and he said, here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire
and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?
And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a
burnt-offering: so they went both of them together.
{110}
And they came to the place which God had told him of; and
Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order; and
bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.
And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to
slay his son.
And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and
said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, here am I.
And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou
any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God,
seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind
him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went
and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in
the stead of his son."
A man who, by his enlightened views, and the elevation of his
mind, as well as by his faithfulness as a follower of Christ, is
an honour to the church which he serves, Dr. Arthur Stanley, Dean
of Westminster, explains and characterises in these terms the
Biblical truths to which I am referring.
{111}
"There have been," he says, "in almost all ancient forms of
religion, and also in some of more modern date, two strong
tendencies, each in itself springing from the best and purest
feelings of humanity, yet each, if carried into the extremes
suggested by passion or by logic, incompatible with the other and
with its own highest purpose. One is the craving to please, or to
propitiate, or to communicate with the powers above us, by
surrendering some object near and dear to ourselves. This is the
source of all sacrifice. The other is the profound moral instinct
that the Creator of the world cannot be pleased, or propitiated,
or approached by any other means than a pure life and good deeds.
On the exaggeration, on the contact, on the collision of these
two tendencies, have turned some of the chief difficulties of
evangelical history. The earliest of them we are about to witness
in the life of Abraham. ...
{112}
The sacrifice, the resignation of the will in the father and the
son was accepted; the literal sacrifice of the act was repelled.
The great principle was proclaimed that mercy was better than
sacrifice,--that the sacrifice of self is the highest and holiest
offering that God can receive. ... We have a proverb which tells
us that man's extremity is God's opportunity." [Footnote 24]
[Footnote 24: Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church.
By Arthur P. Stanley, D.D. Vol. i. pp. 47, 48, 50. London,
1867.]
Abraham was upon the point of accomplishing an act which, even in
the presence of virtuous motives and a divine command, has been
forbidden, and is held accursed by the subsequent Revelation and
the sentiments of all whom it has enlightened. At this moment the
hand of Abraham is stayed, and patriarchal religion is saved from
the antagonism of a conflict between the rigour of the Hebrew law
and the merciful dispensation of the Gospel.
The sentiment which Dean Stanley expresses has my full
concurrence; but I go still further, and maintain that there is
in the pathetic narrative of Abraham's sacrifice something more
than he points out.
{113}
This interposition of God in order to arrest the very act which
he has required is in accord with the general doctrine of the
Bible, expressly condemning human sacrifices; [Footnote 25] but
Abraham's as well as several other examples prove how such
sacrifices continued to exist in the ferocious traditions and
manners, not only of several nations of Semitic origin, but even
of the Hebrews themselves. God's intent is to try Abraham, and he
pauses as soon as Abraham's obedience to the divine order is
beyond doubt. Abraham does not hesitate to execute the divine
command; he expresses no surprise at it. The sacrifice of Isaac
is prepared, and very nearly consummated, as an event almost of
course. Here we have man in the grossest and blindest condition
of barbarism, in the presence of God, in whom as sovereign he
believes, and whose sovereignty it is not his purpose to dispute.
[Footnote 25: Leviticus xviii. 21; Deuteronomy xii. 31;
Ezekiel xx. 26. This question is treated and conclusively
solved in the Theologische Encyclopedie of Herzog, art.
Sacrifice, vol. x. p. 621.]
{114}
It would be easy for me to multiply these examples, and to show,
in many other passages of the Bible, the following fundamental
characteristic of Biblical History: the thought and word of man,
although constantly in presence of the divine law and of the
divine action, yet in contact and contrast with the thought and
word of God. I prefer seeking for proofs in support of my
conviction in a comparison of the Old and New Testaments, and in
the light which Christianity sheds upon the Hebrew Revelation,
which it does not contradict, but to which it applies a movement
of progress.
I say progress,--progress immense, infinitely grander than man's
imagination could ever have conceived,--and at the same time the
character of the divine work remaining absolutely the same. It is
no longer, as in the Old Testament, the stormy combat, the
continuous struggle of God and of man in the events of the world
and in the life of the people. God no longer interposes in the
New Testament to warn or direct, to raise up or humble, to
recompense or to punish man in this world; he decides no longer
directly the issue of battle or the destiny of states.
{115}
It is still God, God in Jesus Christ, with all his sublimity: He,
and He only, occupies and fills the place. He appears there under
a different aspect. In his human form, He is weakness itself,
intended and destined to become the very type of humility and of
suffering; the voluntary victim, who expiates man's sin; the
victim of man's fall. But in the midst of His miseries it is God,
God as He was for Israel in all the splendour of His power.
Christ's own knowledge of this appears throughout. He says it, He
manifests it unceasingly by actions and by words; sometimes by
natural effects, sometimes by miracles. And yet how different!
what a range in the object and the bearing of His actions and of
His words! In the Old Testament the scene concentrates itself
upon a corner of the world, a single people, a petty nation,
separated by God from the rest of the world, in order to withdraw
it from the contagion of idolatry;--but now it is for the whole
world, for all nations, for future as well as for living
generations, for the Gentile as well as for the Jew, for the
barbarians of Malta as well as for the Greeks of Athens, that the
God of the New Testament manifests Himself and speaks; it is over
the whole of humanity that He spreads His light and orders His
servants to extend His empire.
{116}
He does more, much more. That divine light which Jesus comes to
spread over the whole world, although it continues to emanate
from the same fountain, becomes more complete and more pure.
Jesus is the first to recognise the fact that the ancient law,
although issuing from God, bears here and there traces of human
errors and passions. "I am not come," says he, "to abolish the
law, but to fulfil it." How fulfil it? By removing the errors
with which it had become intermixed owing to the imperfect nature
of the men, of the time, and of the place, at which it appeared,
and by filling up the gaps which that imperfection had entailed.
He disentangles the ancient law from every human element, and
brings it back to its one divine element, its one pure and
perfect source. I refrain from all argument or commentary. I will
not cite anything in proof of this grand fact but those very
texts of the Ancient and of the New Testament which embody their
most essential precepts.
{117}
I read in Exodus, "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand,
foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for
stripe." [Footnote 26] Jesus effaces this _lex talionis_.
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your
enemies; bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate
you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute
you." [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 26: Exodus xxi. 24, 25.]
[Footnote 27: Matthew v. 43, 44.]
It is said in the book of Deuteronomy: "When a man hath taken a
wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour
in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then
let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand,
and send her out of his house." [Footnote 28]
[Footnote 28: Deuteronomy xxiv. 1.]
{118}
I read in the New Testament: "And the Pharisees came to him, and
asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? ... And
he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And
they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to
put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the
hardness of your hearts he wrote you this precept. But from the
beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this
cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his
wife; and they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more
twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together,
let not man put asunder." [Footnote 29]
[Footnote 29: Mark x. 2-9; Matthew xix. 3-9.]
The Mosaic law condemns to death every adulterer: "If a man be
found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall
both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the
woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel." [Footnote 30]
[Footnote 30: Deuteronomy xxii. 22.]
{119}
Jesus is called upon to pronounce upon the very case: "And the
scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery;
and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him,
Master, this woman was taken in adultery; in the very act. Now
Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned: but
what sayest thou? This they said tempting him, that they might
have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger
wrote on the ground as though he heard them not. So when they
continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them,
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at
her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they
which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out
one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and
Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When
Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said
unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man
condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her,
Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." [Footnote 31]
[Footnote 31: John viii. 3-11.]
{120}
The Mosaic law is full of minute ceremonial regulations, and of
rigorous conditions, which attach to the performance of certain
external acts, in certain appointed places, the duty of adoration
and of prayer. Not only does Jesus object to the Scribes and
Pharisees that they place all their faith and their piety in the
acts alone; he does more; he gives his disciples personally a
lesson of striking simplicity by teaching them the Lord's Prayer;
and when the Samaritan woman, whom he meets near the well of
Jacob, says to him: "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and
ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
... Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, ... the hour cometh,
and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in
spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in
spirit and in truth." [Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: John iv. 20, 21, 23, 24.]
{121}
Thus Jesus, not to abolish but to accomplish the ancient law, and
to make it harmonise with the new and universal work which he is
about, separates from the law that which the imperfection of man
had introduced in it in other times, and for a more limited work;
he leaves in it nothing but the divine element in all its purity
and empire. He only leaves to the divine element its religious
and moral empire, for it is in its name alone that he speaks; the
religious and moral law is the only law revealed by Jesus, and
extended over the entire world; no other thought mixes itself
with his doctrine, no other motive influences his action;
political science, human science, have absolutely no place at all
in the New Testament; Jesus does not think of satisfying either
social ambition or intellectual curiosity; he desires to make
neither kings nor doctors; as soon as he finds such pretensions
advanced, he sets them aside;
{122}
"Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's; and unto God the
things that are God's." "I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." [Footnote 33]
[Footnote 33: Matthew xxii. 21; xi. 25.]
Jesus occupies himself with man's soul alone, with the human
being in his native simplicity; the relations of man, of every
man, with God; the state and destiny of the human soul, of every
human soul, in the present and in the future: this is the sole
idea, the sole mission, of the New Testament. Jesus knows that
when once accomplished this will bring with it its own salutary
consequences: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his
righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."
[Footnote 34]
[Footnote 34: Matthew vi. 33.]
{123}
I do not hesitate, then, to affirm, that human science, in its
different and special objects,--whether astronomy, geology,
geography, chronology, physics, historical criticism,--is as
foreign to the object as it is to the source of the sacred
Volumes. In the sciences we have the domain of the mind of man
left to itself, and to itself alone. They are the fruits,
assiduously cultivated and slowly acquired by the laborious
exertions of the human intellect during a succession of ages. If,
then, you meet, in Scriptural texts, not treating of acts
declared miraculous, terms and assertions apparently repugnant to
facts recognised as truths in these different sciences, feel no
disquietude. It is not there that God has set up His divine
torch; it is not there that God has spoken. The language is the
language of the men of the different epochs, men who speak
according to the measure of their knowledge or of their
ignorance, the language which they are obliged to speak in order
to be understood by their contemporaries. I feel surprised that
men should require to be told this, so simple, so clear is it.
{124}
In matters of religion and of morality there have always existed,
and in every place there have existed, spontaneous instincts,
aspirations, and ideas common to all men, which lead them to
employ a similar language,--a language comprehended and received
by all who hear it, whatever in other respects may be their
inequality in attainments and civilization; whereas, in matters
purely scientific we find nothing at all like this; men in the
mass see and speak of these, not as they are to the eye of
science, but according to their appearances, and so men
comprehend or do not comprehend them, hear them or do not hear
them, according to the degree of scientific knowledge or of
ignorance prevalent at the time and place at which they live.
What would the Hebrews in the Desert, or the Jews about the
person of Christ, or the savages of the Pacific have said to his
missionaries, if they had been told that it is the earth which
turns round the sun, that its shape is that of a spheroid, that
it is habitable and inhabited at opposite points of its
circumference?
{125}
What is more natural, what more inevitable, than that the
language of the Scriptures should agree with the scientific
imperfection of men upon all these matters, even where that
language is full of divine inspiration as to the religious or
moral law of humanity?
No one honours science more than I do, no one feels a greater
admiration for it. It is a mission that man has to perform, and
it is one of his glories; but it has no place in the relation of
man with God, and in the action of God upon man. God is no
sublime, no mighty doctor, who reveals truths of science to man,
to give him the noble pleasure of contemplating them, or of
publishing them; he has left such researches to labours purely
human. The work of God is more complex and grander: it is
essentially practical. That of which man, every man, stands in
need, that after which he thirsts, that which all mankind asks of
God, simple as well as learned, is to be enlightened as to the
religious and moral truths which are to regulate his soul and his
life, and to decide his lot in eternity.
{126}
It is to all mankind that God responds; it is to the salvation of
all men that the Scripture applies itself. A celebrated
philosopher, a man of a mind lofty and sincere, but one of the
most lost of the great lost ones of the human intelligence,
thought differently. According to Spinoza, "all men are far from
being called to enjoy eternal life in the same plenitude. ...
After death the reason,--just ideas survive; all the rest
perishes. Souls governed by reason, philosophical souls, who even
from the moment when their life in this world ceases, live in
God, are consequently exempt from death; for death deprives them
only of that which is of no value. But those dim and feeble
souls, upon which reason hardly gleams at all, those souls made
up entirely, so to say, of empty imaginings and passions, perish
almost entirely; and death, instead of coming to them as a simple
accident, penetrates to the very bottom of their being. The soul
of the sage, on the contrary, cannot be more than barely
troubled; possessing, by a sort of eternal necessity, the
consciousness of itself and of God, and of things as they really
are, it never ceases to exist; and as for real tranquillity of
soul, it possesses it for ever." [Footnote 35]
[Footnote 35: Œuvres de Spinoza. According to the translation
of Emile Saisset. Introduction, vol. iii. p. 291.]
{127}
I know not if human pride ever gave expression to a thought
showing a stranger aberration of intellect; and in spite of the
favour with which some men of distinguished abilities endeavour
at the present day to encircle the name of Spinoza, I do not
believe that there is any chance, at an epoch when war is
declared against all privileges, for philosophers to make good
their exclusive claim to the privilege of immortality.
{128}
Fourth Meditation.
Christian Ignorance.
When I use the term "Christian Ignorance," I would not have
either the sense which I attach to the expression, or the
intention with which I use it, misunderstood. I do not think that
it should be denied to man to make any use of his intelligence,
to exercise any right to inquire freely after truth, or after any
kind of truth. Is the field which is open to the human mind
limited in extent? Is the mind itself of limited reach? Is there
a difference of degree in human knowledge according as the
objects are different to which it is applied? These are
questions, all of them, fundamentally contained in the words
"Christian Ignorance;" and of these questions it is my aim to
offer what appears to me to be the right solution.
{129}
I am in the presence of four sciences, and of six schools or
systems, which have made, are making, and will always continue to
make, much noise in the world. The sciences are, Physiology,
Psychology, Ontology, and Theology. The systems to which these
sciences have given birth are, Materialism, Positivism,
Scepticism, Spiritualism, Scientific Theology, Mystical Theology.
I am far from meaning to discuss here the principles of these
systems, or to attempt to determine their value; it would be to
undertake the task of examining all philosophy and all
philosophies. I mean to touch only upon one of the special
questions which furnish in our days matter of debate between
Christianity and these different schools. It is thus, and thus
only, that I can clearly establish the sense which I attach to
the words "Christian Ignorance;" and determine, at the same time,
their bearing and their limitation.
{130}
I have, and for very simple reasons, little to say respecting the
first three systems to which I have just referred, i. e.,
Materialism, Positivism, Scepticism. By its denial of the
distinction of the soul and the body, of mind and matter,
Materialism rejects Psychology, and arrives, as far as Ontology
is concerned, only at Atheism or at Pantheism. Of the four great
philosophical sciences, Physiology is the only one with which
Materialism has any concern. Amongst Positivists, some, the more
eminent, admit, it is true, the reality of Objects, or to speak
more exactly, the reality of the domain of Psychology and of
Ontology; but in admitting it they declare it to be inaccessible
to the human mind: "Inaccessible," says M. Littré, "not null or
non-existent; it is an ocean which washes our shore, and for
which we have neither bark nor sail." [Footnote 36]
[Footnote 36: A. Comte et la Philosophie Positive.
By M. Littré, p. 519.]
That is to say, that, according to Positivists, Psychology,
Ontology, and Theology are not--cannot be--sciences.
{131}
As for sceptics, they contest to the human mind all certitude,
and especially certitude with respect to the subject-matters of
Psychology, Ontology, and Theology. The fundamental principle of
Christian belief is then too absolutely strange to those three
schools for it to be necessary that I should discuss with them
the source, bearing, and legitimacy of that which I term
"Christian Ignorance."
It is only with Spiritualists, with scientific Theologians, and
with mystic Theologians, that it is possible to discuss this
question of Christian Ignorance, for the three schools to which
they belong are the only ones which, in the same way as
Christianity itself does, open to the human mind the domain of
the four sciences--Physiology, Psychology, Ontology, and
Theology, and which recognise the right of the human mind there
to search after truth, and the possibility of its being there
discovered.
When I speak of Spiritualists, a preliminary remark is
indispensable. Christianity is as spiritualistic, not to say more
so, than Spiritualism itself.
{132}
It is not, then, with Spiritualism in general, and with all
Spiritualists without distinction, that Christians have to deal
in the question of "Christian Ignorance," as it has in other
questions; the discussion here lies between Christianity and
Rationalistic Spiritualism alone; and not only between
Rationalism and Christian ignorance, but also between
Rationalistic science and Christian science.