Morality as a Religion / An exposition of some first principles

by W. R. Washington Sullivan

Science and religion, we protest, need no reconciliation, for they never were at war. Not religion, but pseudo-philosophy and so-called theology—this it is to which science is an implacable and irreconcilable foe. And she will never cease from her determined opposition until the ecclesiastical idol vacates the very last niche it occupies in its "chapel," clothes itself with the white robe of contrition, and sits humbly upon the stool of repentance awaiting a scientific absolution.

For us, such reconciliation is an unmeaning phrase. We never professed to follow aught but reason's kindly light, for that we know to be the Divine Light in us. And, therefore, all that comes to us in reason's name, comes accredited, as though from the innermost court of the Great Presence itself. We discard nothing but what offends reason and its ascertained laws; we bring everything before its bar. Science is to us a Divine revelation, its teachings are among our inspired literature. No need therefore of reconciliation between religion and science when we resolve both, as in a final synthesis, into the root fact of all this wondrous universe—eternal reason. And because of this, a faith such as ours is part of the order of imperishable realities, for the kingdom of reason, like the throne of the Eternal, is for ever and ever.

[1] Deus Scientiarum Dominus.

XVII.

"THE OVER-SOUL."

The most serious errors in the philosophical and religious domains are generally found to be nothing but the exaggeration, or the minimising, of a truth, very much as evil, physical and moral, is often the privation of a corresponding good, the absence of something which ought to be present. Year by year the vast majority of religionists in this Western world are seriously engaged in the commemoration of a transcendent mystery, the humanisation, or incarnation, of the Deity in the person of the Prophet of Nazara. As might be expected, the upholders of this belief are by no means all agreed as to the manner in which this momentous event came about, and, while there are many prepared to speak of "Our Lord Jesus Christ"—and we certainly feel no difficulty in so speaking of an elevated and saintly spirit such as he—all are not prepared to subscribe to the precise formulation of the mystery as given in an Athanasian creed, or a homily of a fourth century father. Beyond admitting in a general and rather vague way that Jesus is "Divine," many people are not prepared to go. They would shrink from saying that he was the Infinite and Eternal, from whom all things derive their being; they see no necessity for believing in the story of his miracles, or the legendary account of his appearance in this world; above all, his virginal conception and birth they often repudiate in terms. They are coming to see—these open-minded men and women of the Anglican body—that the pre-eminence of Jesus must rest, not upon miracles, but on morals; that it is not his mystic offices, but his moral grandeur, which makes him to be so great a figure in history. In a word, that it is not his miracles which prove his teaching, but his teaching must authenticate his miracles.

Now, all this is, of course, very hopeful, and makes directly for that reconstruction of religion on an ethical basis which we conceive it our duty to press upon the attention of our age. Venerable to us is the memory and teaching of the last of the noble line of Jewish seers. Not one of the masters of the Church ethical, whom we obediently follow, but has exhausted, one might say, the possibilities of speech in their reverence and admiration for the great spirit of Jesus. When Immanuel Kant published the Critique of the Practical Reason, old men and thinkers of the Fatherland were moved to tears at the thought that the great deliverance had come at last, that a man had at length arisen who had penetrated to the core the significance of the great prophet's teaching. The only true commentator on Jesus and his religion is Immanuel Kant. Heretofore, men have followed Paul, Athanasius and Augustine; it is high time the ethics of Kant were substituted in colleges and seminaries of the clergy, and our ministers of religion taught to interpret the Gospel from the standpoint of the moral law instead of the imaginary dogmatics of Paul, and the dialectics of Athanasius and Augustine.

But the doctrine of incarnation unquestionably embodies a great element of truth, which it were our very serious loss to overlook. It supplies us with an admirable illustration of what was asserted in the beginning, namely, that an error is but a truth misstated, either by excess or defect. The Christian, or rather the ancient, orthodox presentation of the dogma errs in both ways. By excess, because it proclaims a man to be the personal Deity, that the flesh and blood of a mortal being is adorable, as is the highest Being, with the supreme offices of religion. It proclaims that Jesus was not a human individual or person at all, but a Divine being energising in two natures, the Divine and the human, so that when he used the pronoun "I," it was the Deity himself, not a man, who spoke. I say this is a gross misstatement by exaggeration, unknown to the prophet himself, unknown to his followers and biographers, and unknown to many Christian writers before the fatal epoch of Athanasius, who emphatically assert that Jesus is not to be worshipped as the Father.[1] The doctrine errs also by defect, because it fails to recognise the divinity of all the sons of the Supreme. Jesus is made to be exclusively Divine, the sole possessor of Divine sonship, and only through him are others put in the way of attaining to the same privilege. "But as many as received him," says the Alexandrian rhapsodist who wrote the prologue to the fourth gospel, "he gave them the power or the faculty to be made the sons of God, as many as believe in his name."

This account of the matter we conceive to be immeasurably below the truth. No mediator is needed between the soul and the Soul of our souls; no intercessor or redeemer. This perverse conception originated in the supposition that man was, and is, a fallen and a falling being, owing to the fatal legacy bequeathed by our presumptive parent, Adam; but Genesis being wholly and avowedly mythical in its opening chapters, the Pauline dialectic in the fifth chapter of the Romans falls to the ground, and with it the laborious argumentations of the epistle to the Hebrews, which essays to prove that the most sternly anti-sacerdotal prophet who ever lived was a full-fledged priest; the man who never conducted a ritualistic service in his life set forth as "a high priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech," the only and eternal redeemer of humanity from the consequences of the misdeeds of an aboriginal parent who had no existence. No; before Agamemnon men were brave, before Aristides they were just, before Jesus they were in their innermost selves divine, and this in essence is the doctrine of the "Over-soul," associated, as far as this expression goes, with the name of the latest of the prophets of ethics, Emerson.

We are all incarnations, flesh-takings, of the infinite. Not only so, but the very unconscious universe, the silent, but ever-living nature is but the garment which clothes the Invisible, and in clothing reveals him; the beauty of nature is the veil, growing slenderer with every fresh access of knowledge, which scarce conceals the Great Presence. Vanini was thrust into the dungeons of the Inquisition at Naples on a charge of atheism. "Atheism!" contemptuously retorted the wretched captive, "I could prove God from that straw," picking up with his feet a fragment of the bed on which he lay in fetters. For the universal Life was in the straw. The life in that slender ear is one with the mighty pulsations of the ocean, the growth of the forest, and of the world of men, and the illimitable stars beyond. The being is one, the life is one, and above all, the mind, the exclusive endowment of man, is one too—one in us, one in the Supreme; we share it, for "we also are his offspring". There is only one Soul—the Divine, and the souls of the sons of men are, not so much images of that, made in its likeness, as it itself, in essence one, yet, participately, in every human being. "I have said, ye are gods, and sons of the Most High, every one," quoted Jesus with approval. So says Emerson, and this is his doctrine of the "Over-soul".