Phases of Faith Part 15

But are you in a condition to form an opinion? (said Fellowes, with a serious air). Mr. Rogers has enforced on me St. Paul's maxim: "The natural man discerneth not the things of the Spirit of G.o.d."

My most devout gentleman I (replied Harrington), how unctuous you are!

Forgive my laughing; but it does _so_ remind me of Douce Davie Deans.

I will make you professor of spiritual insight, &c., &c., &c.

Now is not this disgusting? Might I not justly call the man a "profane dog" who approved of it? Yet everything that is worst here _is closely copied from the Eclipse of Faith, or justified by the Defence_. How long will it be before English Christians cry out Shame against those two books?

VI. I must devote a few words to define the direction and justification of my argument in one chapter of this treatise. All good arguments are not rightly addressed to all persons. An argument good in itself may be inappreciable to one in a certain mental state, or may be highly exasperating. If a thoughtful Mohammedan, a searcher after truth, were to confide to a Christian a new basis on which be desired to found the Mohammedan religion--viz., the absolute moral perfection of its prophet, and were to urge on the Christian this argument in order to convert him, I cannot think that any one would blame the Christian for demanding what is the evidence of the _fact_.

Such an appeal would justify his dissecting the received accounts of Mohammed, pointing out what appeared to be flaws in his moral conduct; nay, if requisite, urging some positive vice, such as his excepting himself from his general law of _four wives only_. But a Christian missionary would surely be blamed (at least I should blame him), if, in preaching to a mixed mult.i.tude of Mohammedans against the authority of their prophet, he took as his basis of refutation the prophet's personal sensuality. We are able to foresee that the exasperation produced by such an argument must derange the balance of mind in the hearers, even if the argument is to the purpose; at the same time, it may be really away from the purpose to _them_, if their belief has no closer connexion with the personal virtue of the prophet, than has that of Jews and Christians with the virtue of Balaam or Jonah. I will proceed to imagine, that while a missionary was teaching, talking, and distributing tracts to recommend, his own views of religion, a Moolah were to go round and inform everybody that this Christian believed Mohammed to be an unchaste man, and had used the very argument to such and such a person. I feel a.s.sured that we should all p.r.o.nounce this proceeding to be a very cunning act of spiteful, bigotry.

My own case, as towards certain Unitarian friends of mine, is quite similar to this. They preach to me the absolute moral perfection of a certain man (or rather, of a certain portrait) as a sufficient basis for my faith. Hereby they challenge me, and as it were force me, to inquire into its perfection. I have tried to confine the argument within a narrow circle. It is addressed by me specifically to them and not to others. I would _not_ address it to Trinitarians; partly, because they are not in a mental state to get anything from it but pain, partly because much of it becomes intrinsically bad _as argument_ when addressed to them. Many acts and words which would be _right_ from an incarnate G.o.d, or from an angel, are (in my opinion) highly _unbecoming_ from a man; consequently I must largely remould the argument before I could myself approve of it, if so addressed.

The principle of the argument is such as Mr. Rogers justifies, when he says that Mr. Martineau _quite takes away all solid reasons for believing in Christ's absolute perfection._ ("Defence," p. 220.) I opened my chapter (chapter VII.) above with a distinct avowal of my wish to confine the perusal of it to a very limited circle. Mr. Rogers (acting, it seems, on the old principle, that whatever one's enemy deprecates, is a good) instantly pounces on the chapter, avows that "if infidelity _could_ be ruined, such imprudencies[17] would go far to ruin it," p. 22; and because he believes that it will be "unspeakably[18] painful" to the orthodox for whom I do _not_ intend it, he prints the greater part of it in an Appendix, and expresses his regret that he cannot publish "every syllable of it," p. 22. Such is his tender regard for the feeling of his co-religionists.

My defender in the "Prospective Review" wound up as follows (x. p.

227):--

"And now we have concluded our painful task, which nothing but a feeling of what justice--literary, and personal--required, would have induced us to undertake. The tone of intellectual disparagement and moral rebuke which certain critics,--deceived by the shallowest sophisms with which an unscrupulous writer could work on their prepossessions and insult their understandings--have adopted towards Mr. Newman made exposure necessary. The length to which our remarks have extended requires apology. Evidence to character is necessarily c.u.mulative, and not easily compressible within narrow limits. Enough has been said to show that there is not an art discreditable in controversy, to which recourse is not freely had in the 'Eclipse of Faith' and the Defence of it."

The reader must judge for himself whether this severe and terrible sentence of the reviewer proceeds from ill-temper and personal mortification, as the author of the Eclipse and its Defence gratuitously lays down, or whether it was prompted by a sense of justice, as he himself affirms.

[Footnote 1: The "Eclipse" had previously been noticed in the same review, on the whole favourably, by a writer of evidently a different religious school, and before I had exposed the evil arts of my a.s.sailant.]

[Footnote 2: The authors.h.i.+p is since acknowledged by Mr. Henry Rogers, in the t.i.tle to his article on Bishop Butler in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica."]

[Footnote 3: That is, my "discovery" that the writer of the "Eclipse of Faith" grossly misquotes and misinterprets me.]

[Footnote 4: Page 225, he says, that each criticism "is quite worthy of Mr. Newman's _friend_, defender and admirer;" a.s.suming a fact, in order to lower my defender's credit with his readers.]

[Footnote 5: As he puts "artful dodge" into quotation marks, his readers will almost inevitably believe that this vulgar language is mine. In the same spirit to speaks of me as "making merry" with a Book Revelation; as if I had the slightest sympathy or share in the style and tone which pervades the "Eclipse." But there is no end of such things to be denounced.]

[Footnote 6: Italics in the original.]

[Footnote 7: In the ninth edition, p. 104, I find that to cover the formal falsehood of these words, he adds: "what he calls his arguments are a.s.sertions only," still withholding that which would confute him.]

[Footnote 8: I will here add, that this "stinking fly"--the parenthesis ("in a certain stage of development")--was added merely to avoid dogmatizing on the question, how early in human history or in human life this mysterious notion of the divine spirit is recognizable as commencing.]

[Footnote 9: If the word _essential_ is explained away, _this_ sentence may be attenuated to a truism.]

[Footnote 10: Paul to the Corinthians, 1st Ep. ii.]

[Footnote 11: This clause is too strong. "Expect _direct_ spiritual results," might have been better.]

[Footnote 12: The substance of what I wrote was this. Socrates and Cicero ask, _where did we pick up our intelligence?_ It did not come from nothing; it most reside in the mind of him from whom we and this world came; G.o.d must be more intelligent than man, his creature.--But this argument may be applied with equal truth, not to intelligence only, but to all the essential high qualities of man, everything n.o.ble and venerable. Whence came the principle of love, which is the n.o.blest of all! It must reside in G.o.d more truly and gloriously than in man. He who made loving hearts must himself be loving. Thus the intelligence and love of G.o.d are known through our consciousness of intelligence and love _within_.]

[Footnote 13: He puts _alone_ in italics. A little below he repeats, "which alone I ridiculed."]

[Footnote 14: He should add: "external _authoritative_ revelation _of moral and spiritual truth_." No communication from heaven could have moral weight, to a heart previously dest.i.tute of moral sentiment, or unbelieving in the morality of G.o.d.--What is there in this that deserves ridicule?]

[Footnote 15: He puts it between two other statements which avowedly refer to me.]

[Footnote 16: Mr. Rogers asks on this: "Does Mr. Newman mean that he claims as much as the _apostles_ claimed, _whether they did so rightfully or not_?" See how acutely a logician can pervert the word _all_!]

[Footnote 17: There is much meaning in the word imprudencies on which I need not comment.]

[Footnote 18: "Unspeakably painful" is his phrase for something much smaller, ("Eclipse" ninth edition p. 194,) which he insists on similarly obtruding, against my will and protest.]

APPENDIX I.

It is an error not at all peculiar to the author of the "Eclipse of Faith," but is shared with him by many others, and by one who has treated me in a very different spirit, that Christians are able to use atheistic arguments against me without wounding Christianity. As I have written a rather ample book, called "Theism," expressly designed to establish against Atheists and Pantheists that moral Theism which Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans have in common, and which underlies every attempt of any of the three religions to establish its peculiar and supernatural claims; I have no need of entering on that argument here. It is not true, that, as a Theist, I evade the objections urged by real atheists or sceptics; on the contrary, I try to search them to the very bottom. It is only in arguing with Christians that I disown the obligation of reply; and that, because they are as much concerned as I to answer; and ought to be able to give me, _on the ground of natural theology_, good replies to every fundamental objection from the sceptic, if I have not got them myself. To declare the objections of our common adversaries valid against those first principles of religion which are older than Jesus or Moses, is certainly to surrender the cause of Christianity.

If this need more elucidation, let it be observed, that no Christian can take a single step in argument with a heathen, much less establish his claim of authority for the Bible, without presuming that the heathen will admit, on hearing them, those doctrines of moral Theism, which, it is pretended, _I_ can have no good reason for admitting.

If the heathen sincerely retorts against the missionary such Pagan scepticism as is flung at me by Christians, the missionary's words are vain; nor is any success possible, unless (with me) he can lay a _prior_ foundation of moral Theism, independent of any a.s.sumption concerning the claims of the Bible. It avails nothing to preach repentance of sin and salvation from judgment to come, to minds which are truly empty of the belief that G.o.d has any care for morality. I of course do not say, and have never said, that the doctrine of the divine holiness, goodness, truth, must have been previously an active belief of the heathen hearer. To have stated a question clearly is often half the solution; and the teacher, who so states a high doctrine, gives a great aid to the learner's mind. But unless, after it has been affirmed that there is a Great Eternal Being pervading the universe, who disapproves of human evil and commands us to pursue the good, the conscience and intellect of the hearer gives a.s.sent, no argument of moral religion can have weight with him; therefore neither can any argument about miracles, nor any appeal to the "Bible" as authoritative. Of course the book has not as yet any influence over him, nor will its miracles, any more than its doctrines, be received on the ground of their being in the book. Thus a direct and independent discernment of the great truths of moral Theism is a postulate, to be proved or conceded _before_ the Christian can begin the argument in favour of Biblical preternaturalism. I had thought it would have been avowed and maintained with a generous pride, that eminently in Christian literature we find the n.o.blest, soundest, and fullest advocacy of moral Theism, as having its evidence in the heart of man within and nature without, _independently of any postulates concerning the Bible_. I certainly grew up for thirty years in that belief. Treatises on Natural Theology, which (with whatever success) endeavoured to trace--not only a constructive G.o.d in the outer world, but also a good G.o.d when that world is viewed in connexion with man; were among the text-books of our clergy and of our universities, and were in many ways crowned with honour. Bampton Lectures, Bridgewater Treatises, Burnet Prize Essays, have (at least till very recently in one case) been all, I rather think, in the same direction. And surely with excellent reason. To avow that the doctrines of Moral Theism have no foundation to one who sees nothing preternatural in the Bible, is in a Christian such a suicidal absurdity, that whenever an atheist advances it, it is met with indignant denial and contempt.

The argumentative strength of this Appendix, as a reply to those who call themselves "orthodox" Christians, is immensely increased by a.n.a.lysing their subsidiary doctrines, which pretend to relieve, while they prodigiously aggravate, the previous difficulties of Moral Theism; I mean the doctrine of the fall of man by the agency of a devil, and the eternal h.e.l.l. But every man who dares to think will easily work out such thoughts for himself.

APPENDIX II.

I here reproduce (merely that it may not be pretended that I silently withdraw it) the substance of an ill.u.s.tration which I offered in my 2nd edition, p. 184.

When I deny that History can be Religion or a part of Religion, I mean it exactly in the same sense, in which we say that history is not mathematics, though mathematics has a history. Religion undoubtedly comes to us by historical transmission: it has had a slow growth; but so is it with mathematics, so is it with all other sciences. (I refer to mathematics, not as peculiarly like to religion, but as peculiarly unlike; it is therefore and _a fortiori_ argument. What is true of them as sciences, is true of all science.) No science can flourish, while it is received on authority. Science comes to us _by_ external transmission, but is not believed _because_ of that transmission. The history of the transmission is generally instructive, but is no proper part of the science itself. All this is true of Religion.

THE END.