I am ashamed to quote further from that chapter in this place; the ground on which I there tread is too sacred for controversy. But that a Christian advocate should rise from reading it to tell people that he has a right to ridicule me for holding that "man is most likely born for a dog's life, and there an end;" absorbs my other feelings in melancholy. I am sure that any candid person, reading that chapter, must see that I was hovering between doubt, hope, and faith, on this subject, and that if any one could show me that a Moral Theism and a Future Life were essentially combined, I should joyfully embrace the second, as a fit complement to the first. This writer takes the opposite for granted; that if he can convince me that the doctrine of a Future Life is essential to Moral Theism, he will—not add to—but refute my Theism! Strange as this at first appears, it is explained by his method. He draws a hideous picture of what God's world has been in the past, and indeed is in the present; with words so reeking of disgust and cruelty, that I cannot bear to quote them; and ample quotation would be needful. Then he infers, that since I must admit all this, I virtually believe in an immoral Deity. I suppose his instinct rightly tells him, that I shall not be likely to reason, "Because God can be so very cruel or careless to-day, he is sure to be very merciful and vigilant hereafter." Accepting his facts as a complete enumeration of the phenomena of the present world, I suppose it is better inductive logic to say: "He who can be himself so cruel, and endure such monsters of brutality for six or more thousand years, must (by the laws of external induction) be the same, and leave men the same, for all eternity; and is clearly reckless of moral considerations." If I adopt this alternative, I become a Pagan or an Atheist, one or other of which Mr. Rogers seems anxious to make me. If he would urge, that to look at the dark and terrible side of human life is onesided and delusive, and that the God who is known to us in Nature has so tempered the world to man and man to the world as to manifest his moral intentions;—(arguments, which I think, my critic must have heard from Socrates or Plato, without pooling out on them scalding words, such as I feel and avow to be blasphemous;)—then he might perhaps help my faith where it is weakest, and give me (more or less) aid to maintain a future life dogmatically, instead of hopefully and doubtfully. But now, to use my friend Martineau's words: "His method doubles every difficulty without relieving any, and tends to enthrone a Devil everywhere, and leave a God nowhere."
Since he wrote his second edition of the "Defence," I have brought out my work called "Theism," in which (without withdrawing my objections to the popular idea of future Retribution) I have tried to reason out a doctrine of Future Life from spiritual considerations. I have no doubt that my critic would find them highly aboard, and perhaps would pronounce them ineffably ludicrous, and preposterous feats of logic. If I could hide their existence from him, I certainly would, lest he misquote and misinterpret them. But as I cannot keep the book from him, I here refer to it to say, that if I am to maintain this most profound and mysterious doctrine with any practical intensity, my convictions in the power of the human mind to follow such high inquiries, need to be greatly strengthened, not to be undermined by such arguments and such detestable pictures of this world, as Mr. Rogers holds up to me.
He throws at me the imputation of holding, that "man is most likely born for a dog's life, and there an end." And is then the life of a saint for seventy years, or for seven years, no better than a dog's life? What else but a long dog's life does this make heaven to be? Such an undervaluing of a short but noble life, is consistent with the scheme which blasphemes earth in order to ennoble heaven, and then claims to be preeminently logical. According to the clear evidence of the Bible, the old saints in general were at least as uncertain as I have ever been concerning future life; nay, according to the writer to the Hebrews, "through fear of death they were all their lifetime subject to bondage." If I had called that a dog's life, how eloquently would Mr. Rogers have rebuked me!
V. But I must recur to his defence of the profanity with which he treats sacred sentiments and subjects. After pretending, in p. 5, that he had ridiculed nothing but the things quoted above, he at length, in pp. 147-156, makes formal admission of my charge and justifies himself. The pith of his general reply is in the following, p. 152:—
"'Now (says Mr. Newman) I will not here farther insist on the monstrosity of bringing forward St. Paul's words in order to pour contempt upon them; a monstrosity which no sophistry of Mr. Harrington can justify!' I think the real monstrosity is, that men should so coolly employ St. Paul's words,—for it is a quotation from the treatise on the "Soul,"—to mean something totally different from anything he intended to convey by them, and employ the dialect of the Apostles to contradict their doctrines; that is the monstrosity … It is very hard to conceive that Mr. Newman did not see this…. But had he gone on only a few lines, the reader would have seen Harrington saying: 'These words you have just quoted were well in St. Paul's mouth, and had a meaning. In yours, I suspect, they would have none, or a very different one.'"
According to this doctrine of Mr. Rogers, it would not have been profane in an unbelieving Jew to make game of Moses, David, and the Prophets, whenever they were quoted by Paul. The Jew most profoundly believed that Paul quoted the old Scriptures in a false, as well as in a new meaning. One Christian divine does not feel free to ridicule the words of Paul when quoted erroneously (as he thinks) by another Christian divine? Why then, when quoted by me? I hold it to be a great insolence to deny my right to quote Paul or David, as much as Plato or Homer, and adopt their language whenever I find it to express my sentiment. Mr. Rogers's claim to deride highly spiritual truth, barely because I revere it, is a union of inhumanity and impiety. He has nowhere shown that Paul meant something "totally different" from the sense which I put on his words. I know that he cannot. I do not pretend always to bind myself to the definite sense of my predecessors; nor did the writers of the New Testament. They often adopt and apply in an avowedly new sense the words of the Old Testament; so does Dr. Watts with the Hebrew Psalms. Such adaptation, in the way of development and enlargement, when done with sincerely pious intention, has never been reproved or forbidden by Christians, Whether I am wise or unwise in my interpretations, the subject is a sacred one, and I treat it solemnly; and no errors in my "logic" can justify Mr. Rogers in putting on the mask of a profane sceptic, who scoffs (not once or twice, but through a long book) at the most sacred and tender matters, such as one always dreads to bring before a promiscuous public, lest one cast pearls before swine. And yet unless devotional books be written, especially by those who have as yet no church, how are we to aid one another in the uphill straggle to maintain some elements of a heavenly life? Can anything be more heartless, or more like the sneering devil they talk of, than Mr. Harrington? And here one who professes himself a religions man, and who deliberately, after protest, calls me an INFIDEL, is not satisfied with having scoffed in an hour of folly—(in such an hour, I can well believe, that melancholy record the "Eclipse of Faith," was first penned)—but he persists in justifying his claim to jeer and snarl and mutilate, and palm upon me senses which he knows are deliberately disavowed by me, all the while pretending that it is my bad logic which justifies him! We know that very many religious men are bad logicians: if I am as puzzle-headed a fool as Mr. Rogers would make people think me, how does that justify his mocking at my religion? He justifies himself on the ground that I criticize the New Testament as freely as I should Cicero (p. 147). Well, then let him criticize me, as freely (and with as little of suppression) as I criticize it. But I do not laugh at it; God forbid! The reader will see how little reason Mr. Rogers had to imagine that I had not read so far as to see Harrington's defence; which defence is, either an insolent assumption, or at any rate not to the purpose.
I will here add, that I have received letters from numerous Christians to thank me for my book on the "Soul," in such terms as put the conduct of Mr. Rogers into the most painful contrast: painful, as showing that there are other Christians who know, and he does not know, what is the true heart and strength of Christianity. He trusts in logic and ridicules the Spirit of God.
That leads me to his defence of his suggestion that I might be possibly as much inspired as the inventor of lucifer matches. He says, p. 154:—
"Mr. Newman tells me, that I have clearly a profound unbelief in the Christian doctrine of divine influence, or I could not thus grossly insult it I answer… that which Harrington ridiculed, as the context would have shown Mr. Newman, if he had had the patience to read on, and the calmness to judge, is the chaotic view of inspiration, formally held by Mr. Parker, who is expressly referred to, "Eclipse," p. 81." In 9th edition, p. 71.
The passage concerning Mr. Parker is in the preceding page: I had read it, and I do not see how it at all relieves the disgust which every right-minded man must feel at this passage. My disgust is not personal: though I might surely ask,—If Parker has made a mistake, how does that justify insulting me? As I protested, I have made no peculiar claim to inspiration. I have simply claimed "that which all[16] pious Jews and Christians since David have always claimed." Yet he pertinaciously defends this rude and wanton passage, adding, p. 155: "As to the inventor of lucifer matches, I am thoroughly convinced that he has shed more light upon the world and been abundantly more useful to it, than many a cloudy expositor of modern spiritualism." Where to look for the "many" expositors of spiritualism, I do not know. Would they were more numerous.