Chapter 19
It is not a mere exercitation of the intellect, it is an endeavor to get nearer God--to assert his eternal Providence, and vindicate his ways to men. We know no performance more wonderful for such a boy. Pascal might have written it. As was to be expected, the tremendous subject remains where he found it--his glowing love and genius cast a gleam here and there across its gloom; but it is brief as the lightning in the collied night--the jaws of darkness do devour it up--this secret belongs to God. Across its deep and dazzling darkness, and from out its abyss of thick cloud, "all dark, dark, irrecoverably dark," no steady ray has ever, or will ever, come,--over its face its own darkness must brood, till He to whom alone the darkness and the light are both alike, to whom the night shineth as the day, says, "Let there be light!" There is, we all know, a certain awful attraction, a nameless charm for all thoughtful spirits, in this mystery, "the greatest in the universe," as Mr. Hallam truly says; and it is well for us at times, so that we have pure eyes and a clean heart, to turn aside and look into its gloom; but it is not good to busy ourselves in clever speculations about it, or briskly to criticize the speculations of others--it is a wise and pious saying of Augustin, _Verius cogitatur Deus, quam dicitur; et verius est quam cogitatur_.
"I wish to be understood as considering Christianity in the present Essay rather in its relation to the intellect, as constituting the higher philosophy, than in its far more important bearing upon the hearts and destinies of us all. I shall propose the question in this form, 'Is there ground for believing that the existence of moral evil is absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of God's essential love for Christ?' (_i. e._, of the Father for Christ, or of {ho pater} for {ho logos}).
"'Can man by searching find out God?' I believe not. I believe that the unassisted efforts of man's reason have not established the existence and attributes of Deity on so sure a basis as the Deist imagines. However sublime may be the notion of a supreme original mind, and however naturally human feelings adhered to it, the reasons by which it was justified were not, in my opinion, sufficient to clear it from considerable doubt and confusion.... I hesitate not to say that I derive from Revelation a conviction of Theism, which without that assistance would have been but a dark and ambiguous hope. _I see that the Bible fits into every fold of the human heart. I am a man, and I believe it to be God's book because it is man's book._ It is true that the Bible affords me no additional means of demonstrating the falsity of Atheism; _if mind had nothing to do with the formation of the Universe, doubtless whatever had was competent also to make the Bible_; but I have gained this advantage, that my feelings and thoughts can no longer refuse their assent to _what is evidently framed to engage that assent; and what is it to me that I cannot disprove the bare logical possibility of my whole nature being fallacious? To seek for a certainty above certainty, an evidence beyond necessary belief, is the very lunacy of skepticism_: we must trust our own faculties, or we can put no trust in anything, save that moment we call the present, which escapes us while we articulate its name. _I am determined therefore to receive the Bible as Divinely authorized, and the scheme of human and Divine things which it contains, as essentially true._"
"I may further observe, that however much we should rejoice to discover that the eternal scheme of God--the necessary completion, let us remember, of his Almighty Nature--did not require the absolute perdition of any spirit called by Him into existence, we are certainly not entitled to consider the perpetual misery of many individuals as incompatible with sovereign love."
"In the Supreme Nature those two capacities of Perfect Love and Perfect Joy are indivisible. Holiness and Happiness, says an old divine, are two several notions of one thing. Equally inseparable are the notions of Opposition to Love and Opposition to Bliss. _Unless therefore the heart of a created being is at one with the heart of God, it cannot but be miserable._ Moreover, there is no possibility of continuing forever partly with God and partly against him; we must either be capable by our nature of entire accordance with His will, or we must be incapable of anything but misery, further than He may for awhile 'not impute our trespasses to us,' that is, He may interpose some temporary barrier between sin and its attendant pain. _For in the Eternal Idea of God a created spirit is perhaps not seen, as a series of successive states_, of which some that are evil might be compensated by others that are good, _but as one indivisible object of these almost infinitely divisible modes_, and that either in accordance with His own nature, or in opposition to it....
"Before the gospel was preached to man, how could a human soul have this love, and this consequent life? I see no way; but now that Christ has excited our love for him by showing unutterable love for us; now that we know him as an Elder Brother, a being of like thoughts, feelings, sensations, sufferings, with ourselves, it has become possible to love as God loves, that is, to love Christ, and thus to become united in heart to God. Besides, Christ is the express image of God's person; in loving him we are sure we are in a state of readiness to love the Father, whom we see, he tells us, when we see him. Nor is this all; the tendency of love is towards a union so intimate as virtually to amount to identification; when then by affection towards Christ we have become blended with his being, the beams of eternal love, falling, as ever, on the one beloved object, will include us in him, and their returning flashes of love out of his personality will carry along with them some from our own, since ours has become confused with his, and so shall we be one with Christ and through Christ with God. Thus then we see the great effect of the Incarnation, as far as our nature is concerned, _was to render human love for the Most High a possible thing_. The Law had said, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength;' and could men have lived by law, 'which is the strength of sin,' verily righteousness and life would have been by that law. But it was not possible, and all were concluded under sin, that in Christ might be the deliverance of all. I believe that Redemption" (_i.e._, what Christ has done and suffered for mankind) "is universal, in so far as it left no obstacle between man and God, but man's own will: that indeed is in the power of God's election, with whom alone rest the abysmal secrets of personality; but as far as Christ is concerned, his death was for all, since his intentions and affections were equally directed to all, and 'none who come to him will he in any wise cast out.'
"I deprecate any hasty rejection of these thoughts as novelties. Christianity is indeed, as St. Augustin says, 'pulchritudo tam antiqua;' but he adds, 'tam nova,' for it is capable of presenting to every mind a new face of truth. The great doctrine, which in my judgment these observations tend to strengthen and illumine, _the doctrine of personal love for a personal God_, is assuredly no novelty, but has in all times been the vital principle of the Church. Many are the forms of antichristian heresy, which for a season have depressed and obscured that principle of life; but its nature is connective and resurgent; and neither the Papal Hierarchy with its pomp of systematized errors, not the worse apostasy of latitudinarian Protestantism, have ever so far prevailed, but that many from age to age have proclaimed and vindicated the eternal gospel of love, believing, as I also firmly believe, that any opinion which tends to keep out of sight the living and loving God, whether it substitute for Him an idol, an occult agency, or a formal creed, can be nothing better than a vain and portentous shadow projected from the selfish darkness of unregenerate man."
The following is from the Review of Tennyson's Poems; we do not know that during the lapse of eighteen years anything better has been said:--
"Undoubtedly the true poet addresses himself, in all his conceptions, to the common nature of us all. Art is a lofty tree, and may shoot up far beyond our grasp, but its roots are in daily life and experience. Every bosom contains the elements of those complex emotions which the artist feels, and every head can, to a certain extent, go over in itself the process of their combination, so as to understand his expressions and sympathize with his state. _But this requires exertion_; more or less, indeed, according to the difference of occasion, but always some degree of exertion. For since the emotions of the poet during composition follow a regular law of association, it follows that to accompany their progress up to the harmonious prospect of the whole, and to perceive the proper dependence of every step on that which preceded, it is absolutely necessary _to start from the same point, i.e._, clearly to apprehend that leading sentiment of the poet's mind, by their conformity to which the host of suggestions are arranged. _Now this requisite exertion is not willingly made by the large majority of readers. It is so easy to judge capriciously, and according to indolent impulse!_"
"Those different powers of poetic disposition, the energies of Sensitive, of Reflective, or Passionate Emotion, which in former times were intermingled, and derived from mutual support an extensive empire over the feelings of men, were now restrained within separate spheres of agency. The whole system no longer worked harmoniously, and by intrinsic harmony acquired external freedom; but there arose a violent and unusual action in the several component functions, each for itself, all striving to reproduce the regular power which the whole had once enjoyed. _Hence the melancholy which so evidently characterizes the spirit of modern poetry_; hence that return of the mind upon itself, and the habit of seeking relief in idiosyncrasies rather than community of interest. _In the old times the poetic impulse went along with the general impulse of the nation._
"One of the faithful Islam, a poet in the truest and highest sense, we are anxious to present to our readers.... He sees all the forms of Nature with the '_eruditus oculus_,' and his ear has a fairy fineness. There is _a strange earnestness in his worship of beauty_, which throws a charm over his impassioned song, more easily felt than described, and not to be escaped by those who have once felt it. We think that he has _more definiteness and roundness of general conception_ than the late Mr. Keats, and is much more free from blemishes of diction and hasty capriccios of fancy.... The author imitates nobody; _we recognize the spirit of his age, but not the individual form of this or that writer_. His thoughts bear no more resemblance to Byron or Scott, Shelley or Coleridge, than to Homer or Calderon, Ferdusi or Calidasa. We have remarked five distinctive excellencies of his own manner. First, his luxuriance of imagination, and at the same time his control over it. Secondly, his power of embodying himself in ideal characters, or rather modes of character, with such extreme accuracy of adjustment, that the circumstances of the narration seem to have a natural correspondence with the predominant feeling, and, as it were, to be evolved from it by assimilative force. Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delineation of objects, and the peculiar skill with which he holds all of them _fused_, to borrow a metaphor from science, in a medium of strong emotion. Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical measures, and exquisite modulation of harmonious words and cadences to the swell and fall of the feelings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habits of thought, implied in these compositions, and imparting a mellow soberness of tone, more impressive, to our minds, than if the author had drawn up a set of opinions in verse, and sought to instruct the understanding, _rather than to communicate the love of beauty to the heart_."
What follows is justly thought and well said.
"And is it not a noble thing, that the English tongue is, as it were, the common focus and point of union to which opposite beauties converge? Is it a trifle that we temper energy with softness, strength with flexibility, capaciousness of sound with pliancy of idiom? Some, I know, insensible to these virtues, and ambitious of I know not what unattainable decomposition, prefer to utter funeral praises over the grave of departed Anglo-Saxon, or, starting with convulsive shudder, are ready to leap from surrounding Latinisms into the kindred, sympathetic arms of modern German. For myself, I neither share their regret, nor their terror. Willing at all times to pay filial homage to the shades of Hengist and Horsa, and to admit they have laid the base of our compound language; or, if you will, have prepared the soil from which the chief nutriment of the goodly tree, our British oak, must be derived, I am yet proud to confess that I look with sentiments more exulting and more reverential to the bonds by which the law of the universe has fastened me to my distant brethren of the same Caucasian race; to the privileges which I, an inhabitant of the gloomy North, share in common with climates imparadised in perpetual summer, to the universality and efficacy resulting from blended intelligence, which, while it endears in our eyes the land of our fathers as a seat of peculiar blessing, tends to elevate and expand our thoughts into communion with humanity at large; and, in the 'sublimer spirit' of the poet, to make us feel
"That God is everywhere--the God who framed Mankind to be one mighty family, Himself our Father, and the world our home."
What nice shading of thought do his remarks on Petrarch discover!
"But it is not so much to his direct adoptions that I refer, _as to the general modulation of thought, that clear softness of his images, that energetic self-possession of his conceptions, and that melodious repose in which are held together all the emotions he delineates_."
Every one who knows anything of himself, and of his fellow-men, will acknowledge the wisdom of what follows. It displays an intimate knowledge both of the constitution and history of man, and there is much in it suited to our present need:--
"_I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that the spirit of the critical philosophy, as seen by its fruits in all the ramifications of art, literature, and morality, is as much more dangerous than the spirit of mechanical philosophy_, as it is fairer in appearance, and more capable of alliance with our natural feelings of enthusiasm and delight. Its dangerous tendency is this, that it perverts those very minds, whose office it was to resist the perverse impulses of society, and to proclaim truth under the dominion of falsehood. However precipitate may be at any time the current of public opinion, bearing along the mass of men to the grosser agitations of life, and to such schemes of belief as make these the prominent object, _there will always be in reserve a force of antagonist opinion, strengthened by opposition, and attesting the sanctity of those higher principles, which are despised or forgotten by the majority_. These men _are secured by natural temperament_ and peculiar circumstances from participating in the common delusion; but if some other and deeper fallacy be invented; if some more subtle beast of the field should speak to them in wicked flattery; if a digest of intellectual aphorisms can be substituted in their minds for a code of living truths, and the lovely semblances of beauty, truth, affection, can be made first to obscure the presence, and then to conceal the loss, of that religious humility, without which, as their central life, all these are but dreadful shadows; if so fatal a stratagem can be successfully practised, I see not what hope remains for a people against whom the gates of hell have so prevailed."
"But the number of pure artists is small: few souls are so finely tempered as to preserve the delicacy of meditative feeling, untainted by the allurements of accidental suggestion. The voice of the critical conscience is still and small, like that of the moral: it cannot entirely be stifled where it has been heard, but it may be disobeyed. Temptations are never wanting: some immediate and temporary effect can be produced at less expense of inward exertion than the high and more ideal effect which art demands: it is much easier to pander to the ordinary and often recurring wish for excitement, than to promote the rare and difficult intuition of beauty. _To raise the many to his own real point of view, the artist must employ his energies, and create energy in others: to descend to their position is less noble, but practicable with ease._ If I may be allowed the metaphor, one partakes of the nature of redemptive power; the other of that self-abased and degenerate will, which 'flung from his splendors' the fairest star in heaven."
"_Revelation is a voluntary approximation of the Infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of finite humanity._ But until this step has been taken by Almighty Grace, how should man have a warrant for loving with all his heart and mind and strength?... Without the gospel, nature exhibits a want of harmony between our intrinsic constitution, and the system in which it is placed. But Christianity has made up the difference. It is possible and natural to love the Father, who has made us his children by the spirit of adoption: it is possible and natural to love the Elder Brother, who was, in all things, like as we are, except sin, and can succor those in temptation, having been himself tempted. _Thus the Christian faith is the necessary complement of a sound ethical system._"
There is something to us very striking in the words "Revelation is a _voluntary_ approximation of the Infinite Being." This states the case with an accuracy and a distinctness not at all common among either the opponents or the apologists of _revealed religion_ in the ordinary sense of the expression. In one sense God is forever revealing himself. His heavens are forever telling his glory, and the firmament showing his handiwork; day unto day is uttering speech, and night unto night is showing knowledge concerning him. But in the word of the truth of the gospel, God draws near to his creatures; he bows his heavens, and comes down:
"That glorious form, that light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,"
he lays aside. The Word dwelt with men. "Come then, let _us_ reason together;"--"Waiting to be gracious;"--"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man open to me, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me." It is the father seeing his son while yet a great way off, and having compassion, and running to him and falling on his neck and kissing him; for "it was meet for us to rejoice, for this my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found." Let no man confound the voice of God in his Works with the voice of God in his Word; they are utterances of the same infinite heart and will; they are in absolute harmony; together they make up "that undisturbed song of pure concent;" one "perfect diapason;" but they are distinct; they are meant to be so. A poor traveller, "weary and waysore," is stumbling in unknown places through the darkness of a night of fear, with no light near him, the everlasting stars twinkling far off in their depths, and yet unrisen sun, or the waning moon, sending up their pale beams into the upper heavens, but all this is distant, and bewildering for his feet, doubtless better much than outer darkness, beautiful and full of God, if he could have the heart to look up, and the eyes to make use of its vague light; but he is miserable, and afraid, his next step is what he is thinking of; a lamp secured against all winds of doctrine is put into his hands, it may, in some respects, widen the circle of darkness, but it will cheer his feet, it will tell them what to do next. What a silly fool he would be to throw away that lantern, or draw down the shutters, and make it dark to him, while it sits "i' the centre and enjoys bright day," and all upon the philosophical ground that its light was of the same kind as the stars', and that it was beneath the dignity of human nature to do anything but struggle on and be lost in the attempt to get through the wilderness and the night by the guidance of those "natural" lights, which, though they are from heaven, have so often led the wanderer astray. The dignity of human nature indeed! Let him keep his lantern till the glad sun is up, with healing under his wings. Let him take good heed to the "sure" {logon} while in this {auchmero topo}--this dark, damp, unwholesome place, "till the day dawn and {phosphoros}--the day-star--arise." Nature and the Bible, the Works and the Word of God, are two distinct things. In the mind of their Supreme Author they dwell in perfect peace, in that unspeakable unity which is of his essence; and to us his children, every day their harmony, their mutual relations, are discovering themselves; but let us beware of saying all nature is a revelation as the Bible is, and all the Bible is natural as nature is: there is a perilous juggle here.
The following passage develops Arthur Hallam's views on religious feeling; this was the master-idea of his mind, and it would not be easy to overrate its importance. "My son, give me thine heart;"--"Thou shalt _love_ the Lord thy God;"--"The fool hath said in his _heart_, There is no God." He expresses the same general idea in these words, remarkable in themselves, still more so as being the thought of one so young. "The work of intellect is posterior to the work of feeling. _The latter lies at the foundation of the man_; it is his proper self--the peculiar thing that characterizes him as an individual. No two men are alike in feeling; but conceptions of the understanding, when distinct, are precisely similar in all--the ascertained relations of truths are the common property of the race."
Tennyson, we have no doubt, had this thought of his friend in his mind, in the following lines; it is an answer to the question, Can man by searching find out God?--
"I found Him not in world or sun, Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye; Nor thro' the questions men may try, The petty cobwebs we have spun:
"If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, I heard a voice 'believe no more,' And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the godless deep;