Part 13
I. Revelation gives an uncertain sound. There are certain books in the world which claim to stand on a higher ground than all others. They claim to be special revelations of the will of God and the destiny of man. Now surely one of the first requisites of a Divine revelation is that it should be undoubtedly of Divine origin. But about all these books, except the Koran of Mahomet, hangs much obscurity both as regards their origin and their authorship. "Believers" urge that were the proofs undoubted there would be no room for faith and no merit in believing. They conceive it, then, to be a worthy employment for the Supreme Intelligence to set traps for His creatures; and, there being certain facts of the greatest importance, undis-coverable by their natural faculties, He proceeds to reveal these facts, but envelopes them in such wrappings of mystery, such garments of absurdity, that those of His creatures whom he has dowered with intellects and gifted with subtle brains, are forced to reject the whole as incredible and unreasonable. That God should give a revelation, but should not substantiate it, that He should speak, but in tones unintelligible, that His noblest gifts of reason should prove an insuperable bar to accepting his manifestation, are surely statements incredible, are surely statements utterly irreconcileable with all reverent ideas of the love and wisdom of Almighty God. Further, the believers in the various revelations all claim for their several oracles the supreme position of the exponent of the Will of God, and each rejects the sacred books of other nations as spurious productions, without any Divine authority. As these revelations are mutually destructive, it is evident that only one of them, at the most can be Divine, and the next point of the inquiry is to distinguish which this is. We, of the Western nations, at once put aside the Hindoo Vedas, or the Zendavesta, on certain solid grounds; we reject their claims to be inspired books because they contain error; their mistaken science, their legendary history, their miraculous stories, stamp them, in our impartial eyes, as the work of fallible men; the nineteenth century looks down on thee ancient writings as the instructed and cultured man smiles at the crude fancies and imaginative conceits of the child. But when the generality of Christians turn to the Bible they lay aside all ordinary criticism and all common-sense. Its science may be absurd; but excuses are found for it. Its history may be false, but it is twisted into truth. Its supernatural marvels may be flagrantly absurd; but they are nevertheless believed in. Men who laugh at the visions of the "blessed Margaret" of Paray-le-Monial assent to the devil-drowning of the swine of Gadara; and those who would scorn to investigate the tale of the miraculous spring at Lourdes, find no difficulty in believing the story of the angel-moved waters of Bethesda's pool. A book which contains miracles is usually put aside as unreliable. There is no good reason for excepting the Bible from this general rule. Miracles are absolutely incredible, and discredit at once any book in which they occur. They are found in all revelations, but never in nature, they are plentiful in man's writings, but they never deface the orderly pages of the great book of God, written by His own Hand on the earth, and the stars, and the sun. Powers? Yes, beyond our grasping, but Powers moving in stately order and changeless consistency. Marvels? Yes, beyond our imagining, but marvels evolved by immutable laws. Revelation is incredible, not only because it fails to bring proof of its truth, but because the proofs abound of its falsehood; it claims to be Divine, and we reject it because we test it by what we know of His undoubted works, for men can write books of Him and call them His revelations, but the frame of nature can only be the work of that mighty Power which man calls God. Revelation depicts Him as changeable, nature as immutable; revelation tells us of perfection marred, nature of imperfection improving; revelation speaks of a Trinity, nature of one mighty central Force; revelation relates interferences, miracles, nature unbroken sequences, inviolable law. If we accept revelation we must believe in a God Who made man upright but could not keep him so; Who heard in his far-off heaven the wailing of His earth and came down to see if things were as bad as was reported; Who had a face which brought death, but Whose hinder parts were visible to man; Who commanded and accepted human sacrifice; Who was jealous, revengeful, capricious, vain; Who tempted one king and then punished him for yielding, hardened the heart of another and then punished him for not yielding, deceived a third and thereby drew him to his death. But nature does not so outrage our morality and trample on our hearts; only we learn of a power and wisdom unspeakable, "mightily and sweetly ordering all things," and our hearts tell of a Father and a Friend, infinitely loving, and trustworthy, and good. The God of Nature and the God of Revelation are as opposed as Ormuzd and Ahriman, as darkness and light; the Bible and the universe are not writ by the same hand.
II. Revelation then being so utterly untrustworthy, it is satisfactory to discover, secondly, that it is perfectly superfluous.
All man needs for his guidance in this world he can gain through the use of his natural faculties, and the right guidance of his conduct in this world must, in all reasonableness, be the best preparation for whatever lies beyond the grave. Revelationists assure us that without their books we should have no rules of morality, and that without the Bible man's moral obligations would be unknown. Their theory is that only through revelation can man know right from wrong. Using the word "revelation" in a different sense most Theists would agree with them, and would allow that man's perception of duty is a ray which falls on him from the Righteousness of God, and that man's morality is due to the illumination of the inspiring Father of Light. Personally, I believe that God does teach morality to man, and is, in very deed, the Inspirer of all gracious and noble thoughts and acts. I believe that the source of all morality in man is the Universal Spirit dwelling in the spirits He has formed, and moving them to righteousness, and, as they answer to His whispers by active well-doing--speaking ever in louder and clearer accents. I believe also that the most obedient followers of that inner voice gain clearer and loftier views of duty and of the Holiest, and thus become true prophets of God, revealers of His will to their fellows. And this is revelation in a very real sense; it is God revealing Himself by the natural working of moral laws, even as all science is a true revelation, and is God revealing Himself by the natural working of physical laws. For laws are modes of action, and modes of action reveal the nature and character of the actor, so that every law, physical and moral, which is discovered by truth-seekers and proclaimed to the world is a direct and trustworthy revelation of God Himself. But when Theists speak thus of "revelation" using the word as rightfully applicable to all discoveries and all nobly written religious or scientific books, it is manifest that the word has entirely changed its signification, and is applied to "natural" and not "supernatural" results. We believe in God working through natural faculties in a natural way, while the revelationists believe in some non-natural communication, made no one knows how, no one knows where, no one knows to whom.
Where opposing theories are concerned an ounce of fact outweighs pounds of assertion; and so against the statement of Christians, that morality is derived only from the Bible and is undiscoverable by "man's natural faculties," I quote the morality of natural religion, unassisted by what they claim as their special "revelation."
Buddha, as he lived 700 years before Christ, can hardly be said to have drawn his morality from that of Jesus or even to have derived any indirect benefit from Christian teaching, and yet I have been gravely told by a Church of England clergyman--who ought to have known better--that forgiveness of injuries and charity were purely Christian virtues. This heathen Buddha, lighted only by natural reason and a pure heart, teaches: "a man who foolishly does me wrong I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him the more good shall go from me;" among principal virtues are: "to repress lust and banish desire; to be strong without being rash; to bear insult without anger; to move in the world without setting the heart on it; to investigate a matter to the very bottom; to save men by converting them; to be the same in heart and life." "Let a man overcome evil by good, anger by love, the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth. For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love; this is an old rule." He inculcates purity, charity, self-sacrifice, courtesy, and earnestly recommends personal search after truth: "do not believe in guesses"--in assuming something at hap-hazard as a starting-point--reckoning your two and your three and your four before you have fixed your number one. Do not believe in the truth of that to which you have become attached by habit, as every nation believes in the superiority of its own dress and ornaments and language. Do not believe merely because you have heard, but when of your own consciousness you know a thing to be evil abstain from it. Methinks these sayings of Buddha are unsurpassed by any revealed teaching, and contain quite as noble and lofty a morality as the Sermon on the Mount, "natural" as they are.
Plato, also, teaches a noble morality and soars into ideas about the Divine Nature as pure and elevated as any which are to be found in the Bible. The summary of his teaching, quoted by Mr. Lake in a pamphlet of Mr. Scott's series, is a glorious testimony to the worth of natural religion. "It is better to die than to sin. It is better to suffer wrong than to do it. The true happiness of man consists in being united to God, and his only misery in being separated from Him. There is one God, and we ought to love and serve Him, and to endeavour to resemble Him in holiness and righteousness." Plato saw also the great truth that suffering is not the result of an evil power, but is a necessary training to good, and he anticipates the very words of Paul--if indeed Paul does not quote from Plato--that "to the just man all things work together for good, whether in life or death." Plato lived 400 years before Christ, and yet in the face of such teaching as his and Buddha's,--and they are only two out of many--Christians fling at us the taunt that we, rejectors of the Bible, draw all our morality from it, and that without this one revelation the world would lie in moral darkness, ignorant of truth and righteousness and God. But the light of God's revealing shines still upon the world, even as the sunlight streams upon it steadfastly as of old; "it is not given to a few men in the infancy of mankind to monopolise inspiration and to bar God out of the soul.... Wherever a heart beats with love, where Faith and Reason utter their oracles, there also is God, as formerly in the heart of seers and prophets."*
* Theodore Tarker.
It is a favourite threat of the priesthood to any inquiring spirit: "If you give up Christianity you give up all certainty; rationalism speaks with no certain sound; no two rationalists think alike; the word rationalism covers everything outside Christianity, from Unitarianism to the blankest atheism;" and many a timid soul starts back, feeling that if this is true it is better to rest where it is, and inquire no more. To such--and I meet many such--I would suggest one very simple thought: does "Christianity" give any more certainty than rationalism? Just try asking your mentor, "_whose_ Christianity am I to accept?" He will stammer out, "Oh, the teaching of the Bible, of course." But persevere: "As explained by whom? for all claim to found their Christianity on the Bible: am I to accept the defined logical Christianity of Pius IX., defiant of history, of science, of common sense, or shall I sit under Spurgeon, the denunciator, and flee from the scarlet woman and the cup of her fascinations: shall I believe the Christianity of Dean Stanley, instinct with his own gracious, kindly spirit, cultured and polished, pure and loving, or shall I fly from it as a sweet but insidious poison, as I am exhorted to do by Dr. Pusey, who rails at his 'variegated language which destroys all definiteness of meaning.' For pity's sake, good father, label for me the various bottles of Christian medicine, that I may know which is healing to the soul, which may be touched with caution, as for external application, and which are rank poison." All the priest will find to answer is, that "under sad diversities of opinion there are certain saving truths common to all forms of Christianity," but he will object to particularise what they are, and at this stage will wax angry and refuse to argue with anyone who shows a spirit so carping and so conceited. There is the same diversity in rationalism as in Christianity, because human nature is diverse, but there is also one bond between all freethinkers, one "great saving truth" of rationalism, one article of faith, and that is, that "free inquiry is the right of every human soul;" diverse in much, we all agree in this, and so strong is this bond that we readily welcome any thinker, however we disagree with his thoughts, provided only that he think them honestly and allow to all the liberty of holding their own opinions also. We are bound together in one common hatred of Dogmatism, one common love of liberty of thought and speech.
It is probably a puzzle to good and unlearned Christians whence men, unenlightened by revelation, drew and still draw their morality. We answer, "from mere Nature, and that because Nature and not revelation is the true basis of all morality." We have seen the untrustworthiness of all so-called revelations; but when we fall back on Nature we are on firm ground. Theists start in their search after God from their well-known axiom: "If there be a God at all He must be at least as good as His highest creature;" and they argue that what is highest and noblest and most lovable in man _must_ be below, but cannot be above, the height and the nobleness and the loveableness of God. "Of all impossible thing, the most impossible must surely be that a man should dream something of the Good and the Noble, and that it should prove at last that his Creator was less good and less noble than he had dreamed."* "The ground on which our belief in God rests is Man. Man, parent of Bibles and Churches, inspirer of all good thoughts and good deeds. Man, the master-piece of God's work on earth. Man, the text-book of all spiritual knowledge. Neither miraculous or infallible, Man is nevertheless the only trustworthy record of the Divine mind in things pertaining to God. Man's reason, conscience, and affections are the only true revelation of his Maker,"** And as we believe that we may glean some hints of the Glory and Beauty of our Creator from the glory and beauty of human excellence, so we believe that to each man, as he lives up to the highest he can perceive, will surely be unveiled fresh heights of righteousness, fresh possibilities of moral growth.
* Frances Power Cobbe.
** Rev. Charles Voysey.
To all men alike, good and evil, is laid open Nature's revelation of morality, as exemplified in the highest human lives; and these noble lives receive ever the heavenly hall-mark by the instinctive response from every human breast that they "are very good." To those only who live up to the good they see, does God give the further inner revelation, which leads them higher and higher in morality, quickening their moral faculties, and making more sensitive and delicate their moral susceptibilities. We cannot, as revelationists do, chalk out all the whole range of moral perfection: we "walk by faith and not by sight:" step by step only is the path unveiled to us, and only as we surmount one peak do we gain sight of the peak beyond: the distant prospect is shrouded from our gaze, and we are too fully occupied in doing the work which is given us to do in this world, to be for ever peering into and brooding over the world beyond the grave. We have light enough to do our Father's work here; when he calls us yonder it will be time enough to ask Him to unveil our new sphere of labour and to cause His sun to rise on it. Wayward children fret after some fancied happiness and miss the work and the pleasure lying at their feet, and so petulant men and women cry out that "man that is born of woman... is full of misery," and wail for a revelation to ensure some happier life: they seem to forget that if this world is full of misery _they_ are put here to mend it and not to cry over it, and that it is our shame and our condemnation that in God's fair world so much sin and unhappiness are found. If men would try to read nature instead of revelation, if they would study natural laws and leave revealed laws, if they would follow human morality instead of ecclesiastical morality, then there might be some chance of real improvement for the race, and some hope that the Divine Voice in Nature might be heard above the babble of the Churches.
And Nature is enough for us, gives us all the light we want and all that we, as yet, are fitted to receive. Were it possible that God should now reveal Himself to us as He is, the Being of Whose Nature we can form no conception, I believe that we should remain as ignorant as we are at present, from the want of faculties to receive that revelation: the Divine language might sound in our ears, but it would be as unintelligible as the roar of the thunder-clap, or the moan of the earthquake, or the whisper of the wind to the leaves of the cedar-tree. God is slowly revealing Himself by His works, by the course of events, by the progress of Humanity: if He has never spoken from Heaven in human language, He is daily speaking in the world around us to all who have ears to hear, and as Nature in its varied forms is His only revelation of Himself, so the mind and the heart alone can perceive His presence and catch the whispers ot His mysterious voice.
Never yet has been broken The silence eternal: Never yet has been spoken In accents supernal God's Thought of Himself.
We are groping in blindness Who yearn to behold Him: But in wisdom and kindness In darkness He folds Him Till the soul learns to see.
So the veil is unriven That hides the All-Holy, And no token is given That satisfies wholly The cravings of man.
But, unhasting, advances The march of the ages, To truth-seekers' glances Unrolling the pages Of God's revelation.
Impatience unheeding, Time, slowly revolving; Unresting, unspeeding, Is ever evolving Fresh truths about God.
Human speech has not broken The stillness supernal: Yet ever is spoken Through silence eternal, With growing distinctness God's Thought of Himself.
ON THE NATURE AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
IT is impossible for those who study the deeper religious; problems of our time to stave off much longer the question which lies at the root of them all, "What do you believe in regard to God?" We may controvert Christian doctrines, one after another; point by point we may be driven from the various beliefs of our churches; reason may force us to see contradictions where we had imagined harmony, and may open our eyes to flaws where we had dreamed of perfection; we resign all idea of a revelation; we seek for God in Nature only; we renounce for ever the hope (which glorified our former creed into such alluring beauty) that at some future time we should verily "see" God, that "our eyes should behold the King in his beauty" in that fairy "land which is very far off." But every step we take onwards towards a more reasonable faith and a surer light of Truth leads us nearer and nearer to the problem of problems, "What is That which men call God?" Not till theologians have thoroughly grappled with this question have they any just claim to be called religious guides; from each of those whom we honour as our leading thinkers we have a right to a distinct answer to this question, and the very object of the present paper is to provoke discussion on this point.
Men are apt to turn aside somewhat impatiently from an argument about the Nature and Existence of the Deity, because they consider that the question is a metaphysical one which leads nowhere; a problem the resolution of which is beyond our faculties, and the study of which is at once useless and dangerous; they forget that action is ruled by thought, and that our ideas about God are therefore of vast practical importance. On our answer to the question propounded above depends our whole conception of the nature and origin of evil, and of the sanctions of morality; on our idea of God turns our opinion on the much-disputed question of prayer, and, in fact, our whole attitude of mind towards life, here and hereafter. Does morality consist in obedience to the will of a perfectly moral Being, and are we to aim at righteousness of life because in so doing we please God? Or are we to lead noble lives because nobility of life is desirable for itself alone, and because it spreads happiness around us and satisfies the desires of our own nature? Is our mental attitude to be that of kneeling or standing? Are our eyes to be fixed on heaven or on earth? Is prayer to God reasonable and helpful, the natural cry of a child for help from a Father in Heaven? Or is it, on the other hand, a useless appeal to an unknown and irresponsible force? Is the mainspring of our actions to be the idea of duty to God, or a sense of the necessity of bringing our being into harmony with the laws of the universe? It appears to me that these questions are of such grave and vital moment that no apology is needed for drawing attention to them; and because of their importance to mankind I challenge the leaders of the religious and non-religious world alike, the Christians, Theists, Pantheists, and those who take no specific name, duly to test the views they severally hold. In this battle the simple foot soldier may touch with his lance the shield of the knight, and the insignificance of the challenger does not exempt the general from the duty of lifting the gauntlet flung down at his feet. Little care I for personal defeat, if the issue of the conflict should enthrone more firmly the radiant figure of Truth. One fault, however, I am anxious to avoid, and that is the fault of ambiguity. The orthodox and the free-thinking alike do a good deal of useless fighting from sheer misunderstanding of each other's standpoint in the controversy. It appears, then, to be indispensable in the prosecution of the following inquiry that the meaning of the terms used should be unmistakably distinct. I begin, therefore, by defining the technical forms of expression to be employed in my argument; the definitions may be good or bad, that is not material; all that is needed is that the sense in which the various terms are used should be clearly understood. When men fight only for the sake of discovering truth, definiteness of expression is specially incumbent on them; and, as has been eloquently said, "the strugglers being sincere, truth may give laurels to the victor and the vanquished: laurels to the victor in that he hath upheld the truth, laurels still welcome to the vanquished, whose defeat crowns him with a truth he knew not of before."