(August, 1880.)
At one of Charles Lamb's delightful Wednesday evenings Coleridge had,
as usual, consumed more than his fair share of time in talking of some
"regenerated" orthodoxy. Leigh Hunt, who was one of the listeners,
manifested his surprise at the prodigality and intensity of the poet's
religious expressions, and especially at his always speaking of Jesus
as "our Savior." Whereupon Lamb, slightly exhilarated by a glass of
gooseberry cordial, stammered out, "Ne--ne--never mind what Coleridge
says; he's full of fun." This jocular and irreverent criticism is
perhaps, after all, the most pertinent that can be passed on the
utterances of this school of "regenerated orthodoxy." Coleridge, who had
unbounded genius, and was intellectually capable of transforming British
philosophy, went on year after year maundering about his "sumject"
and "omject," mysteriously alluding to his great projected work on
the Logos, and assuring everybody that he knew a way of bringing all
ascertained truth within the dogmas of the Church of England. His
pupil, Maurice, wasted a noble intellect (as Mill says, few of his
contemporaries had so much intellect to waste) in the endeavor to
demonstrate that the Thirty-Nine Articles really anticipated all the
extremest conclusions of modern thought; afflicting himself perpetually,
as has been well said, with those "forty stripes save one." And now
we have Dean Stanley, certainly a much smaller man than Maurice, and
infinitely smaller than Coleridge, continuing the traditions of the
school, of which let us hope he will be the last teacher. What his
theology precisely is no mortal can determine. He subscribes the
doctrines of the Church of England, but then he interprets them in an
esoteric sense; that is, of course, in a Stanleyan sense; for when the
letter of doctrine is left for its occult meaning every man "runs" a
private interpretation of his own. The _Nineteenth Century_ for August
contains a characteristic specimen of his exegesis. It is entitled "The
Creed of the Early Christians," but is really a sermon on the Trinity,
which doubtless has been preached at Westminster. We shall examine its
peculiarities and try to reach its meaning; a task by no means easy, and
one which we could pardon anyone for putting aside with Lamb's remark,
"It's only his fun."
Dean Stanley has a new theory of the Trinity, partly deduced from other
mystics, and partly constructed on the plan of the negro who explained
that his wooden doll was made "all by myself, out of my own head." God
the Father, in this as in other theories, comes first: not that he is
older or greater than the other persons, for they are all three coequal
and coëternal; but because you must have a first for the sake of
enumeration, or else the most blessed Trinity would be like the
Irishman's little pig who ran about so that there was no counting him.
There is also another reason. God the Father corresponds to _Natural_
Religion, which of course has priority in the religious development
of mankind; coming before _Revealed_ Religion, to which God the Son
corresponds, and still more before _Spiritual_ Religion to which
corresponds the Holy Ghost.
"We look round the physical world; we see indications of order, design,
and good will towards the living creatures which animate it. _Often,
it is true, we cannot trace any such design_; but, whenever we can, the
impression upon us is the sense of a Single, Wise, Beneficent Mind,
the same now that it was ages before the appearance of man--the same in
other parts of the Universe as it is in our own. And in our own hearts
and consciences we feel an instinct corresponding to this--a voice, a
faculty, that seems to refer us to a higher power than ourselves, and
to point to some Invisible Sovereign Will, like to that which we see
impressed on the natural world. And further, the more we think of the
Supreme, the more we try to imagine what his feelings are towards
us, the more our idea of him becomes fixed as in the one simple,
all-embracing word that he is _Our Father_."
The words we have italicised say that design cannot _always_ be traced
in nature. We should like to know where it can _ever_ be. Evolution
shows that the design argument puts the cart before the horse. Natural
Selection, as Dr. Schmidt appositely remarks, accounts for adaptation as
a _result_ without requiring the supposition of design as a _cause_. And
if you cannot deduce God from the animate world, you are not likely
to deduce him from the inanimate. Dean Stanley himself quotes some
remarkable words from Dr. Newman's _Apologia_--"The being of a god is as
certain to me as the certainty of my own existence. Yet when I look
out of myself into the world of men, I see a sight which fills me with
unspeakable distress. _The world of men seems simply to give the lie to
that great truth_ of which my whole being is so full. If I looked into
a mirror and did not see my face, I should experience the same sort of
difficulty that actually comes upon me when _I look into this living
busy world and see no reflection of its Creator._" How, asks the Dean,
is this difficulty to be met? Oh, he replies, | we must turn to God the
Son in the person of Jesus Christ, and his utterances will supplement
and correct the uncertain sounds of nature; and then there is the Holy
Ghost to finally supply all omissions, and clear up all difficulties.
Now to our mind this is simply intellectual thimble-rigging. Or rather
does it not suggest the three-card trick? One card is useless, two cards
are unsafe, but with three cards to shuffle you are almost sure to
win. Dr. Newman gets his God through intuition; he maintains that
the existence of God is a primary fact of consciousness, and entirely
declines the impossible task of proving it from the phænomena of nature.
Dean Stanley should do the same. It is not honest to employ an argument
and then shirk all the difficulties it raises by resorting to the
theological three-card trick, which confounds instead of satisfying the
spectator, while emptying his mental pockets of the good cash of common
sense.
The Dean's treatment of God the Son is amusing. He writes of Jesus
Christ as though he were a principle instead of a person. "The
Mahometan," he says, "_rightly_ objects to the introduction of the
paternal and filial relations into the idea of God, when they are
interpreted in the _gross and literal sense_. But in the moral spiritual
sense it is true that the kindness, tenderness and wisdom we find in
Jesus Christ is the reflection of the same kindness, tenderness and
wisdom which we recognise in the governance of the universe." This may
be called mysticism, but we think it moonshine. Gross and literal sense,
forsooth! Why, was not Jesus Christ a man, a most literal fact, "gross
as a mountain, open, palpable?" Dean Stanley approves the Mahometan's
objection, and yet he knows full well that it contravenes a fundamental
dogma of the Christian Church, and is accounted a most damnable heresy.
Why this paltering with us in a double sense? To our mind downright
blatant orthodoxy, which is at least honest if not subtle, is preferable
to this hybrid theology which attempts to reconcile contradictions
in order to show respect to truth while sticking to the flesh-pots of
error, and evades all difficulties by a patent and patently dishonest
method of "interpretation."
Quoting Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," Dean Stanley tells us that one great
benefit traceable to God the Son is the recognition of "humility and
poverty, mockery and despising, wretchedness and suffering, as divine."
Well, if these things are divine, the sooner we all become devilish the
better. Nobody thinks them divine when they happen to himself; on the
contrary, he cries out lustily against them. But it is a different
matter when they happen to others. Then the good Christian considers
them divine. How easily, says a French wit, we bear other people's
troubles! Undistracted by personal care, pious souls contemplate with
serene resignation the suffering of their neighbors, and acknowledge in
them the chastening hand of a Divine Father.
God the Holy Ghost represents _Spiritual_ religion: the Father
represents God in Nature, the Son represents God in History, and "the
Holy Ghost represents to us God in our own hearts and spirits and
consciences." Here be truths! An illustration is given. Theodore Parker,
when a boy, took up a stone to throw at a tortoise in a pond, but felt
himself restrained by something within him; and that something, as his
mother told him, was the voice of God, or in other words the Holy Ghost.
Now if the Holy Ghost is required to account for every kind impulse of
boys and men, there is required also an Unholy Ghost to account for all
our unkind impulses. That is, a place in theology must be found for
the Devil. The equilateral triangle of theology must be turned into a
square, with Old Nick for the fourth side. But Dean Stanley does not
like the Devil; he deems him not quite respectable enough for polite
society. Let him, then, give up the Holy Ghost too, for the one is the
correlative of the other.
"It may be," says the Dean, after interpreting the Trinity, "that the
Biblical words in some respects fall short of this high signification."
What, God's own language inferior to that of the Dean of Westminster?
Surely this is strange arrogance, unless after all "it's only his fun."
Perhaps that is how we should take it. Referring to some sacred pictures
in the old churches of the East on Mount Athos, intended to represent
the doctrine of the Trinity, the Dean says that standing on one side the
spectator sees only Christ on the Cross, standing on the other he sees
only the Holy Dove, while standing in front he sees only the Eternal
Father. Very admirable, no doubt. But there is a more admirable picture
described by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his "Study of Sociology," which
graphically represents the doctrine of the Trinity in the guise of three
persons trying to stand in one pair of boots!
Goethe is cited as a Christian, a believer in the Trinity. Doubtless the
Dean forgets his bitter epigram to the effect that he found four things
too hard to put up with, and as hateful as poison and serpents; namely,
tobacco, garlic, bugs, and the _Cross_. Heine also is pressed into
service, and an excellent prose translation of one of his poems is
given, wherein he celebrates the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God. But Dean
Stanley has read his Heine to little purpose if he imagines that this
radiant and splendid soldier of progress meant by the Spirit of God the
third person of the Christian Trinity. Heine was no Christian, and the
very opposite of a theologian. We might translate passages of scathing
irony on the ascetic creed of the Cross from the _De L'Allemagne_, but
space does not admit. A few of Heine's last words must do instead. To
Adolph Stahr he said: "For the man in good health Christianity is an
unserviceable religion, with its resignation and one-sided precepts.
For the sick man, however, I assure you it is a very good religion."
To Alfred Meissner: "When health is used up, money used up, _and sound
human sense used up_, Christianity begins." Once, while lying on
his mattress-grave, he said with a sigh: "If I could even get out on
crutches, do you know whither I would go? Straight to church." And when
his hearer looked incredulous, he added: "Most decidedly to church.
_Where else should one go with crutches?_" Such exquisite and mordant
irony is strange indeed in a defender of the holy and blessed Trinity.
Dean Stanley's peroration runs thus:--"Wherever we are taught to know
and understand the real nature of the world in which our lot is cast,
there is a testimony, however humble, to the name of the Father;
wherever we are taught to know and admire the highest and best of human
excellence, there is a testimony to the name of the Son: wherever there
is implanted in us a presence of freedom, purity and love, there is a
testimony to the name of the Holy Ghost." Very fine, no doubt; also
very soporific. One is inclined to mutter a sleepy Amen. If this
passage means anything at all it implies that all who know truth, admire
excellence, and have any share in freedom and virtue, are testators
to the names of Father, Son and Holy Ghost; so that many Atheists are
Trinitarians without knowing it. "In Christianity," says the Dean, "no
thing is of real concern except that which makes us wiser and better."
That is precisely what the sceptic says, yet for that coroners reject
his service on juries, and rowdy Christians try to keep him out of
Parliament when he has a legal right to enter. But the Dean adds:
"Everything which does make us wiser and better is the very thing which
Christianity intends." That is, Christianity means just what you like to
find in it. How can a man of Dean Stanley's eminence and ability
write such dishonest trash? Must we charitably, though with a touch of
sarcasm, repeat Lamb's words of Coleridge--"Never mind; it's only his
fun?"