man's nature. At the same time that he lays down, in all its
rigour, the principle of the moral law, the pure accomplishment
of duty, he forgets not that man has need of happiness, and
thirsts after happiness, after a happiness pure and lasting; he
opens to virtue the prospect of its attainment, he holds out a
hope, foreign to all worldly objects, hope of an ideal happiness
inaccessible to the curiosity of man's mind, but apt to satisfy
the aspirations of his soul, and not, as it were, a conquest to
be effected by merit, nor the acquittal of a debt, but a
recompense to be accorded to the virtuous efforts of man by the
equitable benevolence of God.
{86}
The Christian Religion, at the same time that it compels man
during this life to constant and laborious exertion, has in store
for him, if only he labour in accordance to the law, "the kingdom
of God" and "the promises of eternal life."
Thus, Jesus knows human nature entirely, and satisfies it; he
keeps simultaneously in view man's duties and his necessities,
his weaknesses and his merits. He does not allow the curtain to
fall upon the rude scenes of life, and the sad spectacles of the
world, without any _dénouement_. He has a prospect, and a
futurity, and a satisfaction for man, superior to his trials, and
superior to his disappointments. In what manner does Jesus attain
this result? How does he touch all the chords of man's soul, and
respond to all its appeals? By the intimate union of morality
with religion, of the moral law with moral responsibility: sole
view, complete at once and definitive, of the nature and destiny
of humanity; sole efficacious solution of the problems which
weigh upon the thought and life of man!
{87}
I say the sole efficacious solution. Efficacy is, in truth, the
peculiar, the essential characteristic of Christianity. However
high-reaching the ambition of philosophy is, it is infinitely
less so than that of religion. The ambition of philosophers is
purely scientific. They study, observe, discuss; their labours
produce systems, schools. The Christian Religion is a practical
work, not a scientific study. At the base of its dogmas and of
its precepts there is certainly a philosophy, and, in my opinion,
the true philosophy; but this philosophy is only the point from
which Christianity departs, not its object. The object is to
induce the human soul to govern itself according to the divine
law; and to attain this object it deals with man's nature as it
is, in its entirety, with all its different elements, all its
sublime aspirations. There, to borrow the language of strategy,
we see the basis of operation of Christianity; the basis upon
which it enters upon its moral struggle, and upon which it
undertakes to ensure the triumph in man of good over evil, and to
procure the salvation of man by his reformation.
{88}
When I published, two years ago, the Second Series of these
Meditations--the subject of which is the actual state of the
Christian Religion--I essayed to characterise therein the
fundamental errors of the different philosophical systems which
combat it. I sent, according to my custom, the volume to my
companion in life, and my _confrère_ at the Institute, M.
Cousin, with whom, notwithstanding our differences of opinion, I
maintained always very friendly relations. On the 1st June, 1866,
he wrote to me from the Sorbonne the following letter:--
"My dear Friend,
"As soon as I received your book I hastened to read it, and I
tell you very sincerely that I am very content with it. The
little difference between our opinions, which you have not
pretended to conceal, are inevitable, because they are the
consequence of a general dissimilarity in the manner in which
we form our conceptions of the nature of philosophy and of the
nature of religion.
{89}
These two great powers may and ought to be in accord, still
they are different. To Religion belongs an influence of an
elevated and universal kind; to philosophy an influence more
restricted, and still very elevated. The one addresses itself
to the entire soul, comprising in it the imagination; the other
only addresses itself to the reason. The first sets out from
mysteries, without which there is no religion; the second sets
out from clear and distinct ideas, as has been said both by
Descartes and by Bossuet. This distinction is the foundation of
my philosophy and of my religion; and this distinction is also,
in my view, the principle of their harmony. To confound them
is, I think, an infallible mode of confusing them each by the
other, as Malebranche has done. To absorb philosophy in
religion gave, in Pascal, the result of a faith full of
contradiction and of anguish; to absorb religion in philosophy
is an extravagant enterprise, of which sound philosophy must
disapprove. To admit them both, each in its place, is truth,
grandeur, and peace.
{90}
"Hence you perceive the reason of our differences of opinion,
which are no more hurtful to our union, than they are to our
old and sincere friendship."
I replied to him on the 13th of June:--
"I count, as well as you, my dear friend, upon our
dissentiments not being hurtful to our old and sincere
friendship; and I feel the more pleasure in so counting,
because, independently of our particular and petty
dissentiments, there is, as you say, between us a general, a
profound difference of opinion. I think, as you do, that
philosophy is not to be confounded or absorbed in religion, nor
religion in philosophy. I regard them both as free in their
manifestations and in their influence; but I do not found their
distinction or their accord upon the same grounds as you do.
{91}
To me, philosophy is but a science, that is the work of man,
limited in its sphere and reach, as is man's mind itself.
Religion, in its principle and its history, is of divine origin
and institution. The one springs from man's avidity of
knowledge; the other is the light coming from God, 'which
shines upon every man that comes into the world,' and which God
continues to maintain and to shed over the world, according to
his impenetrable designs, by the act, general or special, of
his free will.
"I will not say more. We know, both of us, how far our opinions
are in the same road, and where is the point of divergence."
I had left Paris when I received M. Cousin's letter. He was at
Cannes when I returned to Paris. We never saw each other
afterwards. He has preceded me to that region where light is shed
upon the mysteries of this life. But in our last correspondence
we had each touched in a few words upon the knot of the whole
question.
{92}
It is this--What are the points of resemblance, and what of
difference, between Religion and science, between Christianity
and philosophy? Although M. Cousin and I agreed as to the
reciprocal rights of these two influences to liberty of action,
we entertained different sentiments as to their origin and their
nature, and consequently as to the boundaries of their empire,
and the character of their mission.
{93}
Third Meditation.
Christianity And Science.
It is the faith of Christians, and the point from which
Christianity starts, that the Scriptures, which render an account
of its origin, its dogmas, and its precepts, are divinely
inspired. Not that Christians understand by these words that
divine action upon the mind of man so often called inspiration,
and of which Cicero said, "No one has ever been a great man
without some divine inspiration;" [Footnote 17] and of which
Plato was thinking when he said, "It is not by art that they make
these noble poems, but because a God is in them, by whom they are
possessed. ... They do not speak so by art, but by divine power."
[Footnote 18]
[Footnote 17: Pro Archià, c. 8.]
[Footnote 18: I have translated the Greek text literally,
which M. Cousin has rendered with his accustomed elegance.
(Jon., vol. iv. p. 249, et passim.) Note of author.]
{94}
The inspiration of the holy book of Christianity is quite a
different thing: it is special and supernatural. There is divine
inspiration in all the great works of man; these books are a work
directly and personally inspired by God: they affirm this
themselves. The language used by Jesus in the Gospels incessantly
implies it; and, in numerous passages, the epistles of St. Peter
and St. Paul, as well as the Acts of the Apostles, declare it
positively. [Footnote 19]
[Footnote 19: In his History of Christian Theology in the
Apostolic Age, M. Reuss acknowledges it: "This inspiration,"
says he, "was regarded as something unlike any other, and
reserved to a few individuals chosen by Providence, and only
to them upon special and solemn occasions;" and he refers to
the different texts of the New Testament which prove his
assertion. (Vol. i. p. 411, ed. 1860.)]
This Christian principle of the special and divine inspiration of
the Scriptures was not originally taken in so narrow an
acceptation as in later times.
{95}
In the first ages of the Christian era, the Christians of the
school of Plato, whilst carefully distinguishing the inspiration
of the sacred volumes from the inspiration of the great poets,
strove to determine the process common to these two kinds of
inspiration, and to explain one by the other--"It is not by any
effect of nature nor by any human faculty," says St. Justin,
"that it is in the power of men to know things so grand and so
divine; it is by the grace which descends from on high upon the
saints. They have no need for any art to be revealed to them;
pure themselves, they must offer themselves to the action of the
divine spirit, in order that the divine bow, descending itself
from heaven and making use of the just, in the same way as the
musician does of the chords of a harp or lyre, may unfold to us
the knowledge of things divine." "I think," says Athenagoras,
"that you are not ignorant of Moses, or of Isaiah, or of the
other prophets, who, being turned aside from any process of
individual reasoning, and moved by the spirit of God, proclaimed
aloud that which echoed within them, the holy spirit employing
them and attaching itself to them as the player adds to his flute
the breath which makes it discourse its music."
{96}
Questions soon began to be agitated in Christendom as to which of
the religious books in circulation were really inspired, and as
to which did not possess this divine characteristic. Hence
proceeded disputes in respect to the Apocryphal books, and the
formation of the Canon, or collection of the Holy Scriptures. But
even in the very books, received by all as divinely inspired,
great Christian doctors, not merely Origen, but St. Jerome and
St. Augustin, discovered grammatical errors and faults which it
was impossible to attribute to divine inspiration; and they
distinguished, with greater or less exactness, the inspiration of
God from the imperfection of man. St. Jerome points out solecisms
in the Epistles of St. Paul; and St. Augustin says, in speaking
of St. John, "I venture to say that John perhaps has not spoken
of the thing as it really was, but only as it was in his power to
speak; for he is a man, and he speaks of God.
{97}
Inspired, no doubt, by God, but still a man. ... When we meet
with such diversity of expressions--although not in themselves
contradictory--used by the Evangelists, we should regard, in the
words of each, only the intent with which the words are
pronounced, and not, like wretched cavillers, attach an idea of
truth to the external form of the letter; for we must seek the
very spirit, not only in all the words, but in everything else
which serve as symptoms of the manifestation of the spirit."
It was in the presence and in spite of these discussions, of this
explanation and of this free criticism, that the divine
inspiration of the Scriptures was nevertheless upheld in the
fourth century as the common and positive faith of Christians.
I pass by the twelve following centuries: a long period; full of
darkness, but yet with flashes of light; silent yet full of
uproar, full of liberty and oppression: period beginning with the
invasion of the Barbarians and terminating with the Renaissance;
that period in short which, taken together, is called the Middle
Age.
{98}
I transport myself at once to the sixteenth century, that epoch
of political struggles, when men reduced to systems, and reasoned
upon, the different elements of moral and social institutions;
for they had, ever since the fall of the Roman Empire, been
fermenting pell-mell in Europe, which, although so small, was yet
destined to conquer and civilize that globe, termed by us the
world.
Striving to discover what, after the lapse of so many years and
events, had become of the principle of the divine inspiration of
the sacred books, that base of the religious faith and rule of
Christian societies, I find that this question had received two
solutions: one in the name of the Church of Rome, by its
representative the Council of Trent; the other in the name of the
Protestant churches, by their great founders and teachers. The
Council of Trent "receives all the books both of the old and of
the new Testament, since the same God is the author of each;
surrounds them with the same respect, and with an equally pious
reverence;" inserts in its decree the complete catalogue of these
books, and "anathematises whoever does not accept as sacred and
canonical those books, with all that they contain, just as they
are in use in the Catholic Church, and as they exist in the
ancient Latin edition known as the Vulgate." [Footnote 20]
[Footnote 20: Le Saint Concile de Trente, translated by the
Abbé Chanut, pp. 10--13. Paris, 1686.]
{99}
The founders of the great Protestant Churches, although they
began to apply the right of historical criticism to both texts
and manuscripts, proclaimed nevertheless the absolute and
complete inspiration of the holy volumes, in form and sense,
narrative, precepts, and words. The Bible, all the Bible, the
old, the new Testament, were, according to them, written at God's
dictation to serve as the law of Christian Faith.
{100}
The Decree of the Council of Trent remains the Rule of the Church
of Rome in the nineteenth century as much as it was in the
sixteenth century; and in our days a Protestant Divine, justly
respected for elevation of thought as much as for the energetic
sincerity of his Faith, in maintaining the principle of the
complete and divine inspiration, and of the absolute
infallibility, of the Bible, has been driven so far as to make
this strange assertion: "All the expressions and all the letters
of the ten commandments were certainly written by the finger of
God, from the Aleph with which they begin, to the Caph with which
they end;" a few pages further on he says: "The Decalogue, we
repeat, was written entirely by the finger of Jehovah upon the
two stone slabs." [Footnote 21]
[Footnote 21: Théopneustie. By M. Gaussen.
2nd ed., 1842, pp. 225, 242.]
"Be on your guard," said Bossuet, "you assign to God arms and
hands; unless you strip these expressions of all that savours of
humanity, so as to leave nothing of arms and hands but their
action and their force, you err. ... God does everything by
command; he has no lips to move, neither does he strike the air
with his tongue to draw forth sounds from it; he has only to
will, and his will is accomplished." [Footnote 22]
[Footnote 22: Elévations sur les Mystères, vol. ix. pp.
66-68, 85, 109; and the Sixiéme Avertissement sur les lettres
de Jurieu, vol. xxx. pp. 57, 134.]
{101}
The empire of circumstances, both in the sixteenth and the
nineteenth centuries, has had much to do with the adoption of
these two doctrines, thus conceived and expressed. The Council of
Trent, in order to cut short all controversies with the
Reformers, took the Scriptures, and the interpretation of the
Scriptures, under the guardianship of the supreme and infallible
authority of the Church of Rome. The Reformers, in their turn,
found their fixed point and a basis, firm in the midst of the
movement to which they were giving the impulse, in the
infallibility of the Bible, itself divinely inspired. And at the
present time, on the one side the Church of Rome in its new
dangers, and on the other side the Protestants, sincere in their
ardent zeal to awaken that Christian Faith which is languishing,
have pushed the two doctrines,--the former of ecclesiastical
authority, the latter of biblical infallibility,--to their
extremest verge: in my opinion each beyond the limits of right
and of truth. History explains errors, it does not justify them.
{102}
I resume, briefly: those with which I reproach the two doctrines
referred to,--they severally infringe, the one the rights of
religious liberty, the other those of human science. In both
cases they greatly endanger that Christian Religion which they
have, in these respects, severally ill understood.
I have already expressed my views upon this subject. [Footnote
23]
[Footnote 23: Meditations on the Essence of Christianity.
Sixth Meditation. Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, pp.
145-146. London, 1864.]
Fervent and learned men 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. 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 his purpose to give
instruction in geology, astronomy, geography, or chronology.
{103}
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."
I have read the Holy Scriptures scrupulously, and over and over
again, with a view neither to criticise nor defend, with the sole
object of familiarising myself with their character and sense.
The more I advanced in this study, the longer I had lived in the
Bible, the more did the two facts seem clear to me, the Divine
truths and the human faults at once profoundly distinct and in
intimate contact. I meet at each step in the Bible with God and
with man: God, Being real and personal, to whom nothing happens,
in whom nothing changes, Being identical and immovable in the
midst of the universal movement, who gives of himself the
unparalleled definition, "I am that I am:" on the other side man,
Being incomplete, imperfect, variable, full of deficiencies and
of contradictions, of sublime instincts and gross desires, of
curiosity and ignorance, capable of good and of evil, and
perfectible in the midst of his imperfection.
{104}
What the Bible is incessantly showing us is, God and Man, their
points of connection and their contests,--God watching over and
acting upon man; man at one time accepting, at another rejecting,
God's influence. The divine person and the human person, if the
expression is permissible, are in each other's presence, each
acting upon the other and upon events. It is the education of man
after his Creation: his education as a religious and moral being,
nothing less and nothing more. God does not, in thus educating
man, change him: he created him intelligent and free: he
enlightens him as to the religious and moral law with light from
heaven; in other respects he leaves him absorbed in the laborious
and perilous exercise of his intelligence and of his liberty as a
free agent.
{105}
At each epoch, in every circumstance, during his continuous
action upon man, God takes him as he finds him, with his
passions, vices, defects, errors, ignorance; just such a being as
he has made himself; nay, every day is making himself, by the
good or bad use of his intelligence and of his freedom of action.
This is the Biblical account, and the Biblical history of the
relations of Man with God.
What a strange contrast, and still what an intimate and powerful
connection exists, in this history, between those whom--how shall
I dare to permit myself to call the two actors! God does not
appear so elevated, so pure, so strange to imperfection, so
untroubled by any human nature, so immutable and serene in the
plenitude of the divine nature, so really God, in any tradition,
invention of poetry, or in any mythology, as he is presented to
us in the Bible. On the other hand, in no nation, in no
historical narrative or document, does man show himself more
violent and ruder, more brutal, more cruel, more prompt to
ingratitude, and more rebellious to his God, than he is amongst
the Hebrews.
{106}
Nowhere else, and in no history, is the distance so great between
the divine sphere and the human region, between the sovereign and
the subject. Still, Israel never entirely separates itself from
God; and, in spite of vices and excesses, Israel returns to God,
and recognises his law and empire, even whilst incessantly
violating them. Nowhere, on the other hand, does God appear, in
his turn, so occupied with man, does he at once exact so much
from him and yet evince so much sympathy for him: he does not
change him suddenly, by any act of his sovereign will; he is a
witness to all his imperfections, all his weaknesses, and all his
errors; nevertheless, he abandons him not; he holds ever steadily
before him the torch of Heavenly Light, and never omits to
interest himself in his destiny. The religious and moral idea is
ever present and dominant; nowhere else have the business and
labour of human science held so small a place in man's thoughts
and man's society. God, and the relations of God and man, are the
only subjects which fill the Holy volumes.
{107}
In what do those relations consist? By what results does this
continuous action manifest itself, of God upon man; this
incessant dialogue between God and man? By laws, precepts, and
commands, religious and moral--God proposes these to man; he
enjoins nothing more; he speaks to him of nothing else; demands
nothing from him but obedience to his Law. God does not teach, he
commands; God does not discuss, he warns. And the organs of God's
speech, the men whom he takes for his interpreters and his
prophets, Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, do neither less nor more.
Although superior to most of their contemporaries by reason of
possessing certain attainments, they are no professors of human
sciences: just as they speak the language of the common people
whom they address, just so do they share most of their ignorance
and errors respecting the objects and facts of the finite world,
in the midst of which they are living.
{108}
When they are made the medium for the religious and moral
precepts and warnings of God, it is then that they are no longer
mere men of their time; it is then, only then, that the light of
divine inspiration descends upon them, and that they diffuse it
to all around them.
I do not wish to limit myself to a general summary only of what I
regard as the essential character of the Holy Scriptures,--the
simultaneous presence of the divine element and of the human
element; the one in all its sublimity, the other in all its
imperfection; God revealing to man in a certain place his
religious law and his moral law, but without conveying elsewhere
the divine light; God taking man as he finds him, in the points
of time and of space in which he is placed, with all his
barbarism and imperfections. I proceed, therefore, to consider
some of the particular examples presented by the Scriptures,
which make this great truth so evident as to be incontestable.
{109}
I open the book of Genesis and read:--
"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt
Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here
I am.
And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou
lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him
there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I
will tell thee of.
And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass,
and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and
clave the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went
unto the place of which God had told him.
Then on the third day Abraham lift up his eyes, and saw the
place afar off.
And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the
ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come
again to you.
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it
upon Isaac his son: and he took the fire in his hand, and a
knife: and they went both of them together.