of prophecy, and who have not scrupled to assert,
that, if prophecies had been given, they would have been given in such
a shape as would have made their claims more plain, and their fulfilment
more incontrovertible. "Were there none who relied on this mode of
demonstrating the reality of a divine revelation, and manifesting their
claims to be regarded as an embassy from heaven?"