MODERN SCEPTICISM.

MODERN SCEPTICISM.

A
COURSE OF LECTURES
DELIVERED AT THE REQUEST OF THE
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY,

WITH AN EXPLANATORY PAPER
BY THE RIGHT REVEREND
C. J. ELLICOTT, D.D.,
LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL.

NEW YORK:
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH AND CO.,
770, BROADWAY.
MDCCCLXXI.

Issued in this Country
by special arrangement with the English Publishers,
Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton.

[PREFACE.]

The following Lectures, delivered at the request of the Christian Evidence Society, are now, for the convenience of the reader, gathered together into one volume, and earnestly commended to his serious consideration.

A short account of the general designs of the Society, of the plan of the Lectures, and the reasons for their appearing in a different order from that in which they were delivered, will be found in an explanatory paper which the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol has been kind enough to draw up at the request of the Committee. Though placed, as last written, at the end of the volume, the attention of the reader should be early directed to this paper.

The Committee take this opportunity of offering their best thanks to the eminent men who have found time, in the midst of their varied and laborious avocations, to lend such able and efficient service to the great cause in hand,—the maintenance of the truth of the Christian Revelation.

HARROWBY,
Chairman of Committee.

[CONTENTS.]

DESIGN IN NATURE.

BY THE MOST REVEREND
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK.

DESIGN IN NATURE.

"All things are full of God," said the father of Greek philosophy. "We have no need of the hypothesis of God," said a modern French astronomer. It is with the latter saying, which is descriptive of the attitude of modern science at this time, that the present address will have to do. Atheism no doubt exists; but far more common is the mode of thinking which would dispense with all questions about the Divine nature in dealing with the world and its phenomena; which considers that the introduction of the name of God into scientific research, complicates what is simple, obscures the rules of observation, introduces controversies that are useless to science, restrains the free course of inductive reasoning by an apprehension of consequences, and entangles physical inquiry which leads to sure and clear results, with mental and with spiritual inquiry which have produced nothing but disputation. Those who hold such views would think it unphilosophical to deny, just as they would regard it to affirm, the existence of God. But the popular mind is not equal to nice distinctions; and it seems almost the same thing to most people to deny the existence of God as to exclude the thought of Him when exploring His creation.

I am not without hope that a few words delivered here upon "the argument from design," as it is called, may tend to diminish the growing estrangement between science and religion, and at the same time to revindicate for religion her legitimate share in matters of scientific interest.

I may undertake that the subject, however unworthily treated in other respects, shall be discussed without bitterness, and with a fitting respect for those who have done so much for physical science during the present generation.

It is necessary to sketch in a few sentences that field of creation with which the argument from design has to do. The world presents to us four kingdoms or classes of facts. One of these, and the first in point of order, is the mineral kingdom. A few so-called elements, as metals, earthy bases, and the like, acted upon by certain forces, known to us as gravitation, motion, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, have formed the mountain and the valley, the wind and the clouds, the sea margin and the cave; in a word, all the grand substructure on which the higher kingdoms are to take their places. Modern science has discovered however, that these physico-chemical forces are interchangeable or convertible; that retarded motion turns to heat, as in the railway break, that heat generates electricity, and the electric current magnetises the iron round which it passes. Not only this, but each force generates a certain equivalent of another—so much and no more; and no force is lost, though a force may pass from an active to a potential state. For example, two tuns of water are raised by evaporation from the sea, and one of them falls in rain in a valley drained by a river, and in its downward motion back to the sea it will turn the water-wheel, lift the tilt-hammer, bear the barge swiftly in its current, leap over the rocky ledge a foaming cataract, and in all these it is only sending back a portion of the force which was spent upon its evaporation; and the real source of all this work is, and must be, the sun's heat. And ere the water rests again in the sea it will have accounted for the whole of the force, neither less nor more, that had operated upon it; part of it in friction on its bed and in consequent heat; part of it in tasks imposed by human skill. The other tun of water shall fall into some land-locked tarn, high in the hills, where it cannot at once render back its force in work or duty, but the force is there, held in suspense or in reserve. Water lifted from the sea level to the valley of the Engadine, a mile higher, has used much of the sun's heat; it will restore that heat or some equivalent force, as soon as you make a way for it to the sea level again; and it will have parted with all the force, neither more nor less, which raised it to that height. That forces are convertible, and that whether converted or not they are conserved, so that nothing is lost, are propositions demonstrated. It is not, I believe, demonstrated, but it is a probable supposition, that all forces are but one force manifested in different modes.

Then as to the material elements on which these forces work; the hydrogen, carbon, iron, lime, and the like, the name of elements must be held to mean no more than that they have not as yet been resolved into simpler substances. Of their ultimate composition we know nothing. They may be so many modifications of an ultimate matter; but whether this ultimate matter exists, whether it be, as modern materialists tell us with such confidence, eternal and indestructible, whether impenetrability be one of its properties, whether it be not a kind of polar opposite to the physico-chemical forces, and engendered with them, so that in a different universe, with other forces at work, there must have been different elements, these are all questions of mere speculation, incapable of proof. The physical enquirer has bound himself to consider only the facts which he can observe; and when he tells us that matter is eternal, and that therefore creation is impossible, he is deserting the ground where alone he is strong. Bishop Berkeley's and Collier's denial that matter truly exists is quite as probable as this affirmation. But both alike are speculative guesses and not science.

There is a second kingdom to add to the first. The world is not a mere agglomeration of rocks and mountains, seas and lakes. Before the physical forces had completed their work, a new force had been added to them; that of life. The bare rocks became clothed with living moss. In marshy places, warm and moist, a rich vegetation grew and decayed. Along the slopes the interlacing roots of grasses detained the particles of soil which would otherwise have been washed down to some lower bed. The vegetable world, with thousands of varieties, clothed and adorned the stony earth. England's greatness in the present was taken order for in those ages when her coal measures were formed out of the forests which grew rank and died in a climate different in all respects from that which forms the subject of our daily animadversion.

Third in order comes the Animal Kingdom. I do not attempt to define life, whether animal or vegetable, with exactness. Every one has failed in that attempt. As a rough description of animal life, it may, perhaps, suffice to say that the living being is one endowed with sensation and spontaneous motion, of which each of the parts contributes something to the continuance of the whole, and is in turn preserved or defended by the whole. If those who find fault with this, look for another definition in Dr. Whewell's comprehensive work,[1] they will find my excuse in the variety and the inadequacy of the definitions there collected. The animal life spread out over the globe from the first is profuse, is beautiful and various. The oolitic limestone and the white chalk are almost wholly made up of shells of Foraminifera. On the river Columbia is a bed of clay 500 feet thick, which consists largely of the shells of Diatoms, if, indeed, these are to be ranked in the animal kingdom. The shells of the Foraminifera, which can only be examined by the microscope, exhibit wonderful variety and beauty. Still more remarkable in this respect are the Polycystina, whose shells, as figured in Mr. Ponton's book, recall censers and vases, jewelled crosses and stars, pendants and tripods, such as a London goldsmith would do well to reproduce. Until the microscope was invented no eye can have explored this wonderful dust. The shells of both these humble tribes, the Foraminifera and Polycystina resemble the shells of other animals much higher in the scale of organization; but nearly as they are related in organization to each other, the forms are very different, and each in itself presents a wonderful diversity of forms. In higher families of animals there are the same characters. The globe teems with life in earth, and air, and water. If you will permit me, so early in my argument, to speak of the Maker of them all, I will say that the creative power is inexhaustible in invention, both of useful and beautiful parts. And in the ceaseless activity of these creatures, great and small, we recognise the physical happiness which accompanies so much life. It is a chorus of thanksgiving and praise, from pool and jungle, from treetop and soft grass, from the creatures that revel in the life that God has given them.

In demanding the right to regard man as the fourth kingdom of nature, I am aware that some may demur to the claim. No doubt he must take rank in the kingdom of the animals, by reason of his identity with animals in all the vital functions. Disparaging things have been said of his brain; and Moleschott has remarked, I think, that all its finest things are but modified phosphorus after all. "No phosphorus, no thinking!" The slight projection on the outer margin of the ear has lately assumed portentous proportions. The possession of that precious relic, which has turned up suddenly like the locket of the long lost child in a stimulating novel, proves our kinship to the Simian race, from some balder specimens of which we are supposed to have descended, and gives us a place on an unsuspected family tree. But, after all that has been said by the naturalists to teach us humility, there do remain some facts, which entitle man to a separate place, to one at least of which the modern school have given greater prominence than before. They are these. Man can control nature. He can read nature and understand it. He has a power of self-regulation, which we call conscience. And he can and does think much about God.

As to the power of man to control nature, I prefer to employ the words of Mr. Wallace, one of the first to put forward what is called "the law of natural selection," who will not be suspected of claiming any transcendental place or privilege for man. "With a naked and unprotected body," he says, man's intelligence "gave him clothing against the varying inclemencies of the seasons. Though unable to compete with the deer in swiftness, or with the wild bull in strength, it has given him weapons wherewith to capture and overcome both. Though less capable than most other animals, of living on the herbs and the fruits which unaided nature supplies, this wonderful faculty taught him to govern and direct nature to his own benefit, and to make her produce food for him when and where he pleased. From the moment when the first skin was used as a covering, when the first rude spear was formed to assist in the chase, the first seed sown or root planted, a grand revolution was effected in nature, a revolution which in all the previous ages of the world had had no parallel, for a being had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject to change with the changing universe, a being who was, in some degree, superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regulate her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not by a change in body, but by an advance in mind. Here, then, we see the true grandeur and dignity of man. On this view of his special attributes we may admit that even those who claim for him a position and an order a class or a sub-kingdom by himself, have some reason on their side. He is indeed a being apart, since he is not influenced by the great laws which irresistibly modify all other organic beings. Nay, more, this victory which he has gained for himself gives him a directing influence over other existences. Man has not only escaped natural selection himself, but he is actually able to take away some of that power from nature which before his appearance she universally exercised. We can anticipate the time when the earth will produce only cultivated plants and domestic animals; when man's selection shall have supplanted natural selection; and when the ocean will be the only domain in which that power can be exerted, which for countless cycles of ages ruled supreme over the earth."[2] Thus eloquently and forcibly speaks Mr. Wallace; and I do not stop now to criticise the exaggeration of language which treats the law of natural selection as supreme ruler of the earth. Let me say a few words next upon man's power to reflect on, and to understand nature. For this was the second mark by which man was distinguished from the animal creation, with which he has so much in common.

Man alone is capable of an unselfish interest in the world around him; that is, an interest that does not bear immediately on his bodily wants. How far he has carried this interest, let modern science bear witness. The common feat of foretelling all the eclipses of sun and moon for a given year, is performed for our almanack yearly, without exciting surprise or gratitude. Yet it means that man can so follow the heavenly bodies in their path, for years and years to come, for all the years that are gone, that he can tell, without fear of error, on what day the cone of shadow thrown by the sun-lighted earth into space, shall sweep over the face of the moon and blot out her light, completely or a little. But this is an old triumph, hardly worth quoting, but for its aptness to impress all kinds of minds. A clerk in one of our public offices, using only such leisure as official work allowed, has told us lately wonders about the composition of the sun; and here in London, armed with a little instrument (the spectroscope), this distinguished man has been able to ascertain that in yonder photosphere the same elements are found which the chemist seeks and finds in the crust of our little earth. What proofs can be more convincing of the fitness of man to play his part in the scene in which he is placed? His senses are adapted to the facts he is to observe; his eye to light, his ear to sonorous vibrations, his touch to resistance and to weight. But the naked organ soon falls short of his wishes. And soon the microscope unfolds the beautiful forms of the Polycystina shells, the minute fibril of the muscle, and the components of the blood of life. The telescope brings near the world of stars, and resolves the bright mist into clusters of distinct orbs. The balance weighs quantities of matter too small for the touch to appreciate. And lastly, the spectroscope takes the picture, so to speak, of chemical phenomena too distant to be realised by these means; and so the composition of the heavenly bodies, about which the most sanguine observer twenty years ago would have admitted that we should never know anything firmer than conjecture, is already the subject of exact observation.

The names of Homer, Plato, and Shakspeare remind us how marvellously the world is imaged and reproduced in the minds of some great men, and of the share which we smaller men can take in their work by an admiring sympathy. A production of art, whether literary, pictorial, or plastic, is a creation. The things of Troy were not so touching nor so grand in their reality as they became in the form which the poet gave them. Legend enters largely into the stories of Macbeth and Hamlet. The histories are shadowy, but the plays are substantial; they contain some touch of truth. Old and young read them, and lend to the author all their feelings to work on as he will. Weigh this fact well. It seems to me to show so plainly that man's constitution has been fitted by foresight and preparation for the place in earth that he was to fill.

Supposing that Moleschott was right in his startling aphorism, "Without phosphorus there is no thought," what a wonder are we forced to recognise here. The rage of Achilles, the death of Socrates, the resolute wickedness of Lady Macbeth, the character of her husband, so weak in his crime, so grand in his remorse and ruin; the refined and gentle Hamlet, forced by a preternatural command to assume the character of an avenger; to all these the presence of phosphorus in the brain is indispensable. How comes so small a cause to work such grand effects. It is sufficiently wonderful to hear Joachim discourse eloquent music upon the simplest of instruments, a violin; take away the violin and substitute a bit of wood; if the music still continues, what was before a wonderful exercise of skill is now miraculous. If great thoughts are but phosphorus burnt in the closed stove of a poet's brain, I am more ready than ever to admire that creative wisdom which could bring this out of that, which could so dispense with ordinary means in His highest productions. But the aphorism is not true as it stands. I believe there is no free phosphorus in the brain. "Without lime, no thought; without oxygen, no thought; without water, no thought." All these are true, and they import a well-known fact, that man who thinks is a creature in a material world, and that certain forms of matter are needful to his existence as an organised being.[3] "Two things are awful to me," said Kant, "the starry firmament and the sense of responsibility in man." In his "Metaphysics of Ethics" he has treated this sense of responsibility with singular logical power. It is one of the marks that separate man from all other creatures. No doubt this principle has allowed men to come to very wrong and absurd conclusions. Because the savage practises cannibalism, and knows no rules of chastity but those which flow from the husband's right of property in the wife, it is inferred that the savage has no moral sense. It would be as fair to infer that because England once traded in slaves, fought cocks, baited bulls, and oppressed the native races in India and her colonies, therefore there was no sense of right and wrong in England. It is for the existence of the principle that I contend, and not for its perfect education and enlightenment. The principle is that something is right to will and to do, and something is not right. The existence of the principle is proved if the poor savage of whom I spoke would consider his manhood disgraced by fleeing, even for his life's sake, before the foe, or by suffering one cry to escape him under the tortures, wherewith his captors are doing him to death. The education of this principle is a different matter; no one could say that even now his conscience was completely educated. "So act that your principle of action would bear to be made a law for the whole world,"[4] is a noble maxim; but it requires knowledge and light, as well as right intention. If you twit us with the fact that men have been cruel, impure, capricious, and absurd in their conduct, we answer that they had still a right and a wrong. One who has the sense of sight may find himself compelled to live in some narrow cleft or ravine, where there is little to see, but the sense is there still. The bathing-men at Pfeffers, with the earth closed almost over their heads, see little of the scenery of Switzerland: but they have eyes not the less. We are claiming for men now, not the fine sweep of moral prospect, but the moral sense of sight; and this is never wanting. Upon this sense every artifice has been used to make it look like something else;[5] for until it can be so transformed, it is a powerful witness for another world than this. The commonest explanation is that it is only a principle of enlightened self-interest. Study it for yourself in the savage, in the little child; you will find that these two principles run on different lines.

The last mark of man, that distinguishes him from all animals is, that he believes in God. One half the human race at this moment profess some creed in which God is the great first cause, the Creator and Governor of the world. Of the other half, hardly any are quite without religion. "Obliged as I am," says M. Quatrefages, in words which I have had occasion to quote elsewhere,[6] "even by my education, to pass in review the races of men, I have sought for atheism in the lowest and in the highest, but nowhere have I met with it, except in an individual, or at most in some school of men, more or less known, as we have seen in Europe in the last century, and as we see at the present day. Everywhere and always the masses of the people have escaped it." But for my present argument it is not necessary to insist that a right belief in God prevails. There is a belief in God, and it cannot have come from experience or observation of visible facts. You may lower the position of man, by comparing him to the apes, and by chemical analysis of his brain; all the more wonderful is it that a creature in such sorry case should pretend to hold communion with the divine. His feet are in the earthy clay, but his head is lifted up towards heaven. Heir to a hundred maladies, the sport of a hundred passions, holding on this life, so chequered in its complexion, but for a few days, this creature cries out of his trouble: "God exists; and he can see and hear me."

Man, if I have proved my position, stands quite alone at the head of the kingdoms of nature, alone in his power of controlling it, alone in his appreciation of its beauty, alone in the self-government of conscience, the first of all the creatures of God, to pronounce the name of Him who had made all things, in a world which for ages had been blind to its Maker, and thankless because blind.

Now it has become, and will probably continue to be, a question of the deepest interest to mankind, how these four kingdoms came into being. And at present there is a tendency towards a theory purely material and mechanical. It is so in Germany, the country of Büchner, Vogt, and Moleschott; it is so in France, where Comte and Littré have written; it is so here in England, where it is needless to quote distinguished names. I purpose, in the remainder of this lecture, to attempt an interpretation of the facts before us, quite different from this prevalent notion; and also to show how vicious and how inadequate in a scientific point of view the system known as materialism appears to be. The time is all too short for such a purpose: but any address like this can only aim to scatter germs of thought, not to present a system.

That the creation was gradual, appears alike from the account of the Bible and from scientific observation. Matter and motion must have existed before the ball of earth was formed; and the physico-chemical forces must have been in full play when the first lichen clothed the rocks, or the first plants were formed in the sea. The first appearance of life on the globe was a mighty step in creation, and from this point the question of design becomes a very urgent one. Observe: the plant world is a new world, with a series of wonders all its own. There was nothing in the heat of the sun, nor in the earth's motion or magnetic currents, to give any promise or presage of the marvels of the forest. Supposing that we admit that these were evolved by law, that is to say, that as a matter of fact plants only appeared where certain conditions of light and heat and moisture combined to favour them, and that wherever these conditions were combined they never failed to appear. The question next arises whether matter and force evolved them from their own inherent nature, or force and matter were created with the intention to produce them, so that the plant was intended and prepared then when the other forces began to stir the formless void. Is the plant world the accidental or necessary outcome of the forces that made the mineral world? or must we say that it bears marks of design? Here we must observe that it is a wider and richer world than that which preceded it: more full by far of forms of beauty and grace, each of them sustained by a vascular system of which the mineral world affords no parallel. You stand before the gnarled and twisted oak that rises out of the feathering ferns; you never think that this giant of two centuries, endued with a certain power of self-protection against the storms of two hundred years, is an accidental product. It is so grandly strong, so richly clothed with a myriad leaves, alike but yet in something different each from each. The cattle count upon its friendly shade; the fowls of the air make it their resting-place. This a result of certain motions in the universe and certain properties of matter, not designed at all, foreseen by no eye? To no one would such a thought naturally occur. The world, full in its first stage of marks of order and purpose, shows more of the same marks in its second and more complicated state. The change that has taken place is not towards confusion and exhaustion from unforeseen defects in mechanism, but a higher development. The mineral kingdom was wonderful; that it should be able to clothe itself with a mantle of verdure, and pass into another kingdom much more complex, heightens the wonder. But then comes the further change, the pouring out of animal life upon the globe. Was this too an inevitable consequence of physical forces? All the animal creation teems with marks of purpose. Consider only some of the contrivances by which the fowls of the air are fitted for their peculiar life. Describing a night of extreme coldness, the poet says:

"The owl, for all her feathers, is a-cold."

That warm covering of the bird must be portable as well as warm; it weighs about an ounce and a half. But the covering of birds would be useless to them if the showers to which they must be exposed were absorbed by the plumage, so that it became a heavy clinging mass. An oily secretion makes it waterproof; we have all seen the duck free itself by one shake from every trace of its recent bath. The heavy skeleton that befits pedestrian creatures, would disable the bird from flight; so it is provided with tubes of thin bone, surrounding a cavity filled with air. Its pinions must be light as well as strong; observe how the light barbs of the feather have roughened edges so that they form one strong continuous surface, almost impervious to the air which they strike. The air in the bones of birds and in other cavities of the body, heated too by an inner warmth much greater than that of man, contributes something to their buoyancy. Their speed and endurance are enormous. It is said that the swallow's flight is ninety miles an hour. One long stretch across the North Sea brings the sea-fowl from Norway to Flamborough Head; they rest for a short time after this flight, and pass inland, not the worse for their exploit. You may infer from the beak of a bird its habits and its food. The bill of a woodpecker is a pointed tool, tipped with hardest horn, to break open the bark of the tree for insects. The flat bill of the duck has plates of horn at the side; an excellent instrument for straining off the water and retaining the food. The bill of the snipe is long, and narrow, and sensitive, to pierce the marshy ground, and feel after its food. We might go on for hours multiplying such instances, and from every part of the field of creation.

Now, any mind in its natural state knows that in human works such adaptations could only proceed from contrivance, and is willing to regard these in the same way as proofs of design in creation. The physicist has to tutor himself to a different view. All these things are evolutions, under pressure of circumstances, of the original forces of creation. For example, out of certain birds tenanting marshy places, one has a somewhat larger beak, and this gives him an advantage in piercing the ground for food; and so his share of food is larger, and his strength and courage greater, and he has a freer choice of a mate; and so the long beak grows longer in the next generation, and the grandson's beak is longer than the son's, from the same causes; and thus the law works, until in course of time there stands confessed a new species—a perfect snipe. Is the scientific theory better in this case than the popular? It is not. It does not account for the facts so well. But is not our belief that God made the fowl of the air with fitting instruments for a peculiar life because He saw that it was good, and wished all portions of His varied earth to be the scene of the joy and energy of appropriate tenants, a mere hypothesis? The worship of God is universal, and exists without any explicit opinion that He is the Creator, the first Cause. Because you are able to conceive of Him, and are willing to accept Him as the Ruler of your will and conscience, He must exist. Does this seem too rapid an assumption? Consider the alternative. If He exists not, the sound of worship has gone up from all lands in vain, and in vain have all good men consecrated their lives to an obedience to the law of duty. Were such deceit felt to be possible, a darkness that might be felt would settle upon our spirits, and the hands would indeed hang down, and the feeble knees be paralyzed, and a strict silence on all moral subjects become us best. But we must see with such eyes as God has given us; and scepticism about faith and conscience is perhaps as unprofitable as scepticism about touch and sight. God exists then, it is assured to us by the common faith of mankind, by the highest law within ourselves. And as He exists, to Him, and to no other, must we assign the place of Creator. There cannot be two Gods. I cannot give my conscience to one as its guide, and adore another for the wisdom of the universe. God exists then, and His existence is not merely assumed in order to account for marks of design in nature. And we maintain that the easier supposition is also the truer. These marks of purpose are what they appear to be, tokens of the wisdom of God. "Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their host, the earth and all things that are therein, the sea and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all."[7] If I were to venture to express in a few sentences the belief of a man of ordinary education upon this subject I should say that God alone is and can be the first cause of this universe, the mover of its motion, the giver of its life. The wise purposes which shine forth for us in nature, were in the mind of God from the first act of creation. In saying that He has wrought by laws, we do not detract from His power; we seem rather to enhance it to our minds in attributing to Him constancy as well as wisdom. A law is not a restraint; it is a fixed manner of working. To say of a painter that he never produces any but fine works, does not affirm that he is less free than an inferior artist; just because producing bad work is no power or privilege but a defect. And so, when we admit that God works by law, and expect to find the same spectrum from the sun's rays, which we have once made with our own prism, at every time and in every place where the sun's light shines, and so on, we do not narrow the power of the Great Artificer, unless it can be shown that caprice is a privilege and a good. The subject of miracles is not here to be discussed; I will only observe that they are presented to us as parts of a great purpose for the good of man; and that our Lord refused, when He was tempted, to work wonders out of wilfulness, or only to astonish. The extreme jealousy of scientific men of admitting any allusion to theology, in connection with the course of nature, proceeds from erroneous conceptions of God. Mr. Wallace, whom I have already quoted with respect, is ready to admit that the Creator works in the beginning as the founder of the laws on which the world is to proceed; but he is afraid of admitting that there has been continual interference and re-arrangement of details.[8] But this eminent naturalist attributes to us a conception of the Most High which we do not hold, nay, which we energetically reject. If the laws were wise and good, whence would come the need of interference or re-arrangement? Who are we that we should bid God speak once, and forbid Him twice to speak? The laws of nature are God's laws, and God's laws are His utterance of Himself through the speech of nature. God is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and so His laws remain the same. They are, if I may say so without irreverence, the veil and vesture over the form of God, too bright in itself for us to look on; they take their outline from Him who is beneath them. You may continue your researches in full confidence that the laws will stand sure, not because you have the slightest guarantee as a man of science that these laws will never be interfered with; such a guarantee you have on your own principles no right to ask. You are to observe that the facts are so; that they shall eternally be so is not for you, for that is all beyond experience. But the wisdom that made the laws needs not to revise its work, and erase and insert and amend its code. In the days of creation God saw that it was good; the eye that so approved it changes not. Until the purpose that runs through the ages is completed the laws will stand sure. But each new kingdom of nature has introduced a change amounting to a revolution, which neither the theologian nor the naturalist regards as an interference or a caprice. When the principle of plant-life was introduced, the mineral world became the material on which the plant-life worked; it gathered into itself the lower elements, carbon, silica, nitrogen, and used them as means of its own organic life. The plant partook of the nature of the class below it, whilst it dominated and used that class. This same took place when animal life was introduced. The beautiful plants become the material whereon the animal life worked, the food whereby it sustained itself. It was the same when man was added, in whom instinct is replaced by reason, and ethical action supervenes over action by impulse and appetite. Each of these kingdoms has much in common with that which is below it. The animal is in many respects a plant; for the diatomaceous creatures one knows hardly in which kingdom to find their place. The man is an animal in much, and perhaps his animal instincts play a larger part in the world's history and in his own development than we are wont to allow. But each higher step brings in something wholly new. "An animal," says Hegel, "is a miracle for the vegetable world." Each step is a revolution in one point of view; but then the lower state prepared itself for the higher, prophesied, so to speak, of its coming, and the higher seated itself so easily on the throne prepared for it, that we do not wonder to find it there. You call it evolution; we call it a creative act. We think that God exists, and if He acts anywhere it must be in this, the universe of things. Ἐξ ἑνὸς τὰ πάντα γίγνεσθαι [Greek: Ex henos ta panta gignesthai] is an old saying long before Christianity. But you and we may work by the same calculus and rules of observation. The facts are the same, the interpretation of what is behind them is different. Nor need we deny that the principle of which Mr. Wallace spoke as "supreme in the world," has its truth and its use in explaining the facts of creation. It never raised an inert mineral mass into a vegetable organism; it never raised a plant into an animal. It never raised an ape into a man. No facts have yet been produced that go to prove any such leaps, and if our logic is to be improved in anything by the light of experience, it is in this, that facts should be recorded and generalised, but not assumed. But that climatic conditions, and the struggles for life, have modified species, and worked out new varieties, or new species, we may fearlessly admit; it is one more proof, perhaps, that the world is a meet school and training ground for the creatures placed in it for discipline. But a law is not a god; it never ruled supreme; never was other than one precept out of many in the Divine code of the world.

It has become the fashion with some naturalists to speak of God as "the Unknowable." Mr. Martineau has finely observed, somewhere, that this name is self-contradictory; for we affirm by the use of it that we know so much, that He cannot be known. I go much further. It assumes the existence of God, and in the same breath separates us from Him for ever. Theologians have ever been ready to confess that God cannot be known in His own essence to creatures such as we. "Lo! these are parts of His ways: but how little a portion is known of Him? but the thunder of His power who can understand?"[9] An uninspired writer speaks the same language as the inspired. "For us that are men to talk about divine things is as when the unmusical discourse of music or civilians of strategy."[10] But shall we then sit down in despair, and no more look up to God? We shall be untrue to our own best instincts; we shall not have used all our means of enlightenment. I grant that the mere contemplation of God in nature is not enough. Like the pillar of cloud of old, it is at once light and darkness; a light to us in contemplating the book of nature, a darkness to our hearts, shut in with their own sins and sorrows. Naturalists have never done justice, as it seems to me, to the most important facts of man's nature. Not only can he study nature, but he can act in it and upon it. And this power of action assures him of his freedom. Possessed of this gift, that places him a little lower than the angels, he knows that he can use it either way. He may follow his own foolish vanity, his own evil wishes, and set up for his own law, and be his own God; or he may return to Him, whence he came out, and offer to God the homage of his own will, of his love, and his obedience. To one who has performed this great act God is no more "the Unknowable." In the mutual commerce of two wills, two spirits, the finite and the infinite, the finite rises more and more, and sees more and more of Him who has manifested Himself to us in His creation of the world out of free love, in His creation of a free being to rule in the same world, crowned with glory and honor, in His giving that free being a law of duty wherewith to rule himself, in His having planted in him hopes and longings that will be satisfied only in eternity.

Yes; man is humble and low. By every organ, and by every fibre he is mated with some analogous creature in the brute world. He surpasses them in the variety of his ailments, and the profundity of his pains. He is part of a system, which naturalists tell us is hastening towards night and death;[11] the motion of the power of nature tending plainly towards universal rest. But

"Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great,"

he has that in him which unites him to another sphere. To be able to conceive of God at all; to have within him a will and a power of worship, these make him one with God, and assure him against death and darkness. To deny oneself this privilege of viewing the earth in its relation to God, to shut out God artificially from that sphere where the natural understanding has always found Him without assistance, is a pedantry for which we shall surely suffer. God will find us out. There is often a certain irritation in those who would exclude Him from their sphere of view. They lose their philosophic calmness when they speak of religious things. These are the tokens of past conflicts and past quarrels, of a soul that might know more of God if it had not refused. God is reflected in the world, in the man's intelligence, in his conscience, in his will. "Whither shall I go from His presence?" we seem to be saying. It is better to be able to say, "Whom have I in heaven and earth but Thee?"

[PANTHEISM.]

BY THE
REV. J. H. RIGG, D.D.,
PRINCIPAL OF WESTMINSTER TRAINING COLLEGE.

PANTHEISM.

A hundred years ago the controversy of Christianity in England was with Deism, and in France with Atheism; while at that time the transcendental infidelity of Germany was as yet undeveloped, and the name of Spinoza was nowhere held in honour. Now, however, deistic infidelity appears to be obsolete, and it is universally felt by those who have entered truly into the thought and controversies of the age, that the question for the present is between Christian Theism and that style of philosophy which recognises an impersonal divinity in all things.

Deism grants too much to the Christian. If a man really believes in a living and personal God, a Divine Maker and Ruler of the universe, with a moral character and will, he finds it hard to deny the possibility and probability of a revelation, and impossible to maintain the impossibility of miracles. Having been obliged to yield thus far to the Christian argument, the deist is unable thereafter to withstand the positive evidence in favour of Christianity. Moreover Deism is beset by the same difficulties in effect which surround the Christian revelation, without its lights, its consolations, its blessings. The man, therefore, who rejects Christianity seldom finds his resting-place in Deism. He becomes a pantheist or an atheist.

Naked atheism, however, is a repulsive creed. It is a heart-withering negation. It touches no sympathy; it stimulates no play of intellect; under the deadly chill of its unlighted vacancy, imagination cannot breathe. There is nothing about it refined, or subtle, or profound. It is the barest and hardest form of infidelity, and has been professed by the coarsest minds. It demands no effort to comprehend its one universal negation and it taxes no skill to expound it. It is an arid and barren, a cold and dreary, hypothesis, which no genius, not even that of Lucretius, could make attractive. The old illustration is conclusive as to its absurdity. It would be immensely less monstrous to maintain that the Iliad, in its full perfection, might have been the product of the "fortuitous concourse" of the letters of the Greek alphabet, than that this infinitely wonderful and glorious universe is the result of the "fortuitous concourse of atoms." Stark atheism, therefore, however it may have flourished in the heartless and hopeless France of a hundred years ago, was never likely to take root in the soil of European scepticism as the alternative of Christianity. In England it has had very few votaries. Nor has atheism, as such, ever found favour in the land of Luther and Melancthon, the favourite soil of mysticism and pietism. English deism and Scottish scepticism did, indeed, produce potent effects in Germany a hundred years ago; but the result was neither deism, nor such scepticism as that of Hume, nor atheism, but a dreamy idealistic pantheism. And now Germany, with a disastrous fidelity, by an infusion into our literature of its pantheistic unbelief, has repaid to Britain the debt which it contracted by its importation of English deism and Scottish scepticism. At the present moment a pantheistic philosophy is the philosophy in which unbelief for the most part invests itself in England.

Hence the task which falls to me to-day cannot but be felt by myself to be one of very grave importance. I could unfeignedly have wished that it had fallen into other and more competent hands. Perhaps, however, I may venture to claim two qualifications which may, in some measure, help to fit me for dealing with the subject on which I have to speak. One is, that the subject of Pantheism is one which has much and frequently exercised my thoughts for many years past, ever since I learnt from the writings of Coleridge, Hare, and others the meaning of what Hare spoke of as the "fascination of Pantheism;" ever since I was led to the study of philosophy and its development, and especially of the thoughts of the early Greek wrestlers with the mysteries of being, of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonists, and of the modern thinkers of Germany, who have filled with transcendental exhalations of verbal dialectics the vacuum in speculation which had been created by the destructive logic of Kant. The other qualification which I venture to claim for my task to-day is that I have some knowledge of the difficulties of thought and belief which may lead honest men to become pantheists; that I understand the manner of thought of one who has become entangled in the mazy coil of pantheistic reasonings; at all events, that I know that honest searchers after truth may reluctantly become intellectually pantheists, while yet their heart longs to retain faith and worship towards a personal God. If, therefore, one necessary condition of true success in argument is an intellectual and, as far as possible, a moral sympathy with one's opponents, that condition, I believe, is fulfilled in my case. And I cannot but think that all Christian controversialists ought to feel a tender sympathy towards honest thinkers who are involved in the bewildering confusions of a philosophy which they do not love, even although they may, after many a struggle and in sadness of heart, have succumbed at length to Pantheism as the only conclusion of controversy in which they are able to abide.

My subject to-day is not the history of Pantheism, but its principles. The history could not be dealt with in one lecture; the principles, I hope, may. And whatever may be the intellectual genesis, the descent and derivation, or the special character, of any particular form of Pantheism, all its forms will be found to coincide in certain respects. The semi-Hegelian of Oxford, and the pantheist who falls back on the lines of Mr. Herbert Spencer's speculations as his place of defence, may both be regarded as standing on common ground for the purpose of my present argument.

In attempting a criticism of the principles of Pantheism, the first thing to be done is to obtain as clear an idea as possible of what is to be understood by Pantheism, as distinguished from Theism on the one hand, and from Atheism on the other. There can be no doubt that the difficulties, both metaphysical and moral, which attach to the conception of a personal God, the Creator and Governor of the universe, have, more than any other cause, constrained thoughtful men who have pondered the problem of the universe, to endeavour to escape from their perplexities and bewilderments by taking refuge in the notion of a diffused impersonal divinity. And it must be confessed that these difficulties are so oppressive and so staggering to our incompetent human reason, that they might well tempt the mere reasoner, the mere logician, the mere metaphysician, to give up faith in a personal God, if so to do were not really to involve one's self in more than equivalent difficulties of the very same class, besides many other difficulties, and in truth contradictions, both intellectual and also moral, which are involved in the pantheistic hypothesis. That the alternative is such as I have now stated, that the pantheistic hypothesis is necessarily beset with such difficulties and contradictions, will in part be shown by the inquiry which, as I have intimated, must needs come first of all in the criticism I am to attempt. An investigation of the meaning of Pantheism, of the characteristic idea proper to the intermediate hypothesis which rejects equally A-Theism and Theism, will open to view the metaphysical difficulties and contradictions involved in the hypothesis. I shall afterwards try to show the incompatibility of the principles of Pantheism with the true principles of natural science. The moral considerations belonging to the Christian controversy with Pantheism I shall reserve till the final stage in my argument.

Pantheism agrees with atheism in its denial of a personal Deity. Its divinity of the universe is a divinity without a will and without conscious intelligence. In what respect, then, does Pantheism really differ from atheism? If we eliminate from our idea of the divinity of the universe all consciousness, all sympathy, all will, what sort of a divinity remains, what sense of a present and real divine power is left to the man that shrinks from atheism? Atheism denies that in, or over, or with nature there is anything whatever besides nature. Does not Pantheism do the very same? If not, what is there, let the pantheist tell us, in nature besides nature? What sort of a divinity is that which is separate from conscious intelligence and from voluntary will or power? Is it said that though there be no Deity in the universe, yet there is a harmony, a unity, an unfolding plan and purpose, which must be recognised as transcending all limitation, as unerring, inexhaustible, infinite, and therefore as divine? Let us ask ourselves what unity that can be which is above mere nature, as such, and yet stands in no relation to a personal Lord and Ruler of the universe; what plan and purpose that can be which is the product of no intelligence, which no mind ever planned; what infinite and unerring harmony can mean, when there is no harmonist to inspire and regulate the life and movement of the whole. Do not the points of distinction which the pantheist makes between his philosophy and the bald tenets of the atheist amount in effect to so many admissions that the facts of the universe cannot be stated, that the phenomena of nature cannot be described, with anything like fidelity or accuracy, without the use of language such as has no real meaning unless it implies the existence and operation throughout universal nature of a supreme actuative and providential Mind and Will?

The least and lowest implication which is involved in Pantheism, the most elementary idea which the word pantheism can be held to connote, the barest minimum of meaning which the creed of the pantheist can be presumed to contain, is that there is in the whole of nature—in this universe of being—a divine unity. Let us then look at this word unity, and consider closely what it must mean.

Those who believe in a divine unity pervading all nature must imply that in the midst of the infinite complexity and variety of the universe there is everywhere to be recognised a grand law and order of nature—a method, plan, and harmony in the great whole, which must consequently be traceable through all the parts. But whose and whence is this grand law? Is it indeed a reality? Are all things fitted to each other, part to part, law to law, force to force, throughout the infinite depths of microscopic disclosures, throughout the infinite exuberance of nature's grandest provinces, throughout all space and all duration? Do all things work to meet each other? Is every several life-cell, each organic fibre, moving, tending, developing, making escapes or overtures, as if a separate angel of unerring sympathy and insight, of illimitable plastic skill and power, of creative energy and perfect providence, inhabited, inspired, and actuated it? Is it so that the man of science, who enters into communion with nature's actual life, and movement, and purpose, seems to see and feel divinities, unrestingly, unweariedly, in silent omnipotence, in infinite diffusion, everywhere at work, so that the reverent inquirer and gazer to whom this wondrous spectacle is unveiled, could almost, in his own pantheistic sense, adopt the invocation of Coleridge, and address the powers he sees at work in such words as these:

"Spirits that hover o'er
The immeasurable fount,
Ebullient with creative Deity!
And ye of plastic power that interfused
Roll through the grosser and material mass,
In organising surge! Holies of God!
(And what if Monads of the Infinite Mind?)"

Is it so? I ask. Then, what does such a real harmony and such universal correspondence and providence as this imply? Surely we must perforce adopt one of two alternatives. If we refuse to believe in One Ruling, Organizing, Creative Mind, One Living, Universal Mind and Will and Providence, which works through all, we must endow each separate being, or at least each form of life, with creative energy, illimitable and all-answering sensibility and sympathy, unerring wisdom, and veritable will. Nay, ultimately, as it seems to me, the alternative must be between accepting the faith in an infinite God, and attributing to even the particles of inorganic matter, amenable as these are to the laws of gravitation and chemical combination, a wisdom, will, and power of their own, the power of intelligence and of self-direction. As to what are called the laws of gravitation and of chemical combination, we know that a law, like "an idol," is "nothing in the world" but a name. "There is no power but of God; the powers that be, are ordained of God." A law is not a power; the laws of science do but define observed methods of movement or forms of customary relation between thing and thing.

Of one thing, at any rate, I think we may be sure, that a mere order of nature, ascertained though it may have been by the truest and surest induction, cannot have made and cannot sustain itself, cannot be self-originated and self-impelled. So also it is certain that a mere plastic universal power, apart from any creative or providential mind, however its products might seem to imply intelligence, could be animated by no conscious purpose, and could not be conceived as working with blind automatic certainty conformably to a grand cosmical plan or towards a providential end. And if the divinity of the pantheist is nothing more than a personified law or order of nature, his personification of this order or law can add nothing to its virtue or potency, can by no means transform it from a phrase into a living power, from a figure of speech into a real and intelligent force, can never constitute it into a divinity. The more I reflect upon the subject, the more assured the conclusion appears to be, that any conception of a real unity in and of nature is self-contradictory and unmeaning, except upon the assumption of a conscious and intelligent Creator. The unity of nature, to a man who denies the existence of a real God, cannot be a unity inherent in nature, cannot be a unity according to which nature itself has been planned, and is really working; it is an imputed unity, the conception of the pantheistic philosopher's own mind. Unity, indeed, as apprehended by us—and it can only be known through our apprehension of it—is essentially a conception, a relative idea. If one could conceive nature as existing destitute of a mind either to work on a plan, or to recognise a plan in working, in such nature there could be no unity. Unity in action implies a plan of voluntary working, and therefore a regulating mind. Unity of conception and exposition implies an intelligent observer. The unity of nature, if it be not the plan and work of the very God, can be nothing more than a scheme and conception which has been invented and imputed by man.

But perhaps it may be thought that the word unity, as used by pantheists, should be understood rather as referring to the ultimate oneness and identity of all force throughout the universe, than to harmony of universal plan and purpose. Various as are the appearances of nature, and the modes in which the laws of nature operate, it may yet be set forth by the pantheist as his belief,—a belief, he will say, which the modern advance of science tends continually to establish as the true theory of the universe,—that all force is ultimately one, that the different forces of nature are mutually convertible and equivalent, that one energy of nature, Protean, universal, of infinite plasticity and power of variation or adaptation, pervades and actuates all things. It may be called gravitation, or electricity, or light, or heat, or nervous energy, or vital force; but ultimately and essentially it is one and the same; it is, to quote well-worn lines which will be held here strictly to apply—

"Changed thro' all, and yet in all the same."

It

"Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent:
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

*****

To it no high, no low, no great, no small,
It fills, it bounds, connects, and equals all."

Now if this be the pantheistic unity which is admitted by men who deny a personal Deity, I will not stay to object that such a view is hardly consistent with the essential distinction in nature which even Professor Huxley and men of his school unwaveringly and powerfully maintain, between inorganic matter and living forms. It is more to my purpose to remark that it is much simpler and easier to believe in a personal God, than in such an impersonal divinity as this Protean Force. Every difficulty which belongs to the thought of God's existence belongs to this also. This force must be self-originated, must have been from everlasting, must be creative, omnipresent, providential, equal to all plans, purposes, contrivances, inspirations, which have been, or ever will be, in this dædalean and infinite universe; must be the source of all intelligence, though itself unintelligent; of all sympathy, although itself incapable of sympathy; must have formed the eye, though it cannot see, and the ear, though it cannot hear; must have blossomed and developed into personal intelligences, although personal intelligence is a property which cannot be attributed to it; must unquestionably be omniscient as well as omnipresent, or it could not, in its infinite convertibility, anticipate all needs, meet all demands, answer in absolute and universal harmony to every faculty, capability, and tendency of all things that are and all things that become. Now is it reasonable to object to the doctrine of a personal Deity because of its inconceivability and its stupendous difficulties, and yet to believe in such a primal, essential, immaterial, creative, infinite, blind and unintelligent force as this? Surely no contradiction could be greater. The conception of God as from everlasting is stupendous. But an infinite Protean Force from everlasting, destitute of intelligence and will, yet continually operative as the life, soul, wisdom, and providence, of all things, is nothing less than contradictory and absurd.

I can come to no conclusion, accordingly, but that Pantheism really only differs from atheism, in so far as it confesses that it is impossible to speak with ordinary propriety, or in any such way as to meet the necessities either of science itself or of the common sense and feelings of mankind, without employing theistic language. It has been said that hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue. So a profession of Pantheism is the tribute of compliance at least in speech, is the outward language of homage, which theism has power to extort from atheism. "Pantheism," as is said by the author of Lothair, "is but atheism in domino. Nothing," as the same writer adds, "can surely be more monstrous than to represent a creator as unconscious of creating."

Yes, Pantheism is but veiled atheism. Strip Pantheism of all involutions of thought and all investitures of language, and in its naked truth it stands forth as mere atheism. Every form which Pantheism takes, every disguise which it assumes, to hide from itself and from the world its real character, is a testimony borne by atheism to the necessity which all men feel for assuming the existence of Deity; What Robespierre is reported to have said with reference to political government and national well-being, that if there were not a God, it would be necessary to invent one, is felt by pantheistic philosophers to be true in regard to nature. So monstrous a conception is that of this universe without a governing mind; so clearly and directly to the common sense of mankind do the infinite harmonies of the universe seem to imply a designing and governing Intelligence; so indubitably does the might and life of the universe, ever coming forth anew, ever springing up afresh, ever unfolding and advancing, imply a central living Power, One with the infinite governing Intelligence; that pantheists, in order to speak and write intelligibly, are compelled to invest nature with the qualities which they deny to the Deity, to attribute a spirit and intelligence to the whole machine, because they deny the existence of the great Mechanist; to personify a harmony and unity which is but an abstraction, which, on their own hypothesis, is but a grand accident, a result without a cause, because they refuse to believe in a personal God.

I am very far indeed from wishing to come under the definition of what Mr. Hutton has spoken of as the "Hard Church," or to carry my positions merely by the use of the dilemma, yet I cannot refrain from saying, parenthetically, that the argument of the dilemma, carefully and truly applied, is not only always legitimate but often necessary, and I must affirm that it applies very closely in the present instance. The pantheist cannot maintain his position midway between atheism and theism. If he absolutely refuses to be a theist, it is necessary to show him that he will have to yield to the cruel necessity of acknowledging himself to be an atheist. Standing midway, his position is altogether untenable, from whichever side it is assailed. On the one side, the pantheist is condemned by the same arguments which condemn atheism; on the other side, the atheist may justly allege against the position of the pantheist the self-same difficulties which both pantheist and atheist urge against theism.

But if pantheism be in reality only atheism, I may henceforth disregard the verbal distinction between the two, and bring forward considerations and arguments which apply indifferently to either. In pursuing the discussion I shall take up in detail some points of argument already, as to their general scope, more or less distinctly intimated in the preliminary considerations which I have advanced.

To explode any view of the world which excludes from it the presence and government of a personal God, nothing more is needed than to realize and truly understand the atheistic view in its various aspects. Let us try the atheist's theory on the history of the universe, and see whether it can be made to fit, or must be broken in the attempt to fit it.

The will and interference of God, as the Lord and Ruler of the universe, is excluded. The universe is held to have been from the beginning without a shaping and ruling intelligence and will. No mind has presided over its destinies, has animated its energies; no providence of Divine power and wisdom has guided its changes and progress, has renewed and replenished and sustained it. It follows that no power or will from beyond itself has ever touched the universe. Its own unaided and unguided powers have done all. If the universe did not make itself, it has developed itself: all that has been, or is to be, was included potentially in that which was at the beginning, and has unfolded in necessary order. The vision presented is to certain minds very fascinating: it is a vision of vast unbroken progress, of continual and infinite self-development. But let it be worked out, and let us consider what it really means. Such an hypothesis must lead us back, in the infinite dim distance of the original and indistinguishable past, into a universe-mist of germinal powers from which all has since developed.—But stay. Was this mist and expanse of universal nature in its origines all homogeneous and at one stage of existence? Then I have to ask, whence came it? What, going ever further and further back, where were the infinitely earlier, fainter, evanishing entities or powers, into which infinite creative force and potentiality was diffused? and what the one life and grand harmony of influences and impulses, tending towards an infinite goal of progress and perfection, which pervaded the whole? What does all this mean? Is this easier, simpler, more rational, than to believe in God from everlasting? Is anything gained in simplicity, comprehensibility, probability, or in scientific character, by denying that in the "increasing purpose" which "runs through the ages" there is any guidance of a divine intelligence or working of a divine will; and calling the whole process from first to last, from everlasting to everlasting, "development"? What is this word development but a name? Does the use of the word explain anything? Does the use of the word reduce the mystery of the universe to the simplicity of an axiom? Does the use of the word provide a simple equivalent for all that divine wisdom, power, and providence, have ever been imagined to do for the universe? Men call the mystery of being and becoming by the name of development, and then say that all things are effected by development, and that development explains all! Whereas this development of which they talk so familiarly, as though they understood all its secrets, and were privy to its infinitely various and mighty workings, and could unfold its source and meaning, is itself all the time the very mystery to be resolved and explained. Development is in truth as amazing and incomprehensible a mystery as creation. It seems to be but another word for creation. Only they who affect its use instead of the word creation, insist upon creation without a creator. The unintelligent and unconscious universe, on their view, is continually creating itself.

The hypothesis of development, however, is not only unintelligible and utterly devoid of reality, when criticized in its general principle; as might be expected, it altogether breaks down when it is tested in detail. Professor Huxley's protoplasm breaks it down. All the scientific evidence, as that eminent teacher of science showed at Liverpool last autumn, is opposed to the idea that protoplasm was developed out of inorganic matter. The hypothesis of spontaneous life-generation appears to be exploded. Science, at any rate, on its own positive principles, has no right whatever to pretend that life has ever been developed out of what was not living. Here, then, a great and, so far as science can help us to form a judgment, an altogether impassable barrier rises to view against any development hypothesis. At a certain stage in the history of the universe protoplasm, organized life, made its appearance on the scene, starting up as a perfectly new, an original, an undeveloped phenomenon. Before, all had been inorganic and dead; now Life was abroad in the world, destined to increase and multiply, and replenish the universe. Let those who deny divine and creative will and government, inform us whence came this life. It was not developed. Must it not have been created. If not, then whence, I ask, whence did it spring?

The argument which I have just urged should, as I venture to think, be conclusive even with those who know, and seek to know, nothing more of science than the order and method of its phenomenal processes. I will now bring forward a consideration which will, I hope, be admitted to have weight by those men of science—it is to be greatly lamented that there should be so few of these—who have studied the nature and working of the mind as well as the phenomena of sense. We have seen that protoplasm—that Life—was not developed out of inorganic matter, but appears to have been an entirely new and primary fact on the face of the universe. Life came in and appropriated, put to its own uses, bound up under its own seal, impregnated with its own specific virtue, the raw inorganic materials which it found in nature; but the power of Life itself was altogether new. A fact in some sort analogous to this confronts us in a higher sphere, in the sphere of living intelligence itself. I refer to the emergence of personal consciousness among the world of living creatures. To me it appears that the sense of personality is an altogether new and original fact, one which cannot be conceived as developed or developable out of any pre-existing phenomena or conditions. Whence it comes, or how it arises, I know not. But it appears to be, in and of itself, the assertion of an essential separateness between One's Self and all phenomena, all constituents, all conditions whatever. The sense of an I Myself, of Personality, asserts an antithesis between the Man, and all that the Man uses, takes up into his personality, makes his own. As Life binds up inorganic matter under its seal, but is not developed out of inorganic matter, so the voluntary and responsible Self binds up under the seal of its own personality all that belongs to the manifold life of its complex being. As life brings into the universe a new world of phenomena, higher and more manifold than those of mere inorganic matter, yet embodying and adopting these, so personality brings into the universe a new world of vastly higher and rarer phenomena than those of mere vitality, yet embodies and adopts these:—it introduces all that belongs to reflection and morality, giving birth to an intelligence and a world of thought, in which all the lower and anterior phenomena of the world become matters of cognisance, and are mirrored as objects of thought.

As I venture to think that this sense of personality, with the new world of reflective consciousness and morality which it brings in, is a fact, starting up in the midst of a universe of anterior developments, such as all Mr. Darwin's solvents utterly fail to touch, a phenomenon which remains as far from explanation as before he wrote his last book, so it appears to me that the power of human speech is another fact starting up in the midst of the line of supposed developments which no hypothesis of evolution can afford any help towards explaining. Miraculously developed reason, something higher, as it seems to me, than any development of human reason our race has, in its highest culture, as yet put forth, must have been necessary in order to the invention of language by any race even of the most sagacious mammals. And yet, again, speech itself is a necessity, a necessary instrument, in order to the high development of reason. We have some idea what deaf mutes of our human family are like, when no painstaking and kindly culture has been bestowed on their intelligence, and temper, and affections, and conscience. Let us conceive the whole race of man to be, and to have been from the beginning, not indeed deaf, but congenitally and irreversibly dumb, with no more power of articulate expression than a horse, or let us say, a dog. What would the development of human reason have been under such conditions? How, then, is it possible to conceive that the wondrous faculty and instrument of speech was ever invented and perfected by mammals of infra-human faculty and development, and that they were afterwards through this invention developed yet more highly, until they attained to the dignity and advancement of humanity? Such infra-human mammals must have been more miraculously endowed in order to such an invention than ever man himself has been.

After all that Mr. Darwin has written, does or can any reasonable man or woman actually believe in the possibility,—apart from the Divine Power and Will and Guidance,—for that is the point,—of the self-development, the spontaneous upgrowth of articulate language? Let us study our quadrupedal familiars, for the sake of illustration and analogy. We see daily how our noble dogs strain and groan after speech, do all but speak: we mark their eloquent looks, their speaking gestures, their wonderfully expressive movements, how they watch us speak, and seem as if they understood what speech is to us, and as if they craved most longingly the power for themselves. We cannot but sympathetically admire the intelligent, the benevolent, the noble, the sagacious physiognomies which they show. If any creature ever could, would, or did develop speech in any rudimentary form, are not they just in the circumstances to do it? And when once rudimentally begun, however uncouthly and imperfectly, should not their organs continually improve by the continual effort and the increasing intelligence? Is it not immensely less hard of belief, and less difficult to imagine, that dogs should develop speech, than that man should have been developed from the larvæ of the ascidiæ? Yet is there even a beginning made towards the canine development of articulate language, or does any living man believe that such a beginning ever could be made?

To me it appears that human speech and human personality are in some way bound up with each other, that the one, in some sort, implies the other, and that these two characteristics of our race present an insuperable obstacle to the acceptance by really scientific thinkers of any hypothesis of evolution which, leaving God out of nature, would account for the whole existence and progress of the universe on the principle of spontaneous development.

But again, let me be allowed to test the development hypothesis in detail at another point. This hypothesis—and any pantheistic or atheistic view of the universe which professes to be scientific—is obliged to confess that all living beings, of whatever sort, have been developed out of a single primary cell—called often a germ-cell—of protoplasm. Here they find the beginning of every kind of life. The plant, the animal, of every sort,—the lichen, the cedar, the sponge, the bird, the mammal, the minutest entozoon, the most microscopic infusorium, and man,—have been developed out of these primary cells. What then do the same men who teach us this, find to be the constitution of these same cells, when microscopically examined? They find them to be, for the most part, and indeed always, if allowance be made for very trivial exceptions, identically the same. The matter is identically the same, the appearance identically the same; no difference whatever of constitution, form, or properties, is to be detected. They cannot tell whether the nettle, or the frog, or the eagle, or the man, is to be developed out of any given cell: for anything their science can teach them, any of these might be developed, as they call it, out of any cell. But if this be so, is it scientific, is it real or true, is it not altogether misleading, to speak of mere development in such a case? The flower may be said to be developed out of the bud because the bud is the flower in miniature, the flower is really folded up in the bud. But surely here is no case of mere development; here is no unfolding out of the germ-cell of what is potentially contained in the cell, regarded as a merely material organism. Judged by every test of physical experiment, the primary cells are identically the same; and yet they grow into forms essentially and infinitely dissimilar. Does it not clearly appear that here is a matter in which some power above and beyond the mere physical constitution and nature of the primary cell must be admitted, on every principle of science, on every ground of pure candour and truth, to be of necessity present? Is it not evident that with each germ-cell there must be associated some individual life-power which animates the cell, which uses it as a unit to multiply, as a foundation to build upon, which does build and weave and work into it and upon it continually new material, which, for its own use in its work of weaving and fabricating, and for the completion of its own distinctive form and vehicle, takes toll of air and earth and water and heat-power—the ancient elements—selecting out of them its appropriate pabulum, in whatever chemical combinations of the primary elements known to our modern scientific analysis may be fit and needful? Surely not development, but life, the mystery of individual life, is here. And if the philosopher will deny the omnipresent creative and sustaining power of God, it appears to me that he must be prepared to animate each germ-cell with an individual intelligence which works with divine power, on a definite and most miraculous plan, and towards a distinct goal of perfection. To call such various powers and processes, such diverse and generically different operations, in every sphere of life, by the same term, appears to me to be unscientific; to speak of them all alike as processes of unfolding or development, when results the most infinitely unlike and separate are obtained from beginnings which are identically alike, appears to be not only unscientific but altogether misleading.

I do not think it arrogant or unwarranted to conclude from such considerations as I have been trying to set forth, that evolution, or development, apart from the power and guidance of the Living God, is an unphilosophical, an unscientific idea, an empty, an unmeaning word. It is a thing of naught, utterly impotent to solve the mysteries of the universe, even when expounded and reinforced by Mr. Darwin's "Natural Selection." I have not a word to say here against the views of Mr. Darwin, as defined and modified by the requirements of scientific modesty and precision. If I had any pretensions to be called a student of natural science, I should sit at the feet of Mr. Darwin when he speaks, not as a philosophic theorist, but as a scientific observer and a truly inductive naturalist. But I must say here in respect to Natural Selection, regarded as, according to Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, the handmaid of development, that, like development, it is but a name, and not a power. It describes the order and mode according to which Providence works; it is not itself a force—a working energy. Mr. Darwin himself indeed often speaks as if Natural Selection were itself a power and a providence. I find to my hand in Mr. Kingsley's fine, suggestive paper on The Natural Theology of the Future, recently published in Macmillan's Magazine, a sentence of Mr. Darwin's in regard to Natural Selection which I will quote. "It may be metaphorically said," writes Mr. Darwin, "that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing throughout the world every variation even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up that which is good, silently and necessarily working whenever and wherever opportunity offers at the improvement of every organic being." "It may be metaphorically said," are Mr. Darwin's words. But in fact he is using, not a metaphor, but a personification. The distinction Mr. Darwin does not see. He repeatedly speaks of his personifications as metaphors. But the distinction notwithstanding is most important. By personifying Natural Selection Mr. Darwin makes it appear to be a cause, attributes to it a real power, nay, wisdom and providence, as well as power. He speaks in one place of "Nature's power of selection;" contrasting this with the "powers of artificial selection exercised by feeble man," by which, however, man can do so much; and arguing that "Nature's power of selection" must be incomparably greater, and competent to produce incomparably superior effects in respect of "the beauty and infinite complexity of the co-adaptations between all organic beings, one with another, and with their physical conditions of life." Language of a similar sort he very frequently uses. He has, therefore, as a scientific man laid himself open to the reproof of M. Flourens, whom no one will deny to be a scientific critic. "Either," says M. Flourens, "Natural Selection is nothing, or it is nature, but nature endowed with the attribute of selection—nature personified, which is the last error of the last century; the nineteenth century has done with personifications." The nineteenth century ought to have done with personifications; but with the spirit of Lamarck's speculations the style of the French atheistic philosophy of the last century reappears.

Mr. Darwin, in the passage quoted by Mr. Kingsley, describes the manner in which his Natural Selection may be conceived as operating. What, if his meaning were expressed with strict scientific truth, he ought to intend to say, is that such as he describes is the result of providential working according to the mode and order which he designates by the phrase Natural Selection. "All we ask," says one of Mr. Darwin's ablest critics, "is that we may be allowed to believe in a God and a real Divine Providence, as powerful and wise and good as Mr. Darwin's Natural Selection."

But, moreover, it must not be forgotten that there is something besides the mere process of change and growth, of what our philosophers call development, to be accounted for. There is a fact on which the growth, the change, the evolution, must be held in a true sense to depend: a prior fact to be taken account of. The growth proceeds upon a plan, and fulfils an idea: protoplasm itself embodies a scientific principle. But as the seal must be before the impression, the original before the copy, so the principle must be before its embodiment, the plan and the idea must be before the growth: the end, towards which as its goal the growth or development proceeds, must have been conceived and set up as an aim before its fulfilment began. We are bound therefore, if we would exhaust the problem, nay, if we would truly conceive, and justly state it, to ask how and whence the principle, the plan, the idea, the end, had their existence? These are realities; they are the most inner and essential realities in every instance of growth or development; to deal only with the development of the physical basis, is to leave untouched the kernel of the matter, is altogether superficial and unreal. But principles, plans, types and ideas, ends contemplated in movement and progress, these at any rate are not physical, are not matters of sense and organization. They are, as I have said, prior to what is physical, they are conditions antecedent to organization and growth. Moreover, they are mental conceptions, not physical affections. They are only possible, they have no meaning, except as the thoughts of some mind. Here, then, we are brought back by an inevitable necessity to an antecedent mind, the seat and origin of all the principles, the plans the ideas, the ends, embodied in organized beings, and fulfilled in their existence, growth, and perfection. In short, from whatever side we contemplate the problems of nature, and whencesoever we take our point of departure in their investigation, we find ourselves brought face to face with creative mind. The things which are "seen and temporal" lead us always inwards to "the things which are unseen and eternal;" man and creaturely existence conduct us to the living God.

If any one would escape from the pressure of this argument by hardily denying that living organization involves principle or plan, type or idea, purpose or end, it can only follow that the living forms of the universe are an infinite congeries of accidental combinations, that in reality there are no such things as organs, that there can be no such thing as development, and that there is no such thing as law. What men call law is mere sequence that happens to follow regularly. The whole universe has been constituted and regulated by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. Against such a conclusion as this I do not need to argue. It is the naked and repulsive atheism of which I spoke in the introduction to this lecture. The line of argument which I have been pursuing seems to force us to the conclusion that there is no logical resting-place between such theism as Christianity teaches and such Democritean atheism as that of which we have now had a glimpse.

But if this be so, it follows that it is impossible to deny design and final causes in creation, and the sway and oversight of a universal Divine Providence, the providence of a living God, except by denying all law. To the Christian theist, science is living science indeed; to the pantheist, no less than the atheist, science is hardly better than a dead register. He may talk of the wisdom, the power, the order, the benevolence, of nature. But such expressions on the lips of a pantheist are utterly illusive. All the wisdom, all the marvellous adjustments of nature, are but the happy conjunctures, the exquisite chance unisons, of he knows not what. When lost in admiration of marvellous organizations, complexly apt and beautiful contrivances, of what seem like the most studied and beneficent provisions, the soul that is beginning to glow with wonder at this seeming wisdom, and to swell with thankfulness because of this seeming love, must be chilled into blank confusion and amazement by the thought that there is no Being of Wisdom and Benevolence Who is to be thanked and adored because of these His marvellous works. Surely this is enough to darken the universe to the explorer of nature's mysteries, and to fill his soul with perpetual melancholy. Nor is it easy to understand how any man of true science, any real inductive philosopher, who comes into contact with nature's living processes and hears the perpetual whisper of her living voice, can be ensnared into the acceptance of such a hard mystery of sceptical belief as this.

Surely, then, on purely scientific grounds,—the grounds not only of metaphysical but also of natural science, on every ground which can be appealed to by high and pure philosophy, we are at liberty, I should say we are bound, to reject the hypothesis which attempts to expound nature and to solve its mysteries, without the admission of a divine mind. Sense and matter and the observed order of phenomena do not constitute the whole of our science. There are some words written by a poet, too much neglected at the present time, which I cannot forbear from quoting here.

"How should matter occupy a charge
Dull as it is, and satisfy a law,
So vast in its demands, unless impelled
To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,
And under pressure of some conscious cause?
The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused,
Sustains, and is the life of all that lives.
Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fire
By which the mighty process is maintained,
Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight
Slow circling ages are as transient days;
Whose work is without labour; whose designs
No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts;
And whose beneficence no charge exhausts."

Surely, if I may here quote some words of Mr. Kingsley's in the lecture to which I have already referred, this is what men of science "are finding, more and more, below their facts, below all phenomena which the scalpel and the microscope can show, a something nameless, invisible, imponderable, yet seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent, retreating before them deeper and deeper, the deeper they delve, that which the old schoolmen called 'forma formativa,' the mystery of that unknown and truly miraculous element in nature which is always escaping them, though they cannot escape it, that of which it was written of old, 'Whither shall I go from Thy presence, or whither shall I flee from Thy Spirit?'"

The observations which I have thus far offered are directed wholly to the philosophical and scientific aspect of the argument respecting Pantheism. I cannot bring this lecture to an end without referring to the moral branch of the argument. The existence of evil in the universe is alleged as an argument against the existence of God and divine government. Doubtless, the existence of evil is a painful mystery. Many good Christians have felt it to be an oppressive and almost an overwhelming mystery. It is one of the difficulties attendant on the Christian's belief; it is, in fact, the one moral difficulty. But difficulties and mysteries cannot annul the positive necessities of thought and argument. If such arguments as I have endeavoured to state make all science to be contradictory and unintelligible which speaks, in one breath, of the laws and wisdom of nature, and, in the next, denies the existence of a God, then we are bound to accept theism with its inevitable consequences, notwithstanding the mysteries, whether metaphysical or moral, which our faith may involve. Mysteries are not contradictions, and, in whichever direction we move, we shall find it impossible to escape from them. Mysteries surround the position of the sceptic or the atheist, no less than that of the Christian theist; not only mysteries, but, as we have seen, contradictions, beset him round, in whichever direction he turns. The Christian theist, by his faith in God, accepts the mysteries which are involved in the thought of God, but, unlike the unbeliever, he escapes from contradictions and absurdities. It appears that the morality of man—his great glory—that his sense of responsibility and of voluntary moral power, that which most peculiarly constitutes him man, involves the law of moral influence as between man and man. It appears further that the power and faculty of moral influence for good must needs involve the law of moral influence for evil. From the fact of man's own moral nature and moral responsibility, and the consequent fact of his moral influence over his fellow-men, is derived, not only the possibility of moral evil in the case of a solitary individual, but the possibility, perhaps I may say the naturalness, the probability, of a contagion of moral evil spreading throughout the race, the effect of which can only be counteracted or limited by moral arrangements and influences specially constituted for that end. So much I may perhaps say in general, although the subject is one on which I think it wiser, as a rule, to say nothing. I feel it to be a profound and perilous mystery, however gloriously it may have been made the occasion for the manifestation in Christ Jesus our Lord of the Divine superabounding wisdom, mercy, and power. But if we admit the subject to be involved in profound, even terrible mystery, is that a reason why, making shipwreck at one plunge of all that belongs to humanity, faith and hope and philosophy should commit suicide, and descend together into the gulf of everlasting darkness and despair! Reason may reel and grow dizzy while it looks too long and too absorbedly down the fearful and fathomless depths of the mystery of sin, but that is no sufficient cause why reason should cast itself headlong into the abyss.

Pantheism has only one way in which to escape from the mystery of evil, and that is to deny all distinction between right and wrong, between moral good and moral evil. Of course there can be no such thing as sin for the pantheist, because all, according to his creed, is nature and development and necessity. Holiness is a matter of taste or sentiment. Conscience is an illusive development; what we regard as divine morality is but utilitarianism sentimentalized and exalted into sacred law under the influence of unenlightened impulse and antique superstition, a mere affair of the association of ideas which science will some day explain away. The ontology and ethics of Pantheism may be summed up in one sentence, "Whatever is, is; and there is neither right nor wrong, but all is fate and nature." Pantheism—I say Pantheism just as truly and completely as atheism, for the difference between the two, as we have seen, is but one of name and phrase, and both alike deny God and conscience—Pantheism thus does cruel violence to every better instinct of our nature, outrages all the demands of religion and government, whether human or divine, and makes itself the direst foe of human progress and well-being. Many pantheists, doubtless, have been and are virtuous, even noble, men; some, I am prepared to believe, may even, in a certain sense, be religious men. But the direct tendency of the pantheistic philosophy is confessedly what I have now stated. When moral and pure, its pure morality can be nothing more, at least in theory, than a refined utilitarianism. Only as such can any pantheist pretend to impose morality as law.

To sum up, may I not say that Pantheism, whether in its metaphysical or its moral aspect, is the dream of men who will not admit that there is in the universe anything beyond what their senses immediately reveal to them? Its philosophy was represented in the last century in its lower and more popular form by Condorcet; the basis of whose system was laid in the principle, "penser c'est sentir,"—thought is nothing more than sense or feeling; in its higher and more intellectual form it was represented by the sceptical sense-idealism of Hume. At the present day Bain and Mill have endeavoured to develop the principle of Condorcet in harmony with the higher and more subtle philosophy of Hume. The result appears to be a sort of nihilistic sense-idealism. Matter is probably nothing different from our mental ideas—so far Berkeley, no less than Hume, is followed; our ideas, however developed, are yet essentially only the combination and interfusion of our sensations and sense-associations; meantime there is no evidence of the real and substantial existence either of the world outside us, or of ourselves as true and separate selves or persons, or of God. Such at least would seem to be the metaphysics of the distinctively English school of Pantheism, i.e., of Pantheism rendered into philosophic system by the English mind. The German Pantheism has infected the tendencies of English thought and criticism, but, notwithstanding the influence of Hegel at Oxford, has not been reproduced in any English system of egoistic Pantheism. In their aspects and results, in relation to theism and Christian faith, the German egoistic Pantheism and the English sense-idealistic Pantheism strictly coincide.

Such then is the highest philosophy to-day of those who, refusing to be called atheists, nevertheless reject all faith in God; of those who, rejecting Christian theism, claim to be positively neither more nor less than the men of science. Men of science though they be, their philosophy is the philosophy of nescience and the philosophy of despair. We need be under no apprehension that such a philosophy will ever be generally accepted. It is too strong, too sorrowful, too nauseous a composition to suit the common taste. It not only dissolves morality and its foundations, but it precludes all hope of immortality. The race indeed may be immortal and progressively great and glorious, although how even so much can be known is more than I can see; but the individual man by man, woman by woman, child by child, perishes each one for ever. Men and women with yearning, loving hearts, with tender and passionate affections, who have buried their dead out of their sight, and who could not endure to live if they were doomed to sorrow without hope, cannot but reject with loathing and horror such doctrines as these. Men of various culture, of manifold intellectual resources, who live in the midst of refined and accomplished society, and who are not suffering from the pang of immedicable anguish and irreparable bereavement, may possibly live so merely intellectual and speculative a life, may be so wholly absorbed in mere science, may have so far separated themselves from all that belongs to the heart's affections and the trembling religious sensibilities of human nature, as to adopt the philosophy of nihilism with hardy calmness, although I confess that it passes my power to understand or conceive this; such men may be content to follow their speculative conclusions into the "blackness of darkness" for ever, and may thus, if not less, be more than the common crowd of humanity. But such a philosophy will not content those who share the ordinary wants and sensibilities of our race. The working, sorrowing, loving, hoping men and women of this human race will no more be able to satisfy themselves with any atheistic or, if any should prefer so to call it, pantheistic philosophy, than they can "feast upon the east wind." They will cleave to that Christian truth and faith which has "brought life and immortality to light," and which, in "showing" to the craving heart of needy, sorrowing, sinful man "the Father" reconciled in Christ, has blessedly "sufficed" a longing world.

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.

POSITIVISM.

Everybody in this room has, I suppose, heard of the "positive" sciences, or "Positivism" in some shape or other.

What does "Positivism" mean?

A system based on positive facts. But what are facts? They are (says the Positivist) observed phenomena. As for metaphysical conceptions of all sorts, these are negatives with nothing real, nothing positively true in them. Truth must be sought amongst observed phenomena.

It is worth our while to examine this last proposition. Take a "phenomenon." You have all observed colour,—what is it?

A physicist, if you ask him, will tell you of a modification in a ray of light variously produced—by refraction, for example—as when sunlight breaks a dark cloud into many-tinted beauty. But how if all the world of men and animals were blind?

The physiologist will step in and speak to you of the structure of the eye—the susceptibility of its retina for special impressions; there he says you may find colour.

Put both accounts together, and they appear as part-causes, each a factor helping to make up a result; which result physicist and physiologist would agree to call colour.

Yet again: Suppose the human and animal world were deprived of all consciousness, all which in the widest meaning we call mind—their eyes remaining like mirrors, telescopes, microscopes; perfect instruments, only every kind of intelligence, instinctive or rational, gone. Where would colour then be? The sun might play upon cloud or rain, the light of a rainbow be reflected in the eye. Were there but perceiving mind, the impression would exist. But we are supposing the impressible to be wanting; there is no sensation, no percipient; colour must remain unknown, for there is nothing capable of observing it.

Now this shows you, first, how important it is to emphasize the word observed added to phenomenon. It shows you, secondly, where the ultimate seat of every observation really lies; each observed phenomenon, each positive fact, is at last neither more nor less than a mental state. The evidence for each fact is the condition of your own mind, your consciousness as it is called. You may sift the thing witnessed, verify, examine, and cross-examine; but after all, your own consciousness is the first real evidence you have got.

It would seem, then, that the most positive of all sciences would be the science of mind; and the next most positive the sciences which enable us to draw conclusions from our positively existing mental states; the statements, we may call them, which our minds make to us. Yet, strange to say, the very first thing Positivism does is to dispense with a science of mind, as mind, altogether. Mr. Mill makes it a severe reproach against Comte, that he ignores both psychology and logic; recognizes no power in the mind, even of self-observation; accepts no theory even of the inductive process. Mr. Mill characterises Comte's want of mental science as "a grave aberration."[12] It is indeed so. This appears plainly enough in the example just adduced from our commonest sensation, the every-day phenomenon of colour. It was made up, you saw, of three factors, a physical antecedent, a condition of the sensitive apparatus, and a mind which received into its consciousness the impression instrumentally conveyed to it. This last, you will remember, was the first fact to us. It is the fact: the revelation of an outward world, its changes and its continuing presence, its rest and its constant motion. Without this fact of inward consciousness, nature would have possessed no more significance than pictures seen in the eyes of the newly dead.

Such being the case, it needs no argument to show the importance of making quite sure that our interpretation of nature is correct. If there be any unobserved illusion in our sensory instruments, or what must evidently be much worse, in our percipient mind, truth is at an end, and falsehood received in its stead. Hence the necessity of observing our own observations, subjecting our consciousness to scrutiny, and being acquainted with the criteria, not only of our perceptions, but of our judgments. It is this process of analysis and criticism which forms a large part of the method of verification,—a method the value of which did not escape the great Greek philosophers, though some recent writers seem to fancy it a modern discovery.

Inexperienced observers are often so little aware of the pre-eminent importance of this critical process, that I will detain you with an illustration of it for the benefit of my younger auditors. My example shall be taken from perception par excellence—our eyesight, the sense pronounced surest both in poetry and prose. You will remember your Horace

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem,
Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quæ
Ipse sibi tradit spectator.

And almost everybody else has said the same, as witness the old proverb, "Seeing is believing." Now I will mention five instances in which people believe they see something, and do not see it; in other words, the objective antecedent is wanting, and the impression is produced partly by the sensory apparatus, partly by the mind itself. As I describe these instances one by one, let my hearers ask themselves, How does this illusion come about? Is it produced by our optic instrument or by our mental activity?

First, then, Take a lighted stick, and whirl it rapidly round and round. You believe you see a circle of sparks—in reality it is no more than a simple train, and on a like illusion the Catherine-wheel is constructed. Again, put yourself in the hands of an optically inclined friend, and let him operate upon you thus. He shall place a cardboard down the middle axis of your face, quite close against your nose—one side of his board, say the right, coloured a brilliant red, the left a vivid green. After an instant or two let him suddenly substitute another board, white on both sides. Do my young friends guess what will follow? Your right eye will see green, your left red—the reverse of what they saw before; yet neither will see correctly, for both eyes are looking at uncoloured surfaces.

Thirdly, Watch the full moon rising—how large and round she looks, resting as it were upon that eastern hill, and seen amidst the tops of its forest trees! How much larger and broader than when she hangs aloft in upper sky! Has every one here learned the true reason why? If not, look at her through a slit in a card, and her diameter will be the same. Fourthly, A schoolboy is crossing his bedroom in the deep dark night, anxiously hoping that his head may not come into collision with the bed-post. Though carefully and successfully avoiding it, he imagines of a sudden that the blow is imminent. Quick as thought he stops to save his head, and, behold, the room is as quickly filled with sparks or flames of fire. Another moment, and all becomes dark once more. I have heard many a schoolboy exclaim over this phenomenon, but never knew one who could explain it. Finally, did you ever, on opening your eyes in a morning, close them quickly again, and keep them shut, directing them as if to look straight forwards? Most persons of active nervous power, after a few trials—say a dozen, or a score—are surprised to see colours appear and flit before the sight. Some years ago, Germany's greatest poet tried, at the suggestion of her greatest physiologist, a series of experiments on these coloured images. He found that by an effort of will he could cause them to come and go, govern their movement, march, and succession. And this took place under no conditions of impaired sensation, nor any hallucination of a diseased mind. A thoroughly healthy will succeeded in impressing itself upon physical instruments, controlling their law, and creating at its own pleasure an unfailingly bright phantasmagoria.

Some here may, others may not, have apprehended the distinctions between our five cases. The first two are due to the sensory apparatus, its optical laws of continued impression and complementary colour. In the latter three, mind intervenes. The enlarged size of the moon occurs through rapid comparison, the fiery lights in a dark room through instinctive apprehension, both influences of mind on the sensory system. The fifth and most interesting of all is no bad example of interference between moral and material law. The will truly causative (you may remark) overrules the natural process of physical impression, alters it, and creates a designed effect. I wish I could induce my young friends to devise a number of experiments on similar mixed cases, and, having tried them, to dissect out their real laws. These sharpenings of the critical faculty are exceedingly useful—they cultivate clearness; and most people know that two-thirds among our mistakes in life are caused by confusion of thought.

Besides all other uses, such lessons teach at once the necessity, as we said before, of observing your own observations. And as, first, the real witness of every observation is our mind; every fact[168] which comes through our bodily senses being to us a mental impression, it seems but common sense to hear above all things what mind has to say for and about itself. Then, secondly, where would be the benefit derived from our observations, if we could not reason upon them, or could place no confidence in our own reasonings? Yet the art of reasoning is so purely a mental process, that it can be represented by symbols as abstract and free from material meaning as if they were bare algebraic signs. Thirdly, in the most accurate of sciences mind extends our knowledge far beyond the circle of observation, and gives us axiomatic assurance of its own accuracy. Who ever saw, or ever can see, all straight lines in all conceivable positions, yet who doubts that throughout the whole universe no two straight lines ever did inclose or can inclose a space? And, fourthly, can it be a matter of indifference to any of us what evidence the mind offers concerning its own moral nature, and what is the value of that evidence, and the laws deducible therefrom? How true it thus appears that "know thyself" lies at the root of all knowledge, and that the man who receives no witness from within can know nothing as he ought to know it!

Comte swept away all these and the like considerations by a neat little fiction of his own. We cannot observe ourselves observing, he said, we cannot observe ourselves reasoning. So, then, logic becomes a chimera, and psychology a word of contempt. Respecting this fallacy, Mr. Mill thinks the only wonder is that it should impose on any one. Clearly it imposed on Comte himself. But, "what organon," asks Mill, "for the study of our moral and intellectual functions does M. Comte offer in lieu of the direct mental observation which he repudiates? We are almost ashamed to say it is phrenology!" Mill regards this statement as a reductio ad absurdum, but the actual organon substituted is more absurd still. Comte's phrenology was not the phrenology of Gall or Spurzheim, but a funny small bantling of his own, a sort of "infant phenomenon," called into existence not without a Positive purpose. In plain words, mind was no longer to give evidence respecting itself. We must study its laws in brain. How any true correspondence of brain and mind could be known unless both were studied, does not appear. Comte overlooked the question in his anxiety to substitute for psychology and its laws a bodily function and its laws. Yet his motive appears to have been excellent! He regarded this dwarfed superficial phrenology, Mr. Mill tells us, "as extricating the mental study of man from the metaphysical stage, and elevating it to the positive." The chief gist of which sentence, bewildering to the uninitiated, opens up the very core and centre of the Positive system—a subject for dissection of some considerable human interest.

Each science is brought into the positive stage when it is co-ordinated according to positive laws—"systematized," Comte would say. He has a perfect mania for systematization; system is with him almost an equivalent for truth. Of course, the real value of every system turns entirely on its co-ordinating method, or principle of formation; and Comte's, we see, was one of positive laws. The nature of these laws is, therefore, the essence and turning-point of the whole matter. I cannot impress upon you too strongly the paramount importance of keeping this truth steadily in view.

But if any one inquires exactly what these laws are, he asks, I fear, a puzzling question. Puzzling, for this reason that, say what one will—employ any words, however carefully selected—one may become liable to the charge of raising a false impression. Positivist savans themselves do not use any uniform phraseology, and many phrases they do use are necessarily derived from philosophies most disedifying to Positive ears.

Examples showing what sort of law is really meant are therefore always welcome; and few could be more instructive than this way of making mind Positive. Comte did not falter in his purpose. Later on he explained the necessity (for his system, you understand) of bringing our intellectual and moral phenomena under the same law with other phenomena of animal life; and reduced them, not to brain action pure and simple, but to cerebral functions, controlled by the viscera and vegetative movements of our bodily existence.

Let us look at the meaning of all this. Soul used to be conceived of as different in kind from body. The brain, the nervous system, the body, were its organs, allies, machines. Sometimes they, especially the instruments through which the soul more immediately works, exercised reaction on their sovereign employer; they impeded or suspended her functions, and troubled her serenity. But though they might cloud the manifestation, they could not destroy the essence of a living soul. What they did was temporal and transitory; but they shall pass away and be dissolved, while soul will endure for ever.

The word mind has been much used to signify soul, as acting in and through body. There is, however, some vagueness in its employment. Yet we constantly speak of the laws of mind, because soul is in this life the partner of body; and therefore known to us as mind, and as mind is studied through its laws. One psychological task has always been to separate the pure activity of soul from the mixed workings of mind, by examination and cross-examination of our internal consciousness.

You will now easily understand how vast the change Comte intended by his physiological organon for the study of our moral and intellectual functions. You will see what is meant by elevating mental science to the Positive stage, and systematizing it under laws which people may variously describe as phenomenal, mechanical, or material; adjectives all roughly used to express the same general idea. What we took for a spiritual essence is only a developed animal nature, the difference between men and beasts of the field is not one of kind, but of degree. ManKIND is a misnomer. Humanity is (as Comte thought) a higher degree of animality. We have no right to suppose a personal immortality. Man may be said to live after death in the memory of his fellow-men, but the truly Positive philosopher believes in no other deathless existence. What we really can see and investigate is a vast moving mechanism, our universe. Beyond this all knowledge is a blank. We know of nothing which set this mechanism in motion; it may have moved from all eternity; it may go on moving everlastingly; or it may wear itself out. Philosophy can teach us no more than distinctions and degrees in the phenomenal law which pervades and rules a universe without a God.

Yet Comte said that he was no Atheist. He even denounced Atheism, and declared it as bad as theology. He did not wish to deny, only to ignore God. Neither did he desire to appear ungrateful; (pardon words which sound in your ears profanity;) God was a really useful hypothesis once; in the days when men had recently issued from their primæval forests. Thanking the Deity for His provisional services, Comte courteously dismissed Him from His throne.

All this will have seemed to you a most monstrous tissue of negations. But Comte held it to be a code of Positive faith; a faith firmly grounded on the self-sufficingness of human nature, read according to his version of course—void of belief in a personality which survives the grave, without knowledge of, trust in, or prayer to God. The blessings of this advanced faith he desired to extend far and wide. At the present moment his desire is realizing itself; for the like attitude of thought has become a favourite position among the savans of our Western world. When it penetrates the more active classes, we shall discern it easily by its fruits! what those fruits will be, is a question for statesmen and for us all.

The chief hindrance opposing its spread amongst unsophisticated minds has been a point much dwelt upon of old by Plato, and by Cicero after him. It is the protest which that irrepressible entity called soul perseveres in alleging. We are all apt to shrink from the picture of bodily dissolution:

"To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod!"

But what if the "delighted spirit" has been developed by brain, and with brain must be dissolved? Our whole distinctive human life, our mind, moral, intellectual, spiritual, rebels against a doom of subjection to that crass material law! Yet can we establish a difference? Can we show that the law of our true being differs from the law of things outside us?

This question, unspeakably interesting to every one of us, might be put in various shapes. We might ask, Can the protest of soul be set down as a mere sentiment only? If it were no more than an instinct of our nature, it would deserve consideration; for why should so high and noble an instinct be aimless and misleading? If we cannot trust our own souls, what are we to trust? Phenomena themselves are given us within. Mathematical truths, which Positivists are obliged to exempt from phenomenal law, have a subjective validity—we cannot help thinking them, and we cannot think their contradictories.

But suppose that a future state of recompence with its inferential moralities cannot be denied without denying our own consciousness—pronouncing the clearest of our intuitions a will o' the wisp—or, sadder still, a corpse light on the grave of hope—nay, more, without subverting the law which makes human society to differ from animal gregariousness, and gives to human action its spring, its liberty, its life—suppose all this true, what shall, what can we say? And such is the issue I propose to try this morning.

The plan I have devised for trying it fairly is, first, to get as clear an idea as short compass will allow of what Positivism says on our question. Afterwards to state a case for moral law by way of antithesis. It is through the law of our moral being that we may most readily look for something to difference our souls from creatures below them. The strain I shall have to put on your attention lies in this; after grasping in brief the Positivist attitude, I must ask that you will not take my facts or arguments on trust, but will verify each severally by an appeal to your own consciousness. It is always upon the law deduced from or applied to facts that you ought to exercise your greatest vigilance. For law interprets facts to us—we might almost say that under its manipulation they bend like a nose of wax; nothing, you will remember, so flexible as figures, except facts.

Let me represent these maxims to you under a similitude. Everybody has looked (when young at least) through a kaleidoscope, and has observed the beauty of its many-coloured figures, their symmetrical shapes, and the enchantment of their succession. What magic creates this phantasmagoria? Some pretty bits of coloured glass, shining gewgaws, scraps of lace, fripperies, and other odds and ends, are put into a translucent box, and beheld through a tube fitted with mirrors which are set at an angle determined by optical law. The broken knick-knacks represent the facts of everybody's phenomenal kaleidoscope; the reflecting angle under which they are seen is its law; the coloured images are everybody's impressions of things, nature, and mankind. As long as you live, remember that whenever you are contemplating the world's phenomena—whenever you see facts of life, either great or small, you are looking at them through some optical instrument or another. If its law accords with their law, your view is truthful; but then it will be all the less pretty, the less symmetrical. There are dark spots in our real world, checks of all sorts, moral evil, anguish of heart and conscience, foresights, stern accountabilities! You have lost your childhood's magic glass, and have got a clear reflecting telescope in its stead! Pity to forego the nice kaleidoscope where all was so bright, so harmonious, and arrayed in such regular shapes. Yet the view it gave was worth what most people's views are worth—precisely nothing!

Comte had his kaleidoscope. Every systematizer who allows no mystery, no darkness anywhere, must keep the article; in point of fact, most people enjoy having one. Alas! for the 19th century! It has such a feverish viewiness, such a fashion of incessantly turning its magic tube, that life seems little else than a dreamy phantasmagoria! To construct a steady reflecting instrument for yourself requires industry, time, and thought, three things which few people care to bestow upon their beliefs. Therefore the practice is to pick up kaleidoscopes ready-made at a cheap rate, and to feel as easy as stern realities will permit on the subject of their truthfulness. Romances are the kaleidoscopes of one class, cram-books of a second, newspapers of a third, self-love the optical law of the greatest number. We are met this morning to break up a grand kaleidoscope, and to look into its construction. I shall do my endeavour to prevent you all from replacing it by any instrument of a ready-made sort. The easiest plan for all lecturers is to display a series of transparent conclusions; but I shall prefer furnishing you with facts and arguments, letting you put them together, look at them, and verify their law of true vision for yourselves.

Let us see Comte's law first. It was, strictly speaking, a law of succession and resemblance. You will guess at once that were this all we could see in the phenomenal world, our insight would be very limited. And Comte's object was to limit us. We can never know, Positively speaking, final causes; those which make up the common notion of design, purpose, intention. Nor yet any efficient causes; nothing truly productive of an effect, as men usually say. All we can know is the middle of a chain of successive phenomena. The two ends are absolutely hidden from our eyes. It was in this sense that Comte denied causation—his language was vigorous; he denounced it as metaphysical, and when Comte nicknames anything metaphysical or theological, he means, as everybody knows, Anathema maranatha.

The difficulty here is palpable. A law of averages—a statistical law, as it is often called, does not profess to account for anything; it merely generalizes crude material, and gets it ready for scientific thought to work out the true law. But a law of succession has an imposing sound, and it does in the worst sense impose. The fallacy may be shown in an instant. Day and night succeed each other regularly. Does either account for the other? The rotation of the earth is simultaneous with both—it accounts for both. Its effect is to expose the earth's two hemispheres alternately to the sun's rays. This rotation coincides again with other laws of our planetary system, and they account for it. It is on these laws, and not on such grounds as Hume, Comte's great Positive antecedent, alleged, that we look for sunset and sunrise. When they fail, the system of which our globe forms part will have collapsed.

Such then was the original kaleidoscope of Positivism. It was condemned for reasons which will have plainly appeared to you. Other eyes have swept the field of vision this world offers, and other instruments to aid our insight have been adopted.

You will not have failed already to remark the extreme vagueness of that word "law." There are very few English words more vague: it is applied to almost every sort of formula, force, principle, idea; besides being misused in ways almost innumerable. You must therefore, when busy with questions like the present, fix your attention upon the adjectives added to it, and the examples selected by way of illustration.

The Positive system is, according to Littré, of immeasurable extent, embracing the whole universe. Thus, whatever was conceived in dark preparatory ages, theological or metaphysical; whatsoever persons, who philosophize in either of those antiquated ways may even now dream;—if the conception cannot be reduced under Positive laws, it must be regarded as non-existent. All that really exists is included within such laws, the definition of which, therefore, becomes a subject of the greatest possible importance. They are, he says, immanent causes. The room we are in contains intelligent and educated people, but how many here could define this word "immanent"? It and its correlative, transcendent, are in truth metaphysical terms. If you will turn to Mellin's Encyclopædic Word-Book (favourably known to metaphysicians for purposes of pillage), you will find immanent explained, under the German einheimisch, into ten shades of usage. Probably, in common English Littré might have said "inherent." "The universe," he writes, "now appears to us as a whole, having its causes within itself, causes which we name its laws. The long conflict between immanence and transcendence is touching its close. Transcendence is theology or metaphysic, explaining the universe by causes outside it; immanence is science, explaining the universe by causes within itself."[13] Now, one stock-in-trade example is that a stone falls to the ground by virtue of an immanent cause. In plainer words, the stone belongs to universal matter of which gravity is an inherent law. Next, we find this same example Positively applied to the human will. Volition is free just as a falling stone is free; it obeys its own inherent law. Further, we read of "the rigorous fatalities which make the world what it is." Comte, Littré, and others object against calling these fatalities materialistic, because they distinguish gradations of law. Yet they limit all human knowledge within the materialistic circle, and Janet, who refuses to acquit them of Materialism, dwells on the point that, instead of defining mind as an unknown cause of thought, emotion, and will, it is said to be, "when anatomically considered, the sum of the functions of brain and spinal cord; and when considered physiologically, the sum of the functions of brain in consciously receiving impressions."[14] We need not wish to dispute about words. But suppose it had been stated in plain French or English that all known or knowable objects in the universe are placed by Positivism under the rule of laws as rigorous in their fatality as the laws of matter, would not the ultimate point in question have been more tangible, more intelligible? People might indeed have said, "Why, after all Positivism comes to the same thing as Fatalism, or Materialism;" and with certain writers this risk may very possibly be held a decisive objection.

Once more,—another explanation given by Littré is, that Positivism lies strictly within the "relative." Many here are aware how, since Kant's time, England, France, and Germany have been flooded with metaphysic, good, bad, and indifferent, on the relative and the conditioned. Pity that Littré should have plunged into these whirlpools! Ravaisson refers to Herbert Spencer and Sophie St. Germain for the point that this conception, the relative, must always imply the existence of an absolute, known or unknown.[169] I cannot follow him now, but any one interested in doing so will find the subject commenced at page 66 of his "Philosophie en France," (one of the Imperial Reports), and continued through sections 9 and 10. It is a very important discussion. Ravaisson stands out amongst Frenchmen as a consummate master of his science; and he inclines to infer that Comte tended, and that Positivism generally now tends, towards a final return to metaphysic. However this may be, I fear I have tired you, and am glad to quit this dry part of my lecture, and get away to more common-sense ground.

By way of introducing our most interesting topic, let me draw one common-sense conclusion from the difficult tract just shot over. During our passage, a thought may have flashed upon you which I remember hearing in a Bampton Lecture, somewhat to this effect—"Positivism is the most negative system of all." It appears hard to avoid this idea; for Positivism denies in express terms that human beings have any knowledge outside those generalized laws of experience which make up the Positive sciences. It denies (in a word) the most essential part of what was formerly held to be a knowledge of mind, both human and Divine.

Positive thinkers rebut the charge of negativism this way. We confine ourselves, they say, to what we know; we do not venture, like Pantheists and Atheists, into the unknowable. We do not deny God, we only ignore Him. We do not ask about the first cause of the world, or whether it has a constructural final end. Such questions as these are "disedifying." "The Positive philosophy," says Littré, "does not busy itself with the beginning of the universe, if the universe had a beginning—nor yet with what happens to living things, plants, animals, men, after their death, or at the consummation of the ages, if the ages have a consummation."[15] Littré's sentence, which I have rendered verbatim, reminds one of the prayer told to Bishop Atterbury, as offered by soldier on the eve of battle: "O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!" I am sorry to repeat ill-sounding words again; but is not this really the exact religious attitude of an honest Positivist, who feels sometimes touched by visions of possible life after death,

"Of all the nurse and all the priest have taught;"

that is, if we conceive his attitude according to the least negative interpretation put upon the system?

Continuing this least negative interpretation, let us view under its light the Positive cosmology or theory of the world's existence; of creation,—that is to say, if there ever was a creation. A stone falls to the ground. Trying to account for the phenomenon, we grasp a law inherent in the material world. Other phenomena lead us to other laws. We contemplate the material world with its laws in operation, a magnificent spectacle of moving forces; an organic whole, shining through its own intrinsic glory of never-ceasing development. If we turn and pursue the reverse road, and trace evolution back to its elementary principles, we may dissolve worlds into primordial force, or we may, as Professor Tyndall suggested at Liverpool, find the All in a fiery cloud occupying space. Then comes the complex question,[170] What beyond? What before? Whence, and How produced? a Positivist thinker may return one of two answers. He may either say, "We do not know," or he may say, "Nothing can be known." Take the least negative first, as we proposed; it surely deserves this rejoinder: If you plead ignorance, but surmise that knowledge is possible, you ought not, for reasons valid with every true lover of wisdom, to stop here. You are substituting for the ideas of creation and first cause, what you call a primordial universe, a material condition of some kind, producing phenomena regulated by inherent laws, successive, perishable, and nothing more! All once believed beyond, a blank! Even the very name of philosophy consecrated by consent of ages to the First and to the Last, admonishes you. Renounce your vocation, deny your name, or proceed. We demand a Positive result in the highest sense, not a fog of ignorance, not a slough of despond. But if the second answer be the true one, if the teaching of Positivism is that nothing more can be known, let us be told so in plain words. Let no one be charmed into the Positive circle by false allurements; for of all vices treachery and hypocrisy are the most cowardly. Are you really wiser than the pagan Lucretius? If not, why boast of 19th century discoveries in wisdom, insight, happiness? If you have examined the relics of a primæval world, explored the races of living and thinking creatures, if you have ascended to the starry firmament, and traversed its shining hosts, to come back with shame and disappointment, and tell us this is your all, our all, then indeed the wages of your science is death. While you speak your final verdict at least cover your faces,

"And, sad as angels for a good man's sin,
Weep to record, and blush to give it in!"

These thoughts have brought us to the most essential considerations of this lecture. Whether the Positive savant puts in a plea of ignorance or of blank negation, we care not. We will treat it as a challenge thrown down, and do our best to meet it. Succeed or not, we will take no refuge in ambiguities, but maintain a truly positive assertion. We say that the world we live in is not one world, but two,[171] distinguishable through the laws by which each is governed. There exists such a thing as phenomenal law; we accept the fact. But distinct, broadly distinct, apart in its working, its elements, and its final result, is moral law. An appeal lies to facts, and we shall try to justify our assertion.

The mode of proof now to be adopted is not metaphysical. I mention the circumstance because investigations into mind are apt to be confounded with metaphysic, and are then supposed too difficult to deserve attention. My argument will demand nothing beyond a hearing and a scrutiny. It will consist of just so much mental dissection as may be needful to show, first, a structural law of our inward nature, and, secondly, to illustrate its workings and effects. These two sets of facts will be placed side by side, in order that each may check the other, and that their coincidence may also (as I hope it will) furnish a fresh and sufficient proof of the contrast between moral and material law. Everybody knows how convincing are, and ought to be, facts separately ascertainable, yet converging into one and the same conclusion.

One form of speech almost unavoidable ought to be remarked beforehand. I mean the word freedom as applied to the human will and its volitions. When compelled to use it, I shall do so only in the sense of philosophic as contrasted with theological free will. By philosophic freedom I understand that sort and degree of active choice free from constraint which is required for the idea of responsibility, an idea universally agreed on by divines opposed to each other on the point of theological freewill. By this last-named idea I understand supposed powers of spiritual attainment, which go to make up a notion of self-sufficing moral strength. With it the present lecture, being purely philosophical, can have nothing whatever to do, but I should much deplore misconception, because any theory of self-sufficingness would be repugnant to my own personal convictions.

Look now at the life of an animal, with senses often more instrumentally accurate than ours. Survey the world around, which furnishes the objects of his perception and his intelligence. The mode in which that intelligence acts is held to be more or less under the absolute rule of instinct, and creatures below man are commonly described as those "that nourish a blind life within the brain." Whether this be or be not perfectly correct makes no difference to our present purpose. The point I want you to fix your thoughts upon is the directness of relation between the feeling or intelligent principle of mere animal life, and the object perceived, felt, or apprehended. Perhaps it may give vividness to your thought, if you figure this relation under the similitude of a right line connecting two points—object without, apprehension within. The line itself will then represent the impulsive activity of a creature, as, for example, when a hungry tiger leaps upon his prey.

Now this directness of action is not the thing most marked in our own proper human existence. What is really marked is the exact reverse; the more truly human any action appears, the farther is it away from resemblance to that animal characteristic. Suppose a man acts like a tiger, he is simply brutal; if he be governed by his feelings, however amiable, we pronounce him weak or unreasoning.

Absolutely impulsive doings, such as the indulgence of an appetite, blows struck in passion, or even in self-defence, we separate from our volitions proper, and call them irrational and instinctive. In educating children we check displays of impulse, we bid them pause and reflect. And it is obvious that education presupposes an educable power or principle, which principle self-education (the most important training of all) will place in a clear light before you. Interrogate yourselves, then. You will see that the mental power you most wish to train and augment is distinguishable enough even in the commonest affairs of life. Take a case of feeling. Some object—no matter what—kindles an emotion within you—anger, wish affection, pursuit, dislike, avoidance—and you feel strongly impelled to take action thereupon. This would be the movement which was imaged to our minds as a simple line. But to launch along it inconsiderately you would feel neither proper per se—nor yet doing what is due to yourself, because it is your human prerogative to act, not according to impulse, but according to reason. And observe, to do, or to forbear doing, is a question by no means determined by finding whether another emotion be or be not stronger than the first. What reason demands is that the impulse you feel, or it may chance the strongest of a dozen impulses, shall become to you an object of careful scrutiny. You are bound in honesty to scrutinize it; not only because it exists as an incitement felt within yourself, but much, much more because it is felt to be your actual self. It is your character which gave the spring, and lives in the movement to action. Perchance this point of character is a hidden nook, an unknown depth of feeling or desire, undiscovered, unsuspected by your fellow-creatures—a secret of your inner self. Nevertheless it is amenable to the tribunal of a more inward self still, to be brought before it as an object that shall be examined and cross-examined, sentenced either to vivid freedom or present suppression—it may be even to extinction evermore! Each human being possesses this wonderful self-objectivizing power. He is able to look at himself as a NOT-self—a something partitioned off, and external; to be thought about, felt about, reasoned about; to be controlled, chastened, corrected. This power is our inalienable heritage; we cannot resign it if we would; we cannot finally suspend its exercise. Mountains could not crush, nor oceans drown it; flames of fire never burned it out from the breast of one single martyr. Whether we use our birthright for good or for evil, it still remains with us; when we act, our will is not a feeling, an appetition, travelling simply from one point to another. It is a movement of our world within, a movement of that microcosm called Man.

Suppose a person resolves to employ this power aright. Some wish or feeling, such as might drive a lower creature to instinctive action, stirs within him, and becomes the object of his contemplation. To the sessions of silent thought he summons whatever assistants he can get; the witnesses of experience, prudence, duty, the golden rules of the Gospel; whatever seems most proper to determine the question at issue,—fitness or unfitness, to act or to abstain from acting. He says to himself (as all here have done a thousand times), "This longing, thought, state of mind, is wise or foolish, good or bad, right or wrong; nay, 'tis I myself that am so!" And in thus saying he is conscious of that sort of freedom to will or not to will, which makes up responsibility. He does not deny—contrariwise, with the might of his whole essential humanity he asserts—that the act of will is thus taken out of the direct line of inevitable antecedency, away from the physico-mechanical series, and enabled to commence a series of its own. In a word, his consciousness evidences to him that functional law which makes the human soul a thing more wonderful than all the inorganic or all the animated universe besides. And the law thus evidenced is the law of moral causation.

I said that our own soul thus becomes to us more wonderful than all the known universe besides. I might have said more mysterious; so truly sui generis and different from all things not ensouled, as to be inexplicable by human sciences, an enigma to itself, dwelling alone in its own awful isolation. Do but think what cause is—nothing less than originating power; what then must it be in stern and sad reality for a soul to originate a sin! Yet we cannot deny the fact. We confess it every day, not only in our hearts and deeper utterances, but in the commonest though most tremendous of words, the word responsibility. If a man were in no true sense the cause of his own actions, he could never be held responsible either by God or Man. But as long as Justice maintains her seat, each criminal will be so held, so judged, so recompensed. And the only principle under which Justice can justify her judgments is the reality of moral causation.

If, then, this law be established, we have proved our point. Just as we recognize a material world by mechanical law—and indeed our knowledge of matter itself is only a knowledge of its laws—so in like manner, and pari passu, we recognize a moral world by its distinctive law. We live, therefore, not in one world, but in two:

"Man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him."

The point is of surpassing importance! Upon it turns the whole issue. "Can mechanism—or, as it is vaguely called, materialism—be or be not accepted, with its attendant theories, as the truth; that is, our whole truth, all we have to live by and to die by?" Infinitely important issue! having much to do at this very moment with the happiness and real good of millions amongst our fellow-creatures and fellow-countrymen. It is for this reason we must not spare pains to demonstrate our moral law, for this reason also we will give some passing sentences to show how worthless in argument is the sophism most commonly circulated against it. Men speak of a "law of motives," with complete assurance, and without seeming to be aware of the twofold fallacy underlying it. Writers on the subject furnish statistics of suicide, murder, and the like; and then ask how the freedom of moral cause can be compatible with so visible a law? But what sort of a law is this? Clearly not a law upon which the results are conditioned, as sunrise on the earth's rotation; but a mere generalization, like the laws of average before mentioned. Such a law does not govern the acts, but the acts the law, or, in plain words, they are the law. It is an epitomized result, inferring no more consequence to our free moral causation, than a life assurance infers to the contingency of our individual life or death. The sophism would be readily detected if it were not for that unfortunate word "motive." People forget that a motive is not a power that compels us, but an object which we choose to seek. "Will," we are seriously told, "must be determined by the strongest motive." Now if, in thus speaking, the strongest motive objectively be meant, that is the motive essentially and in its own nature the strongest, then indeed we may exclaim, "Would that this were true!" For are not right, justice, goodness, absolutely and in themselves the strongest? Yet men in general fail to pursue them; they are chosen by those of whom the world is not worthy. But if, on the other hand, the phrase "strongest motive" is to be understood subjectively, and means that which on each occasion is felt to be the strongest; what form of sounding words has ever yielded a more barren sense, a simpler truism? "Will must be determined by the choice of will." It means this, and nothing more.

We may sum the whole matter of motive in a single sentence. Motives do not make the man, but the man his motives. To conceive it otherwise would be to imagine each man a mere bundle of instincts, such instincts as we calculate with certainty in the brute animals we wish to allure, to subdue, or to destroy.

"Be not like dumb driven cattle,"

says the Psalm of Life, and old Herbert exhorts—

The beast feels an incitement, and rushes direct upon the pitfall. It is the prerogative of a true man to subsume (as logicians speak) each line of impulse into the circle of his own soul; to deliberate in the secret chambers of a being impenetrable even to his own understanding, and to put in force the result which becomes as it were the free manifestation of himself. When therefore you examine the actions of a fellow-creature, and discern his motives, you praise or blame what? not the motives, but the man.

Permit me to close this discussion by an example of the manner in which we make and unmake our own motives.

No one present is so young, or so careless, as never to have felt the pains of self-reproach. Some light or shade of life projects before us the outline of ourself. By virtue of the law described, we view and review it, as if it were the picture of another being. In contrast with it, we place our own ideal, all that our boyhood fondly fancied our manhood would become; the semblances of those we have loved and lost; of the father, who taught us to prize truth and virtue above earthly wealth and distinction; of the mother, at whose knee we knelt in prayer, and whose upraised eye imaged the serenity of that heaven to which she implored us to aspire. These beloved forms, robed in the unfading freshness of a love stronger than death, stir our heart of hearts, with accents unmistakable. They remind us of what we resolved and trusted one day to be found, in thought, in feeling, and in life. But, close to the glowing portrait of our purposed self stands the dwindled figure of what we actually are; and, oh, the shame, the anguish of that stern, disappointing comparison!

Among the lower creatures (we ask in passing) what is there to resemble this self-reforming principle? In the domesticated animal, both beast and bird, we see wounded affection, grief under a master's anger, and desire to win back his love. In the gregarious tribes we find respect for a common bond of what we almost may call utility; but has any sense of wrong as wrong, or sin as sin, ever been found educable? Man shows the mighty strength of this principle within him, even when he shows it in its most repulsive shapes. The remorseful wretch who throws himself beneath the wheel of Juggernaut, is a different kind of being from the horse or dog. And considering the self-interest, self-flattery, and self-indulgence arrayed against it, may we not say that the root of such passionate remorse has something sound in it, else it would long ago have been trodden out from the life and heart of mankind?

For now, as always, our honest anguish and shame sow the appointed seed of our noblest attainments. Those steps by which we climb our steep ascent are hewn in the travail of our souls. David found it so, when he heard the voice of Nathan saying, "Thou art the man!" and wrote words which have come down near three thousand years;—"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit." "Of all acts," asks Mr. Carlyle, "is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact; is dead; it is 'pure' as dead dry sand is pure. David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare here below." Truest emblem indeed! In it, we see, as in a glass, how living in two worlds we cannot but have a sympathy with each; insomuch that every man feels himself to be two selves, not one; a spiritual and a psychical man. "There is," says Sir Thomas Browne, "another man within me, that's angry with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards me." A double consciousness which grows upon many a soul, until its truer choice and better motives are attained:

"The life which is, and that which is to come,
Suspended hang in such nice equipoise
A breath disturbs the balance; and that scale
In which we throw our hearts preponderates."

This lecture started from the question, what is a phenomenon, and how do we know of its existence? Seeing that our knowledge rests primarily on the evidence of our own mind, we drew the inference that Comte committed a fatal error when he banished the science of mind, as mind, from his cycle. Reviewing his various devices, and some devices of his successors, for eliminating psychology, and reducing the study of mind to a study of bodily functions, we approached the stronghold of Positivism,—law. And, after discussing the theories maintained respecting it, we boldly threw down our challenge to this effect: law phenomenal or mechanical admitted, we assert, the existence of another kind of law. We say that the freedom of human choice between evil and good is utterly unlike the freedom of a stone which falls by mechanical law, and cannot choose but fall. The inference from phenomenal law is the existence of a phenomenal world. The inference from another existent law is that there is another existent world. Man, we affirm, lives in both; has sympathies with both; and, by virtue of his double nature, is a true citizen of both. The ultimate principle of man's higher nature is to us inscrutable; for, even as the eye sees not itself, so neither does the spirit of a man discern that which makes it spirit. But, though we cannot know the soul, we can know much and many things about it; things most important—nay, all-important for us to know, since they distinguish the spirit that burns within us from matter, from mechanism, and from mere animality. Hence we do not, with the Positivist, ignore the unknowable. Contrariwise, confessing our ignorance, where we are ignorant, we strive to observe and gather all we can.

One thing that can be thus known is the principle of moral causation; and this we have inductively investigated. We began by observing a process in our own minds, a process or law of self-objectivity. I am sorry to use such an uncouth word; but it saves a long description, and you will all remember the fact. That process carries, on the very face of it, adaptation to the purposes of moral choice, free from the material necessity which governs a falling stone, and disengaged from the control of such impulses as the incitement of ruling instincts. We next verify this law by observing its operation; first, in single acts of the Will accompanied, as you will recollect, by distinct consciousness of choice and responsibility. It was in respect of this conscious certainty that Dr. Johnson said, "We know we are free, and there ends the matter." We verified, a second time, the self-objectivising law, by its working and effects upon our motives, which it makes and unmakes; eliminating some, adopting others, so as to modify and alter our whole real character. Any one who is happy enough to recall the slow advances of successful self-education, or a less ordinary process by which old things passed away and all things became new, may recollect with pleasure how this law served as an instrument of change; how it placed himself before his own inward eye, even daily, in freshly instructive lights, awakening new self-questionings, emotions, aversions, desires, hopes, and stimulating to new exertions; how it opposed itself to the mastery of any single dominant passion, under which we say a man acts mechanically, because he has already surrendered himself a slave to its sway; how it became a check upon all day-dreaming or drifting with the tide, when again we are said to act mechanically because we yield to circumstances as they flow, and live a blind life, like creatures that cannot escape the chain of Instinct. For, observe: let any instinct, even the noblest, be ever so nobly developed, if we act from its impulse only, and not from a reflective choice of the prompting which it gives, we are living below the image of our true nature, because we are not striving to become a law unto ourselves.

You may verify our moral law in numberless ways among the common walks of life; and it really is a task of no great difficulty, if you take with you the truth that the whole issue is summed in one word—Responsibility. A falling stone cannot choose but fall; were a man subject to material law, he could have no choice whatever. Neither would it make any real difference, if the Will were impelled by overpowering motive, and did not make its motive to itself. The slate which slides from a roof, and kills a child, we do not accuse of murder; we do not attach moral accountability to the hungry tiger. It is because man is not impelled like stones or tigers, that we hold him responsible. And we praise or blame in the highest degree his most deliberate acts. The wrong he does with malice aforethought is a crime in the strongest sense; the good he works with considerate purpose we esteem his highest well-doing. In our time the wills of individual men have changed the destinies of nations; and any one who reads books, reviews, or newspapers sees a vigorous use of that word responsibility. No one doubts that these powerful wills are the true causes of effects felt throughout all Europe, effects which will remain when those who caused them are in the grave; nay, even when generations—perchance dynasties—shall have passed away.

In lower life, we honour the truly causative man who conquers a habit of intemperance or any evil passion: it is greater to overcome one's self than to conquer many cities. We deem every one accountable for what he allows, or disallows, in relation to his God, his fellows, or himself. In a word, we consider each man so far the true cause of his own conduct, as to load him with responsibility.

Yes, responsibility! Do not shrink from the thought; it is wholesome for all. Do but practise self-control enough to look yourself with honest purpose in the face when you are about to act, you will never suppose that you act mechanically, and you will seldom act amiss. If you wish to benefit your countrymen, inculcate the grand lesson of responsibility; for what well-informed person doubts that one main root of our present social and religious ailments lies in compromise with known immoralities, indolent acquiesence in hollow words, and lifeless outside shows, where ought to be heard and seen the rigid truths of accountability, duty, consistency?—all impossible without a practical law of self-scrutiny and self-control. Yet further: Responsibility is also an undeniable witness to a world of life beyond death. Just as even Herbert Spencer himself has remarked, that the idea of relativity involves the correlative idea of an absolute; even so, in thought, responsibility involves its correlative belief, a recompence! But, in morality, the evidence is stringent beyond expression. For, the idea of responsibility is fixed in the nature of things; unchangeable, eternal. And it contains in itself the loftier idea of personality. Leading us to look for a world of righteous recompence, it leads also to belief in a personal Being, before whom we are responsible, and who will award to each of us our recompence. David travelled the same road to the same conclusion, when he looked round upon men, who lacked mercy because they lacked justice, and said, "Unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work."

Did I not feel that my strain upon your attention must now cease, I should have liked to show at length how the law by which we discover moral causation, may be verified everywhere in the whole province of mind. It is difficult, for instance, to look at the perplexing questions raised about language, without perceiving that there runs through its purely human formation the articulate results of an element resembling internal dialogue; in other words, a law of self-objectivising representation. In art, again, the perpetual efforts of ages is to present our human manifoldness of thought, feeling, and idea, before our one individual self. Hence the art formula of multeity in unity. And what is the true bond of society as distinguished from gregariousness? Is it not the Gospel's golden rule? But how can our neighbour be viewed as a second self, unless self has been already objectivised before our moral intuitions? We might follow the same thread throughout the conditions of all philosophy.

The one thing we have to remember in every research concerning man is that education, whether of self or others, implies an educable principle; a germ, of which education and attainment are the bud, the blossom, and the fruit. Therefore, if we want to know Humanity, we must look to the educated human being. The philosopher, the artist, the thinker of every sort, must have risen into clearness ere he can become a typical man. Is it not, therefore, a mistake to appeal for theories of human nature to the statistics (always statistics!) of ignorance and savagery? When modelling our physical form, Buonarotti did not seek his type in hospitals for maimed or distorted limbs, and exclaim, Behold, such is man! Curious too, and contradictory, the way in which appeals to barbarism have worked. In the 18th century we used always to hear of that golden age,

"When free in woods the noble savage ran,
And man, the brother, lived the friend of man."

In the 19th, savage life is cannibalism, superstition, cruelty, terrible, revolting, loathsome; perchance, time must yet pass before we learn justice to our fellows of any age! Meanwhile, we may feel sure that our human ideal is not to be found in the frost-bitten rickety infant species; nor yet in its dwarfed and stunted adult; the cretin and the imbecile will not give its lineaments; and it may be hard to say which is least like a true man, the undeveloped or the perverted creature. For example, what superiority in moral height has the savant, whose self-satisfied science ignores or denies a God, over the poor pigmy barbarian, unskilled in the use of fire, and living upon berries and insects, who props himself against a tree with earthward face, and prays, saying, "Yere, if indeed thou art, why dost thou suffer us to be killed? Thou hast raised us up. Why dost thou cast us down?"[16] Better perhaps the rude stammering of our race's childhood than its half-speechless, half-paralyzed old age!

And here the argument of this lecture ends. Of causation in general, and the grand subject of design, it has not been my hint to speak. These vast topics have fallen into higher hands than mine. My aim was limited to finding the differentia of man—the moral characteristic which places him in contrast with physico-mechanical laws.

It occurs to me, however, that you may employ ten minutes not unpleasantly, upon what we can hardly help calling the romance of Positivism. The story, taken from first to last—part comic, part tragic—is as wild and weird as one of the Frenchman Doré's pictures,—a story too strange to be thought true, if it did not happen to have been true! It has also its stinging lessons, and they follow naturally; evolved, as it were, from the motley and mystifying commencement.

Comte's life has been written by friend and foe. For fulness of detail the right book is by his disciple and executor, Dr. Robinet, who has just figured among those who rule in the Commune of Paris. Robinet is very interesting, for he thoroughly believes in his master, and accepts the whole Comtist religion, calendar and all, which Littré and others reject. No reproach this to Comte's biographer, for that same worship is celebrated in our cooler atmosphere of England. The Pall Mall Gazette has, by its notices, made the celebrations widely known. There is an account of the grandest yearly solemnity which will suffice many, and excite the curiosity of more, in its number for January 7th, 1868. It is not hard to see that the worshippers differ from the recusants by a strong feeling that they cannot live upon axioms sounding like negatives. They want sentiment, emotion, excitement to sustain them. Let us observe how Comte caught the first glimpse of this requirement.

His life was sombre—a boy delicate and fractious, disliked by his masters, turned out of the Polytechnique, repudiated by his great socialist teacher St. Simon. His family relations not happy, his marriage least of all. We cannot wonder at vagaries, for he had a real fit of rampant insanity, and after release from an asylum had nearly drowned himself in the Seine. His wife found him intolerable, and left her home. Mr. Mill speaks of her respect for him;—it was oddly testified after his death, for she pleads in law that he was a madman, an atheist, and immoral; repudiates his will, and seizes the consecrated relics of his dwelling. Littré supported her against those who, like Robinet, thought her little less than blasphemous. If she had appeared in an English law court, we should have known more truth than we do.

Let us now look at such facts as we have from the more favourable side. The man lived a lonely life, as became a sort of conceptual alchemist, sustained by a belief that he was turning men's leaden thoughts into his own pure gold. One brilliant projection of his has made him the idol of Positivists. I confess it puzzles me, among many others, to imagine how a qualified critic can treat such a philosophic solvent either as true or as original. It supposes the history of all human thinking to pass necessarily through three stages, theology, metaphysics, positive truth; and that the world makes progress accordingly. We will hope that the thing called theology, a benighted belief in the government and intervention of supreme will, is not altogether extinct in this age of progress; if it be so, Mr. Froude encourages us to look for a revival. Among lesser matters, the hypothesis of metaphysical cookery is an idea one fails to realise. Was it a banquet with joints cut Laputa-like, after some fashion of concepts, or syllogistic figures? Was it a "feast of reason and a flow of soul," or, more probably, an abstraction pure and simple, as if a man could

Comte's comicalities strike most people all the more because he writes on, always utterly insensible to his own comedy. If any one wishes for a serious critique in small compass, I may mention Stirling's appendix to his translation of Schwegler's Handbook; Whewell in his Philosophy of Discovery, and elsewhere.

Comte was most confiding in his own theory. Littré is not so confident, for he has another theory of his own. But, putting aside the question of its verification, we may remark that in the rough idea Comte showed himself before his age. Positive thinkers have busied themselves with physical evolution; for example, the development of a brain from an oyster or an eozoon; but Comte was intent upon mental evolution.[172] Man need not much care about the congeners of a body sprung from earth; but soul is another thing. We trust our own spirit, as carrying some image and superscription of God; we feel and conceive it to be different in kind from sensitive life; we love to think of it in its finality as a spark flowing out from Divine Light; a breath breathed into body from above. In the reverse of this belief there is doubtless an element unfavourable to happiness; it makes some men cynics, some pessimists, some simply victims. Comte's infinite self-satisfaction probably saved him from self-torture. But we judge that he felt his condition deeply, from the rapture with which he hailed a new and brilliant discovery!

Yes, it was the most wonderful of all his discoveries; he one day found an unsuspected law of life within himself; he discovered that he had a heart.

To many, this is the black spot on Comte's memory; they cannot receive his love, nay, his frantic adoration, of the lonely wife of a convict, absent in the gallies, as a piece of pure Platonism. Had Madame Comte's allegations been sifted fully, we might have known all. As it is, I for my own part like to think him innocent; he was mad from disease, and perhaps from conceit; a conceit, says Mr. Mill, too colossal to be believed without reading him up; but I trust he was not immoral. His letters are against it, the lady's face is against it, and above all, there is against it the lasting effect upon himself. After a year's happiness to Comte, she died and left him, as he thoroughly supposed, an enlightened and a religious man.

Poor Comte! His sweeter life was buried with the dead, who to him could never rise again. His religion was no more than a funereal cult; a veil thrown over it, no hope, no thought of reunion! The episode of Clotilde was, in itself, one of those touches of nature which make the whole world kin; the brief, bright, and long sad experience the solitary had of his heart; the love, the loss, the unforgetting sorrow! But, did it not prove, beyond the force of reclamation to disprove, that Comte's system ends, at last, in what is commonly called materialism? its faith (or negation of faith) being in effect this, that we look for entire human dissolution coincident with bodily death. And the end flows naturally from the beginning; all we think is phenomenal, all we know is phenomenal, first and last. Our life is only a phenomenon; and death, death joins us to the unreturning past. We are absorbed, all that is good of us, into general and generic humanity; an Eidolon, called the Great Being for our comfort; as if a name (what's in a name?) could console us! The race we may have tried to serve is to be our Euthanasia, our sepulchre, I had almost said our cenotaph!

Strange thought, not without a kind of serpent-fascination! Epidemic in England now, gaining force from its unhallowed audacity! The consistent pessimist, who rates men at the worst, thinks the worst in himself, and does the worst by all others, and by himself, if he is but fixed in this unbelief, need not fear what the world, man, or God shall do unto him. It is the old whisper, "Ye shall be as gods!" 'Tis superhuman to sit and watch the storm; to have our strong sensations, illusions they are called in France; blood-poisons which circulate in our life, working hot passion and mischief; sorrow to many a loving, many a confiding heart; passion, mischief, sorrow, what matters it? there comes an opiate by-and-by! The man of overwrought brain, used up, worn-out feelings; the distempered dreamer; the reckless worker of wrongs; the disappointed striver for an earthly crown, all shall have their common slumber at last; unconscious, impervious, unbroken. I will read you three stanzas from a longer piece written by one not unknown always where that tree of knowledge grew:—

"Cessation is true rest,
And sleep for them opprest;
And not to be,—were blest.

Annihilation is
A better state than this;
Better than woe or bliss.

The name is dread;—the thing
Is death without its sting;
An overshadowing."

If such be the thought to them whose natural heritage stands strong, fringed with luxurious hope to live beloved, to die regretted; what will the "overshadowing" be when it passes, like a plague breath, over the children of toil and anxiety, over them whose life is at best hard, and their lot depressed and without "illusions"? Will they not want their strong sensations? Will they respect any law, human or divine, which stands between them and their enjoyments? Will they not crush all who bar their pleasures, aye, choke them in their own blood? Why not? The opiate comes to all at last. 'Tis an act of oblivion! The overshadowing will cover all.

And this is the coming creed of the 19th century. To return to Comte, about whom I might say much, but must not;—of course, he had no foresight of anything worse than an immediate realization of his crowning ideas—sociality, fraternity, Positivism. Europe split into small states; women made incapable of property, but held objects of religious worship; men worked on a communistic principle; an oligarchy of rich; a spirituality of Positive believers, with a supreme infallible pontiff at their head; Paris the seat of infallibility and of order. Clotilde had shown Comte a principle antagonistic to, and predominating over, all egoism; Altruism was to burn out of men all selfish aims, nay, the ordinary feelings of a man! A rigorous rule of life was to aid, and a religion without a God to enforce, this new law. Two hours a day, divided into three private services, were to be spent in the adoration of Humanity under the form of a living or dead woman. The image of the fair idol, dress, posture, everything was to be brought distinctly to mind; and the whole soul to be prostrated in her honour. Comte, it has been said, gave woman everything except justice.

There is a grave moral in this tale. Theology was extinguished; but the desire to worship burned on—a fire unquenchable. Is that desire, or is it not, a broad reality, an inalienable truth of our nature? Comte accepted it for himself, and not for himself alone, but for our whole human race. Along with it he accepted the only principle which could bestow universal validity. Our moral intuitions were acknowledged safe guides, and something more; the rulers of an intellectual world, the revealers of truth higher than all beside. Often and often he asserted the dominion of heart over mind. Probably, if Comte had lived longer he would have acknowledged other revelations of our moral nature. Moral causation, for example. That strange phrase of his—"a modifiable fatality," self-contradiction in words, suicide in sense, what did it portend? Was it the first sound of a marriage-bell, freedom and duty once again united? A change of his system wonderful to contemplate, yet not more wonderful than the state in which he left it.

One cannot help here asking how matters would have stood if Comte had died without knowing his Clotilde. How incomplete according to his own account his philosophy! how wanting in that which perfected the whole! A notable fact this, throwing great light on the value of such-like systematization which, after all, much resembles secretion from that interesting viscus, the system-maker's own particular brain. And there is another fact quite as notable. How curious that Comte should have lived so long without discovering whatever truth his own heart and a strong human affection disclosed to him! Hence we might illustrate and confirm a previous remark, that any one not living a truly human life—call him undeveloped, uneducated, dwarfed, or immature—is no typical man; and if we believe ancient maxims, scarcely a learner in philosophy, certainly not a judge of its highest and widest problems.

The most notable fact and greatest surprise of all is, that Comte's prayer without petition, his passionate self-mesmerizing adoration, his religion without a God, should have taken any hold on men. No one can transfer to others his private sorrow or his private joy; it is hard for a man to get his thought understood, harder still to make common pasture of his heart. But Comte devised extraordinary propagandist expedients; those who consider his developments mere madness, should explain why sane people have accepted them. Comte set no value on Protestantism in any shape. The religion of his own country he carried back to mediæval forms, and then travestied it. There were many festivals, a calendar of saints, nine sacraments, and a horrible caricature of the Christian Trinity. This idea crowned his sociology, which I need hardly say was communistic socialism, enfolding (as socialism always must enfold) and scarcely veiling the most iron of despotisms, both temporal and spiritual. His mind delighted in contemplating a synthesis of the great Fetish, Earth, with the great Being Humanity; which last somehow assumes on occasion a feminine gender.

To Clotilde, symbolizing that supreme object, Clotilde, his noble and tender patroness, he transferred Dante's homage of Beatrice; addresses to the mother of our Lord; and stranger than all, the prayer of Thomas à Kempis to Almighty God, "Amem te plusquam me, nec me nisi propter te"—"May I love Thee more than self, nor self at all except for Thee." Now consider: when Comte died, sixty-four years had not quite elapsed since goddesses of Reason were worshipped in the cathedral and other churches of Paris. Upon each high altar a fair woman, chosen for her faultless beauty, sate enthroned, her feet resting upon the consecrated slab. Gaily clothed in tunic and Greek mantle, she was so displayed by a torch behind her throne, so elevated above her worshippers, as to attract from Phrygian cap to Italic shoe their passionate gaze and adoration. Low down beneath her footstool lay the broken symbols of a faith then declared effete and passed away; just as half a century afterwards Comte declared theology passed away. Music sounded, incense smoked, Bishop Gobel, who assisted at a parody of sacred rites, wept tears of shame, but in fear and trembling he assisted. The object of this mad mockery of religion, this empire of heart over mind, this woman-worship, was to proclaim afresh Fraternity, Progress, Sociality. Sociality, for the supposed law of which final development Comte worshipped humanity and Clotilde—but disowned immortality and God.

These two madnesses, how near akin, how far apart were they? The world is not really made young by destroying old things; yet the path of 18th century madness lay through fire and blood. Its deeds are sometimes spoken of, even now, as great crimes; but no great crime is criminal in the sight of men whose life is godless, dark, and unsubstantial. Horrors pass before them like unrealities. "The world," writes Mercier on the trial of Louis XVI,—"The world is all an optical shadow." In our 19th century life, 'tis a skilfully prepared overshadowing, beneath which men beat their brows till their blood-shot eyes see red. "I see red," exclaimed Eugene Sue's ruffian, "and then I strike with the knife."[17] Let me end by telling you a dream, which is not all a dream.

A company of savans were seen in the visions of the night, busy with a new scientific invention. Earth, they argued, earth has her volcanoes, her burning exhalations; men have electric lights, fires, gas lamps, furnaces. These make up the world's proper illumination. The effect intended was, therefore, to darken the air we breathe, so that no rays from the upper sky should pass through it. The inventors hoped that a district, a country, nay, even a world, might thus be overshadowed by a gloom impervious to moon and stars by night, to sun by day; and the human eye see no changes, save those which the earth's activity, or human power and skill, might produce. Terrestrial and artificial alternations excepted, all was to be changeless as winter midnight—deep impenetrable darkness! It was seen slowly, very slowly, to descend. In thirty years the men of science hoped and purposed its perfection.

Did those who had previously known the beautiful light of heaven, who had bathed and basked in the life-giving sunbeam, feel happy, or even calm, when they saw their children and children's children robbed of celestial glory and gladness?

Yet there is one thing worse than a world without a sun—you know what I mean—Humanity without a GOD.

Postscript.

The Lecturer purposely abstained from reading Professor Huxley's acute critique on Positivism until this Lecture had gone to press. He now strongly recommends his auditors to read No. viii. of the Lay Sermons.

Should any reader find difficulties in pages 23–25 of the foregoing Lecture, he will do well to peruse Littré's "Auguste Comte et la Philosophie Positive," chapter iii., particularly pp. 42, 43.

SCIENCE AND REVELATION.

BY THE VERY REVEREND
R. PAYNE SMITH, D.D.,
DEAN OF CANTERBURY; LATE REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, OXFORD.

SCIENCE AND REVELATION.

The duty which has been imposed upon me to-day by the Christian Evidence Society is, I conceive, to state as clearly as I can, what is our ground for believing that a revelation is not only possible, but is a necessary part of the system of this world. As the programme further joins science and revelation, I conceive that I am debarred from any but a strictly scientific proof. We may reasonably infer the probability of a revelation from God's necessary attribute of love. We may ourselves feel morally sure that a creature, approaching so nearly to the spiritual world, and capable of so much good as is man, would not be left by his Maker in that miserable state of vice and misery in which we find ourselves. There are many good and weighty reasons for believing that God would give us a revelation, and that the Christian religion is God's revelation—reasons drawn from the nature of God, from the actual condition in which man is placed, and from the direct teachings of Holy Scripture—all these, like a cord of many threads that cannot easily be broken, serve to confirm the faith of the believer, but I must forego their use. In confining myself to what I conceive to be the strictly scientific basis of a revelation, I would, nevertheless, beg you to remember that the evidences of Christianity are cumulative. They cover a vast field, and it is in their united force that their strength lies. The very vastness of the field often invites attack. Some outlying work seems capable of overthrow. Some discovery in the domains of history, of philology, or of physical science, seems to provide new weapons for the assault. Possibly not all the arguments used in defence of Christianity will endure the test of close and accurate examination. Possibly, too, in our views of the nature of Christianity, and in our exegesis of the Scriptures, we have arrived only at partial truth, and do not distinguish with sufficient accuracy between what is certainly revealed, and what is nothing more that a possible explanation of the Divine word. There are, moreover, I will candidly confess, difficulties in the way of faith. However new may be the form of the attack, and however modern the materials which it uses, yet the strength of the attack lies in real difficulties, which are no new matter, but have ever lain deep in the minds of thoughtful men. I do not believe that belief is a thing easy of attainment, any more than virtue is. I believe that both are victories, gained by a struggle—gained over opposing forces.[173] But as certain as I am that this present state of things was intended to train man to virtue, though I cannot answer all the objections brought against the system of the world being exactly what it is, nor solve all the doubts and difficulties, moral and metaphysical, which surround us: so I am convinced, in spite of similar difficulties in the way of religion, that belief, and not unbelief, is the end at which man ought to aim. I believe that man was intended to attain to a higher and more perfect state than that in which he now finds himself, and that he can only attain to it by virtue and faith; but as the very value of these lies apparently in their being won by an effort, long and earnestly maintained, I am not surprised at the existence of difficulties, least of all of such difficulties as arise from our ignorance. Still belief would be unnecessarily[18] difficult,[174] and we may even say, morally impossible, if the sum of the arguments in defence of a revelation did not largely exceed the sum of the arguments against one. With these arguments I have to-day nothing to do. The evidences of Christianity, external and internal, will be treated of by others. My business is to show that a revelation was to be expected; that it was probable, or at all events possible, and, therefore, that the evidences of Christianity have a claim upon the consideration of every right thinking man. In showing that a revelation was to be expected, I shall at the same time show what is the exact position which it holds, and in what way revealed knowledge differs from all other knowledge, scientific and unscientific.

Now the argument which I shall use as my proof of the possibility of a revelation is simply this, that in the present system of things we find no being endowed with any faculties without there being also provided a proper field for their exercise, and a necessity imposed upon that being of using those faculties. In this statement I assume nothing. I do not assume that there is a God who made these beings. I do not assume that they were made or created; still less do I assume that they were intended to use their faculties. I put aside all theories of design and causation, not because I do not believe that they possess force, but because the actual facts which I see around me, or which I am taught by scientific men, are enough for my proof. The only thing which I assume is, that the laws of nature are universal; and I assume this simply because it will be readily granted me. The universality of nature's laws compels us to admit that a law which holds good in all known cases, will necessarily hold good in all cases whatsoever.

Our whole language is so essentially based upon religious ideas that it would be very difficult for me to use only neutral words. But in using religious words, I wish them to be understood in a neutral sense. If I speak of creatures, I mean only beings, things which exist now, or have existed. If I speak of them as endowed with faculties, I merely mean that they possess them. By nature, I mean simply the present state of things, whether designed by an intelligent mind, or a mere come-by-chance. I look simply around me at what is—or at all events appears to be—and I find myself in a world in which there is a very exact correspondence between the endowments and faculties of every existent being, and the state of things in which it happens to be.

So exact is this correspondence, that if you give Professor Owen a bone, he will tell you to what order of animals its owner belonged, what were its habits, the nature of its food, of its habitat, and mode of life. Nature works out this correspondence even to the most minute detail. By looking at the bone of a quadruped we can tell, not merely great things about it, but such trifles as which leg it used first in getting up from the ground. For nature is so undeviating that the outward habits, even in things of no apparent moment, correspond to the internal conformation.

Now, possibly, it will readily be granted that such is the present state of things. Whatever may have been the stages through which we have, or have not, passed, we now find ourselves in a world of apparent cause and effect—full of infinitely varied forms of life, but of which none are purposeless. I cannot upon this point bring forward a better witness than Professor Huxley, who, in his most interesting essay on Geological Contemporaneity (Lay Sermons, p. 236) speaks as follows:—"All who are competent to express an opinion upon the subject are, at present, agreed that the manifold varieties of animal and vegetable form have not either come into existence by chance, nor result from capricious exertions of creative power; but that they have taken place in a definite order, the statement of which order is what men of science term a natural law." The whole chain of animal and vegetable life seems to this great authority so perfect and complete, that even the variations which have taken place in it, have been governed, he considers, by a law, that is, a regular and orderly succession. These variations have been the result, apparently, of certain changes in the external state of things, to which the external conformation of the animal has somehow or other been made to correspond. But as Professor Huxley points out, these variations have been confined to very narrow limits. When people speak of the enormous changes which have taken place in the living population of the globe during geological eras, they refer, he says, to the presence in the later rocks of fossil remains of a vast number of animals not discoverable in the earlier rocks; but the fossils which you do find in the early rocks differ but little from existing species. (See p. 238.) He thus negatives on sure grounds the idea that a state of things ever existed on this globe essentially unlike what exists now.

What then exists now? I answer, first of all a vast chain of vegetable life, fitted in every portion of it to find its own subsistence, and to propagate its species. Its main function is to "manufacture out of mineral substances that protoplasm, upon which, in the long run, all animal life depends." (Lay Sermons, p. 138.) I need not detain you by enumerating the many various contrivances by which plants are enabled to manufacture food for us out of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen—substances upon which, in their original state, animals cannot feed—nor the still more curious and elaborate processes by which their fecundation, and the propagation of each species is provided for—processes which seem often to require the intervention of animal life. I need not detain you upon this point: you will readily grant that this correspondence does exist. If a plant is not suited to its habitat, and cannot use its natural powers, nature imposes upon it the severe penalties—first, of degradation, and then of death.

Upon the animal world she imposes just the same penalties. There is neither excess nor defect in her operations.[19] Whatever she gives must be used, but animals, being governed in the main by instincts, have no choice. They necessarily employ all their living powers, and apparently have no powers beyond those indispensable for their existence. This point, however, I will not press, though it seems to follow from the fact asserted by Professor Huxley, that no important difference can be observed between the fossil remains found in the earliest strata, and animals of the same species and order existent now. (See pp. 241, 242, and for vegetables, p. 240.) For, as he tells you, facts establish a scientific law—law in the mouths of scientific men, meaning an established order of facts. Well then! I will put this fact of absence of progress aside, and with it the corollary of the absence of latent powers.[20] But of actual powers it is evident that animals do use them all, and have to use them all. So close, too, is the agreement between the powers and the external position of every animal, that a change in its external relations will modify its powers to a certain extent. But only to a certain extent; there are fixed limits to the adaptability of those living powers. If the changes are such as to occasion a more active exercise of its living powers, the animal increases in strength, size, and beauty; if unfavourable, but still permitting some use of its powers, it dwindles and decays. But pass the appointed bounds and the animal dies. Nature is exacting the penalty of the non-use of what it has given. Nature exacts a severe penalty for the mis-use, and the last and final penalty for the violation of her laws. I do not know that an ascidian jelly-bag has any other faculties than those of sucking in water, and of sticking to a stone.[21] But this I know, that if it does not use all the powers it possesses and suck in its water, and stick to its stone, no process of natural selection will ever develop it into a monkey: it will go to the limbo of nonentity.[22] But what an alarming thought, that at a period separated from us by such vast geologic ages, that, according to the nebular hypothesis, held by so many of our leading astronomers as a probable theory, this whole universe was a mass of heated vapour; what an alarming thought that the very existence of man should have depended upon a jelly bag sticking to a stone and sucking up water! Alas! there was then no water, no stones, no jelly bags, and therefore there are now no men! Man escapes, poor thing, from his humble parentage: he need not feel his ears to find the proof there of his monkeyhood:[23] but his escape costs him dear. What with astronomy and biology, men of science between them have cleared us out of existence. Scientifically, man is no more.

My argument, fortunately, depends upon matters of fact: facts for which the believer accounts by holding that this world is the work of a Being possessed of infinite wisdom and power, and who therefore has endowed all His creatures with those faculties which they needed, and with no others; because to give useless faculties would be a violation of God's attribute of wisdom. The student of natural science may take another view. It is no part of his business to do so. His office is to discover and tabulate the order of facts, of phenomena, and this order he calls a natural law. Well and good. But teleology, the science of ends, which gives the reason why a thing is what it is—teleology belongs to the metaphysician. It is his business to inquire into causes and effects. Still, as a matter of fact, scientific men do try their hand at accounting for the present state of things, and they say, perhaps, that there is a struggle, a competition in nature,[177] so sharp and close that no creature can continue to exist save by the vigorous exercise of all its necessary faculties, while all useless qualities will be cast away as mere overweight and incumbrance. I need no decision upon this point; the fact is all I want. I do not want you to decide whether mind preceded matter, and consequently that there is a God: or whether matter and mind came into existence contemporaneously, in which case there is no room for the theory of development, but abundant room for impossibilities, metaphysical and actual; or, lastly, whether matter preceded mind, the latter being simply the result of a high corporeal organisation, slowly attained to by the processes of selection, natural and sexual. Whether this present state of things was worked out intelligently, by a Being possessed of will and understanding, or is the result of blind and unintelligent powers, working fortuitously, this, to my argument, matters not. All I want is the admitted fact—that every living organisation fully possesses all those faculties which it needs, and must use all its faculties under penalty, first of degradation, and, finally, in the long run, of extinction.

But man is a living organization, and must, therefore, come under this law. Let us see whether the fact confirms this deduction. Now, in all the long line, from the ascidian upwards to man, nature had supplied none but physical wants. Her children need food; she gives them each those senses and that conformation which enables them to get each their own food. They need safety: she uses much ingenuity in providing for their safety. She is, moreover, liberal. Their food is, in general, gained so easily, and their safety so well provided for, that their lives are full of enjoyment. Her care, however, is taken in the main for the species, and not for the individual. He enjoys his food because nature has taken loving care for the whole family to which he belongs; and she further takes care that that family shall continue to exist. If it perish, it is because by some change in temperature, or the like, the correspondence is destroyed between its faculties and its external position. Short of this, the ingenuity employed by nature in providing for the continued existence of every species of insect and animal is as wonderful as that employed by her in continuing vegetable life; and, as a rule, the lower the creature is in the scale of being, the more curious the contrivances used for its preservation.

Well, when we come to man we find these three leading necessities equally well provided for. Man is provided with the means for obtaining food, for providing for his safety, and for propagating his species. But, though nature's ends are the same, and reached with equal certainty, her means are, in the main, different. The animals are moved to gain their existence by their senses working upon their instincts. This is a great advance upon vegetable life. You had there neither senses nor instincts, but simply powers. But man rises above the animals as much as they transcend vegetables. He attains to these same ends of food, safety, and continued existence by the use of his reason.

Now, I wish you to notice this. Nature is not limited in her resources, nor confined to one method. She is not obliged to plant animals in the ground that they may suck up food through their legs; she can and does give them instincts by which they can get their food in a very different way. But perfect as these instincts are, nature can do still better. She can produce an animal capable of reasoning upon causes and effects, and who, therefore, provides for everything which he imagines to be good for him by setting those causes in motion which produce the desired effect.[24] But with the possession of reason there also goes the possession of what we call mental faculties. Not only can man by the use of his reason obtain food, provide for his safety, and continue his race, but higher ends are made possible for him, to be attained to by the use of this higher endowment. Man has the power of articulate speech, and upon this follows the power of learning to read, to write, and to cypher; and upon the power of doing these three things follows a plenitude of other powers. Now, I shall not stop to enquire how man gained these powers, whether by natural and sexual selection or not; but I venture to point out that there is a vast chasm between physical and intellectual powers. The most sensible monkey is a parody rather than an imitation of man, and the difference between the two is enormous.[25] The points of agreement serve rather to enable us to measure this interval, and see how wide it is, than to bridge it over. Now, let us suppose ourselves philosophers come, we will say, from the planet Jupiter, on a mission intrusted to us by the Jovians, to examine and report upon the nature of the creatures which people the four inferior planets, Terra, Venus, Mercury, and Mars. Of course, we should look upon the inhabitants of such small communities with contempt, but, being philosophers, we should not neglect anything because it was trifling. Well, when we came to Terra we should report that it was a very curious region, inhabited by a long scale of beings, each one fitted to its place, and that at their head there was a rather noxious, troublesome, and uppish creature called man, whose examination had caused us an infinity of trouble.

In examining this creature we should find that it shared in all the wants of those beneath him, but that it supplied its wants, not by the use of instincts, but of reason. Over and above, however, man's physical wants, we should find that he had mental wants; and with these wants faculties also, by which he could supply them. Supply all the physical wants of an animal, and having none besides, it will lie still for hours or days until hunger stirs it to renewed exertion. Supply all man's physical wants, and his mental wants then develop into full activity. Give him the lowest and basest drudgery; make him work morning, noon, and night in the meanest occupations, for the supply of merely physical necessities, and, though you can infinitely degrade, you cannot destroy his mental powers. He still thinks, still connects causes and effects. But our purpose will be best answered by taking the case of those whose faculties are most highly cultivated. Has nature supplied a proper field for the exercise of the mental powers, not merely of Fuegians, but of the most highly developed man? You know that she has. Take the senses which he has in common with the animals, but see what vast means have been provided by which he can make an intellectual use of them. What arts and sciences, painting, music, harmony, numbers, eloquence, have grown out of their use. As for our mental powers, think only of the vast number of ologies which are claiming admission into our very normal schools. Think only of all our learned Associations, our Royal Societies, our Social Congresses, our British Museums full of books, which have been written, and are waiting only to be read, and you must own that men do use their mental powers, and have means enough for a more ample use of them. Nature makes us use our mental powers to some extent. She encourages us to use them thoroughly and earnestly.

Use them we must. Man is placed in such a position that he must study what passes round him. Man learns by experience. Instincts are but slightly progressive. Unless brought into contact with man, the animals learn little—perhaps nothing. I do not doubt but that those huge monsters, whose remains we behold in geological museums, were the most dull and stupid creatures possible. I think this simply because I suppose that man did not then exist, and, therefore, that these monsters had nothing to waken them up out of their sluggish torpor. But scientific men[26] tell me that existing mammals actually have larger brains than their ancient tertiary prototypes of the same order. Let man enter the stage, and the instincts of animals are quickened. Nature did not create man without taking care to guard the inferior animals from his destructive powers. But man in himself, essentially, is at once progressive and retrogressive. Bound up with him is an infinite possibility of advance and decay. He is never stationary. Both individuals and communities are perpetually either ascending or descending in the scale, morally and intellectually. But this law of nature obliges man to perpetual mental effort under the usual penalty of degradation. We have not merely to advance, to win new ground. If this were all, at length we should have nothing to do. We have to win back lost ground. Our gains are, I hope, greater than our losses; but the progress of no community will ever be fast enough, continued enough, and assured enough, to justify the members of it in living in a fool's paradise. This, then, was our second point. The first was, that nature has provided us with a proper field for the exercise of our mental faculties; the second, that she imposes upon us the necessity of using them.

We may add, that the law of scientific progress also makes it certain that no advance of science will ever deliver us from the necessity of using our faculties. The valuable part of every science is its theory—the mental part. Facts and fossils are of no value, except as being the materials for thought. No geologist would care much for a discovery of fossils in agreement with an established theory, but if the theory were still debated, then every discovery that tended to prove or disprove it, would be canvassed with intelligent interest. The pure sciences can grow, I am well aware, only by additions. But then they are simply instrumental. They are to the mixed sciences what arithmetic is to the ordinary business of life. Logarithms, algebra, the integral and differential calculuses, are simply easy ways of doing difficult sums. It is a great thing, no doubt, for science to perfect its instruments and processes, but scientific progress lies in the mixed sciences themselves, and these are constantly undergoing modification. The spectrum analysis is largely modifying the science of astronomy. Deep sea dredging, and other fresh means of information, have so modified geology, that no one holds now that similar strata are necessarily of the same date. A vast cretaceous formation is probably going on at this very day in the bed of the Atlantic. (Huxley, "Lay Sermons," p. 206.) The law, then, of scientific progress is constant modification; fresh facts are discovered, new theories started, old theories revived, existing theories altered, recast, newly shaped. Should a science become, practically, complete and perfect, scientific men would care for it no longer. The manufacturer and merchant would then seize upon it. In this way what was once a problem in the mind of the student, becomes an article of use, comfort, and enjoyment in our daily lives. Meanwhile, new sciences spring up, and old sciences take new shape, and, as a matter of fact, so large has become the scientific domain, that no one man can master it. Division of labour has become as necessary here as in the manual crafts. We are no longer encyclopædists, but each one must stick to his own page in the great book of learning.

Many of these sciences relate to our social condition. And of these the importance and value every day rapidly increases. Good government largely depends upon knowledge of all those natural laws upon which moral and physical well-being depends. Upon good government follow increased wealth, active trade, higher wages, and larger consumption of commodities. Upon these follows increased population, and that population concentrated upon spots favourable for all this activity. And upon this follow new social difficulties; fresh problems arise to be solved, and new questions to occupy the mind both of the student and of the statesman. Unless solved, society will retrograde; it will suffer in health, in wealth, and morality; turbulence will take the place of quiet industry; and that community will decay. Here again nature provides a field for the employment of our faculties, and compels us to use them. If not there is the same penalty, degradation. I do not know how many geological periods it would take before, by the neglect of our powers, we could retrograde back to our ascidian progenitor; but I see everywhere around me the proofs that retrogression is as much a law of man's nature as progress. We can only continue what we are by using all our powers.[27] But I may have lingered over this part of my subject too long. No one perhaps will deny that man both can and must use his mental powers as thoroughly as an animal must use its instincts, and a plant its vegetative powers, or it will suffer for its neglect. Only remember that my argument has nothing to do with individuals; I am treating of man as a species, and investigating the general laws which regulate his well being. Well, now, has man any other powers than those already described? Has he merely physical powers to enable him to get food, and other bodily necessaries; and mental powers to enable him to read, write, and cypher? Is this all? You know that it is not all. There is another broad distinction between man and all the other inhabitants of this earth. He alone distinguishes between right and wrong.[28] Now if man possesses this faculty, however acquired, and by whatever name called, then if nature's laws are universal, he is both bound to use it, will suffer from not using it, and will have a proper field provided for its use. Nature gives no faculty without imposing an obligation of exercising it: an obligation, however, which rests in its full force upon the species, and upon the individual only as belonging to the species. Some powers every individual must use or he would die; there are other powers which, if he does not use, nature will be content with a lighter penalty. Far be it from me to affirm that every one here uses his reasoning powers. I hope he does; but if he does not use them, I am quite sure that nature will exact of him the penalty of stupidity. But the species must use them; if not, upon degradation would soon follow extinction. Nature, for instance, would not let man exist as a mere animal. If he did not use his reason, the instincts of other animals are so superior to his, that while they found food he would be unable to do so. Even if necessity quickened his instincts, he would yet have ceased to be a man, and would be retrograding back to the ascidian. To continue to be a man he must make some low use at all events of his mental powers. Now, can you establish any such difference between man's intellectual and moral powers, as will justify you, while acknowledging that you must use the one, in neglecting the other? Can you give any reason why you need not use the faculty which undoubtedly you possess of distinguishing between right and wrong, and the faculty, let us say, of "using the imagination in matters of science." I am sure you cannot. By not using your mental powers you will be in an inferior mental position; by not using your moral powers you will hold an inferior moral position.

But you may say the penalty is slight, and we will pay it. We will use our physical powers, and become grand animals and we will use our mental powers, and become grand intellectual men. Not men I answer. Add intellectuality to animality, and you merely get an intellectual animal. Your moral powers are an essential part of yourselves. Confessedly too, there is ample field for using them. The whole world is so constituted that morning, noon, and night, the question perpetually arises of right and wrong. You cannot take a step in life without conscience intervening. It is so inseparably a part of yourselves that constantly it acts as a mere instinct, and approves or condemns your conduct as spontaneously as your palate distinguishes between sweet and bitter. You may render your palate dull, so that you cannot taste what you eat and drink; you may render your conscience dull, but it has a strong recuperative force, and, after years of dullness, will awaken, and exercise again its judicial functions with stern and decisive energy. Struggle as much as you like, but the conclusion cannot be evaded, that you can distinguish between right and wrong, that you ought to do so, and that you must do so.

If so, what follows? I answer, the necessity of religion, and therefore of revelation. Resist as men will and do, they have but a choice between two alternatives. Either all this present state of things, in which every faculty has its appropriate field of exercise, and every external possibility has opposite to it an internal faculty; either all this is an illusion and deceit, a purposeless and objectless piece of jugglery;[29] or if it be a reality, then the existence in man of faculties, obliging him to distinguish between right and wrong, constitute him a responsible agent. If he is responsible, he is responsible to some one: and certain penalties are necessarily attached to the neglect, the misuse, and the violation of his moral powers. The person to whom man is responsible must be capable of forming an equitable judgment, and therefore must know the motives as well as the outward acts, and for this nothing less than omniscience will suffice. He must have the power of apportioning adequate rewards and punishments to human actions, which will need little less than omnipotence. And as no adequate reward or punishment follows in this life, there must be some other state in which men will be dealt with according to their true deserts. If not, then there exists in man a whole class of faculties, moral faculties, which seem to find in this present state of things an appropriate field for their exercise, but which man is under no necessity of using. A man who lives in the habitual violation of every moral obligation, but does so with discretion, may have a very large enjoyment of the things of this world: while generally a man whose conscience is tender, and whose life is regulated by the highest motives, necessarily and voluntarily abandons much, both of pleasure and prosperity. Nature cannot have so bungled her work. The highest possible exercise of the powers which she has given us must necessarily lead to the highest possible good. It does not matter to the argument whether conscience and your other moral faculties be natural or acquired. If nature endowed an ascidian with the power of acquiring moral faculties, it was bound to use them as soon as it had got them. The question whether you are bound to use your mental faculties does not depend in the least upon the question whether man is an improved monkey. You are bound to use them simply because you have them. So you are bound to live as a responsible being simply because you have the faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong. You know, too, that you act yourselves upon this principle. If any one were to push one of you out of your seat and take it himself, not only would you be angry, but our chairman would call in a policeman to expel the disturber, and give you your seat back again. Why? Because the man would have been doing wrong, and need not have done it; and because it was wrong you are angry and punish him. But can you stop there? There are things which we know to be wrong, but which hurt none but ourselves; things we know to be wrong, but which benefit society. A man may liberally support useful institutions from motives of ostentation, or as a bribe, if he is a candidate, let us say, for a seat in parliament. An act may be apparently right, but the inner motive wrong. Now, conscience judges of things absolutely; it condemns or approves of things, not as they seem, but as they really are: not by results, but by their intrinsic character. What is there which answers to this outside of man? Must there not be a judge who also judges men absolutely? You can find no such judge but God. Either, then, nature is a sham, and her laws not universal, and this present state of things a delusion, or there is a universal judge, and a future state in which reward and punishment will be meted out in strict accordance with the rightness and wrongness of human action. A being omniscient and almighty can alone judge actions absolutely in the same way as conscience judges us, both for our thoughts, words, and deeds.

I have chiefly spoken of conscience, but the argument takes in all man's moral and spiritual powers.[30] No man can doubt but that man has within him powers which exactly answer to religion outside of him. The power of faith is as much a faculty as that of sight; and so also is that instinct, I had almost called it, which makes a man ever turn away in discontent from the present to struggle for the future. And what is more, man's moral and religious faculties develop with advancing civilization just as his mental faculties do. The mental questions which agitate our minds would be entirely void of interest to a savage; the social difficulties which occupy the attention of our political economists and statesmen would be mere trash to a peasant: so, too, with religion. I do not see any reason why a race may not sink so low as to lose the very idea of a God; but I am sure that such a race would hold the very lowest place in the scale of humanity. Whatever round in the ladder of human progress you like to examine, I will make bold to say that you will find the religious and moral state of mankind there holding a very close relation to the degree of mental culture and civilization to which it has attained.

Now, the only thing that acts powerfully upon man's moral faculties is religion. I do not say that this ought or ought not to be so; all I assert is that it is so. Call, if you like, the great mass of your fellow men Philistines, and despise their low culture, but you will find nothing that acts powerfully upon these Philistines to give them culture, to raise, refine, and purify them, except religion. Conscience, too, holds a most direct and evident relation to religion. You will not find conscience amenable to reasoning. When virtue begins to reason, the proverb tells you it is lost. When conscience condemns, it is because the thing condemned is a sin against God; when it approves, it is because the thing done is absolutely right, and as God commanded. Conscience never asks whether a thing is a sin against society; it never troubles about consequences, knows nothing about political economy, or political morality either. It judges by a higher and absolute rule. By so doing it makes man a responsible agent absolutely, brings him into direct relation with God as the absolute judge, and renders necessary a more exact apportionment of rewards and punishments than exists at present. There must be some other state of existence in which man will be judged in the same way as now he judges himself, and in which the natural effects of this judgment will be fully carried out.

But, if there is thus a future judgment, and a state in which happiness and misery will follow as the natural[31] results of our actions here, man will require a certain amount of knowledge concerning this judgment. By the possession of conscience and other religious faculties, man holds a definite relation towards God. Plainly the most tremendous results may follow from this relation, and man ought to have some sure knowledge of these results. Now it is conceivably possible that God might have given us this knowledge by means of the light of nature, as we call it. But He has not. Confessedly natural religion is neither clear enough nor certain enough to affect powerfully the masses. Man is not a quiet, orderly, neutral sort of being; he bears about with him a nature fraught and fully charged with the most dangerous passions. Reason, with its prudential maxims, has never done much to restrain these passions. To take, then, the lowest possible ground. As nature has given us moral qualities, I suppose that moral excellence is a thing as necessarily to be attained to as physical and mental excellence. But while nature has provided ample means for attaining to the two last, she will not, without a revelation, have provided sufficient means for the attainment of the first. By the aid of religion, about as many men probably attain to moral excellence, as by other natural means attain to physical and mental excellence.[32] Without religion nature will have broken down. You would have universally a state of things like that in ancient Greece—one Plato, surrounded by the mass leading the most grossly sensual life.

Nature cannot develop any being higher than herself, nor endow it with wants which she cannot supply. If nature develops intellect, morality, religion, then that power which developed these faculties must also be intellectual, moral, religious. What, then, can this power in nature be but the working of God? Out of nothing comes nothing. The effect cannot be greater than the cause. The existence of man, with his mental, moral, and religious powers, forbids us to believe that that which caused man to exist can be less possessed of these powers than he is. Infinitely higher he may be, lower he cannot be. And as surely as man's physical and mental wants are provided for by that power which called these wants into being, so surely will man's moral and religious wants be supplied.

They are not supplied by the light of nature; nothing then remains but revelation. Into the formal proof of revelation I must not enter; all that devolved upon me was to show the à priori probability, or at least possibility, of a revelation. I have endeavoured to show this by a consideration of what man is, viewed simply as a natural being, and by the consideration of his natural wants. I have not taken into consideration any of the additional knowledge given us in the Bible concerning man. I have treated him in much the same way as I might one of the creatures in the Zoological Gardens, if I had been asked to study it in order that I might see what its wants were, and tell the keeper what to give it to maintain it in the full possession of its powers. No doubt it would have helped me if I had been told what and where the creature had been before. I should then have had no difficulty in explaining and accounting for everything. Such knowledge, however, even revelation does not give us, because it is not indispensable. It gives us that only which is necessary for the supply of our wants.

Even with this knowledge my argument is not concerned; but certain general principles about revelation follow from what I have laid down. And first, revelation has nothing to do with our physical state. Reason is quite sufficient to teach us all those sanitary laws by which our bodies will be maintained in healthful vigour. If the Bible condemns drunkenness, gluttony, and the like, it does so not for sanitary reasons, but for moral reasons, because they are sins. So revelation has nothing to do with our mental powers; whatever we can attain to by our mental powers we are to attain to by them. Physical and metaphysical science alike lie remote from the object-matter of revelation. Because God has, in the Bible, given us revelation in an informal way, in order, perhaps, to commend it to our entire nature, people often forget that its proper object-matter is simply the moral relation in which man stands to God, especially with reference to a future state of being. Religious men forget this. They often take up an antagonistic position to science, and try to make out systems of geology and astronomy and anthropology from the Bible and by these judge all that scientific men say. Really the Bible never gives us any scientific knowledge in a scientific way. If it did, it would be leaving its own proper domain. When it does seem to give us any such knowledge, as in the first chapter of Genesis, there is a very important differentia about it. What it says has always reference to man. The first chapter of Genesis does not tell us how the earth was formed absolutely; geology ought to tell us that. It tells us how it was prepared and fitted for man. Look at the work of the fourth day. Does any man suppose that the stars were set in the expanse of heaven absolutely that men might know what time of year it was? But that is their special service, and in old time a most important service for man. To the geologist man is just as much and just as little as a trilobite or a megatherium. To the student of the Bible man is everything, and the first chapter of Genesis teaches him that man was the cause of all other terrestrial creation, the sum and crown of the Creator's work.[180] But if believers mix up science and revelation, so do the students of physical science. No sooner is a theory started, than it is immediately compared with what the Bible says, or is supposed to say. Now, no doubt, the comparison between the teachings of revelation and science is inevitable. Whatever is mixed up with revelation, owing to the manner in which God has been pleased to bestow it, must, at least, be true. It would be impossible for us to accept the authority of the Bible upon those points in which we cannot judge of its truth, if in those points in which we are competent judges we found it erroneous. The teachings, therefore, of science and of revelation must be compared; but in this comparison not only must we remember that it is not the object of the Bible to teach science, and that, as it speaks to all people at all times, it must use popular language, but also that the comparison must be made, not with the floating theories of the hour, but only with established truths. If the wisest geologist of our days could show that there was an exact agreement between geology and the Bible, it would rather disprove than prove its truth. For, as geology is a growing science, it would prove the agreement of the Bible with that which is receiving daily additions, and is constantly undergoing modification, and ten years hence the two would be at hopeless variance. At the same time there is a good side to the discussion, and the theologian especially is the gainer. In the present day the attack upon revelation draws its weapons from our increased knowledge of physical science, of philology, and of history, and the theologian can no longer neglect these studies. I have no scruple in saying that I look with pride upon what my countrymen have done, and are doing, in enlarging the bounds of our scientific knowledge, even if I do not always approve of their spirit, or accept their conclusions; and I am quite sure theologians must study, intelligently and dispassionately, all those branches of knowledge which are brought into contact with revelation, or they will lose their influence over the intellect of the country. It is no use treating physical science as a bugbear. Let our theologians master it, and they will find it a manly study, which will give their minds breadth, will teach them what are the difficulties which press heavily on many thoughtful minds, and which must be fairly met. An opposition between an old science like theology and new sciences there must be: but let both sides remember that revelation was never intended to teach us anything that we could learn by the use of our natural faculties, and that what the Bible teaches must be compared not with floating and probable theories, but with proved theories. These proved theories will, I believe, fall into their place in due course of time, as easily as Galileo's theory about the revolution of the earth round the sun. If not, I do not see how the claims of the Bible to be the Word of God can be maintained: for I cannot believe that there is any chasm between the teachings of God in nature and in revelation. But I think it perfectly possible that men may misinterpret and misunderstand both one and the other.

I have detained you too long. But I must make one more remark. If the proper object matter of revelation is that knowledge, which being necessary for us as moral agents, was yet unattainable by our natural powers, then reason is no judge of what revelation teaches. There may be in our relations to God, things which we never should have expected: deep truths opening onwards into mysteries past our present finite comprehension. If everything had been plain, easy, commonplace, revelation would not have been needed. Nevertheless, reason holds a very high office with respect to revelation. In a matter of so high consequence, as whether God has spoken to us or not, we are bound to examine most scrupulously the evidence upon which the fact of the revelation rests. And this examination involves an enquiry into the teachings of revelation. The existence of mysteries in a revelation is reasonable: the existence of immorality in it would be fatal to its claims. For if the scientific basis for my belief in the gift of a revelation is the existence in me of conscience, and of moral faculties which make me a responsible being, I am left absolutely without a basis for a revelation which makes me violate my conscience. A revelation which degrades my moral and spiritual powers is as much against nature as anything that degraded my physical or mental powers. If religion be true, it must ennoble, elevate, purify, and perfect me, here as far as the present condition of my existence permits, entirely in that other state to which our present responsibility points, provided, of course, that I submit myself to its teachings. I know of no way by which I can make this examination except by reason and experience. And I hold this further, because I hold that a true religion must be commensurate with the whole of man. It must make him better physically, mentally, morally, and spiritually, and consecrate all his powers to God.

I am only too well aware that much which I have said has been put in a feeble and confused manner. Much also necessary for the support and elucidation of the argument had to be omitted because of the necessity of compressing it into so short an essay; but I trust that the main line of thought is clear, namely, that religion outside of us stands in so plain a relation to what we are internally, that either it is real, or this whole state of things is a delusion. Man, without a revelation, and therefore without religion, is the only one thing of all that exist upon the face of the earth that is a bungle,[33] a failure, and a mistake.

THE
NATURE AND VALUE
OF THE
MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY TO CHRISTIANITY.

BY
JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D.,
KENSINGTON.

MIRACLES.

One of the most touching narratives in the New Testament relates to a want of faith in miracles. It is said that when Thomas was told of his Master's resurrection, he replied, "Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe." He was not denounced for this. No word of withering scorn, or cutting ridicule, or threatening anger, fell on the ear of the doubting disciple. But evidence was offered. "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing." As far as rebuke appeared, it was only by implication, in words respecting those whose faith is of keener eye, and swifter foot: "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

I think that every one who speaks of miracles to doubting minds should from this narrative take a lesson. Surely the gist and purpose of it is, that we should distinguish between intellectual difficulty and moral prejudice, and deal patiently and convincingly with honest seekers after truth. Sometimes the subject before us has been so handled as to drive the unbeliever into deeper unbelieving—I would rather strive to work upon a little faith, and make it more.

I.

I am to speak to you respecting the nature of the miraculous testimony to Christianity. My business is with mighty works, recorded in the New Testament as having been wrought for the purpose of testifying to a Divine mission. No definition of their character in relation to physical law can anywhere be found in this ancient record. They are not spoken of as violations of law, or as suspensions of law, or as interferences with law, or as contradictions to law. They are described, not on the side of their physical nature, but on the side of their moral signification. They are depicted, not in their connection with the obvious order of the material universe, or with any hidden powers and principles of a higher and harmonious description; but in their connection with Him who claimed to be the Redeemer of mankind, who came, according to His own words, to seek and save that which was lost. They are denominated "wonders," startling occurrences, things contrary to common experience; and "signs,"—not mere marvels bursting idly on the public gaze, and exciting in a multitude of spectators a barren curiosity, but signs,—replete with an ulterior meaning, and testifying to the character and work of Him through whom they were accomplished.

There is no necessity, then, for us at the outset to define a miracle on the physical side of it—to call it a violation of law, or a suspension of law—an interference with it, or a contradiction to it. In other words, there is no need imposed by the conditions of our argument, to inquire into the mode in which such a phenomenon can be produced. It is enough to show that it did occur, and to dwell upon the religious significancy of its occurrence first to the witnesses, and next to ourselves. What is the exact position which miracles may be thought to occupy as wonders in the universe, whether, through breaking in upon common experience, they are referable to the operation of occult laws, known and controlled at a fitting moment by the mysterious touch of the wonder-worker; or whether they are to be considered as resulting simply from the immediate fiat of the Supreme will, are questions which may with advantage be relegated for consideration elsewhere.

1. But, at the very threshold of our inquiry we are met by the assertion, that a miracle, however defined, is in itself simply impossible. Impossible! In what sense impossible? Does it mean impossible to man, or impossible to God? Impossible to man, of course, it is. That impossibility enters into the popular idea of a miracle. Man has no such control over nature as to be able to produce one. But if it be said a miracle is impossible to God, such an impossibility involves the extension of human inability to God Himself. It involves either the idea, that nature has ever been independent of God, or the idea, that if produced by Him, He is no longer Lord of His own works—this Lordship having been surrendered by His will, or having escaped from His hands. Summarily disposing of this gross anthropomorphism, we find behind it the dogma of Spinoza, that there is nothing transcendental anywhere, no transcendental beginnings, no transcendental interpositions; for God and nature are one through the eternities. In the wake of Spinoza's philosophy follows the modern axiom—"to recognise the impossibility even of any two material atoms subsisting together without a determinate relation—of any action of the one on the other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, without reference to a physical cause—of any modification whatsoever in the existing conditions of material agents, unless through the invariable operation of a series of eternally impressed consequences, following in some necessary chain of orderly connexion."[34]

Here, in limine, before examining this principle, let me observe, once for all, that miracles do by no means cast any slur upon the settled order of nature, as if it were faulty and imperfect, and required correction or supplement for effectuating its proper ends—as frail constructions in engineering departments of human contrivance need subsequent repairs. Nature is perfect enough for her own ends; miracles are introduced for other and higher purposes. This requires to be borne in mind throughout our entire discussion.

But to come to the antagonist principle, that there is a development in nature through the agency of physical laws, apart from an original Creator and an everlasting Lord. I do not say—far from it—that the principle denies the existence of such a Creator and Lord, but it supposes at least that the physical order of the universe is fixed in such a sense, as to have ever excluded from it the action, directly or indirectly, of a Divine will, beyond the inflexible maintenance of ordinary operations. It is said, "The enlarged critical and inductive study of the natural world cannot but tend powerfully to evince the inconceivableness of imagined interruptions of natural order, or supposed suspensions of the laws of matter, and of that vast series of dependent causation which constitutes the legitimate field for the investigation of science, whose constancy is the sole warrant for its generalization." In reply to this it may be fairly urged that science, whilst she maintains the invariable sequence of causes and effects, and the uninterrupted order of physical events, is a prophetess of truth and wisdom. She enunciates lessons bound up with the welfare of the race. Thus far there is no antagonism between her and religion. She can, without abandonment of her principles, nay, in the act of carrying them out, officiate as a priestess at the altar of God; nor is there anything in the position for which she stipulates contrary to the claims of Revelation. For Revelation, in appealing to miracles, supposes the ordinary course of physical phenomena to be inviolable, and no book more than the Bible exhibits the normal constancy of natural agencies. But when science pronounces as impossible all such signs and wonders as are recorded in Scripture, she steps out of her province. In her own province she may justly affirm there are no signs of miracles; she may sweep her telescope over the fields of the sky, and ply her microscope amidst the growths of the earth, and say, I can see no traces anywhere but of inflexible law. These realms of existence are full of order. It is the perfection of their beauty, that they are free from violations, suspensions, disturbances, and interferences. But to say this—and I fully concur in it—is not to demonstrate that the Scriptures relate impossibilities. To do so, philosophy must pass beyond the range of physical observation, since there no place can be found for working out the desired demonstration. Philosophers do not always remember how difficult it is to prove a negative. Showing that certain things are, they are apt to slide into a belief that therefore certain other things cannot be, the conclusion proving on logical examination a simple non sequitur. Doubtless it is a fact, that we can detect nowhere in nature a provision made for producing miracles such as come under our review in this lecture, that no prophecy nor hint of them can be discerned throughout her measured realms; but this is a very different thing from saying, that nature teaches the belief of them to be absurd. So far from its being absurd, there may, after all, be found in nature something analogous to a miracle. In nature there are distinct worlds, worlds between which there are gaps and gulfs. I do not dispute that there are striking approximations in the phenomena of some realms to the phenomena of others; but there are also broad deep spaces, here and there, never bridged over by the discoveries of science. Hence, "an animal," as you have been told already, in the words of Hegel, "is a miracle for the vegetable world." It is a new creation in some way, and a new creation in any way is a miracle. After wandering amongst rocks, we find in plants a new world. Organized life is so; so also, compared with animal instinct, is the mind of man, with its spiritual reason, and its moral consciousness.

Not only do Coleridge, Kant, and Plato regard man's highest faculty as essentially different from the mere adaptive understanding of an animal nature; but what is still more remarkable, Aristotle himself, whose turn of mind was so different from theirs, differentiates man from other creatures on the ground of his being endowed with the faculty of reason. In his work on the Generation of Animals, he says that there is no resource except to believe, that the reason has no affinity with the material elements out of which the human embryo is formed, but that it comes from without, and that it alone, of all the component parts of man, is divine.[35] Thus, in the opinion of one of the greatest philosophers the world has ever known, the line of demarcation between man and all lower creatures is broad and clear, a line which in the simple order and development of nature they could never cross. The superior attributes of humanity, according to him, come from without; here, then, amongst the component parts of humanity is something divine. In other words, we have a new world; a new creation. I do not say there is a strict parallel between any new race or species in nature and the occurrence of individual miracles on rare occasions, but I do say that there is enough of resemblance between these two descriptions of change to exempt a believer in both of them from the charge of being absurd.

Furthermore, there are in human minds varieties of power of an astonishing description: although there be faculties common to all men, the vigour of those faculties in some cases is such as perfectly to eclipse the vigour of them in others. The superiority of individual minds, whose works have filled the world with wonder, is such as to leave behind, at an unapproachable distance, the ordinary measure of human endowment. Certain intellects (I need not name them) have long exercised a formative power upon the civilized portions of our race. They have been as crystals inserted in a solution, and other crystals have received shape from them. Whence have come these typical energies in the intellectual world? No law of development will account for a resplendent genius now and then flashing on the world; for the appearance of a master mind, after humanity has kept on a low level through generation after generation; for the ascent again of gifted spirits into the highest heaven of invention, after another lapse into mere mediocrity. No known laws of causality account for such facts in the realms of intellectual existence. If, in the case of man, as compared with other animals, the difference, as Aristotle says, is something which comes from without, the same may be said with respect to the difference between ordinary mortals and William Shakespere or John Milton. There is forced upon us the conviction, that these stars which dwell apart are kindled by fires burning in superhuman spheres. I do not say, in this case, any more than in the others I have cited, that we find an exact parallel to a miracle; but I do maintain, that we discover here a kind of inspiration which, like the miraculous, transcends all known laws, and brings to mind what was said by the first of those just named:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

What is called physical science must change her name, and renounce her office, and assume functions of another order, before she can pronounce a peremptory negative upon the point in controversy.[36] Physical science needs to become metaphysical, and to pass into fields of abstract reasoning in order to the utterance of a universal dictum. To this kind of mental employment in itself I make no objection; for the science of merely physical nature, without any outlook into higher regions, keeps the soul in humiliating imprisonment. The excursions of thought, however, now before us are regarded in some quarters under the singular delusion of being strictly scientific, whilst employed in devising a theory of the universe which excludes the constant control of a personal God, an Almighty will. The assaults on what is miraculous can be carried on only with metaphysical weapons. The facts of physical nature do not supply them; only from theories of physical nature, taking a metaphysical form, can they be gathered. Even Positivism, with all its doubtfulness and denial—strange contradiction that—must, in order to deny the possibility of miracles, build up a wall to shut them out, by trenching first on ground beyond its own domain. Pure Positivism, consistently with itself, is not competent to contradict the existence of the supernatural; it can but leave it an open question. The common method of distinctly denying miracles is one involving either some atheistic or pantheistic principle. Assume—and it is but an assumption—that matter is eternal and self-sufficient; that natural laws have not originated in, or are not administered by, a personal will; and thus assuming what prepares for, if it does not necessitate, some atheistic or pantheistic hypothesis, you can plausibly maintain that the wonders of which we speak are utterly inconceivable. But, as you see, it is not physical science simply considered which brings out this result; the result comes through adding to physical science what is really a metaphysical element.

At what a tremendous cost, it may be observed by the way, is such a result achieved. The philosophy of universal necessity places man in the same predicament as it does simple matter. If all nature excludes voluntary control, and is subject only to an iron rule of invariable succession, then man also must himself be incapable of voluntary control, whether it comes from a supreme will or from his own. Thus the warfare which assails miracles, threatens to destroy all ideas of freedom and moral responsibility. And this dark foreshadowing is not concealed. "Step by step," we are confidently and calmly told, "the notion of evolution by law is transforming the whole field of our knowledge and opinion. Not the physical world alone is now the domain of inductive (?) science, but the moral, the intellectual, and the spiritual are being added to the empire. It is the crown of philosophy to see the immutable even in the complex action of human life."[37] But when all assumptions are denied, the whole question presents another aspect. Given the fundamental distinction between things physical and things moral; given the higher nature of man, the personal existence of God, a moral element in the Divine rule, the immortality of the human soul, and the present vicinity of invisible spiritual realms; and, immediately, miracles wrought by the Divine will for men's moral welfare are completely removed out of the sphere of the impossible.

Positivism, Atheism, and Pantheism are considered in other lectures of this course, and therefore it is not my office to examine them. To what has been said by the Archbishop of York and the Rev. Mr. Jackson, and to what may be said by the Rev. Dr. Rigg, I must refer my hearers.

I would only observe in passing, what, indeed, I have hinted at already, that it puzzles me beyond description to conceive how, by any course of natural evolution, independent of the introduction of a new force by an overruling power, the phenomena of the human will with its morally creative energy for good and evil could have been produced. To solve, on the principle of pure development, the problem of the genesis of that mysterious faculty, is an insuperable task. If we may speak of what is inconceivable—and scientific men set us the example—we should say the existence of volition in man, with its moral accompaniments, is utterly inconceivable, apart from belief in a Divine will, of which ours is the offspring.

It appears, then, that science really presents no antecedent grounds for rejecting miracles, and that if we believe in a personal God, the presumed impossibility melts away. This point has been conceded by one of the masters of modern reasoning. "A miracle," as was justly remarked by Brown, "is no contradiction to the law of cause and effect; it is a new effect, supposed to be produced by the introduction of a new cause. Of the adequacy of that cause, if present, there can be no doubt, and the only antecedent improbability which can be ascribed to the miracle, is the improbability that any such cause existed."[38] 2. When we have disposed of the preliminary objection which, in some way or other, says miracles are impossible, we are met by another objection, namely, that they are immensely improbable. Hume's ingenious position,[39]—that miracles are contrary to human experience, that no amount of human testimony is sufficient to establish them, and that it is far more likely men should be deceived or mistaken, than that such events as miracles must be, could ever take place,—has been made to do abundant service in this controversy; very little, if anything, has been added by those who have persistently used the argument, to improve its form or to increase its plausibility. One of its latest modifications is, that incidents out of the common course of things, said to happen in the present day, are by all of us sceptically regarded, that supernatural pretensions are felt by us to be inadmissible, and that where we are compelled to allow the honesty of witnesses, if they affirm anything involving a miraculous nature, we at once dispose of the whole matter by saying 'there must be a mistake somewhere.' Undoubtedly it is true that miracles are contrary to common experience. They must be so, or they would not be what they are. If they were of frequent occurrence, if they had happened in the history of the world so often as to become familiar to mankind, they would change their character completely. Their nature and purpose, in the view of those who receive them, is such as to render it necessary that we should bear this in mind. But to allege that they are contrary to human experience, taken in the widest point of view, is to beg the question at issue, a fact remarked a thousand times. That they are not contrary to the experience of certain persons who lived eighteen hundred years ago, is what Christians affirm; to say that they are, is illogically to cut the controversy short, and, by a general denial of everything of the kind, to put out of court the very case about to be tried, in support of which there are credible witnesses waiting to give evidence. The question of probability must be looked at all round. The circumstances under which any alleged wonders may have happened must be taken into account, before we pronounce upon their probability or improbability. When extraordinary things, coloured with a supernatural tinge, are related to us as having occurred without any assignable purpose, or only for some sectarian or party end, in connection with beliefs long cherished and avowed, of course we look on them suspiciously; giving to the authorities relating the narratives, credit for integrity and truthfulness, we naturally say 'there must be a mistake somewhere.' And, no doubt, the general culture of the present age, however superficial that culture may be, makes us far less ready than our fathers were, to endorse popular tales of wonder. There is a salutary scepticism which grows out of extensive knowledge. Truth is of such immense value, that we should not be indifferent to it in the smallest communications and concernments of life. Most assuredly any wayward, eccentric, unmeaning, and useless departure from the common course of things, tending only to shake our faith in nature,—as if men might gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles, as if barley being sown, wheat should spring up, or an apple tree by a sudden freak should bear oranges,—would deserve to be stigmatized as unworthy of belief. But the wonders in question come under another category. They are represented in the history which has recorded them, not only as being exceptional incidents in themselves, but as having been accomplished under exceptional circumstances. They are not waifs and strays on the stream of time, floating no one knows why and whither; but growths rooted in what appears as a unique system of moral instruction and improvement, designed by the loving Father of spirits for His lost children. They do not produce what may be called a disturbance of nature—that is, a throwing things in the physical world out of gear, so that men are thereby puzzled to make out what nature is, and how far it may be trusted. The documents which contain our miraculous chronicles attest the immutability of Him who is the King of nature, and the unchangeable foundation of His government and law, with a pre-eminent luminousness and with an unparalleled force.

The wonders chronicled were avowedly wrought for purposes of the highest order; and here, again, we fall back upon the distinction between what is physical and what is moral. Those purposes of the highest order to which we refer are moral. They bear on the noblest destinies of humanity, and they link themselves with the principles of natural religion, with the being and sway of a mighty, wise, and gracious God, with our conscience and responsibility, and with the future existence of the soul. Natural religion, though it speaks not a word of miracles, though it gives no prophecies of their advent, yet prepares for their appearance so far, that its teachings, fairly considered, cut off all antecedent unlikelihood of their occurrence. For natural religion suggests the desirableness of revealed religion, and revealed religion is only another name for supernatural interposition.

In a lecture upon Science and Revelation, by the Dean of Canterbury, it has been shown that man's moral nature, man's religious susceptibilities, render religion a necessity for the supply of his deepest wants; but that what is called natural religion is not clear enough, nor certain enough, to affect the generality of our race. Revelation, then, it may be fairly argued, looking at man, is a desideratum, looking at God, is a probability; and Revelation, being obviously a supernatural bestowment, seems to imply some authentication of itself, in part at least, by means of evidence corresponding with its own supernatural origin and character.

The conditions under which Scripture miracles are said to have been performed must be kept in view when we are told they are improbable. They were not performed in one continued series by a succession of Thaumaturgists; but they are found grouped together in certain clusters. As science indicates particular epochs of the energizing power of nature, so the Bible records particular epochs of an energizing power above nature.

The first great cluster of Bible wonders we find gathered round the Lawgiver of Israel; the second round the great Reformer of God's ancient Church; the third round Him who is spoken of as The Word made flesh, who dwelt among us, and who imparted to His apostles miraculous powers akin to His own. Miracles, for the most part, are halos of divine light encircling three grand names—Moses, Elijah, Jesus,—the last the greatest of the three.

Physical wonders we meet with in company with spiritual ones—wonders in outward nature in company with wonders in the great soul-world, of which sensible things are the types and shadows. In other words, miracles occur in connection with inspiration, and, whilst marvels startle the eye, new truths or new applications of truth are addressed to the mind. In harmony with facts in the intellectual universe already noticed, resembling the exceptional illuminations of genius which at intervals have flashed on the rest of mankind,—like the lightning that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, and shineth unto the other part under heaven,—souls inspired with a grand moral message have come forth from the secret place of the Most High; and it has been in the pathway of these inspired souls that physical miracles have started up; rather, it has been by their hands that physical miracles have been wrought.

There have been surprising coincidences in modern times between the wonderful in nature and the wonderful in history; for example, between the sailing of the invincible Spanish Armada, and the storm which strewed the shores of Great Britain with its ponderous wrecks—between the march of Napoleon's army and the winter's snow which blinded, benumbed, and destroyed so many thousands. The connection is unexplained except on the principle of a Divine providence.[40] And so in ancient times there were coincidences between the lightning and thunder of Sinai, and the legislative wisdom of Moses—between the fire that fell on Carmel, and the reforming zeal of Elijah. The connection is explicable only on the principle of these men having been the internunciators of the Divine will. This explication is strengthened by what they did with their own fingers or their own lips.

It may be considered as entrenching too much on the domain of doctrine to speak in this lecture of the Incarnation; but I would venture to say thus much, that Jesus appears on the face of the evangelical narratives, as the Son of God, in a sense in which no other being can be rightly called so; that in the opinions of early Christendom, the lowest as well as the highest, He was esteemed as a supernatural Person;[41] and that, by common consent, amidst diversities of theological sentiment, it is acknowledged, never man spake like this man, or lived like this man, or died like this man, or was like this man. And being, by the perfection of His moral character, and by the purpose of His benevolent mission, a truly exceptional person, it is only in keeping with the first blush, and with the deeper study of His wondrous life, to believe in signs and wonders attending His earthly career, showing whence He came, and illustrating what He came to do. Christ Himself is the greatest of wonders in the history of the world. No other approaches Him in wisdom, love, beautifulness, and glory. In more senses than one His name is "above every name." Taking the four Gospels together, the Incarnation of the Word is associated with a supernatural birth. The miracle in the spiritual world of the manifestation of God in Jesus Christ, is coupled with the miracle in the physical world of the Virgin's conception. If Christianity be more than the republication of natural religion, if it be the revelation of God's redeeming love, it involves a miracle as the very starting-point of the process; and the unfolding of the idea in the New Testament includes a divine manifestation, which is a miracle in history, and a divine birth, which is a miracle in nature.[42] His advent in the world comes out in the four Gospels as a central sunlike marvel, and therefore it seems no improbability, but rather the clearest of all probabilities, that around Him there should revolve a planetary circle of miracles.

Difficulties are needlessly created by forgetfulness of the character ascribed to this extraordinary Person. To argue as to what He did, or as to what He did not do, without a recognition of the actual One painted in the Gospels, is really to argue about another Christ, not the one whom Christians follow.

In accordance with the view I have taken, is the manner in which the New Testament miracles are narrated. It seems assumed that such things might be expected in the wake of such a personage as the Son of God. They are not introduced as a procession of facts challenging supreme admiration. No flourish of trumpets heralds their march; but they follow as the fitting and humble retinue of Him who walked the earth its undisputed Master. The Evangelists write as men who were not astounded at what their Master did, because they were so filled with reverence and admiration, at the thought of what their Master was.

Having considered the antecedent objections made to miracles, we are now prepared to look at what is really the nature of the miraculous testimony afforded to Christianity. And here, for the sake of simplifying the argument, I shall confine myself to the miracles ascribed to Christ. Faith in His miracles will lead to faith in the miracles of His apostles. If it be granted, as we contend from what has been said it ought to be, that this is a case in which historical proof is admissible, then it is impossible to find stronger historical proof than comes to hand in support of the truth of the evangelical narratives. The historical proof, as such, has of late been comparatively little impugned; the assaults made on the prior credibility of supernatural facts being the main opposition with which believers in Christianity have to contend. That opposition overcome, and the validity of competent witnesses, as to the question at issue, established, the course is free for an accumulation of evidence, such as Dr. Lardner, with rare erudition, has piled up in his volumes on the Credibility of the Gospel History: such as Archdeacon Paley, with unique ingenuity, and with singular felicity of arrangement and illustration, has condensed in his view of the Evidences of Christianity.[43] The works now mentioned do not, it must be confessed, supply all that is wanted for the settlement of the question, according to the phase it assumes at present. But when scientific and metaphysical difficulties of modern creation have been grappled with and removed, the array of pagan and Christian testimonies in support of the original credibility of the Evangelists, as collected by these and other writers, comes to render service of immense value. It is more than any one has yet attempted, to overturn, by citation against citation, criticism against criticism, argument against argument, the bulwarks of historical defence built up by the researches of learned advocates. Indeed, the early historical evidence all goes one way. It is evidence without counter-evidence.

And to pass for a moment to foreign literature. After the endeavours of Strauss and others to resolve much of the Gospel story into myths of a later age, and of Rénan, to construct out of the original documents a French philosophical romance, we are provided with the works of Ebrard and Pressensé, who have vindicated the truth of the New Testament story.

It would be idle to attempt, within the compass of this lecture, any outline of the mass of matter brought together in this service. But I may be allowed to indicate that it may be arranged in three divisions. First, the concessions of the Jews. Talmudical writings imply that Jesus of Nazareth did many mighty works. The Toldoth Jeschu relates a number of things, such as raising the dead, healing lepers, and restoring the lame. It represents people as falling down before Him, exclaiming, "Truly Thou art the Son of God."[44] The Christian miracles are allowed, but they are attributed to magic. "There can be no doubt," says Whately, "that this must have been (as our sacred writers tell us it was) what the adversaries of Jesus maintained from the first. For if those who lived on the spot in His time had denied or doubted the facts of the miracles, and had declared that the accounts of them were false tales, and that no miracles had ever really been wrought, we may be sure that the same would have been said ever after by their descendants."[45] Secondly, the admissions of heathens. The extracts from Celsus in Origen afford an abridged history of Jesus Christ, and acknowledge that He did many marvellous things. Celsus explains the fact by saying, Jesus went into Egypt, and having made trial of powers practised there, returned highly elated, and pronounced Himself a God.[46] Porphry speaks of Christian miracles as wrought by poor rustics through magical arts.[47] Julian does not contradict them when he contemptuously affirms, that Jesus did nothing in His lifetime worthy of remembrance, unless any one thinks it a mighty matter to heal lame and blind people, and exorcise demons in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany.[48] To these heathen admissions, which are of considerable value, are to be added, thirdly, the affirmations of Christians. Miracles are asserted by them in manifold forms and in manifold writings. The Fathers follow in the wake of Apostles and Evangelists; and, be it remembered, each New Testament author who testifies to these superhuman achievements is an independent witness, so that their statements bear the value of as many concurrent proofs: and if it should be said that, because they were Christians, they are partial witnesses, on the other hand it can be said that some of the Fathers, and all the New Testament writers, had become so, contrary to former habits and prejudices, in part, at least, through the very force of miracles, and that too at the cost of extraordinary self-sacrifice and suffering.

I have not sufficient space to exhibit adequately the argument for the credibility of the New Testament witnesses. I must, however, observe that the force has not departed from the old-fashioned method of stating the case, namely, that you must accept them as competent and satisfactory; or you must believe either that they were dishonest men, intending to deceive, or that they were dupes of their own or of other people's fancies. I am disposed to extend the dilemma, and to say, that there is a third supposition, growing out of the junction of these two, the supposition (according to a not uncommon occurrence in the mysteries of human nature) that the witnesses might be partly the victims of delusion, and partly the inventors of fiction, that credulity and imagination might be both at work, the result being a fabrication of miracles, having no basis, or but an exceedingly slender one, in facts occurring before men's eyes. With these alternatives under our view, the inquiry is, Which shall we apply to the witnesses of the miracles of Christ? Rénan has applied the composite supposition to the witnesses of the resurrection. "On the Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene first came very early to the tomb. The stone was displaced from the opening, and the body was no longer in the place where they had laid it. At the same time the strangest rumours were spread in the Christian community. The cry, 'He is risen,' quickly spread amongst the disciples. Love caused it to find ready credence everywhere." "Such was the impression He had left in the hearts of His disciples, and of a few devoted women, that during some weeks more, it was as if He were living and consoling them. Had His body been taken away, or did enthusiasm, always credulous, create afterwards the group of narratives by which it was sought to establish faith in the resurrection? In the absence of opposing documents this can never be ascertained. Let us say, however, that the strong imagination of Mary Magdalene played an important part in this circumstance. Divine power of love! Sacred moments in which the passion of one possessed gave to the world a resuscitated God!" No one is more ready than I am to do justice to the extraordinary literary merits of the "Vie de Jésus," its lucid style, its descriptive power, its manifold charms; but I cannot conceal my amazement that the author, with his exquisite genius, should adopt such a travestied rendering of the noblest of Bible stories. There are no documents, as he confesses, to work upon but the four Gospels; and from these Gospels it distinctly appears that, so far from the witnesses produced being of the character he indicates, so far from their love snatching at anything within reach, however airy, out of which to weave a web of wonders, there were men amongst them slow of heart to believe what the prophets had written, and what Jesus had said about the resurrection; men who counted the report of that resurrection, when they first heard of it, as an idle tale,—one of whom even would not yield to sight itself, but demanded to touch the nail-prints in the holy palms, and to thrust his hand into the sacred side. And as to the women, when they came to the sepulchre on the third day, it was not to hail a risen Jesus, but to anoint a buried one. That persons represented by the historians as burdened with doubts, and fears, and unbelief, and demanding demonstrative evidence, should have been finally convinced, and should have staked their all upon that conviction, removes them for ever utterly beyond all reasonable suspicion of dreaming strangely coloured dreams of their Lord's risen life,—to say nothing of collusion and fraud,—and places them at once amongst witnesses, who well knew what they said, and whereof they affirmed.

The credibility of the witness borne to another resurrection is also well established. For evidence of the authenticity of the Gospel of St. John, I refer to Professor Lightfoot's lecture, and would only remark upon the narrative in this Gospel—a narrative so full of pathetic beauty—that it is impossible to explain away its details by possibilities of misapprehension, and pardonable exaggerations of extraordinary incidents. Thus much is indisputable, Lazarus was sick unto death. To all human appearance he died. He died, and was buried, and remained so long in the grave that it was believed the corruption of his corpse had commenced. Coincident with the utterance by Jesus, at the door of the tomb, of the words, "Lazarus, come forth!" the body moved, arose, came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; in consequence of which, "many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on Him." Here were presented to the senses of witnesses phenomena involving the performance of a miracle. A distinction has been justly drawn between testimony to phenomena cognizable by the senses, and miracles completely considered on their invisible and divine side, as well as their visible and human one. "Testimony," it is said, "can apply only to apparent sensible facts; testimony can only prove an extraordinary and perhaps inexplicable occurrence or phenomenon; that it is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent on the previous belief and assumption of the parties."[49] With the omission of the words "previous belief and assumption," and the substitution of the words "reflection and conviction,"—whether exercised and experienced at the time or afterwards,—I accept the statement. Phenomena are immediately apprehensible; the cause is not so. A persuasion that the cause is miraculous arises in the mind as an inference from what is directly witnessed. But what is directly witnessed may be of such a nature as to compel the witness, as a reasonable person, to believe that what has taken place results from a supernatural interposition. This conviction implies, indeed, that the person believes in the existence of supernatural power—in other words, believes in the existence and agency of God—which belief may be described as a "previous belief:" but a conviction that particular phenomena are the result of a supernatural cause, depends on the exercise of reason in regard to the phenomena themselves. "No testimony," I admit, "can reach to the supernatural," directly, but it may reach it by implication.

Keeping in view the distinction laid down, we say of the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus, that no natural solution of the event recorded is within reach. Fraud, collusion, trickery,[50] are excluded by the character of Christ and of Lazarus: no reference to accidental coincidences, or to mesmerism, or to electric influences, or to any known physical agencies, meets the case. Nor is there room for the anticipation that the advancement of science will ever solve this problem. If a solution be attainable, we are shut up to the one solution accepted by Christians. To leave it unsolved, to refer it to the class of unaccountable phenomena, through a persistent determination not to believe in anything supernatural, in the face of all which can be said in reply to antecedent objections, is most unphilosophical.

Let me here add, in reference to narratives of the miraculous, that it is easy to marshal a number of general reflections together, casting a slur upon evidence, and to invest with some plausibility its denial or non-acceptance. But, when we think how fallaciously, yet plausibly, general reflections may be employed for the contradiction of evidence,—how, by reference to the proverbial exaggerations of travellers' stories, accounts of other countries, of their customs and productions, may be discredited; how, by insisting upon men's liability to illusion, the observations of scientific inquirers may be set aside; how, by dwelling on credulity and passion, party spirit, and the like, historic doubts may be conjectured respecting the existence of Napoleon I., and how, in the same way, historic doubts may be hereafter raised respecting a large part of the career of Napoleon III.; we see how little such general reflections are to be trusted, how much more they may do to hinder the interests of truth than to help them.[51] The absurdity of the conclusions in such cases discredits the process by which they are reached.

Let us not pass from this part of the subject without saying one word as to the presumption in favour of the New Testament narratives of miracles, when compared with narratives of miracles found elsewhere. Place side by side with the Scripture narratives the miraculous stories in the Apocryphal Gospels, in the writings of the Fathers, in mediæval chronicles, in modern legends of Saints, and one sees the force of a remark by an eminent German theologian: "The critical acumen of Niebuhr was, as is admitted, inferior to that of no man, and he has done away with only too much of the ancient history of Rome. Yet he acknowledged, 'with respect to a miracle, in the strictest sense of the word, it needs but an unprejudiced and searching investigation of nature to perceive, that the miracles related are anything but absurd, and a comparison of them with the legends or so-called miracles of other religions, to recognize what a different spirit dwells in them.'"[52] To take only one step farther in this direction, when it is asked, "What, if so many apparently competent witnesses were to assure you, that they had seen such and such a miracle—mentioning the most monstrous absurd, fantastic, and ludicrous confusion of nature—would you believe them?" We answer in the words of a modern Writer: "We are only concerned with the miraculous under that form and those conditions under which it has actually by trustworthy report taken place, as subordinated to what has been called 'a general law of wisdom,' i.e. to a wise plan and design in the Divine mind under which check the course of miracles has, so to speak, kept near to nature, just diverging enough for the purpose, and no more."[53]

II.

It is time to attend to the second part of our subject, the value of the miraculous testimony to Christianity.

1. The miracles must not be taken alone; they form a part of Christianity; and therefore, to be rightly understood, they should hold in the mind an inseparable relation to the rest of Christianity. Christianity is its own evidence. Each portion harmonizes with the other portions. They yield mutual support. Miracles, therefore, are concurrent with other proofs. "External" and "internal" are convenient words, but they are liable to mischievous application. One objection to the word "external," as designating the evidence of miracles, is that it assumes them to be outside the Gospel—only bulwarks for defence, not pillars identical with the inner structure. It is curious that opposite classes of persons have attributed to miracles an externality which their place in Scripture will not allow. By one class, consisting of advocates for the evidence, miracles are presented as the chief part of the evidence, as marks indispensable for the authentication of Divine truth, yet quite ab extra things, placed round about the temple to ward off evil-disposed persons who would dare to violate the shrine. By another class, consisting of those who take exception to the miracles, they are also treated as things ab extra, things which may well be cut off from Christianity—burdens which there is no necessity it should be made to bear—a dress which disfigures it rather than otherwise, and which, for the sake of its progress in the world, had better be stripped off and cast away. These two modes of assuming one and the same thing, are as objectionable in themselves, as they are curious in their coincidence.

The miracles really run into and intersect the lines of New Testament teaching from end to end. They are not seals externally attached, but contents deposited inside—not post-marks showing simply whence the letter comes, but paragraphs written in the folded sheet. The "internal" and the "external"—if we may use the words in their popular currency—must occupy our attention together. Miracles cannot be torn from the life of Christ. His nature, character, teaching, wonders, constitute an unparalleled spiritual unity. Criticism here, of course, has its own department of duty to fulfil. What really constitute the synoptical Gospels and the Gospel of St. John, is its province to determine. Readings of MSS. require to be examined with an honest desire to render the textus receptus as perfect as possible—a desire which a reverential regard for the genuine contents of the record must serve to stimulate. When all that labour has been accomplished, the miracles of the genuine rolls of Scripture are to be regarded as integral elements of faith. "The facts of Christianity," says Archdeacon Lee, "are represented by some as forming no part of its essential doctrines; they rank, it is argued, no higher than its external accessories. It is impossible to maintain this distinction. In the Christian Revelation the fact of the Resurrection is the cardinal doctrine, the doctrine of the Incarnation is the fundamental fact. Christianity exhibits its most momentous truths as actual realities, by founding them upon an historical basis, and by interweaving them with transactions and events which rest upon the evidence of sense."[54] 2. Miracles are reasonable attestations of a Divine mission. As such our Lord appeals to them, they "bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me." As such Nicodemus received them: "We know that Thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him." As such the poor blind man regarded them in that exquisite piece of naïveté, in which he says, "Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes." As it is reasonable, in the case of an ambassador, to refer to his credentials in proof of his legitimate authority; so it is reasonable, in the case of a professedly Divine teacher, to refer to signs and wonders he is capable of working, in proof of his Divine commission.

Of vast importance is it that we should note precisely the point touched by the finger of miraculous evidence. It may be said, not only are miracles incapable of enforcing a train of argument, but they are incapable of establishing any moral or religious proposition. No physical demonstration, it may be alleged, can ever link itself on to a spiritual truth, because the two things belong to totally different spheres. We should get involved in metaphysical subtleties, were I to inquire thoroughly into this position. It is enough to say, that, admitting it, the exact point touched by miraculous evidence, is, according to the teaching of Scripture itself, the office sustained and the commission borne by a person. "The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me." "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by Him." In these passages, the witness of miracles is attached to a person. "My works bear witness of me," says Jesus. They are the approval of "a man," says Peter. The evidential force of them bears on Christ Himself, the sent of God. Thus considered, miracles free themselves from objections made to their competency to serve as direct proofs of spiritual truths.

The miracles of Moses afford evidence of his Divine legation: in like manner the miracles of Jesus afford evidence of His Divine Messiahship. It is said of Him that "He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." Authoritativeness is characteristic of His mode of teaching. "Verily, verily, I say unto you." He claimed a right to speak, as one who had power to command men that they should obey. There is in His utterance little of argument, but much of law. Miracles can add no force to a chain of reasoning, and you may say they cannot immediately demonstrate spiritual truth, but they afford a basis for the enunciation of a Divine message, a mandate of the Divine will.

Miracles, no doubt, come within relations to spiritual truth, through the medium of the miraculously demonstrated authority of its utterer; but spiritual truth has other distinct and appropriate marks of its Divine origin and character. It contains an inward witness—it shines by its own light. It commends itself to men's consciences in the sight of God, and when believed, vindicates the justness and wisdom of such belief.

It cannot be too much insisted on, that miraculous evidence comes not out in Scripture by itself. The works of Jesus include more than His miracles. The whole beneficent influence of His life is covered by the words, "who went about doing good." With the thought of what He did, stands associated the thought of what He was; and with the character of His matchless life is interwoven the character of His matchless teaching. Miracles form but one strand in the cable which binds the Church's faith to Him who is the Anchor of her hope; and they expose the ship to peril who untwist the rope, and lay upon that single strand the whole amount of strain—the entire stress of tension. Holy Writ warrants no such course; but warns against it. "If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, 'Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them;' thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams." Moses, himself a worker of miracles, appeals to something beyond miracles as essential to the final establishment of religious authority. The moral proof is put in the foremost place, and no mere physical achievement can exercise exclusive force apart from that. And, as if to remind us of these words in Deuteronomy, we read in the last chapters of Revelation of men being deceived by the miracles of the beast, of the spirits of devils working miracles, and of the false prophet that wrought miracles. Thus the New Testament teaches us to bind the evidence of Christian miracles to that which shows how utterly different they are from all the pretensions of deceivers, from all the delusions of fanatics. To dwell on extraordinary incidents, apart from other considerations, is to open a door to superstition, and even revolting credulity. In this way, a belief in witchcraft, sanctioning most unrighteous and cruel laws, maintained its ground in England to the end of the seventeenth century. From anything like the unreasonableness of staking religious faith upon physical events or historical circumstances, simply because they are unaccountable upon any ordinary hypothesis of human affairs, the Gospel is perfectly free. He who appeals to His own mighty works, appeals also to His own self-evidencing words, and to the moral disposition of His disciples. "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." "My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. He that speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory; but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him."

The solitary position assigned to the evidence of miracles in the controversies of the last century was mischievous to the interests of religion. I believe with Coleridge, "how little of divine, how little fitting to our nature a miracle is, when insulated from spiritual truths, and disconnected from religion as its end:"—and I would ask with him, "What then can we think of a theological theory, which, adopting a scheme of prudential legality, common to it with 'the sty of Epicurus,' as far at least as the springs of moral action are concerned, makes its whole religion consist in the belief of miracles!" There is some room for this severe censure of theologians in the last century, who failed to insist "on the creating of a new heart, which collects the energies of a man's whole being in the focus of the conscience—the one essential miracle, the same, and of the same evidence to the ignorant and the learned, which no superior skill can counterfeit, human or demoniacal." I should assign a higher place to the physical miracle than Coleridge did,—but there is to my mind a true and deep sense in what he asks respecting the moral one:—"Is it not that implication of doctrine in the miracle, and of miracle in the doctrine, which is the bridge of communication between the senses and the soul?"[55] Christianity as a whole, at the present time, establishes its claims by the new spiritual creation which it effects in its sincere disciples. And here, let me add: looking at the position of our inquiry at the present day, it appears of great importance, not to lay down as a principle, that miracles are indispensable in the authorization of a Divine message. To do so hampers our argument. To do so contradicts Scripture,—"John did no miracle." If one eminent servant of the Most High could make good his authority without effecting any physical marvel, so might another. Regarding Jesus simply as a Divine Teacher, there would, then, be no absolute necessity for His working wonders in the fields of material nature. His moral acts, His freedom from moral defects, and the whole moral tenor of His life, would evince the holiness of His character, and the oneness of His own spirit with that of the Father of spirits, the fountain of love and truth; for what He said of men applied to Himself, "By their fruits ye shall know them." Yet, though I cannot see that miracles, as some think, were essential to the proof of what He said respecting Himself, they are, as indicated already, what might be expected in one who was all that Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be; they also corroborate claims to spiritual authority, resting on other grounds; and, still further, the manner in which some of them were performed, points to the higher nature which tabernacled in His humanity.

The place in the sphere of evidence occupied by the miracles of Jesus, is not exactly the same to us that it was to the multitudes who witnessed them. I fully agree in the remark, "We do not ask any one to begin with the miracles,—to regard power, and still more the record of power, centuries afterwards, as the one irresistible proof of the truth and Divine origin of a Revelation. This has been done—done perhaps too long—done certainly in this age without conviction."[56] A miracle never was the one irresistible proof. It never was more than one amongst others. But at first it had a power of awakening attention, which it does not possess now. Seen, it irresistibly produced excitement, which led to inquiry. Recorded, it fails of that effect. It is wise, at this time of day, to begin the exposition of Christian evidence by insisting on Christianity as a fact—as a moral spiritual power in the world; and then, examining its principles, and tracing its achievements to the beginning, to bring out the evidential worth of Christ's miracles as a crown on the head of other proofs. At the same, time it should be observed, that their pertinency as proofs remains unaltered. They are not less true for being old. They are as good witnesses now as they were eighteen centuries ago. What was done by Julius Cæsar, what was done by Alexander the Great, as it appears on record, is still as valid an indication as ever, of the genius and prowess which the men possessed. So, what Jesus did, as we find it recorded in His fourfold memoirs, produces undiminished assurance of His superhuman character. If any one asks for miracles now, I reply, they are not wanted, they could not be used as credentials of one who left the world ages since. His own miracles, ascertained by history, will, to the end of time, in connection with His whole life, avail as guarantees for faith in His Divine might and goodness.

3. And, finally, the miracles promote the acceptance of Christian truths by the illustrations of them which they afford. Christ's miracles are of the same description as the principles and precepts in Christ's teaching. They are animated with benevolence, instinct with love. The Gospel perpetually offers to men a spiritual salvation; Miracles at the beginning brought them salvation of a lower kind, which nevertheless pointed to a higher. Of the author of Christianity it might be said literally, "He is the Saviour of the body." His wondrous works of healing sparkled with a tenderness, compassion, and help, like those with which His main mission to mankind was filled. And, as they were eminently beneficial to human beings, and so were of the same class as the other bestowments the Christ of God came to confer, they exhibited types of the nobler blessings themselves. They are mirrors reflecting larger and better gifts. Signs they are as well as wonders; parables as well as proofs. In cures of the blind, there are parables of spiritual illumination; in the cleansing of lepers, parables of spiritual purification; and in exorcisms, parables of spiritual disenthralment.

The benevolent animus, and the didactic form of the miracles of Jesus seized the attention of early Christian writers, and were employed by them for the purpose of establishing and recommending the Christian religion. They used them much more under their illustrative than under their strictly evidential aspect. Arnobius (A.D. 306), in ten chapters of his seven books, "Adversus Gentes," lays special stress upon their kind and beneficent tendency.[57] Lactantius, his contemporary in his "Institutions," whilst regarding Christ's miracles as proofs of His higher nature, manifests particular delight in searching out their ethical significance. He goes through the mighty works of our Lord in order, and points out, how they demonstrated the renewal of the human soul, the opening of its eyes, the unstopping of its ears, the loosening of its tongue.[58] And Athanasius (A.D. 326) takes special pains to show that the miracles of Jesus were revelations—self-representations of His Person as Divine Creator, not mere credentials of His doctrine, but veritable victories over nature, so that no one can doubt who Christ is, when once he beholds His works:—and moreover, that by the manner of His working miracles, He at once proved his Divinity, and His humanity, His Godhead and His incarnation.[59] And Augustine insists much on their design as symbolical of redemption, as instructive acts, charged with prophetical import, and calculated to inspire delight more than wonder.[60] These remarks and quotations bear chiefly on the relation of miracles to the spiritual blessings of the Gospel at the beginning. But miracles also sustain a very interesting relation to the like blessings as bestowed in after, and in present times. When the spring is over, and its produce of blossoms has passed away, it is found, that though the ground is covered with leaves of white and pink, the blossoms have set into precious fruit. They have bequeathed more than blossoms. Each folded up a promise of what is richer than itself. The peach flower, the peach—the pear flower, the pear. We read in the Apocalypse, of the Tree of Life. Is not the Gospel the Tree of Life? Is not Christ the Tree of Life? It is not fanciful to speak of the miracles as early blossoms. Long since they burst out profusely. Long since they fell. To some eyes, they may seem to lie in the paths of history, as withered leaves. But if the spring-time is past, the autumn-time has long since come. Christianity can tell of spiritual blessings which it has conferred on the children of men down to this day, and is conferring still. A tranquil conscience, a pure heart, a holy life, a hope that maketh not ashamed,—these are the clustering felicities, the manifold beatitudes, of the Gospel of Love. Thank God! abundant has been the ingathering. Thank God! abundant is the harvest, still waiting to be gathered. In nature the bloom is more plentiful than the fruit, but here the fruit is more plentiful than the bloom.