Let us place side by side with this issue, first, the commonly conceived relation between a Personal supreme Being and his creation;—secondly, the apprehension of Theistic truth within the soul, as it comes to us substantiated by religious men. We shall, at all events, gain the advantage of a strong contrast between Theism and non-Theism;—and strong contrast with shadows is often a strong enlightenment.
First, then, to consider the idea of Creation as the work not of a blind thing, but a supremely wise and powerful Being. It is plain that (to say the very least) this idea is encompassed with slighter and fewer difficulties. If a doubter is not convinced by the ordinary argument from Design, he cannot avoid admitting the fact of its possibility;—that it is applicable, and has been applied, argued, and reargued, without any overwhelming rejoinder or refutation. And there are two obvious reasons why it has never been successfully refuted. One—the evident truth that, whatever rival theories[172] might or might not be expected to do, this theory explains the world. Next—that no other attempted explanations have ever found a First ground for any existing thing. In the theory of Design it continues an open question how far we may conceive the Creator's first act as a grand finality,—the launch of a vast assemblage of worlds formed,—or, being formed;—so built upon law and guided by far-stretching wisdom, that the Universe sails gloriously through the Ocean of Space like a thing of Life; each breath of Force, each wave of Time wafting it securely on. But, let any idea of a true creation be admitted, and no belief in existing laws of any kind, will ever banish the great and good God from the world which He has created and made. His presence adds glory to its fabric, and, when we walk in its garden of delights, we feel that He walks and speaks there too.[173]
The argument from Creation to Creator forms the subject of the next Chapters. Therefore, we press it no farther here.
The point to be remembered now, is that this line of reasoning has alone offered a tenable explanation of the world's existence. And a like remark holds good of Natural Realism as opposed to Speculative Idealism. It is impossible (as we have seen), to prove or disprove either by bare argumentative abstractions. But, as a question of practical reason, the Natural Realist explains the outer world of individual existences, and his explanation tallies both with its phenomena and our own relations to them. Our material progress (that antithesis of oriental quietism), depends upon activities we should never have exerted had we not fully believed in a world of working energy within ourselves, and an outside world of reacting forces for us to work upon.
From mere material progress, let us turn our eyes to the nobler civilization of Mankind. A respect for human life because it is human,—honour paid to all men, inasmuch as manhood possesses an intrinsic title to honour,—the desire to do justice and love mercy,—sympathy with privation, suffering, and aberration, both moral and intellectual,—these are the true elements that soften and improve our race. And they are pre-eminently the dowry of nations believing in Theism. Theism is to these spiritual powers what Realism has been to material powers. Human beings are, by these two agencies, brought into contact with both the outer and the inner work of life. And as regards life's central work, the lesson of history is now what it always has been. To move man from a lower to a higher sphere, his soul must first be deeply stirred. And a spiritual stir and movement is the applied strength of a spiritual power.[ai]
We propose, then, to see by example, what Theism may be to mankind. Many examples will not be needed, provided those selected are typical. We shall therefore choose some two or three distinctive types.
The task of selection reminds us to protest, once for all, against the weak and cynical way of illustrating human nature which threatens to become prevalent. If we want to see what a true man is, we must not seek his fossil effigies, by delving into the scanty and disputable records of primæval savagery,[aj] and unearthing the crumbled seeds of better things, which died before coming to perfection. It is like estimating the Oak from a mouldy Acorn. It is worse!—Barbarism tends to distortion and degeneracy. We might as wisely pronounce a maimed dwarf with carefully flattened forehead, the beau ideal of human strength and beauty, as seek to know the mind of man amid its wrecks and perversities. We must rather look at our race in its strongest and noblest development. The healthy acorn grows into a spreading oak;—the truly human child becomes, not a crooked dwarf, but an upright intellectual giant. The investigation of maimed deformities may have its interest for comparative purposes, but no ancient Greek nor Hebrew, no modern European nor American, ought to be painted with lineaments which are revolting to his higher nature. Let us help the savage by every means we can, except by asking him to sit for a model of Humanity. When we do this, we have assuredly lost our very best reason for helping him at all.
The examples following, no one will doubt to be types of true and highly developed men. The first, is intended to shew how Theism stands out before the apprehension of a Man engaged in searching out abstract truth.
The Philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton has become familiar to most people, so far as his theory of "the Conditioned" is concerned. They are aware that his mind dwelt on the speculative difficulties surrounding a knowledge of the Absolute, the self-subsisting First Cause, and true Ground of all things. Yet, to the veracity of God he appeals for the veraciousness of our primary beliefs. Over against a whole school of Idealists, he places, as the one fatal objection, this same veracity—"Either maintaining the veracity of God, they must surrender their hypothesis;—or, maintaining their hypothesis, they must surrender the veracity of God."[174] And, if the existence of a Deity is known, there can be no doubt that His truth is amongst the highest and clearest to us, of all His essential attributes. We cannot (as Sir William says) "suppose that we are created capable of intelligence, in order to be made the victims of delusion; that God is a deceiver, and the root of our nature a lie."[175] Therefore, he drew a wide distinction between, on the one hand, knowing the Absolute and the Supreme so as to examine and explain His nature, and, on the other hand, believing that He truly is, so as to affirm the fact of His being, and the necessary consequences of His existence. "When I deny," he writes, "that the Infinite can by us be known, I am far from denying that by us it is, must, and ought to be, believed!"[176]—In this belief, Sir William saw a sufficient reason for accepting, as Mr. Mill advises all to accept, "the inexplicable fact." And indeed the problem of truth perpetually does come, (evade the conclusion as we will), in one shape or another, to this same necessity of final acceptance. Mr. Coleridge's Friend is one long investigation into this necessity, and he fairly closes his argument by saying that always,—start from whatever point we may,—"reason will find a chasm, which the moral being only, which the spirit and religion of man alone can fill up."[177]
3 For Sir W. Hamilton, Theism bridged the vast abyss! No one could more strongly estimate its vastness, and the poverty of our visual powers when we stand beside it;—the dim feeling which makes us shrink back from its awful verge. But Theism became to him the strength of a noble life;—a life of much self-sacrifice, and meagre earthly recompense.[ak]