Phases of Faith Part 12

[Footnote 6: Horace and Cicero speak the mind of their educated contemporaries in saying that "we ought to pray to G.o.d _only_ for external blessings, but trust to our own efforts for a pure and tranquil soul,"--a singular reversing of spiritual religion]

CHAPTER IX.

REPLY TO THE DEFENCE OF THE "ECLIPSE OF FAITH."

This small treatise was reviewed, unfavourably of course, in most of the religious periodicals, and among them in the "Prospective Review,"

by my friend James Martineau. I had been about the same time attacked in a book called the "Eclipse of Faith," written (chiefly against my treatise on the Soul) in the form of a Platonic Dialogue; in which a sceptic, a certain Harrington, is made to indulge in a great deal of loose and bantering argumentation, with the view of ridiculing my religion, and doing so by ways of which some specimen will be given.

I made an indignant protest in a new edition of this book, and added also various matter in reply to Mr. Martineau, which will still be found here. He in consequence in a second article[1] of the "Prospective" reviewed me afresh; but, in the opening, he first p.r.o.nounced his sentence in words of deep disapproval against the "Eclipse of Faith."

"The method of the work," says he, "its plan of appealing from what seems shocking in the Bible to something more shocking in the world, simply doubles every difficulty without relieving any; and tends to enthrone a devil everywhere, and leave a G.o.d nowhere.... The whole force of the writer's thought,--his power of exposition, of argument, of sarcasm, is thrown, in spite of himself, into the irreligious scale.... If the work be really written[2] in good faith, and be not rather a covert attack on all religion, it curiously shows how the temple of the author's wors.h.i.+p stands on the same foundation with the _officina_ of Atheism, and in such close vicinity that the pa.s.ser-by cannot tell from which of the two the voices stray into the street."

The author of the "Eclipse," buoyed up by a large sale of his work to a credulous public, put forth a "Defence," in which he naturally declined to submit to the judgment of this reviewer. But my readers will remark, that Mr. Martineau, writing against me, and seeking to rebut my replies to him--(nay, I fear I must say my _attack_ on him; for I have confessed, almost with compunction, that it was I who first stirred the controversy)--was very favourably situated for maintaining a calmly judicial impartiality. He thought us both wrong, and he administered to us each the medicine which seemed to him needed.

He pa.s.sed his strictures on what he judged to be my errors, and he rebuked my a.s.sailant for profane recklessness.

I had complained, not of this merely, but of monstrous indefensible garbling and misrepresentation, pervading the whole work. The dialogue is so managed, as often to suggest what is false concerning me, yet without a.s.serting it; so as to enable him to disown the slander, while producing its full effect against me. Of the directly false statements and garblings I gave several striking exhibitions. His reply to all this in the first edition of his "Defence" was reviewed in a _third_ article of the "Prospective Review," Its ability and reach of thought are attested by the fact that it has been mistaken for the writing of Mr. Martineau; but (as clearly as reviews ever speak on such subjects) it is intimated in the opening that this new article is from a new hand, "at the risk of revealing _division of persons and opinions_ within the limits of the mystic critical _We_." Who is the author, I do not know; nor can I make a likely guess at any one who was in more than distant intercourse with me.

This third reviewer did not bestow one page, as Mr. Martineau had done, on the "Eclipse;" did not summarily p.r.o.nounce a broad sentence without details, but dedicated thirty-four pages to the examination and proof. He opens with noticing the parallel which the author of the "Eclipse" has inst.i.tuted between his use of ridicule and that of Pascal; and replies that he signally violates Pascal's two rules, _first_, to speak with truth against one's opponents and not with calumny; _secondly_, not to wound them needlessly. "Neglect of the first rule (says he) has given to these books [the "Eclipse" and its "Defence"] their apparent controversial success; disregard of the second their literary point." He adds, "We shall show that their author misstates and misrepresents doctrines; garbles quotations, interpolating words which give the pa.s.sage he cites reference to subjects quite foreign from those to which in the original they apply, while retaining the inverted commas, which are the proper sign of faithful transcription; that similarly, he allows himself the licence of omission of the very words on which the controversy hangs, while in appearance citing _verbatim_;... and that he habitually employs a sophistry too artful (we fear) to be undesigned. May he not himself have been deceived, some indulgent render perhaps asks, by the fallacies which have been so successful with others? It would be as reasonable to suppose that the grapes which deluded the birds must have deluded Zeuxis who painted them."

So grave an accusation against my a.s.sailant's truthfulness, coming not from me, but from a third party, and that, evidently a man who knew well what he was saying and why,--could not be pa.s.sed over unnoticed, although that religious world, which reads one side only, continued to buy the "Eclipse" and its "Defence" greedily, and not one in a thousand of them was likely to see the "Prospective Review," In the second edition of the "Defence" the writer undertakes to defend himself against my advocate, in on Appendix of 19 closely printed pages, the "Defence" itself being 218. The "Eclipse," in its 9th edition of small print, is 393 pages. And how does he set about his reply? By trying to identify the third writer with the second (who was notoriously Mr. Martineau), and to impute to him ill temper, chagrin, irritation, and wounded self-love, as the explanation of this third article: He says (p. 221):--

"The third writer--if, as I have said, he be not the second--sets out on a new voyage of discovery ... and still humbly following in the wake of Mr. Newman's great critical discoveries,[3] repeats that gentleman's charges of falsifying pa.s.sages, garbling and misrepresentation. In doing so, he employs language, and _manifests a temper_, which I should have thought that respect for himself, if not for his opponent, would have induced him to suppress. It is enough to say, that he quite rivals Mr. Newman in sagacity, and if possible, has more successfully denuded himself of charity.... If he be the same as the second writer, I am afraid that the little Section XV." [_i.e._ the reply to Mr. Martineau in 1st edition of the "Defence"] "must have offended the _amour propre_ more deeply than it ought to have done, considering the wanton and outrageous a.s.sault to which it was a very lenient reply, and that the critic affords another ill.u.s.tration of the old maxim, that there are none so implacable as those who have done a wrong.

"As the spectacle of the reeling Helot taught the Spartans sobriety, so his _bitterness_ shall teach me moderation. I know enough of human nature to understand that it is very possible for an _angry_ man--and _chagrin and irritation are too legibly written on every page of this article_--to be betrayed into gross injustice."

The reader will see from this the difficulty of _my_ position in this controversy. Mr. Martineau, while defending himself, deprecated the profanity of my other opponent, and the atheistic nature of his arguments. He spoke as a bystander, and with the advantage of a judicial position, and it is called "wanton and outrageous." A second writer goes into detail, and exposes some of the garbling arts which have been used against me; it is imputed[4] to ill temper, and is insinuated to be from a spirit of personal revenge. How much less can _I_ defend myself, and that, against untruthfulness, without incurring such imputation! My opponent speaks to a public who will not read my replies. He picks out what he pleases of my words, and takes care to divest them of their justification. I have (as was to be expected) met with much treatment from the religious press which I know cannot be justified; but all is slight, compared to that of which I complain from this writer. I will presently give a few detailed instances to ill.u.s.trate this. While my charge against my a.s.sailant is essentially moral, and I cannot make any parade of charity, he can speak patronizingly of me now and then, and makes his main attacks on my _logic_ and _metaphysics_. He says, that in writing his first book, he knew no characteristics of me, except that I was "a gentleman, a scholar, and _a very indifferent metaphysician_" At the risk of encountering yet more of banter and insult, I shall here quote what the third "Prospective Reviewer" says on this topic. (Vol. x. p.

208):--

"Our readers will be able to judge how well qualified the author is to sneer at Mr. Newman's metaphysics, which are far more accurate than his own, or to ridicule his logic. The tone of contempt which he habitually a.s.sumes preposterously reverses the relative intellectual _status_, so far as sound systematic thought is concerned, of the two men."

I do not quote this as testimony to myself but as testimony that others, as well as I, feel the _contemptuous tone_ a.s.sumed by my adversary in precisely that subject on which modesty is called for. On metaphysics there is. .h.i.therto an unreconciled diversity among men who have spent their lives in the study; and a large part of the endless religious disputes turns on this very fact. However, the being told, in a mult.i.tude of ingenious forms, that I am a wretched logician, is not likely to raffle my tranquillity. What does necessarily wound me, is his misrepresenting my thoughts to the thoughtful, whose respect I honour; and poisoning the atmosphere between me and a thousand religious hearts. That these do not despise me, however much contempt he may vent, I know only too well through their cruel fears of me.

I have just now learned incidentally, that in the last number (a supplementary number) of the "Prospective Review," there was a short reply to the second edition of Mr. Rogers's "Defence," in which the Editors officially _deny_ that the third writer against Mr. Rogers is the same as the second; which, I gather from their statement, the "British Quarterly" had taken on itself to _affirm_.

I proceed to show what liberties my critic takes with my arguments, and what he justifies.

I. In the closing chapter of my third edition of the "Phases," I had complained of his bad faith in regard to my arguments concerning the Authoritative imposition of moral truth from without. I showed that, after telling his reader that I offered no proof of my a.s.sertions, he dislocated my sentences, altered their order, omitted an adverb of inference, and isolated three sentences out of a paragraph of forty-six lines: that his omission of the inferential adverb showed his deliberate intention to destroy the reader's clue to the fact, that I had given proof where he suppresses it and says that I have given none; that the sentences quoted as 1,2,3, by him, with me have the order 3, 2,1; while what he places first, is with me an immediate and necessary deduction from what has preceded. Now how does he reply?

He does not deny my facts; but he justifies his process. I must set his words before the reader. _(Defence, 2nd ed., p. 85.)

"The strangest thing is to see the way in which, after parading this supposed 'artful dodge,'[5] which, I a.s.sure you, gentle reader, was all a perfect novelty to my consciousness,--Mr. Newman goes on to say, that the author of the 'Eclipse' has altered the order of his sentences to suit a purpose. He says: 'The sentences quoted as 1, 2, 3, by him, with me have the order 3, 2, 1.' I answer, that Harrington was simply anxious to set forth at the head of his argument, in the clearest and briefest form, the _conclusions_[6] he believed Mr.

Newman to hold, and which he was going to confute. He had no idea of any relation of subordination or dependence in the above sophisms, as I have just proved them to be, whether arranged as 3, 2, 1, or 1, 2, 3, or 2, 3, 1, or in any other order in which the possible permutations of three things, taken 3 and 3 together, can exhibit them; _ex nihilo, nil fit_; and three nonent.i.ties can yield just as little. Jangle as many changes as you will on these three cracked bells, no logical harmony can ever issue out of them."

Thus, because he does not see the validity of my argument, he is to pretend that I have offered none: he is not to allow his readers to judge for themselves as to the validity, but they have to take his word that I am a very "queer" sort of logician, ready "for any feats of logical legerdemain."

I have now to ask, what is garbling, if the above is not? He admits the facts, but justifies them as having been convenient from his point of view; and then finds my charity to be "very grotesque," when I do not know how, without hypocrisy, to avoid calling a spade a spade.

I shall here reprint the pith of my argument, somewhat shortened:--

"No heaven-sent Bible can guarantee the veracity of G.o.d to a man who doubts that veracity. Unless we have independent means of knowing that G.o.d is truthful and good, his word (if we be over so certain that it is really his word) has no authority to us: _hence_ no book revelation can, without sapping its own pedestal, deny the validity of our _a priori_ conviction that G.o.d has the virtues of goodness and veracity, and requires like virtues in us. _And in fact_, all Christian apostles and missionaries, like the Hebrew prophets, have always confuted Paganism by direct attacks on its immoral and unspiritual doctrines, and have appealed to the consciences of heathens, as competent to decide in the controversy. Christianity itself has _thus_ practically confessed what is theoretically clear, that an authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man. What G.o.d reveals to us, he reveals within, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses. External teaching may be a training of those senses, but affords no foundation for cert.i.tude."

This pa.s.sage deserved the enmity of my critic. He quoted bits of it, very sparingly, never setting before his readers my continuous thought, but giving his own free versions and deductions. His fullest quotation stood thus, given only in an after-chapter:--"What G.o.d reveals to us, he reveals _within_, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses." "Christianity itself has practically confessed what is theoretically clear, _(you must take Mr. Newman's word for both,)_[7] that an authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man." "No book-revelation can, without sapping its own pedestal, &c. &c."

These three sentences are what Mr. Rogers calls the three cracked bells, and thinks by raising a laugh, to hide his fraud I have carefully looked through the whole of his dialogue concerning Book Revelation in his 9th edition of the "Eclipse" (pp. 63-83 of close print). He still excludes from it every part of my argument, only stating in the opening (p. 63) as my conclusions, that a book-revelation is impossible, and that G.o.d reveals himself from within, not from without In his _Defence_ (which circulates far less than the "Eclipse," to judge by the number of editions) he displays his bravery by at length printing my argument; but in the "Eclipse" he continues to suppress it, at least as far as I can discover by turning to the places where it ought to be found.

In p. 77 (9th ed.) of the "Eclipse." he _implies_, without absolutely a.s.serting, that I hold the Bible to be an impertinence. He repeats this in p. 85 of the "Defence." Such is his mode. I wrote: "_Without_ a priori _belief_, the Bible is an impertinence," but I say, man _has_ this _a priori_ belief, on which account the Bible is _not_ an impertinence. My last sentence in the very pa.s.sage before us, expressly a.s.serts the value of (good) external teaching. This my critic laboriously disguises.

He carefully avoids allowing his readers to see that I am contending fundamentally for that which the ablest Christian divines have conceded and maintained; that which the common sense of every missionary knows, and every one who is not profoundly ignorant of the Bible and of history ought to know. Mr. Rogers is quite aware, that no apostle ever carried a Bible in his hand and said to the heathen, "Believe that there is a good and just G.o.d, _because_ it is written in this book;" but they appealed to the hearts and consciences of the hearers as competent witnesses. He does not even give his reader enough of my paragraph to make intelligible what I _meant_ by saying "Christianity has practically confessed;" and yet insists that I am both unreasonable and uncharitable in my complaints of him.

I here reprint the summary of my belief concerning our knowledge of morality as fundamental, and not to be tampered with under pretence of religion. "If an angel from heaven bade me to lie, and to steal, and to commit adultery, and to murder, and to scoff at good men, and usurp dominion over my equals, and do unto others everything that I wish _not_ to have done to me; I ought to reply, BE THOU ANATHEMA! This, I believe, was Paul's doctrine; this is mine."

It may be worth while to add how in the "Defence" Mr. Rogers pounces on my phrase "_a priori_ view of the Divine character," as an excuse for burying his readers in metaphysics, in which he thinks he has a natural right to dogmatize against and over me. He must certainly be aware of the current logical (not metaphysical) use of the phrase _a priori_: as when we say, that Le Verrier and Adams demonstrated _a priori_ that a planet _must_ exist exterior to Ura.n.u.s, before any astronomer communicated information that it _does_ exist. Or again: the French Commissioners proved by actual measurement that the earth is an oblate spheroid, of which Newton had convinced himself _a priori_.

_I_ always avoid a needless argument of metaphysics. Writing to the general public I cannot presume that they are good judges of anything but a practical and moral argument. The _a priori_ views of G.o.d, of which I here speak, involve no subtle questions; they are simply those views which are attained _independently of the alleged authoritative information_, and, of course, are founded upon considerations _earlier_ than it.

But it would take too much of s.p.a.ce and time, and be far too tedious to my readers, if I were to go in detail through Mr. Rogers's objections and misrepresentations. I have the sad task of attacking _his good faith_, to which I further proceed.

II. In the preface to my second edition of the "Hebrew Monarchy,"

I found reason to explain briefly in what sense I use the word inspiration. I said, I found it to be current in three senses; "first, as an extraordinary influence peculiar to a few persons, as to prophets and apostles; secondly, _as an ordinary influence of the Divine Spirit on the hearts of men, which quickens and strengthens their moral and spiritual powers_, and is accessible to them all (in a certain stage of development) _in some proportion to their own faithfulness._ The third view teaches that genius and inspiration are two names for one thing.... _Christians for the most part hold the two first conceptions_, though they generally call the second _spiritual influence_, not inspiration; the third, seems to be common in the Old Testament. It so happens that the _second is the only inspiration which I hold._" [I here super-add the italics] On this pa.s.sage Mr.

Rogers commented as follows ("Defence" p. 156):--

"The latest utterance of Mr. Newman on the subject [of inspiration]

that I have read, occurs in his preface to the second edition of his "Hebrew Monarchy," where he tells us, that he believes it is an influence accessible to all men, _in a certain stage of development_!

[Italics.] Surely it will be time to consider his theory of inspiration, when he has told us a little more about it. To my mind, if the very genius of mystery had framed the definition, it could not have uttered anything more indefinite."

Upon this pa.s.sage the "Prospective" reviewer said his say as follows (vol x. p. 217):--

"The writer will very considerately defer criticism on Mr. Newman's indefinite definition, worthy of the genius of mystery, till its author has told us a little more about it. Will anyone believe that he himself deliberately omits the substance of the definition, and gives in its stead a parenthetical qualification, which might be left out of the original, without injury either to the grammatical structure, or to the general meaning of the sentence in which it occurs?" He proceeds to state what I did say, and adds: "Mr. Newman, in the very page in which this statement occurs, expressly identifies his doctrine with the ordinary Christian belief of Divine influence. His words are exactly coincident in sense with those employed by the author of the "Eclipse," where he acknowledges the reality of 'the ordinary, though mysterious action, by which G.o.d aids those who sincerely seek him in every good word and work.' The moral faithfulness of which Mr. Newman speaks, is the equivalent of the sincere search of G.o.d in good word and work, which his opponent talks of."

I must quote the _entire_ reply given to this in the "Defence," second edition, p. 224:--

"And now for a few examples of my opponent's criticisms. 1. I said in the "Defence" that I did not understand Mr. Newman's notions of inspiration, and that, as to his very latest utterance--namely, that it was an influence _accessible to all men in a certain stage of development_ [italics], it was utterly unintelligible to me. 'Will any one believe (says my critic) that he deliberately omits the substance of the definition, and gives in its stead a parenthetical qualification, which might be left out of the original without injury either to the grammatical structure or to the general meaning of the sentence in which it occurs? Was anything ever more amusing? A parenthetical clause which might be left out of the original without injury to the grammatical structure or to the general meaning! _Might_ be left out? Ay, to be sure it might, and not only 'without injury,'

but with benefit; just as the dead fly which makes the ointment of the apothecary to stink might be left out of _that_ without injury. But it was _not_ left out; and it is precisely because it was there, and diffused so remarkable an odour over the whole, that I characterized the definition as I did--and most justly. Accessible to all men in a certain stage of development! When and how _accessible_? What _species_ of development, I beseech you, is meant? And what is the _stage_ of it? The very thing, which, as I say, and as everybody of common sense must see, renders the definition utterly vague, is the very clause in question."

Such is his _entire_ notice of the topic. From any other writer I should indeed have been amazed at such treatment. I had made the very inoffensive profession of agreeing with the current doctrine of Christians concerning spiritual influence. As I was not starting any new theory, but accepting what is notorious, nothing more than an indication was needed. I gave, what I should not call definition, but description of it. My critic conceals that I have avowed agreement with Christians; refers to it as a theory of my own; complains that it is obscure; pretends to quote my definition, and leaves out all the cardinal words of it, which I have above printed in italics. My defender, in the "Prospective Review," exposes these mal-practices; points out that my opponent is omitting the main words, while complaining of deficiency; that I profess to agree with Christians in general; and _that I evidently agree with my critic in particular_.

The critic undertakes to reply to this, and the reader has before him the whole defence. The man who, as it were, puts his hand on his heart to avow that he anxiously sets before his readers, if not what I _mean_, yet certainly what I have _expressed_,--still persists in hiding from them the facts of the case; avoids to quote from the reviewer so much as to let out that I profess to agree[8] with what is prevalent among Christians and have no peculiar theory;--still withholds the cardinal points of what he calls my definition; while he tries to lull his reader into inattention by affecting to be highly amused, and by bantering and bullying in his usual style, while perverting the plainest words in the world.

I have no religious press to take my part. I am isolated, as my a.s.sailant justly remarks. For a wonder, a stray review here and there has run to my aid, while there is a legion on the other side--newspapers, magazines, and reviews. Now if any orthodox man, any friend of my a.s.sailant, by some chance reads these pages, I beg him to compare my quotations, thus fully given, with the originals; and if he find anything false in them, then let him placard me as a LIAR in the whole of the religious press. But if he finds that I am right, then let him learn in what sort of man he is trusting--what sort of champion of _truth_ this religious press has cheered on.

III. I had complained that Mr. Rogers falsely represented me to make a fanatical "divorce" between the intellectual and the spiritual, from which he concluded that I ought to be indifferent as to the wors.h.i.+p of Jehovah or of the image which fell down from Jupiter. He has pretended that my religion, according to me, has received nothing by traditional and historical agencies; that it owes nothing to men who went before me; that I believe I have (in my single una.s.sisted bosom) "a spiritual faculty so bright as to antic.i.p.ate all essential[9] spiritual verities;" that had it not been for traditional religion, "we should everywhere have heard the invariable utterance of spiritual religion in the one dialect of the heart,"--that "this divinely implanted faculty of spiritual discernment antic.i.p.ates all external truth,"

&c. &c. I then adduced pa.s.sages to show that his statement was emphatically and utterly contrary to fact. In his "Defence," he thus replies, p. 75:--

"I say with an unfaltering conscience, that no controvertist ever more honestly and sincerely sought to give his opponent's views, than I did Mr. Newman's, after the most diligent study of his rather obscure books; and that whether I have succeeded or not in giving what he _thought_, I have certainly given what he _expressed_. It is quite true that I supposed Mr. Newman intended to "divorce" faith and intellect; and what else on earth could I suppose, in common even with those who were most leniently disposed towards him, from such sentiments as these? ALL THE GROUNDS OF BELIEF PROPOSED TO THE MERE UNDERSTANDING HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH FAITH AT ALL. THE PROCESSES OF THOUGHT HAVE NOTHING TO QUICKEN THE CONSCIENCE OR AFFECT THE SOUL.

_How then can the state of the soul be tested by the conclusion to which the intellect is led?_ I was _compelled_, I say, to take these pa.s.sages as everybody else took them, to _mean_ what they obviously _express_."