LECTURE X.
MERE THEISM INSUFFICIENT.
I.
I have endeavoured to show, in the course of lectures which I am now bringing to a close, that the light of nature and the works of creation and providence prove the existence, and so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God. This truth ought always to be combined with another—namely, that the light of nature and the works of creation and providence "are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation." Reason sends forth a true light which is to be trusted and followed so far as it extends, but which is much more limited than the wants of human nature. The deepest discoveries and the highest achievements of the unaided intellect need to be supplemented by truths which can only come to us through special revelation. The natural knowledge of God which man can attain by the exercise of his own faculties is not sufficient to make him feel that the Eternal bears to him fatherly love, or to break the power of sin within him and over him, or to sustain and develop his moral and spiritual life. It falls far short of what is required to enable a human soul, a religious and immortal being, to accomplish its true destination. It falls far short, in other words, of being what is "necessary unto salvation," in the broad and comprehensive sense which the term salvation bears throughout Scripture.
There are those who, instead of regarding theism as simply so much fundamental truth which Christianity presupposes and applies, would oppose theism to Christianity, and substitute theism for Christianity. They would rest in mere theism and would reject Christianity. They represent theism, dissociated from Christianity, as all-sufficient, and as the religion to which alone the future belongs. In doing so, these men—many of them most earnest and excellent men—seem to me to show great want of reflection, great ignorance of the teachings of history, and a very superficial acquaintance with human nature.
Atheism, polytheism, and pantheism have always proved stronger than mere theism—more popular, more influential on ordinary minds. It is only in alliance with revelation that theism has been able to cope successfully with these foes. In no land, and in no age, has a theism resting exclusively on the authority of reason gained and retained the assent of more than a small minority of the community. Its adherents may have been men who did credit to their creed—honourable, high-minded, cultivated men—but they have always been few. In India, in Persia, in Greece, in Rome, some specially gifted and religious minds reached, or at least approached, theism; but, on the whole, the development of belief in all these countries was not towards but away from theism. The Israelites, although authoritatively taught monotheism, fell back again and again into polytheism. Mythology is not merely "a disease of language," but also a testimony to the fact that the minds and hearts of the mass of mankind cannot be satisfied with a Deity who is only to be apprehended by abstract thought,—a proof that while a few speculative philosophers may rest content with the God discovered by pure reason, the countless millions of their fellow-men are so influenced by sense, imagination, and feeling, that they have ever been found to substitute for such a God deities whom they could represent under visible forms, as subject to the limitations of space and time, and as actuated by the passions of humanity. Pantheism has a powerful advantage over theism, inasmuch as it can give a colouring of religion to what is virtually atheism, and a semblance of reason even to the most wildly extravagant polytheism. There is no logical necessity why a mere theist should become an atheist, but the causes which tend to produce atheism are too strong to be counteracted by any force inherent in mere theism; and hence, as a matter of historical fact, mere theism has always, even in modern Christendom, largely given place to atheism. All the powers of the world above, and of the world to come, are needed to oppose the powers of the world below, and of the world which now is. Only a much fuller exhibition of the Divine character than is presented to us by mere theism can make faith in God the ruling principle of human life. Mere theism might have sufficed us had we remained perfectly rational and perfectly sinless; but those who fancy that it is sufficient for men as they are, only make evident that they know not what men are. In the state into which we have fallen, we need a higher light to guide us than any which shines on sea or land; we need the light which only shines from the gracious countenance of Christ.
"The world by wisdom knew not God." The whole history of the heathen world testifies to the truth of this affirmation of St Paul. It is an indubitable historical fact that, outside of the sphere of special revelation, man has never obtained such a knowledge of God as a responsible and religious being plainly requires. The wisdom of the heathen world, at its very best, was utterly inadequate to the accomplishment of such a task as creating a due abhorrence of sin, controlling the passions, purifying the heart, and ennobling the conduct. Not one religion devised by man rested on a worthy view of the character of God; not one did not substitute for the living and true God false and dead idols, or represent Him in a mean and dishonouring light. We are apt to associate with the religion of Greece and Rome the religious philosophy of a few eminent Greek and Roman thinkers who rose above the religion of their age and country. The religion itself was mainly the creation of imagination, and in various respects was extremely demoralising in its tendencies. The worshippers of Jupiter and Juno, of Mars and Venus, and the gods and goddesses who were supposed to be their companions, must have been very often not the better but the worse for worshipping such beings. Certainly, they could find no elevating ideal or correct and consistent rule of moral life among the capricious and unrighteous and impure objects of their adoration. It was less from the religion, the idolatrous polytheism, of Greece and Rome that the human soul in these lands drew spiritual inspiration, than from philosophy, from reason apprehending those truths of natural religion which the positive religion concealed and disfigured and contradicted. If salvation be deliverance from darkness to light, from sin to holiness, from love of the world to love of God, no sane man will say that the Greek or Roman religion was the way to it, or an indication of the way to it.
Did, then, the philosophers discover the way? There is no need that we should depreciate what they did. Men like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, among the Greeks—like Cicero, Epictetus, and Antoninus, among the Romans—obtained wonderful glimpses of Divine truth, and gave to the world noble moral instructions, which are of inestimable value even to this day. But they all failed to effect any deep and extensive reform. They did not turn men from the worship of idols to the service of the true God. They were unable to raise any effective barrier either to superstition or to vice. They were insufficiently assured in their own minds, and spoke as without authority to others. They saw too clearly to be able to believe that the popular religion was true, but not clearly enough to know what to put in its place. In the systems and lives of the very greatest of them there were terrible defects, and neither the doctrine nor the conduct of the majority of those who pretended to follow them, the common specimens of philosophers, was fitted to improve society. Philosophy found out many truths, but not the truth. It did not disclose the holiness and love of God—discovered no antidote for the poison of sin—showed the soul no fountain of cleansing, healing, and life.