Let us revert to the points of difference between the two creeds as above enumerated. Is a man necessarily self-interested in doing the will of a Being whom he loves and hopes by serving to approach and resemble? Of course, if he is looking for payment,—for health, wealth, happiness on earth or celestial glory,—for any adventitious reward outside of the fact of becoming better and nearer to God,—then, indeed, his service is self-interested. He is a mercenary in the army of martyrs. In strict ethics, his conduct, however exactly legal, is not virtuous; for virtue can only be absolutely without side-looks to contingent profit, present or future. I presume that, when Agnostics boast of the superior disinterestedness of the virtue they inculcate over that of religious men, they think (and cannot divest themselves of the early acquired habit of thinking) of religion as of this kind of labor-and-wages system,—hard duty below, high glory above,—with perhaps the additional complication of certain scholastic doctrines of imputed righteousness. But it is time this confusion should cease. Love of goodness impersonated in God is not a less disinterested, though naturally a more fervent, sentiment than love of goodness in the abstract. The Theist, in his attempt to obey by good deeds the will of the Being he loves, acts as simply as the Atheist, who loves the good deed, thinking that no being higher in the scale of existence than himself has any appreciation of the difference between good and evil. The Theist, indeed, adds to his love of goodness per se a love of goodness impersonated in God, who desires good actions to be done,[3] and possibly also a hope that, by doing good now, he may be given the power to do it again and again for ever; but it is all the same charmed circle of doing good for goodness’ sake, out of which he never emerges into any such motive as doing good for the sake of honor, prosperity, or heavenly bliss in a golden city. The sole thing which the Theist asks of God as the reward of obedience is the power to obey better in future, the privilege of obeying forever. The payment of his virtue is to be virtuous now and throughout eternity. Whether it be in this life or another, there is no difference; no new principle comes into play; no bribe unsought for here is hoped for there. He says to God: “It is a joy to serve Thee, but infinitely greater is the joy to serve Thee with the assurance that the term of my service will never expire. Precious is the privilege of calling Thee Father. How glad then am I that I shall be a child at Thy feet forever! Lord, I seek no heaven hereafter. I covet no abode of bliss, no outward reward above. To be with Thee is my heaven and my salvation and the only reward I seek. As I abide in Thee now, may I continue to live in Thee, O Father; and to grow in wisdom and love and purity and joy in Thee, time without end.”[4]
Surely, it is altogether absurd to speak of this religion as involving any, even the very slightest shade of interestedness or detraction from the highest conceivable type of human virtue. If it deserve such a condemnation, then must likewise stand condemned the most pure and exalted human love which friend has ever felt for friend,—for this also, by its very nature, seeks to serve for love’s sake, to arrive at perfect harmony, to dwell with the beloved in unbroken and everlasting union.
Turn we now to the other side of the subject. Theism has been, I hope, vindicated from the charge of interestedness. What shall we say to the general ethical aspect of Agnosticism, which assumes to be the nobler system? Admitting the blameless conduct and the high aspirations of some of its professors, what value shall we attach to their claim to be the heralds of a higher morality?
If I may, without offence, condense their lessons in a very obvious parallel, they amount to this “symbol”: “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he cease to believe either in one God or in three; and that he be fully assured that those who have done good and those who have done evil shall alike go into everlasting nothingness.” This creed piously accepted, he will advance to perfection and outrun in two ways any excellence which has been hitherto attained.
1st. While recognizing that, so far as he himself is concerned, death means the annihilation of consciousness, he will act throughout his life with a deep and conscientious concern for the consequences of his actions to those who come after him or, as Mr. Frederick Harrison expresses it, to his own posthumous activity.
2d. By welcoming the conclusions of Atheism, and especially the doctrine of the annihilation of consciousness at death, not as a sorrowful truth, but as the latest and brightest gospel of good tidings; and proclaiming, on all suitable occasions, that they afford a better stand-point and outlook for humanity than any faith or hope which has been hitherto entertained.
The first of these doctrines was set forth, a few years ago, in two eloquent and affecting papers, by Mr. Frederick Harrison, in the Nineteenth Century. How much sympathy I feel with a great deal which is said in these papers,[5] how sincerely I respect Mr. Harrison’s noble conception of the aim of life, even where I most completely misdoubt the validity of the method he proposes for attaining it, there is scarcely need to say. It is precisely because such Positivists as he and Mr. Morley and the late George Eliot, and such Agnostics as many I could name, assume such really high ground in their teaching, and appeal (though, as I think, in a fallacious way) to our very noblest sympathies and aspirations, that I feel urged to raise my feeble voice and call in question their guidance. There, in truth, stand, as they point to them, the snowy summits of purity and goodness. But by what path would they guide us to ascend them? Even if their own strong souls may climb those arid crags, can they be in any possible sense a better way than that by which millions of believers in God and immortality have gone up on high?
Let us take Mr. Harrison’s doctrine of the “Posthumous Activities” of the soul, and endeavor to estimate how far it is calculated to act as an efficient motive of virtue on ordinarily constituted, well-intentioned men and women. We must bear in mind that it is formally proposed as a substitute for the old belief in the immortality of the individual,—that is (according to the Theist creed), in the immortality of the virtue of the individual. While a Theist believes that, having lighted that sacred torch, he shall be permitted to bear it onward, burning more purely and brightly forever, the Comtist thinks he must lay down his at the side of his grave, though other men may ignite their own from it, and so carry on its light from age to age.
In the first place, I must remark that, like the promise on which such stress is laid in Dr. Bridge’s General View of Positivism, that attached husbands and wives may be solemnly interred side by side, there is nothing new in these anticipations. We have always known that we might be buried in the same vault with our next friend, as we have always known that our actions would continue to bear fruit after our departure. We entertained the first hope (so far as such a pitiful matter as the future position of our deaf and blind decaying dust deserves to be considered a hope), and we were aware of the responsibility,—plus the belief that we ourselves should enjoy free converse with the spirit of our friend, and afford to smile together on our poor mouldering garments laid up side by side in the tomb,—and plus the belief that we might ourselves be cognizant of our posthumous activities. There is nothing in the fact that both the hope and the sense of responsibility must now stand by themselves for what they are worth, to give them (so far as I can see) any fresh leverage as motives of conduct. People who did not love each other better while they expected to be at liberty to spend eternity in conscious communion, as well as to be buried in the same grave, certainly will not love each other better when their future prospects are limited to the family vault. And people who have not regulated their conduct with a view to their post-mortem influence while they anticipated to be living somewhere to know, or, at all events, to be obliged to think about it, are very little likely to regulate it the better when they are convinced that, if they leave the deluge behind them, they will neither know nor care one iota. As to the good man, he will, under the old creed and under the new alike (and neither more nor less, so far as I can perceive), entertain a solemn sense of a responsibility to do all the good and refrain from every evil in his power during his threescore years and ten,—not first, or chiefly, for the sake of consequences near or remote to himself or other people in this world or another, but because goodness, truth, courage, justice, and generosity are good in themselves, lovable in his eyes and in the eyes of God, and falsehood, impurity, cruelty, and treachery are bad and despicable, hateful to him and to his Maker. Afterward, and as a reinforcement of his choice of Scipio, he will reflect that every good act entails good consequences in widening circles of loving-kindness, honor, and honesty, and every bad one the reverse; and he will hope in dying to reflect that the sum of the influence he leaves to work after him will be wholly on the side of truth, justice, and love. It is monstrous for Mr. Harrison to say that “the difference between our (Positivist) faith and that of the orthodox is this. We look to the permanence of the activities which give others happiness. They look to the permanence of the consciousness which can enjoy happiness.” Why should looking to the permanence of consciousness and happiness make a man care less for the activities “which give others happiness”? Does A care less for B’s welfare because he would like to be alive to see it, or even alive at the antipodes at the same time?
Moralists and divines of all ages have not overlooked the remoter consequences of our actions in rehearsing the motives in favor of virtue. But it is idle to attach to it, as applied to the bulk of mankind, more practical force than it possesses. In the first place, when such an observer of things as Shakspere could say that