Lectures and Essays

by Goldwin Smith

Here no doubt is a belief in the efficacy of sacrifice, even of human sacrifice, even of the sacrifice of the first-born. But it is a receding and dying belief; while the belief in the power of justice, mercy, humility, moral religion in short, is prevailing over it and taking its place.

So it is again in the New Testament with regard to spiritual life and the miraculous. Spiritual life commenced in a world full of belief in the miraculous, and it did not at once break with that belief. But it threw the miraculous into the background and anticipated its decline, presaging that it would lose its importance and give place finally to the spiritual. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing…. Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." Clearly the writer of this believes in prophecies, in tongues, in mysteries. But clearly, also, he regards them as both secondary and transient, while he regards charity as primary and eternal.

It may be added that the advent of spiritual life did at once produce a change in the character of the miraculous itself, divested it of its fantastic extravagance, and infused into it a moral element. The Gospel miracles, almost without exception, have a moral significance, and can without incongruity be made the text of moral discourses to this day. An attempt to make Hindoo or Greek miracles the text of moral discourses would produce strange results.

Compared with the tract of geological, and still more with that of astronomical time, spiritual life has not been long in our world; and we need not wonder if the process of disengagement from the environments of the previous state of humanity is as yet far from complete Political religions and persecution, for instance, did not come into the world with Christ; they are survivals of an earlier stage of human progress. The Papacy, the great political Church of mediaeval Europe, is the historical continuation of the State religion of Rome and the Pontificate of the Roman emperors. The Greek Church is the historical continuation of the Eastern offset of the same system. The national State Churches are the historical continuations of the tribal religions and priesthoods of the Northern tribes. We talk of the conversion of the Barbarians, but in point of fact it was the chief of the tribe that was converted, or rather that changed his religious allegiance, sometimes by treaty (as in the case of Guthrum), and carried his tribe with him into the allegiance of the new God. Hence the new religion, like the old, was placed upon the footing of a tribal, and afterwards of a state, religion; heresy was treason; and the state still lent the aid of the secular arm to the national priesthood for the repression of rebellion against the established faith. But since the Reformation the process of disengagement has been rapidly going on; and in the North American communities, which are the latest developments of humanity, the connection between Church and State has ceased to exist, without any diminution of the strength of the religious sentiment

Whether there is anything deserving of attention in these brief remarks or not, one thing may safely be affirmed: it is time that the question as to the existence of a rational basis for religion and the reality of spiritual life should be studied, not merely with a view of overthrowing the superstitions of the past, but of providing, if possible, a faith for the present and the future. The battle of criticism and science against superstition has been won, as every open-minded observer of the contest must be aware, though the remnants of the broken host still linger on the field. It is now time to consider whether religion must perish with superstition, or whether the death of superstition may not be the new birth of religion. Religion survived the fall of Polytheism; it is surely conceivable that it may survive the fall of Anthropomorphism, and that the desperate struggle which is being waged about the formal belief in "Personality," may be merely the sloughing off of something that when it is gone, will be seen to have not been vital to religion.

There are some who would deter us from inquiring into anything beyond the range of sensible experience, and especially from any inquiry into the future existence of the soul, which they denounce as utterly unpractical, and compare with obsolete and fruitless inquiries into the state of the soul before birth. We have already challenged the exclusive claim of the five bodily senses to be the final sources of knowledge; and we may surely add that it is at least as practical to inquire into the destiny as it is to inquire into the origin of man.

If the belief in God and in a Future State is true, it will prevail. The cloud will pass away and the sun will shine out again. But in the meantime society may have "a bad quarter of an hour." Without exaggerating the influence of the belief in Future Reward and Punishment, or of any form of it, on the actions of ordinary men, we may safely say that the sense of responsibility to a higher power, and of the constant presence of an all-seeing Judge, has exercised an influence, the removal of which would be greatly felt. Materialism has in fact already begun to show its effects on human conduct and on society. They may perhaps be more visible in communities where social conduct depends greatly on individual conviction and motive, than in communities which are more ruled by tradition and bound together by strong class organizations; though the decay of morality will perhaps be ultimately more complete and disastrous in the latter than in the former. God and future retribution being out of the question, it is difficult to see what can restrain the selfishness of an ordinary man, and induce him, in the absence of actual coercion, to sacrifice his personal desires to the public good. The service of Humanity is the sentiment of a refined mind conversant with history; within no calculable time is it likely to overrule the passions and direct the conduct of the mass. And after all, without God or spirit, what is "Humanity"? One school of science reckons a hundred and fifty different species of man. What is the bond of unity between all these species and wherein consists the obligation to mutual love and help? A zealous servant of science told Agassiz that the age of real civilization would have begun when you could go out and shoot a man for scientific purposes. Apparent dirae facies. We begin to perceive, looming through the mist, the lineaments of an epoch of selfishness compressed by a government of force.

PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION

There appears to be a connection between the proposed substitutes for religion and the special training of their several authors. Historians tender us the worship of Humanity, professors of physical science tender us Cosmic Emotion. Theism might almost retort the apologue of the specter of the Brocken.

The only organized cultus without a God, at present before us, is that of Comte. This in all its parts—its high priesthood, its hierarchy, its sacraments, its calendar, its hagiology, its literary canon, its ritualism, and we may add, in its fundamentally intolerant and inquisitorial character—is an obvious reproduction of the Church of Rome, with humanity in place of God, great men in place of the saints, the Founder of Comtism in place of the Founder of Christianity, and even a sort of substitute for the Virgin in the shape of womanhood typified by Clotilde de Vaux. There is only just the amount of difference which would be necessary in order to escape servile imitation. We have ourselves witnessed a case of alternation between the two systems which testified to the closeness of their affinity. The Catholic Church has acted on the imagination of Comte at least as powerfully as Sparta acted on that of Plato. Nor is Comtism, any more than Plato's Republic and other Utopias, exempt from the infirmity of claiming finality for a flight of the individual imagination. It would shut up mankind for ever in a stereotyped organization which is the vision of a particular thinker. In this respect it seems to us to be at a disadvantage compared with Christianity, which, as presented, in the Gospels, does not pretend to organize mankind ecclesiastically or politically, but simply supplies a new type of character, and a new motive power, leaving government, ritual and organization of every kind to determine themselves from age to age. Comte's prohibition of inquiry into the composition of the stars, which his priesthood, had it been installed in power, would perhaps have converted into a compulsory article of faith, is only a specimen of his general tendency (the common tendency, as we have said, of all Utopias) to impose on human progress the limits of his own mind. Let his hierarchy become masters of the world, and the effect would probably be like that produced by the ascendency of a hierarchy (enlightened no doubt for its time) in Egypt, a brief start forward followed by consecrated immobility for ever.