Chapter 11

Reply to it, said he, eagerly; does it require any reply?--However, I will read what I have written. Is it not plain, that while Mr. Newman is professedly anatomizing the spiritual nature of man, as man,--the functions and revelations of that inward oracle which supersedes and anticipates all external revelations--he is, in fact, anatomizing his own? What title has he, when avowedly explaining the phenomena of the religious faculty which he asserts to be inherent in humanity,--though how they should need explaining, if his theory be true, I know not,--what title has he, when men deny that they are conscious of the facts he describes, to raise refuge in his own private revelations, and that of the few whose privilege it is to be "born again" by a mysterious law which he says it is impossible for us to investigate? "We cannot pretend," he says, "to sound the mystery whence comes the new birth, in certain souls. To reply, 'The Spirit bloweth where He listeth,' confesses the mystery, and declines to explain it. But it is evident that individuals in Greece, in the third century before the Christian era, were already moving towards an intelligent heart-worship or had even begun to practise it!" (Soul, p.64) High time, I think, that after some thousands of years some few individuals should begin to manifest the phenomena of the universal revelation from within, if such a thing be!

This is not to delineate the religions nature of humanity, but to reveal--yes, and to reveal externally--the religious nature of the elect few,--and few they are indeed,--who, by a mysterious infidel Calvinism, are permitted to attain, by direct intuition, and independent of all external revelation, the true sentiments and experiences of "spiritual insight." It this be Mr. Newman's solution of our difficulties, it is utterly nugatory. It is not to dissect the soul, "its sorrows and aspirations"; it is merely to give us the pathology--perhaps the morbid pathology--of Mr. Newman's soul; its sorrows and its aspirations. If the answer merely respected the practical value of a theory of spiritual sentiments, which all acknowledged, then Mr. Newman's answer might have some force; for certainly, only he who reduced that theory to practice, or attempted to do so, would have a right to conclude against the experience of him who did. But it is obvious that the question affects the theory itself, and especially the consciousness of those terms of possible communion with God, those relations of the soul to him, on the reception of which all the said spiritual experience must depend.

How, then, stands the argument? I ask how I shall know the intimation of the spiritual faculty, which renders all "external revelation" an impertinence? I am told, with delicious vagueness, that I must gaze on the phenomena of spiritual consciousness; I say I exercise earnest and sincere self-scrutiny, and that I can discern nothing but shadowy forms, most of which do not answer to those which these new spiritualists describe; and then Mr. Newman turns round and says, that the unspiritual nature cannot discern them! What is this but to give up the only question of any importance to humanity,--which is not what are Mr. Newman's spiritual phenomena; if they are known to himself, it is well; he has been very long in discovering them, in spite of the clearness of the internal revelation;--but what are those of man? In the former be all, Mr. Newman is safe indeed; he is intrenched in his own peculiar consciousness, of which I am quite willing to admit that all other men (as well as I) are inadequate judges. But the monograph of a solitary enthusiast is of the least possible consequence to humanity. For reasons similar to those which render us incompetent to pronounce on his experience, he is incapable of judging of ours. There is only one other answer that I know of, and that is the answer which Fellowes made to me the other day, when you were not by:--"O, but you have the same spiritual consciousness as I have, only you are not aware of it?" I contented myself with saying, that I was just as able to comprehend a perception which is not perceived, as a consciousness which when sought was not to be found. The question is one of consciousness; you say you have it, I do not deny it; I have it not. Now, if we are not disputing as to whether it be a characteristic of humanity, it little matters: if we are, I plainly have the best of it, because want of uniformity in the phenomenon is destructive of the hypothesis.

But I proceed to ask my second question. Is the "absolute religion" of Mr. Parker, or the "spiritual faculty" of Mr. Newman, of such singular use as to supersede all external revelation, since by the unfortunate "conceptions" of the one, and the "degraded types" of the other, it has for ages left man, and does, in fact, now leave him, to wallow in the lowest depths of the most debasing idolatry and superstition; since, by the confession of these very writers, the great bulk of mankind have been and are hideously mal-formed, in fact, spiritual cripples, and have been left to wander in infinitely varied paths of error, but always paths of error?--for Judaism and Christianity, though better forms, are, as well as other forms, --according to these writers,--full of fables and fancies, of lying legends and fantastical doctrines. Think for a moment of a "spiritual faculty," so bright as to anticipate all essential spiritual verities, --the universal possession of humanity,--which yet terminates in leaving the said humanity to grovel in every form of error, between the extremes of Fetichism, which consecrates a bit of stone, and Pantheism, which consecrates all the bits of stone in the universe, in fact, a sort of comprehensive Fetichism;--which leaves man to erect every thing into a God, provided it is none,--sun, moon, stars, a cat, a monkey, an onion, uncouth idols, sculptured marble; nay, a shapeless trunk,--which the devout impatience of the idolater does not stay to fashion into the likeness of a man, but gives it its apotheosis at once! Think of the venerable, wide-spread empire of the infinite forms of polytheism, the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, and Hindoo mythologies; and then acknowledge, that, if man has this faculty, it is either the most idle prerogative ever bestowed on a rational creature, or that, somehow or other, as the Bible affirms, it has been denaturalized and disabled. If, on the other hand, man has this faculty, and yet has never fallen, it can only be because he never stood; and then, no doubt, as John Bunyan hath it, "He that is down need fear no fall!"

There is an answer, indeed, but it is one which, in my judgment, covers those who resort to it with the deepest shame. It is that which apologizes for all these abominations,--so humiliating and odious, by representing them as less humiliating and odious than they are. It is true that Mr. Parker, when it is his cue, is most eloquent in his denunciations of the infinite miseries and degradation which have followed the exorbitancies of the religious principle. Thus he says of superstition (and there are other innumerable passages to a similar effect), "To dismember the soul, the very image of God,--to lop off the most sacred affections,--to call Reason a liar, Conscience a devil's oracle, and cast Love clean out from the heart,--this is the last triumph of superstition, but one often witnessed in all the three forms of Religion, Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism; in all ages before Christ, in all ages after Christ." Far be it from me to deny it, or the similar horrors which he liberally shows flow from fanaticism. But then, at other times, that quintessence of all abstractions which all religions alike contain--the "absolute religion"--imparts such perfume and appetizing relish to the whole composition, that, like Dominie Sampson in Meg Merrilies's cuisine, Mr. P. finds the Devil's cookery-book not despicable. The things he so fearfully describes are but perversions of what is essentially good. The "forms," the "accidentals," of different religions become of little consequence; whether it be Jehovah or Jupiter, the infinite Creator or a divine cat, a holy and gracious God that is loved, or an impure demon that is feared,--all this is secondary, provided the principles of faith, simplicity, and earnestness--that is, blind credulity and idiotic stupidity--inspire the wretched votary; as if the perversions he deplores and condemns were not the necessary consequences of such religions themselves, or, rather, as if they were aught but the religions! In virtue of the "absolute religion," "many a savage smeared with human sacrifice," and the Christian martyr perishing with a prayer for his persecutors, are hastening together to the celestial banquet. I hope the "savage" will not go with "unwashen hands," I trust he may be Pharisee enough for that; I also hope the two will not sit next one another; otherwise the savage may be tempted to offer up a second sacrifice, and the Christian martyr be a martyr a second time. Hear him:--"He that worships truly, by whatever form,"--that is, who is sincere in his Fetichism, his idolatry, his sacrifices, though they may be human, --"worships the only God; he hears the prayer, whether called Brahma, Pan, or Lord, or called by no name at all. Each people has its prophets and its saints; and many a swarthy Indian who bowed down to wood and stone,--many a grim-faced Calmuck, who worshipped the great God of Storms,--many a Grecian peasant who did homage to Phoebus Apollo when the sun rose or went down,--yes, many a savage, his hands smeared all over with human sacrifice,--shall come from the East and the West, and sit down in the kingdom of God, with Moses and Zoroaster, with Socrates and Jesus." (Discourses, p. 83) The charity which hopes that men may be forgiven the crime of "religions" which, if there be a God at all, must be "abominations," one can understand; but these maudlin apologies for the religions themselves, --as if they were not themselves crimes, and involved crimes in their very practice,--I do not understand. According to this, all that man has to do is to be sincere in any thing, however diabolical, and it is at once transmuted into a virtue which nothing less than heaven can reward!

Mr. Newman sometimes follows closely in Mr. Parker's steps in the exercise of this bastard toleration, this spurious charity; though, in justice, I must say, he does not go his length. Yet who can read without laughter that definition of idolatry, made apparently for the same preposterous purpose,--to sanctify the hideous absurdities of the "religious sentiment," and to save the credit of the "internal oracle"? He says,--"To worship as perfect and infinite one whom we know to be imperfect and finite, this is idolatry, and (in any bad sense) this alone ...... A man can but adore his own highest ideal; to forbid this is to forbid all religion to him. If, therefore, idolatry is to mean any thing wrong and bad, the word must be reserved for the cases in which a man degrades his ideal by worshipping something that falls short of it." (Soul, pp. 55, 56)

So that the most degraded idolater, if he but come up to his own ideal of the Divinity, is none at all, but a respectable worshipper! It may be; but the idolater's ideal of God is, generally, the reality of what others call the Devil!--Only think of the divine ideal of a man who worships an image of his own making, with ten heads and twenty hands! The definition reminds me of that passage in which Pascal's Jesuit Father defines the moral sin of "idleness":--"It is," says he, "a grief that spiritual things should be spiritual, as if it should be regretted that the sacraments are the source of grace; and it is a mortal sin." "O Father!" said I, "I cannot imagine that any one can be idle in such a sense." "So Escobar says, 'I confess it is very seldom that any person fails into the sin of idleness.' Now, surely, you must see the necessity of a good definition!"

No, no; few but Mr. Parker will affirm that the various religions which have overshadowed the world are essentially more one in virtue of the "absolute religion," than they are different in virtue of their principles, tendencies, practices, and forms; while in none --if we except Judaism and Christianity--is there enough of the "absolute religion" to keep them sweet.

These apologies, odious as they are, are necessary if the credit of the "spiritual faculty" and the "absolute religion" is to be at all preserved. But, unhappily, it is not a tone which can be consistently preserved. Sometimes the religions of mankind are all tolerable enough, from the presence of the all-consecrating element; and sometimes, in spite of this great antiseptic, they are represented as the rotten, putrid things they are! And then another answer, equally empty with the former, is hinted to save the credit of the darling oracle. Its due influence has been perverted, its just expansion prevented, by the influence of national religions, by the intervention of the "historical" and "traditional," by false and pernicious education;--these things, it seems, have poisoned the waters of spiritual life in their source, else they had gushed out of the hidden fountains of the heart pure as crystal!

Yes, it is too plain; "Bibliolatry" and "Historical Religion," in some shape,--Vedas, Koran, or Bible,--have been the world's bane. Had it not been for these, I suppose, we should everywhere have heard the invariable utterance of "spiritual religion" in the one dialect of the heart.

It is too certain that the world has found its spiritual "Babel": the one dialect of the heart is yet to be heard.

But I am not sure that the apologetic vein would not be wiser. For what is this plea, but to acknowledge that man is so constituted that the boasted "religious sentiment," the "spiritual faculty,"--if it exist at all, and is any thing more than an ill-defined tendency, --instead of being a glorious light which anticipates all external revelation, and renders it superfluous, is, in fact, about the feeblest in our nature; which everywhere and always is seduced and debauched by the most trumpery pretensions of the "historical" and "traditional"! It is not so with people's eyes; it is not so with people's appetites; no parental influence or early instruction can make men think that green is blue, or stones and chalk good for food. Yet this glorious faculty uniformly yields,--goes into shivers in the encounter! I, at least, will grant to Mr. Parker all he says of the pernicious and detestable character of the infinite variety of "false conceptions of God," and to Mr. Newman all he says of the "degraded types" of religion; but then it was Man himself that framed all those "false conceptions," and all those "degraded types." How came he thus universally to triumph over that divinely implanted faculty of spiritual discernment, which, if it exist, must be the most admirable feature of humanity; which these writers tell us anticipates all external truth, but which, it seems, greedily swallows all external error? It almost universally submits to the most contemptible pretensions of a revelation, and acknowledges that it dares not to pronounce on that, even when false, of which, even when true, it is to be the sole source! There never was an "historical" religion, however contemptible, that did not make its thousands of proselytes. Man has been easily led to embrace the most absurd systems of mythology and superstition, and is willing even to go to death for them.

So far from venturing to set up the claims of the internal oracle in competition, man all but uniformly takes his religion from his fathers (no matter what), just as he takes his property; only the former, however worthless, he holds as infinitely the more precious. Even when he surrenders it, he still surrenders it to some other "historical" religion: it is to that he turns. Such men as Mr. Newman and Mr. Parker--though every one can see that their system too has been derived from without, that it is, in fact, nothing but a distorted Christianity--may be numbered by units. The vast bulk of mankind are unresisting victims of the "traditional" and "historical"; nay, rather eagerly ask for it, and willingly submit to it. What, then, can I infer, but either, 1st, that this vaunted internal faculty which supersedes all necessity of an external revelation is a delusion, and exists only as a vague and imperfect tendency; or, 2dly, that, as Christians say, it lies in ruins, and needs that external revelation, the possibility of which is denied; or, 3dly, that God has somehow made a great mistake in mingling the various elements of man's composition, and miscalculating the overmastering power of the "historical" and "traditional "; or, 4thly, that man, having the original faculty still bright and strong, and that brightness and strength sufficient for his guidance and support, is more hopelessly, deliberately, and diabolically wicked, in thus everywhere and always substituting error for truth, and superstition for religion,--in thus giving the historical and traditional the uniform ascendency over the moral and spiritual,--than even the most desperate Calvinist ever ventured to represent him! Surely he is the most detestable beast that ever crawled on the face of the earth, and, in a new and more portentous sense, "loves darkness rather than light." The fact is, that--so far from having even a suspicion that an external revelation is useless or impossible--he, as already said, greedily seeks for it, and devours it.

Nay, so far from its being authenticated by the history, or vouched by the consciousness of the race, this very proposition--that man stands in no need of an external revelation--first comes to him, and rather late too, by an external revelation; even the revelation of such writers as Mr. Parker and Mr. Newman. The last has been a student of theology for twenty years, and has only just arrived at this conviction, that he needed no light, inasmuch as he had plenty of light "within." Brilliant, surely, it must have been! I can only say for myself, that I do not, even with such aid, find myself in any superfluous illumination, and would gladly accept, with Plato, some divine communication, of which, heathen as he was, he acknowledged the necessity.

The mode of accounting for man's universal aberrations, from the tyranny of "Bibliolatry" and superstitious and pernicious "education," --seeing that it is a tyranny of man's own imposing,--is exactly like that by which some theologians seek to elude the argument of man's depravity; it is owing, they say, to the influence of a universally depraved education! But whence that universally depraved education they forget to tell us. Meantime, the inquirer is apt to put that universal proclivity in the matter of education to that very depravity for which it is to account.

Similarly, one is apt to infer, from man's tendency to deviate into any path of religious superstition and folly, that the spiritual lantern he carries within casts but a feeble light upon hit path. This plea, therefore, is utterly worthless; for if it were true, that the influence of tradition and historic association, when once set up, could thus darken and debauch the natural faculty, whose specific office it was to convey, like the eye, specific intelligence, it would not account for the first tendencies of man to disown its authority in favor of an absurd and uniform submission to the usurpations of tradition and priestcraft. The faculty is universally feeble against this influence; it staggers; whether from weakness or drunkenness little matters, except that the last is the viler infirmity of the two. If we find a river turbid, it is of no consequence whether it was so as it issued from its fountain, or from pollutions which have been infused into its current lower down,--it is a turbid river still.

On the whole, so far from admitting the principle of Mr. Newman, that a "book-revelation" of moral and spiritual truth is unnecessary, I should rather be disposed to infer the very contrary, from the uncertainty, vacillation, and feebleness of man's spiritual nature. I should be disposed to infer it, whether I look at the lessons which experience and history teach, or those taught by my own anxious and sincere scrutiny of my own consciousness. If it be, on the other hand, as he says, "impossible," mankind are in a very hopeless predicament, since it only proves that, the "spiritual insight" of man having unhappily failed the great majority of our race, it cannot be supplied by any external aid; that the malady, which is but too apparent, is also as apparently without a remedy.

For myself, I must say that I find myself hopelessly at issue with him in virtue of the above axiom, whether I receive or reject his theory of religious truth; for, if that axiom be true, I must reject his theory of religion,--since it is nothing but a book-revelation to me,--issued by Mr. Newman, instead of the Bible or the Koran. On the other hand, if that theory be true, and I accept it, his maxim must be false, for the very same reason; since he himself will have given me a double book-revelation,--a revelation at once of the theory and of the genesis of religion, both of which are in many respects absolute novelties to my consciousness.

But further; if we take the genesis of religion as described by either of these writers, and consider the infinite corruptions to which they both acknowledge a perverted, imperfect "development" of the "religious sentiment" and the "spiritual faculty" has led, one would imagine that an external communication from Heaven might be both very possible and very useful; useful, if only by cautioning men against those "false conceptions" which have so uniformly swamped the "idea," and those "degraded types," into which all the various principles of our nature have wheedled the "spiritual faculty." Only listen to a brief specimen of the "by-path meadows" which entice the poor soul from the direct course of its development, and judge whether a communication from Heaven, if it were only to the extent of a sign-post by the way-side, might not be of use! First comes "awe." "But even in this early stage," says Mr. Newman, "numberless deviations take place, and mark especially the rudest Paganism. We may embrace them under the general name of Fetichism, which here claims attention ...... But even in the midst of enlightened science, and highly literate ages, errors fundamentally identical with those of Fetichism may and do exist, and with the very same results." (Soul, pp. 7, 10.) Then comes wonder: "But of this likewise we find numerous degraded types in which the rising religion is marred ...... Of this we have eminent instances in the gods of Greece, and in the fairies of the German and Persian tribes ...... Under the same head will be included the grotesque devil-stories and other legends of the Middle Ages ...... Yet the dreadful alternative of gross superstition is this, that the graver view tends to cruel and horrible rites, while the fanciful and sportive sucks out the life-blood of devout feeling." (Ibid. pp. 14-16.) Then comes the sense of beauty: "This was strikingly illustrated in Greek sculpture. A statue of exquisite beauty, representing some hero, or an Apollo, because of its beauty, seemed to the Greeks a fit object of worship ...... An opposite danger is often remarked to accompany the use of all the fine arts as handmaids to religion; namely, that the would-be worshipper is so absorbed in mere beauty as never to rise into devotion." (Ibid. pp. 21, 23.) Then comes the sense of order; but, alas! Atheism and Pantheism, and other "degrading types," may be begotten of it!