Phases of Faith Part 8

[Footnote 10: My friend James Martineau, who insists that "a self-sustaining power" in a religion is a thing _intrinsically inconceivable_, need not have censured me for coming to the conclusion that it does not exist in Christianity. In fact, I entirely agree with him; but at the time of which I here write, I had only taken the first step in his direction; and I barely drew a negative conclusion, to which he perfectly a.s.sents. To my dear friend's capacious and kindling mind, all the thought here expounded are prosaic and common; being to him quite obvious, so far as they are true. He is right in looking down upon them; and, I trust, by his aid, I have added to my wisdom since the time of which I write. Yet they were to me discoveries once, and he must not be displeased at my making much of them in this connexion.]

[Footnote 11: It is the fault of my critics that I am forced to tell the reader this is exhibited in my "Hebrew Monarchy."]

[Footnote 12: It in not to the purpose to urge the _political_ minority of the Roman wife. This was a mere inference from the high power of the bond of the husband. The father had right of death over his son, and (as the lawyers stated the case), the wife was on the level of one of the children.]

[Footnote 13: 1 Cor. vii. 2-9]

[Footnote 14: Namely, in the Armenian, Syrian, and Greek churches, and in the Romish church in exact proportion as Germanic and poetical influences have been repressed; that is, in proportion as the hereditary Christian doctrine has been kept pure from modern innovations.]

[Footnote 15: In a tract republished from the _Northampton Mercury_ Longman, 1853.]

[Footnote 16: The Romans practised fornication at pleasure, and held it ridiculous to blame them. If Paul had claimed authority to hinder them, they might have been greatly exasperated; but they had not the least objection to his denouncing fornication as immoral to Christians. Why not slavery also?]

[Footnote 17: I fear it cannot be denied that the zeal for Christianity which began to arise in our upper cla.s.ses sixty years ago, was largely prompted by a feeling that its precepts repress all speculations concerning the rights of man. A similar cause now influences despots all over Europe. The _Old_ Testament contains the elements which they dread, and those gave a political creed to our Puritans.]

[Footnote 18: More than one critic flatly denies the fact. It is sufficient for me here to say, that such is the obvious interpretation, and such _historically has been_ the interpretation of various texts,--for instance, 2 Thess. i. 7: "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed... in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them _that know not G.o.d, and that obey not the Gospel_; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction," &c. Such again is the sense which all popular minds receive and must receive from Heb, x. 25-31.--I am willing to change _teaches_ into _has always been understood to teach_, if my critics think anything is gained by it.]

[Footnote 19: The four monarchies in chapters ii. and vii, are, probably, the Babylonian, the Median, the Persian, the Macedonian.

Interpreters however blend the Medes and Persians into one, and then pretend that the Roman empire is _still in existence_.]

[Footnote 20: The first apparent reference is by Micah (vi. 5) a contemporary of Hezekiah; which proves that an account contained in our Book of Numbers was already familiar.]

[Footnote 21: I have had occasion to discuss most of the leading prophecies of the Old Testament in my "Hebrew Monarchy."]

[Footnote 22: A critic is pleased to call this a mere _suspicion_ of my own; in so writing, people simply evade my argument. I do not ask them to adopt my conviction; I merely communicate it as mine, and wish them to admit that it is _my duty_ to follow my own conviction. It is with me no mere "suspicion," but a certainty. When they cannot possibly give, or pretend, any _proof_ that the long discourses of the fourth gospel have been accurately reported, they ought to be less supercilious in their claims of unlimited belief. If it is right for them to follow their judgment on a purely literary question, let them not carp at me for following mine.]

[Footnote 23: I am told that this defence of John is fanciful. It satisfies me provisionally; but I do not hold myself bound to satisfy others, or to explain John's delusiveness.]

[Footnote 24: Phil. ii. 5-8; Rom. xv. 3. The last suggests it was from the Psalms (viz from Ps. lxix. 9) that Paul learned the _fact_ that Christ pleased not himself.]

[Footnote 25: Here, again, I have been erroneously understood to say that there cannot be _any_ internal revelation of _anything_. Internal truth may be internally communicated, though even so it does not become authoritative, or justify the receiver in saying to other men, "Believe, _for_ I guarantee it." But a man who, on the strength of an _internal_ revelation believes an _external event_, (past, present, or future,) is not a valid witness of it. Not Paley only, nor Priestley, but James Martineau also, would disown his pretence to authority; and the more so, the more imperious his claim that we believe on his word.]

[Footnote 26: This appears in v. 2, "by which ye are saved,--_unless ye have believed in vain_" &c. So v. 17-19.]

[Footnote 27: 1 Cor. xv. "He rose again the third day _according to the Scriptures_." This must apparently be a reference to Hosea vi. 2, to which the margin of the Bible refers. There is no other place in the existing Old Testament from which we can imagine him to have elicited the rising _on the third day_. Some refer to the type of Jonah. Either of the two suggests how marvellously weak a proof satiated him.]

[Footnote 28: Such is the most legitimate translation. That in the received version is barely a possible meaning. There is no such distinction of prepositions as _in_ and _by_ in this pa.s.sage.]

CHAPTER VI.

HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OF RELIGION.

After renouncing any "Canon of Scripture" or Sacred Letter at the end of my fourth period, I had been forced to abandon all "Second-hand Faith" by the end of my fifth. If asked _why_ I believed this or that, I could no longer say, "_Because_ Peter, or Paul, or John believed, and I may thoroughly trust that they cannot mistake." The question now pressed hard, whether this was equivalent to renouncing Christianity.

Undoubtedly, my positive belief in its miracles had evaporated; but I had not arrived at a positive _dis_belief. I still felt the actual benefits and comparative excellencies of this religion too remarkable a phenomenon to be scored for defect of proof. In Morals likewise it happens, that the ablest practical expounders of truth may make strange blunders as to the foundations and ground of belief: why was this impossible as to the apostles? Meanwhile, it did begin to appear to myself remarkable, that I continued to love and have pleasure in so much that I certainly disbelieved. I perused a chapter of Paul or of Luke, or some verses of a hymn, and although they appeared to me to abound with error, I found satisfaction and profit in them. Why was this? was it all fond prejudice,--an absurd clinging to old a.s.sociations?

A little self-examination enabled me to reply, that it was no ill-grounded feeling or ghost of past opinions; but that my religion always had been, and still was, a _state of sentiment_ toward G.o.d, far less dependent on articles of a creed, than once I had unhesitatingly believed. The Bible is pervaded by a sentiment,[1] which is implied everywhere,--viz. _the intimate sympathy of the Pure and Perfect G.o.d with the heart of each faithful wors.h.i.+pper_. This is that which is wanting in Greek philosophers, English Deists, German Pantheists, and all formalists. This is that which so often edifies me in Christian writers and speakers, when I ever so much disbelieve the letter of their sentences. Accordingly, though I saw more and more of moral and spiritual imperfection in the Bible, I by no means ceased to regard it as a quarry whence I might dig precious metal, though the ore needed a refining a.n.a.lysis: and I regarded this as the truest essence and most vital point in Christianity,--to sympathize with the great souls from whom its spiritual eminence has flowed;--to love, to hope, to rejoice, to trust with them;--and _not_, to form the same interpretations of an ancient book and to take the same views of critical argument.

My historical conception of Jesus had so gradually melted into dimness, that he had receded out of my practical religion, I knew not exactly when I believe that I must have disused any distinct prayers to him, from a growing opinion that he ought not to be the _object_ of wors.h.i.+p, but only the _way_ by whom we approach to the Father; and as in fact we need no such "way" at all, this was (in the result) a change from practical Ditheism to pure Theism. His "mediation" was to me always a mere name, and, as I believe, would otherwise have been mischievous.[2]--Simultaneously a great uncertainty had grown on me, how much of the discourses put into the mouth of Jesus was really uttered by him; so that I had in no small measure to form him anew to my imagination.

But if religion is addressed to, and must be judged by, our moral faculties, how could I believe in that painful and gratuitous personality,--The Devil?--He also had become a waning phantom to me, perhaps from the time that I saw the demoniacal miracles to be fictions, and still more when proofs of manifold mistake in the New Testament rose on me. This however took a solid form of positive _dis_belief, when I investigated the history of the doctrine,--I forget exactly in what stage. For it is manifest, that the old Hebrews believed only in evil spirits sent _by G.o.d_ to do _his bidding_, and had no idea of a rebellious Spirit that rivalled G.o.d. That idea was first imbibed in the Babylonish captivity, and apparently therefore must have been adopted from the Persian Ahriman, or from the "Melek Taous," the "Sheitan" still honoured by the Yezidi with mysterious fear. That _the serpent_ in the early part of Genesis denoted the same Satan, is probable enough; but this only goes to show, that that narrative is a legend imported from farther East; since it is certain that the subsequent Hebrew literature has no trace of such an Ahriman.

The Book of Tobit and its demon show how wise in these matters the exiles in Nineveh were beginning to be. The Book of Daniel manifests, that by the time of Antiochus Epiphanes the Jews had learned each nation to have its guardian spirit, good or evil; and that the fates of nations depend on the invisible conflict of these tutelary powers.

In Paul the same idea is strongly brought out. Satan is the prince of the power of the air; with princ.i.p.alities and powers beneath him; over all of whom Christ won the victory on his cross. In the Apocalypse we read the Oriental doctrine of the "_seven angels_ who stand before G.o.d." As the Christian tenet thus rose among the Jews from their contact with Eastern superst.i.tion, and was propagated and expanded while prophecy was mute, it cannot be ascribed to "divine supernatural revelation" as the source. The ground of it is dearly seen in infant speculations on the cause of moral evil and of national calamities.

Thus Christ and the Devil, the two poles of Christendom, had faded away out of my spiritual vision; there were left the more vividly, G.o.d and Man. Yet I had not finally renounced the _possibility_, that Jesus might have had a divine mission to stimulate all our spiritual faculties, and to guarantee to us a future state of existence. The abstract arguments for the immortality of the soul had always appeared to me vain trifling; and I was deeply convinced that nothing could _a.s.sure_ us of a future state but a divine communication. In what mode this might be made, I could not say _a priori_: might not this really be the great purport of Messiahs.h.i.+p? was not this, if any, a worthy ground for a divine interference? On the contrary, to heal the sick did not seem at all an adequate motive for a miracle; else, why not the sick of our own day? Credulity had exaggerated, and had represented Jesus to have wrought miracles: but that did not wholly _dis_prove the miracle of resurrection (whether bodily or of whatever kind), said to have been wrought by G.o.d _upon_ him, and of which so very intense a belief so remarkably propagated itself. Paul indeed believed it[3] from prophecy; and, as we see this to be a delusion, resting on Rabbinical interpretations, we may perhaps _account_ thus for the belief of the early church, without in any way admitting the fact.--Here, however, I found I had the clue to my only remaining discussion, the primitive Jewish controversy. Let us step back to an earlier stage than John's or Paul's or Peter's doctrine. We cannot doubt that Jesus claimed to be Messiah: what then was Messiah to be?

and, did Jesus (though misrepresented by his disciples) truly fulfil his own claims?

The really Messianic prophecies appeared to me to be far fewer than is commonly supposed. I found such in the 9th and 11th of Isaiah, the 5th of Micah, the 9th of Zechariah, in the 72nd Psalm, in the 37th of Ezekiel, and, as I supposed, in the 50th and 53rd of Isaiah. To these nothing of moment could be certainly added; for the pa.s.sage in Dan.

ix. is ill-translated in the English version, and I had already concluded that the Book of Daniel is a spurious fabrication. From Micah and Ezekiel it appeared, that Messiah was to come from Bethlehem and either be David himself, or a spiritual David: from Isaiah it is shown that he is a rod out of the stem of Jesse.--It is true, I found no proof that Jesus did come from Bethlehem or from the stock of David; for the tales in Matthew and Luke refute one another, and have clearly been generated by a desire to verify the prophecy. But genealogies for or against Messiahs.h.i.+p seemed to me a mean argument; and the fact of the prophets demanding a carnal descent in Messiah struck me as a worse objection than that Jesus had not got it,--if this could be ever proved. The Messiah of Micah, however, was not Jesus; for he was to deliver Israel from _the a.s.syrians_, and his whole description is literally warlike. Micah, writing when the name of Sennacherib was terrible, conceived of a powerful monarch on the throne of David who was to subdue him: but as this prophecy was not verified, the imaginary object of it was looked for as "Messiah,"

even after the disappearance of the formidable a.s.syrian power. This undeniable vanity of Micah's prophecy extends itself also to that in the 9th chapter of his contemporary Isaiah,--if indeed that splendid pa.s.sage did not really point at the child Hezekiah. Waiving this doubt, it is at any rate clear that the marvellous child on the throne of David was to break the yoke of the oppressive a.s.syrian; and none of the circ.u.mstantials are at all appropriate to the historical Jesus.

In the 37th of Ezekiel the (new) David is to gather Judah and Israel "from the heathen whither they be gone" and to "make them one nation _in the land, on the mountains of Israel_:" and Jehovah adds, that they shall "dwell in the land _which I gave unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers dwelt_: and they shall dwell therein, they and their children and their children's children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever." It is trifling to pretend that _the land promised to Jacob, and in which the old Jews dwelt_, was a spiritual, and not the literal Palestine; and therefore it is impossible to make out that Jesus has fulfilled any part of this representation. The description however that follows (Ezekiel xl.

&c.) of the new city and temple, with the sacrifices offered by "the priests the Levites, of the seed of Zadok," and the gate of the sanctuary for the prince (xliv. 3), and his elaborate account of the borders of the land (xlviii. 13-23), place the earnestness of Ezekiel's literalism in still clearer light.

The 72nd Psalm, by the splendour of its predictions concerning the grandeur of some future king of Judah, earns the t.i.tle of Messianic, _because_ it was never fulfilled by any historical king. But it is equally certain, that it has had no appreciable fulfilment in Jesus.

But what of the 11th of Isaiah? Its portraiture is not so much that of a king, as of a prophet endowed with superhuman power. "He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked." A Paradisiacal state is to follow.--This general description _may_ be verified by Jesus _hereafter_; but we have no manifestation, which enables us to call the fulfilment a fact.

Indeed, the latter part of the prophecy is out of place for a time so late as the reign of Augustus; which forcibly denotes that Isaiah was predicting only that which was his immediate political aspiration: for in this great day of Messiah, Jehovah is to gather back his dispersed people from a.s.syria, Egypt, and other parts; he is _to reconcile Judah and Ephraim_, (who had been perfectly reconciled centuries before Jesus was born,) and as a result of this Messianic glory, the people of Israel "shall fly upon the shoulders of the _Philistines_ towards the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay their hand on _Edom_ and _Moab_, and the children of _Ammon_ shall obey them." But Philistines, Moab and Ammon, were distinctions entirely lost before the Christian era.--Finally, the Red Sea is to be once more pa.s.sed miraculously by the Israelites, returning (as would seem) to their fathers' soil. Take all these particulars together, and the prophecy is neither fulfilled in the past nor possible to be fulfilled in the future.

The prophecy which we know as Zechariah ix.-xi. is believed to be really from a prophet of uncertain name, contemporaneous with Isaiah.

It was written while Ephraim was still a people, i.e. before the capture of Samaria by Shalmanezer; and xi. 1-3 appears to howl over the recent devastations of Tiglathpilezer. The prophecy is throughout full of the politics of that day. No part of it has the most remote or imaginable[4] similarity to the historical life of Jesus, except that he once rode into Jerusalem on an a.s.s; a deed which cannot have been peculiar to him, and which Jesus moreover appears to have planned with the express[5] purpose of a.s.similating himself to the lowly king here described. Yet such an isolated act is surely a carnal and beggarly fulfilment. To ride on an a.s.s is no mark of humility in those who must ordinarily go on foot. The prophet clearly means that the righteous king is not to ride on a warhorse and trust in cavalry, as Solomon and the Egyptians, (see Ps. xx. 7. Is. x.x.xi. 1-3, x.x.x. 16,) but is to imitate the lowliness of David and the old judges, who rode on young a.s.ses; and is to be a lover of peace.

Chapters 50 and 53 of the pseudo-Isaiah remained; which contain many phrases so aptly descriptive of the sufferings of Christ, and so closely knit up with our earliest devotional a.s.sociations, that they were the very last link of my chain that snapt. Still, I could not conceal from myself, that no exactness in this prophecy, however singular, could avail to make out that Jesus was the Messiah of Hezekiah's prophets. There must be _some_ explanation; and if I did not see it, that must probably arise from prejudice and habit.--In order therefore to gain freshness, I resolved to peruse the entire prophecy of the pseudo-Isaiah in Lowth's version, from ch. xl. onward, at a single sitting.

This prophet writes from Babylon, and has his vision full of the approaching restoration of his people by Cyrus, whom he addresses by name. In ch. xliii. he introduces to us an eminent and "chosen servant of G.o.d," whom he invests with all the evangelical virtues, and declares that he is to be a light to the Gentiles. In ch. xliv. (v.

1--also v. 21) he is named as "_Jacob_ my servant, and _Israel_ whom I have chosen." The appellations recur in xlv. 4: and in a far more striking pa.s.sage, xlix. 1-12, which is eminently Messianic to the Christian ear, _except_ that in v. 3, the speaker distinctly declares himself to be (not Messiah, but) Israel. The same speaker continues in ch. l., which is equally Messianic in sound. In ch. lii. the prophet speaks _of_ him, (vv. 13-15) but the subject of the chapter is _restoration from Babylon_; and from this he runs on into the celebrated ch. liii.

It is essential to understand the _same_ "elect servant" all along.

He is many times called Israel, and is often addressed in a tone quite inapplicable to Messiah, viz. as one needing salvation himself; so in ch. xliii. Yet in ch. xlix. this elect Israel is distinguished from Jacob and Israel at large: thus there is an entanglement. Who can be called on to risk his eternal hopes on his skilful unknotting of it?

It appeared however to me most probable, that as our high Churchmen distinguish "mother Church" from the individuals who compose the Church, so the "Israel" of this prophecy is the idealizing of the Jewish Church; which I understood to be a current Jewish interpretation. The figure perhaps embarra.s.ses us, only because of the male s.e.x attributed to the ideal servant of G.o.d; for when "Zion"

is spoken of by the same prophet in the same way, no one finds difficulty, or imagines that a female person of superhuman birth and qualities must be intended.

It still remained strange that in Isaiah liii. and Pss. xxii. and lxix. there should be _coincidences_ so close with the sufferings of Jesus: but I reflected, that I had no proof that the narrative had not been strained by credulity,[6] to bring it into artificial agreement with these imagined predictions of his death. And herewith my last argument in favour of views for which I once would have laid down my life, seemed to be spent.

Nor only so: but I now reflected that the falsity of the prophecy in Dan. vii. (where the coming of "a Son of Man" to sit in universal judgment follows immediately upon the break-up of the Syrian monarchy,)--to say nothing of the general proof of the spuriousness of the whole Book of Daniel,--ought perhaps long ago to have been seen by me as of more cardinal importance. For if we believe anything at all about the discourses of Christ, we cannot doubt that he selected "_Son of Man_" as his favourite t.i.tle; which admits no interpretation so satisfactory, as, that he tacitly refers to the seventh chapter of Daniel, and virtually bases his pretensions upon it. On the whole, it was no longer defect of proof Which presented itself, but positive disproof of the primitive and fundamental claim.

I could not for a moment allow weight to the topic, that "it is dangerous to _dis_believe wrongly;" for I felt, and had always felt, that it gave a premium to the most boastful and tyrannizing superst.i.tion:--as if it were not equally dangerous to _believe_ wrongly! Nevertheless, I tried to plead for farther delay, by asking: Is not the subject too vast for me to decide upon?--Think how many wise and good men have fully examined, and have come to a contrary conclusion. What a grasp of knowledge and experience of the human mind it requires! Perhaps too I have unawares been carried away by a love of novelty, which I have mistaken for a love of truth.

But the argument recoiled upon me. Have I not been 25 years a reader of the Bible? have I not full 18 years been a student of Theology?

have I not employed 7 of the best years of my life, with ample leisure, in this very investigation;--without any intelligible earthly bribe to carry me to my present conclusion, against all my interests, all my prejudices and all my education? There are many far more learned men than I,--many men of greater power of mind; but there are also a hundred times as many who are my inferiors; and if I have been seven years labouring in vain to solve this vast literary problem, it is an extreme absurdity to imagine that the solving of it is imposed by G.o.d on the whole human race. Let me renounce my little learning; let me be as the poor and simple: what then follows? Why, then, _still the same thing follows_, that difficult literary problems concerning distant history cannot afford any essential part of my religion.

It is with hundreds or thousands a favourite idea, that "they have an inward witness of the truth of (_the historical and outward facts of_) Christianity." Perhaps the statement would bring its own refutation to them, if they would express it clearly. Suppose a biographer of Sir Isaac Newton, after narrating his sublime discoveries and ably stating some of his most remarkable doctrines, to add, that Sir Isaac was a great magician, and had been used to raise spirits by his arts, and finally was himself carried up to heaven one night, while he was gazing at the moon; and that this event had been foretold by Merlin:--it would surely be the height of absurdity to dilate on the truth of the Newtonian theory as "the moral evidence" of the truth of the miracles and prophecy. Yet this is what those do, who adduce the excellence of the precepts and spirituality of the general doctrine of the New Testament, as the "moral evidence" of its miracles and of its fulfilling the Messianic prophecies. But for the ambiguity of the word _doctrine_, probably such confusion of thought would have been impossible. "Doctrines" are either spiritual truths, or are statements of external history. Of the former we may have an inward witness;--that is their proper evidence;--but the latter must depend upon adequate testimony and various kinds of criticism.