Indeed, it would seem that, when, it comes to the point, even distinguished leaders in the ranks of those against whose views I have been arguing, find it impossible to give up their faith, at least in immortality. Rénan is unquestionably one of the most distinguished leaders among those men of learning and culture who deny the existence of a creative will and Personal God. Yet Rénan cannot make up his mind that he has lost for ever his beloved sister; that she has passed into the night of nothingness into which he must soon follow her. In the dedication to her memory of his "Life of Jesus," he addresses an invocation to "the pure soul of his sister Henriette, who died at Byblos, Sept. 24th, 1861;" and appeals to her "to reveal to him, from the bosom of God in which she rests, those truths which are mightier than death, and take away the fear of death."
Rénan, then, after all, cannot give up his sister, nor, if it were only for her sake, his belief in immortality. And yet how utterly unscientific is such a belief, if science is to be defined and limited in accordance with the principles of the anti-theistic philosophy. Where can our men of mere sense-science find any physical basis of immortality? There is no hope, no instinct or faith, at once so indissolubly bound up with our nature, so necessary to the development of all that is best in man, and so utterly destitute of evidence and basis in merely natural science, as our assurance of immortality. If we are to retain our belief in immortality, we must maintain our faith in realities above and apart from sense, in realities which cannot be tested or investigated by any appliances of natural science. If immortality be true, Pantheism cannot be true.
What, then, have we found respecting the seductive and too fashionable illusion which has led astray so many minds, especially of speculative, restless, and daring intelligence, in the present age? We have found that Pantheism is essentially only atheism in disguise, and occupies a position in which it combines against itself the arguments which theists have to allege against atheism, and atheists against theism; that, while it dethrones the true God, it sets up in His place Development and Natural Selection as its divinities, clothing them with the attributes which it denies to deity; that its development hypothesis will not bear the test of science, of the natural science to which it professes to appeal; that the origin of protoplasm, the attributes of man, and the growth and transformation of germ-cells, alike refuse to accord with the hypothesis; that the very nature of science itself, as recognizing law and organization, is incompatible with any philosophy which denies theism; that the moral difficulties which rise up as a barrier against a denial of the Christian theism are no less insurmountable than the metaphysical and scientific difficulties; that morality, conscience, natural affection, immortal hope, every deepest, most tender and sacred, most blessed and humanising, instinct of our nature is violated by the denial of a personal and holy God and Judge; in a word, that our whole humanity revolts against it.
May I venture to hope that the views which I have now endeavoured to set forth may have some weight with young and inquiring spirits? No more terrible suffering can there be, than for an honest, loving, and virtuous nature to become involved in the meshes of pantheistic doubt and unbelief. We must make up our minds to bear with many profound and painful mysteries which are not to be solved by man; but may the good Spirit of God save us each and all from losing our childlike faith in His almighty, omnipresent, and absolutely good and holy government and providence!
POSITIVISM.
BY THE
REV. W. JACKSON, M.A., F.S.A.,
LATE FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD.