Phases of Faith Part 13

Here he so isolates three a.s.sertions of mine from their context, as to suggest for each of them a false meaning, and make it difficult for the reader who has not my book at hand to discover the delusion.

The first is taken from a discussion of the arguments concerning the soul's immortality ("Soul," p. 223, 2nd edition), on which I wrote thus, p. 219:--that to judge of the accuracy of a metaphysical argument concerning mind and matter, requires not a pure conscience and a loving soul, but a clear and calm head; that if the doctrine of immortality be of high religious importance, we cannot believe it to rest on such a basis, that those in whom the religious faculties are most developed may be more liable to err concerning it than those who have no religious faculty in action at all. On the contrary, concerning truths which are really spiritual it is an obvious axiom,[10] that "he who is spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man." After this I proceeded to allude to the history of the doctrine among the Hebrews, and quoted some texts of the Psalms, the _argument_ of which, I urged, is utterly inappreciable to the pure logician, "because it is spiritually discerned." I continued as follows:--

"This is as it should be. Can a mathematician understand physiology, or a physiologist questions of law? A true love of G.o.d in the soul itself, an insight into Him depending on that love, and a hope rising out of that insight, are prerequisite for contemplating this spiritual doctrine, which is a spontaneous impression of the gazing soul, powerful (perhaps) in proportion to its faith; whereas all the grounds of belief proposed to the mere understanding have nothing to do with faith at all."

I am expounding the doctrine of the great Paul of Tarsus, who indeed applies it to this very topic,--the future bliss which G.o.d has prepared for them that love him. Does Mr. Rogers attack Paul as making a fanatical divorce between faith and intellect, and say that he is _compelled_ so to understand him, when he avows that "the natural man understandeth not the things of G.o.d; for they are foolishness unto him." "When the world by wisdom knew not G.o.d, it pleased G.o.d by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." Here is a pretended champion of Evangelical truth seeking to explode as absurdities the sentiments and judgments which have ever been at the heart of Christianity, its pride and its glory!

But I justify my argument as free from fanaticism--and free from obscurity when the whole sentence is read--to a Jew or Mohammedan, quite as much as to a Christian.

My opponent innocently asks, _how much_ I desire him to quote of me?

But is innocence the right word, when he has quoted but two lines and a half, out of a sentence of seven and a half, and has not even given the clause complete? By omitting, in his usual way, the connecting particle _whereas_, he hides from the reader that he has given but half my thought; and this is done, after my complaint of this very proceeding. A reader who sees the whole sentence, discerns at once that I oppose "the _mere_ understanding," to the whole soul; in short, that by the man who has _mere_ understanding, I mean him whom Paul calls "the natural man." Such a man may have metaphysical talents and acquirements, he may be a physiologist or a great lawyer; nay, I will add, (to shock my opponent's tender nerves), _even if he be an Atheist_, he may be highly amiable and deserving of respect and love; but if he has no spiritual development, he cannot have insight into spiritual truth. Hence such arguments for immortality as _can_ be appreciated by him, and _cannot_ be appreciated by religious men as such, "have nothing to do with faith at all"

The two other pa.s.sages are found thus, in p. 245 of the "Soul," 2nd edition. After naming local history, criticism of texts, history of philosophy, logic, physiology, demonology, and other important but very difficult studies, I ask:--

"Is it not extravagant to call inquiries of this sort _spiritual_ or to expect any spiritual[11] results from them? When the spiritual man (as such) cannot judge, the question is removed into a totally different court from that of the soul, the court of the critical understanding.... How then can the state of the soul be tested by the conclusion to which the intellect is led? What means the anathematizing of those who remain unconvinced? And how can it be imagined that the Lord of the soul cares more about a historical than about a geological, metaphysical, or mathematical argument? The processes of thought have nothing to quicken the conscience or affect the soul."

From my defender in the "Prospective Review" I learn that in the first edition of the "Defence" the word _thought_ in the last sentence above was placed in italics. He not only protested against this and other italics as misleading, but clearly explained my sense, which, as I think, needs no other interpreter than the context. In the new edition the italics are removed, but the unjust isolation of the sentences remains. "_The_ processes of thought," of which I spoke, are not "_all_ processes," but the processes _involved in the abstruse inquiries to which I had referred_. To say that _no_ processes of thought quicken the conscience, or affect the soul, would be a gross absurdity. This, or nothing else, is what he imputes to me; and even after the protest made by the "Prospective" reviewer, my a.s.sailant not only continues to hide that I speak of _certain_ processes of thought, not _all_ processes, but even has the hardihood to say that he takes the pa.s.sages as _everybody else_ does, and that he is _compelled_ so to do.

In my own original reply I appealed to places where I had fully expressed my estimate of intellectual progress, and its ultimate beneficial action. All that I gain by this, is new garblings and taunts for inconsistency. "Mr. Newman," says be, "is the last man in the world to whom I would deny the benefit of having contradicted himself." But I must confine myself to the garbling. "Defence," p.

95:--

"Mr. Newman affirms that my representations of his views on this subject are the most direct and intense reverse of all that he has most elaborately and carefully written!" He still says, "_what_ G.o.d reveals, he reveals within and not without," and "he _did_ say (though, it seems, he says no longer), that 'of G.o.d we know everything from within, nothing from without;' yet he says I have grossly misrepresented him."

This pretended quotation is itself garbled. I wrote, ("Phases," 1st edition, p. 152)--"Of _our moral and spiritual_ G.o.d we know nothing without, everything within." By omitting the adjectives, the critic produces a statement opposed to my judgment and to my writings; and then goes on to say. "Well, if Mr. Newman will engage to prove contradictions,... I think it is no wonder that his readers do not understand him."

I believe it is a received judgment, which I will not positively a.s.sert to be true, but I do not think I have anywhere denied, that G.o.d is discerned by us in the universe as a designer, creator, and mechanical ruler, through a mere study of the world and its animals and all their adaptations, _even without_ an absolute necessity of meditating consciously on the intelligence of man and turning the eyes within. Thus a creative G.o.d may be said to be discerned "from without." But in my conviction, that G.o.d is not _so_ discerned to be _moral_ or _spiritual_ or to be _our_ G.o.d; but by moral intellect and moral experience acting "inwardly." If Mr. Rogers chooses to deny the justness of my view, let him deny it; but by omitting the emphatic adjectives he has falsified my sentence, and then has founded upon it a charge of inconsistency. In a previous pa.s.sage (p. 79) he gave this quotation in full, in order to reproach me for silently withdrawing it in my second edition of the "Phases." He says:--

"The two sentences in small capitals are not found in the new edition of the 'Phases.' _They are struck out_. It is no doubt the right of an author to erase in a new edition any expressions he pleases; but when he is about to charge another with having grossly garbled and stealthily misrepresented him, it is as well to let the world know _what_ he has erased and _why_. He says that my representation of his sentiments is the most direct and intense reverse of all that he has most elaborately and carefully written. It certainly is not the intense reverse of all that he has most elaborately and carefully _scratched out_."

I exhibit here the writer's own italics.

By this attack on my good faith, and by pretending that my withdrawal of the pa.s.sage is of serious importance, he distracts the reader's attention from the argument there in hand (p. 79), which is, _not_ what are my sentiments and judgements, but whether he had a right to dissolve and distort my chain of reasoning (see I. above) while affecting to quote me, and pretending that I gave nothing but a.s.sertion. As regards my "elaborately and carefully _scratching out_,"

this was done; 1. Because the pa.s.sage seemed to me superfluous; 2.

Because I had pressed the topic elsewhere; 3. Because I was going to enlarge on it in my reply to him, p. 199 of my second edition.[12]

When the real place comes where my critic is to deal with the substance of the pa.s.sage (p. 94 of "Defence"), the reader has seen how he mutilates it.

The other pa.s.sage of mine which he has adduced, employs the word _reveals_, in a sense a.n.a.logous to that of _revelation_, in avowed relation to _things moral and spiritual_, which would have been seen, had not my critic reversed the order of my sentences; which he does again in p. 78 of the "Defence," after my protest against his doing so in the "Eclipse." I wrote: (Soul, p. 59) "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."

The words, "What G.o.d reveals," seen in the light of the preceding sentence, means: "That portion of _moral and spiritual truth_ which G.o.d reveals." This cannot be discovered in the isolated quotation; and as, both in p. 78 and in p. 95, he chooses to quote my word _What_ in italics, his reader is led on to interpret me as saying "_every thing whatsoever_ which we know of G.o.d, we learn from within;" a statement which is not mine.

Besides this, the misrepresentation of which I complained is not confined to the rather metaphysical words of _within_ and _without_, as to which the most candid friends may differ, and may misunderstand one another;--as to which also I may be truly open to correction;--but he a.s.sumes the right to tell his readers that my doctrine undervalues Truth, and Intellect, and Traditional teaching, and External suggestion, and Historical influences, and counts the Bible an impertinence. When he fancies he can elicit this and that, by his own logic, out of sentences and clauses torn from their context, he has no right to disguise what I have said to the contrary, and claim to justify his fraud by accusing me of self-contradiction. Against all my protests, and all that I said to the very opposite previous to any controversy, he coolly alludes to it (p. 40 of the "Defence") as though it were my avowed doctrine, that: "_Each_ man, looking exclusively within, can _at once_ rise to the conception of G.o.d's infinite perfections."

IV. When I agree with Paul or David (or think I do), I have a right to quote their words reverentially; but when I do so, Mr. Rogers deliberately justifies himself in ridiculing them, pretending that he only ridicules _me_. He thus answers my indignant denunciation in the early part of his "Defence," p. 5:--

"Mr. Newman warns me with much solemnity against thinking that 'questions pertaining to G.o.d are advanced by boisterous glee.' I do not think that the 'Eclipse' is characterised by boisterous glee; and certainly I was not at all aware, that the things which _alone_[13]

I have ridiculed--some of them advanced by him, and some by others--deserved to be treated with solemnity. For example, that an authoritative external revelation,[14] which most persons have thought possible enough, is _im_possible,--that man is most likely born for a dog's life, and 'there an end'--that there are great defects in the morality of the New Testament, and much imperfection in the character of its founder,--that the miracles of Christ might be real, because Christ was a _clairvoyant_ and mesmerist,--that G.o.d was not a Person, but a Personality;--I say, I was not aware that these things, and such as these, which alone I ridiculed, were questions 'pertaining to G.o.d,'

in any other sense than the wildest hypotheses in some sense pertain to science, and the grossest heresies to religion."

Now first, is his statement true?

_Are_ these the _only_ things which he ridiculed?

I quoted in my reply to him enough to show what was the cla.s.s of "things pertaining to G.o.d" to which I referred. He forces me to requote some of the pa.s.sages. "Eclipse," p. 82 [1st ed.] "You shall be permitted to say (what I will not contradict), that though _Mr. Newman may be inspired_ for aught I know ... inspired as much as (say) _the inventor of Lucifer matches_--yet that his book is not divine,--that it is purely human."

Again: p. 126 [1st ed.] "Mr. Newman says to those who say they are unconscious of these facts of spiritual pathology, that _the consciousness of the spiritual man is not the less true, that_ [though?] _the unspiritual man is not privy to it_; and this most devout gentleman quotes with unction the words: _For the spiritual man judgeth all things, but himself is judged of no man_."

P. 41, [1st ed.], "I have rejected creeds, and I have found what the Scripture calls, _that peace which pa.s.seth all understanding_." "I am sure it pa.s.ses mine, (says Harrington) if you have really found it, and I should be much obliged to you, if you would let me partic.i.p.ate in the discovery." "Yes, says Fellowes:... '_I have escaped from the bondage of the letter and have been introduced into the liberty of the Spirit.... The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. The fruit of the Spirit is joy, peace, not_--'" "Upon my word (said Harrington, laughing), I shall presently begin to fancy that Douce Davie Deans has turned infidel."

I have quoted enough to show the nature of my complaints. I charge the satirist with profanity, for ridiculing sentiments which _he himself_ avows to be holy, ridiculing them for no other reason but that with _me also_ they are holy and revered. He justifies himself in p. 5 of his "Defence," as above, by denying my facts. He afterwards, in Section XII. p. 147, admits and defends them; to which I shall return.

I beg my reader to observe how cleverly Mr. Rogers slanders me in the quotation already made, from p. 5, by insinuating, first, that it is my doctrine, "that man is _most likely_ born for _a dog's life_, and there an end;" next, that I have taken under my patronage the propositions, that "the miracles of Christ might be real, because Christ was a _clairvoyant_ and mesmerist, and that G.o.d is not a Person but a Personality." I cannot but be reminded of what the "Prospective"

reviewer says of Zeuxis and the grapes, when I observe the delicate skill of touch by which the critic puts on just enough colour to affect the reader's mind, but not so much as to draw him to closer examination. I am at a loss to believe that he supposes me to think that a theory of mesmeric wonders (as the complement of an atheistic creed?) is "a question pertaining to G.o.d," or that my rebuke bore the slightest reference to such a matter. As to Person and Personality, it is a subtle distinction which I have often met from Trinitarians; who, when they are pressed with the argument that three divine Persons are nothing but three G.o.ds, reply that Person is not the correct translation of the mystical _Hypostasis_ of the Greeks, and Personality is perhaps a truer rendering. If I were to answer with the jocosity in which my critic indulges, I certainly doubt whether he would justify me. So too, when a Pantheist objects (erringly, as I hold) that a Person is necessarily something finite, so that G.o.d cannot be a Person; if, against this, a Theist contend that G.o.d is at once a Person and a Principle, and invent a use of the word Personality to overlap both ideas; we may reject his nomenclature as too arbitrary, but what rightful place ridicule has here, I do not see. Nevertheless, it had wholly escaped my notice that the satirist had ridiculed it, as I now infer that he did.

He tells me he _was not aware_ that the holding that _there are great defects in the morality of the New Testament, and much imperfection in the character of its Founder, was a question pertaining to G.o.d_. Nor indeed was _I_ aware of it.

I regard questions concerning a book and a human being to be purely secular, and desire to discuss them, not indeed with ridicule but with freedom. When _I_ discuss them, he treats my act as intolerably offensive, as though the subject were sacred; yet he now pretends that _I_ think such topics "pertain to G.o.d," and he was not aware of it until I told him so! Thus he turns away the eyes of his readers from my true charge of profanity, and fixes them upon a fict.i.tious charge so as to win a temporary victory. At the same time, since Christians believe the morality of the _Old_ Testament to have great defects, and that there was much imperfection in the character of its eminent saints, prophets, and sages; I cannot understand how my holding the very same opinion concerning the _New_ Testament should be a peculiarly appropriate ground of banter and merriment; nor make me more justly offensive to Christians, than the Pauline doctrine is to Jews.

In more than one place of this "Defence" he misrepresents what I have written on Immortality, in words similar to those here used, though here he does _not_[15] expressly add my name. In p. 59, he says, that "according to Mr. Newman's theology, it is most _probable_ (in italics) that the successive generations of men, with perfect indifference to their relative moral conditions, their crimes or wrongs, are all knocked on the head together; and that future adjustment and retribution is a dream." (So p. 72.) In a note to the next page, he informs his readers that if I say that I have left the question of immortality _doubtful_, it does not affect the argument; for I have admitted "the probability" of there being no future life.

This topic was specially discussed by me in a short chapter of my treatise on the "Soul," to which alone it is possible for my critic to refer. In that chapter a.s.suredly I do _not_ say what he pretends; what I _do_ say is, (after rejecting, as unsatisfactory to me, the popular arguments from metaphysics, and from the supposed need of a future state to _redress the inequalities of this life_;) p. 232: "But do I then deny a future life, or seek to undermine a belief of it? _Most a.s.suredly not_; but I would put the belief (whether it is to be weaker or firmer) on a _spiritual_ basis, and on none other."

I am ashamed to quote further from that chapter in this place; the ground on which I there tread is too sacred for controversy. But that a Christian advocate should rise from reading it to tell people that he has a right to _ridicule_ me for holding that "man is _most likely born for a dog's life_, and there an end;" absorbs my other feelings in melancholy. I am sure that any candid person, reading that chapter, must see that I was hovering between doubt, hope, and faith, on this subject, and that if any one could show me that a Moral Theism and a Future Life were essentially combined, I should joyfully embrace the second, as a fit complement to the first. This writer takes the opposite for granted; that if he can convince me that the doctrine of a Future Life is essential to Moral Theism, he will--not _add_ to--but _refute_ my Theism! Strange as this at first appears, it is explained by his method. He draws a hideous picture of what G.o.d's world has been in the past, and indeed is in the present; with words so reeking of disgust and cruelty, that I cannot bear to quote them; and ample quotation would be needful. Then he infers, that since I must admit all this, I virtually believe in an immoral Deity. I suppose his instinct rightly tells him, that I shall not be likely to reason, "Because G.o.d can be so very cruel or careless to-day, he is sure to be very merciful and vigilant hereafter." Accepting his facts as a _complete_ enumeration of the phenomena of the present world, I suppose it is better inductive logic to say: "He who can be himself so cruel, and endure such monsters of brutality for six or more thousand years, must (by the laws of external induction) be the same, and leave men the same, for all eternity; and is clearly reckless of moral considerations." If I adopt this alternative, I become a Pagan or an Atheist, one or other of which Mr. Rogers seems anxious to make me.

If he would urge, that to look at the dark and terrible side of human life is onesided and delusive, and that the G.o.d who is known to us in Nature has so tempered the world to man and man to the world as to manifest his moral intentions;--(arguments, which I think, my critic must have heard from Socrates or Plato, without pooling out on them scalding words, such as I feel and avow to be blasphemous;)--then he might perhaps help my faith where it is weakest, and give me (more or less) aid to maintain a future life dogmatically, instead of hopefully and doubtfully. But now, to use my friend Martineau's words: "His method doubles every difficulty without relieving any, and tends to enthrone a Devil everywhere, and leave a G.o.d nowhere."

Since he wrote his second edition of the "Defence," I have brought out my work called "Theism," in which (without withdrawing my objections to the popular idea of future _Retribution_) I have tried to reason out a doctrine of Future Life from spiritual considerations. I have no doubt that my critic would find them highly aboard, and perhaps would p.r.o.nounce them ineffably ludicrous, and preposterous feats of logic.

If I could hide their existence from him, I certainly would, lest he misquote and misinterpret them. But as I cannot keep the book from him, I here refer to it to say, that if I am to maintain this most profound and mysterious doctrine with any practical intensity, my convictions in the power of the human mind to follow such high inquiries, need to be greatly _strengthened_, not to be undermined by such arguments and such detestable pictures of this world, as Mr.

Rogers holds up to me.

He throws at me the imputation of holding, that "man is _most likely_ born for a _dog's life_, and there an end." And is then the life of a saint for seventy years, or for seven years, no better than a dog's life? What else but a _long_ dog's life does this make heaven to be?

Such an undervaluing of a short but n.o.ble life, is consistent with the scheme which blasphemes earth in order to enn.o.ble heaven, and then claims to be preeminently logical. According to the clear evidence of the Bible, the old saints in general were at least as uncertain as I have ever been concerning future life; nay, according to the writer to the Hebrews, "through fear of death they were all their lifetime subject to bondage." If I had called _that_ a dog's life, how eloquently would Mr. Rogers have rebuked me!

V. But I must recur to his defence of the profanity with which he treats sacred sentiments and subjects. After pretending, in p. 5, that he had ridiculed nothing but the things quoted above, he at length, in pp. 147-156, makes formal admission of my charge and _justifies himself_. The pith of his general reply is in the following, p. 152:--

"'Now (says Mr. Newman) I will not here farther insist on the monstrosity of bringing forward St. Paul's words in order to pour contempt upon them; a monstrosity which no sophistry of Mr. Harrington can justify!' I think the _real_ monstrosity is, that men should so coolly employ St. Paul's words,--for it is a quotation from the treatise on the "Soul,"--to mean something totally different from anything he intended to convey by them, and employ the dialect of the Apostles to contradict their doctrines; that is the monstrosity ... It is very hard to conceive that Mr. Newman did not see this.... But had he gone on only a few lines, the reader would have seen Harrington saying: 'These words you have just quoted were well in St. Paul's mouth, and had a meaning. In yours, I suspect, they would have none, or a very different one.'"

According to this doctrine of Mr. Rogers, it would not have been profane in an unbelieving Jew to _make game_ of Moses, David, and the Prophets, whenever they were quoted by Paul. The Jew most profoundly believed that Paul quoted the old Scriptures in a false, as well as in a new meaning. One Christian divine does not feel free to ridicule the words of Paul when quoted erroneously (as he thinks) by another Christian divine? Why then, when quoted by me? I hold it to be a great insolence to deny my right to quote Paul or David, as much as Plato or Homer, and adopt their language whenever I find it to express my sentiment. Mr. Rogers's claim to deride highly spiritual truth, barely because I revere it, is a union of inhumanity and impiety. He has nowhere shown that Paul meant something "totally different" from the sense which I put on his words. I know that he cannot. I do not pretend always to bind myself to the definite sense of my predecessors; nor did the writers of the New Testament. They often adopt and apply _in an avowedly new sense_ the words of the Old Testament; so does Dr. Watts with the Hebrew Psalms. Such adaptation, in the way of development and enlargement, when done with sincerely pious intention, has never been reproved or forbidden by Christians, Whether I am wise or unwise in my interpretations, the _subject_ is a sacred one, and I treat it solemnly; and no errors in my "logic" can justify Mr. Rogers in putting on the mask of a profane sceptic, who scoffs (not once or twice, but through a long book) at the most sacred and tender matters, such as one always dreads to bring before a promiscuous public, lest one cast pearls before swine. And yet unless devotional books be written, especially by those who have as yet no church, how are we to aid one another in the uphill straggle to maintain some elements of a heavenly life? Can anything be more heartless, or more like the sneering devil they talk of, than Mr.

Harrington? And here one who professes himself a religions man, and who deliberately, after protest, calls _me_ an INFIDEL, is not satisfied with having scoffed in an hour of folly--(in such an hour, I can well believe, that melancholy record the "Eclipse of Faith,"

was first penned)--but he persists in justifying his claim to jeer and snarl and mutilate, and palm upon me senses which he knows are deliberately disavowed by me, all the while pretending that it is my bad logic which justifies him! We know that very many religious men _are_ bad logicians: if I am as puzzle-headed a fool as Mr. Rogers would make people think me, how does that justify his mocking at my religion? He justifies himself on the ground that I criticize the New Testament as freely as I should Cicero (p. 147). Well, then let him criticize me, as freely (and with as little of suppression) as I criticize it. But I do not _laugh_ at it; G.o.d forbid! The reader will see how little reason Mr. Rogers had to imagine that I had not read so far as to see Harrington's defence; which defence is, either an insolent a.s.sumption, or at any rate not to the purpose.

I will here add, that I have received letters from numerous Christians to thank me for my book on the "Soul," in such terms as put the conduct of Mr. Rogers into the most painful contrast: painful, as showing that there are other Christians who know, and _he does not know_, what is the true heart and strength of Christianity. He trusts in logic and ridicules the Spirit of G.o.d.

That leads me to his defence of his suggestion that I might be possibly as much inspired as the inventor of lucifer matches. He says, p. 154:--

"Mr. Newman tells me, that I have clearly a profound unbelief in the Christian doctrine of divine influence, or I could not thus grossly insult it I answer... that which Harrington ridiculed, as the context would have shown Mr. Newman, if he had had the patience to read on, and the calmness to judge, is the chaotic view of inspiration, _formally_ held by Mr. Parker, who is _expressly_ referred to, "Eclipse," p. 81." In 9th edition, p. 71.

The pa.s.sage concerning Mr. Parker is in the _preceding_ page: I had read it, and I do not see how it at all relieves the disgust which every right-minded man must feel at this pa.s.sage. My disgust is not personal: though I might surely ask,--If Parker has made a mistake, how does that justify insulting _me_? As I protested, I have made no peculiar claim to inspiration. I have simply claimed "that which all[16] pious Jews and Christians since David have always claimed."

Yet he pertinaciously defends this rude and wanton pa.s.sage, adding, p.

155: "As to the inventor of lucifer matches, I am thoroughly convinced that he has shed more light upon the world and been abundantly more useful to it, than many a cloudy expositor of modern spiritualism."

Where to look for the "many" expositors of spiritualism, I do not know. Would they were more numerous.