The main argument, which at first appears to be thus set aside, is that which is founded on the marks of design, and which is worked out in his own way with marvellous skill by Paley in his Natural Theology. Paley"s argument rests as is well known on the evidence of design in created things, and these evidences he chiefly finds in the frame-work of organised living creatures. He traces with much most interesting detail the many marvellous contrivances by which animals of various kinds are adapted to the circ.u.mstances in which they are to live, the mechanism which enables them to obtain their food, to preserve their species, to escape their enemies, to remove discomforts. All nature thus examined, and particularly all animated nature, seems full of means towards ends, and those ends invariably such as a beneficent Creator might well be supposed to have in view. And whilst there is undeniably one great objection to his whole argument, namely that the Creator is represented as an Artificer rather than a Creator, as overcoming difficulties which stood in His way rather than as an Almighty Being fashioning things according to His Will, yet the argument thus drawn from evidence of design remains exceedingly powerful, and it has always been considered a strong corroboration of the voice within which bids us believe in a G.o.d.
Now it certainly seems at first as if this argument were altogether destroyed. If animals were not made as we see them, but evolved by natural law, still more if it appear that their wonderful adaptation to their surroundings is due to the influence of those surroundings, it might seem as if we could no longer speak of design as exhibited in their various organs; the organs we might say grow of themselves, some suitable, and some unsuitable to the life of the creatures to which they belonged, and the unsuitable have perished and the suitable have survived.
But Paley has supplied the clue to the answer. In his well-known ill.u.s.tration of the watch picked up on the heath by the pa.s.sing traveller, he points out that the evidence of design is certainly not lessened if it be found that the watch was so constructed that, in course of time, it produced another watch like itself. He was thinking not of Evolution, but of the ordinary production of each generation of animals from the preceding. But his answer can be pushed a step further, and we may with equal justice remark that we should certainly not believe it a proof that the watch had come into existence without design if we found that it produced in course of time not merely another watch but a better. It would become more marvellous than ever if we found provision thus made not merely for the continuance of the species but for the perpetual improvement of the species. It is essential to animal life that the animal should be adapted to its circ.u.mstances; if besides provision for such adaptation in each generation we find provision for still better adaptation in future generations, how can it be said that the evidences of design are diminished? Or take any separate organ, such as the eye. It is impossible not to believe until it be disproved that the eye was intended to see with. We cannot say that light was made for the eye, because light subserves many other purposes besides that of enabling eyes to see. But that the eye was intended for light there is so strong a presumption that it cannot easily be reb.u.t.ted. If indeed it could be shown that eyes fulfilled several other functions, or that species of animals which always lived in the dark still had fully-formed eyes, then we might say that the connexion between the eye of an animal and the light of heaven was accidental. But the contrary is notoriously the case; so much the case that some philosophers have maintained that the eye was formed by the need for seeing, a statement which I need take no trouble to refute, just as those who make it take no trouble to establish, I will not say its truth, but even its possibility. But the fact, if it be a fact, that the eye was not originally as well adapted to see with as it is now, and that the power of perceiving light and of things in the light grew by degrees, does not show, nor even tend to show, that the eye was not intended for seeing with.
The fact is that the doctrine of Evolution does not affect the substance of Paley"s argument at all. The marks of design which he has pointed out remain marks of design still even if we accept the doctrine of Evolution to the full. What is touched by this doctrine is not the evidence of design but the mode in which the design was executed. Paley, no doubt, wrote on the supposition (and at that time it was hardly possible to admit any other supposition) that we must take animals to have come into existence very nearly such as we now know them: and his language, on the whole, was adapted to that supposition. But the language would rather need supplementing than changing to make it applicable to the supposition that animals were formed by Evolution. In the one case the execution follows the design by the effect of a direct act of creation; in the other case the design is worked out by a slow process. In the one case the Creator made the animals at once such as they now are; in the other case He impressed on certain particles of matter which, either at the beginning or at some point in the history of His creation He endowed with life, such inherent powers that in the ordinary course of time living creatures such as the present were developed. The creative power remains the same in either case; the design with which that creative power was exercised remains the same.
He did not make the things, we may say; no, but He made them make themselves. And surely this rather adds than withdraws force from the great argument. It seems in itself something more majestic, something more befitting Him to Whom a thousand years are as one day and one day as a thousand years, thus to impress His Will once for all on His creation, and provide for all its countless variety by this one original impress, than by special acts of creation to be perpetually modifying what He had previously made. It has often been objected to Paley"s argument, as I remarked before, that it represents the Almighty rather as an artificer than a creator, a workman dealing with somewhat intractable materials and showing marvellous skill in overcoming difficulties rather than a beneficent Being making all things in accordance with the purposes of His love. But this objection disappears when we put the argument into the shape which the doctrine of Evolution demands and look on the Almighty as creating the original elements of matter, determining their number and their properties, creating the law of gravitation whereby as seems probable the worlds have been formed, creating the various laws of chemical and physical action, by which inorganic substances have been combined, creating above all the law of life, the mysterious law which plainly contains such wonderful possibilities within itself, and thus providing for the ultimate development of all the many wonders of nature.
What conception of foresight and purpose can rise above that which imagines all history gathered as it were into one original creative act from which the infinite variety of the Universe has come and more is coming even yet?
And yet again, it is a common objection to Paley"s and similar arguments that, in spite of all the tokens of intelligence and beneficence in the creation, there is so much of the contrary character. How much there is of apparently needless pain and waste! And John Stuart Mill has urged that either we must suppose the Creator wanting in omnipotence or wanting in kindness to have left His creation so imperfect. The answer usually given is that our knowledge is partial, and, could we see the whole, the objection would probably disappear. But what force and clearness is given to this answer by the doctrine of Evolution which tells us that we are looking at a work which is not yet finished, and that the imperfections are a necessary part of a large design the general outlines of which we may already trace, but the ultimate issue of which, with all its details, is still beyond our perception! The imperfections are like the imperfections of a half-completed picture not yet ready to be seen; they are like the bud which will presently be a beautiful flower, or the larva of a beautiful and gorgeous insect; they are like the imperfections in the moral character of a saint who nevertheless is changing from glory to glory.
To the many partial designs which Paley"s Natural Theology points out, and which still remain what they were, the doctrine of Evolution adds the design of a perpetual progress. Things are so arranged that animals are perpetually better adapted to the life they have to live. The very phrase which we commonly use to sum up Darwin"s teaching, the survival of the fittest, implies a perpetual diminution of pain and increase of enjoyment for all creatures that can feel. If they are fitter for their surroundings, most certainly they will find life easier to live. And, as if to mark still more plainly the beneficence of the whole work, the less developed creatures, as we have every reason to believe, are less sensible of pain and pleasure; so that enjoyment appears to grow with the capacity for enjoyment, and suffering diminishes as sensitivity to suffering increases. And there can be no doubt that this is in many ways the tendency of nature. Beasts of prey are diminishing; life is easier for man and easier for all animals that are under his care: many species of animals perish as man fills and subjugates the globe, but those that remain have far greater happiness in their lives. In fact, all the purposes which Paley traces in the formation of living creatures are not only fulfilled by what the Creator has done, but are better fulfilled from age to age. And though the progress may be exceedingly slow, the nature of the progress cannot be mistaken.
If the Natural Theology were now to be written, the stress of the argument would be put on a different place. Instead of insisting wholly or mainly on the wonderful adaptation of means to ends in the structure of living animals and plants, we should look rather to the original properties impressed on matter from the beginning, and on the beneficent consequences that have flowed from those properties. We should dwell on the peculiar properties that must be inherent in the molecules of the original elements to cause such results to follow from their action and reaction on one another. We should dwell on the part played in the Universe by the properties of oxygen, the great purifier, and one of the great heat-givers; of carbon, the chief light-giver and heat-giver; of water, the great solvent and the storehouse of heat; of the atmosphere and the vapours in it, the protector of the earth which it surrounds. We should trace the beneficent effects of pain and pleasure in their subservience to the purification of life. The marks of a purpose impressed from the first on all creation would be even more visible than ever before.
And we could not overlook the beauty of Nature and of all created things as part of that purpose coming in many cases out of that very survival of the fittest of which Darwin has spoken, and yet a distinct object in itself. For this beauty there is no need in the economy of nature whatever. The beauty of the starry heavens, which so impressed the mind of Kant that he put it by the side of the Moral Law as proving the existence of a Creator, is not wanted either for the evolution of the world or for the preservation of living creatures. Our enjoyment of it is a super-added gift certainly not necessary for the existence or the continuance of our species. The beauty of flowers, according to the teaching of the doctrine of Evolution, has generally grown out of the need which makes it good for plants to attract insects. The insects carry the pollen from flower to flower, and thus as it were mix the breed; and this produces the stronger plants which outlive the compet.i.tion of the rest. The plants, therefore, which are most conspicuous gain an advantage by attracting insects most. That successive generations of flowers should thus show brighter and brighter colours is intelligible. But the beauty of flowers is far more than mere conspicuousness of colours even though that be the main ingredient. Why should the wonderful grace, and delicacy, and harmony of tint be added?
Is all this mere chance? Is all this superfluity pervading the whole world and perpetually supplying to the highest of living creatures, and that too in a real proportion to his superiority, the most refined and elevating of pleasures, an accident without any purpose at all? If Evolution has produced the world such as we see and all its endless beauty, it has bestowed on our own dwelling-place in lavish abundance and in marvellous perfection that on which men spend their substance without stint, that which they value above all but downright necessities, that which they admire beyond all except the Law of Duty itself. We cannot think that this is not designed, nor that the Artist who produced it was blind to what was coming out of His work.
Once more, the doctrine of Evolution restores to the science of Nature the unity which we should expect in the creation of G.o.d. Paley"s argument proved design, but included the possibility of many designers.
Not one design, but many separate designs, all no doubt of the same character, but all worked out independently of one another, is the picture that he puts before us. But the doctrine of Evolution binds all existing things on earth into one. Every mineral, every plant, every animal has such properties that it benefits other things beside itself and derives benefit in turn. The insect developes the plant, and the plant the insect; the brute aids in the evolution of the man, and the man in that of the brute. All things are embraced in one great design beginning with the very creation. He who uses the doctrine of Evolution to prove that no intelligence planned the world, is undertaking the self-contradictory task of showing that a great machine has no purpose by tracing in detail the marvellous complexity of its parts, and the still more marvellous precision with which all work together to produce a common result.
To conclude, the doctrine of Evolution leaves the argument for an intelligent Creator and Governor of the world stronger than it was before. There is still as much as ever the proof of an intelligent purpose pervading all creation. The difference is that the execution of that purpose belongs more to the original act of creation, less to acts of government since. There is more divine foresight, there is less divine interposition; and whatever has been taken from the latter has been added to the former.
Some scientific students of Nature may fancy they can deduce in the working out of the theory results inconsistent with religious belief; and in a future Lecture these will have to be examined; and it is possible that the theory may be so presented as to be inconsistent with the teaching of Revelation. But whatever may be the relation of the doctrine of Evolution to Revelation, it cannot be said that this doctrine is antagonistic to Religion in its essence. The progress of Science in this direction will a.s.suredly end in helping men to believe with more a.s.surance than ever that the Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth, by understanding hath He established the heavens.
LECTURE V.
REVELATION THE MEANS OF DEVELOPING AND COMPLETING SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE.
The evolution of Knowledge. Does not affect the truth of Science. Nor of Religion. Special characteristic of evolution of Religious Knowledge, that it is due to Revelation. All higher Religions have claimed to be Revelations. The evolution of Religious Knowledge in the Old Testament; yet the Old Testament a Revelation. Still more the New Testament. The miraculous element in Revelation. Its place and need. Harmony of this mode of evolution with the teaching of the Spiritual Faculty.
LECTURE V.
REVELATION THE MEANS OF DEVELOPING AND COMPLETING SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE.
"G.o.d, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past to the Fathers by the Prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by His Son." _Hebrews_ i. 1.
The doctrine of Evolution has been applied not only to the formation of all created things, but to the development of human knowledge; and this with perfect justice, though with some risk of misunderstanding. It is certain, and, indeed, it is obvious, that knowledge grows. The ordinary experience of mankind becomes larger and clearer in the course of time, and the systematised experience which we call Science makes the same progress in still greater measure and with more a.s.surance.
Our Science has been built on the labours of scientific men in past ages. New generalisations imagined by one thinker, new crucial experiments devised by another, new instruments of observation invented by another,--these have been the steps by which Science has grown and established its authority and enlarged its dominion. When or by whom the first steps were made we have no record. No mathematician that ever lived showed greater natural power of intellect than he, whoever he was, who first saw that the singular contained the universal; but we know neither his name nor his age, nor his birthplace nor his race. But after those first steps had been taken, we know who have been the leaders in scientific advance. And we know what they have done, and what they are doing; and we can conjecture the direction in which further advances will be made. And so we can trace the development of this kind of knowledge, and in a certain and very real sense this development may be called an evolution.
But there is this difference between the evolution of nature and the evolution of the science of nature. The evolution of nature results in the existence of forms which did not exist before; the evolution of knowledge results in the perception of laws which were already in existence.
The knowledge grows, but the things known remain. The knowledge is not treated as if independent of the things known or believed to be known, as a phenomenon belonging merely to the human mind, with beginnings and laws and consequences and history of its own. And, consequently, its having a regular growth is not used as an argument against its substantial truth.
The Science of Mathematics, for instance, has a history; but no mathematician will admit that the fact that it has a history affects its claims to acceptance as truth. We may ask, how men have been brought to believe the deductions of the higher mathematics, and we may answer our own question by tracing the steps; but our conviction is not shaken that these deductions are true.
And so, too, we can trace the steps by which the great generalisations of Science have been reached, and we may show that Kepler grew out of Copernicus, and Newton out of Kepler; but the proof that the knowledge of one truth has been evolved out of the knowledge of another, and that out of the knowledge of another, is not used to show that all this Science has nothing to do with truth at all, but is only a natural growth of human thought. Science has grown through all manner of mistakes--mistakes made by the greatest thinkers and observers, mistakes which men ignorantly laugh at now, as their own mistakes will be no doubt laughed at in turn hereafter. But we do not, therefore, treat scientific thought as nothing more than one of the phenomena of humanity; ways of thinking which necessarily grew out of the conditions in which men have existed, but sufficiently accounted for by their origin and mode of growth having been shown, and having no solidity of their own.
What has been said of Science may be said also of Religion. Religion also has had its development, and in some respects a development parallel to that of Science.
It is possible to trace the steps by which men have obtained an ever larger and fuller knowledge of the Supreme Law of Right, a clearer perception of its application, of its logical results, of its relation to life, to conduct, to belief. It has grown through mistakes as Science has. There has been false Religion, as there has been false Science.
Unsound principles of conduct have been inculcated in Religion as unsound generalisations have been set up in Science. There have been improper objects of reverence in Religion, as there have been impossible aims proposed for scientific investigation. Ezekiel rises above the doctrine that the children are punished for the sins of their parents, just as Galileo rises above the doctrine that nature abhors a vacuum.
The parallel is all the more complete in that in many cases false religions have been also false sciences. The prayer to the fetish for rain is as contrary to true religion as it is contrary to true science.
Many false religions are most easily overthrown by scientific instruction. Many false sciences begin to totter when the believers in them are taught true religion. The ordinary superst.i.tions which have so strong a hold on weak characters and uninstructed minds, are as inconsistent with true faith in G.o.d as with reasonable knowledge of nature. Science grows, but the facts, whether laws or instances of the operations of those laws, are not affected by that growth. And Religion grows, but the facts of which it takes cognisance are not affected by that growth. Neither in the one case nor in the other is the fact that there has been a development any argument to show that the belief thus developed has no real foundation. The pure subjectivity of Religion, to use technical language, is no more proved by this argument than the pure subjectivity of Science.
But there is one most important particular in which the development of Religion entirely differs from the development of Science. The leaders of scientific thought, from the time that Science has been conscious of itself, have never claimed direct divine instruction. For a long time, indeed, scientific thought rested largely on tradition, and that tradition was handed on from generation to generation without any examination into its foundations. The stores of past observations seemed so very much larger in quant.i.ty than any that men could add in their own day, that it was natural to give more weight to what was received than to what was newly observed. The experience of each generation in succession seemed nothing in comparison with the acc.u.mulated experience of all preceding generations. And in many cases old traditions stopped the growth of Science by preventing the acceptance of observations inconsistent with them. But such old traditions never claimed to rest on a revelation from G.o.d; or, if such a claim was made here and there, it never had strength enough to root itself in Science and form part of the recognised authority on which Science stood.
Science, from the time when it recognised itself as Science, has owed its development to observation of nature, and long before it shook off the fetters of unexamined tradition it had disclaimed, even for that tradition, any other basis than this. But not so Religion. Many religions, and among them the purer and higher religions, in proportion to their nearer approach to perfection, have claimed to rest on a Divine Revelation, and to be something more than either speculations of philosophic observers of nature, or deductions from innate principles of reason or conscience. Not thinkers, but prophets, or men claiming to be prophets, have given the purest religions to their disciples among mankind. It has always been possible to bring all religious teaching to the bar of conscience; it has been possible to put all religious teaching to logical examination; to systematise its precepts, whether of faith or conduct; to inquire into its fundamental principles, and to ask for the authority on which the whole teaching rests. But these applications of our intellectual faculties to Religion have always been admitted as coming after, not as preceding, the teaching to which they are made. The prophet does sometimes reason when he is deducing from principles already accepted, new precepts, or new prohibitions; but he does not confine himself to such reasoning in the fulfilment of his mission. He professes to have a message to give. He will accredit it by such means as He supplies Who has sent him with this message. He will, in order to open the consciences of his hearers, appeal to past revelations which they have already received, and with which his new message is in thorough harmony; but he often appeals also to his power over nature to bear witness that the Lord of nature has sent him. The Hebrew prophet will appeal to the teaching of the Law, will repeat the old revelation with its old unshaken and unshakeable precepts, but he will not stop there: he will also give signs from the Lord to prove that he has a right to the t.i.tle of prophet which he claims. Armed with this t.i.tle, he will go on to predict the coming of the Great Restorer, the Messiah; he will insist on the judgment of all things, sure to be pa.s.sed in its appointed day; he will hint at the immortality of the soul, and the execution of the Almighty justice on every man that lives.
It is probable enough that many of the inferior religions have grown up with no such claim at all. The worship of ancestors, where it has prevailed, has very likely, as has been suggested, grown out of dreams, in which loving memory has brought back in sleep vivid images of the dead who were reverenced while they lived, and cannot be readily forgotten after death. Such worship barely attains to what may be called in strictness a religion. Its connexion with the spiritual faculty, the true seat of religion, is weak and vague. It is like the honour paid to a sovereign residing in a distant capital, with only the difference that those who receive this worship are supposed to reside not in a distant capital, but in another world. So, too, the worship of fetishes, of trees, of serpents, of the heavenly bodies, while they have some of the inferior elements of religion in them, yet hardly deserve to be called religions. There is in them the sentiment of fear, the acknowledgment of persons or some resemblance of persons imperceptible by the senses; the acknowledgment of powers possessed by these persons.
But the central idea of a rule of holiness is either altogether wanting, or so very feeble and indistinct as to contain no promise of developing into ultimate supremacy. These religions do not often lay claim to a revelation from a supreme authority. And they have withered away with the growth of knowledge and with clearer perceptions of what Religion must be if it is to exist at all.
All the higher religions have claimed to rest on a divine revelation, and the Christian Religion on a series of such revelations. The Christian Religion does not profess (as does for instance the Mahommedan) to be wrapped up in one divine communication made to one man and admitting thereafter of no modifications. Though resting on divine revelation it is professedly a development, and is thus in harmony with the Creator"s operations in nature. Whether we consider what is taught concerning the heavenly Moral Law, or concerning human nature and its moral and spiritual needs, or concerning Almighty G.o.d and His dealings with us His creatures, it is undeniable that the teaching of the Bible is quite different at the end from what it is at the beginning.
The New Testament considered by itself as a body of teaching is such an advance on all that preceded it as to be quite unique in the history of the world. The ideas conveyed in the Old Testament are absorbed, transformed, completed, so as to make them as a whole entirely new; and to these are added entirely new ideas sufficient by themselves to form a whole system of doctrine. And because of this it is difficult to speak of the new teaching as having grown out of the old.
But the Old Testament covers many centuries, and within its range we can trace a steady growth, and that growth always of the same character, and always pointing towards what the Gospel finally revealed. The strength of the moral sentiment in the earlier books is always a.s.signed to the belief in, and reverence for, Almighty G.o.d. It is evidently held to be more important to believe in G.o.d and to fear Him than to see the perfection of His holiness. If we distinguish between Religion and Morality, Religion is made the more important of the two. It is more important to recognise that the holy G.o.d exists and reigns than to see clearly in what His holiness, and indeed all holiness, consists. The sentiment of reverence is more important than the perception of that universality which we now know to be the essential characteristic of the Moral Law. In a.n.a.lysing the origin and nature of Religion in the second of these Lectures, it was necessary to follow the order of thought, and beginning with Duty to end with G.o.d. But the order of fact is not the same. In actual fact man began with G.o.d and ends with a clearer perception of Duty. Hence in all the earlier stages the morality is imperfect. The profaneness of Esau is a serious offence. The ungenerous temper, the unfairness and duplicity of Jacob are light in comparison.
Truth is not an essential. Blood-shedding and impurity when in horrible excess are treated as most grievous sins; but restrained within limits are easily condoned. Women are placed below their true and natural place; polygamy if not distinctly allowed is certainly condoned; divorce is permitted on one side, not on the other. Slavery is allowed though put under regulation. But the unity and spirituality of G.o.d are guarded with the strongest sanctions, and nothing could be said against idolatry and polytheism now, in sterner and clearer language than was used then.
The reverence for G.o.d required then was as great as the reverence required now. But the conception of the holiness which is the main object of that reverence has changed; has in fact been purified and cleared. And the change is traceable in the Old Testament. The prophets teach a higher morality than is found in the earlier books. Cruelty is condemned as it had not been before. The heathen are not regarded as outside G.o.d"s love, and the future embraces them in His mercy even if the present does not. Conscience begins to be recognised and appealed to. Idolatry is not merely forbidden, its folly is exposed; it is treated not only with condemnation, but with scorn. Individual responsibility is insisted on. Children are not held responsible for their fathers, though the inheritance of moral evil and of the consequences of moral evil is never denied. And even trust in G.o.d rises to a higher level in Habakkuk"s declaration that that trust shall never be shaken by any calamity that may befall him, than in the earlier belief that calamities would never befall those who held fast that trust.
If we review this progress in moral teaching we recognise that it corresponds to the natural and for the most part unconscious working of that instinctive test which, as was pointed out before, we apply to all moral questions, the test of universality. The pivots of all the prophetical teaching are the incessant inculcation of justice and mercy; justice which requires us to recognise the rights of others side by side with our own; mercy which demands our sympathy with the feelings of other creatures that can feel.
We are bound to recognise the claims of others to equal treatment with ourselves, and any refusal or apparent refusal to do so must be justified by a universal rule applicable to all alike. The perpetual attempt to justify exceptions in this way is sure to end in diminishing the number of those exceptions. If we are compelled to think much of the position of woman in marriage, we are sure at last to come to Malachi"s declaration that G.o.d hateth putting away. If we are compelled to think of the position of slaves, we cannot continue for ever to believe that there are some beings with consciences and free wills, who nevertheless, because of the accidents of their lives, have no rights at all; and we acknowledge the righteousness of Jeremiah"s denunciation of the breach of covenant when the n.o.bles of Judah re-enslaved those whom they had solemnly emanc.i.p.ated. If we think of the nature of responsibility and the justification of punishment, we find it impossible to believe that an innocent man shall be rightly punished for the wrong-doing of another, even if that other be his father or his mother; and we are convinced that Ezekiel is speaking G.o.d"s words when he proclaims on G.o.d"s behalf that "the soul that sinneth it shall die; the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son." And once more, whatever divine purpose gave the chosen people a priority among all peoples in knowledge of divine will and possession of divine favour, it is impossible to find any rule by which this priority shall for ever exclude all other peoples from being within the range of G.o.d"s manifested love; and conscience cannot but accept as a divine message that the Gentiles also shall come to the Heavenly "Light, and their kings to the brightness of His rising." So again, to turn from justice to mercy, we recognise that we are bound to spare pain to all creatures that can feel, and this duty can only be set aside by some higher duty which makes that pain the means to a higher moral end. And if we are set by our consciences to seek for some rule of universal application for this purpose, it becomes perpetually clearer that nothing can excuse cruel punishments inflicted on criminals or enemies, or hard-hearted indifference to the poor and the weak. Our own nature cries out for kindness in our pain, and that very cry from within compels our consciences to listen to the cry from without. And the denunciations of cruelty and oppression we recognise as we hear them to be the voice of G.o.d.
But however true it be that this progress corresponds exactly throughout with the necessary working of the great moral principles implanted in the spiritual faculty, it nevertheless remains true also that all this teaching in its successive stages is given by men who did not profess to be working out a philosophical system, but who claimed to bring a message from G.o.d, to speak by His authority, and in many cases to be trusted with special powers in proof of possessing that authority.
Looking back over it afterwards we can see that the teaching in its successive stages was a development, but it always took the form of a revelation. And its life was due to that fact. As far as it is possible to judge, that union between Morality and Religion, between duty and faith, without which both religion and morality soon wither out of human consciences, can only be secured--has only been secured--by presenting spiritual truth in this form of a Revelation.
When we pa.s.s to the New Testament, all that has previously been taught in the Old, in so far as it is related to the new teaching at all, is related as the bud to the flower. The development, if it be indeed a development, is so great, so sudden, so strange, that it seems difficult to recognise that it is a development at all.
First, the morality is in form, if not in substance, absolutely new. The duty of justice and mercy is pushed at once to its extreme limits, even to the length of entire self-surrender. The disciple has his own rights no doubt, as every other man has his; but he is required to leave his rights in G.o.d"s hands and to think of the rights of others only. The highest place is a.s.signed to meekness in conduct and humility in spirit.
The humility of the Sermon on the Mount may possibly by careful a.n.a.lysis be shown to be identical at bottom with the magnanimity of Aristotle"s Ethics. But the presentation of the two is so utterly opposed that in the effect on life the ident.i.ty is altogether lost. And as justice and mercy, so too self-discipline is pushed as far as it can go. Instead of the enjoyment of life being an integral part of the aim set before the will, hunger and thirst for righteousness, and penitence for failure in keeping to it, are to fill up the believer"s hopes for himself. Of inward satisfaction and peace he is often a.s.sured; but these, and these only, are the means to that peace. The disciple"s life is to consist in bearing the cross, and bearing it cheerfully; in returning good for evil, and love for indifference and even for hatred; in detaching his affections from all the pleasures to be obtained from external things; in fixing his trust and his love on his Eternal Father.
Taken as a whole, this is quite unlike all moral teaching that preceded it, and there is no indication that any philosophy could ever have evolved it. It has fastened on the human conscience from the day that it was uttered; and whatever moral teaching since has not been inspired from this source has soon pa.s.sed out of power and been forgotten. We find when we examine that it exactly agrees with the fundamental teaching of the spiritual faculty when that teaching is applied to such creatures as we are, and to such a G.o.d as the New Testament sets before us. But we find it impossible to a.s.sert that by any working of human thought this morality could have been obtained by the spiritual faculty unaided. On the contrary, it seems more near the truth to say that we could never have obtained so clear a conception of the great Moral Law, if the teaching of the New Testament had not enlightened and purified the spiritual faculty itself. And to this is to be added that the moral teaching of the New Testament recognises what we may now almost consider a proved necessity of our nature, or at least a sure characteristic of the government of the world, that perpetual progress without which nothing human seems to keep sweet and wholesome. Perfect as the New Testament morality is in spirit, it is nevertheless imperfect in actual precepts. It leaves questions to be solved some of which have not been solved yet. It left slavery untouched, though a.s.suredly doomed. It said nothing of patriotism. It gave no clear command concerning the right use of wealth. It laid down no principles for the government of states, though such principles must have a moral basis. There has been a perpetual growth in the understanding and in the application of this perfect teaching, and there will yet be a growth. Of no philosophical system of morals is it possible to say the same.
But in the second place, the New Testament contains not only a new morality, it contains also a new account of human nature. The mystery of that discord which makes the n.o.blest and best of human souls a scene of perpetual internal conflict is acknowledged and its counterpart in G.o.d"s dealings with mankind is set forth. The struggle between the spiritual faculty a.s.serting its due supremacy, and the lower pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes, impulses and inclinations, is so described by Saint Paul that none have ever since questioned his description with any effect. And our Lord"s teaching of our absolute dependence on G.o.d and helplessness without Him; and Saint John"s teaching that the whole world, outside Christ, "lieth in the wicked one," lay down the same truth. And as the mystery of moral evil in mankind is thus set forth, so too the mystery of the remedy for that evil. In the love of G.o.d shown in the Cross of Christ, in our union with G.o.d through that same Death upon the Cross is the power which conquers evil in the soul and carries a man ever upward to spiritual heights. And as all profounder thinkers have confessed the truth of the account thus given of the internal contradiction of man"s moral nature, so have all believers borne witness (and only they could bear witness) to the account thus given of the solution of that contradiction and the renovation of that nature. Millions have lived and died in the Christian faith since the teaching recorded in the New Testament was given, and among them have been the purest, the justest, the most self-sacrificing, the most heavenly-minded of mankind. And they all concur in saying that the one stay of all their spiritual lives has been communion with G.o.d through Christ.
Thirdly, the New Testament affirms with a clearness previously unknown the immortality of the soul and the future gift of that spiritual body which shall in some way spring from the natural body as the plant grows from the seed. There had grown up, no doubt quite naturally, antic.i.p.ations of this doctrine and ever stronger and more deeply-rooted persuasion that it must be true. But it is revealed in the New Testament as it is taught nowhere else, and it is sealed by the Resurrection of our Lord, ever since then the historical centre of the Christian Faith.
How exactly it harmonises with the teaching of the spiritual faculty I have pointed out before.
And, lastly, the New Testament not only tells us what never was told before of man"s nature as a spiritual being and of his destiny hereafter; it tells also what was never told elsewhere of the nature of G.o.d and of the relations between Him and His creature man. The unity and spirituality of the G.o.dhead so strenuously insisted on in the Old Testament, is no less insisted on in the New. But the mysterious complexity embraced within that unity, though darkly hinted at in the older teaching, is nowhere clearly set forth, but in the latter. We may find antic.i.p.ations of the teaching of St. Paul and St. John, and of our Lord Himself as recorded by St. John, in the Book of Proverbs, in the Prophets, in the Rabbinical writers between the Prophets and the New Testament, and we can see in Philo to what this finally came unaided by Revelation. But the Christian teaching on our Lord"s nature and on the Incarnation is distinct from all this. And it is in the Christian form, and only in that form, that the doctrine has satisfied the spiritual needs of the great ma.s.s of believers.