Part 7

And now we take one step further. We have seen that there is a faith which underlies all morality as well as religion, and that this faith is the discipline of the soul, and without it the soul cannot grow in morality or religion. Let us suppose, for argument’s sake, let us suppose that for this yearning of the soul after an infinite perfection, there is a corresponding reality—an absolutely perfect, a supremely righteous and true and holy Being. And let us suppose that it pleased him to make a revelation of himself to man; what should we expect beforehand respecting that revelation? Should we not expect that it would follow the analogy of all other revelations to the higher and better part of man’s nature, and that inasmuch as morality needs faith, so this manifestation of the Perfect One would come in some way or other so as to call out the act of faith? Should we not expect that if this were the only absolutely perfect nature, it would appear to our lower and inferior nature in some respects unintelligible, in some respects mysterious, in some respects contradictory? For all mysteries, everything we cannot understand, must come to our understanding in the shape of contradictory propositions. We must expect that this higher nature, this perfect nature, should try our faith. If it would be unreasonable to suppose that an inferior man to himself should understand a man, so also it would be unreasonable to suppose that our nature should not find some difficulty in perfectly appreciating and understanding the absolutely perfect nature of a supremely perfect Being. Should we not expect from analogy that we should have some more difficulty in understanding God, than we have in understanding man? We must expect the same trial of our faith, the same probation and discipline of our spiritual nature, when it is brought into contemplation of this perfect nature. Surely we should beforehand expect that this would be the case; surely we might say that the God who was perfectly understood could not be the true God. When a man says, I want a God that is not a mystery; I ask, Do you know a man who is without a mystery? Are you not a mystery yourself? Is there one fellow being whom you understand? And yet you say, I have not faith in a God whom I cannot understand. Who can comprehend him who dwells in ineffable light, in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning? If there be revelation from God at all, it must try the faith of man. In the next place, we should expect that it would be a revelation of a righteous person; because we know that the highest tendencies of our nature at their best moments are ever to find a righteous person, and our faith that has been cultivated in our brother man naturally looks for a person. Faith has ever been trusting in a person, in a nature, and therefore we should expect beforehand that if there came a revelation of this God, it would not come in the shape of a revelation of doctrines or creeds, but that it would be a revelation of a person. We Christians say there is made to us a revelation of the working of the Divine Will, and the purpose of the Divine Designer, in the works of his hands. We say the invisible things of God are revealed by the things that are made. There is that in the world which testifies to a creator and designer. This we believe because there is that in us which instinctively, when it finds a work of art, supposes an artist; and finding a work requiring design, has belief in a designer. We say, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handy work.”

But this revelation must follow the law of all other manifestations. There must be a possibility of denying it; a discipline here, as in the other case, in which faith is called into play; and therefore, though the world reveals its maker, it does not demonstrate its maker. “Day unto day is uttering speech, and night unto night showeth forth knowledge;” but the speech is like the speech for things spiritual, the utterance is for all who choose to believe it. If men will, they may put it aside; and some deny it in the face of the world. God has willed that there shall be nothing in this world to demonstrate his existence; but it is now as of old, inasmuch as men did not choose to retain God in their knowledge, he gave them over to a reprobate mind. There is a possibility, there is a necessity, in the manifestation of God, that it should try the faith of man. Once more, we Christians believe not only that God has revealed himself in his works, but also in his word, in his Incarnate Word; that, in answer to the craving desire of the soul of man to look upon human perfection, this earth has once been walked upon by a perfect man; that in the story of the Gospels we possess that which no imperfect souls could ever have imagined, the lineaments of a perfect being. I am not saying that it is so, but it is our belief. But before we opened the Gospels, we should expect according to the analogy of all other holy and righteous lives that we know of, that it should not demonstrate itself, should not make itself an impossibility to the sceptical mind to find fault with it, and should reveal itself to those whose lives were like it, so that wisdom should justify herself by her children. We should not expect, judging from analogy of what we see in the world, that this life should in all respects silence all opposition, and be understood by every mind that it came in contact with. We should expect to hear that he was despised and rejected of men, and some people besought him to depart from their coasts. If the revelation of a divine and perfect nature is to follow the analogy of all revelations of a lower degree of perfection, and all manifestations of inferior natures, then we must expect the same law will govern this case as all others; there will be a possibility of doubt, and a trial of faith, and to those who conquer the doubt and exercise the faith, will the promise be realised, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” Ah, it was not with faith in a series of propositions only, nor in a set of dogmas—though we believe the propositions and hold the dogmas, but in the light of faith in this person—that the disciples of the Perfect One went out to convert the world. They did not preach Christ’s teaching, but Christ.

Did it ever occur to you to read the Acts of the Apostles? if so, you will have seen how little of the words of Christ, how little of the teachings of Christ, appears there. When we read in the Acts, how the Apostles went out to preach Christ, do we read that they gathered the multitude in the forum? Did they say, Listen to the morality of the Gospels? You will not find a quotation from the Sermon on the Mount. What did they do? They gathered the multitude together, and preached not the words of Christ, but Christ. They said, Come and believe in this man; it was the personality, it was the life and death, and resurrection and ascension of him, that they preached. It was a person in whom they asked the people to believe; and the result is this extraordinary and singular fact, that Christ is the only teacher among men whose life is greater than his teaching. All other teachers have faded into insignificance in comparison with their teaching. Who cares about the life of Euclid? but everybody believes in his teaching. Men are fond of comparing Christ with Socrates. Let us take it so. Did any man ever hear a person say, I am dead with Socrates; I am buried with Socrates; the life that I live is by faith in Socrates? Were such words ever heard of any heathen teacher? How comes it that men said this of Christ? The faith of the soul went out to the nature and work of Christ. The faith of man triumphed in the discovery of the perfect man.

Now we have reached the last point to which I have desired to bring you in this series of sermons. We have reached the historical fact, as to which others will follow me who will take up the subject, and who will show the evidence arising from history and prophecy. My task ends in removing the stumbling-blocks which would prevent your coming to hear them. It has been my part to lead you to the steps, to the threshold of the temple. We have found difficulties that have kept many away from the entrance to the temple. The first is the belief that Christianity is opposed to Freethought. And I have endeavoured to show you that Christianity does not deny it, but asserts it; that where Christianity does deny it, law and society deny it. The second difficulty is that of scepticism. We have seen that it is fatal to morality, and to all the higher forms of human life, and that the sceptical understanding should submit to the soul. Christianity only requires what morality has done. I have answered the objection that Christianity must appeal to faith, and must do so because it cannot find demonstration. Our answer is that it has all the demonstration that is possible for the supernatural or for history. Christianity does make demands on faith, but it acts in accordance with the analogy of human life; and Christianity in claiming faith justifies its claim to be a religion.

Now the time comes to close this discourse, in which from my inmost soul I have set the truth before you. I will ask you in all sincerity, Why do you suppose I am here? Some may say because we are priests and bigots. To me, if I must put it so, it makes no difference whether I come here or not. Why do I come here? Do you really, honestly believe, that I have come here to deceive you? Will you not give me credit, that to the best of my ability and in all earnestness and honesty, I have endeavoured to put before you the reasons that seem to me sufficient for my belief? Hear us, then, for this reason if for no other, that we desire your souls for our Lord and Master, that it is in his name we come among you, and because we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and came down from heaven to save men. It is for this reason, and this only, that we are here to speak to you, that we may with the help of God deepen your faith or shake your unbelief. We come with his word, that calls on you to follow the higher and not the lower part of your nature. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and ye shall be saved.” There are some who don’t believe in the first part of this message, there are few who do not believe that men need to be saved, saved in this world, and saved in the next, saved from some of the sin and misery in this world. I ask, is there no need of faith, is there no desire for the objects of faith? Among men have we not some need of faith? The world is growing old and sick at heart. All the remedies that have been tried for the evils of society, have been tried in vain. Idol after idol has been set up, has been rocked on its basis, and shivered. The gods of mankind have been taken away, and the cry of despondency has been raised, We have no humanity. Is there any evidence that there shall be a perfection of humanity? Is it from faith in men of science? Did science ever comfort the afflicted, or allay human sorrows? Faith in civilisation? Can it remedy the evils that are conquering society? Civilisation now means the gathering of men in great masses, to live the luxurious, the voluptuous life of great towns; it means the weary, toilful, haggard life of others in these same towns; it means the rich growing richer, and the poor growing poorer every day. Civilisation throws its dark shadows in its track. Civilisation and science, have they arrested war, or softened the heart of humanity, or prevented strife between nations? Civilisation, science and art have invented mitrailleuses, and invented destructive methods of wholesale murder. Where will you find in all these things a substitute for faith? Some speak of the millennium, and of the natural state of man being remedied in this world. We believe in the final perfection of man, but not in this world. We believe in the reign of righteousness, but it is in the eternal world. It is in that faith that we gain courage to look on the scenes and sorrows that afflict humanity. It is in the strength of that faith that we look down on the graves of the departed, and believe all is not dust of the earth; but we take up the song of Christian triumph over death, and thank God for the message “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”

THIRD REPLY OF MR. C. BRADLAUGH. CHRISTIANITY AND FAITH.

ON Wednesday evening, April 5th, Mr. Bradlaugh delivered his third lecture on “Christianity and Faith,” before an audience which crowded every corner of the Free Library, Norwich. He said: In delivering the last of this course of lectures, permit me to commence by expressing my regret, that those who differ from me consider it necessary to show their disagreement in the manner in which it was expressed last night, on my leaving this room. If it had been the conduct of some ignorant young persons only, I should not have deemed it right to waste one moment in bringing the matter before you, but there were full-grown and decently dressed persons, who were distributing religious tracts, who encouraged others in following me, and using foul language. I could not help feeling how strong was the cause which I advocate, and how wretchedly weak the cause of my opponents, when such weapons were resorted to in lieu of fair reply.

I now address myself to the last sermon of the Bishop of Peterborough, entitled “Christianity and Faith.” The first portion of this was a recapitulation of the principal arguments of the two previous sermons, and then he made a statement utterly opposed to the whole purpose of his sermons. I will deal with the exact purport, if I do not read to you the precise words he uttered. He said, It is a waste of time to endeavour to satisfy the consistent sceptic. He said, We Christians, have absolutely nothing in common with the consistent sceptic. If that be true, why did the Bishop come to preach the course of sermons to win back sceptics to the Church? Why did the Dean and Chapter inaugurate the course of sermons, if it was, in their opinion, impossible to satisfy the sceptic? Why did the Bishop say it was not only to strengthen the faith of those in the church, but to win back those who had left it? If it be not possible to win them back, then the whole course of sermons was a mere pretence, and I put it that the Bishop was, either consciously or unconsciously, misleading his hearers as to his real views, or that he did not know what he was talking about. The Bishop offered some advice to Christians for dealing with sceptics. He said, Before you allow a sceptic to put your belief to the proof, ask him what is it that he believes. That is what you have no right to do. The sceptic does not come to you at all to force his opinions on you. You come to him when he is in the cradle, and by aid of early habit and repetition of phrases in lieu of thoughts, you put your religion into him, you train him to accept your religion in school, you fashion his brain-power before it has stability for resistance. He has a right to express his disbelief in your religion, and you have no right to pretend to answer him with a mere What do you believe? There is no equality in the two positions; religion is law-protected, scepticism is law-condemned; and the Bishop has no right to take such ground: a sceptic’s ignorance would be no evidence of a believer’s knowledge. But give the Bishop the full benefit of the ground, and what does it amount to except that, after the Dean and Chapter had made a parade of their desire to answer infidelity, declaring that they would have the most competent man, this most competent man is obliged to say, The only way I advise you to meet modern infidelity is by admitting in effect, that you can do no more for your faith than to ask the infidel, What do you believe? I dismiss this; it is of so trifling a character that if it had not formed a prominent part of the Bishop’s sermon, it would not have been worth noticing. The Bishop, in dealing with Christianity and Faith, said that morality is built on faith, and that in order to be moral and have a code of morality, we must exercise an act of faith, and believe in our higher and better nature. What is our better nature, judging by the Churchman’s standard? The Articles of the Church of England declare that our nature is always lusting to do evil. The Litany says that each man is always trying to do wickedly, and entreats the Lord to deliver us from the lusts of the flesh. How then can we be asked to trust in a higher or better nature, which the Church declares is a nature fallen, depraved, and constantly tending to evil? The doctrine of the Bible is that there is none who does good, that man’s thoughts are evil continually. It is sufficient for me to quote the Litany in which the Bishop took part before his sermon, which said that we are all miserable sinners, and prayed God to be merciful to us. How can we rise to our higher and better nature, if the existence of that higher and better nature be authoritatively denied? The Bishop says there is an eternal opposition in our nature, between what he calls the sceptical understanding and the spiritual faculty, between the mind which we share with the animal and “the soul, which we Christians believe we specially derive from God.”

Let us clear away a little difficulty here. By mind I mean the totality of cerebral ability and its results in activity, and I deny that we share mind with any other animal at all. Each animal has the mind special and peculiar to its own organisation; and diverse races of men have diverse characters and degrees of mind, limited by, and resulting from, their organisation and its development. But it is the Bible, and not the sceptic, that says the mind of man and the minds of all other animals are on a level. The Bishop says that the sceptic would degrade man to the level of the beast. You have only to take the Bible and you will read:

“I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them . . . so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast.”

If the doctrine is degrading, it is the Bible that teaches the doctrine, and not the sceptic. Freethinkers never contend for anything of the kind. On the contrary, we say that the superiority of the intellect is distinctly marked in its development, that not only are men mentally superior to all other animals, but that some races of men are vastly superior to others. What does the Bishop mean by opposition between mind and soul? He did not trouble to give any evidence of the existence of what he calls soul as apart from mind. I challenge any one who may follow me to give me any evidence of any sort of existence apart from mind, that we can call soul. The Bishop said that there is a constant opposition between the intellectual faculty, the mind which we share in common with the beast, and the spiritual soul. I deny that the Bishop advanced the slightest proof of—or gave any clue to—any such soul. I deny that it is possible for any man to conceive the existence of two separate existences in man: one, mind; the other, soul. As to the opposition between them, the Bishop says that God created man’s intellectual faculties, and that he also endowed man with a soul; and that the soul is hostile to the mind; and that the mind is low and grovelling, always in hostility to the soul. He thus makes God put into man a degrading nature, always hostile to religion, and in a constant struggle with the soul. No more degrading supposition can be made respecting God, who is thus pictured as a malicious fiend; and if the Bishop had intended to make infidels, he could not have contrived more effectual means than the preaching this doctrine.

The Bishop, after dealing with the manner in which the spiritual part of our nature overcomes what he calls the animal, the intellectual or mental part of our nature—for he used all these words to describe the natural man at war with the spiritual man—says that the manner in which the spiritual conquers the other, is only by the unconscious training of the man in Christian society. The Bishop says that God has made many millions of men, and given them minds in opposition to their souls, that these minds are strong enough to lead men to evil, and they cannot be brought to God, unless in Christian society; so that the Buddhists, the Brahmins, the Mohammedans, and men of all other persuasions must necessarily be damned, because, having no Christian society, there is not amongst them the means of overcoming this natural mind. This is a pretty specimen of Christian teaching. But the Bishop is not even content with this. Having told us that Christianity is founded on an act of faith, and that faith is trust, he tells us that he believes that we are better, nobler, than our understanding would persuade us we are. Having told us that we have a wicked nature, a depraved mind in conflict with the spirit, he says that our morality is also to be founded on an act of faith, that we are really better and nobler that we suppose. Where do we find the evidence to justify this act of faith? We are, according to the Bishop and his Church, all miserable sinners, nor can we do good without the help of God. There is that subtle serpent the devil constantly working in us, and our nature is in league against God. The Bishop says the only way to overcome this horrid nature is by the training of man in Christian society, and yet two minutes after, he tries to persuade us that we are better, nobler than he and his church say we are. He says, in fact, we are all very wicked. Adam ate an apple 6,000 years ago, and we are, in consequence, all degraded and depraved; yet we are really nothing of the kind. The Bishop stated that the effect of belief in our nobler, better nature is the improvement of our character, and it is by believing in what is better and nobler, and in the possibility of being better and nobler, that we grow better. _Ergo_, so long as men believe they are born in a state of natural depravity, and that of themselves they cannot do good, so long as the mass of men believe that those are depraved to damnation who cannot get trained in Christian society, so long as they believe that millions of men will be lost because they live without even hearing of Christ at all, so long they must be degraded by that belief. They must believe that God made the majority of mankind for damnation and the minority for salvation; their faith must make themselves into the incarnations of vileness and God into an almighty fiend.