Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation / Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer

by Jesse Henry Jones

Mr. Spencer proceeds to strengthen as well as he can his position by stating that "from age to age Science has continually defeated it (Religion) wherever they have come into collision, and has obliged it to relinquish one or more of its positions." In this assertion, also, he manifests either a want of acquaintance with the facts or a failure to comprehend their significance. Religion may properly be divided into two classes.

1. Those religions which have appeared to grow up spontaneously among men, having all the errors and deformities which a fleshly imagination would produce.

2. The religion of Jesus Christ.

1. From the three great ideas mentioned above, no Science has ever driven even the religions of this class. It has, indeed, corrected many forms of expression, and has sometimes driven individuals, who failed to distinguish between the form, and the idea which the form overlies, into a rejection of the truth itself.

2. Respecting the religion of Jesus Christ, Mr. Spencer's remark has no shadow of foundation. Since the beginning of its promulgation by Jehovah, and especially since the completion of that promulgation by our Saviour and his apostles, not one whit of its practical law or its philosophy has been abated; nay, more, to-day, in these American States, there may be found a more widespread, thoroughly believed, firmly held, and intelligent conviction of God's personality, and personal supervision of the affairs of men, of his Fatherhood, and of that fatherhood exercised in bringing "order out of confusion," in so conducting the most terrible of conflicts, that it shall manifestly redound, not only to the glory of himself, but to the very best good of man, so manifestly to so great a good, that all the loss of life, and all the suffering, is felt to be not worthy to be compared to the good achieved, and that too most strongly by the sufferers, than was ever before manifested by any nation under heaven. The truth is, that, in spite of all its efforts to the contrary, criticism has ever been utterly impotent to eliminate from human thinking the elements we have presented. Its utmost triumph has been to force a change in the form of expression; and in the Bible it meets with forms of expression which it ever has been, is now, and ever shall be, as helpless to change as a paralytic would be to overturn the Himalaya.

The discussion of the topic immediately in hand may perhaps be now properly closed with the simple allusion to a single fact. Just as far as a race of human beings descends in the gradations of degradation, just so far does it come to look upon Deity simply as power. African Fetishism is the doctrine that Deity is an incomprehensible power, rendered into the form of a popular religion; only the religion stands one step higher than the philosophy, in that it assumes a sort of personality for the Power.

On page 102 the following extract will be found: "And now observe that all along, the agent which has effected the purification has been Science. We habitually overlook the fact that this has been one of its functions. Religion ignores its immense debt to Science; and Science is scarcely at all conscious how much Religion owes it. Yet it is demonstrable that every step by which Religion has progressed from its first low conception to the comparatively high one it has now reached, Science has helped it, or rather forced it to take; and that even now, Science is urging further steps in the same direction." In this passage half truths are so sweepingly asserted as universal that it becomes simply untrue. The evil may be stand under two heads.

1. It is too philosophical. Mr. Spencer undertakes to be altogether too profound. Since he has observed that certain changes for the better have been made in some human religions, by the study of the natural sciences, he jumps to the conclusion that religion has been under a state of steady growth; and of course readily assumes—for there is not a shadow of other basis for his assertion—that the "first" "conception" of religion was very "low." This assumption we utterly deny, and demand of Mr. Spencer his proof. For ourselves we are willing to come down from the impregnable fortresses of the Bible upon the common ground of the Grecian Mythology, and on this do battle against him. In this we are taught that the Golden Age came first, in which was a life of spotless purity; after which were the silver and brazen ages, and the Iron Age in which was crime, and the "low conception" of religion came last. How marked is the general agreement of this with the Bible account!

2. But more and worse may be charged on this passage than that it is too philosophical. Mr. Spencer constructs his philosophy first and cuts his facts to match it. This is a common mistake among men, and which they are unconscious of. Now the fact is, Science was not "the agent which effected the purification." Religion owes a very small debt to Science. Science can never be more than a supplement, "a handmaid" to Religion. Religion's first position was not a low one, but nearly the highest. Afterwards it sunk very low; but men sunk it there. Science never "helped it" or "forced it" one atom upwards. Science alone only degrades Religion and gives new wings and hands to crime. This will be especially manifest to those who remember what Mr. Spencer's doctrine of Science is. He says: "That even the highest achievements of Science are resolvable into mental relations of coexistence and sequence, so coördinated as exactly to tally with certain relations of coexistence and sequence that occur externally." Of course the highest object of Science will be "truth"; and this, our teacher tells us, "is simply the accurate correspondence of subjective to objective relations." To interpret. A science of medicine, a science of ablutions, a science of clothing, a science of ventilation, a science of temperature, and to some largely, to many chiefly, a science of cookery do, combined, constitute Science, and the preservation of the body is its highest attainment. Is this Science "the agent which has effected the purification of Religion?" What then is the truth?

"Lo this have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions."—Eccl. VII. 29. The first religion was a communion with God. The Creator taught man, as a father would his children. But when man sinned, he began to seek out many inventions, and sank to that awful state of degradation hinted at in the fragmentary sketches of the popular manners and customs of the times of Abraham,—Gen. XII. XXV.; which Paul epitomizes with such fiery vigor in the first chapter of Romans, and which may be found fully paralleled in our own day. At the proper time, God took mankind in hand, and began to develop his great plan for giving purity to religion. So he raised up Moses, and gave to Israel the Levitical law. Or if Mr. Spencer shall deny the biblical account of the origin of the five books of Moses, he at least cannot deny that they have a being; and, placing them on the same ground of examination and criticism as Herodotus, that they were written more than a thousand years before the Christian era. Now mark. Whoever wrote them, they remained as they were first framed, and no one of the prophets, who came after, added one new idea. They only emphasized and amplified "The Law." So far then as this part of Religion was concerned, Science never helped a particle. Yea, more, the words to Moses in the wilderness were never paralleled in the utterances of man before the Christian era.