m , o* r LIBRARY i TUF. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Receded.-. .-M&*ttJ 188? (S Accessions No..\3^^./^/. S/ie/f No. I Si I -'- i / " . HISTOKIC ASPECTS OF THE A PRIORI ARGUMENT CONCERNING THE BEING AND ATTEIBUTES OF GOD HISTOKIC ASPECTS OF THE A PRIORI ARGUMENT CONCERNING THE BEING AND ATTKIBUTES OF GOD BEING FOUE LECTURES DELIVERED IN EDINBURGH IN NOVEMBER 1884 ON THE HONYMAN-GILLESPIE FOUNDATION WITH APPENDICES AND A POSTSCRIPT BY JOHN GIBSON CAZENOVE, D.D. u SUB-DEAN AND CHANCELLOR OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. MARY, EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY Hontion MACMILLAN AND CO. 1886 -&J- CL3 UNIVERSITY PKEFACE FIFTY-THREE years ago, that is to say in A.D. 1833, a Scottish gentleman, Mr. William Hony- man Gillespie, published a work on the d priori argument for the Being and Attributes of God a work of which some account will be found in the following pages. The widow of this" gentleman, w T ho died in A.D. 1875, being anxious to promote what her husband had so much at heart the sacred cause of Belief against Unbelief is desirous of insti- tuting a Lectureship connected with his name, as a means of good, and as a fitting tribute to his memory. The Foundress of the Lectureship hopes to endow it in such wise as that a course of four or six Lectures may be delivered at in- tervals of four or five years. The Lectures are to treat of such themes as the Being and Attri- vi Preface. butes of God; the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ ; the truth of Christ's Religion ; or other cognate subjects, on which there is, in the main, an agreement among the vast majority of those 'who profess and call themselves Christians.' The tenure of the Lectureship is to be undenomi- national. Those with whom the Foundress took counsel agreed in thinking it desirable, that the first course should have some immediate relation to that particular phase of Apologetics in which Mr. Gillespie took so deep an interest. I need not detain the reader with any account of the circumstances which have induced me, with much diffidence, to occupy the unsought- for position of the First Lecturer on this found- ation. The objects at which I have aimed are explained in the Lectures themselves. But I should like here to add one or two other considerations. I am not without hope that the limitation and narrowness of the range of these Lectures may to some readers prove rather an advantage than the reverse. It is possible that the outlines of at least one portion of an abstruse question Preface. vii may thus be more easily grasped, and that the study of more exhaustive treatises (such as, for example, those of Professor Flint on Theism and anti-Theistic theories) may be facilitated. It is also, I trust, conceivable that the quotations given in the Lectures, the Mottoes, and the Appendices may be found to present a body of information, such as is not elsewhere readily accessible within the same compass, and which may prove both helpful and suggestive. My very special thanks are due, in the first place, to the Foundress for the great kindness and liberality displayed throughout our inter- course. Secondly, to the Kev. William Adam- son, D.D., Minister of the Evangelical Union, who not only encouraged me in this undertaking (to which he had previously contributed a very able and useful pamphlet), but who generously relieved me from all trouble connected with the arrangements for the delivery of the Lectures. Thirdly, to the Eev. Robert Flint, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Theology in the University of Edin- burgh. Besides my indebtedness to his volume on Theism (which may have influenced me un- consciously, even where I believe my conclusions viii Preface. to be independent of it), I owe gratitude to Dr. Flint for kind encouragement and suggestions in the way of study, and for my introduction to the work of M. Bouchitte. One other friend of long standing must not be passed by. The Kev. David Greig, M.A. of Aberdeen, and Eector of Addington in Buckinghamshire, is possessed of a large share of that metaphysical acumen for which his native land is celebrated. He has supplied me with much in the way of instruction and of suggestion, especially as regards the Fourth Lecture. But Mr. Greig must not be held responsible for any of my statements or arguments, with some of which he may, I fear, be found to disagree. Despite these aids I claim to have made an independent study of all the leading authorities on the subject of these Lectures, with most of whom I possess an acquaintance of many years' standing. The Lectures are now published in the form in which they were originally composed. In delivery, however, illustrations, particularly of the shorter Lectures, were freely supplied from passages which are now relegated to the Appen- Preface. ix dix. An epitome of the volume was also given in two Lectures delivered in Glasgow in January 1885. I am very conscious of the value of the kind patronage bestowed not only by an audience both larger and more attentive than I ventured to anticipate, but specially also by those gentle- men who on successive nights very generously accompanied me to the platform. That body in- cluded, I believe, representatives from among those engaged in the Ministry of all the leading Christian communions in this city Presby- terian, Episcopalian, and Eoman Catholic. To each and all of them I beg to return my cordial thanks. J. G. CAZENOVE. EDINBURGH, 6th March 1886. NOTE. As it is just possible that a perusal of this volume may be attempted by some readers unversed in mental science, it may be well for their sakes to give a brief explanation of the terms a priori and a posteriori, as applied to the process of reasoning. These words were suggested by the Aristotelian philosophy, and were originally applied as follows. When we reason from cause to effect, we are said to argue a priori. Thus, for example, a farmer casting his glance upon Preface. a piece of rich soil, which is about to be tilled, argues d priori that the crop will be a good and abundant one. But when we reason backward from effect to cause, our argument is d posteriori. If our farmer sees in August a splendid crop of wheat in a given field, he infers d posteriori that the soil of that field is rich. In later times, under the influence of Hume and Kant, the range of these terms has been enlarged, and we commonly call all elements of knowledge d priori if they are antecedent to experience, and d posteriori when they are based upon experience. Thus we know d priori the truth of the axiom, that ' the whole is greater than its part ; ' but men have learnt d posteriori that bread is wholesome, and hemlock poisonous. LECTURE I. ' The proper, peculiar, and deepest theme of universal and human history, to which all others are subordinate, is the conflict of belief and unbelief. . . . All those epochs ... in which unbelief be it under whatsoever form it will maintains a direful supremacy, and even if it should shine for a moment with a tinsel brilliancy, vanish before posterity, because no one willingly torments himself with a knowledge of the unfruitful.' Goethe, West-Ostlicher Divan. ' An undogmatic creed is as senseless as a statue without shape or a picture without colour.' Leslie Stephen, Freethinking and Plain- speaking, p. 124. 'The central truth round "which all the rest group themselves is the conviction uttered in each eager credo, and implied in every cry from the heart's distress, that there is an eternal God, in whom we live, and who can hear us when we speak to Him ; from whom, further, we learn of His boundless knowledge, of His years which shall not fail, and of our own blessedness as to be found only in Him. From this root there has grown up a complete philosophy of life, at once theoreti- cal and practical.' Ellen Watson (Life by Anna Buckland), p. 164. LECTUEE I. IT will not be denied that there have been mul- titudes of men and women Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan, and others who have believed in a real Theism. By a real Theism I mean the acceptance of the doctrine that there exists a supreme, sole, infinite Being, who has created and preserved all things, and without whose permission nothing has ever existed or can exist; a Being perfect in wisdom, in goodness, and in power, except in so far as His power is limited by His goodness, or by any laws which He has imposed upon Himself or impressed upon the Universe ; a Being who is a pure Spirit without body, parts, or passions ; a Being who has existed eternally in the past, who exists now, and who will exist eternally in the future. But those who disbelieve in such a creed, 4 Belief and Experience of Life. [LECT. who either hesitate concerning it, or who actually oppose it, may ask of the believers the pro- foundly important questions, 'Why do you thus believe? What is the ground of your belief? 7 To this inquiry the following seem to be the leading answers. ' I received this doctrine from loved parents and teachers. To them it was " the life's life of their being ; " and it affected their conduct and their whole relations to all around them. I have given it a trial, often it must be granted a feeble, unworthy, inconsistent one. Nevertheless it has not broken down under the strain of this life's sorrows and difficulties, or of my own miserably imperfect practice. On the contrary, it has made life endurable, and has been the source and mainspring of any benefits which I have been able to confer upon my fellow- creatures/ One who speaks in this strain may possibly be quite unable to set forth the ground of his or her convictions in a strictly argumentative form. It must be owned, I think, that the class of whom such a Theist is a representative has been in the past, and will always remain in the future, by far Belief and Implicit Reason. the largest. The well-known but true story of the judge who recommended a colonial official to give his decisions, but not to publish his reasons for them, is applicable to many subjects besides that of law. Comparatively few persons are sufficiently well skilled in the process of analysing the grounds of their convictions to be able to attempt the task satisfactorily. They have good reasons, but those reasons are implicit ones, and the endeavour to be explicit proves a failure. Wordsworth, in one of his earliest poems, has illustrated the danger of demanding from chil- dren their reasons for the judgments which they form; 1 and on deep and difficult subjects many of us must always remain children. An example of the kind of argument which must always influence a large number, even of thoughtful persons, is given us in a work which has appeared since I undertook the delivery of these lectures. A lady of high culture and of earnest thoughtfulness became acquainted with the late Dr. Strauss. For some seven years her mind was deeply affected by his teaching, 1 Anecdote for Fathers, showing how the practice of lying may be taught (vol. i. poem x. in the edition of 1841). 6 Belief and Doubt under Sorrow. [LECT. and she tells us that she 'had to wrestle heart and soul with theoretical doubts.' At length these doubts were resolved. By what process of reasoning was this result brought about ? By a process which, if we attempt to put it into mood and figure, may seem to have but little power. Her infant son fell out of a window and was killed. The mother sought for consolation in the various systems of philo- sophy which had been brought before her. The amount of support which she found in them shall be stated in her own words. ' The whole edifice of philosophical conclusions which I had built up for myself, I find to have no foundation whatever ^nothing of it is left it has crumbled away like dust. What should we be, what would become of us, if we had no faith if we did not believe that there is a God who rules the world and each single one of us?' But to whatever degree convictions of this nature may be practically trustworthy for the individual, of course we cannot ask other minds to receive as true, conclusions, however sacred, i.] Belief influenced by Example. 7 brought about by an experience like that of the lamented Princess Alice. The same must be said of many a similar basis of belief. There is, for example, the impress made by the consistent life of believers around us. Chaucer concludes the eulogy of his model parson with the emphatic lines : ' And Christes law, and His apostles twelf, He preached, but first He followed it Himself.' If, on the one hand, as has been asserted, the faults and shortcomings of believers have wrought more injury to the cause of belief than whole volumes of argument ; so, on the other, a single consistent life may effect more in the way of persuasion than the most able and elaborate ratiocination. Such at least will be the case with many minds. Nevertheless man possesses the great gift of reason, and no cause ought to shrink from courting investigation carried on by means of such a power. We may indeed ask ourselves, and ask those around us, to keep careful and sleepless watch, lest conscious or unconscious prejudice should disturb the process, which we take to be reasonable ; but we must not on any 8 Belief and the Claims of Reason. ELECT. account, to borrow a phrase from Bishop Butler, allow ourselves to ' vilify reason.' Belief in Theism, like every other belief, must be tried at this tribunal, if it is to stand. It was no despiser of the claims of faith who issued to believers the command ' to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear/ And what is true in this respect of advocates of Theism holds true of supporters of every other reply to questions concerning the supernatural. Thus, for example, the Epicurean of old ought to have asked himself whether, while admitting in words the existence of superior powers but denying their interest in human affairs, he was not practically though unavowedly teaching atheism. Those who proclaim in our own day what Mr. Goldwin Smith has called ' the figment of a scientific God/ should look to themselves lest they through unconscious prejudice be apply- ing principles derived from other departments of knowledge into one in which they will not hold good. The same must be said too of the Pantheist, who identifies creation with a Creator, and the i.] Position of Atheism and Agnosticism. 9 Polytheist, who believes in ' gods many and lords many.' But most eminently is it true concerning the teachers of Atheism and Agnosticism. Not only may they be called upon to listen to the warn- ing of an Apostle concerning those who did not like to retain God in their knowledge, but they come before the public standing at a disadvan- tage. They have yet to show that any great nation has found it possible for any lengthened period to live upon Atheism. They have yet to show that the dread of Atheism, as something inconsistent with settled government, felt by so many statesmen in Athens, in Kome, nay, even in the Paris of the Eevolution of 1789, is wholly devoid of any sufficient basis or excuse. Many religions can point to achievements in the domains of science, of art, of literature, of legislation, of philanthropy, and of general civilization. Theism, particularly Christian Theism, can certainly do this. The nations which profess it are, in the language even of Gibbon, ' the most distinguished portion of human kind in arts and learning as well as in arms.' l Avowed Atheists can not yet 1 Decline and Fall, chap. xv. (ad into.) io Theism in Science and Art. [LECT. point to a long and brilliant bead-roll in many of these departments of thought and action. It is, of course, possible that some few men of eminence have not had the courage of their opinions, and have secretly disbelieved in Theism. But such men seldom influence posterity. Nor must it be forgotten that several of these in- herited their share of the intellectual wealth of believing ages, and were often nurtured in an atmosphere of belief. Even physical science, which is so often cited as an example to the contrary, has received more aid from the camp of belief both in the Middle Ages and in modern times than is generally admitted. Art architectural can point to the Temple of Jerusa- lem, to the medieval cathedrals, abbeys, town- halls, and castles, and to the glories of the Alhambra, as associated with the idea of Theism. Art pictorial, similarly blended, may challenge the universe for any rival list of great names and triumphs. In music, again, the bell and the organ are creations of Theistic religion, mainly, it would seem, of its Christian form. Many literatures have made such faith at least their starting-point. Hebrew literature (for the Bible i.] In Letters, Law, and Philanthropy. 1 1 is literature, however much more it may also be) is one illustration. It is highly probable the earliest Hindoo writings were, though less dis- tinctly, of similar character. Anglo-Saxon litera- ture begins with the poetry of a sacred bard, the lowly Csedmon, and the first great and enduring work of modern letters is the Divina Commedia of Dante. The Mosaic code of law, of which even sceptics have spoken highly, was inter- twined with the nation's creed. And the grand creation of Eoman law, though in great measure a product of Stoic philosophers, was so far from being anti-Theistic, that Christian emperors, witness Theodosius, found little difficulty in accepting its main outlines, and the student who opens the Institutes of Justinian is at once con- fronted by the words, 'In Nomine Domini Nostri Jesu Christi.' On the philanthropy of at least one form of Theism, the Christian, it is almost needless to dwell, unless it may be per- mitted to call attention to the generous confes- sion of a bystander, Mr. Lecky, to the effect that Christianity has suffered from the fact that so much of its charity is private and hidden, while the fierce conflicts connected with it are but too 1 2 Arguments mainly outward or inward. [LECT. patent to every eye. Nevertheless its mansions of charity are also visible. Some of you may have heard of a stranger in a large town being allowed to address an assembly of Agnostics, and telling them of the inspection which he had made with the help of a guide. Here was an infirmary undenominational, but avowedly Chris- tian. In another quarter stood some almshouses, and a dispensary, for impoverished Jews. This hospital was Wesleyan, another Koman Catholic. Anglicans and Presbyterians had their peniten- tiaries and other homes of refuge. But on ask- ing for the similar solaces of human misery built by Atheists and Agnostics, he was informed that as yet such institutions were utterly un- known. But it is time for me to return to my more immediate subject. When believers in Theism endeavour to act upon the advice to seek for reasons of their hope, they must, I conceive, search for their arguments by the course of looking mainly outward, or mainly inward. I use the word mainly advisedly, because the pro- gress of inquiry will, if I am not mistaken, im- press upon us a conviction that it is extremely i.] A posteriori argument wide spread. 13 difficult, if not absolutely impossible, entirely to separate the one line of thought from the other. Undoubtedly the argument from effect to cause (or, as logicians call it, the a posteriori argument) is the most obvious, and has been the most widely spread. It seems to have the sanc- tion of an Apostle. 1 It is the argument by which (as Xenophon tells us) Socrates confronted the atheistic tenets of the little Aristodemus. It reappears in the treatise of Cicero De Naturd Deorum. It has been elaborated (some say borrowed) by Paley in his famous book on Natural Theology ; and it seems, if we can trust the reports of travellers, to occur even to the untutored mind of the savage. With the specious counter -arguments by which this mode of reasoning has been met, I am not here specially concerned. Dr. Mozley, among his many great services to the cause of belief, has discussed this subject with his usual clearness and ability ; and to his remarks on the argument from design, 2 I may for the present be content to refer my 1 Romans i. 19-31. 2 Essays, Historical and Theological, vol. ii., ' Essay on Argu- ment from Design.' 1 4 Supporters of a priori A rgument. [LECT. hearers. But it is possible to draw up a list of writers who have made use, either partially or exclusively, of another line of reasoning. Their arguments have followed an v 0"%ere, ylyvovTai de del TrXeious ^ eXdrrous TavTrjv TTJV vbaov If^ovTes' r6de roLvvv trot Trapayeyov&s a^rwv TroXXotcri ios, Order. He is invisible though He can be perceived ; incomprehensible, though made manifest through His grace ; beyond our powers of appreciation, though His worth is felt even by our mortal capacities of sense ; and therefore is He true and mighty. . . . But that which is boundless is thoroughly known to itself alone. And thus the very power of His greatness renders Him to men an object at once known and unknown. And this is the capital fault of men who are unwilling to recognize Him whom yet they cannot possibly ignore.' Tertullian, Apology, (cap. xvii.). ' When asked by the governors who was the God of Christians ? he said, "If thou art worthy thou shalt know." Potheinus, Martyr at Lyons in A.D. 180 (Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. lib. v. cap. i.). ' Only love for the living God, and longing to be approved by Him is the scientific, as it is the Christian basis of morality ; and science will never find a firmer basis, nor life a surer. ' Lotze (cited by Cook, Monday Lectures in Boston, 1884). 1 My life will show the world what it shows me, that there is a lov- ing God who arranges everything for the best.' Autobiography of Hans Christian Andersen. LECTUEE IV. BY the commencement of the nineteenth cen- tury the aspect of the a priori argument for the being and attributes of God had, I think, assumed a position of this kind. The labours of Anselm, Descartes, and Clarke had brought about a recognition of the importance of this mode of argument. Other distinguished men, if they had not made any great additions to the reasonings on its behalf, had at least stated the case in their own way, and had increased both the knowledge of the process and the respect paid to it; especially where they were able to attract audiences which might not have been so willing to lend an ear to the authors already mentioned. An illustration of my meaning may be afforded by the mere mention of the name of the Jewish philosopher Mendelssohn, the grandfather of the celebrated musician. As a Jew he may probably 68 Kant on the usual lines of Argument. [LECT. have interested many who would have paid less attention to works written by Christians. This position remained for some time materi- ally unaltered, and it is not difficult to mention authors such as the French advocate M. Nicolas, Mr. W. Anchor Thompson, and Prin- cipal Tulloch among ourselves who have given a certain amount of prominence to the a priori method in their able contributions to the philo- sophy of this fundamental doctrine. But in the meantime an acknowledgment, hardly less im- portant in its way, had been bestowed upon it by the famous philosopher of Konigsberg, Emanuel Kant. Kant, while seemingly recognizing a sort of moral conviction of the being of God, yet attempted to refute in his Critique of Pure Reason the usual lines of argument. Still, he felt it as necessary to bestow his attention on the a priori as on the d posteriori argument, thereby showing that he considered each to have won its place in the literature of the subject. "With Kant's reasonings against the argument from design I am not here immediately con- cerned, though I might again repeat my refer- ence to the essay by the late Dr. Mozley. Of UK17SRSITT Kant's criticism on the a priori method I have already spoken, and need only here repeat that, for my own part, I do not see why we may not accept the reply of M. Victor Cousin ; provided that we limit that reply to those cases where an idea in the human mind (as, for instance, that of the soul) is not of a material character, nor of a kind that can be separated into parts. In asserting that no great addition to the nature and the force of the a priori argument had been made, with the exception of the replies to Kant, I speak under correction. It might imply a more exhaustive survey of theological literature of the subject than I can pretend to have made, to be able to speak with absolute confidence. I am here stating the results of a general impression, and if it can be shown to be erroneous, I hope that I shall be found most glad and willing to correct it. But, in the year 1833, a small volume ex- clusively devoted to this subject was published by a Scottish gentleman, Mr. William Honyman Gillespie of Torbanehill. This work will probably be acknowledged, even by those who dissent from its reasonings, 70 Eulogists of Mr. Gillespie s work. [LECT. and who impugn either its conclusions, or at least the modes of reaching them, to have awakened fresh interest in the subject. The merits of Mr. Gillespie's work were freely recog- nized by the press, and it received warm eulogy from Lord Brougham, and from others of much higher authority in such questions, as -Professor Macdougal, Principal Tulloch, and Sir William Hamilton. Let me first briefly state the general line struck out by Mr. Gillespie, and then men- tion what seem the most formidable objections to that line ; adding, however, certain considera- tions which prevent me from regarding them as in any wise fatal to the argument. I take up the sixth edition of the work, published in 1872, and offer the following epitome of its contents. We have seen that Plato and Augustine started from the recognition of many sorts of goodness, whence we may arrive at the idea of the one Perfect Good. Anselm, and after him Descartes, elaborated this process of reasoning, attempting also some modifications and additions. In Clarke's system, though he may have failed to express it clearly, the starting-point seems to be the idea of Cause, which leads us upward to one iv.] Starts from ideas of Space and Time. 71 sole Great Cause. Mr. Gillespie takes a different starting-point. He begins with those great sub- jects of Space and Time, and, naturally assuming that we all recognize their importance, he argues for the Infinity of Space, or, as he prefers to call it, Infinity of Extension, not only as something existent, but as something necessarily existing. He next proceeds to argue that this Infinity of Extension is necessarily indivisible, and, in some sense necessarily immovable. From these posi- tions he goes onward to the assertion of the necessary existence of a Being of infinity of extension ; a Being possessed of unity and sim- plicity. The material universe being finite in extension cannot satisfy these conditions, and the Being who does satisfy them must neces- sarily be but one. The author then proceeds to treat the subject of Time in a way very similar to that in which he has treated the subject of Extension. He thus arrives at the conclusion that there is a Being of infinity of duration, and that there can be but one such. The next step taken is to show the identity of the Being who possesses infinity of extension with the Being possessing infinity of duration. 72 The author on the Divine Attributes. [LECT. From the Being of God, established on these grounds, our author passes on to the con- sideration of the Divine attributes. His main divisions of these are into the Intellectual, the Moral, the Compound, and the Transcendant attributes. This portion of the work almost inevitably involves reflections concerning God, not only as He is in Himself, but as He is in relation to His creatures. Hence arise some attempts to adjust the connexion between morality and happiness, immorality and misery. The reasonings of this portion of the work contain some conclusions which, it seems to me, might be doubted, or even rejected, without pre- judice to the main positions of Mr. Gillespie's treatise. They take us, however, from a region of purely intellectual and (some would say) cold propositions, into one where the author may exhibit, and certainly does exhibit, an extremely high tone of moral and religious feeling. The author dwells with great force, in a - way cal- culated to impress us with awe and reverence, not only on the holiness and justice and the purity of God, but also on the terrible nature of sin in the creature, more especially of the sins of iv.] The Divine glory. 73 rebellion and of impurity. Although the earlier portion of his argument rests on grounds of pure natural reason, in the latter part the author occasionally borrows the ideas and even the language of Eevelation, though more by the way of illustration than of actual argument. Among the other Divine attributes which have been passed over or only glanced at in our brief epitome, ought to be mentioned those of perfect wisdom, perfect beauty, and perfect blessedness, in the highest sense of the word. Further, it is justly argued that from the entire attributes in their conjunction, there results an excellency or glory, far greater than can be expressed by the mere sum of the parts, because each one of the excellencies increases the action of all the others. This point is finely illustrated, and the natural conclusions respecting the proper attitude of the creature toward such a Being, the feelings of awe, dependence, trust, gratitude, and childlike love are most forcibly though briefly inculcated. I ought perhaps to mention in passing, that, although I have here given an epitome of the sixth edition of this work, the other editions, though substantially identical in point of argu- 74 High motives of all these Reasoners. [LECT. ment, yet contain important matter in the way of explanation of some of the author's positions, and of examination and reviews of the argu- ments of other writers, conjoined with replies to attacks upon his own work. Most especially is this the case in the fourth issue out of the ten which were published, the one marked as the Eussel edition. The reasoners of whom I have chiefly spoken, - Anselm, Descartes, Clarke, Gillespie are no longer with us. They were all doubtless prompted by the highest of human motives a sincere desire for the glory of Him concerning whom they wrote, and for the best and highest welfare of their fellow-men. If, as common possessors of what Christians believe to be a fallen nature, these writers allowed any earthly alloy, such as the joy of a contest, or eagerness for victory on human grounds, ever to be blended, however unconsciously, with the promptings of a nobler self, all this has, we hope, entirely passed away. In the peace which we thoroughly trust they now inherit, they can desire nothing more than that their labours may continue to prove effective, so far, and so far only, as they iv.] Some reservations of the Lecturer. 75 subserve the cause of truth. No criticism upon their productions can affect them, unless indeed they could suppose it to be injurious to the sacred cause which they upheld. And even here, it may be, that their keener vision might be permitted to discern that mistaken criticism would probably be, in God's good providence, overruled to good ; just as (to use a favourite idea of St. Augustine) the uprising of heresy has often ultimately led to a clearer perception and a fuller manifestation of true doctrine. I have thought it very possible that the position which I occupied might tempt me, in the preparation of these lectures, to become a champion at all hazards of every position and inference contained in Mr. Gillespie's acute and able volumes. Let me say then that I should not like, without fuller consideration, to commit myself to all the positions contained in Mr. Gillespie's critiques of previous authors, and that there is one of the later inferences, rather outside the main argument, which I feel myself unable to accept. But after having tried to obtain, from opponents of Mr. Gillespie's leading posi- tions, the utmost that can be said against him, 76 Reply to objections. [LECT. the assaults leave me under the impression that they are unsuccessful. For example, it has been said that the argu- ment from space and time to a Being of infinite expansion and duration fails, when regarded from a Kantian point of view. Kant, as I am justly reminded, regards space and time as mere forms of sensibility, and as having no objective exist- ence at all. Undoubtedly, from this point of view, Mr. Gillespie's argument falls to the ground. But I am compelled to ask whether there is any real prospect of the victory on this subject falling to the philosophy of Kant. Fully ad- mitting the great service rendered to us by Kant in many ways, and specially in his cor- rection of the doctrine of Locke concerning the relation of knowledge to the human mind, we may still, with, I believe, the vast majority of thinkers, refuse to entertain his theory of the non- objectivity of space and time. Far from having taken up an anti-Kantian view for the sake of defending Mr. Gillespie, I may venture to remark that, forty years ago, I was taught to distrust Kant on this subject by a tutor who iv.i Objections based on Kant and Leibnitz. 77 was an eminent logician, and who has only been prevented by ill-health from obtaining a wide- spread reputation. This writer, in an Essay on Logical Method, published in 1848, has referred to ' those who admit Kant's very questionable view of time and space.' If the future impress of Mr. Gillespie's arguments can only be dis- annulled by the thorough acceptance of the doctrine of Kant, that impress will not, I believe, run any great risk of being effaced. The view of space and time taken by Leibnitz may perhaps to some seem to be more plausible than that of Kant. Leibnitz regarded space and time as subsequent to substance, and generated by it. But may it not be said that if space and time are always and necessarily generated by substance, they may fairly be reckoned as properties of substance ? And, in that case, should we not have the right to fall back upon a position, which is fortified by the high authority of Bishop Butler ? Butler's words are as follows : ' Did it plainly appear that Space and Duration were Properties of a Substance, we should have an easy way with Atheists; for it would at once prove demon- 78 Biitler favourable to Gillespie. [LECT. strably an Eternal, Necessary, Self -existent Being ; that there is but One such ; and that he is need- ful in order to the existence of all other things.' I am quite aware that Leibnitz would not admit the validity of Butler's reasoning. He maintained that not only were space and time subsequent to substance, but that they are merely the relations in which substances stand to each other, and, consequently, in themselves non-existent. With Bishop Butler I fail to see the necessary sequence of the positions thus set forth. Mr. Gillespie would probably have been well content to put against Leibnitz, great as he is, the support afforded by the words of Butler, which indeed he has quoted in his work. A third and fourth assault are perhaps even subtler still. The first of these is the raising of the question whether, if we allow Mr. Gillespie's view of space and time as infinite entities, we have a right to apply to them the category of substance, and deduce from them the existence of a Being of infinite expansion and duration. Here, again, I venture to think that Bishop Butler comes to our aid. In a iv.] Probably also Sir Isaac Newton. 79 passage of the Analogy we find him saying. 'Abstract notions can do nothing. Indeed we ascribe to God a necessary existence, uncaused by any agent. For we find within ourselves the idea of infinity, i.e. immensity and eternity, impossible even in imagination, to be removed out of being. We seem to discern intuitively, that there must be, and cannot but be, some- what external to ourselves, answering this idea or the archetype of it. And from hence (for this abstract, as much as any other, implies a concrete), we conclude that there is, and cannot but be, an infinite and immense eternal Being existing, prior to all design contributing to His existence, and exclusive of it.' Analogy of Religion, part i. chap. vi. It is further urged that if this last objection holds good, which I, for one, am not prepared to grant, another difficulty might be found to arise out of it. It is said that many, perhaps a majority, of metaphysicians and theologians hold that if space and time are infinite entities they would limit God himself, and so prove incon- sistent with Theism. But here Mr. Gillespie might well, I think, have fallen back on the 8o Character of argument not annulled. [LEO*. magnificent language employed by Sir Isaac Newton in the well-known passage towards the close of the Principia, where he speaks of God Almighty. " He is eternal and infinite, almighty and omniscient, that is to say, He endures from eternity unto eternity, and is present from infinity unto infinity. . . . He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite : He is not duration and space, but he endures and is present. He endures evermore, and is present everywhere, and by existing evermore and every- where, He constitutes duration and space." Can it be illegitimate to argue from these infinite entities to the existence of the Being, who makes them what they are ? But it may be urged that this defence of Mr. Gillespie's process of reasoning inflicts a blow upon its a priori character. If, it may be said, he has reasoned back from space and time to Him who has made them what they are, the argument is no longer a strictly a priori one. I have already admitted that it is difficult to avoid some importation of the lessons of experi- ence, even into arguments intended to be of a wholly a priori character. But it surely may iv.] Space and Time being Primary Ideas. 8 1 be fairly maintain eel that, in arguing from space and time, we do look inward far more than outward. It is not a case of the quasi-inductive reasoning suggested by Plato and Augustine and adopted by Anselm, from the material things around us, but from prior and funda- mental ideas, which are the condition of what is learnt from experience. If it be said that to speak thus implies a recurrence to the Kantian view of space and time, I should reply that I am entirely prepared to accept Kant's theory up to the point for which I have used it, and that I only resist it when Kant, not content with speaking of space and duration as funda- mental ideas which are not simply derived from experience, goes on to insist on their being mere forms of sensibility, and being devoid of objective existence. Here I conclude this imperfect survey of some of the arguments of some of the leading advocates for the cogency of the a priori mode of proof. I do not doubt but that an exhaustive account ought to enter into the nature of the contributions made by some other distinguished G 82 Objects of this Historic Survey. [LECT. men, whose names I must mention presently. Such an attempt, however, would require a longer course of lectures than the present, and it may be doubted whether the gain in value would be proportionate to the increase in bulk. But the object of any historic survey must be, I imagine, the showing forth, if possible, what has been done, the suggesting of some- thing that has been overlooked, and which remains to be supplied; and, lastly, the limit- ation of the range of the discussion involved in the indication of what can not be achieved by this process. It is not to be denied that there have existed, and do exist, some very sincere Theists, who regard the a priori argument as either deficient, or, at any rate, as one that does not powerfully affect their own minds. Now, if any speak on this wise, ' The argument does not come home to me ; I prefer the a posteriori line of reason- ing, or even to rest on convictions which I cannot pretend to set forth in any logical form,' I am not, at present, going to argue against this class of thinkers ; but if they say or imply that there is nothing at all in the d priori line of iv.] Eminent Sanction of this Reasoning. 83 reasoning, I must say they appear to me to take a somewhat bold, perhaps I may even say, a slightly presumptuous view of the matter. For, surely, it is something like presumption to say that there is nothing whatever in a line of thought which has been suggested by a Plato and an Augustine, elaborated by an Anselm and a Descartes ; which has received more or less sanction from such men as Cudworth, Male- branche, Bossuet and Fenelon ; as Cousin, Saisset, and Jules Simon ; as Thompson and Principal Tulloch among ourselves, to say nothing of hints from the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes, and from Boethius. The guarded conclusions of the exhaustive studies of Professor Flint at any rate admit thus much, ' It may be that the d priori arguments are faulty as logical evolutions of the truth of the Divine existence from ultimate and necessary conceptions, and yet that they concur in manifesting that if God be not, the human mind is of its very nature self-contradictory; that God can only be dis- believed in at the cost of reducing the whole world of thought to a chaos.' And here, perhaps, I ought to say one word 84 Moral certitude of Belief. [LECT. on an underlying question, much mooted in our day. It is admitted by nearly all reasonable men that there do exist truths in the sphere of mathematics, and of metaphysics, which no one can deny without manifest absurdity. Is the being of God to be regarded as a truth of the same nature ? I suppose it to be possible, (though Leibnitz, and perhaps Mr. Gillespie, are here against me) that we must answer this grave and solemn question in the negative. But I do not conceive that this admission is tantamount to an acknowledgment that reasoning has no place in the establishment of the great truths of religion, and of this one, the most funda- mental of all. High authorities in the realm of physical science have, of late years, made large admissions respecting the number of truths which they are obliged to assume ; truths, which yet cannot be ranked among the principles which admit of absolute demonstration ; truths there- fore which can be denied without palpable absurdity. To return, however, to my more immediate subject. I have a few suggestions to offer in connexion with it. There are thinkers of our iv.] Mr. Martineau on this Siibject. 85 day who, in contemplating the arguments for the being of God, are inclined to dwell largely, not to say exclusively, on the inferences deducible from conscience and the moral nature of man. This line of reasoning has commended itself to thinkers in very different theological camps. It was espoused, though perhaps with indifferent success, by Kant ; it was a favourite one with Chalmers, and has also been employed by Erskine of Linlathen. It has been stated with remarkable force and clearness by Mr. Martineau, and has been powerfully urged by a Koman Catholic essayist, the late Dr. Ward, who was fond of illustrating and confirming his reasonings on this head by extracts both from the earlier and the later writings of Cardinal Newman. I doubt whether it is possible to state it more briefly and forcibly than Mr. Martineau has done in his Studies of Christianity. 'No ethical conceptions are possible at all, except as floating shreds of unattached thought, without a religious background; and the sense of responsibility, the agony of shame, the inner reverence for justice, first find their meaning and vindication in a Supreme Holiness that 86 Essentially an a priori Argument. [LECT. rules the world. Nor can any one be penetrated with the distinction between right and wrong without recognizing it as valid for all free beings, and incapable of local or arbitrary change. His feeling insists on its permanent recognition and omnipresent sway ; and this unity in the moral law carries him to the unity of the Divine Legislator. Theism is thus the in- dispensable postulate of conscience ; its objective counterpart and justification, without which its inspirations would be illusions, and its veracities themselves a lie.' Most thoroughly, for my own part, do I acknowledge, and that with much gratitude, the force of this reasoning ; but I should like to ask whether it must not be allowed to contain, to say the least, a strong infusion of the d priori element. It is surely not from mere experience, not by an extensive induction, but by looking inward, that we find those moral principles and laws of conscience which have been so much dwelt upon by the eminent men whom I have named. But if this be the case, is not the moral basis another form of the a priori argument ? It dwells, it is true, upon iv.] Difficulty of exc hiding either Element. 87 a different phase of the matter from that of the reasoners described by me, and one which, to many minds, may prove more attractive, and, consequently, seem even more cogent than the argument derived from our general notions of what is good, or from the idea of cause, or from our ideas of duration and space. But if the process of drawing inferences from it be similar in nature, those who adopt it ought to be grate- ful to the authors, who have helped to impress upon us the value of a priori reasoning in this matter. But I have a further step to take. I have already twice admitted, and that ungrudgingly, the difficulty which we, who are so largely creatures of experience, find in keeping out of our calculations the intrusion of a posteriori elements of thought. Let me, however, ask whether it has not been generally overlooked that it is at least equally difficult for those who adopt the argument from design to exclude all d> priori elements from their field of reasoning. For example, when we are told that Theism assumes causality, I must again ask and Kant at least w r ould be with me here whether the 88 Range of Natural Religion. [LECT. very idea of cause is not d priori. And further, as a highly-gifted friend points out to me, the d posteriori argument ' concludes from intelli- gence in nature to an intelligent Author or Being. It thus imports the idea of " Being," and is thereby connected with the ontological argument/ which is confessedly an d priori one. This is a point of view, which I would fain earnestly recommend to the careful consideration of all thinkers, who desire to prosecute still further researches into the arguments available for the being and attributes of God. Another point which is sometimes, I think, in danger of being neglected, is the following. The great majority of those who believe in the cogency of at least some of the arguments for the being of God would be ready to admit that reasonings equally valid can be adduced for the existence of the soul as something distinct from the body, and also even on behalf of its im- mortality and its anticipation of future judg- ment. Might it not be well that essays on natural religion should include reasonings on these topics as well as on the Creator ? For they surely form the complement of natural iv.] Problem concerning 'Necessary T religion, and might perhaps not only present it in a more attractive form, but likewise in one more likely to be well balanced and to be free from a certain one-sidedness, which the narrow- ing of the field of observation may occasionally induce. Let me also express a hope that critics may be found to take in hand another deeply inter- esting problem of an a priori character : I mean the relation of what are often called ' necessary truths ' to the Being of Him Who is emphatic- ally the Truth as well as the Light and the Life. 1 We have reason to be very grateful to all who have added to true knowledge on a theme than which none can be more important to our race. True ideas concerning God must lie at the foundation of all religion ; on this point we may gladly accept the words of John Stuart Mill, ' It is now acknowledged by nearly all the ablest writers on the subject that natural religion is the necessary basis of revealed, and that the proofs of Christianity pre-suppose the 1 See Appendix B. 90 Deficiencies of Natural Religion. [LECT. being and moral attributes of God/ But it seems impossible to deny the assertion so often made, namely, that natural religion, however firmly grasped by some eminent individuals in varied ages and countries, has not succeeded in maintaining its ground with the many. It appears to need some other aid over and above the appeal to right reason, and such aid Christians believe to have come, directly or indirectly, from revelation. Grant the acceptance of a real Theism on grounds of pure reason, and you are still con- fronted with three questions concerning which natural religion is almost silent, or returns very hesitating answers. There is the existence of evil, the value of prayer, the possibility of the forgiveness of sin. Of the first of these problems revelation, it is true, does not offer any solution; but it does, at least, give hints and suggestions of a consoling and practical character. It points to the many proofs afforded by history, both sacred and profane, of the way in which virtues witness patience, long-suffering, forgiveness, and others emerge from trials, and allow even past evil to be overruled to good. It speaks of iv.] Its hesitation concerning Prayer. 91 God Himself, not standing aloof from the great mystery of pain, but condescending to share its worst forms sin alone excepted as regards the suffering both of body and of soul. And it seems to sanction reason in doubting whether the Creator could test the real allegiance of in- telligent creatures, except by allowing them this dread gift of the freedom of choice between good and evil. The heathen, as we know from many touching passages of their writings, and by the widely- spread practice of offering sacrifice to Beings above them, did hope that prayer might be heard and that sin might be pardoned. But Theism, standing alone, from the days of Plato to those of Rousseau, and even of Jules Simon and Mr. Greg, speaks most hesitatingly, to say the least, both concerning the value of prayer and the possibility of pardon, and at times seems to deny them both. How different on these heads is the ringing clearness of Eevelation : ' thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come ' (Ps. Ixv. ) ; and how gladly did the Hebrew praise his God as One that could and would forgive sin : ' Who is a God like unto 92 Advantages of Revealed Religion. [LECT. thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage ? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us ; he will subdue our iniquities ; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea' (Micah vii. 18, 19). I do not enter upon the subject of the way in which a further revelation has enlarged our knowledge concerning the grounds and means of forgiveness. But if any are inclined to think that mere Theism has an advantage over re- vealed religion in that it is free from mystery and difficulty, I would recommend to them a glance at the concluding pages of Bishop Wat- son's answer to Tom Paine, at the admissions on this head of John Stuart Mill, and at the reply to the Religion Naturelle of M. Jules Simon in the essays of the present Due de Broglie. The last-named writer adds a reflection which may well engage our attention. He observes that up to a certain date in the world's history the pre- servation of Theism had been confined to com- paratively a small portion of the globe. But an iv.] Discontent of Atheists. 93 event takes place, ' Unto us a Child is born/ and in a few years the republication of natural religion is found to be spreading over the face of the civilized world, and has from that time, despite occasional eclipses, never been thoroughly darkened, or for any long period overthrown. At the present moment many votaries of physi- cal science, while declining to admit a real and vital Theism (such as that professed by Jews, Christians, and the earlier Mohammedans), seem inclined to acknowledge the presence of a mys- terious Something, which lies behind the forces of the universe. An avowed and outspoken atheist, Buchner, tells them that this is of no avail. He declares that such admissions are sure to leave an opening for renewed belief in the Being of God ; and, terrible as his language is, I cannot say that it seems to me either unintelli- gible or even surprising. A person who has thoroughly accepted the account of this mys- terious power, as taught by Mr. Herbert Spencer, might, it is to be hoped, be led onward to the plain and emphatic language which so many sages and devout minds have employed for long generations. 94 Lull in the assaults on Theism. [LECT. Some time must perhaps elapse before we can see the results of such admissions, and of the able works in favour of Theism, which have been recently set forth in so many different quarters. It is by no means impossible that, in the course of a few years, there may be a change concerning the points at issue in that battle which Goethe declared to be ( the proper, peculiar, and deepest theme of universal and human history, to which all others are subordinate the conflict of belief and unbelief.' Should this prove to be the case, there will ensue for a season, possibly not a short season, a certain amount of neglect, not only of the works of atheistic writers, from Lucretius down to La Mettrie and Buchner, but also of those written by the apologists for Theism, whether from the d priori or a posteriori point of view. But, as has already been seen, from time to time the great question, than which none can be more vital for humanity, namely, that which concerns the Being of God, will inevitably recur. New forms of attack will be invented by the restless fertility of the human mind, and possibly new lines of defence may have to be constructed by the champions of belief. But IV. Conclusion. 95 they will surely do well and wisely if they try to make themselves acquainted with what has been done, and with what has been left undone, by thinkers of past generations, from the days of Plato to those of the age in which their own lot is cast. If these lectures may be permitted to suggest but a hint on either of these important topics to those who may feel called upon to take part in a contest so solemn and weighty, they will have achieved all which the author can venture to hope for, and have attained the main end which he aimed at and desired to secure. APPENDIX APPENDIX A. As there are differences of opinion concerning the precise meaning to be attached to the phrase of ' a real Theism,' it seems right that the author, even at the risk of some repetition, should indicate more clearly and fully than he has done in the body of the lectures the sense which he attaches to these words. The point may be elucidated (1) by a few references to schools of thought, or authors who do not seem to have attained to a true Theism ; and (2) by a few specimens from authors who do appear to have thoroughly grasped, so far as human understanding can, what is implied in the word God. (1) Those cannot be accepted as real Theists who have spoken of matter as something eternal and, consequently, coeval with the Deity. For one of the first attributes of God is almightiness. Now, if there is anything which has existed co-eternally with Him, it has existed without His leave, and, therefore, He is not almighty. This error runs through a large portion of ancient philosophy. Indeed, the difficulty would be to make any tolerable list of classic thinkers who could be pronounced entirely free from it. It renders God not a true creator, but one who has ' merely fabricated the world, as men build houses of pre-existent i oo Appendix. materials/ and is repugnant to the notion of the Divine all-sufficiency. 1 Dr. Mill, from whom I partially cite these last words, pronounces it to be the doctrine of almost all the later Theists among the Greeks, who were not Christians, of all the Indian theistical schools (except the Vedantic), particularly the Nyaya, and those of the Sankhya, that are not Atheists. Equally must one deny the title of true Theism to the seductive and widely-spread error known as Pantheism. Pantheism makes God a mere soul of the universe and identical with it. It has, no doubt, had a great charm for many devout minds brought up in an atmosphere of Poly- theism ; because they found in Pantheism a sort of refuge from the grosser elements of popular belief. Further, like most errors, Pantheism at some points verges on the truth ; for it is true that in Him who made us ' we live and move and have our being;' it is true that in union with the Creator lies the highest bliss of the creature. But the true faith is, that the creature can never become of one substance with the Creator. By its vague and dreamy theology Pan- theism has destroyed the historic sense in the land where it reigns most supreme namely, Hindostan. Spinoza, its high priest in modern Europe, was also, according to Bun- sen, ' deficient in the historic sense.' Many of the ancients it may suffice to name Virgil have seemingly used Pan- theistic language in a religious spirit; and the same is probably true concerning several Eastern poets and sages. But the identification of all human spirits with the great Creator-Spirit, thereby making all human action an act of the Deity, overthrows (as the Hindoos confess) the eternal distinction between right and wrong; it obliterates the very idea of submission to a personal, independent Lord ; 1 Dr. Mill's Analysis of Pearson on the Creed. Appendix. i o i and perhaps Spinoza, who of all moderns has done most to popularize Pantheism in the West, has (as I have said) done more than any one man to sap in the European mind all true foundation for the love of God. I do not dwell upon Manichseism, because the idea of two contending principles which are believed to be equal, or nearly equal, in power is inconsistent with the true divinity of either. It may have a certain plausibility for the un- aided intellect; indeed otherwise it could hardly have entangled for eight years so powerful and gifted a mind as that of St. Augustine. Paulicianism, in the sixth cen- tury of the Christian era, was essentially a revival of the system of Manes, and there seems little doubt but that the Albigenses, like many of the ancient Gnostics, were more or less infected with the same error. Within our own century it was thought by the elder Mill (as his son, J. S. Mill, informs us) to possess consider- able attraction, and he wondered that it had not been revived. But it would surely be a waste of time to pro- long any argumentative discussion in order to prove, what few would seriously deny, that Manichgeism is essentially opposed to real Theism. If (a point which has been dis- puted) the Zendavesta really teaches this doctrine, it must share the same condemnation. 'The Paulicians,' says Gibbon, 'dared to violate the unity of God, the first article of natural and revealed religion.' 1 It is possible that a nearer approximation to truth may underlie that teaching of the ancient Egyptians to which some modern authorities 2 have given the name of Heno- theism. In this system each thing worshipped sun or 1 Decline and Fall (chap. liv.). 2 E.g. Mr. Le Page Renouf, in his interesting and valuable ' Hibbert Lectures. ' i O2 Appendix. moon, cloud or tree is regarded for the moment as the one representative of Deity. But it is obvious that such teaching would have a fatal facility of lapsing into idol- atry, even if, on the part of its first teachers, it was not intended to be idolatrous. All systems and teachings which fall short of the recog- nition of one great, sole Personal Being, to whom men must bow in reverent submission, must be pronounced to need the essentials of a real Theism. But how far the holders and teachers of such doctrines are blameworthy is, in each individual case, beyond the perception of merely human insight. Christians, of course, believe that there has been, and may be, error on this vital theme, for which its supporters and propagators are terribly responsible. For an apostle has declared that the heathen ought to have recognized the eternal power and Godhead of the Creator by the things that are made, and that a declension from such knowledge, when possessed, was inexcusable, because resulting from ingratitude and folly, and leading them on by a just punishment to the vilest moral corruption. Many Christian teachers have inferred from the famous passage in which St. Paul treats this problem that, although ignor- ance of revealed truth may be quite excusable, yet that ignorance of natural religion and, above all, of the Being of God must always be without excuse. But when we con- sider the surroundings, or (as some would call it) the environ- ment of many of our fellow -creatures, whether in lands where the most debased forms of heathenism have long been dominant, or in the crowds of great cities, even in countries nominally Christian, it seems more just, as well as more charitable, to suppose that there may be an ignor- ance of even the elementary truths of religion which may have excuses, to be admitted, we trust, as such by Hini Appendix. 103 whom they have not known. Nor can it be held impossible that some persons may be practically classed with these, who, moving in circles unlike either of those just described, have been deliberately brought up by parents in unbelief even concerning the Being of God. 1 The list of those who seem to have unintentionally erred, or to have used language not meant to mislead, is probably very large. Allusion has already been made to the religious temper of Virgil. Among modern authors one might point to Pope, who in his Essay on Man em- ploys pantheistic language, but probably from mere shallow- ness or ignorance. It can hardly be denied that the far grander mind of Wordsworth did display, in all its earlier effusions, something of a pantheistic tinge. He rose out of this in his later years, but, as by that time his poetic fervour had abated, it rather unfortunately happens that some of his finest poetry is, in this respect, the least satis- factory. It is not, however, likely to work any harm to minds not predisposed to error, and the poet's language is nearly always patient of a good interpretation. Still, it may lend some countenance to those who are disposed to exult in anything that looks like a divorce between genius and faith. A more recent work on Natural Eeligion by the author of Ecce Homo lies open, it must be feared, to similar strictures. The author himself may not only hold the main truths taught by Natural Eeligion, but may also 1 Since the above was written I find Mr. Wilfrid Ward declaring that his father, the late Dr. Ward, had arrived at the conclusion that there might be invincible ignorance of the Being of God. One of the most learned of the Scottish Episcopalian clergy, the late Rev. George Forbes of Burntisland, impressed on me this conviction several years ago. Mr. W. Ward's remarks may be found in a note appended to his father's essays on The Philosophy of Theism (London, 1884). iO4 Appendix. be quite sincere in claiming to be a Christian. But he seems prepared to concede to the votaries of physical science, and perhaps to those of art, the validity of a creed which neither Jew, nor Mohammedan, nor Christian, can be prepared to accept. It is not true honesty nor true charity to keep silence on a matter so vital and essential ; not true honesty, for it is claiming as virtual allies those who really occupy a different camp ; not true charity, for it is leaving others to suppose they may be in the possession of solemn and life-penetrating verities, of which we really fear that they are devoid. To say all this is, however it may be trusted, not incompatible with thorough belief in the excellence of the intentions of the author of the volume to which we refer. 1 That Agnosticism cannot be recognized as compatible with true Theism is a position which seems hardly to require proof. Of course there is a sense of the word which would only express the mental attitude of all Theists towards Him whom they worship. For such would grant most fully that their grasp of the ideas involved in the very meaning of the word God, must, in this life, be feeble and clouded ; nay must, even in the world to come, be bounded by the limitations of the creature. 2 In the most compre- hensive sense of the term, God alone can know Himself ; but Theists do claim sufficient knowledge of God to be 1 These remarks are fully corroborated by Principal Tulloch in his Modern Theories in Philosophy and Religion, and by Mr. Mallock in his Atheism and the Value of Life. Their criticisms were unknown to me when I wrote the above comments. 2 The recognition of this aspect of the case by Christian teachers, including several of the early Fathers, has been well and clearly set forth by the Rev. Canon Curteis in an article in the Nineteenth Century for June 1884. It is also fully recognized in the able and temperate article on the proofs for the Being of God, by Dr. Standenmaier, in the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Drs. Wetzer and "Welte. Appendix. 1 05 able to serve Him in ways well-pleasing to His majesty, ways expressive of their awe, reverence, submission, and trustful love. Compared with the ignorance expressed by Agnostics, in the modern sense of the term, the Theists' acquaintance with God may be really called knowledge, and in addressing heathen idolaters they can honestly employ the language of the Apostle, and say: 'Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.' What to Christian minds seems sad and distressing in the position of the ordinary Agnostic of our time is this. Christians believe, as in truth did many of the heathen, that all men must one day stand at a bar of judgment. It is surely a solemn thought, that any creature should have so spent its earthly life as to render itself liable to some sentence of the following import. ' Day by day, in matters of your earthly life, you acted earnestly and intelligently upon evidence, which you knew to be far from complete and demonstrative. In education, in the choice of a pro- fession, in business, in art, and even in the pursuit of physical science, indeed in almost every department of thought and action, you were compelled to make assump- tions which you could not at the moment verify. But the evidence for My existence, for My power, and My love, you rejected as insufficient, while all the time you were accepting far less cogent proof for the verity of the thoughts and words and deeds to which your inclinations led you. You have not served Me, nor submitted yourself to Me ; of the justice of the verdict now to be passed upon you your own heart and conscience and intellect must now be in itself a fitting judge.' (2) Having thus far stated negatively what can not be accepted as a true Theism, it may be well to give some io6 Appendix. specimens of what may be regarded as the expression of a real belief in God. Such belief seems often to have remained, half-uncon- sciously, in minds where falsehood and superstition have grievously overlaid it, though not in such wise as entirely to destroy it. Hence the famous comment of Tertullian, to which I have made reference in these Lectures. The result is, that in heathen writings one sometimes misses the explicit expression of belief in Theism, on the part of authors in whom one might have hoped to find it, and who, possibly, did in reality hold it while in other cases it seems to emerge, as it were in their better moments, from the heart of writers who would generally be considered, and with too much truth, as thoroughly imbued with senti- ments degrading to all right ideas concerning the Godhead, sentiments carelessly epicurean, brutalizing, or avowedly anti-theistic. Thus, for example, even the careless and pleasure-loving Horace can at moments rise into a region of elevated thought, as when he sings the praises of the great Parent who rules things human and divine, earth and sea, and the world with its varied seasons, from Whom nothing greater than Himself has its origin ; Who has nothing like to or even second to Himself, though Pallas [is not this the Divine wisdom 3] has justly claimed the honours nearest to Him (Ode xii. in bk. i., lin. 13-28). Not less strange is it to discover at the commencement of a long poem, replete with lowering tales concerning the gods, I mean the metamorphoses of Ovid, a clear conception of a god, considered as a creator, bringing into order the rude mass of chaos, and at last (when sun and moon, earth and sea, cold and heat, and the animal creation in water, earth, and air had received their fitting place) creating something Appendix. 107 which was lacking, a being holier than all these, with more capacity for lofty thought, and able to exercise lordship and dominion over all around him (lib. i. lin. 5-88). Cicero, though anticipating Paley, as I have observed, in the argument from a Clock (De Naturd Deorum, lib. ii. cap. 38, 97), and inclined to hope an immortality of bliss for great souls, is rightly, I think, regarded by Dollinger as a half-sceptical eclectic. In Greek literature the Homeric poems at moments seem to assign to Jove a supremacy which verges on Mono- theism, but which (a too common case), after all, makes fate superior to the Divine Will. Similar language might perhaps be used concerning the really devout and reverent teaching of ^Eschylus. The case of Pindar is, I think, doubtful. Herodotus appears to believe in a providence, and l the Divine ' is with him a common expression. He assigns to it personal attributes ; but, unfortunately, a lead- ing one is not merely a propensity to punish guilt, but an intense jealousy of human prosperity, even though its possessor may have been innocent in character. Sophocles is reverent, but seldom, if ever, seems to escape from Poly- theism. Aristotle, though claimed as theistic by many able writers (as, for instance, by the late Father Gratry) is, in my judgment, pantheistic. Plato, in his higher moments, as in the pages of the Timceus, I should have unhesitatingly claimed as capable of enunciating a real Theism. This decision has, however, been lately challenged by a dis- tinguished Cambridge student of Plato, Mr. Archer-Hind, and I consequently feel it to be a duty to reconsider the question. The Greek Stoics, as a rule, were pantheistic, as indeed had been for the most part the earlier schools, as the Ionian and Eleatic. One must, however, except from the general judgment on the Stoics the noble name of io8 Appendix. Cleanthes. This philosopher has not only left us an augmentative statement for the being of a God, but has addressed to Him a brief but splendid hymn, unexceptionable in tone, and full of reverence and beauty. He is probably one from whom St. Paul quoted the words (also employed by the Sicilian Aratus), 'For we also are His offspring.' * Tov jap Kal 7ez/09 ecrjjiev.' Another great name intervenes between Plato and Cleanthes which I have hesitated to introduce, because here also one cannot speak with confidence. I refer to Demosthenes. In one of the grandest passages of what must ever remain among the finest, perhaps actually the finest, of all orations, Demosthenes seems to me to mention Jove separately from the other supreme powers (as a Christian might speak of God and His Saints), and then to pass on and introduce 'the God' in such wise that Ter- tullian might have claimed him as a witness. I the rather call attention to the passage, because I have never seen it noticed in this connexion. Possibly I am seeing what I wish to see. But the reader shall judge. The orator is arguing in a lofty strain that, even if Athens had known to a certainty that Philip of Macedon would triumph, she could not looking back to her past history or to future ages have tamely submitted and surrendered her liberties. ' But since he [^Eschines] insists so strongly on the subject of results, I wish also to say something on this head, even though it may sound like a paradox. And this I entreat, by Jove and the gods, let no man simply marvel at it as an extravagance of speech on my part, but let him meditate upon it in a favourable temper of mind. Even if the future had been beforehand clearly manifest to all men, and all men had possessed this foreknowledge, and if you, ^Eschines, had foretold, and if you had uttered your testi- Appendix. mony aloud with shout and cry (you who, in fact, never uttered one syllable of remonstrance), not even under such circumstances could this state of Athens have by any possi- bility have stood aloof from interference if she retained any regard for her glory, for her ancestors, or for the ages yet to come. As matters stand, Athens seems to have suffered failure in policy an event which is common to humanity when such is the will of God; but in the other case, first claiming to be leader of the rest of the Greeks and then abnegating her position, she would have incurred the guilt of having betrayed all her brethren in the hands of Philip.' 1 Then follows the famous page in which the orator recalls the ancient glories of his country in her resistance to Persia, including the adjuration of those who risked all at Marathon and Platsea, at Salamis and Artemisium, to all of whom the state awarded the same honours of burial without reference to their special success or victory. * For so much as lay within the task of brave men, this they all of them accomplished, but they attained that amount of good or ill fortune which the Deity assigned to each.' 2 It must be added that, in common with Socrates (as appears 1 As I have translated the accessories of the point at issue some- what freely, it seems right to subjoin the original : 'ETreiS-fj 5 7roXi)s rois ffv^e^KOffiv ZyKeirai, f3ov\ofj.al n Kal irapddo^ov eiiretv. Kcti /AOV Trpbs Atos /ecu deuv, fj^dels rrjv u7rep/3o\V davfj^da-rj, dXXa ^ier' evvoias, o X^yw, dewp-qcrdrw. E yap ?jv airacri irp6drj\a rot, fj^XXovra yevfoeffdai, Kal irpoydecrav airavTes, Kal , elr aTTocrracra TOVTOV, $iXi7T7ry irpodeSuK&ai Trd^ras av yap fy wdpuv ayad&v epyov, airay Mr. Allardyce; 1 and some of the more favourable aspects of Hindoo religion have been set forth by Professor Monier Williams, by the Eev. K. M. Banerjea, by Mrs. Speir, by the late Mr. J. B. Morris, and the Eev. Eowland Williams ; and (as regards Buddhism) by Bishop Milman and others. Nevertheless, the history of this home of Pantheism seems clearly to bring out the following drawbacks to such a creed. In the first place, it appears to destroy the historic sense. Even cultivated Hindoos are ignorant of history ; and it is impossible to settle the date of any single work in Sanskrit. It does not satisfy the needs of the many : they fall back upon a gross form of idolatry, insomuch as that while the central soul of the universe is represented as untainted by evil, those incarnations of the Supreme Being which have appeared on earth are not supposed to be subject to the moral law. A convert from Brahmanism to Christ- ianity, now member of an Anglican brotherhood, the Eev. Father Goreh, has commented with just sadness and severity on a Brahmanic prayer in which the god Indra is invoked 1 I have to thank Mr. Allardyce for the loan of a book by Mr. Banerjea, which I had not previously seen. Appendix. 113 by the title c adulterous lover of Ahallya ' as an endearing appellation. Mr. Ward, a Baptist missionary, has used even stronger language than that of Father Goreh, declaring that in writing his account of Hindooism he was often obliged to stop short, as it was impossible to pollute his pages with such filthiness as he had seen in Hindoo books and had heard from Hindoo priests. I do not like to quit this subject without citing a portion of the criticism of the actual state of Hindostan by one who had spent there some of the best years of his life, and who did not approach the subject with what many might think the bias of a missionary, but with the eye of a politician and a man of letters. 1 As this superstition [the Hindoo popular religion] is of all superstitions the most inelegant, so it is of all super- stitions the most immoral. Emblems of vice are objects of public worship. Acts of vice are acts of public worship. The courtesans are as much a part of the establishment of the temple, as much ministers of the god, as the priests. Crimes against life, crimes against property, are not per- mitted but enjoined by this odious theology. But for our interference human victims would still be offered to the Ganges, and the widow would still be laid on the pile with the corpse of her husband, and burned alive by her own children.' l And again, ' the conversion of the whole people to the worst form that Christianity ever wore in the darkest ages would be a most happy event. It is not necessary that a man should be a Christian to wish for the propaga- tion of Christianity in India. It is sufficient that he should be an European not much below the ordinary European level of good sense and humanity. In no part of the world 1 Speeches of the Rt. Hon. T. B. Macaulay (London, Longmans, 1854), pp. 274, 275. I H4 Appendix. is heathenism more cruel, more licentious, more fruitful of absurd rites and pernicious laws.' 1 If in Hindostan the Mohammedans are inferior to the Hindoos, it must be remembered that competent judges inform us that Mohammedanism differs greatly in different lands, and that India may not be in the present day one of its best specimens. I now come to the theistic teaching of those who, accord- ing to Christian belief, have written under the influence of Divine inspiration. On descriptions of what is implied in the teaching of the Old Testament concerning God I do not dwell for the moment, as I shall presently have occasion to cite two summaries of this nature. It must here be enough to say that the Jewish nation, whether in its own small realm of Palestine, or in foreign homes, as Babylon and Alexandria, and, in short, in all lands whither its sons have been scattered, has proclaimed Theism with a clear- ness, a persistency, and a defiance of persecution, which can scarcely be said, unless it be in these latter days, ever to have faltered. Even if there be truth in the charge that large numbers of them did, especially in Spain, pretend to be Christians, while remaining Jews at heart, such conduct, however sad and hypocritical, would of course in no wise involve the forfeiture of their Theism. Where even bril- liant thinkers of their race, such as Spinoza, have virtually or openly denied Theism, the synagogue has at once broken with such. It is easy for men who have no earnest faith to sneer at the forms of excommunication adopted in such a case as that of Spinoza ; but without any wish to defend uncharitableness, it must be remembered that earnest men cannot but feel strongly concerning any tenet which they 1 ' Essays ' from the Edinburgh Review. By T. B. Macaulay. Essay on Gladstone's Church and State (Longmans, 1854). Appendix. 115 conscientiously regard as the ' life's life of their being,' and that they might really hope that their language of horror would shock and startle an erring brother, and by arresting his downward course prove itself in the end to have been an utterance of true charity. Direct quotations from Holy Scripture are here presumed to be unnecessary. It is almost needless to add that the writings of men nurtured upon these are replete with effective and eloquent passages concerning the being and attributes of God ; I propose to quote a few which have struck me by their terseness, by their fulness, or by their pathos ; though my small selection may probably betray, on my part, much ignorance or want of judgment. The following passage from the Philosophumena, ascribed to Hippolytus, embodies a clear statement of the relation of the Creator to His works. ' The one God, the first and only One, Maker and Lord of all things, had nothing coeval with Himself ; no bound- less chaos, no measureless waste of waters or extent of barren land, no dense atmosphere, no glowing fire, no subtle breeze, nor blue vault of the mighty skies ; but He endured alone by Himself, and by His will He caused to exist things heretofore non-existent, save only that He willed to make them as one endowed with full experience of results : for to Him belongeth foreknowledge also.' 1 1 As this treatise is not very accessible it may be well to subjoin the original. 6e6s efs, 6 Trpwros Kal /j.6vos, Kal aTrdvTWv TroiTjrrjs Kal /ctfpios, fftyxpovov &r%ej> ovdtv, of> x ao5 aireipov, oi>x vdup a^rprjTov t) yty ffTeppav, oi>xl apa trvKvbv, ov Trvp 6epfji.6v, ov Trvev/J-a \eirTOv, OVK ovpavov /j.eyd\ov Kvavtav 6po(j)-f]v' dXV ?)V e?s ^6^0? eaurw, 6's 0eX-?7<7as eiroirja-e rb. 8vra OVK 6vra yap aur^ Kal irpbyvwvis. S. Hippolyte Episc. et Mart., Refutations omnium ffceresium librorum decem quce supersunt. (Ed. Duncker et Schneidewin, Gottingse, 1859), lib. x. cap. 32. 1 1 6 Appendix. It is almost needless to say that the works of St. Augustine are replete with passages of much beauty and eloquence on this lofty theme. It may suffice to select a brief specimen from his Confessions, which has somewhere, I think, been translated by Bishop Jeremy Taylor : ' What then art Thou, O my God 1 For what do I ask except for Thee, Lord God? For who is Lord beside the Lord? Or who is God beside our God? most high, most excellent, most powerful, most almighty, most merciful, and most just, most hidden and most present, fairest and strongest, stable and incomprehensible, changeless yet changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new, yet leading into decrepitude the proud, though they know it not ; ever in action, ever at rest ; gathering together, yet not in want ; bearing, filling, and protecting ; creating, nourishing, and completing; seeking, though nothing is lacking to Thee. Thou lovest, yet art devoid of passion ; Thou art jealous, and yet art undisturbed ; Thou repentest, and yet dost not sorrow ; Thou art angry, and yet remainest calm ; Thou dost change Thy works, yet dost not change Thy plan ; Thou dost recover that which Thou findest, and yet hast never lost ; never art Thou needy, and yet Thou rejoicest in gains ; never art Thou avaricious, and yet Thou requirest interest. Free-will offerings are made to Thee that thou mayest owe, and yet who hath anything that is not thine < \ Thou payest debts which yet are owed to no man ; Thou givest dues, yet without losing anything. And what have I said, O my God, my life, my holy charm? Or what indeed does any man say when he speaks of Thee ? And woe to those who are silent concerning Thee, since even those who speak are dumb.' (Confessions, book i. cap. iv.) It might be possible to cull many noble sentiments from Appendix. 1 1 7 hymns and books of meditations of the Middle Ages ; though some authors of that epoch have perhaps written more beautifully on the Incarnation and on Eedemption than on the immediate subject before us. Anselni is, perhaps, one of many to whom this remark is applicable, and possibly also Thomas a Kempis, the reputed author of the Imitatw Christi. In selecting a grand passage from Dante I have, as on so many other points, been anticipated by Professor Flint, but I do not like to omit it. Dante (like Anselm in the latter part of the Monologium) has perhaps too much dwelt on the revelation of God as given to Christians to be cited as giving a description of what is involved in Theism considered by itself. But I venture to quote some portion of the earlier passages in the Pamdiso (xix. 40-45, 52-63), though I must leave my readers to look out for themselves the wondrous vision of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnate Lord, with which the poem concludes : < He Who turn'd His compass on the world's extreme, And in that space so variously hath wrought, Both openly and in secret ; in such wise Could not through all the universe display Impression of His glory, that the Word Of His omniscience should not still remain In infinite excess.' That is, as Gary (whose rendering is here given) rightly interprets, ' the divine nature still remained incomprehen- sible.' The poet then refers to the fault of the rebel angels, who would not wait for further light, but fell through pride ; and proceeds : * Whence needs each lesser nature is but scant Receptacle unto that Good, which knows No limit, measured by Itself alone. 1 1 8 Appendix. Therefore your sight, of the omnipresent Mind A single beam, its origin must own Surpassing far its utmost potency. The ken your world is gifted with, descends In the everlasting Justice as low down, As eye doth in the sea ; which, though it mark The bottom from the shore, in the wide main Discerns it not ; and nevertheless it is But hidden through its deepness.' l Father Gratry, one of the few learned clergy of the modern French Church, will also be found to furnish much that bears upon the present work in his two small volumes entitled La Connaissance de Dieu, where may be seen short extracts from Malebranche, Fe"nelon, Bossuet, and others. From Sir Isaac Newton I have already quoted a part of the grand passage near the close of the third book of his 1 ' Colui che volse il sesto Allo stremo del mondo, e dentro ad esso Distinse tanto occulto e manifesto, Non poteo suo valor si fare impresso In tutto 1'universo, che il sup verbo Non rimanesse in infinito eccesso. E quinci appar ch' ogiii minor natura E corto recettacolo a quel bene Che non ha fine, e se in se misura. Dunque nostra veduta, che conviene Essere alcun de' raggi della mente Di che tutte le cose son ripiene, Non puo di sua natura esser possente Tanto, che suo principio non discerna Molto di la, da quel ch' egli e, parvente. Pero nella giustizia sempiterna La vista che riceve il vostro inondo, Come occhio per lo mare, entro s' interna ; Che benche dalla proda veggia il fondo, In pelago nol vede, e nondimeno Egli e, ma cela lui 1'esser profondo. ' Appendix. 1 1 9 Principia a passage which has won the just admiration of foreigners, such as M. Nicolas, as well as of British theo- logians. Among authors of this century three have, I conceive, been eminently successful in setting forth the cycle of the leading ideas comprised in our utterance of the word God. Two of these, it is true, are only engaged in setting forth a summary of the Hebrew teaching on the subject, but they seem to have effected this task with much precision and completeness. I refer to Strauss, the author of the Leben Jesu, who thought it right to describe a doctrine, which he was endeavouring to overthrow. Here his effort to be fair has, as I have implied, been in the main successful. The second writer of whom I am thinking is the lamented Arthur Hallam, known to most only as the subject of the Laureate's In Memoriam, but deserving, I must maintain, of a fuller recognition than he has yet received on the ground of his own merits. The third writer, whose description is of a more general character, is Cardinal Newman, in his Discourses on University Education. As it is highly probable that my readers may not have these works at hand, it may be well to cite them here. The following extract from the Life of Christ by Strauss seems important, from its clear presentation of the wide difference between the Theism taught in the pages of Holy Scripture and the feeble grasp of what is implied in Theism displayed by many, who either lack the courage or the per- ception requisite for the admission that their creed is limited and illogical, even if it be not in reality that of Agnosticism or of dogmatic Atheism : ' In the ancient world (that is, in the East) the religious tendency was so preponderating, and the knowledge of nature so limited, that the law of connexion between 1 20 Appendix. earthly finite beings was very loosely regarded. At every link there was a disposition to spring into the infinite, and to see God as the immediate cause of every change in nature or the human mind. In this mental condition the Biblical history was written. Not that God is here repre- sented as doing all and everything Himself a notion which, from the manifold evidence of the fundamental connexion between finite things, would be impossible to any reasonable mind but there prevails in the Biblical writers a ready disposition to derive all things, down to the minutest details, as soon as they appear particularly important, immediately from God. He it is who gives the rain and the sunshine ; He sends the east wind and the storm ; He dispenses war, famine, and pestilence ; He hardens hearts and softens them, suggests thoughts and resolutions. And this is particularly the case with regard to His chosen instru- ments and beloved people. In the history of the Israelites we find traces of His immediate agency at every step. Through Moses, Elias, Jesus, He performs things which never would have happened in the ordinary course of nature. 'Our modern world, on the contrary, after many cen- turies of tedious research, has attained a conviction that all things are linked together by a chain of causes and effects which suffers no interruption. It is true that single facts and groups of facts, with their condition and processes of change, are not so circumscribed as to be unsusceptible of external influence ; for the action of one existence or king- dom in nature entrenches on that of another ; human free- dom controls natural development, and material laws react on human freedom. Nevertheless the totality of finite things forms a vast circle, which, except that it owes its existence and laws to a superior power, suffers no intrusion Appendix. 1 2 1 from without. This conviction is so much a habit of thought with the modern world that in actual life the belief in a supernatural manifestation, and immediate Divine agency, is at once attributed to ignorance or im- posture. It has been carried to the extreme in that modern explanation which, in a spirit exactly opposed to that of the Bible, has either totally removed the Divine causation, or has so far restricted it that it is immediate in the act of creation alone, but mediate from that point onward i.e. God operates on the world only in so far as He gave to it this fixed direction at the creation. From this point of view, at which nature and history appear as a compact tissue of finite causes and effects, it was impossible to regard the narratives of the Bible, in which this tissue is broken by innumerable instances of Divine interference, as historical. ' It must be confessed, on nearer investigation, that this modern explanation, although it does not exactly deny the existence of God, yet puts aside the idea of Him, as the ancient view did the idea of the world ; for this is, as it has been often and well remarked, no longer a God and Creator, but a mere finite artist, who acts immediately upon his work only during its first production, and then leaves it to itself who becomes excluded, with this full energy, from one particular sphere of existence.' l Strauss, it is to be feared, placed himself in his later day upon a lower level in point of faith than even the low one described in the above remarkable passage. It is inter- esting to compare the treatment of some of the same pro- positions at the hand of a believer in the Theism proclaimed in Scripture. Accordingly, we turn to the pages few but 1 Strauss's Life of Christ, Introduction, 14 (vol. i. pp. 70-72 in English translation). 122 Appendix. precious bequeathed to posterity by the lamented Arthur Hallam. ' What is the distinguishing character of Hebrew litera- ture which separates it by so broad a line of demarcation from that of every ancient people 1 ? Undoubtedly the sentiment of erotic devotion which pervades it. Their poets never represent the Deity as an impassive principle ; a mere organizing intellect removed at infinite distance from human hopes and fears. He is for them a Being of like passions with themselves, requiring heart for heart, and capable of inspiring affection, because capable of feeling and returning it. Awful, indeed, are the thunders of His utterance, and the clouds that surround His dwelling-place ; very terrible is the vengeance He executes on the nations that forget Him ; but to His chosen people, and especially to the men " after His own heart " whom He anoints from the midst of them, His " still small voice " speaks in sym- pathy and loving -kindness. Every Hebrew, while his breast glowed with patriotic enthusiasm at those promises, which he shared as one of the favoured race, had a yet deeper source of emotion, from which gushed perpetually the aspirations of prayer and thanksgiving. He might consider himself almost in the presence of his God; the single being to whom a great revelation had been made, and over whose head " an exceeding weight of glory was suspended." His personal welfare was infinitely concerned with every event that had taken place in the miraculous order of providence. For him the rocks of Horeb had trembled, and the waters of the Red Sea were parted in their course. The word given on Sinai with such solemn pomp of ministration was given to his own individual soul, and brought him into immediate communion with his Creator. That awful Being could never be put away from Appendix. 123 him. He was about his path, and about his feet, and knew all his thoughts long before. Yet this tremendous, enclos- ing presence was a presence of love. It was a manifold everlasting manifestation of one deep feeling a desire for human affection. Such a belief, while it enlisted even pride and self-interest on the side of piety, had a direct tendency to excite the best passions of our nature. Love is not long asked in vain from generous dispositions. A Being, never absent, but standing beside the life of each man with ever-watchful tenderness, and recognized, though invisible, in every blessing that befell them from youth to age, became naturally the object of their warmest affections. Their belief in Him could not exist without producing as a neces- sary effect that profound impression of passionate individual attachment, which in the Hebrew authors always mingles with and vivifies their faith in the Invisible. All the books in the Old Testament are breathed upon by this breath of life. Especially is it to be found in that beautiful collection, entitled the Psalms of David, which remains, after some thousand years, perhaps the most perfect form in which the religious sentiment of man has been embodied.' 1 1 Remains. Essay on Signer Rosetti. Although it is an excursus in some measure outside the province of this volume, I cannot but think that some readers may be glad to see a portion of the continu- ation of the above passage. ' But what is true of Judaism is yet more true of Christianity, " matre pulchrd filia pulchrior." In addition to all the characters of Hebrew Monotheism, there exists in the doctrine of the Cross a peculiar and inexhaustible treasure for the affectionate feelings. The idea of the Qedisdpuiros [God-man] the God, Whose goings forth have been from everlasting, yet visible to men for their redemption as an earthly temporal creature, living, acting, and suffering among them- selves, then (which is yet more important) transferring to the unseen place of His spiritual agency the same humanity He wore on earth, so that the lapse of generations can in no way affect the conception of His identity ; this is the most powerful thought that ever addressed itself to 124 Appendix. For the sake of brevity I omit some portions of the sketch given by Cardinal Newman, retaining enough, how- ever, to afford a fair idea of its general character. ' By theology I simply mean the science of God, or the truths we know about God put into system; just as we have a science of the stars, and call it astronomy, or of the crust of the earth, and call it geology. * For instance, I mean for this is the main point that as in the human frame there is a living principle acting upon it and through it by means of volition, so, behind the veil of the visible universe there is an invisible intelli- gent Being, acting on and through it, as and when He will. Further, I mean that this invisible Agent is in no sense a soul of the world, after the analogy of human nature, but, on the contrary, is absolutely distinct from the world, as being its Creator, Upholder, Governor, and Sovereign a human imagination. It is the TTOU OTW [the standing point] which alone was wanting to move the world. Here was solved at once the great problem which so long had distressed the teachers of mankind, how to make virtue the object of passion, and to secure at once the warmest enthusiasm in the heart, with the clearest perception of right and wrong in the understanding. The character of the blessed Founder of our faith became an abstract of morality to determine the judgment, while at the same time it remained personal and liable to love. The written word and the Established Church prevented a degeneration into ungoverned mysticism, but the predominant prin- ciple of vital religion always remained that of self-sacrifice to the Saviour. Not only the higher divisions of moral duties, but the simple primary impulses of benevolence, were subordinated to this new absorbing passion. The world was loved "in Christ alone." The brethren were members of this mystical body. All the other bonds that had fastened down the Spirit of the Universe to our narrow round of earth were as nothing in comparison to this golden chain of suffering and self-sacrifice, which at once riveted the heart of man to One, Who, like himself, was acquainted with grief. Pain is the deepest thing we have in our nature, and union through pain has always seemed more holy and more real than any other.' Appendix. 1 2 5 Lord. Here we are at once brought into the circle of doctrines which the idea of God embodies. I mean then by the Supreme Being, one who is simply self-dependent and the only Being Who is such; moreover, that He is without beginning or eternal, and the only eternal ; that in consequence He has lived a whole eternity by Himself, and hence that he is all-sufficient, sufficient for His own blessed- ness and all-blessed and ever-blessed. Further, I mean a Being who, having these prerogatives, has the Supreme Good, or has all the attributes of God in infinite greatness ; all wisdom, all truth, all justice, all love, all holiness, all beautif ulness ; who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent ; ineffably one, absolutely perfect ; and such, that what we do not know and cannot even imagine of Him, is far more wonderful than what we do and can. I mean one who is sovereign over His own will and actions, though always according to the eternal rule of right and wrong which is Himself. I mean, moreover, that He created all things out of nothing, and preserves them every moment, and could destroy them as easily as He made them ; and thus in con- sequence He is separated from them by an abyss, and is incommunicable in His attributes. . . . His are all beings visible and invisible, the noblest and the vilest of them. His are the substance and the operation, and the results of that system of physical nature into which we are born. His, too, are the powers and achievements of the intellectual essences on which he has bestowed an independent action and the gift of origination. The laws of the universe, the principles of truth, the relation of one thing to another, their qualities and virtues, the rules and harmony of the whole, all that exists is from Him ; and if evil is not from Him, as assuredly it is not, this is because evil has no sub- stance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, 126 Appendix. or corruption of that which has. . . . The primary atoms of matter, their properties, their mutual action, their dis- position and collocation, electricity, magnetism, gravitation, light, and whatever other subtle principles or operations the wit of man is detecting or shall detect, are the works of His hands. From Him has been every movement which has convulsed and refashioned the surface of the earth. The most insignificant or unsightly insect is from Him, and is good in its kind ; the everteeming, inexhaustible swarms of animalculse, the myriads of living motes invisible to the naked eye, the restless overspreading vegetation which creeps like a garment over the whole earth, the lofty cedar, the umbrageous banana, are His. His are the tribes and families of birds and beasts, their graceful forms, their wild gestures, and their passionate cries. 'And so in the intellectual, moral, social, and political world. Man, with his motives and works, his languages, his propagation, his diffusion, is from Him. Agriculture, medicine, and the arts of life, are His gifts. Society, laws, government, He is their sanction. The pageant of earthly royalty has the semblance and the benediction of the Eternal King. Peace and civilization, commerce and adventure, wars when just, conquest when humane and necessary, have His co-operation, and His blessing upon them. . . . " He enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world." His are the dictates of the moral sense, and the retributive reproaches of conscience. To Him must be ascribed the rich endowments of the intellect, the radiation of genius, the imagination of the poet, the sagacity of the politician, the wisdom, (as Scripture calls it) which now rears and decorates the temple, now manifests itself in proverb or in parable. The old saws of nations, the majestic precepts of philosophy, the luminous maxims of law, the oracles of Appendix. 127 individual wisdom, the traditionary rules of truth, justice, and religion, even though embedded in the corruption, or alloyed with the pride of the world, bespeak His original agency, and His long-suffering presence. Even where there is habitual rebellion against Him, or profound far-spreading social depravity, still the undercurrent, or the heroic out- burst of natural virtue, as well as the yearnings of the heart after what it has not, and its presentment of its true remedies are to be ascribed to the Author of all good. Anticipations or reminiscences of His glory haunt the mind of the self-sufficient sage, and of the pagan devotee : His writing is upon the wall, whether of the Indian fane or of the porticoes of Greece. He introduces Himself, He all but concurs, according to his good pleasure, and in His selected season, in the issues of unbelief, superstition, and false worship, and changes the character of acts by His overruling operation. He condescends, though he gives no sanction, to the altars and shrines of imposture, and He makes His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. He speaks amid the incantations of Balaam, raises Samuel's spirit in the witch's cavern, prophesies of the Messias by the tongue of the Sibyl, forces Python to recognize His ministers, and baptizes by the hand of the unbeliever. He is with the heathen dramatist in his denunciations of injustice and tyranny, and his auguries of divine vengeance upon crime. Even on the unseemly legends of a popular mythology He casts His shadow, and is dimly discerned in the ode or the epic as in troubled waters or in fantastic dreams. All that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, all that is beneficent, be it great or small, be it perfect or fragmentary, natural as well as supernatural, moral as well as material comes from Him.' (On University Education. Discourse III. Dublin, 1852.) 128 Appendix. It is right to add that, as on the one hand some authors have professed Theism while falling short of what such a profession should include when rightly understood, so, on the other hand, we occasionally meet with assertions which seem somewhat extravagant in the enlargement of the meaning of the term, and with accusations of Atheism, which have been unfairly directed. An example of the first-named fault occurs in a recent number of the Dublin Review, where one of the contributors to that serial writes as follows : ' We are far from saying that the religion of our fellow-countrymen is not, as far as it goes, a good thing, but how many of them, in their millions, believe in the Trinity, or in the Divinity of Christ, or in sin and grace ? And the man who does not believe in these things cannot believe in God, in the true and catholic sense of that word.' (No. for July 1884, p. 147, Art. 'Pope Leo XIII. and the Freemasons.') I do not pause to discuss the profound and interesting question how far real belief in God, such as may be taught even by natural religion, prepares the mind for the reception of sublime verities, such as those of the Holy Trinity, and the Incarnation, which have only been learned from revealed religion. But it is obvious that to include in the idea of Theism truths not explicitly known before the dawn of the Christian revelation must exclude from the ranks of Theists not merely Mohammedans, but also the spiritual forefathers of Christians the patriarchs, kings, prophets, and people of the older covenant, of whom we are assured that ' these all died according to faith.' I have been anxious in these Lectures to write in the spirit of a founder of earlier date, the celebrated Robert Boyle, who enjoined those elected to his lectureship to dis- cuss fundamental truths of religion, c not descending lower Appendix. 129 to any controversies that are among Christians themselves.' I have derived great assistance from the works of Christians of almost every leading denomination, from Fathers and Schoolmen, from Lutherans, from Presbyterians, Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and even from Unitarians. It is, conse- quently, in no polemic spirit that I make the above quot- ation from the Dublin Review. If I were inclined to con- trovert it in detail, I should begin by appealing to the very opposite language employed by such writers as Father Gratry and Cardinal Newman. Two other forms of an unreal character of quasi-Theism ought perhaps to have been more fully noticed, though they hardly deserve it. The one is the creed of men who accept the doctrine of a Supreme Creator and Governor of the universe, but do not allow that He is omniscient and omni- potent. Such a being is not in any true sense God : and a devout Theist feels instinctively that he could not cherish towards such a Creator any approximation to real faith and reverence, submissive awe or childlike trust. The other form is that of the kind of Agnostic, who says, 'I do not know whether God has conscious intelli- gence.' A being who has not conscious intelligence is no God to me : He is my inferior and not my superior. The fact of my possessing conscious intelligence at once. places me above any substance not similarly endowed. 'I am.' says Pascal, ' a reed, but a reed that can think.' APPENDIX B. IT has been intimated that I am desirous of following, how- ever humbly and distantly, in the steps of the author of the Advancement of Learning, who not only reports what has been achieved in the various departments of knowledge, but also sets down those which appear to him deficient. My survey, however, unlike that of Bacon, is a comparatively narrow one. The literature on the relation between science and religion is becoming an immense one. How much of it will survive must be a question for posterity. On one side it touches the question treated in these Lectures, namely, where it is admitted that an a priori element is involved in the discussion of the points at issue. Illustrations abound. I must be content to refer to Mr. Balfour's Philosophic Doubt, and to a paper read before the Victoria Society by Bishop Cotterill. There is one department of this subject which seems to me to be well worthy of further investigation by competent thinkers. I refer to the question of what have been often called (I believe justly) necessary truths. Their nature has been stated and explained by Kant, Hamilton, Mansel, M'Cosh, and many others. Some, like M'Cosh and the late Dr. Ward, have shown their intimate connexion with the argument for the being of God. Appendix. 131 It would, I think, be accepted as a fair statement of the case, if I were to say that these eminent writers recognize three conditions of a necessary truth ; namely (1) that it be of such a nature as to be recognized as true by all persons of fairly sane and developed intellect; (2) that it carries along with it its own evidence ; (3) that it be of such char- acter as that we cannot conceive a state of things in which it should cease to be true. These truths have been believed to be especially promi- nent in the realm of metaphysical, moral, and mathematical science. Metaphysical, e.g. 'No change can take place in phenomena without a cause.' Moral, e.g. 'I am bound to restore to my friend, on his demand, a thing which he entrusted to my charge.' Mathematical, e.g. l Things which are equal to the same are equal to each other.' 'Two added to two equals four.' Assaults are at this moment being made upon all three of these alleged specimens of necessary truth. A man of the first rank among lecturers on physical science, Professor Helmholtz, declares that 'he tries to impress upon his pupils, whenever he can, the principle that " a metaphysical conclusion is either a false conclusion or a concealed experimental conclusion.'" Metaphysicians may find it necessary to accept this challenge. I quoted the words of Helmholtz to a distinguished Edinburgh pro- fessor (not the occupant of a chair of mental science), and he gave me, by way of reply, the following comment, ' that means that he is a metaphysician, and a metaphysician of a bad school.' This comment I believe to be as true as it is pithy. The words of Helmholtz remind me of persons who denounce all casuistry as pernicious and sophistical, and 1 Popular Scientific Lectures (Second Series), English Translation, p. 234. London, Longmans and Co., 1880. 132 Appendix. then in the same breath proceed to discuss the question whether this or that species of amusement is or is not lawful for a Christian man to indulge in ; a question which in any case must needs involve the whole principle of casuistry. 2. Necessary truth in morals may be described in the admirable words of Dr. Martineau, which I have already quoted. 'Nor can any one be penetrated with the dis- tinction between right and wrong, without recognizing it as valid for all free beings, and incapable of local or arbitrary change.' Many will remember the story told by Herodotus of the Spartan Glaucus, son of Epicydes, who, having re- ceived a deposit, afterwards denied the fact, and then con- sulted the oracle at Delphi. The solemn answer warned him that for merely having thought of such a deed (though he was penitent and did not carry it out in practice) his race should utterly perish. And this, says the historian, came to pass. The Roman satirist, Juvenal, a writer not too favourable to Grecian literature, singles out this narrative for special approbation. 1 We are told that the doctrine of Evolution saps this certitude. Now I am, I believe, correct in asserting that the great teacher of Evolution, Darwin, never asserted his own view to be more than an hypothesis. The Professor of Botany in Edinburgh, Mr. Dickson, has declared his conviction, as a man of science, that it is an hypothesis ; which, however ingenious, is thus far non-proven, and that it is one which, in all probability, never will be proven. Virchow, the first pathologist in Europe, if I understand him rightly, endorses the first part of Professor Dickson's verdict. Is it not then a little too early to plan attempts at reconciliation between the foundation of morals and an unproven theory 1 1 Herodotus (lib. vi. cap. 86) ; Juvenalis (Sat. xiii. 202). Appendix. 133 In saying this I fully recognize what Mr. Darwin him- self allowed namely, that the theory of Evolution, as taught by him, is quite compatible with Theism, and that many religious men seem inclined either wholly or par- tially to adopt it, among whom are Dr. Asa Gray, Bishop Cotterill, the Eev. David Greig, possibly also Mr. Mivart and Mr. Justin M'Carthy. With the last-named writer I entirely believe that the hypothesis of Evolution may be held in such wise as not to interfere with true religion, natural or revealed. Nor does it seem to me at all incon- ceivable that the Creator of all things may have so ordered them as that, when matter reaches a certain stage, mind may supervene. Consequently I should be sorry to rest any cause upon such a basis, as that a proven instance of abiogenesis would destroy it. 1 3. There remains the question of necessary truth in mathematical science. This branch of knowledge was by many regarded as the very stronghold of illustrations of the very meaning of the phrase necessary truth. And in such light it is still regarded in many quarters. Let me cite a recent instance. In Bishop Temple's Bampton Lec- tures for 1884 we read the following: 'We attach, and cannot help attaching, a conviction of necessity to all mathematical reasoning. We not only know that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, but we know that this is so, and must be so, in all places and at all times, and we know it without any proof whatever' (p. 15). In the next page the view of John Stuart Mill, that the conviction of the necessity of mathematical truth is a 1 Hence I am compelled, with regret, to admit the existence of a certain distrust of that brilliant and wondrously popular work by Professor Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, though in many ways it seems to have done much good. 134 Appendix. delusion is set aside (justly, I conceive, so far as Mill's reasoning is concerned) on the ground that it fails to account for all the facts. But a more formidable (I do not say a finally successful) assault proceeds from another quarter. It comes from the distinguished mathematicians and physiologists who are teaching what is termed non-Euclidean geometry. Their case against the necessary character of at least some of the axioms of geometry may be read in the Lectures of Helm- holtz already quoted, and in a paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in October 1880, by the occupant of the Chair of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh, Professor Chrystal. 1 Is it possible that the question concerning the existence or non-existence of necessary truth may become, in certain minds, mixed up with the question of the Being of God 1 Several thinkers, men of diverse training and temperament, would answer this question in the affirmative. We may name, for example, the late Dr. G. Ward, Dr. M'Cosh, and others. But a more pertinent example is at hand. The late William Kingdon Clifford, having in youth been a sincere believer in Christianity, became an ardent atheist so ardent that a man of large and varied attainments, both in physical science and other departments of know- ledge, has been heard to say that Clifford seemed to him like one who would really like to persecute Christianity. He persuaded himself that all knowledge is derived from experience. ' He saw, however,' to quote the words of Mr. Mallock, * that there was one great difficulty in the way of this theory, and that was the necessity and the universality 1 This paper (re-printed and published by David Douglas, Edin- burgh, 1880) was read at the request of the Council of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Appendix. 135 of the truths of geometry.' l From this difficulty he at- tempted to escape, and persuaded himself that he had escaped by enthusiastically adopting the opinions of the non-Euclidean geometers, Lobatchewsky and his followers. Clifford maintained that this school had proved that geo- metrical truths are neither necessarily nor universally true now, and that in the remote past they may not have been true at all. Hence Clifford argued that the change was one of transcendent importance, being, in fact, a change in our conception of the cosmos. 'Were,' he says, 'the Euclidean assumptions true, the constitution of the uni- verse at an infinite distance from us would be as well known as the geometry of this room, so that here we should have real knowledge of something at least that concerns the cosmos something that is true throughout the immen- sities and eternities. That something Lobatchewsky and his followers have taken away.' Clifford hence argued that we have no reason for believing in an immaterial soul, and no parallels by which to illustrate and support a belief in a theological intuition. 2 We need a scientist (one who, like Descartes, is competent to handle problems metaphysical as well as mathematical) to discuss the real relation between the non-Euclidean geo- metry and the question of necessary truth. The author of the Bampton Lectures for 1884 might well undertake such a task, if the supervision of the see which he now holds can leave him any leisure for its accomplishment. Mean- while it may be observed that the paper by Professor Chrystal does not appear to go the length of Professor Clifford's theories in regarding experience as our sole in- structor. ' It might be granted,' says Mr. Chrystal, ' as I 1 Atheism and the Value of Life (London, 1884), pp. 45-47. 2 Mallock, ubi supra. 136 Appendix. for the most part take it to be, that any axioms that can be made the foundation of a consistent reasoned system are given d priori' (p. 6). 1 And I think that, even if it should prove impossible to regard all the axioms of Euclid as necessary truths, some of them, as also the elementary truths concerning number, may still be ranked within that category. Other writers may lend assistance. Thus, for example, there is much that is suggestive in the Hampton Lectures of Mr. Jackson, though I have failed to grasp with precision his view concerning the relation between deduc- tive and inductive truth, and cannot but regret the extreme one-sidedness of many of his references to history.. The Boston Monday Lectures for 1884, by Mr. Joseph Cook, also touch upon these themes. Mr. Goldwin Smith has been lending the powerful aid of his pen towards an exhibition of the peril involved in some evolutionary theories of morality. 2 If I do not speak of the gratitude also due to the late Professor Clerk Maxwell and to the authors of The Unseen Universe (Professors Tait and Balfour Stewart), it is because I suppose the works of those writers to be more immediately connected with the a posteriori rather than with the a priori arguments for religion, and because The Unseen Universe starts from the assumption of Theism. On similar grounds, though with more diffidence, I pass by Canon Mozley's Sermon on Nature ; the amplifications and additions to its arguments by my friend and colleague, Dr. Dowden, in his discourse on the same theme ; the cele- brated works of Mr. Euskin, and the writings of the lamented Principal Shairp. 1 I cite Professor Chrystal's paper as a source of information, and not as in the least degree wishing to make him responsible for any inferences drawn by Clifford from Pangeometry. 2 I refer to the article in the Contemporary Review for June 1882, and to subsequent defences of the author's position. POSTSCEIPT. CIRCUMSTANCES, with which it is not necessary to trouble the reader, have rendered the delay between the delivery and the publication of these Lectures longer than I had intended it to be, and longer than is desirable. But I take the opportunity of the delay to add a few last words on (a) the subject of Kant and the d priori view ; (b) and on the alleged Pantheism of Plato. I must also (c) add some- thing concerning Spinoza. (a) The writer who first suggested to me the difference between a concept, such as that of the unicorn (false in itself but compounded of two real entities, a horse and a horn), and an idea which cannot be thus severed into parts, such as the idea of God and of the soul, was a French barrister, M. Nicolas. It is employed at the very outset of his Etudes ^Philosophiques sur le Christianisme (Paris, 1851. seventh ed.). But I have since found it in some work of earlier date, though I cannot recollect where possibly in one of the treatises of De Maistre. It may be much earlier than this. Anselm has, I think, a partial but only a partial glimpse of the matter. In his reply to Gaunilo he seems to see the difference between our concept of a picture which is not yet produced, but only exists in the painter's mind, and our idea of the Divine nature. 138 Postscript. The further argument, that this idea of a thing which is single and indiscerptible is a strong plea for the true exist- ence of the thing thus imaged to us, is disallowed by Kant. I am glad to find that in maintaining that Anselm has a real case in this matter, and that Kant has not quite done justice to its force, I can claim some measure of support from the writings of Principal Tulloch, of Professor Edward Caird, and of Principal Caird. Principal Tulloch speaks as follows : 'In the same point of view we see the fallacy of the Kantian doctrine of the infinite. Admitting it as a regulat- ing idea of human knowledge, Kant yet denied to it any objective validity. The idea according to him might be necessary to us, and yet not represent a reality. And so it might, were the ideal or notional the mode in which the infinite is alone present to us. But this is so far from being the case that the idea as present in the understanding is only the dim reflection of the fact present in reason. The infinite comes to us intuitively, and not notionally, and in this the very mode of its apprehension affirms its reality. The soul looks upward, and the light of the infinite dawns upon it. It presents itself as an objective presence a self- revealing vision and is not wrought out as a mere ideal projection from our mental restlessness. It is felt to be a reality, containing and conditioning the soul, which, with all its power, it cannot think away ; and this it would not be were it a mere created form of the soul.' (Burnett Prize Essay on Theism, p. 280. Edinburgh, 1855.) A little farther on Dr. Tulloch proceeds to say that * It is now admitted on all hands that Kant's denial of objectivity to the pure reason and his virtual readmission of their reality as postulates of the practical reason is the most inconsequent and feeble portion of his whole philo- Postscript. 139 sophy. . . . We have in the last case no higher name for knowledge everywhere than belief. And this belief, as Sir Wm. Hamilton says, " is mistaken by Kant when recognized as a mere spiritual craving." It is rather "an immediate manifestation to intelligence, not as a postulate, but as a datum not as an interest in certain truths, but as the fact, the principle, the warrant of their cognition and reality.'" 1 Without claiming Professor Edward Caird as an actual supporter of the d priori argument for the being of God, it may be said that he is evidently unprepared to commit himself to its rejection on the ground adopted by Kant. * Pure thought cannot be conceived as dwelling in itself, but only as relating to existence, to a world in time and space; and it is only (1) through the opposition between itself and such a world ; and (2) through the transcendence of that opposition that it can come to the full consciousness of itself. In the language of theology, the ontological argument expresses the doctrine that God as a spirit is necessarily self-revealing to the world.' Philosophy of Kant, chap, xviii. Dr. Caird seems to show more marked favour to the Anselmian argument. ' The Ontological Argument, as commonly stated, finds in the very idea of God the proof of His existence. The thought of God in the mind demonstrates His Being.' The Principal then proceeds, as his brother has also done, to exhibit the weakness of such reasoning if applied to food, or raiment, or (as in Kant's illustration) to dollars. But presently he adds 1 For a somewhat different and perhaps more favourable view of Kant, see an article in the Fortnightly Review (May 1844), 'The Speculative Basis of Unbelief,' by a most acute metaphysician, the Rev. David Greig. 1 40 Postscript. 1 It is difficult, however, to conceive that an argument, of which the refutation seems so easy and obvious, could have imposed itself on thinkers such as those above named; and on closer examination we shall find that, imperfect as may be the form in which it has often been presented, the principle of this argument is that on which our whole religious consciousness may be said to rest. ' It is quite true that there are many things of which, from the mere idea or conception of them in our minds, we cannot infer the objective existence. If existence means, as in the case of Kant's dollars, the accidental existence of particular objects for sensuous perception, such an existence we cannot infer from thought. It is indeed of the very nature of such things that, regarded simply in themselves, they either may or may not be ; and to infer their necessary existence from the idea of them would be in direct con- tradiction with that idea. But there are other ideas with respect to which this does not hold good ; and there is especially one idea which, whether we are explicitly or only implicitly conscious of it, so proves its reality from thought, that thought itself becomes impossible without it. Its absolute objective reality is so fundamental to thought that to doubt it implies the subversion of all thought and all existence alike.' Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Glasgow, 1880), pp. 153-156. Principal Caird appears to me to throw himself more completely on Anselm's side than I have done. But I am far from presuming to say that he may not be in the right. THE ALLEGED PANTHEISM OF PLATO. The admirable scholarship, the philosophic thought, the acquaintance with German editions and criticisms of Plato, Postscript. 141 and the independence of mind displayed by Mr. E. D. Archer-Hind and Mr. Henry Jackson in their treatment of the Platonic dialogues might almost justify us in calling them 'the New Cambridge Platonists.' Whether further study may bring me round to an opinion expressed by one of these gentlemen I cannot tell. But for the present, after some renewal of my own inquiries, and after conversations held with two of the best Greek scholars in this city, both of whom are conversant with such themes, I find myself unable to subscribe to the verdict of Mr. Archer -Hind when, in the Introduction to his very valuable edition of the Phcedo, he speaks of 'the matured Pantheism of the TimcBUS.' How far I can go with him may be judged from the following statements : The phrase 'matured Pantheism' implies that such an eschatology was not developed in the earlier dialogues. Thus much, indeed, our critic seems, in the context, dis- tinctly to admit. 'Even were it shown,' he says, 'that personal immortality is inadmissible in the Timceus, it does not follow that it is so in the Phcedo.' But if we look back to a still earlier date, we must surely hold that Plato did not merely hint at, but emphati- cally assert a belief in personal immortality, unless we assume that the utterances ascribed to Socrates afford us no clue to the convictions of Plato himself. For towards the close of the Apologia, when Socrates is trying to impress upon his hearers his conviction that death will be a gain, he reserves to the last the prospect of possibly conversing with poets such as Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer, and with victims of unrighteous judgments, such as Palamedes and Ajax, son of Telamon. The possibility of nothing- ness, of dreamless sleep, is indeed mentioned. But absorption into an impersonal Anima Mundi and loss of 142 Postscript. individuality appears to have no place in the speaker's thoughts. That Plato taught a real Theism has been the impres- sion left upon minds very differently trained; such as, for example, those of Coleridge, Father Gratry, Eowland Williams, Davis, Dollinger. Williams and Davis make special appeal to the Timceus. I have elsewhere 1 cited a few sentences which, taken by themselves, appear to favour this view. 'To discover, then, the Creator and Father of this universe (rov TTOI^T^V KOI Trarepa rovSe rov Trai/ro?) is difficult, and that he who has discovered Him should announce Him to all men is impossible ' (p. 29). 'But when the Creator Father (o yevvrjcras Trarrjp) per- ceived that this created image of the eternal gods was endued with motion and life (/civvjOev avrb /cal %cov evevorjae), He was delighted, and from His joy sought to render it still more like to its pattern.' Another passage, to which Mr. Rowland Williams calls particular attention, occurs in pp. 47, 48 of the Timceus, on the gift of sight and the other senses as imparted by God to man. I am, however, compelled, on reconsidering the question, with the aid of the friends to whom I have referred and of the Introduction to this dialogue by Professor Jowett, to admit that there do appear to be some blemishes upon the clearness and precision of the doctrine of Theism as set forth by Plato. He is not perfectly consistent. He seems to admit the existence of matter moving about in an inhar- monious and disorderly manner (icivovpzvov 7r\r}/uL/jie\a)^ teal aTaKTWs), a chaos, in short, which is coeval with God. This is, indeed, the common teaching of Greek philosophy. But it is an assault, however unconscious, on the first pre- 1 In an article contributed to The Church Quarterly Review of April 1877, headed ' Pantheism From the Vedas to Spinoza ' (p. 17, note). Postscript. 143 rogative of the Creator, His Almightiness ; for if anything has existed without His leave then He is not Almighty. 'The Creator in Plato,' says Dr. Jowett (p. 568), 'is still subject to a remnant of necessity which He cannot wholly overcome.' ' The Platonic compared with the Jewish de- scription of the process of creation has less of freedom or spontaneity.' The part assigned to man in the Timceus (though apparently modified, perhaps we might say cor- rected, in the Laws, book x. p. 903) may be thought to leave an opening for Pantheism, and such passages do not stand alone. Still I fail to perceive a doctrine of matured Pantheism. SPINOZA. I am sorry to find myself, on the subject of Spinoza, at variance with so calm, learned, and candid a thinker as Principal Fairbairn, who believes that Spinoza wrought well for the doctrine of Theism. But I am unable to retract a single word. To my thinking Mr. Leslie Stephen and Mr. Matthew Arnold thus far make for me, in that they are thoroughly conscious of the profound gulf between Spinozism and Hebraism. The Jews of the Portuguese synagogue at Amsterdam, in A.D. 1656, excommunicated Spinoza. ' They,' says Mr. Arnold, ' remained children of Israel, and he became a child of modern Europe.' Must we not add, ' Immune quantum discrepat'? Professor Edward Caird, though giving Spinoza credit for good motives, and even willing to accept the strange eulogy of Novalis, who called Spinoza ' a God-intoxicated man,' yet admits that ' Spinoza has been called an Atheist, not witlwut reason, if we look at his system from the outside, and in its ultimate logical results? 1 1 Philosophy of Kant (p. 43). 1 44 Postscript. 1 Spinoza/ said the late Principal Le Bas to me, ' may have believed in a God, but it was a God whom I should as soon think of worshipping as I should of falling down before the force of gravitation.' I might cite similar lan- guage from the Prize Essay on Theism by the Kev. W. Anchor Thomson, but I prefer to close with the often- quoted words of Niebuhr. Mr. Fairbairn maintains that Spinoza has benefited Christianity. But Niebuhr said, ' A Christianity after the fashion of the modern philosophers and Pantheists, without a personal God, without immortal- ity, without human individuality, without historical faith, is no Christianity at all to me ; though it may be a very intellectual, very ingenious faith-philosophy.' * 1 Life and Letters (vol. ii. p. 123). While I am writing, the report of a similar reply by the Rev. Dr. Walter Smith has reached me. It is an expansion, clothed in language of much beauty, to an invitation to substitute belief in ' the stream of tendency ' for belief in Theism and in Christianity. (See Scotsman newspaper of 26th December 1885.) The late Bishop Cotton of Calcutta, in his primary charge, has also spoken of the deadening tendency of Pantheism. He spoke from experience of its effects in India. ADDENDUM. MUCH has been written concerning the force and prac- tical authority of truths for which the proof falls short of absolute demonstration. It might suffice to refer to Bishop Butler's well-known dictum, in his introduction to the Analogy, that ' to us Probability is the very guide of life,' on which that wonderful treatise is so largely a comment. The question also occupies considerable space in Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent, and is there treated with much candour as well as ability (see esp. Part II., chap, vi.) But to the slight references to this question made by me in pages 84 and 130, I wish to add the following: (1) The Lecture headed ' What is Science ? ' delivered in Glas- gow by the Duke of Argyll, and re-published in Good Words (vol. for 1885, p. 236); (2) a passage from M. Ozanam's Civilization in the Fifth Century, which runs as follows : ' The power of theology lies in its being the parent soil of faith and love. And mankind only loves what it takes upon trust, not what it can easily compass ; the not understanding a thing is the condition of loving it; and whatever is capable of mathematical demonstration gives little or no warmth to the heart. Who has ever been in love with an axiom, with a truth that leaves no need of further search 1 The unknown is the most powerful con- 146 Addendum. stituent of love, for nothing fascinates the human mind like mystery ; and, on the contrary, we soon weary of what we comprehend. Mystery is the secret of love, and in love there is faith.' l 1 Although I have long known and possessed M. Ozanam's book, I owe the recollection of this passage to an article on ' The Mysteries of Revelation and of Nature ' in The Quiver for November 1884, by my own diocesan, Bishop Cotterill. Frederick Robertson of Brighton has something like it in one of his Sermons, but I have mislaid my refer- INDEX. AESCHYLUS, his teaching, 101. Agnosticism, Mr. Harrison's cri- tique upon it (from Fortnightly Review, February 1885), 50; con- temned by the atheist Buchner, 42, 93 ; criticism of it, 104-105. Alice, the Princess, her struggle with doubt, and conquest over it, 5, 6. Allardyce, Mr., his tale, A City of Sunshine (London, 1872), 112. Andersen, Hans Christian, quoted, 66. Anselm, St., one of the three writers specially prominent in the use of the d, priori argument, 14 ; date of his birth, 22 ; Prior, and then Abbot of Bee, ibid; Archbishop of Canterbury, ibid ; combines desire of knowledge with faith, 23 ; his eulogists, ibid ; his Cur Deus Homo, 24 ; his Monologium and Proslogium, 24-30 ; criticism of his argument, 31-37 ; how far original, 38-48 ; his followers and opponents, see Descartes and Kant; recent critics, see Cousin, Bouchitte", Flint, ^ Tulloch, Caird. A posteriori argument for Theism, the most obvious and best known, 13 ; sanctioned by Socrates, by Cicero, by St. Paul, ibid; Paley's work based upon it, Dr. Mozley's support of it, ibid ; is it wholly separable from the a priori argu- ment? 87, 88. A priori argument for Theism, suggested by Plato, 44-48 ; em- ployed by St. Augustine, 39-41 ; but first formalized by St. Anselm, 41 ; names of eminent supporters, 83. Aquinas, St. Thomas, his agreement with Anselm doubtful, 54. Archer-Hind, Mr., on Plato, 140- 144. Argyll, Duke of, his Essay on Science, 145. Aristotle, 46, 107. Arnold, Matthew, on Spinoza, 143. Atheism, historic case against it, 8-12. Augustine, St., his De Trinitate quoted, 39-41 ; his Confessions quoted, 116 ; Anselm's debt to him, 38, 41. BACON, Francis, suggestion from his Advancement of Learning, 130. 148 Index. Bouchitte, M., his version of An- selm's Monologium and Pros- logium, and his commentary, 32. Broglie, Due de, his Questions de Religion et d'Histoire (especially the essay La Religion Naturelle], Paris, 1860, 92-93. x Buchner, his avowed Atheism ; de- nounces Agnostics and the ad- missions of Darwin and of Her- bert Spencer, 42, 93. Buddhism, 112. Butler, Bishop, recognizes the d priori argument, 51, 77, 79 ; his dictum on the value of proba- bility, 145. C^DMON, the poet, 11. Caird, Professor Edward, does not accept Kant's line of argument against Anselm, 139 ; on Spinoza, 143. Caird, Rev. Principal, D.D., defends against Kant the validity of the Ontological argument, 139, 140. Cause, Argument from (Clarke and Mozley), 61-64. Chaucer quoted, 7. Chretien, Rev. C. P., his essay on Logical Method (Oxford, 1848), 77. Chrystal, Professor, on Non-Euc- lidean Geometry, 134. Clarke, Dr. Samuel, his Boyle Lectures, his line of argument, Dr. Mozley's re -statement of Clarke's reasonings, 59-64. i I have given an epitome of this essay in the Christian Remembrancer for April 1868, in an article headed "Lines of De- marcation," and based on it a reply to the Duke of Somerset (London, Ridgway, 1872). Cleanthes, the Stoic, a real Theist, his noble hymn, 108. 2 Clifford, W. K., his Atheism, 134 ; its connexion with the denial of necessary truth, ibid. Cotterill, Bishop, reference to, 130, 133, 146. Cousin, M. Victor, a defender (against Kant) of the d priori line of argument, 32, 69. Crusades, ages of ; question of Theism versus Atheism not pro- minent in those times, 53. DANTE. Citation from the third part of his Divina Commedia, the Paradiso, 117, 118. Demosthenes, his seemingly theistic language, 108, 109 ; his recogni- tion of the moral law, 110. Descartes renews the Anselmian ar- gument, 55 ; his versatility, ibid; criticism of his contributions to the subject, 55-57; how far original, 57, 58 ; his influence in this matter, 59. Dickson, Professor, on Darwinism, 132. Dryden, Dr. Johnson on his alleged plagiarisms, 57. Dublin Review, its apparent over- statement of what is included in Theism, 128. EESKINE of Linlathen favours the argument from conscience, 85. 2 Extracts from this hymn have often been given, e.g. by the late Archbishop Sumner in his Records of the Creation (London, 1818). Compare Flint's Theism, where full justice is done to Cleanthes both as poet and reasoner. Index. 149 FAIKBAIRN, Rev. Principal, on Spinoza, 143-44. GASSENDI, an opponent of the Onto- logical argument, 32. Gaunilo, his criticism of Anselm, 35 ; Anselm's reply, 36. Gibbon quoted, 9, 101. Gillespie, Mr. Wm. Honyman, his work on the d priori argument, 69 ; eulogists of it, 70 ; its line of thought, 71-73; criticism, 75; objections to it derived from the philosophy of Kant, 76 ; reply, ibid; from the philosophy of Leibnitz, and reply, 77-78 ; other objections and answers, 78-81. Glaucus, son of Epicydes, his crime and its penalty, 132. Goreh, Rev. Father, on Hindoo worship, 112. Gratry, Rev. Father, his learning, 118 ; his work La Connaissance de Dieu (Paris, 1853), ibid; claims Aristotle as a Theist, 107 ; and Plato, 142. Greig, Rev. D., his essay on Un- belief, 139 (note). H ALLAM, Henry (historian), cites the charges of plagiarism against Des- cartes made by Leibnitz (Litera- ture of Europe, London, 1837), 58. Hallam, Arthur (son of the above), his description of Hebrew Theism, 122, 123 ; of Christian Theism, 123 (note). Helmholtz, Professor, his disbelief of metaphysical science, 129. Herodotus inclined to some sort of Theism, 107. Hindostan and Hindoo religion, 19, 20, 112, 114. Hobbes and Huet, opponents of On- tological argument, 32. Hobbes an object of assault to Clarke, 60. Homer, his teaching mainly poly- theistic, 107. Horace, occasionally theistic in tone, 106. INDIA (see Hindostan). JACKSON, Mr. Henry, on Plato, 141. Jackson, Rev. W., his Bampton Lectures, 136. Jowett, Professor, his introduction to Plato's Timceus (Plato's Dialogues Translated, Oxford, 2ded., 1875), 142, 143. Judaism, its Theism (see Strauss and A. Hallam, also Spinoza). KANT opposes the a priori as well as the a posteriori argument for Theism, 32, 59, 68 ; but employs the argument fromconscience,85 ; his views on time and space, 76, 77 ; on cause, 61 ; critics of Kant (see Caird, Chretien, Greig, Tulloch). Koran, the, teaches a real Theism, 110. LE BAS, Principal, on Spinoza, 144. Lecky, W. E. H., reference to, 11 (see his European Morals, 3d ed. , London, 1877). Leibnitz questions the originality of Descartes, 58 ; his views on time and space, 77. MACAULAY, Lord, on Hindoo re- ligion, 113. Index. M'Cosh, Rev. James, LL.D., his defence of the existence of neces- sary truths (see his Intuitions of theMind, new ed., London, 1865), 130, 132. Mallock, W. H., on the late Pro- fessor Clifford, 134. Martineau, Mr., his Studies of Christianity, 85, 86. Mohammed and Mohammedanism, reality of its Theism, 3, 110, 112. Mozley, Rev. Dr. (Reg. Professor of Divinity at Oxford), restates the argument from design, 13 ; also the d priori one of Clarke, 61, 64; Sir J. Paget on his merits, 60. NEWMAN, Cardinal, favours the argument for Theism derived from conscience, 85 ; his descrip- tion of what is involved in real Theism, 124 ; his Grammar of Assent, 146. Newton, Sir Isaac, passage from his Principia on the relation of time and space to their Creator, 80. Niebuhr, B. G. (the historian), his rejection of Pantheism, 144. OVID, clearness of his distinction between a Creator and things created, 44, 106. Ozanam, M., on the fascination of mystery, 145. PANTHEISM, 8, 43, 100. Paulicianism, a revival of Manichse- ism, 101. Perfection, the main idea in Anselm's Monologium, 37 ; as also with Augustine, 39, 40 ; and with Plato, 45, 48. Plato, germ of d, priori argument in his works, 41, 48 ; did he only teach Pantheism ? 140, 143. Pliny (the elder) Epicurean in words, nobly Stoic in his life and death, 111. SOPHOCLES, recognition in his Anti- gone of the eternal nature of the moral law, 110. Strauss, his description of Jewish Theism, 119, 121. Sufis, their infusion of a pantheistic element into Mohammedanism, 111. TIME and Space. Appealed to by Clarke, 64 ; by Gillespie, 70, 71 ; view of Kant, 76; of Leibnitz, 77 ; of Newton, 80. Tulloch, Rev. Principal (the late), 1 his defence of the a priori argu- ment against Kant, 138, 139. WABD, Rev. Mr. (Baptist mission- ary), on Hindooism, 113. Ward, Dr. Win. Geo. 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