Mr. Newman sometimes follows closely in Mr. Parker"s steps in the exercise of this b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sage 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 const.i.tuted 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 antic.i.p.ates 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 appet.i.tes; 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 G.o.d," 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 antic.i.p.ates 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 superst.i.tion, and is willing even to go to death for them.
So far from venturing to set up the claims of the internal oracle in compet.i.tion, 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 G.o.d 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 subst.i.tuting error for truth, and superst.i.tion 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 superst.i.tious 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 superst.i.tion 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 a.s.sociation, 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 G.o.ds 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 superst.i.tion 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 ill.u.s.trated 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!
As I look at men thus tumbling into error along this wretched causeway to heaven, I seem to be viewing Addison"s bridge of human life, with its broken arches, at each of which thousands are falling through. This way to the "celestial city" ought to be called the "Northwest Pa.s.sage"; it has one, and only one, trait of your Christian path: "there will be few that find it."
If, then, by the confession of these writers, the "false conceptions"
and the "degraded types"--the result of what are as truly "principles"
of man"s nature as the supposed "spiritual faculty," only that this last always has the worst in the conflict--have universally, and for unknown ages, involved man in the darkest abysses of superst.i.tion, crime, and misery, surely external revelation is any thing but superfluous; and if impossible, so much the worse.
The same truth is even formally evinced by the self-destructive course which both writers employ; for as the conditions of the development of our "spiritual nature," when not complied with, lead to all the deplorable consequences which they acknowledge, how do they propose to rectify them? Why, by "external"
culture, proper discipline and training, judicious instruction, by enlightening mankind,--as we may suppose they are doing by these hopeful books of theirs! If man can do so much by his books, is it impossible that a book from G.o.d might do something more? But on this I will say nothing, since you tell me that you have heard attentively the conversation I had with my friend Fellowes the other day. I will therefore omit what I had written on this point ......
But I proceed to another, maintained by these writers, on which I confess I am equally sceptical. If they concede (as how can they help it?) that the "religious sentiment" and the "spiritual faculty"
have somehow left humanity involved in the most deplorable perplexities and the most humiliating errors, they yet a.s.sure us that there is "a good time coming,"--an auspicious "progress" in virtue and religion, very gradual indeed, but sure and illimitable for the race collectively! Yes, "progress," that is "the word; and a "progress" for the world at large, of which they speak as certainly as if they had received, at least on that point, that external revelation, the possibility of which they deny. A matter of spiritual "insight" I presume none will declare it to be, and the data are certainly far too meagre and unsatisfactory to make it calculation. Is Saul among the prophets? Yes; but, as usual, the truth (if it be a truth) for which they contend is, as with other parts of their system, a plagiarism from the abjured Bible. Now, if I must believe prophecy, I prefer the magnificent strains of Isaiah to the sentimental prose either of Mr. Parker or of Mr. Newman.
I must modestly doubt whether, apart from the representations of the "books" they abjure as special "revelations," there is any thing in the history of the world which will justly a sober-minded man in coming to any positive conclusion as to this promised "progress" this infidel millennium, either the one way or the other. The chief facts, apart from such special information, would certainly point the other way. Look at the condition of the immense majority of the race in every age,--so far as we can gather any thing from history,--compare it with that of the immense majority at the present moment;--what does it tell us? Why, surely, that, if there be a destiny of indefinite "progress" in religion and virtue for the race collectively, the hand of the great clock moves so immeasurably slow that it is impossible to note it. The experience of the individual, nay, of recorded history,--if we can say there is any such thing,--fails to trace the movement of the index on the huge dial. If there be this progress for the race collectively, it must be accomplished in a cycle vast as those of the geological eras;--a deposit of a millionth of an inch of knowledge and virtue over the whole race in fifty million years or so! Mr. Newman is pleased to say, "Some nations sink, while others rise; but the lower and higher levels are both generally ascending."
Has this level for the whole race been raised perceptibly within the memory of so-called history?
Observe; I am not denying that the notion may be true: I am literally the sceptic I profess to be: I know not--apart from special information from a superhuman source--whether it be true or false. I am only venturing to laugh at men, who, denying any such information, affect to speak with any confidence on the solution of this prodigious problem, the data for solving which I contend we have not: while those we have, apart from the direct a.s.surance of supposed inspiration, more plausibly point to an opposite conclusion. The conclusion which would more naturally suggest itself from the history of the past would be that of perpetual advance and perpetual retrogression, contemporaneously going on in different portions of the race,-- perpetual flux and reflux of the waves of knowledge and science an different sh.o.r.es; though, alas! as to "religion and virtue;" I fear that these, like the Mediterranean, are almost without their tides. For a "progress" in the former,--in the race collectively.--far more plausible arguments can be adduced than for a progress in the latter; yet how much might be said that appears to militate even against that. Think of the frequent and signal checks to civilization; its transference from seat to seat; the decay of races once celebrated for knowledge and art; the inundations of barbarism from time to time;--these things alone might make a sober mind pause before he predicted for the entire race a certain progress even in art and science. Experience would at most justify a philosopher in saying. "Perhaps, yes; perhaps no." But the argument becomes incomparably more doubtful when we come to "religion," and especially that particular form of it which such writers as Messrs.
Parker and Newman believe will be preeminent and universal; towards which consummation it does not appear at present that the smallest conceivable advance has been made; since, with the exception of that infinitesimal party, of which they are among the chief, the immense majority of mankind persist in rejecting the sufficiency of the "internal" oracle, and are still found as strongly convinced as ever both of the possibility and necessity of an "external" revelation, and that, in some shape or other, it has been given! Nay, the facts, so far as we have any, seem all the other way; for no sooner had men been put approximately in possession of the pure "spiritual truth,"
which both Mr. Newman and Mr. Parker suppose to be characteristic in larger measure of Judaism and Christianity than of any other religion, than they busily began the work, not of improvement, but of corruption. The Jews corrupted their pure monotheistic truths into what these writers believe the fables, legends, miracles, and absurd dogmas of the Old Testament: and, as if that were not enough, proceeded to bury them in the huge absurdities of the Rabbinical traditions; the Christians, in like manner, corrupted the yet purer truths, which these writers affirm Christianity teaches, with what they also affirm to be the load of myth, fiction, false history, and monstrous doctrine, which make up nine tenths of the New Testament: and, as if that were not enough, proceeded, just as did the Jews, to "expand" the New Testament itself into the worse than Rabbinical traditions of the Papacy! From approximate "spiritual truth" to the supposed legends and false dogmas of the Pentateuch, from the supposed legends and dogmas of the Pentateuch to the absurdities of the Talmud;--again, from the approximate "spiritual truth" of Christianity to the supposed legends and fanciful doctrines of the New Testament, and from the legends and doctrines of the New Testament to the corruptions the Papacy;--surely these are queer proofs of a tendency to progress! A tendency to retrogradation is rather indicated. No sooner, it appears, does man proceed to obtain "spiritual truth" tolerably pure, as tested by such writers, than he proceeds incontinently to adulterate it! This unhappy and uniform tendency is also a curious comment on the impotence of the internal spiritual oracle, as against the ascendency of the "historical"
and "traditional."
Similar arguments of doubt may be derived from other facts.
Over how many countries did primitive Christianity soon degenerate into such odious idolatry, that even the delusions of the "false prophet" have been considered (like the doom to "labor") as a sort of beneficent curse in comparison! What, again, for ages, was the history of those "Shemitic races," in which, of all "races," was found, according to Mr. Parker, the happiest "religious organization,"
by which they discovered, earlier than other "races," the great truths of Monotheism? One incessant bulimia for idolatry was their master-pa.s.sion for ages; while for many ages past, as has been remarked by a countryman of Mr. Parker, their "happy religious organization" has been in deplorable ruins.
I humbly venture, then, once again, to doubt whether any sober-minded man, apart from "special inspiration," can affirm that he has any grounds to utter a word about a "progress" in religion or virtue for the race collectively. But it is easy to see where these writers obtained the notion; they have stolen it from that Bible which as a special revelation they have abjured.
I cannot help remarking here, that it is a most suspicious circ.u.mstance, if there be, indeed, any universal and sufficient "internal revelation," that these writers find every memorable advance of what they deem religious truth in unaccountable connection either with the happy "religious organization of one race," according to Mr. Parker, or in equally strange connection with the records of "two books" originating among that race; according to Mr. Newman.
"The Bible," says the latter, "is pervaded by a sentiment which is implied everywhere, namely, the intimate sympathy of the Pure and Perfect G.o.d with the heart of each faithful worshipper. This is that which is wanting in Greek philosophers, English Deists, German Pantheists, and all formalists. This is that which so often edifies me in Christian writers and speakers, when I ever so much disbelieve the letter of their sentences." (Phases, p. 188.)
It is unaccountably odd that the universal spiritual faculty should act thus capriciously, and equally odd that Mr. Newman does not perceive, that, if it were not for the "Bible," his religion would no more have a.s.sumed the peculiar task it has, than that of Aristotle or Cicero. Sentiments due to the still active influences of his Christian education he imputes to the direct intuitions of spiritual vision, just as we are apt to confound the original and acquired perceptions of our eyesight. He is in the condition of one who mistakes a reflected image for the object itself, or a forgotten suggestion of another for an original idea. In the camera obscura of his mind, he flatters himself that the colored forms there traced are the original inscriptions on the walls, forgetful of the little aperture which has let in the light; and not even disturbed by the untoward phenomenon, that the ideas thus contemplated are all upside down.
But, surely, it is natural to ask,--How is it that Greek philosophers, Hindoo sages, Egyptian priests, English Deists,--that men of all other religions,--having always had access to the fountain of natural illumination within, have not also had their "Baxters, Leightons, Watts, Doddridges"? that the whole style of thought on this subject is so totally different in them all, by his own confession? If man possess the "spiritual faculty" attributed to him,--if it be a characteristic of humanity,--it will be surely generally manifested; and even if those disturbing causes, which he and Mr. Parker so plentifully provide, by which the genesis of religion is so unhappily marred, but which, alas! no revelation from without can ever counteract--prevent its uniform, or nearly uniform display, still its princ.i.p.al indications (partial though they may be everywhere) ought, at least, to be everywhere indifferently diffused throughout the race. Its manifestation may be sporadic, but it will be in one race as in another; it will not be suspiciously confined to one race with a peculiarly felicitous "religious organization," or to "two books" exclusively originating with that favored race.
For his "spiritual" illumination, it is easy to see Mr. Newman"s exclusive dependence on that Bible which he abjures as a special revelation. If it has not been so to mankind, it has, at least, been so to Mr. Newman. To it he perpetually runs for argument and ill.u.s.tration. Among those who will accept his infidelity I apprehend there will be few who will not recoil from his representations of spiritual experience, so obviously nothing more than a disguised and mutilated Christianity. They will say, that they do not wish the "new cloth sewed on to the old garment"; scarcely a soul amongst them will sympathize with his soul"s "sorrows," or share his soul"s "aspirations"!
But, however these things may be, I now proceed to what I acknowledge is the most weighty topic of my argument; which is to prove that, if I acquiesce, on Mr. Newman"s grounds, in the rejection of the Bible as a special revelation of G.o.d, I am compelled on the very same principles to go a few steps further, and to express doubts of the absolutely divine original of the World, and the administration thereof, just as he does of the divine original of the Bible. If I concede to Mr. Newman, however we may differ as to the moral and spiritual faculties of man, that these are yet the sole and ultimate court of appeal to us; that from our "intuitions" of right and wrong, of "moral and spiritual, truth," be they more perfect according to him, or more rudimentary and imperfect according to me, we must form a judgment of the moral bearings of every presumed external revelation of G.o.d,--I cannot do otherwise than reject much of the revelation of G.o.d in his presumed Works as unworthy of him, just as Mr. Newman does very much in his supposed Word as equally unworthy of him. Mr.
Newman says, "Only by discerning that G.o.d has Virtues, similar in kind to human Virtues, do we know of his truthfulness and his goodness......
The nature of the case implies, that the human mind is competent to sit in moral and spiritual judgment on a professed revelation, and to decide (if the case seem to require it) in the following tone:--"This doctrine attributes to G.o.d that which we should all call harsh, cruel, or unjust in man: it is therefore intrinsically inadmissible; for if G.o.d may be (what we should call) cruel, he may equally well be (what we should call) a liar; and, if so, of what use is his word to us?"" (Soul, p. 58) Similarly Mr. Newman continually affirms that G.o.d reveals himself, when he reveals himself at all, within, and not without; as he says in his "Phases,"--"Of our moral and spiritual G.o.d we know nothing without,--every thing within. It is in the spirit that we meet him not in the communications of sense." (p. 52.) If I acquiesce in this judgment, I must apply the reasoning of the above pa.s.sage to the "external revelation" of G.o.d in his Works, as well as to that in his Word; and the above reasoning will be equally valid, merely subst.i.tuting one word for the other. We are to decide, if the case seem to require it, in the following tone:--"These phenomena--this conduct--implies what we should call in man harsh, or cruel, or unjust; it is, therefore, intrinsically inadmissible as G.o.d"s work or G.o.d"s conduct."
Acting on his principles, Mr. Newman refuses to "depress" his conscience (as he says) to the Bible standard. He affirms, that in many cases the Bible sanctions, and even enjoins, things which shock his moral sense as flagrantly immoral, and he must therefore reject them as supposed to be sanctioned by G.o.d. He in different places gives instances;--as the supposed approbation of the a.s.sa.s.sination of Sisera by the wife of Heber, the command to Abraham to sacrifice his son, and the extermination of the Canaanites. Now, whether the Bible represents G.o.d, or not, in all these cases, as sanctioning the things in question, I shall not be at the pains to inquire, because I am willing to take it for granted that Mr. Newman"s representation is perfectly correct. I only think that he ought, in consistency, to have gone a little further. Let him defend, as in perfect harmony with his "intuitions" of right and wrong, the undeniably similar instances which occur in the administration of the universe; or, if it be found impossible to solve those difficulties, let him acknowledge, either that our supposed essential "intuitions" of moral rect.i.tude are not to be trusted, as applicable to the Supreme Being, and that therefore the argument from them against the Bible is inconclusive; or, that no such being exists; or, lastly, that he has conferred upon man an intuitive conception of moral equity and rect.i.tude,--of the just and the unjust,--in most edifying contradiction to his own character and proceedings!
Here Fellowes broke in:--
"If indeed there be any such instances; but I think Mr. Newman would reply, that they will be sought for in vain in the "world,"
however plentiful, as I admit they are, in the Bible."
"I know not whether he would deny them or not," said Harrington; "but they are found in great abundance in the world notwithstanding, and this is my difficulty. If Mr. Newman were the creator of the universe, no question, none of these contradictions between "intuitions" within, and stubborn "facts" without, would be found.
He has created a G.o.d after his own mind; if he could but have created a universe also after his own mind, we should doubtless have been relieved from all our perplexities. But, unhappily, we find in it, as I imagine, the very things which so startle Mr. Newman in the Scriptural representations of the divine character and proceedings.
Is he not, like all other infidels, peculiarly scandalized, that G.o.d should have enjoined the extermination of the Canaanites? and yet does not G.o.d do still more startling things every day of our lives, and which appear less startling only because we are familiar with them,--at least, if we believe that the elements, pestilence, famine, in a word, destruction in all its forms, really fulfil his bidding?
Is there any difference in the world between the cases, except that the terrible phenomena which we find it impossible to account for are on an infinitely larger scale, and in duration as ancient as the world? that they have, in fact, been going on for thousands of weary years, and for aught you or I can tell, and as Mr. Newman seems to think probable, for millions of years? Does not a pestilence or a famine send thousands of the guilty and the innocent alike--nay, thousands of those who know not their right hand from their left--to one common destruction? Does not G.o.d (if you suppose it his doing) swallow up whole cities by earthquake, or overwhelm them with volcanic fires? I say, is there any difference between the cases, except that the victims are very rarely so wicked as the Canaanites are said to have been, and that G.o.d in the one case himself does the very things which he commissions men to do in the other? Now, if the thing be wrong, I, for one, shall never think it less wrong to do it one"s self than to do it by proxy."
"But," said Fellowes, rather warmly, for he felt rather restive at this part of Harrington"s discourse, "it is absurd to compare such sovereign acts of inexplicable will on the part of G.o.d with his command to a being so const.i.tuted as man to perform them."
"Absurd be it," said Harrington, "only be so kind as to show it to be so, instead of saying so. I maintain that the one cla.s.s of facts are just as "inexplicable," as you call it, as the other, and only appear otherwise because, in the one case, we daily see them, have become accustomed to them and, what is more than all, cannot deny them,--which last we can so promptly do in the other case; for Moses is not here to contradict us. But I rather think, that a being const.i.tuted morally and intellectually like us, who had never known any but a world of happiness, would just as promptly deny that G.o.d could ever perform such feats as are daily performed in this world! I repeat, that, if for some reasons ("inexplicable," I grant you) G.o.d does not mind doing such things, he is not likely to hesitate to enjoin them; for reasons perhaps equally inexplicable. I say perhaps; for, as I compare such an event as the earthquake in Lisbon, or the plague in London, with the extermination of the Canaanites, I solemnly a.s.sure you that I find a greater difficulty, as far as my "intuitions" go, in supposing the former event to have been effected by a divine agency than the latter. If we take the Scripture history, we must at least allow that the race thus doomed had long tried the patience of Heaven by their flagrant impiety and unnatural vices; that they had become a centre and a source (as we sometimes see collections of men to be) of moral pestilence, in the vicinage of which it was unsafe for men to dwell; that, as the Scriptures say (whether truly or falsely, I do not inquire), they had, filled up the measure of their iniquities."
Let this be supposed as fict.i.tious as you please, still the whole proceeding is represented as a solemn judicial one; and supposing the events to have occurred just as they are narrated, it positively seems to me much less difficult to suppose them to harmonize with the character of a just and even beneficent being, than those wholesale butcheries which have desolated the world, in every hour of its long history, without any discrimination whatever of innocence or guilty; which, if they have inflicted unspeakable miseries on the immediate victims, have produced probably as much or more in the agony of the myriad myriads of hearts which have bled or broken in unavailing sorrow over the sufferings they could not relieve. Such things (I speak now only of what man has not in any sense inflicted) are, in your view, as undeniably the work of G.o.d as is the extermination of the Canaanites according to the Bible. Why, if G.o.d does not mind doing such things, are we to suppose that he minds on some occasions ordering them to be done; unless we suppose that man--delicate creature!--has more refined intuitions of right and wrong, and knows better what they are, than G.o.d himself? Now, Mr. Newman and you affirm, that to suppose G.o.d should have enjoined the destruction of the Canaanites is a contradiction of our moral intuitions; and that for this and similar reasons you cannot believe the Bible to be the word of G.o.d. I answer, that the things I have mentioned are in still more glaring contradiction to such "intuitions"; than which none appears to me more clear than this,--that the morally innocent ought not to suffer; and I therefore doubt whether the above phenomena are the work of G.o.d. I must refuse, on the very same principle on which Mr. Newman disallows the Bible to be a true revelation of such a Being, to allow this universe to be so.
In equally glaring inconsistency is the entire administration of this lower world with what appears to me a first principle of moral rect.i.tude,--namely, that he who suffers a wrong to be inflicted on another, when he can prevent it, is responsible for the wrong itself.
The whole world is full of such instances."
"Ay," said Fellowes, eagerly, "we ought to prevent a wrong, provided we have the right as well as the power to interfere."