"In the fulness of time God sent his own Son." However defective was the former dispensation, he, who appeared to most of the men of his day as only a carpenter's son, declared to mankind the final and perfect truth. As the system taught by Moses was not the result of any philosophical developments, but was incomparably superior to the religion of the most civilized people of the world, at whose court Moses was brought up, and was manifestly constructed de novo, and from some kind of revelation, so this, which the carpenter's son taught, was incomparably superior to any utterance which the human soul had up to that time, or has since, made. It comes forth at once complete and pure. It utters the highest principles in the simplest language. Indeed, nothing new was left to say when John finished his writing; and the canon might well be closed. And since that day, has Religion advanced? Not a syllable. The purest water is drank at the old fountain. But it will be said that the cause of Religion among men has advanced. Very true, but Science did not advance it. You can yet count the years on your fingers since men of Science generally ceased to be strenuously hostile to Religion. Religion, in every instance, has advanced just where it has gone back, and drank at the old fountains. Who, then, has purified Religion? God is "the agent which has effected the purification." God is he to whom Religion owes "its immense debt," not Science. He it is who has brought her up to her present high position.
When, now, we see how completely Mr. Spencer—to use a commonplace but very forcible phrase—has "ruled God out of the ring," how impertinent seems his rebuke, administered a few pages further on, in the passage beginning, "Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious," to those who believe that God means what he says, and that men may know him. These men at least stand on a far higher plane than he who teaches that an "incomprehensible omnipresent Power" is all there is for us to worship, and his words will sound to them like the crackling of thorns under a pot.
There does not appear in this chapter any further topic that has not already been touched upon. With these remarks, then, the examination of this chapter, and of Mr. Spencer's First Principles, may be closed.
CONCLUSION.
If it has ever been the reader's lot to examine Paley's "Evidences of Christianity," or the "Sermons of President Dwight on the Existence of God"; and if he has risen from their perusal with a feeling of utter unsatisfaction, enduring the same craving for a sure truth harassing as before, he will have partly shared the experience which drove the author forward, until he arrived at the foundation principles of this treatise. Those works, and all of that class are, for the object they have in view, worthless; not because the various statements they make are untrue, not because elegant language and beauty of style are wanting; but because they are radically defective in that, their method is irrelevant to the subject in hand; because in all the arguments that have been or can be brought forward there is nothing decisive and final; because the skeptic can thrust the sharp sword of his criticism through every one of them; because, in fine, the very root of the matter, their method itself is false, and men have attempted to establish by a series of arguments what must be ground for the possibility of an argument, and can only be established by the opposite, the a priori method. Though the Limitist Philosophy has no positive value, it has this negative one, that it has established, by the most thorough-going criticism, the worthlessness of the a posteriori processes of thought on the matter in hand. Yea, more, the existence of any spiritual person cannot be proved in that way. You can prove that the boy's body climbs the tree; but never that he has a soul. This is always taken for granted. Lest the author should appear singular in this view, he would call the attention of the reader to a passage in Coleridge's writings in which he at once sets forth the beauty of the style and incompetency of the logic of Dr. Paley's book. "I have, I am aware, in this present work, furnished occasion for a charge of having expressed myself with slight and irreverence of celebrated names, especially of the late Dr. Paley. O, if I were fond and ambitious of literary honor, of public applause, how well content should I be to excite but one third of the admiration which, in my inmost being, I feel for the head and heart of Paley! And how gladly would I surrender all hope of contemporary praise, could I even approach to the incomparable grace, propriety, and persuasive facility of his writings! But on this very account, I feel myself bound in conscience to throw the whole force of my intellect in the way of this triumphal car, on which the tutelary genius of modern idolatry is borne, even at the risk of being crushed under the wheels."
Instead of the method now condemned, there is one taught us in the Book, and the only one taught us there, which is open to every human being, for which every human being has the faculty, and respecting which all that is needed is, that the person exercise what he already has. The boy could not learn his arithmetic, except he set himself resolutely to his task; and no man can learn of God, except he also fulfils the conditions, except he consecrate himself wholly to the acquisition of this knowledge, except his soul is poured out in love to God; "for every one that loveth, is born of God, and knoweth God." We come then to the knowledge of God by a direct and immediate act of the soul. The Reason, the Sensibility, and the Will, give forth their combined and highest action in the attainment of this knowledge. As an intellectual achievement, this is the highest possible to the Reason. She attains then, to the Ultima Thule of all effort, and of this she is fully conscious. Nor is there awakened any feverish complaining that there are no more worlds to conquer. In the contemplation of the ineffable Goodness she finds her everlasting occupation, and her eternal rest. Plainly, then, both Reason and Revelation teach but a single, and that the a priori method, by which to establish for man the fact of the being of God. Let us buttress this conclusion with other lines of thought.
Reader, now that it is suggested to you, does it not seem in the highest degree improbable, that the most important truths which can pertain to man, truths which do not concern primarily the affairs of this life, but of his most exalted life, the life of the spiritual person as the companion of its Creator, should be based upon an inferior, less satisfactory, and less adequate foundation of knowledge, than those of our childhood's studies, of the arithmetic and the algebra? The boy who cons the first pages of his arithmetical text-book, soon learns what he knows to be self-evident truths. He who should offer to prove the truth of the multiplication-table, would only expose himself to ridicule. When the boy has attained to youth, and advanced in his studies, the pages of the algebra and geometry are laid before him, and he finds new and higher orders of self-evident truths. Would any evidence, any argument, strengthen his conviction of the validity of the axioms? Yea, rather, if one should begin to offer arguments, would he not instinctively and rightfully feel that the confession was thereby tacitly made, that self-evidence was not satisfactory; and would he not, finding his spontaneous impulse, and his education, so contradictory, be liable to fall into complete skepticism? If now there be this spontaneous, yea, abiding, yea, unalterable, yea, universal conviction respecting matters of subordinate importance, can it be possible,—I repeat the question, for it seems to carry with it irresistibly its own and the decisive answer,—can it be possible that the decisions of questions of the highest moment, that the knowledge of the principles of our moral being and of the moral government to which we are amenable, and most of all of the Governor who is at once Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge, is not based on at least equally spontaneous, yea, abiding, yea, unalterable, yea, universal convictions? And when the teacher seemingly, and may it not with truth be said actually, distrusting the reliability of such a conviction, goes about to bolster up his belief, and the belief of his pupil, in the existence of God, and thereto rakes together, with painstaking labor, many sticks and straws of evidence, instead of looking up to the truth which shines directly down upon him with steady ineffable effulgence, is it at all strange that the sharper-eyed pupil, keenly appreciating the contradiction between his spontaneous conviction and his teaching, should become uncertain which to follow, a doubter, and finally a confirmed skeptic? If, then, it is incredible that the fundamental principles of man's moral nature—that to which all the other elements of his being are subordinate, and for which they were created—are established on inferior grounds, and those less satisfactory than the grounds of other principles; and if, on the other hand, the conviction is irresistible, that they are established on the highest grounds, and since the truths of mathematics are also based on the highest ground, self-evidence, and since there can be none higher than the highest, it follows that the moral principles of the Universe, so far as they can be known by man, have precisely the same foundation of truthfulness as the principles of mathematics—they are self-evident.
But some good Reader will check at the result now attained because it involves the position that the human Reason is the final standard of truth for man. Good reader, this position is involved, and is true; and for the sake of Christ's religion it must be taken. The only possible ground for a thoroughly satisfactory and thoroughly unanswerable Christian Philosophy, is the principle that The human Reason is the final standard of truth for man.
It has been customary for the devout Bible-reader to esteem that book as his final standard; and to such an extent in many instances has his reverential regard for it been carried, that the expression will hardly be too strong for truth, that it has become an object of worship; and upon the mind of such a one the above assertion will produce a shock. While the author would treat with respect every religious feeling, he would still remind such a person that the Bible is the moral school-book of the spiritual person in man, which God himself prepared for man's use, and must in every case be inferior and subordinate to the being whom it was meant to educate; and furthermore, that, by the very fact of making man, God established in him the standard, and the right to require that this fact be recognized. Mark, God made the standard and thus established the right. This principle may be supported by the following considerations: