We have no reason, however, to complain at present that our scientific men are, as a class, wanting in the insight referred to, or that the truth just indicated is imperfectly realised by them. Perhaps such complaint was never less applicable. It is not long since it was the fashion among men of science to avoid all reference to religion—to treat religious theory and scientific theory as entirely separate and unconnected. They either cared not or dared not to indicate how their scientific findings were rationally related to current religious beliefs. But within the last few years there has been a remarkable change in this respect. The attitude of indifference formerly assumed by so many of the representatives of science towards religion has been very generally exchanged for one of aggression or defence. The number of them who seem to think themselves bound to publish to the world confessions of their faith, declarations of the religious conclusions to which their scientific researches have led them, is great, perhaps, beyond example in any age. They are manifesting unmistakably the most serious interest in the inquiry into the foundation of religion, and into the relationship of religion to science. The change is certainly one for the better. It is not wholly good only because scientific men in their excursions into the domain of religion are too frequently chargeable with a one-sidedness of view and statement which their scientific education might have been hoped to make impossible—only because they too seldom give to religious truths the patient and impartial consideration to which these are entitled. But most deserving of welcome is every evidence on their part of the conviction that when science goes deep enough it cannot but raise the questions to which religion professes to be an answer; so that the mind, instead of getting free from religious reflection by advancing in scientific inquiry, finds such reflection only the more incumbent on it the farther it advances—a conviction which falls short of, indeed, but is closely allied to, the belief so aptly expressed by Lord Bacon, "that while a slight taste of philosophy may dispose the mind to indifference to religion, deeper draughts must bring it back to it; that while on the threshold of philosophy, where second causes appear to absorb the attention, some oblivion of the highest cause may ensue, when the mind penetrates deeper, and sees the dependence of causes and the works of Providence, it will easily perceive, according to the mythology of the poets, that the upper link of nature's chain is fastened to Jupiter's throne." Men of science are simply exercising a right to which they are fully entitled when they judge of religion by what they find to be ascertained in science; and no class of men is more likely than they are to open up the way to points of view whence religious truth will be seen with a clearness and comprehensiveness greater than any to which professional theologians could hope of themselves to attain. He can be no wise theologian who does not perceive that to a large extent he is dependent on the researches of men of science for his data, and who, firm in the faith that God will never be disgraced by His works, is not ready to accept all that is truly discovered about these works, in order to understand thereby God's character.
The greatest issues, then, are involved in the investigation on which we enter. Can we think what these are, or reflect on their greatness, without drawing this inference, that we ought, in conducting it, to have no other end before us than that of seeking, accepting, and communicating the truth? This is here so important that everything beside it must be insignificant and unworthy. Any polemical triumphs which could be gained either by logical or rhetorical artifices would be unspeakably paltry. Nothing can be appropriate in so serious a discussion but to state as accurately as we can the reasons for our own belief in theism, and to examine as carefully and impartially as we can the objections of those who reject that belief, and their reasons for holding an opposite belief. It can only do us harm to overrate the worth of our own convictions and arguments, or to underrate the worth of those of others. We must not dare to carry into the discussion the spirit of men who feel that they have a case to advocate at all hazards. We must not try to conceal a weakness in our argumentation by saying hard things of those who endeavour to point it out. There is no doubt that character has an influence on creed—that the state of a man's feelings determines to a considerable extent the nature of his beliefs—that badness of heart is often the cause of perversity of judgment; but we have no right to begin any argument by assuming that this truth has its bright side—its side of promise—turned towards us, and its dark and threatening side turned towards those who differ from us. If we can begin by assuming our opponents to be wicked, why should we not assume them at once to be wrong, and so spare ourselves the trouble of arguing with them? It will be better to begin by assuming only what no one will question—namely, that it is a duty to do to others as we would have others do to us. When a man errs, it is a kindness to show him his error—and the greater the error, the greater the kindness; but error is so much its own punishment to every ingenuous nature, that to convince a person of it is all that one fallible person ought to do to another. The scoff and the sneer are out of place in all serious discussion; especially are they out of place when our minds are occupied with thoughts of Him who, if He exist, is the Father and Judge of us all, who alone possesses the full truth, and who has made us that we might love one another.[4]
II.
Theism is the doctrine that the universe owes its existence, and continuance in existence, to the reason and will of a self-existent Being, who is infinitely powerful, wise, and good. It is the doctrine that nature has a Creator and Preserver, the nations a Governor, men a heavenly Father and Judge. It is a doctrine which has a long history behind it, and it is desirable that we should understand how we are related to that history.
Theism is very far from coextensive with religion. Religion is spread over the whole earth; theism only over a comparatively small portion of it. There are but three theistic religions—the Mosaic, the Christian, and the Mohammedan. They are connected historically in the closest manner—the idea of God having been transmitted to the two latter, and not independently originated by them. All other religions are polytheistic or pantheistic, or both together. Among those who have been educated in any of these heathen religions, only a few minds of rare penetration and power have been able to rise by their own exertions to a consistent theistic belief. The God of all those among us who believe in God, even of those who reject Christianity, who reject all revelation, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. From these ancient Jewish fathers the knowledge of Him has historically descended through an unbroken succession of generations to us. We have inherited it from them. If it had not thus come down to us, if we had not been born into a society pervaded by it, there is no reason to suppose that we should have found it out for ourselves, and still less that we should merely have required to open our eyes in order to see it. Rousseau only showed how imperfectly he realised the dependence of man on man, and the extent to which tradition enters into all our thinking, when he pretended that a human being born on a desert island, and who had grown up without any acquaintance with other beings, would naturally, and without assistance, rise to the apprehension of this great thought. The Koran well expresses a view which has been widely held when it says, "Every child is born into the religion of nature; its parents make it a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian." The view is, however, not a true one. A child is born, not into the religion of nature, but into blank ignorance; and, left entirely to itself, it would probably never find out as much religious truth as the most ignorant of parents can teach it. It is doubtless better to be born into the most barbarous pagan society than it would be to be born on a desert island and abandoned to find out a religion for one's self.
The individual man left to himself is very weak. He is strong only when he can avail himself of the strength of many others, of the stores of power accumulated by generations of his predecessors, or of the combined forces of a multitude of his contemporaries. The greatest men have achieved what they have done only because they have had the faculty and skill to utilise resources vastly greater than their own. Nothing reaches far forward into the future which does not stretch far back into the past. Before a tragedy like 'Hamlet,' for example, could be written, it was requisite that humanity should have passed through ages of moral discipline, and should be in possession of vast and subtle conceptions such as could only be the growth of centuries, of the appropriate language at the appropriate epoch of its development, and of a noble style of literary workmanship. "We allow ourselves," says Mr Froude, "to think of Shakespeare, or of Raphael, or of Phidias as having accomplished their work by the power of their individual genius; but greatness like theirs is never more than the highest degree of perfection which prevails widely around it, and forms the environment in which it grows. No such single mind in single contact with the facts of nature could have created a Pallas, a Madonna, or a Lear." What the historian has thus said as to art is equally true of all other forms of thinking and doing. It is certainly true of religious thought, which has never risen without much help to the sublime conception of one God. It is, in fact, an indisputable historical truth that we owe our theism in great part to our Christianity,—that natural religion has had no real existence prior to or apart from what has claimed to be revealed religion—and that the independence which it now assumes is that of one who has grown ashamed of his origin.
It does not in the least follow that we are to regard theism as merely or even mainly a tradition—as a doctrine received simply on authority, and transmitted from age to age, from generation to generation, without investigation, without reflection. It does not follow that it is not a truth the evidence of which has been seen in some measure by every generation which has accepted it, and into the depth and comprehensiveness and reasonableness of which humanity has obtained a constantly-growing insight. There have, it is true, been a considerable number of theologians who have traced all religious beliefs to revelation, and who have assigned to reason merely the function of passively accepting, retaining, and transmitting them. They have conceived of the first man as receiving the knowledge of God by sensible converse with Him, and of the knowledge thus received as transmitted, with the confirmation of successive manifestations, to the early ancestors of all nations. The various notions of God and a future state to be found in heathen countries are, according to them, broken and scattered rays of these revelations; and all the religious rites of prayer, purification, and sacrifice which prevail among savage peoples, are faint and feeble relics of a primitive worship due to divine institution. This view was natural enough in the early ages of the Christian Church and in medieval times, when the New World was undiscovered and a very small part of either Asia or Africa was known. It was consonant also to the general estimate of tradition as a means of transmitting truth, entertained by the Roman Catholic Church; but it is not consistent with the Protestant rejection of tradition, and it is wholly untenable in the light of modern science, the geography, ethnology, comparative mythology, &c., of the present day. A man who should thus account for the phenomena of the religious history of heathen humanity must be now as far behind the scientific knowledge of his age regarding the subject on which he theorises, as a man who should still ascribe, despite all geological proofs to the contrary, the occurrence of fossils in the Silurian beds to the action of the Noachian deluge.[5]
Theism has come to us mainly through Christianity. But Christianity itself rests on theism; it presupposes theism. It could only manifest, establish, and diffuse itself in so far as theism was apprehended. The belief that there is one God, infinite in power, wisdom, and goodness, has certainly not been wrought out by each one of us for himself, but has been passed on from man to man, from parent to child: tradition, education, common consent, the social medium, have exerted great influence in determining its acceptance and prevalence; but we have no right to conceive of them as excluding the exercise of reason and reflection. We know historically that reason and reflection have not been excluded from the development of theistic belief, but have been constantly present and active therein; that by the use of his reason man has in some countries gradually risen to a belief in one God; and that where this belief existed, he has, by the use of his reason, been continuously altering, and, it may be hoped, extending and improving his views of God's nature and operations. We know that in Greece, for example, the history of religion was not a merely passive and traditional process. We know as a historical fact that reason there undermined the polytheism which flourished when Homer sang; that it discovered the chief theistic proofs still employed, and attained in many minds nearly the same belief in God which now prevails. The experience of the ancient classical world is insufficient to prove that a purely rational philosophy can establish theism as the creed of a nation; but it is amply sufficient to prove that it can destroy polytheism, and find out all the principal arguments for theism. We know, further, that in no age of the history of the Christian Church has reason entirely neglected to occupy itself in seeking the grounds on which the belief of God can be rested. We know that reason is certainly not declining that labour in the present day. The theistic belief, although common to the whole Christian world, is one which every individual mind may study for itself, which no one is asked to accept without proof, and which multitudes have doubtless accepted only after careful consideration. It comes to us so far traditionally, but not nearly so much so as belief in the law of gravitation. For every one who has examined the evidences for belief in the law of gravitation, thousands on thousands have examined the evidences for the existence of God.