Philosophy, says Cousin, is the effort of reflection--the attempt of the human mind to develop in systematic and logical form that which has dimly revealed itself in the spontaneous thought of ages, and to account to itself in some manner for its native and instinctive beliefs. We may further add, it is the effort of the human mind to attain to truth and certitude on purely rational grounds, uncontrolled by traditional authorities. The sublime era of Greek philosophy was, in fact, an independent effort of human reason to solve the great problems of existence, of knowledge, and of duty. It was an attempt to explain the phenomenal history of the universe, to interpret the fundamental ideas and laws of human reason, to comprehend the utterances of conscience, and to ascertain what Ultimate and Supreme Reality underlies the world of phenomena, of thought, and of moral feeling. [848] And it is this which, for us, constitutes its especial value; that it was, as far as possible, a result of simple reason; or, if at any time Faith asserted its authority, the distinction is clearly marked: If this inquiry was fully, and honestly, and logically conducted, we are entitled to presume that the results attain by this effort of speculative thought must harmonize with the positive utterances of the Divine Logos--the Eternal Reason, whose revelations are embalmed and transmitted to us in the Word of God. If the great truth that man is "the offspring of God" and as such "the image and glory of God" which is asserted, alike, by Paul and the poet-philosophers of Tarsus and Mysia, be admitted, then we may expect that the reason of man shall have some correlation with the Divine reason. The mind of man is the chef-d'œuvre of Divine art. It is fashioned after the model which the Divine nature supplies. "Let us make man in our image after our likeness." That image consists in ἐπίγνωσις--knowledge; δικαιοσύνη--justice; and ὁσιότης--benevolence. It is not merely the capacity to know, to be just, and to be beneficent; it is actual knowledge, justice, and benevolence. It supposes, first, that the fundamental ideas of the true, the just, and the good, are connate to the human mind; second, that the native determination of the mind is towards the realization of these ideas in every mental state and every form of human activity; third, that there is a constitutional sympathy of reason with the ideas of truth, and righteousness, and goodness, as they dwell in the reason of God. And though man be now fallen, there is still within his heart some vestige of his primal nature. There is still a sense of the divine, a religious aptitude, "a feeling after God," and some longing to return to Him. There are still ideas in the reason, which, in their natural and logical development compel him to recognize a God. There is within his conscience a sense of duty, of obligation, and accountability to a Superior Power--"a law of the mind," thought opposed and antagonized by depraved passions and appetites--"the law in the members." There is yet a natural, constitutional sympathy of reason with the law of God--"it delights in that law," and consents "that it is good," but it is overborne and obstructed by passion. Man, even as unregenerate, "wills to do that which is good," but "how to perform that which is good he finds not," and in the agony of his soul he exclaims, "Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me!" [849]
[Footnote 848: ][ (return) ] Plato sought also to attain to the Ultimate Reality underlying all æsthetic feeling--the Supreme Beauty as well as the Supreme Good.
[Footnote 849: ][ (return) ] Romans, ch. vii.
The Author of nature is also the Author of revelation. The Eternal Father of the Eternal Son, who is the grand medium of all God's direct communications to our race--the revealer of God, is also "the Father of the spirits of all flesh." That divine inbreathing which first constituted man "a living soul" --that "inspiration of the Almighty which giveth man understanding," and still "teacheth him knowledge," proceeds from the same Spirit as that which inspires the prophets and seers of the Old Testament Church, and the Apostles and teachers of the new. That "true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" shone on the mind of Anaxagoras, and Socrates, and Plato, as well as on the mind of Abraham and Rahab, Cornelius and the Syro-Phoenician woman, and, in a higher form, and with a clearer and richer effulgence, on the mind of Moses, Isaiah, Paul and John. It is not to be wondered at, then, if, in the teaching of Socrates and Plato, we should find a striking harmony of sentiment, and even form of expression, with some parts of the Christian revelation. No short-sighted jealousy ought to impugn the honesty of our judgment, if, in the speculations of Plato, we catch glimpses of a world of ideas not unlike that which Christianity discloses, and hear words not unfamiliar to those who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
If, then, there exists some correlation between Divine and human reason, and if the light which illuminates all minds in Christian and in heathen lands is the same "true light," though differing in degrees of brightness, it is most natural and reasonable to expect some connection and some correspondence between the discoveries of philosophy and the revelations of the Sacred Oracles.
Although Christianity is confessedly something which is above reason and nature--something communicated from above, and therefore in the fullest sense supernatural and superhuman, yet it must stand in relation to reason and nature, and to their historic development; otherwise it could not operate on man at all. "We have no knowledge of a dynamic influence, spiritual or natural, without a dynamic reaction." Matter can only be moved by forces, and according to laws, as it has properties which correlate it with these forces and laws. And mind can not be determined from without to any specific form of cognition, unless it have powers of apprehension and conception which are governed by uniform laws. If man is to be instructed by a verbal revelation, he must, at least, be capacitated for the reception of divine communication--must have a power of forming supersensuous conceptions, and there must be some original community of thought and idea between the mind that teaches and the mind that is taught. A revelation from an invisible God--a being "whom no man has ever seen or ever can see" with the eye of sense--would have no affinity for, and no power to affect and enlighten, a being who had no presentiment of an invisible Power to which he is in some way related. A revealed law promulgated from an unseen and utterly unknown Power would have no constraining authority, if man had no idea of right, no sense of duty, no feeling of obligation to a Supreme Being. If, therefore, religious instruction be not already preceded by an innate consciousness of God, and of obligation to God, as an operative predisposition, there would be nothing for revelation to act upon. Some relation between the reason which planned the universe, and which has expressed its thoughts in the numerical relations and archetypal forms which are displayed therein, and the reason of man, with its ideas of form and number, proportion and harmony, is necessarily supposed in the statement of Paul that "the invisible things of God from the creation are seen." Nature to us could be no symbol of the Divine Thought, if there were no correlation between the reason of man and the reason of God. All revelation, indeed, supposes some community of nature, some affinities of thought, some correlation of ideas, between the mind communicating spiritual knowledge, and the mind to which the communication is made. In approaching man, it must traverse ground already occupied by man; it must employ phrases already employed, and assume forms of thought already familiar to man. It must address itself to some ideas, sentiments, and feelings already possessed by man. If religion is the great end and destination of man, then the nature of man must be constituted for religion. Now religion, in its inmost nature, is a communion, a fellowship with God. But no creature can be brought into this communion "save one that is constitutionally related to God in terms that admit of correspondence." There must be intelligence offered to his intelligence, sentiment to his sentiment, reason to his reason, thought to his thought. There must be implanted in the human mind some fundamental ideas and determinations grounded upon this fact, that the real end and destination of man is for religion, so that when that higher sphere of life and action is presented to man, by an outward verbal revelation, there shall be a recognized harmony between the inner idea and determination, and the outer revelation. We can not doubt that such a relation between human nature and reason, and Christianity, exists. We see evidences of this in the perpetual strivings of humanity to attain to some fuller and clearer apprehension of that Supreme Power which is consciously near to human thought, and in the historic development of humanity towards those higher forms of thought and existence which demand a revelation in order to their completion. This original capacity, and this historical development, have unquestionably prepared the way for the reception of Christianity.
Christianity, then, must have some connection with the reason of man, and it must also have some relation to the progressive developments of human thought in the ages which preceded the advent of Christ. Christianity did not break suddenly upon the world as a new commencement altogether unconnected with the past, and wanting in all points of sympathy and contact with the then present. It proceeded along lines of thought which had been laid through ages of preparation; it clothed itself in forms of speech which had been moulded by centuries of education, and it appropriated to itself a moral and intellectual culture which had been effected by long periods of severest discipline. It was, in fact, the consummation of the whole moral and religious history of the world.
A revelation of new truths, presented in entirely new forms of thought and speech, would have defeated its own ends, and, practically, would have been no revelation at all. The divine light, in passing through such a medium, would have been darkened and obscured. The lens through which the heavenly rays are to be transmitted must first be prepared and polished. The intellectual eye itself must be gradually accustomed to the light. Hence it is that all revelation has been progressive, commencing, in the infancy of our race, with images and symbols addressed to sense, and advancing, with the education of the race, to abstract conceptions and spiritual ideas. The first communications to the patriarchs were always accompanied by some external, sensible appearance; they were often made through some preternatural personage in human form. Subsequently, as human thought becomes assimilated to the Divine idea, God uses man as his organ, and communicates divine knowledge as an internal and spiritual gift. The theistic conception of the earliest times was therefore more or less anthropomorphic, in the prophetic age it was unquestionably more spiritual. The education of Hebraic, Mosaic, and prophetic ages had gradually developed a purer theism, and prepared the Jewish mind for that sublime announcement of our Lord's--"God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit." For ages the Jews had worshipped in Samaria and Jerusalem, and the inevitable tendency of thought was to localize the divine presence; but the gradual withdrawment from these localities of all visible tokens of Jehovah's presence, prepared the way for the Saviour's explicit declaration that "neither in this mountain of Samaria, nor yet at Jerusalem, shall men worship the Father," to the exclusion of any other spot on earth; the real temple of the living God is now the heart of man. The Holiness of God was an idea too lofty for human thought to grasp at once. The light of God's ineffable purity was too bright and dazzling to burst at once on human eyes. Therefore it was gradually displayed. The election of a chosen seed in Abraham's race to a nearer approach to God than the rest of pagan humanity; the announcement of the Decalogue at Sinai amidst awe-inspiring wonders; the separation of a single tribe to the priestly office, who were dedicated to, and purified in an especial manner for the service of the tabernacle; the sanctification of the High-priest by sacrifice and lustration before he dared to enter "the holiest place"--the presence-chamber of Jehovah: and then the direct and explicit teaching of the prophets--were all advancing steps by which the Jewish mind was lifted up to the clearer apprehension of the holiness of God, the impurity of man, the distance of man from God, and the need of Mediation.
The ideas of Redemption and Salvation--of atonement, expiation, pardon, adoption, and regeneration--are unique and sui-generis. Before these conceptions could be presented in the fullness and maturity of the Christian system, there was needed the culture and education of the ages of Mosaic ritualism, with its sacrificial system, its rights of purification, its priestly absolution, and its family of God. [850] Redemption itself, as an economy, is a development, and has consequently, a history--a history which had its commencement in the first Eden, and which shall have its consummation in the second Eden of a regenerated world. It was germinally infolded in the first promise, gradually unfolded in successive types and prophecies, more fully developed in the life, and sayings, and sufferings of the Son of God, and its ripened fruit is presented to the eye of faith in the closing scenic representations of the grand Apocalypse of John. "Judaism was not given as a perfect religion. Whatever may have been its superiority over surrounding forms of worship, it was, notwithstanding, a provisional form only. The consciousness that it was a preparatory, and not a definite dispensation, is evident throughout. It points to an end beyond itself, suggests a grander thought than any in itself; its glory precisely consists in its constant looking forward to a glorious future destined to surpass it." [851]
[Footnote 850: ][ (return) ] Romans, IX 4-6.