(October, 1879.)
The _Christian World_ is distinguished among religious journals by a
certain breadth and vigor. On all social and political subjects it is
remarkably advanced and outspoken, and its treatment of theological
questions is far more liberal and intelligent than sceptics would
expect. Of late years it has opened its columns to correspondence on
many topics, some of a watery character, like the reality of Noah's
flood, and others of a burning kind, like the doctrine of eternal
punishment, on all of which great freedom of expression has been
allowed. The editor himself, who is, we suspect, far more sceptical than
most of his readers, has had his say on the question of Hell, and it is
to be inferred from his somewhat guarded utterance that he has little
belief in any such place. This, however, we state with considerable
hesitation, for the majority of Christians still regard the doctrine of
everlasting torture as indubitable and sacred, and we have no desire to
lower him in the estimation of the Christian world in which he labors,
or to cast a doubt on the orthodoxy of his creed. But the editor
will not take it amiss if we insist that his paper is liberal in its
Christianity, and unusually tolerant of unbelief.
Yet, while entitled to praise on his ground, the _Christian World_
deserves something else than praise on another. It has recently
published a series of articles for the purpose of stimulating faith and
allaying doubt. If undertaken by a competent writer, able and willing
to face the mighty difference between Christianity and the scientific
spirit of our age, such a series of articles might be well worth
reading. We might then admire if we could not agree, and derive benefit
from friendly contact with an antagonist mind. But the writer selected
for the task appears to possess neither of these qualifications. Instead
of thinking he gushes; instead of reason he supplies us with unlimited
sentiment. We expect to tread solid ground, or at least to find it not
perilously soft; and lo! the soil is moist, and now and then we find
ourselves up to the knees in unctuous mud. How difficult it is nowadays
to discover a really argumentative Christian! The eminent favorites of
orthodoxy write sentimental romances and call them "Lives of Christ,"
and preach sermons with no conceivable relation to the human intellect;
while the apologists of faith imitate the tactics of the cuttle-fish,
and when pursued cast out their opaque fluid of sentimentality
to conceal their position. They mostly dabble in the shallows of
scepticism, never daring to venture in the deeps; and what they take
pride in as flashes of spiritual light resembles neither the royal
gleaming of the sun nor the milder radiance of the moon, but rather the
phosphorescence of corruption.
In the last article of the series referred to, entitled "Thou art a God
that Hidest Thyself," there is an abundance of fictitious emotion and
spurious rhetoric. From beginning to end there is a painful strain that
never relaxes, reminding us of singers who pitch their voices too high
and have to render all the upper notes in falsetto. An attempt is made
to employ poetical imagery, but it ludicrously fails. The heaven of the
Book of Revelation, with its gold and silver and precious stones,
is nothing but a magnified jeweller's shop, and a study of it has
influenced the style of later writers. At present Christian gushers
have descended still lower, dealing not even in gold and jewels, but in
Brummagem and paste. The word _gem_ is greatly in vogue. Talmage uses it
about twenty times in every lecture, Parker delights in it, and it often
figures on the pages of serious books. In the article before us it is
made to do frequent service. A promise of redemption is represented as
shining gem-like on the brow of Revelation, Elims _gem_ the dark bosom
of the universal desert, and the morning gleams on the _dew-gemmed_
earth. Perhaps a good recipe for this kind of composition would be an
hour's gloat on the flaming window of a jeweller's shop in the West End.
But let us deal with the purport and purpose of the article. It aims at
showing that God hides himself, and why he does so. The fact which it is
attempted to explain none will deny. Moses ascended Mount Sinai to see
God and converse with him, Abraham and God walked and talked together,
and according to St. Paul the Almighty is not far from any one of us.
But the modern mind is not prone to believe these things. The empire of
reason has been enlarged at the expense of faith, whose provinces have
one after another been annexed until only a small territory is left her,
and that she finds it difficult to keep. Coincidently, God has become
less and less a reality and more and more a dream. The reign of law
is perceived everywhere, and all classes of phenomena may be explained
without recourse to supernatural power. When Napoleon objected to
Laplace that divine design was omitted from his mechanical theory of the
universe, the French philosopher characteristically replied: "I had no
need of that hypothesis." And the same disposition prevails in other
departments of science. Darwin, for instance, undertakes to explain the
origin and development of man, physical, intellectual and moral, without
assuming any cause other than those which obtain wherever life exists.
God is being slowly but surely driven from the domain of intermediate
causes, and transformed into an ultimate cause, a mere figment of the
imagination. He is being banished from nature into that poetical region
inhabited by the gods of Polytheism, to keep company there with Jupiter
and Apollo and Neptune and Juno and Venus, and all the rest of that
glorious Pantheon. He no longer rules the actual life and struggle of
the world, but lives at peace with his old rivals in--
"The lucid interspace of world and world,
Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans;
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts, to mar
Their sacred everlasting calm." *
* Tennyson: "Lucretius."
The essence of all this is admitted by the writer in the _Christian
World_; he admits the facts, but denies the inference. They show us
one of God's ways of hiding himself. Order prevails, but it is the
expression of God's will, and not a mere result of the working of
material forces. He operates by method, not by caprice, and hence the
unchanging stability of things. While doing nothing in particular, he
does everything in general. And this idea must be extended to human
history. God endows man with powers, and allows him freedom to employ
them as he will. But, strangely enough, God has a way of "ruling our
freedom," and always there is "a restraining and restoring hand."
How man's will can be free and yet overruled passes our merely carnal
understanding, although it may be intelligible enough to minds steeped
in the mysteries of theology. According to this writer, God's government
of mankind is a "constitutional kingdom." Quite so. It was once
arbitrary and despotic; now it is far milder and less exacting, having
dwindled into the "constitutional" stage, wherein the King _reigns_ but
does not _govern_. Will the law of human growth and divine decay stop
here? We think not. As the despotism has changed to a constitutional
monarchy, so that will change to a republic, and the empty throne be
preserved among other curious relics of the past.
God also hides himself in history. Although unapparent on the surface of
events, his spirit is potent within them. "What," the writer asks, "is
history--with all its dark passages of horror, its stormy revolutions,
its ceaseless conflict, its tears, its groans, its blood--but the
chronicle of an ever-widening realm of light, of order, of intelligence,
wisdom, truth, and charity?" But if we admit the progress, we need not
explain it as the work of God. Bunsen wrote a book on "God in History,"
which a profane wag said should have been called "Bunsen in History;"
yet his attempt to justify the ways of God to men was not very
successful. It is simply a mockery to ask us to believe that the slow
progress of humanity must be attributed to omniscient omnipotence. A
God who can evolve virtue and happiness only out of infinite evil and
misery, and elevate us only through the agency of perpetual blood and
tears, is scarcely a being to be loved and worshipped, unless we assume
that his power and wisdom are exceedingly limited. Are we to suppose
that God has woven himself a garment of violence, evil, and deceit, in
order that we might not see too clearly his righteousness, goodness, and
truth?
It must further be observed that Christian Theists cannot be permitted
to ascribe all the good in the world to God, and all the evil to man, or
else leave it absolutely unexplained. In the name of humanity we protest
against this indignity to our race. Let God be responsible for good and
evil both, or for neither; and if man is to consider himself chargeable
with all the world's wrong, he should at least be allowed credit for all
the compensating good.
The theory of evolution is being patronised by Theists rather too
fulsomely. Not long ago they treated it with obloquy and contempt, but
now they endeavor to use it as an argument for their faith, and in doing
so they distort language as only theological controversialists can.
Changing "survival of the _fittest_" into "survival of the _best_," they
transform a physical fact into a moral law; and thus, as they think,
take a new north-west passage to the old harbor of "whatever is is
right." But while-evolution may be construed as progress, which some
would contest, it cannot be construed as the invariable survival of
the best; nor, if it were, could the process by which this result is
achieved be justified. For evolution works through a universal struggle
for existence, in which the life and well-being of some can be secured
only through the suffering and final extinction of others; and even
in its higher stages, cunning and unscrupulous strength frequently
overcomes humane wisdom fettered by weakness. "Nature, red in tooth and
claw, with ravin shrieks against the creed" of the Theist. If God is
working through evolution, we must admit that he has marvellously hidden
himself, and agree with the poet that he _does_ "move in a mysterious
way his wonders to perform."
The writer in the _Christian World_ borrows an image from the puling
scepticism of "In Memoriam," which describes man as
"An infant crying in the night,
And with no language but a cry."
This image of the infant is put to strange use. The writer says that
God is necessarily hidden from us because we can grasp "his inscrutable
nature and methods" only as "an infant can grasp the thought and purpose
of a man." Similes are dangerous things. When it is demanded that they
shall run upon all fours, they often turn against their masters. This
one does so. The infant grows into a man in due course, and then he can
not only grasp the thought and purpose of his father, but also, it may
be, comprehend still greater things. Will the infant mind of man, when
it reaches maturity, be thus related to God's? If not, the analogy is
fallacious. Man is quite mature enough already, and has been so for
thousands of years, to understand something of God's thought and purpose
if he had only chosen to reveal them. This, however, if there be a
God, he has not condescended to do. An appeal to the various pretended
revelations of the world serves to convince us that all are the words of
fallible men. Their very discord discredits them. As D'Holbach said,
if God had spoken, the universe would surely be convinced, and the same
conviction would fill every breast.
The reason given for God's hiding himself is very curious. "If," says
the writer, "the way of God were not in large measure hidden, it would
mean that we could survey all things from the height and the depth of
God." Truly an awful contemplation! May it not be that God is hidden
from us because there is none to be revealed, that "all the oracles are
dumb or cheat because they have no secret to express"?
But, says the writer in the _Christian World_, there is one revelation
of God that can never be gainsaid; "while the Cross stands as earth's
most sacred symbol, there can be no utter hiding of his love." This,
however, we venture to dispute. That Cross which was laid upon the back
of Jesus poor mankind has been compelled to carry ever since, with no
Simon to ease it of the load. Jesus was crucified on Calvary, and in his
name man has suffered centuries of crucifixion. The immolation of
Jesus can be no revelation of God's love. If the Nazarene was God, his
crucifixion involves a complicated arrangement for murder; the Jews
who demanded his death were divinely instigated, and Judas Iscariot was
pre-ordained to betray his master; in which case his treachery was a
necessary element of the drama, entitling him not to vituperation but
to gratitude, even perhaps to the monument which Benjamin Disraeli
suggested as his proper reward. Looking also at the history of
Christianity, and seeing how the Cross has sheltered oppressors of mind
and body, sanctioned immeasurable shedding of blood, and frightened
peoples from freedom, while even now it symbolises all that is
reactionary and accursed in Europe, we are constrained to say that the
love _it_ reveals is as noxious as the vilest hate.