LECTURE X.
OF THE TWOFOLD SPIRIT OF TRUTH AND ERROR IN SCIENCE; OF THE CONFLICT OF FAITH WITH INFIDELITY.
IN the terrestial creation, in the realm of nature, no sooner did the behest go forth, “Let there be light,” than the accomplishment forthwith followed. Scarcely was this light and life-creating word spoken, than it was succeeded, spontaneously and immediately, without let or hinderance, by the second word of the joyful conclusion: “And there was light.” Quite otherwise, however, is it in the life and in the world of free-created man, in the progression of his intellectual development, in the history of his mind [geist], in his now advancing, now retrograding thought and knowledge. Here, indeed, the first call to light and divine truth does not pass over even man’s stubborn and taciturn heart altogether unheeded and unanswered, and without eliciting some faint response. But lasting is the struggle between light and darkness, between knowledge and ignorance, between faith and infidelity. Ever wavering from side to side, and fluctuating from one extreme to another, the victory long remains undecided. And centuries often, nay, thousands of years, pass away ere with perfect truth that word of fulfillment and completion can be uttered, and we can go on, undoubtedly, to say, “And there was light.” Even when the true end is pursued along the direct road, the right track is often lost amid the endless strife and controversy of men, while a long train of useless discussion raises so thick a cloud of dust as shuts it entirely out of sight, and so a new route has to be sought and opened from quite an opposite quarter.
How deeply was the Gentile world sunk in wild and cruel superstition, when the Great Prophetic Spirit and the Disperser of that Egyptian darkness, which hung over it, repeated or wrote down those first words of light for the spiritual no less than the material creation! Assuredly he had in view thereby a new genesis for his people—a new life and a new beginning of light. Then followed fifteen centuries of probation. And what was this long period but one ceaseless though alternating struggle between light and darkness? At the end of it, in spite of its great and noble gifts and superior knowledge, the whole nation had fallen into the lowest depths of luxury and corruption, on the one hand a prey to the wilder passions, on the other spiritually dead and rotten. But, the shadow of its former self, it dragged on a miserable existence, oppressed by a foreign yoke and torn by intestine sects and parties. The one claiming to be the only legal sect (and as concerned the letter of the law, and the outward ritual, it was so in fact), and arrogant and obstinate, closely adhering to the dead letter, was widely estranged and alienated from the spirit of love and mildness. And thus the very name of Pharisee has become odious and hateful, having passed into a proverb and a by-word. Wholly mistaking the meaning of the revelation imparted to them, they misunderstood the future to which it referred, no less than the immediate fortunes of their nation and their own condition. Consequently they went totally wrong in the interpretation of the former, as well as of the problem of the present which was laid before them. For they took it in the narrow and perverted spirit of party. No doubt the Pharisees reckoned among their members many truly pious, well-disposed, and right-thinking individuals—men, who in the beginning of the new era of the world, as appeals from the simple history of those times, acknowledged the truth, and recognized the hand of God pointing and leading onward to the future. These men mourned in silence over the revolting pride and stiffneckedness of their cotemporaries. But though endued with great learning and talents, and burning zeal for right and truth, they did not venture openly to oppose and to teach differently from their brethren, even because in reality the law, the dead and external law, was on their side.
But the other party was that of the Sadducees. Quite different in principle, these were the innovators among the Jews. Explaining away the theological creed of their nation, they went so far in this direction as to throw into shade, and to question, or, rather, absolutely to deny, the immortality of the soul. In civil matters and questions of law and policy, they were the liberal free-thinkers of their day.
From amid these two dark clouds, which, if they shone at all, glimmered only with the deceptive halo of the false light and hue of party, broke the new dawn and sun of Truth—at first unobserved, nor understood by any, so thickly had these mists overspread the horizon. But this new genesis, and this full illumination, was no longer destined exclusively for a single people. Accordingly, it gradually spread over the ten or twelve great nations who occupy two parts of the habitable globe, and also possess and govern the greatest portion of the third and the most ancient. And it is, in short, by means of that intellectual superiority and civilization which they owe to this springing of a new era, and this first light, that the former bear rule in the remotest regions of the earth.
Since the dawning of that day-spring eighteen centuries have elapsed, and sadly torn and distracted is the present aspect of Christianity. We should, no doubt, give a very distorted picture of the state of Christendom were we anxiously to trace its resemblance, through every minuter trait and nicer shade, to the old world at its close and at the end of those fifteen centuries of Jewish preparation. Such a minute parallel would be false, whether we were to compare it to the moral state and character of that nation, mentally blinded and hurrying with hasty steps toward its ruin, or even to the old heathen world of Rome, already condemned by anarchy and infidelity. Still it is generally true. For it is undeniable that man is perpetually relapsing into dissension and party quarrels, even while the hand which sways the destinies of the world, in ever-recurring epochs of renovation, is continually presenting to him anew both truth and life, health and peace. And every one can answer for himself the question whether this new proclamation of light and truth, this divine message of peace and salvation, has yet reached its full accomplishment. Has the Sun of Righteousness yet penetrated, and cast its bright beams on all the relations of life, to the very inmost joints of soul and spirit? Can it with perfect truth be said, relatively to the whole human race, “And there is light”—that light, at least, which alone is good, even because it shall remain forever? For those meteoric sparks which flash across the universal night and darkness, from the systems of man’s wisdom, which, crossing and recrossing each other’s path, are soon again extinguished forever; or those clouds of public opinion, charged with electric fluid and with pestilence, which, for the most part, is but the public outburst of some party passion; these emit no lasting, no salutary, and, therefore, no true light. Dark and gloomy, too, perhaps, in its future prospects, appears the long struggle between divine truth and human discord, between light and darkness, between faith and infidelity. But the more difficult and intricate the problem is which forms the theme of our present disquisition, the more diligently and the more conscientiously ought we to seek out and dwell upon every bright and quiet spot. For such alone can cheer us on our way along the rugged path that leads to the blissful goal of internal and spiritual peace, which will essentially contribute to give a solid basis to the public and social tranquillity, and to insure its permanence.
Slowly and gradually is it that the individual mind, distracted and vacillating between God and a divine faith on the one hand, and a higher, or even the highest, science on the other, advances in its progress toward the perfect truth. Arriving, step by step, at fuller and better convictions, it attains at last to a clear discernment that, properly and fundamentally, these two apparently-conflicting objects are not distinct, but in their inmost essence are perfectly one. But for the final attainment of this end, the most important condition to be observed is that scientific patience to which I called your attention in the last Lecture. The chief thing to be guarded against is a precipitate and over-hasty decision. For by such we should incur the great danger of sacrificing the sacred deposit of faith to science, or of foolishly rejecting the treasures of true science, which as such is indispensable to the higher life, and even necessary and useful for the confirmation of faith itself. And why, in the pursuit of truth—that proper spiritual theme and highly interesting matter of the otherwise flat and insipid drama of life—should we feel indisposed to such a scientific patience, as I called it? Why should we be unwilling to recognize it as what it really is—both salutary and indispensable to human frailty, and, as an intellectual virtue, no less necessary than even moral patience? And the latter is even the fundamental condition of every great or little business, and almost every pursuit of life, if it is to attain to a happy result, and is not to fail of its true end and aim. For patience is, as it were, the indispensable portion which their earthly existence brings to all men. Not only is it needed by the invalid on the bed of sickness, in the long and tedious observance of his physician’s precise and rigid prescriptions—not only is it wanted by the teacher in his troublesome task of giving the first development to the intellectual powers of the child—not only is patience requisite for the judge who has to settle the complicated quarrel of two litigants, of whom each claims his sympathy, each desires to win him to his own side and to bias his judgment—but it is also indispensable to the warrior whom ambition hurries forward in the pursuit of honor for himself and his country. For numberless are the hardships and privations, and many, too, are the miseries which the soldier must undergo before he can gain the object of his hopes, the hard-fought battle and the glorious victory. The statesman, too, with his wide sphere of influence and authority, stands eminently in need of patience. How watchful and comprehensive must be his vigilance, how deliberate his precautions, lest the organic course of his administration should come to a check or stop, in consequence of his having neglected, or failed to provide for any single member of the great body, or any regulating-wheel in the complicated machinery of the state.
But, on the other hand, there are also moments in human life where the final issue turns not so much on a steady and uniform perseverance in continuous activity, as on a decided resolution and firmness of purpose. Among these we may place foremost, perhaps, in an intellectual relation, the dissension between faith and infidelity, and the choice at the point where the two branch off forever.
It is not here my design to set up, to commend, and to extol faith, nor to decry, to attack, and to make war upon infidelity. For the former would take me beyond my present limits; the latter would lead me into a boundless field of details, and require me to take an exhaustive survey, not only of all actually existent, but also of all conceivable, prejudices and delusions. My principal object is rather to sketch a true and exact picture of both, comprising, at the same time, all their historical manifestations, and explaining their psychological causes, in order to exhibit them both in their true light, so that man may choose for himself and decide between them.
Now the apparent—or it may be real, but still only accidental—schism between science and faith is, in the first place, internal. It is often, indeed, profoundly hidden and concealed in the inmost depths of the heart. It is therefore inwardly only that it admits of being adjusted and finally reconciled. When this task is once accomplished in the heart of an individual, and the choice is at least made one way or the other, then this decision manifests itself outwardly, either as the triumph of truth in the unity of science and faith, or as infidelity and skepticism, shows itself in the form of a determined opposition to this unity, or to faith itself. And the latter is the form it also assumes in the intermediate case when the schism between science and faith is declared to be irreconcilable. Openly expressed, therefore, these two views go far beyond the original dissension, and pass into the second schism and conflict between faith and infidelity. And although this problem be itself an original and internal one, still it reveals itself pre-eminently as a practical schism in actual life, and it is as such, also, that it develops and manifests itself in history.