facts which show themselves there, is the co-existence of man and
the universe, spectator and spectacle, the one confronting the
other, the "_moi_" and the "_non moi_," the subject and
the object, in the language of philosophy. I hasten to say that I
repudiate absolutely the different systems,--Pantheism, whether
materialistic or idealistic,--Scepticism, whether idealistic or
absolute,--which refuse to admit this primary fact, deny the
reality of the external world, or the legitimacy of the knowledge
of it which the understanding acquires, see only illusions in the
relations of man to the universe, or absorb man and the universe
together, in the confusion and the obscure darkness of a
pretended identity. I do not dream of here discussing these
different systems; if I engaged in such discussion, I should have
to deal with something very different from the question to which
I am applying myself at this moment.
{179}
Here I have only to do with Rationalistic Spiritualism. This form
of Spiritualism has so much in common with Christianity, that it
admits the reality and the distinction of the "_moi_" and of
the "_non moi_" of the subject and the object, of the
spectator and the spectacle, of spirit and matter, of man and the
universe. For Rationalistic Spiritualists as well as for
Christians, this is the great fact in the midst of which, and
under the empire of which, man's intelligence is developed, man's
life passed. Man is there passive, active, and witness, all
simultaneously. As spectator he receives impressions from the
spectacle, which both prompt him to act, and which stir his being
from within; he is witness both to what is passing within himself
and to what is passing without himself. Notwithstanding the
diversity and the mobility of the impressions which he receives
from without, and of the acts which he originates himself, he has
a consciousness of his own personal and permanent existence, and
also the consciousness of existences other than his own; he knows
not, by the way of reasoning or hypothesis, but by instinctive
and immediate intuition, that which, although it is not himself,
yet acts upon himself as something coming from himself.
{180}
Man discovers the external world as he becomes aware of himself,
by the intercommunication which takes place between them, and
which, nevertheless, shows him how distinct from himself is that
external world. He observes and notes both what takes place
without him and within him. The results of this observation he
terms facts, nor are they for him vain appearances, creations
merely of his thought or volition; they are manifestations to him
of realities independent of himself, and yet to which he stands
in relation; they are bonds of union in which he feels that he is
highly interested, not merely as any curious spectator might be,
but as a real being; interested, not merely for the sake of
science, but interested as one whose very destiny is therein
involved.
{181}
Amongst these facts, in their nature so numerous and so diverse,
I only select those which concern the religious instincts of man,
or the questions which they suggest. I admit two kinds of these;
first, the spontaneous and common religious beliefs, which
mankind professes, although under very different forms and in
very different degrees; secondly, the theories and systems of
philosophy, emanating from and promulgated by philosophers in
order to bring under discussion the popular religious opinions,
and to resolve the questions which they involve. On the one side
is the natural and instinctive religion of humanity; on the other
is human science, which, when it addresses itself to the task of
disengaging natural religion from every system of mythology, is
called religious philosophy.
Are there in the nature and in the religious history of men no
other great facts besides these instincts of humanity, and these
systems of human science? Natural Religion with its mythologies,
and religious philosophy with its systems, are these all the
religious aid accorded to man to enlighten him upon subjects of
religion?
{182}
To the question thus formalised, Rationalistic Spiritualism says,
Yes; whereas Christian Faith replies, No.
In addition to the facts to which I have just referred, viz., the
instinctive beliefs of mankind, and the systemised doctrines of
human science concerning religion, the Christian faith admits and
proclaims another great religious fact, the real and active
presence of God in the life of man and in the history of
humanity. What the Christian faith affirms is, that the real and
active presence of God, in man's life, amidst the mysteries of
Providence, of prayer, and of grace, and the real and active
presence of God in the history of the human race, amidst the
mysteries of Revelation, of Inspiration, of the Incarnation, and
of the Redemption, do not constitute simply a poetical mythology,
are not merely hypotheses of philosophy, but are psychological
and historic facts which human science cannot explain, but which
it nevertheless can, nay, is bound to recognise.
{183}
Not philosophers only, but the whole human race, believers and
disbelievers, are placed in the same permanent position in which
all originally stood; that is to say, Man stands always
confronting the Universe, Man always at once spectator and actor,
greedy to know and comprehend the spectacle on which he is
looking, and of which he himself forms part. The spectacle is
immense, infinite; the spectator petty, imperfect, ephemeral,
diverse, and with limited powers of vision. Accordingly as he is
situated, accordingly as he is disposed and his intelligence
reaches, he sees to a greater or less distance, and with a vision
more or less accurate, all that the spectacle presents. He
observes more or less completely, more or less exactly, the facts
which are occurring there. Hence the differences of opinion
amongst mankind. Who are they amongst them who succeed best in
appreciating and in describing these facts without altering their
character or omitting any? This is the fundamental question, the
question antecedent to and which governs all the others.
{184}
The contest, then, between Christians and non-Christians, is not
a contest between Faith and Reason. Reason occupies a place, and
a large place, in the Faith of Christians; they attain to faith
as well by reason as by sentiment or authority; nor is there, at
the same time, in the negations or the doubts of non-Christians,
as much reflection and as much accurate observation as they
themselves suppose. Are Christians right in affirming not only
the existence of God, but his real and active presence in the
life of man and in the history of the human race? Are these
psychological and historic facts which reason and science are
bound to admit? Or are the Deists who are not Christians
justified in denying these facts and in limiting God to existence
alone, and in treating him as subject to the general and
permanent laws assigned to all other existences?
{185}
As far as Christianity and Rationalistic Spiritualism are
concerned, this is the real question at issue.
Having pointed out the source of the differences of opinion which
we find amongst men, I will now indicate their consequences.
Rationalistic Spiritualism affirms the existence of God, and
those who follow this system evince the strongest desire to
demonstrate his existence. They are right; for the existence of
God, and the rational consequences of his existence, form all
their natural religion, all their religious philosophy. In these
days, men of minds, as eminent as sincere, M. Émile Saisset, M.
Jules Simon, M. Ernest Bersot, M. de Rémusat, have made
earnest--I would willingly say pious--efforts to elucidate the
proposition of God's existence, and to derive from it all the aid
that reason can furnish to explain the instincts and satisfy the
religious exigencies of humanity. But these Spiritualists deceive
themselves. They do not attain to God himself, they only attain
to the idea of God; what they establish is the admissibility of
the intellectual idea, not the presence of a real being.
{186}
In rejecting the psychological and historical facts upon which
Christianity is founded, that is to say, the relations free and
unintermitted of God with Man, whether in the individual life of
each man or in the history of the mankind, Rationalistic
Spiritualism deprives itself of direct and positive evidence to
prove God's existence; it places a human argument in the place of
the divine manifestation, and a scientific work of man in the
place of the real action of God.
In an excellent book, justly entitled by him "Idea of God,"
another contemporary philosopher, M. Caro, has valiantly, and
with brilliant success, defended this idea against the different
systems which reject or distort it. And not limiting himself to
polemics, he has concluded his work by a forcible and clear
enunciation of his own thought.
{187}
"It is the living God, the intelligent God, whom we defend
against the God of Naturalism, who would not be more than a law
of geometry or a blind force; against the God of Hegel, who would
not be more than an indeterminate Being, an origin and a
commencement of things, or an absolute mind, result at once and
product of the world; against the God of the new Idealists, who,
to save his divinity, strip him of his reality. We affirm, in
opposition to all these subtle and hazardous conceptions, that a
supposed perfect being, unless he had an existence, would not be
perfect; that a mere ideal of the mind is not a God; that if he
is not a substance he is but a conception, a pure category of
spirit, a creation and dependence upon man's thought which, in
ceasing to exist, annihilates its God; that, if he is not cause,
he is the most useless of beings; and if he is cause, he is mind
supreme, for were he not so he would be nothing but an
unconscious and necessary agent, a blind spring of the world,
inferior to what he produces, since in the organic matter that
emanates from him, an intelligence displays itself, of which he
would possess nothing, and since too in man is manifested a
divine Reason.
{188}
Another remark, and we have done with our definition. This living
God, this God intelligent, is also a God that loves ... A God
that loved not would not be worthy of being adored ... We do not
adore a law, however simple it may be, however fruitful in
consequence; we do not adore a force if it be blind, however
potent, however universal it may be; nor an ideal, however pure
it may be, if it be only an abstraction. We only adore a being
who is living perfection, the perfection of reality in its
highest forms of mind and love. Every other adoration implies a
contradiction if the object is a pure abstraction, idolatry if
the object be the substance of the universe or humanity.
This is God as he appears to reason, and as the religious
conscience of humanity will have him. This is your God."
[Footnote 43]
[Footnote 43: L'Idée de Dieu et ses Nouveaux Critiques.
By E. Caro. p. 498. 8vo. Paris, 1864.]
{189}
It is to be regretted M. Caro has not carried his conclusions
still higher, and completed his work by proceeding on from
philosophical spiritualism to Christian Spiritualism.
Rationalistic Deism is merely an idea of God, given as the
philosophical solution of the grand problem, which the spectacle
of the Universe and of Man in the Universe causes to weigh upon
the soul of man.
Christianity is faith in God, Being real, Sovereign real,
continually present, and active in the government of the
Universe, as he is in the soul of man and in the history of the
human race.
Rationalistic Deism arrives at the idea of God, and stops short
there, because it ignores the psychological and historical facts
which go beyond this idea. It is by holding account of these
facts, and by doing to them the homage which is their due, that
Christianity forwards and justifies her faith.
{190}
Sixth Meditation.
Christian Life.
Every doctrine, religious, moral, or political, has yet to submit
to a test--the great test--the practical application. The idea
has to be transformed into reality, the thought to be made life.
Philosophers pride themselves upon searching only for the truth,
upon busying themselves only with the theoretical truth of their
ideas, to the neglect of every other consideration. They are
right in one sense: for the knowledge of truth, of truth as it is
in itself, is that which the human mind proposes to itself as its
object, and is the only thing which can satisfy it; if man
pretends to it, it is his right and his honour to do so: whatever
the object of his study, the mind does not halt or rest until it
believes that it has attained to the truth.
{191}
This is no privilege of philosophers; neither are they the only
ones for whom truth is a law: all men have a right to live under
its empire, whether as to facts or ideas. No one, not even those
who affect most disdain for theory, would venture to lay down the
principle that we should be indifferent whether we are
essentially in the right, and that practically there is no
difference between truth and error.
But by what signs is truth recognisable? Are there no other than
the affirmations of that inquisitive spectator, named the human
mind? Is it only by language, by reasoning, and by discussion,
that the truth of an idea and of a doctrine manifests and proves
itself?
To such a pretension, if advanced, I hesitate not to reply with a
denial, and in doing so, to repeat what I have just said: every
doctrine, religious, moral, or political, has to submit to a
test,--the practical application.
{192}
The idea transformed into reality, the thought made the life;
these are the most certain signs of an idea being intrinsically
true, these, too, are proofs of its reasonable legitimacy, which
it is bound to give.
There is a radical difference between the material world and the
intellectual world. The laws which regulate and maintain order in
the material world, are independent of man, of both his thought
and his volition. It matters not that he knows these laws, or is
ignorant of them; they do not the less exist and govern; man has
no power to change, arrest, or suspend their operation; he cannot
influence them. Galileo was right to say of the earth, in spite
of his judges, "Still it moves;" it would have moved even if
Galileo, as well as his judges, had been ignorant of the fact,
and the contest between the whirlpool of Descartes and Newton's
principle of attraction, was a matter perfectly indifferent to
the general system of the world. _There_ man's error is
absolutely without effect or influence.
{193}
In the intellectual and moral world it is otherwise; here man is
not only spectator, he is an actor, an actor free or not to act--
to act with effect. He thinks and he wills, and so contributes to
the facts which take place in the world; he knows, or is ignorant
of, the laws, he respects or violates the laws which preside
here, but which do not preside here as laws external to and
independent of himself. Man's errors, man's faults, are not here
without real and serious consequences; they have the power of
sowing evil and of carrying perturbation into the intellectual
and moral world, thus delivered up, as the Bible proclaims, to
the disputes of men.
Learned men, in the study and appreciation of the material world,
separate sciences absolutely, and, considering each apart from
its practical application, occupy themselves in their scientific
investigations only with the pure theory. This I understand and
admit; for such a course does not endanger the security of
society or the results of their own labours.
{194}
Their ignorance and their errors have no doubt grave
inconveniences; the facts and the forces of the material world
are either misconceived or not turned sufficiently to account;
man and human society do not reap all the advantages which the
profound and exact knowledge of the truth might, in this respect,
procure them. Such ill, although real, is of a negative
description, a good, it may be, missed or postponed; but no
general disturbance results in that material world upon which
naturalists or chemists concentrate their labours; the world will
not have to undergo the effect, nor to pay the penalty, of their
ignorance or of their errors. The intellectual and moral world,
on the contrary, runs a greater risk, and imposes upon its
teachers severer duties; no doubt these study it as freely, and
make truth, too, their object; but science does not here escape
the weight of its own conclusions; it is a power as formidable in
its abuse as it is in itself sublime; it may carry into the world
to which it addresses itself trouble instead of order,
incendiarism instead of light. If practical application is not
here the object of science, it is still its necessary and
appropriate proof; in facts as in a mirror are reflected the
truth or the error, the good or the ill, of human opinions.
{195}
Christianity has now been subjected to this test for nineteen
centuries: it is subject to it at this moment, it will continue
ever to be so. I need not say that I do not propose to retrace
here the narrative of the manner in which it has supported and
surmounted that test; that would be to write the History of
Christianity. I confine myself, on the contrary, to a single
small part of this history, the most modest part, the least
pretending: and shall endeavour to bare a little to the view what
Christianity, when it has been put into practice, what Christian
Faith, after it has become Christian Life, has in the different
situations of man's life accomplished, and is every day
accomplishing, for the ennoblement of his nature, and the
furtherance of his ultimate destiny.
{196}
Three words, "_Rights of Man_" inscribed upon the banners of
the French Revolution, constituted its force; the rights of man
as man, rights by this title alone, by virtue alone of his
humanity. Three other words, _Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity_, have served as a commentary upon the three
former. It is in the name of these two maxims that the French
Revolution is making the tour of the world; they are the sources
of the good and the evil, the movements in advance as well as the
ruinous calamities of our time and of an unknown future.
Whilst all of true and good that these two maxims contain is
Christian and was proclaimed by Christianity, all that they have
of false and fatal is condemned and expressly repudiated by
Christianity. Not only in this terrible confusion does
Christianity proclaim in principle the part that is good, and
condemn in principle the part that is evil; but Christianity
alone, in point of fact, has the necessary authority and moral
force to suppress the evil without at the same time causing the
good also to perish.
{197}
It is a subject to us, in these days, of pride, and of a pride
that is just, that we have at last begun to consider man himself,
the individual man, his existence, and his personal liberty, his
rights, and the guarantees of his rights, as the essential
objects of social institutions. We have at last emerged from the
rut of pagan antiquity, glorious at once and rude, where the
individual, made wholly subordinate, was sacrificed to the state,
where man was regarded simply as citizen, and thousands of human
creatures were degraded and treated as cyphers in favour of a
single class. Men are no longer numbered as Jews and Gentiles,
Romans and Barbarians, freemen and slaves. Christianity first not
only proclaimed but put into practice this important truth. The
right of every man, as man, the worth of the human soul, and of
the human person, irrespectively of his situation in life,
constitute the starting-point, the fundamental idea, the dominant
precept of the Christian religion.
{198}
It was, in effect, in religious society, in the rising Christian
Church, that this principle was first proclaimed, and first put
into practice; Christianity treated the relation of man to God as
the chief concern of man's life, and religious liberty as the
chief of human liberties; it was in the presence of God that
Christians admitted the equal importance of every soul; as it was
amongst Christians themselves that they greeted each other as
brethren, and that fraternity engendered charity. But although
sprung from a source so elevated, and applied at first upon a
stage so small, the Christian idea was not on that account less
potent, or less fruitful; in spite of obstacles and reverses it
maintained itself, and diffused itself through centuries and over
distant countries; it made constant efforts to penetrate civil
society. At the epochs of the history of Christendom which are
most to be deplored, in the midst of the oppressions and the
iniquities which have brought desolation upon it, daring voices
have never been wanting: at one time it was the voice of the
Christian Church itself directed against the masters of the
earth; at another a voice issuing from the bosom of the Church
itself, full of generous protestations against the disorders and
acts of violence which were taking place in its own bosom.
{199}
Jesus, God and man, having raised man before God, man never
afterwards entirely humiliated and degraded himself before any
human tyranny. In the presence of the greatest inequalities of
earthly power, the appellation, _brethren_, never ceased to
be echoed in Christian Society; and even at this day, after all
the progress which equality has made in civil society, it is only
in religious societies and in Christian Churches that men hear
themselves greeted as _brethren_.
The Christian faith has not only exercised a political influence
in the state by changing the relations in which individuals stand
to the political authorities, or in which the different classes
stand to one another: it has also introduced a change in the
constitution of the primary natural and imperishable association,
called family.
{200}
There, also, it has caused to disappear, at one time, the
despotism of husband and father; at another, the degradation of
wife, and the brutal or licentious independence of children. If
we give ourselves the trouble to compare the Christian family as
religion, laws, and morals have made it, with the family of
antiquity which was most strongly constituted, namely, the Roman
family,--we shall not need to examine long before we discern
clearly on which side order really is, on which side the just
appreciation of natural sentiments, the respect for right and
liberty.
I have said that at the same time that Christianity proclaims and
puts in practice all that is true and healthy in the popular
maxims of our times, man's rights and liberty, his equality and
fraternity, it condemns and rejects all that they contain of
false and deplorable. There is one very striking fact in the
history of the foundation of Christianity, a fact traceable not
merely in the records of a few years, but through three
centuries.
{201}
Christianity began with resisting absolute power, and with laying
claim to liberty of conscience. It owed its establishment to the
same cause. In the Roman world no one any longer made even a show
of resistance; every kind of oppression was in force, every claim
to freedom abandoned: the Christians again raised high the banner
of right, and of resistance in the name of right; but never did
they raise their banner to encourage revolt or attacks upon
authority; they undertook the defence of liberty against tyranny,
and never made appeals to insurrection against authority.
Martyrdom, not murder; such is the sum of the history of
Christianity from the day of its birth in the manger of Jesus, to
the day when it mounted the throne of Constantine. The reason of
this is, that from the time when Christianity was yet in its
cradle, and even afterwards when it was struggling to conquer its
liberty, liberty was not an exclusive idea for Christians either
in their doctrines or their lives: they recognised, respected,
and proclaimed with equal solicitude both principles upon which
the moral order of the world reposes, authority and liberty.
{202}
They never, in any respect, sacrificed the one to the other, nor
humiliated the one in the presence of the other; masters and
disciples, all referred power to its true source, and did homage
to its right at the same time that they maintained their own
right against power. When Jesus spoke, the people were astonished
at his doctrine, "for he taught as one having authority, and not
as the Scribes." [Footnote 44]
[Footnote 44: Matthew vii. 29.]
Jesus declared formally to his disciples his authority over them,
and the mission which it imposed upon them: "Ye have not chosen
me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go
and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain."
[Footnote 45]
[Footnote 45: John xv. 16.]
And when St. Paul, although exposed to all kinds of perils and
struggles, spread abroad throughout the Roman Empire the
doctrines of Jesus, he said to the new Christians, "Let every
soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but
of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. ... Wherefore ye
must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for
conscience' sake." [Footnote 46]
[Footnote 46: Romans xiii. 1, 5. ]
{203}
Nor can I here omit again to cite the words which Jesus himself
addressed to the Pharisees: "Render under Cæsar the things which
are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." [Footnote
47]
[Footnote 47: Matthew xxii. 21.]
The respect for authority as much as for liberty, the right of
power as well as the right of conscience, the separation of
religious life from civil life,--all these were not, for the
primitive Christians, simple necessities arising out of their
situation, nor simple counsels of prudence; they were principles
of doctrine and precepts of life, recognised and practised in the
name of justice and of truth.
{204}