GIFT OF SEELEY W. MUDD and GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER DR.JOHNR. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI to the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SOUTHERN BRANCH JOHN FISKE imiyERSITY of CAOFOlOfi^ AT hOS ANGELES LIBRARY Can the Old Faith Live WITH THE New? OR THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION AND REVELATION REV. GEORGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. MINISTER OF THE PARISH OF INNELLAN WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXXV ^ Ail Rights reserved ■1 Pi ^4 PREFACE. Our object in this volume is to consider the rela- tion of the modern doctrine of Evolution to those doctrines of the Bible which bear on the develop- ment of the world ; and as natural evolution is supposed to involve religious agnosticism, we have prefaced the inquiry by considering the scientific value of the religious sentiment in general. The chapters are not a series of disconnected studies, but are arranged on a principle of development, and therefore they cannot be read out of their natural order. There are two important books which have stim- ulated us to make this attempt — that of Mr Joseph John Murphy on 'The Scientific Bases of Faith,' and that of Professor H. Drummond on ' Natural Law in the Spiritual World.' Our design, however, is \-i Preface. not identical with that of either of these works. Both of these are in their nature constructive ; their aim is to build a faith on the acceptance of the modern doctrine of Evolution. Our pur- pose, on the other hand, is purely analytic. We have nowhere desired to express any opinion as to the scientific evidence for that doctrine ; our sole design has been to inquire if the doctrine be true, What then .'' With this view we have placed it side by side with those doctrines of revelation which seem to come into contact with it, and have sought impartially to consider the question, How the adoption of the former would affect our acceptance of the latter. In considering the scientific relations of the different religious doctrines, we have confined our- selves rigidly to those points in which revelation appears to come into contact with Evolution. There are many questions between science and revelation which are not questions between Evolu- tion and revelation. The relation, for example, of the six days of Genesis to the progressive periods of geology may be a question between science and revelation, but it is not a cjucstion of Evolution : it would still remain to be solved even though the modern doctrine of Iwolutlon were disproved ; it Preface. vii exists for the creationist as much as for the Dar- winian. Evolution relates to the particular mode in which things became what they are, and it is in this light purely that we have viewed the subject. We have only to add that, as we have mentioned few names, we have made use of few references, our object having been not to seek recondite facts, but to avail ourselves only of those which have obtained universal currency. G. M. Manse, Innellan, 1885. CONTENTS. CHAP. I. INTRODUCTORY, II. THE PLACE FOR FAITH IN THE SYSTEM OF NATURE, III. IS THE OBJECT OF FAITH KNOWABLF. . IV. THE CONDITIONS REQUISITE TO DIVINE KNOW LEDGE, ...... V. CREATION AND EVOLUTION, .... VI. EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION, . VII. EVOLUTION AND THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF LIFE, VIII. EVOLUTION AND THE PRIMITIVE MAN, . IX. EVOLUTION AND PROVIDENCE, X. EVOLUTION AND THE SECOND ADAM, . XI. EVOLUTION AND THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT, Xn. EVOLUTION AND DIVINE COMMUNION, . XIII. EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY, . XIV. CONCLUSION, PAGE I 24 5° 72 lOI 130 173 199 223 2C2 279 305 338 CAN THE OLD FAITH LIVE WITH THE NEW? CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Our design in the present treatise is to endeavour to ascertain to what extent the speculations of modern thought would, if proved to be true, affect the fundamental articles of religious belief Our subject is therefore not the establishment of a thesis but the institution of an inquiry. Our aim is not either to prove or to disprove anything. We have simply recognised the fact that the spirit of the nineteenth century has led men to certain views of mind and nature which are very different from those entertained by their fathers ; and with- out inquiring whether they or their fathers have occupied the right side of the question, we have set ourselves, if possible, to determine the influence A 2 Can the Old Faith live luith the Neiv ? of these opinions on the religious sentiments in which we have been nurtured. It will be seen that the position here taken is an intermediate, to some extent a neutral, one. There have been two extreme attitudes in which faith has stood to science — that of antagonism and that of alliance. There are some who have looked upon the page of revelation as a final sentence against the doctrine of Evolution ; there are others who have looked upon it as itself an anticipation and forewarning of the truth of that doctrine. We do not ourselves hold either of these views. We do not believe that when the writer of the Book of Genesis attributed to God the act of creation, he had in his mind an\' comparison whatever between creating and evolving, and therefore we refuse to see in the doctrine of that Book either an anticipa- tive refutation or an anticipative corroboration of the doctrine of Evolution. But when all this is said, there remains another and an intermediate question, which, alike from the side of religion and of science, is a legitimate subject of inquir}^ We may refuse to believe that the old culture was in any conscious sense an anticipation of the new, and still we may ask the question, Will the new culture lend itself to the old .'' Is it possible, on the one hand, that the ancient faith may be ex- pressed in terms of modern thought, and on the other, tliat modern thought may be expressed in Introductory. 3 terms of the ancient faith ? Let it be observed that such an inquiry is at all times legitimate, and is by no means limited to the sphere of Christian theology. No one, for example, would for a moment maintain that Confucianism was a designed anti- cipation of the institutions of modern culture. Yet there may occur circumstances in which it may be the interest of modern culture to ask whether her institutions can take root on the basis of the Con- fucian system, whether the results of modern civil- isation can find a possible meeting-place in any caste of thought indigenous to the Chinese soil. It is not too much to say that the discovery of such a meeting-place, so far from being regarded by modern culture as a detraction from her own dignity, would be hailed by her with the most lively enthusiasm. Alike in the field of missionary enterprise and in the field of secular education, the discovery of a point of contact between the most recent and the most antique civilisation which the world has beheld, would be greeted as a pioneer of progress and a promise of future development. Is there, then, any a priori probability that such a meeting-place should be found between the old culture and the new } At a first glance it would seem as if such a hope were precluded by a simple study of the records of the past. The original impression made on every student of history is a 4 Can tJic Old FaitJi live ivith the New ? sense of the utter transitoriness of the tlioughts and the systems of men. The civilisations of the past seem to succeed one another in no other re- lations than those of destroyer and destroyed. Each new system of culture is to all outward appearance built on the spot left vacant by the removal of its predecessor, and the feet of those who carried out its predecessor are already seen waiting at the door to carry it out also. In a floating panorama such as this, — a panorama which appears to consist only of shifting scenes without causal sequence and without mutual interdepend- ence, — it is hard to see where room can be found for any contact between the future and the past. If the history of previous systems has been simply the history of successive revolutionary changes in the thoughts of men, what reason have we to sup- pose that the system which we now call modern shall manifest any greater continuity with the products of other days .'' And if, indeed, the apparent picture were the real one, there could exist no reason for such a hope ; there is no reason whatever to believe that the culture of the nineteenth century possesses any exceptional element which puts it beyond com- parison with previous cultures. Is the picture, however, of these previous cultures what it has been represented to be .'' Do we find on examin- ation that the civilisation of one period has dis- Ijiirodiictory. 5 placed the civilisation of another by the process of abolition ? On the contrary, the slightest scrutiny of human annals makes it apparent that, in every case, the displacement has been effected not by abolition but by transmutation, — that the new system has taken the place of the old not by root- ing out the old, but simply by transplanting it. To make this clear, let us take one or two repre- sentative instances. One of the earliest and most extensive modifica- tions of human culture exhibited by the history of man is that embraced in the transition from the creed of the Brahman to the doctrine of the Bud- dhist. At first sight it would seem as if that transition had involved a complete and radical revolution — a revolution in which the old faith was entirely obliterated, and a new faith, or rather an absence of faith, substituted in its room. Yet a deeper study will show us that Buddhism never contemplated any such revolution. Buddha, like Confucius, appeared not as an innovator but as a reformer. He did not propose to break with the past ; what he desired was, to give a philosophic meaning to the dogmas of the past, to represent in the world of spirit that which up to his time had only been symbolised in the world of matter. He found a belief current in his age and country that the souls of men who had conquered their worldly lusts would be absorbed at death in the Life of the 6 Can the Old Faith live zvitJi the Neiv ? Universe. So far from contradicting that belief, he said that it erred not by excess but by defect. He declared that the hope held out by Brahmanism of emancipation from individual care, so far from being a delusive hope, was not expressed with sufficient emphasis. The Brahman had contented himself with saying that a redemption from in- dividual care might come in the future world ; Buddha announced that such a redemption might be reached now and here. He told his country- men that they had been taught by Brahmanism to look not for too much but for too little ; that they did not need to wait for the loosing of the silver cord in order to find rest ; that they might enter into rest in the very heart of the present scene of things, and in the midst of the world of life might obtain the Nirvana of peace.^ He told them that the true death for the spirit of man Avas the death of self, the surrender of individual desire, the giv- ing up of the anxious longing for seen and perish- able things. Here was a new civilisation, yet it was a nov^elty reached purely by the transmu- tation of the old — a civilisation which had in- deed constructed a completely different edifice, but which had constructed it by transposing and re- combining the elements of that edifice which it * See T. Y. R. lJ)avid's ' Lectures on the Origin and rirowth of Religion, as illustrated by some points in the History of Indian Buddhism,' Appendix X., p. 253. Introductory. y had destroyed. Buddhism was not the annihila- tion of Brahmanism. It did not build itself upon the ruins of the ancient system ; rather did it carry that system up to the summit of the mount and transfigure it there. It built a new tabernacle, but it built it out of old materials — those very materials which had been furnished by the life of that age which it came to supplant. The second representative instance we shall select is the transition from Judaism into Christi- anity. We believe Christianity to have been the introduction of a new moral and spiritual force into this world, the introduction of a force which conferred upon humanity a new power for living a moral and a spiritual life. To this extent, there- fore, we hold Christianity to have been an innova- tion on the old order of things. But the innovation lay purely in the newness of the method, not in the newness of the work to be done. Christianity by its own admission did not come to teach men a new morality ; almost the initial words of its Divine Founder are these : " Think not I am come to destroy the law." So far from having come to destroy the morality of Judaism, Christianity de- clared that its mission was to intensify the range of that morality, to fulfil that which from its weakness it could not itself do. The force which lay in Judaism was not sufificient to ac- complish its own aspirations ; Christianity brought 8 Can the Old Faith live zuith the Nezv ? a new force to its aid to overtake the old things. Accordingly, as we pass from the Jewish to the Christian dispensation we are struck with a fact somewhat analogous to that observed in the transi- tion from Brahmanism to Buddhism. We see that we have entered into a different circle of ideas, but we are at the same time made aware that the difference has been reached not by destruction but by transmutation. The leading ideas of Chris- tianity. are renewals of the leading ideas of Juda- ism. If Christianity destroys Judaism, it is only on the principle that where the perfect has come the partial is done away ; it destroys it by absorb- ing its separate night-lights in one common blaze of day. Christianity has united two ideas which in Judaism are not only separate but contradictory — the idea of kinghood and the thought of sacri- fice. In the Judaic polity these ideas never did coalesce ; the one was the antithesis of the other. There were cases, indeed, in which the offices of the priest and of the king were combined in one person, but even then there was no amalgamation. The same person might be both priest and king, but he could not be both priest and king at the same moment. And the reason is plain. In Judaism priesthood and kinghood denoted two opposite states of mind : priesthood was the mark of humility, kinghood was the badge of independ- Introductory. 9 ence. Accordingly, in Jndaism the ruler could only become a priest by ceasing for the moment to rule, and the priest could only become a ruler by ceasing for the moment to sacrifice. The acts might be combined in one life, but they were only combined as any number of inconsistencies may be united in the person of a single man. But when Christianity came, it not only retained these two ideas — it abolished their differences, it joined together what man had put asunder. The idea of priesthood and the idea of kinghood ceased to denote two opposite mental attitudes ; they be- came merely different sides of one thought — the headship of Christ. Here the priest and the king met together. The Head of the body was king over the members just because He was the real sufferer in all that the members bore, and He was the real sufferer in all that the members bore just because He was the Head of the body. In this strange and subtle thought, borrowed from the constitution of the physical frame, Christianity joined together in one idea what in all the systems of antiquity had been separate and contradictory elements. It united the conception of sacrifice with the conception of royalty, and out of their union it evoked a new idea — the empire of sacri- ficial service. The combination was as new in its result as is the result produced by the combination of oxygen and hydrogen, yet equally in the one 10 Can the Old Faith live with the Neiv ? case as in the other, the newness has been reached by the incorporation of elements ah-eady existing in the previous state of things. We shall take one more example of the relation which, in the course of human history, the new culture habitually bears to the old. In one sense no two states of civilisation can be more opposed to one another than Mediaevalism and Paganism. Theoretically, the former is the antithesis of the latter, and came to supersede it. Yet it is none the less certain that the temple of Mediaevalism is supported by two pillars which had their origin in Pagan culture. Mediaevalism is professedly a sur- vival of the Roman Empire, and the Roman Em- pire, in its Christianised form, preserved essentially all the characteristics of its Pagan condition. Now the Roman emperor in his days of Paganism united in himself two functions, in both of which he was esteemed an object of reverence ; he was the ruler of the state and he was the head of religion — the chief Consul and the Pontifex Maxi- mus. In both of these attitudes the emperor was deemed sacred. Hence it was that in the system of Roman Paganism, Church and State were one. There was no real distinction between the political and the religious, between treason and impiety, between heresy and crime. Around the idea of the state there circled two conceptions — the thought of religious sanctity and the thought of Introductory. 1 1 political power. Vet in their nature and in their aim these two were one ; the religious sanctity was political, and the political power was religious. Now this was precisely the thought which Medisevalism appropriated. The idea of Mediae- val government, so far from being detached from the culture of the past, was essentially based on past culture. That government in a slightly modi- fied form revived the conception of Roman Im- perialism. Here, as in the older civilisation, Church and State were again one. Here, again, the civil power comprehended two functions — the one political, the other ecclesiastical. The differ- ence lay in the fact that in Mediaivalism the two functions no longer belonged to the same person. A nominal division was made between the province of the secular and the province of the sacred, and each was assigned to its own representative ; the former was symbolised in the emperor, the latter was incarnated in the pope. We say a nominal division, for the most superficial study makes it evident that the recognition of two heads instead of one made no real separation between the secu- lar and the sacred. The emperor was nominally the ruler of the State, but he claimed, by inherit- ance from his Roman ancestors, a headship over the Church as well ; the State was to him identical with the Church. The pope was nominally ruler of the Church, but, in virtue of that very fact, he 1 2 Can the Old Faith live with the New ? claimed a headship over the State also ; the Church was to him identical with the State. The whole fabric was, in short, the reproduction of an older culture. Medisevalism constructed her gov- ernment upon no ideal or Utopian model. She did not build her structure out of fancy, but reared it out of past experience. The Renaissance which came at the close of Medievalism has been called a revival of Pagan civilisation, but in truth it only intensified the effort at which Mediaeval- ism aimed. The aim of that civilisation had all along been regressive, and the Renaissance only put the finishing touch to the process by which the Europe of the Middle Ages strove to reunite itself to the secularism of the first Christian century. We have taken these three specimens not as marking abnormal aspects of culture but as repre- sentative of the course which we believe all culture to have followed in every age. It would have been as easy to have produced fifty specimens as three ; indeed we are acquainted with no past civilisation which would not yield the same result In our selection of these particular specimens we have been guided by the fact that each of them exhibits a distinct form of culture. The transition from Brahmanism to Buddhism, the transition from Judaism to Christianity, and the transition from Paganism to Mediaevalism, are each separate in- Introductory. 1 3 stances exhibiting few analogies in their conditions and circumstances. Yet in each of these instances the result has been the same. The new form of culture, coming under the guise of revolution, has really erected itself on the basis of the old, and has effected its conquest over the minds of men not by obliterating but by transmuting the labours of its predecessor. Now what is the relevancy of such a study to the subject we have in hand .'' It clearly lies in the fact that the considerations here advanced are fitted to remove a preliminary prejudice to the investigation of that subject. It is a very popular notion that every attempt to reconcile the culture of our age with the faith of past ages is in its very nature a recoil from the spirit of the age. If it be so, we can only come to one conclusion — • that there must be an essential difference between the spirit of the nineteenth century and the spirit of every other century and epoch that the world has known. In all previous periods of human history, the first aim of the spirit of every age was to unite itself to the culture of the past ; and the compliance with that tendency, so far from being a sign of recoil, was an indication of sym- pathy with contemporaneous movements. Is there anything in the circumstances of the nineteenth century which should reverse our judgment on this matter .'' Is there any cause which in the nature 1 4 Can tJie Old Faith live zvith tJic Neiv ? of things should render the culture of our age more revolutionary than the culture of its prede- cessors ? If there be such a cause, it is only fair that it should be stated and examined. The mere fact that other periods have followed a different law, will of itself give no warrant for holding that the nineteenth century is bound to be reconcilia- tory to the faith of other centuries. But, on the other hand, it must be shown that there is ground for such a difference. It must be shown that the nineteenth century has more right to be revolu- tionary than preceding epochs. There is only one ground on which such a right could be established. If it could be proved that our age has arriv^ed at any new discovery which is fitted to revolutionise the beliefs of past ages, our modern life would then legitimately occupy a quite exceptional posi- tion in the history of culture. It would have a right to consider itself in the light of a new de- parture. It would have a claim to regard itself as standing on the boundary line between two worlds. It would be entitled to present to each of these worlds a different front. To the world of the future it would rightly offer the hand of alliance, for it would see in itself the pioneer and prophet of the coming age. To the world of the past, on the other hand, it would with equal pro- priety present the front of antagonism, for it would see in that world the accumulated result of ages Introductory. 1 5 of error which the advent of its own Hght would be commissioned to dispel. All this, we say, would be the legitimate con- clusion from the fact that the nineteenth century had made any discovery in the field of nature which was fitted to exert a modifying tendency on old beliefs. Now it is precisely on this ground that the present age has been tempted to assume an antagonistic attitude towards the result of past ages. It believes itself to be in possession of a view of nature which past ages had not. It looks upon itself as the repository of a secret which was hid from its predecessors — a secret whose divulg- ence is calculated to render nugatory all that these predecessors have thought. It would be a great mistake to imagine that the belief of our age in the possession of this secret is to it uniformly a source of joy. It is not too much to say that in the large majority of cases it is fraught with the deepest pain. With all the optimism that prevails in the minds of some scientists, there is no reason to question the fact that the radical revolt from the faith of the past is at best contemplated only as a painful necessity. There are probably few men of those who believe themselves to be in possession of a revolutionary secret, who do not at times cast back a wistful glance towards that far country from which their secret has severed them ; probably few who would not in their hearts 1 6 Can ihe Old Faith live zvitJi the Nnu ? rejoice if some second discovery could be made, which should enable them to hold the new with- out rejecting the old. We have, therefore, no right to represent men of science as the personal antagonists of the old faith, even where their opinions are diametrically opposed to that faith. Their opinions are, in most cases, the greatest burdens they have to bear, and they bear them as burdens. They are the victims to their own secret, the martyrs to the supposed discovery which they themselves have made. A light has broken over the fields of nature which seems to them incompatible with other lights, and in the spirit of stern duty they have left all and followed it. But they have not left all with joy; they have not abandoned the past without regret. They, like the Hebrew patriarch, may hope yet to find a land flowing with milk and honey, but they cannot forget that in exchange for that hope they are sacrificing what was once a possession. It is then a mistaken view of the office of modern apologetics to regard it as an attack to be directed against men of science. We feel convinced that the most advanced evolutionists of the present day would hail the advent of any light which should reveal a place for the religious consciousness with- in that system of nature which they have been compelled to make their own. W^e feel convinced that by the large majority of such thinkers a Introductory. 17 revelation of this sort would be regarded not as an antagonist but as an ally. There was a time, indeed, when men of science exhibited a personal hostility to the leaders of religious thought, but the fault lay with the religious leaders. Scholastic theology claimed the empire not only over the field of religion but over the field of nature, and every natural explorer who claimed to discover what the Church had not discovered was looked upon in the light of an usurper. That time has now passed away. The eyes of all men, whether in the world of religion or in the world of science, are directed with eager wistfulness towards the field of nature. No modern theologian would attempt to close his eyes to the fact, that the revelations made to the human mind from this quarter have been lately of the most startling kind. Whether he accepts or does not accept all the conclusions of the modern scientist, he feels himself bound to acknowledge that conclusions which have obtained the inipriiiiatur of such distinguished names may at the very least possibly be true. He knows also that to prove them to be untrue would require long centuries. Under these circumstances, what is the true course for the modern theologian .-' He sees prevailing in scientific circles a theory which he himself is neither able to affirm nor to deny. The facts at first hand are not before him ; he requires to take them on trust. The inferences B 1 8 Can tlic Old Faith live loith the Nezv ? from these facts may appear to him to be still awaiting some confirmatory link, but he knows that for that link he will probably have to wait long-. The question is, What shall he do in the meantime? Shall he suspend his judgment on matters of previous faith until more scientific light shall manifest itself? That would in all probability be equivalent to suspending his religious judgment for ever. Is there no other course open to him ? Is there any means by which he may avoid a polemical attitude towards science on the one hand or an ag- nostic attitude towards religion on the other, where- by he may preserve at once his reverence for scientific research and his devotion to those doc- trines which have constituted his religious faith ? There is one such means available to the modern theologian. The personal determination of the truth or fallacy of scientific statements of facts is, as we have said, beyond him, and investigation in this sphere is therefore to him impossible. But let the theologian begin by taking for granted the inferences of science, by assuming that the conclu- sions at which he has arrived have become recog- nised laws of nature. He will then be in a position to consider the real question, and the only question with which in this matter he has any concern — What efifcct will the establishment of these con- clusions exert upon the old belief? to what extent will it modify, in what measure shall it overthrow, Introductory. 19 the religious conclusions of the past ? This, we say, is the real attitude in which modern theology should approach modern science. Assuming for the sake of argument that its conclusions are true, it should limit itself to the inquiry what these conclusions amount to. In following such a line of investigation, theology will have on its side the sympathy of men of science. Its apologetic aspect will be completely separated from any polemical attitude. It will take its seat where men of science sit — 'at the feet of nature. It will recognise its mission to be identical with the mission of science — that of an interpreter of nature. And if theology shall find that the conclusion to which nature is supposed to point would not, even if established, militate against her ancient faith, if she shall find that the need for a supernatural element in nature has not been lessened by the circuit of the suns, she will arrive at a peace and calm which will make waiting easy. She will be able to weigh impar- tially all announcements of scientific discovery, because she shall have already concluded that no amount of discovery in the field of natural Evolu- tion can dispense with the necessity for a Presence and a Power which evolves. Now we have said that in the view of our leading scientists there is a preliminary obstacle to the very attempt at such a reconciliation, — that the spirit of our age believes itself even against its will to be 20 Can the Old Faith live ivith the Neiv ? bound to oppose the spirit of past ages. The ground on which our age feels this necessity resting upon it is its belief that it has arrived at a truth to which other epochs were strangers. That truth is the universal and unqualified dominion of law throughout all phenomena of the visible and in- visible universe. The history of the progress of science has been the history of the progress of man's ability to find the traces of law in nature. There was a time when man looked at the facts of nature as a series of isolated events without sequence and without connection ; that was the time when he had found no trace of law. By-and- by there broke upon him the conviction that there w'ere certain departments of nature whose changes were not arbitrary but periodical, and whose mani- festations must therefore be referred to the oper- ation of some fixed principle. Even yet, how- ever, it did not occur to him to include in this domain of law the great and startling events of nature ; he limited its sphere to the things which he called commonplace. The rain and the sun- shine might be linked to natural causes, but the thunderstorm, the hurricane, and the earthquake must still be regarded as preternatural influences. Then came a third stage in which these preter- natural influences ceased to be preternatural, — in which thunder and hurricane and earthquake became themselves events whose causes could be Introductory. 2 1 determined as easily as the rain and the sunshine. Lastly, this nineteenth century has brought a yet more exhaustive view of tlie universality of law ; it has come by the discovery of that doctrine called the correlation of forces. That doctrine has not only abolished the distinction between great and small, but it has broken down the middle wall of partition which at one time was supposed to render the acts of the mind wholly independent of bod- ily influences. It has established the fact that be- tween the life-force and the other forces of nature there is going on a constant action and reaction, so that they can no longer be regarded as occupying independent provinces, and the result has been that the domain of natural law has threatened to extend itself beyond the boundaries of nature, and to claim a sovereignty over that empire which has always been allotted to the rule of a spiritual agency. Now the effect of all this has been that it has seemed to narrow, and ultimately threatened to destroy, the sphere of religion. Religion is essen- tially based upon the belief in the existence of something which transcends the world. It is not difficult to see that if the domain of natural law were to be extended universally and to be stretched out beyond phenomena, there would in the nature of things be no further possibility for the existence of religion. Religion is based upon the belief that 22 Can the Old Faith live zvith the Neiv ? there is a Presence behind law', a Presence which gives to law at once its existence and its vindica- tion. If we adopt the view that there is no room for such a Presence, if we deny that there is any- where in the universe of being aught that transcends law, we have thereby committed ourselves to the position that the principle which regulates nature is a purely mechanical principle, and that the actions and events of nature are the product of a blind necessity. It is in this sense that the idea of religion is still bound up with the idea of miracle. We call that miraculous which transcends the order of nature ; we ought not to limit the word to that which supersedes the order of nature. To supersede the order of nature is to violate it, but to trans- cend it may be to manifest it. If we believe in the existence of a Power behind nature, then the mani- festation of nature itself is a revelation of that which transcends it, because it is a revelation of the existence of that Power which lies at the back of that order which it originates. Miracle, therefore, is involved in the notion of any religion. It cannot be escaped either by the Deist, the Theist, or the Pantheist. Whosoever believes that the laws of nature are the expression of a life behind them, has tlicreby signed his confession of faith in the exist- ence of a perpetual miracle, for he has acknowledged his belief in the existence of a Power which, by his own admission, transcends all that he sees. The Litrodiictory. 23 question then narrows itself to this, Can our age any longer believe in miracle — in the existence of that which transcends nature ? If it can, religion is still a possibility ; if it cannot, religion must cease to be an element in human thought. This is the preliminary question in any inquiry concerning the relation of the old faith to the new. If this question be answered in the affirmative, we have a right to proceed in such an investigation ; if it be answered in the negative, our way is for ever barred on the very threshold of the inquiry. We shall accordingly devote the following chapter to an examination of this important subject. 24 Can the Old Faith live with the New ? CHAPTER II. THE PLACE FOR FAITH IN THE SYSTEM OF NATURE. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews defines faith to be the evidence of things not seen ; he declares it to be that faculty whereby we under- stand " that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." The definition is a most remarkable because a most philosophical one ; it is comprehensive in its very simplicity. It states that the essence of the religious faculty is its power to discover that there is something which transcends nature, — that the very existence of a visible order presupposes the existence of something which is not visible. We should not have been surprised to find that a period so primitive and unscientific as that in which the writer to the Hebrews wrote should have given birth to a very difi'erent definition of the word faith. We should naturally have expected to liear him say, " I^y faith we understand that the Place for Faith in the System of Nature. 25 word of God has power to break through the visible order of things." Such a definition of the province of faith would have been harmonious with the view popularly entertained of the nature of miracle. A miracle, in the popular use of the word, is that which either violates or suspends a law of nature. The supernatural is here contem- plated as consisting in antagonism to the natural. Viewed in this light, an age of scientific law must prove destructive to the existence of religion, for just in proportion as violations of nature cease to be conceivable, will the evidence for such super- naturalism become fainter and more inadequate. But so far from basing his belief in the super- natural on the possibility of seeing changes in the order of nature, the writer to the Hebrews pro- fesses to find his evidence for the supernatural in the order of nature itself; it is through the things that are seen that he reaches his con- viction of the existence of that which is not seen. It is not by an interruption of the visible order that he comes to the recognition of a Power and Presence behind it : on the contrary, it is by the recognition of the visible order itself that he is impelled to recognise the being of a Power not itself; it is by the sight of the visible order that he finds it to be inadequate to the explana- tion of its own existence. We have alluded here to the definition of the 26 Can tJie Old Faitli live ivith the New ? supernatural given by the writer to the Hebrews, because we are disposed to think that it is the only exhaustive definition that ever has been given. By this definition, in our opinion, the modern belief in the supernatural must stand or fall. If we define the supernatural to be that which violates the law of nature, we have defined not the supernatural but only a mode of super- naturalism. If any such violation of law were observed, it would of course be evidence for the existence of a Power behind nature, for that which can violate a law must transcend the law which it violates. But in point of fact it becomes more and more evident in modern times that the system of nature as now constituted does not admit of such a mode of supernaturalism. The question is not, whether a supernatural Power could violate the laws which He has made. There is not a scientific man in the world who would for a moment deny that if there be a Power which transcends nature, that Power can at any time alter nature. It could not even be said that such an alteration would be an unscientific act, for it is ever scientifically a natural principle that the greater should dominate the less. But the question with which the modern scientist has to do is not whether a supreme Power could, but whether in point of fact He docs, interfere with the sequence of natural law. It is not with him a question of Place for Faith in the System of Nature. 27 philosophy but a question of observation. He sees a thunderstorm, and he asks, whence came it ? He would not for a moment dispute that if there be a Divine Power behind nature, this thunder might be His direct voice. But what the man of science asks is not what the thunder might be, but what it is. He asks whether he can refer it to any antecedent causes in nature itself; and when he finds that he can, he inquires no further. He is absolved from investigating what any power could do, by discovering what the power existent in nature has actually done. The scientific spirit, then, is opposed to that sense of the word "miracle" which regards it as a violation of the law of nature by a Power behind nature. But there is another sense of the word " miracle " which looks upon it, not as a violation of law, but as a manifestation that the law does proceed from something that is behind it, — a revelation that it is not self-con- stituted, but constituted by a Divine Power. This is the view of the supernatural which is adopted by the writer to the Hebrews, and the view which we believe to be the deepest and the soundest. The supernatural is here regarded not as that which breaks through nature, but simply as that which lies above nature. It is here looked upon not as something which occasionally manifests itself by the destruction or the suspension of the 28 Call the Old Faith live with the Neiv ? laws which it has made, but as something which reveals itself always and everywhere in the exe- cuting and in the sustaining of these laws. In the view of this ancient writer, faith is not a state of mind which is to be called up only for special occasions, for startling events or for sudden catastrophes ; it is a state of mind which is to exist habitually and unceasingly. And the reason why it is to exist habitually and unceasingly is a remarkable one : it is not because faith is to avert its eyes from the search for the supernatural, but because it is to see the supernatural in every- thing. To faith, as here defined, all things alike are to be revelations of the supernatural ; every event is in this sense to be startling, every sight in this sense miraculous. The object of faith is to be the supernatural in the natural, or rather behind the natural. Its materials are to be derived not from that which sets aside but from that which vindicates the existing law, and it is to find its evidence for the unseen and eternal in its very study of the limits of the seen and temporal. Now the question is. Can this view of faith stand the test of modern times ? We have said that the conception of miracle which regards it as a viola- tion of law is a thought inconsistent with the .sys- tem of nature expounded by modern science : can the same be affirmed of that other conception of Place for Faith i?i the System of Nature. 29 miracle which regards it not as a violation but as a transcending of law? Is there anything in the facts of modern science which militates against that view of nature expounded by the writer to the Hebrews, whereby the visible order is made the expression of an invisible order, and faith finds her province in discovering that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear ? It will not be maintained by any scientist that there is. The most advanced evolutionism of the nineteenth century does not contend that the facts of nature are adverse to the belief that there is something which transcends nature. The most that such evolutionists do contend for is, that we caimot know from nature whether there be or be not anything behind it ; it is on this ground that in all religious questions they take the name of Agnostics. The most advanced unbelief of our day does not go so far as to say, There is no God ; it would hold such a statement to be in the highest degree unscientific. The doctrine of Agnosticism is the doctrine of human ignorance ; its leading article is the duty of humility. It warns man to affirm nothing and to deny nothing concerning that which transcends experience. It does not say that there is nothing which transcends experience, nor yet does it say that there is anything ; it main- tains that the existence or the non-existence of such a supersensuous region is alike unknowable, 30 Can the Old Faith live tvith the N'eiu ? and that being unknowable, it is not a subject either for behef or disbehef. Under these circum- stances the Agnostic recommends to the minds of men an ignoring of the whole question. He ad- vises them to confine themselves to the limits of the positive, by which he understands the limits of the five senses. He cautions them not to attempt to go beyond the range of experience, to keep within that margin which nature has prescribed to human knowledge, and to avoid inquiring whether in the infinite possibilities of the universe there be or be not any higher knowledge than the human. It will be evident from this that the religious belief in something which transcends nature is not in our age called to contend with any positive argument to the contrary ; it is only called to contend with the assertion that there is no ground for argument on either side. Modern belief is no longer met by ^-//j-belief, but simply by ?^;/belief: that which it has to encounter is not a positive but a negative. Agnosticism does not say, You are believing in a fallacy ; it merely says, You are believing in something which cannot be verified. It asks, What is the use of opening up a region of faith when we have no evidence that it exists any- where outside of our own imagining, and when all the time wc have at the very door of our being a region of practical certainty accessible to observa- tion and verifiable in actual experience } This, then, Place for Fait Jl in the System of Nature. 31 is the real problem with which we have here to deal — whether there be or be not any ground for such a faith as was held by the writer to the Hebrews ? The theology of our age is not called, like the theology of the last century, to answer objections ; no objections are made. It is not called to prove that there are fallacies in the argu- ment for atheism ; no argument is offered for atheism — the Agnostic would deem an attempt to disprove God as contrary to true science as an attempt to prove Him. What the theology of our age has to do is to discover some positive ground for the continuance of a belief in that which tran- scends nature. It has to meet Agnosticism by proving that something can be known beyond the things of experience ; or, to speak more correctly, by proving that there is a region beyond the things of experience — a region of whose essential nature we are, indeed, in ignorance, but of whose existence we have the most satisfactory evidence. How is this to be proved ? Shall theology refute Agnosticism by appealing to itself.'' that would, indeed, be reasoning in a circle. It will not do for the theologian to take refuge in that sense of mystery which he himself experiences in the study of Divine things. The A"-nostic will tell him that the Divine things which have created his sense ot mystery are themselves in all probability the crea- tion of his own fancy and the product of his own 32 Can the Old Faith live ivith the N'ciu ? brain. He will tell him that he has first built the wall and then tried to push it down ; that the thing which now transcends his power is itself the result of his power. Such a retort on the part of the Agnostic would, from his point of view, be quite legitimate : denying as he does that there is any evidence for the existence of a Power which tran- scends experience, he cannot, in reason, be ex- pected to acknowledge the legitimacy of a sense of mystery which is professedly created by the contemplation of that Power. Here, then, we seem to be stopped on the very threshold, and to be debarred from the right of calling any wit- nesses whatever. Religious faith has in all ages felt that the object which it worships is one which transcends experience ; but who is to tell, or by what evidence is it to be told, that this religious faith itself was not the child of a poetic imagina- tion .^ If the theologian is to meet the Agnostic, it must be on other and wider ground — on ground which, for the time, shall be common to both, and in which both shall agree to find the issue by which their creed shall stand or fall. Now there is such a common ground on which the theologian and the Agnostic may meet — the ground of that very Positivism on which the latter professes to base his whole system. For if we look at the matter a little more closely, we shall find that the necessity for faith in something which Place for FaitJi iu tJic System of Nature. 3 3 transcends experience, is by no means a merely religious necessity. It is popularly thought that faith in the supernatural belongs peculiarly to the world of religion ; in point of fact it belongs to every thinking man in ev^ery department of thought. If the believer in a God became the heir to certain intellectual difficulties which the non-believer in a God avoided, it would become a very serious question whether Atheism were not the more excellent way. But the truth is, the believer in a God does not become heir to a single intellectual difficulty which does not press with at least equal force on the non-believer. Sir William Hamilton has remarked that every difficulty in theology may be paralleled by an equal difficulty in philosophy ; we may go further and say, that every difficulty in theology may be paralleled by an equal difficulty in Positivism, which is the ne- gation of philosophy. Bishop Butler wrote his ' Analogy ' to prove that every argument which can be used against Christianity can be used with equal force against Deism. Such a work was thoroughly well-timed in an age where the un- believers in Christianity were believers in Deism, But in our age the men who have given up Chris- tianity have, at the same time and for the same reason, given up Deism ; they see in both these religions the worship of a Power which transcends nature, and they cannot find evidence for the C 34 Can the Old Faith live with the New ? existence of such a Power. For them, therefore, there is needed a new Analogy — an Analogy which shall describe the relation not between the belief in Christianity and the belief in Deism, but be- tween the belief in any religion and the belief in no religion. There is wanted a work which will show that the denial of a Divine existence involves intellectual difficulties precisely the same in kind and infinitely more intense in degree than the intellectual difficulties created by the acceptance of such an existence — difficulties which must com- pel the Positivist to find in nature herself that supernatural element which he has refused to recognise as existing beyond nature. If such a book of Analogy were written it would lead, we think, to a very remarkable conclusion — the necessity for belief in miracle as a first prin- ciple of thought. Mr Hume says that we have no experience of a miracle ; it seems to us that the sense of the miraculous is just the deepest expe- rience of our lives. If it be asked in what sense Ave here use the word " miraculous," our answer is, it depends on what department of nature we are to consider. If a man accepts some religion as a solution of the universe, he will be compelled, indeed, to recognise a miracle, but only a miracle of the milder sort — a Power that transeends nature, but not necessarily a Power that violates nature. If, on the other hand, a man should refuse to ac- Place for Faith in the System of Nature. 35 cept any religion as a solution of the universe, and should insist instead on studying the universe itself, he will require to accept a miracle of the most pronounced description — a miracle which shall consist not in the mere transcendence of law but in the actual violation of law, and which shall make a demand upon his faith in comparison with which the requirement of any religion would be small and gentle. To bring out this point, let us consider the alternatives which are open to a man who seeks a solution of the universe. These alternatives are three. He may say that the world never began to be — in other words, that its duration has been eternal. He may say that the earliest forms of matter and life sprang up spontaneously and be- came the progenitors of other forms — in other words, that the present system of things is, in its origin, the product of chance. He may say, finally, that the present system of things is the product of a Power that transcends it, and that therefore the first principle of the universe is a Divine Intelligence. These are the three alternatives, and, as Mr Herbert Spencer^ admits, the only alternatives which are open to him who seeks a solution of the universe. Even the Agnostic must hold that one or other of these is the explanation of the origin of things. It is impossible that all ■^ First Principles, § il. 36 Can the Old Faith live ivitJi the Nezv ? of them can be false ; it is impossible that if all of them were false any other solution of the problem could be given. We shall hereafter show that the first and the third are not mutually ex- clusive ; meantime we have simply to point out that if the problem of the world's origin is ever to be solved, it must be solved somewhere within the limit of these three alternatives. But we have now to observe that the acceptance of any one of these alternatives is tantamount to the acceptance of a miracle ; one must be true, and yet any one is a choice of the supernatural. Let us glance at each of them separately, and let us begin with that which in the field of Agnosti- cism finds the most general acceptance — the theory that the world had no beginning. Let us first distinctly understand what is the real issue here involved. It is the doctrine of evolution that there never has been an absolute beginning. That doctrine is commonly supposed to constitute the main difference between Theism and Atheism, but in truth there is not a theist in the world who would not gladly subscribe to it. Let no one imagine that in denying an absolute beginning, the doctrine of evolution is committing any religious heresy. The first principle of every religious believer is just the denial of an absolute beginning, just the assertion that there never was a time when absolute nothingness reigned. The Place for Faith in the System of Nature. ij surest truth in the universe is the knowledge that there never was a period in which something did not exist ; all science and all religion must alike concur in this. The question between evolution and theology, where such a question is started, does not lie in the affirmation or denial of an eternal something in the universe ; the existence of such an eternal something is admitted by both. But the question begins where this admission ends. What is this eternal something .'' is it matter or spirit, extension or thought, nature or the super- natural .-' It is here that theology and Agnosticism part asunder. Theology holds that what is eternal in the physical universe must itself be of a nature which transcends the physical ; Agnosticism holds that as we have no right to go beyond the limits of our sensuous experience, we have no right to assume that the thing which has existed from eternity is anything other than the visible order of nature. Let us then, for the sake of argument, accept the view of the Agnostic. Let us say that some- thing has existed from all eternity, and that this something is nothing else than the physical nature which our senses now perceive. What we wish to point out is this, that in adopting such a view the Agnostic is flying from Scylla into Charybdis. His reason for choosing the alternative of an eternal physical nature is, his idea that thereby )03«8 38 Can the Old Faith live ivitJi the N'ew ? he will avoid the supernaturalism of a religious belief: he does avoid it, but he accepts instead the supernaturalism of an irreligious belief. For, let it be distinctly marked that the belief in the independent eternity of the present visible order is, in the most pronounced sense of the term, the acceptance of a miracle. Mr Herbert Spencer himself admits that such a belief is unthinkable. But why is it unthinkable? Is it merely because the idea of eternity is an idea which cannot be represented in the imagination ? That this is not the cause will be evident from the fact that we do not experience the same difficulty in conceiving that the world shall never end, as we do in con- ceiving that the world has never begun. So far from finding the idea of an unending world to be unthinkable, we find it much more difficult to think the contrary — much more difficult to imagine a time when the present system of things shall cease to be. , Now the idea of eternity is as much involved in the conception of an unending world as in the conception of an unbeginning world ; and if that idea does not render the former conception unthinkable, there is no reason whatever why it should so affect the latter. Yet the fact remains, that while we have no difficulty, so far as imagina- tion is concerned, in conceiving that the present system of things shall never end, we have a dif- ficulty amounting to the impossible in conceiv- Place for Faith in the System of Nature. 39 ing that the present system of things has never begun. We repeat the question then, What is it that renders this idea unthinkable ? We have seen that it is not our inability to represent the notion of eternity, for we have the same inability in relation to an eternal future, and yet we find no difficulty in conceiving such a future. Why is it that when we try to conceive this world as having had an eternal past, we are forced to abandon the attempt in despair ? The reason lies here : to conceive this world as having had an eternal past is to conceive a violation of law as now established ; in other words, it is to believe in a miracle of the most pronounced type. Let us try to make this clear. This w^orld, considered as an object of sense, is simply a series of changes, or as the Positivist would put it, a succession of antecedents and con- sequents. If this world has been eternal in the past, we have then the phenomenon of a series of changes going back into infinitude. This is equiv- alent to saying that we have a chain consisting of an infinite number of links, not one of which rests upon anything ; which, again, is tantamount to say- ing that there is no chain at all. Not one of the links has an adequate antecedent, not one of them is either self-supporting or supported by anything else. The denial of a first link is equivalent to the affirmation that something is suspended on nothing, 40 Can t]ic Old Faith live with the New ? or that a series of consequents exists without any antecedent. Now we are not here contending whether this conception be or be not false ; but we contend that, whether false or true, it is the idea of a violated law, of a miracle, of a supernatural ele- ment introduced into nature. We contend that the man who accepts this conception as an article of belief is thereby committing himself to a faith in the supernatural, compared to which the faith of a religious man is small and insignificant. He is going far beyond Agnosticism itself. The Agnos- tic never goes further than to say that no true cause has yet been discovered in the world. But the man who holds this belief in an eternal regress of physical changes asserts not merely that no cause has been discovered but that no cause exists. He declares in effect that a series of phenomena which are transparently dependent and incapable of self- existence, have owed their life to another series of phenomena whose dependence is equally trans- parent, and whose incapacity for self-existence is not less manifest. And in committing himself to this doctrine he has committed himself emphatically to a confession oi faitJi ; it is only on the ground of faith that he can for a moment hold it. It is a violation of every law of all philosophy, not excepting Positive philosophy. It is a violation of every principle of causality — even of that Agnostic principle which can see in the cause only Place for Faith hi tJic System of Nature. 4 1 an adequate antecedent. It is, in short, a recog- nition of the fact that there is in the natural an element which is supernatural, and that the things which meet the eye have not owed their being to "things which do appear." This brings us to the second alternative — that which proposes to regard the world as having had its origin in a spontaneous accident ; in other words, as having come by chance. Over this alternative we need spend no time, because the conclusion to which it points is transparent on the very surface ; it is professedly the announcement of a miracle. It is admitted by Professor Huxley that to believe in the spontaneous generation of life is an act oi faith. He himself professes to have that faith ; but he candidly acknowledges that he has it in direct contradiction to all the facts of present experience — that if spontaneous genera- tion ever happened, it must have occurred under conditions which no longer exist. The belief that life at one time arose spontaneously from dead matter, is itself the belief that dead matter at one time possessed a power which it does not now possess ; in other words, a power which, in relation to the pr^ent system of things, is strictly super- natural. To admit that at any time matter pos- sessed such a power, or to assert that at any moment there was introduced into the universe a single chance movement, is to destroy at one sweep 42 Can the Old Faith live with the Nezv ? the whole doctrine of evolution. The doctrine of evolution cannot be held consistently by any one who is willing to concede that at any solitary moment of the infinite past there was a single intervention of the hand of chance. Professor Huxley itiay hold, by what he calls an act of philosophic faith, that there was one moment in which life sprang up spontaneously, but in so doing he has committed himself to the guidance of faith for ever. That one moment, if it ever existed, has destroyed all the moments of scientific evolu- tion. It has broken that chain which professed to be an infinite and an irrefragable chain. It has introduced into the universe, midway in its career, a new and unheard-of element — an element unlike all that has preceded it, and unaccounted for by aught that has accompanied it. It has introduced it suddenly, unexpectedly, without cause or ade- quate antecedent, by what is equivalent to a creation out of nothing, which yet at the same time is a creation without hands. The amount of faith in the supernatural required for such a belief as this is simply appalling. The man who can embrace it must have a special gift of faith. It is the acceptance of a doctrine which is confessedly contrary to all scientific experience and avowedly opposed to all mental intuition ; and, what renders the case more illogical still, it is the acceptance of a doctrine which is pronouncedly supernatural, Place for Faith i>i tJie System of Nature. 43 with a view to avoid the supernaturalism of another creed which is far less pronounced than its own. For this leads us to the third of those forms of solution by which it has been proposed to account for the existence of the universe ; it is that which regards the visible order of things as the result of a spiritual and creative Intelligence. This is the view which is commonly considered as the distinctively supernatural explanation. We have seen that this is a grand mistake. We have seen that every attempt either to explain the origin of the universe or to leave its origin unexplained, must alike end in the recognition of a supernatural element. We now go on to make good what we have already suggested — that so far from being the distinctively supernatural explanation, this theory of a creative Intelligence is quite the least super- natural of the three attempted solutions. It in- volves a miracle indeed, but not a miracle of the same class as that involved by the others. The doctrine that the world has existed from eternity, and the doctrine that the world has sprung into existence spontaneously, are alike beliefs which involve a violation of the law of nature as now established. But the doctrine that this world owes its origin to the work of a higher creative Intel- ligence does not involve a violation of the law of nature ; it is only a miracle of transcendence. We are aware that this is the very point which has 44 Can the Old Faith live zvith the Neiv ? frequently been made a subject of dispute. Mr Herbert Spencer, as Kant had done before him, labours to show that the conception of a supreme Intelligence is just as unthinkable as any of those other conceptions by which man has attempted to account for his own being. We shall try to repre- sent as clearly and as strongly as possible the line of argument by which this charge of unthinkable- ness has generally been supported. We start, it is said, with the notion that every existence must have a cause. We come, on this ground, to the conclusion that the world cannot be eternal, and that therefore there must be some infinite Intelligence to account for those wonder- ful phenomena which we see around us. So far all is well. But the moment we have found this Cause for our physical universe, we immediately proceed to violate that very principle of causality by which we profess to have found Him, We started with the assumption that every existence must have a cause, and on the strength of that assumption we concluded that the world must have a Creator. But, now that we have found the Creator, we do not go on to ask what has caused Hitn ; nay, instead of that we start a new as- sumption — that His existence is self-existent ; in other words, that His being is without a cause. The theologian is here charged with the most flagrant breach of logic. He is asked why he Place for Faith in the System of Nature. 45 affirms a principle of causality in order to find a God, and then denies it in order to make his God eternal. If he is willing to arrest the principle of causality at any place or time, why should he not arrest it in the universe itself? If there can be a God without a cause, why should there not be a world without a cause ? If the theologian is will- ing in the highest sphere of existence to deny the necessity that existence must have a cause, where- fore should he not be willing to carry down this principle of denial into its lower and subordinate spheres ; why should he not be content to say that the visible order is itself self-existent ? We have stated the argument as strongly as we can in order that it may have all the force which belongs to it. But now we have to point out that, plausible as the reasoning is, it is built upon a mistake. It is quietly taken for granted at the beginning that the fundamental principle of the theologian is, every existence must have a cause. We must emphatically deny that this is a principle either of theology or of metaphysics. The prin- ciple is, not that every existence must have a cause, but that every change must have a cause. If the world in which we live were merely an existence, we should not be warranted in concluding that there must be a principle underlying it. Our reason for concluding that there must be such a principle is the testimony of our experience that the world 46 Can the Old Faith live with the A^rie' ? in which we dwell is, so far as we see it, not self- supporting. It is because this world exhibits to us only a succession of changes that we are driven to infer the existence of a power underlying these changes. It by no means follows, however, that when we have discovered such a power, whether it be the God of Theism or the Force of Mr Herbert Spencer, we shall be bound to find a cause for it also. This power, whatever it be, may be change- less in its nature, and, if changeless in its nature, it is not a subject for the principle of causality. It is a popular opinion that the mere sight of any existing object is bound to suggest the ques- tion, Who made it ? It seems to us that this is a mistake. If an object were nothing more than existing, it would not to the primitive man offer any such suggestion. The reason why every object around us does suggest such a question is, that in point of fact every object around us is constantly exhibiting change. If, instead of an outward object, we take the consciousness of in- dividual existence itself, we shall see this still more clearly. Let us suppose the case of a man brought into the world at the stage of manhood and with the powers of manhood fully developed ; the very first question he should ask would be this, Where liave I come from .-* He would take it for granted that he had come from somewhere, that he owed his being to the influence of some power beyond Place for Faith in the System of Nature. 47 his own. The child in actual life seldom gets the chance of putting that question ; it is told from the very first that God made it, and so reflection on the subject is forestalled. But in the case of our hypothetical man, reflection would anticipate in- formation ; the sense of wonder would be too quick to be forestalled, and the question would come forth, Whence came I .'' But now, why is it that the man would put such a question at all in reflecting on the problem of his own existence .-' Would it be from his conviction that every exist- ence must have a cause outside of itself that he would infer his own life not to be eternal } Not so. His search for a cause of his being would pro- ceed from a very different source — not from an inference at all, but from an actual perception of fact. It would proceed from his consciousness that in point of fact he was not eternal. He would feel instinctively that his present being was the manifestation of a change. He would see behind him a blackness of darkness, a great blank of nothingness, out of which he had come by some process unknown to himself. It would be his sense of a change that would lead him to the con- viction that there must have been somewhere a power to cause the change. Had his memory of the past been unbroken, had he been conscious of no blank in the yesterday, he would assuredly have concluded that his own being was eternal ; but 48 Ca)i the Old Faith live zvitJi the Neiv ? when he knows that his consciousness of to-day has come to him as a surprise, he is inevitably forced to the conclusion that it has come to him by another power than his own. This, then, is the inference at which we arrive. The third alternative for the solution of the uni- verse is not unthinkable, and it is the only one of the three which is not unthinkable. This is simply, in other terms, to say that it is the least supernatural of the three. It involves only a supernaturalism which transcends the order of nature, not a supernaturalism which violates the order of nature. It sets aside no law, it suspends no principle, it interferes with no portion of the material mechanism ; it simply postulates the fact that behind the material mechanism there is a principle which is immaterial. Leaving, however, this question for the present, we have here simply to refer to that result to which the investigation of this chapter has led us. We have been brought to the inevitable conclusion that there is a place for faith in the system of nature. Nay, to state the conclusion thus is to understate it. What we have found is not simply that there is a place for faith in the order of nature ; it is rather that only through faith is there a place for nature itself. We have examined one by one the solu- tions by which it has been attempted to explain the existence of the universe, and each of these Place for Faith in the System of Nature. 49 solutions has yielded us the same result — a limit to the power of natural law. Whether we have considered the hypothesis of the world's eternity, or the doctrine of its spontaneous generation, or the belief in its origination from the hand of an intelligent Creator, we have found equally that the road of experience has come to an end, and that we have been compelled through the rest of our journey to travel by the flight of faith. We have found that each doctrine alike, though not in the same degree, has led to the conclusion that the natural is bounded by the supernatural, and that beyond the sphere of experiment and understanding there lies a region of the super- sensuous and the mystical. We have found, finally, that of the three alternatives, those which demand the most faith are just those which the opponents of supernaturalism have adopted with the view of avoiding the necessity of faith. We have seen that the worshippers of physical law are compelled, by the adoption of either of these creeds, to abandon the inviolability of that very law which they worship ; and that the only belief which saves them from the necessity of beholding a violation of their cherished prin- ciples of nature, is just that faith in a supreme and supernatural Intelligence which, in the sup- posed interest of science, they are making such frantic efforts to gainsay. D 50 Can the Old Faith live xvith the Neiv ? CHAPTER III. IS THE OBJECT OF FAITH KNOWABLE ? In the previous chapter we arrived at the con- clusion that the contemplation of nature inevit- ably leads to the recognition of a supernatural element — an element which cannot be avoided by any road we may choose to follow. But when this conclusion has been reached, we have only gained the threshold of another question. To know that there is a supernatural element is one thing ; it is another and a very different thing to know zvhat is that supernatural element. The question which immediately presents itself is this : conceding that there is an object of faith, is it conceivable that this object of faith can ever become an object of knowledge .'* Can we reach, after all, any higher conclusion than the simple fact that we have come to a barred gate .'' No doubt the very recognition of a barred gate proves that there is something on the other side of it, and to this extent it must be granted that Is the Object of Faith Knoivable ? 5 i we have passed beyond Agnosticism. But, then, this extent is only negative ; it is simply the recognition that there is a region beyond our experience into which we are forbidden to travel. The question is. Can this region be known ? Can we reach any other or any further know- ledge of it than the fact that its gates are barred ? Can the supernatural become to us anything more than a negation, anything more than a limit which says to the exercise of human thought, " Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further" ? We do not here inquire whether, in point of fact, the supernatural has or has not revealed itself, or whether, as a matter of history, there is or is not adequate evidence for its revelation ; that is an investigation which belongs specially to the sphere of the theologian. Our inquiry is a more outward and a more preliminary one, and one without the settlement of which the other cannot even be entered upon. We want to consider not whether the supernatural Jias revealed itself, but whether it co7ild reveal itself, to the mind of man. If, as Agnosticism says, there be a great gulf fixed between our human experience and that which transcends experience — if the supernatural be in its very nature the antithesis and contrary of the natural — if there be no possible channel of com- munication by which the idea of a supersensuous world can be imparted to the world of sense, — we 52 Can tJie Old Faith live with the Neiv ? are precluded on the very threshold from con- sidering the claims of any revelation ; we are de- barred from entertaining for a moment any testi- mony of actual history which declares that, at any time, God made Himself known. Now, if there be such an impossibility of the supernatural communing with the natural, it must lie in one or other of two things, — either in the nature of the finite, or in the character of the infinite. If there be an incompatibility between nature and the supernatural, it must consist either in the deficiencies of nature, or in the infinitude of that which lies beyond nature. As both of these positions have been taken by Agnosticism, we propose briefly to consider them each in turn. And, first, it is averred that man has no faculty which gives him any knowledge of the supersen- suous. We are told, again and again, that all the powers of the human mind are correlated with certain bodily impressions, and are unable to tran- scend the limits of these impressions. Every idea which enters the mind is an idea limited by the boundaries of earthly experience, and entirely in- capable of soaring beyond that sensuous atmo- sphere which originally gave it birth. It is here that the main diff'erence lies between the Agnostic and the Gnostic — the men of the nineteenth cen- tury who say they do not know, and the men of the second century who said they knew all about Is tJie Object of FaitJi Knozvablc ? 53 it. The difiference lies in the fact that the Gnostic beheved himself to possess a special faculty for communing- with Divine things ; the Agnostic denies that he has any faculty which is not ex- clusively concerned with the interpretation of the sensuous and the human. The Gnostic held that there were in the human mind possibilities of a state of ecstasy whereby it could transcend the records of its own experience, and soar into a region with which the earth had no concern ; the Agnostic holds that the only ecstasy of which the human mind is capable is one that directly arises from contemplating the things of time. The Gnostic affirmed that the clearest light we have comes from our moments of mysticism, when we are lifted above the visible and enabled to com- mune with the eternal and the unseen ; the Ag- nostic declares that these moments of mysticism are themselves but the dimness of the outer senses, the temporary clouds that obscure our perception of the visible and actual world. Here is a very striking difference amounting to nothing less than a direct antithesis. And yet we would call attention to the fact that antithetical as these two systems undoubtedly are, there is one essential point on which they are agreed.^ They both take for granted that our sole hope in the ^ We have already pointed out this in the anonymous article "Agnosticism" in the 'Scottish Review,' April 1883. 54 Can the Old Faith live ivith the New ? possibility of obtaining Divine knowledge rests upon our possession of a faculty which transcends the limits of earthly experience. They both as- sume that if there be no such faculty, there can be no means whatever whereby man can attain to any knowledge of the supernatural. The Gnostic claims to have such a knowledge, because he claims to possess a mysterious inner eye which beholds supersensuous things ; the Agnostic main- tains that he can have no such knowledge, be- cause he feels that he does not possess any power which is capable of transcending the limits of sense or surpassing the boundaries of finite ex- perience. The two are at one on their main posi- tion — that our recognition of a supernatural world depends on our possession of a supersensuous power. But now, what if it could be shown that in this position, whose certainty is tacitly assumed, the Gnostic and the Agnostic are alike wrong } What if it could be shown that instead of being recog- nised by a special faculty, our evidence for the supernatural is actually suggested by the very limits of human experience itself.^ Such a dis- covery would not affect the question whether there be or be not a special power which com- munes with the Divine ; it would leave that still an open question, but it would make its solution a matter of much less consequence. It would Is the Object of Faith Knozvablc ? 55 prove that in order to establish their respective theories the Gnostic and the Agnostic have alike gone out of their way. It would then be possible to hold that the Gnostic was wrong in his premiss and right in his conclusion — wrong in believing in a supersensuous faculty, yet right in maintaining that he had a knowledge of the supernatural. It would then be possible to hold that the Agnostic was right in his premiss and wrong in his conclu- sion — right in asserting that he had no supersen- suous faculty, but wrong in inferring thence that he could have no knowledge of the supernatural. And yet, this is the very conclusion, the inevit- able conclusion, to which we have been led by the investigation of the previous chapter. We there found that our idea of the supernatural was an idea directly suggested, not by any transcendental faculty nor by any supposed communion with transcendental things, but simply and solely by a study of the limits of nature herself. We found that we were necessitated to seek a supersensuous solution of the universe from the simple fact that the natural laws were unable, without violating themselves, to account for their own origin. We saw that to introduce the hypothesis of chance was to formulate the idea of a violation of the law of nature ; that to adopt the conception of an un- beginning world was to deny the existence of any law of nature at all. By the exigency of these 56 Can tJic Old Faith live ivitJi the New ? alternatives we were driven to a solution of the universe which seemed at once more easy and more rational- — a solution which did not violate any principle of nature, and which did not contradict any testimony of consciousness ; we inferred that the movements of the universe must themselves be the manifestations of a Power beyond the uni- verse. But what we want now to emphasise is the fact that the process by which we arrived at this conclusion was itself a purely natural process. We did not reach it by any transcendentalism, we did not come to it by any mysticism ; we were driven to it by the barred gate of our own experience. It was the limits of our own senses that compelled us to seek a solution of the universe which invoked the presence of a Power beyond them. Experi- ence, and nothing but experience, was the source of our information that nature was inadequate to account for her own existence. No transcendental logic, no mystical power of abstraction, no special faculty conversant with the things beyond experi- ence, could ever in this matter have possessed one tithe of the authority which was wielded by the testimony of experience itself when it told us that the domain of visible nature was too narrow and limited to account for what we see. Here, then, is a point which has been ignored by both the Gnostic and the Agnostic. Our know- ledge that there is a supernatural is not suggested Is tJie Object of Fait J L Kiwzvablc ? 57 by the supernatural ; it comes from those very limits of experience which the Gnostic and the Agnostic alike hold to be barriers to our view of God, The stone which each of these builders has rejected is that which has been made the head of the corner. This is not a matter of theory ; it is a matter of Positivism, of fact, of experience. We may, if we will, deny the existence of the super- natural, but we cannot deny that there have been times when we have dreamed of its existence. That dream was at the very least an idea, and the idea is here the thing that needs to be accounted for. However illusory it may have been, however short-lived it may have been, however soon it may have been supplanted by another and a contrary thought, it remains an eternal fact that it once was there. That at any moment of our lives there should have been present in the mind the concep- tion that there is something which transcends the limits of nature, nay, that at any moment there should have entered the mind the idea that nature has a limit at all — this is the real problem that needs to be explained. And what we wish to emphasise is the fact that the explanation has been found, not in the exercise of a transcendental faculty, but in that sober study of the things of experience which the Positivist declares to be the boundary of human knowledge. It is from nature herself that we have learned the limits of nature, 58 Can the Old Faith live zuith the New ? and it is in learning the limits of nature that we have caught a glimpse of that region which is illimitable. We have now considered the first of the posi- tions by which it has been proposed to deny that the object of faith can be an object of knowledge. We have seen that if there be any barrier to an intellectual communion between the human and the Divine, it does not lie in the nature of the human — so far, at least, as that nature is viewed simply as finite. It is, of course, quite possible to hold that the human nature may have so debased itself by sin as to render it naturally incapable of communing with the Divine, but that is an ethical and not an intellectual barrier. We are here con- sidering simply the position that the fact of man being a finite being debars him from attaining to a knowledge of God — and we have found that position to be untenable. We have seen that the moment a man reaches the idea of his finitude, he has already attained the thought of something beyond it, or, in other words, that the very recog- nition of a barred gate implies the recognition of something on the other side against which it is barred. There is, therefore, nothing in the fact of man being finite which renders it impossible for him to arrive at Divine knowledge ; it is by the knowledge of his finitude that he reaches the idea of a Divine existence. And this brin