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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
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 Class 
 
JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 AND HIS 
 
 GREATEST BOOK 
 
 BY 
 
 JABEZ T. SUNDERLAND 
 
 i * 
 
 AND 
 
 ELIZA R. SUNDERLAND 
 
 A Centennial Tribute 
 
 TORONTO, CANADA: 
 
 WM. TYRRELL & CO. 
 
 1905 
 
"High hearts are never long without hearing 
 some new call, some distant clarion of God, even 
 in their dreams; and soon they are observed to 
 break up the camp of ease and start on some 
 fresh march of faithful service. And, looking 
 higher still, we find those who never wait till 
 their moral work accumulates, and who reward 
 resolution with no rest; who do the good only 
 to see the better and see the better only to 
 achieve it; who are too meek for transport, too 
 faithful for remorse, too earnest for repose; 
 whose worship is action, and whose action cease- 
 less aspiration." Martineau's "Endeavours. 
 
 " 
 
 CofT|plirr]eqts of 
 
 J. T. SUNDERLAND 
 
 
JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 A BRIEF SKETCH 
 OF His LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 OTV I 
 
 BY 
 
 JABEZ T. SUNDERLAND, M.A. 
 
"That God is a Spirit, has not hindered him 
 from shaping the vault of night, and hanging 
 it with stars; or from tinting the tender blue 
 of day; or from spreading the sheet of sea, and 
 streaking it with green and gold; or from pois- 
 ing the summer clouds, to fling the chase of 
 purple shadows on the hills; or from shining 
 through the cool lights of the spring woods; or 
 from dwelling in our humanity, to touch it with 
 many a grace and repeat in it the image of his 
 piety and his truth; or from resting with the 
 Man of Sorrows as the symbol of his piety and 
 holy love. These are the works of his Creative- 
 ness, the appeal of his Beauty to our hearts, 
 the mighty Poem he improvises through all the 
 rhythm of the Universe." Martineau's" Hours 
 of Thought." 
 
. ;--.;' 
 
 OF 
 
 1*1 
 
 James Martineau 
 
 HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 James Martineau. was born April 21, 1805, in 
 Norwich, England, and died January 11, 1900, 
 in London, at the age of almost ninety-five years, 
 his life's long day having reached its natural 
 evening; his life's full year having rounded to 
 its late autumn, with extraordinarly rich harv- 
 ests reaped and garnered. 
 
 GREAT MEN. 
 
 God's most precious gifts to the world are 
 great men. But the value of great men varies 
 according to the quality of their greatness. 
 Mere intellectual greatness, unaccompanied with 
 moral, is of comparatively low value, Indeed, 
 a. man of intellectual brilliancy may even be a 
 curse to the world, if he uses his intellectual 
 powers for evil ends. But great men who are 
 not only ( great in intellect, but great also in 
 moral character who possess not only brilliant 
 mental powers, but the will to use them for 
 highest purposes such men are blessings to the 
 world whose value cannot be overestimated. 
 
6 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 We speak of "Alexander the Great." Such 
 greatness as the famous Greek conqueror repre- 
 sents, stands for mingled good and evil. In 
 like manner, the greatness of a Caesar or a 
 Napoleon, or even of a Wellington and a Grant, 
 represent some influences that conserve and 
 benefit, and some that hurt and destroy. But 
 there is a class of great men whom we may look 
 upon as representing good, and only good, to 
 the race. In this class we find such historic 
 names as Socrates, Plato, Isaiah, Paul, Luther, 
 Milton, Wesley, Channing, and, above all, Jesus. 
 In this company Martineau belongs, because in 
 him, as in them, splendid intellectual gifts were 
 allied with moral endowments equally splen- 
 did, and his brilliant powers were employed, not 
 for destructive or selfish ends, but to advance 
 truth, righteousness, peace, love, and whatso- 
 ever makes for the permanent betterment of the 
 world. 
 
 MARTINEAU *S ENDOWMENTS. 
 
 Martineau was a member of the famous Lon- 
 don Metaphysical Society, which contained 
 many of the most eminent thinkers, literary 
 men, scientists, and public leaders of England, 
 such as Gladstone, Buskin, Huxley, Tyndall, 
 Tennyson, the Archbishop of York, Professors 
 Sidgrwick and Mivart, Dr. W. B. Carpenter, Mr. 
 
MARTINEAU'S ENDOWMENTS 7 
 
 R. H. Button, Lord Selbome, and Archbishop 
 Manning. Tennyson has left it on record 
 that he regarded Martineau as the master mind 
 of all that remarkable company; and Gladstone 
 said to Frances Power Cobbe, "Martineau is 
 beyond question the greatest of living think- 
 ers." This was high praise. But best of all, 
 Martineau was as great morally as he was in- 
 tellectually. He always used his splendid pow- 
 ers for worthiest ends to discover and give to 
 the world the highest kind of truth moral 
 truth, spiritual truth, religious truth, such truth 
 as would feed the best that was in men, and 
 therefore most benefit mankind. 
 
 Dr. Martineau 's endowments were both many 
 and rich. His was a subtle, keen, and penetrat- 
 ing intellect. He was a trained logician. He 
 was a profound philosophic thinker. He was 
 a spiritual seer. He had a vivid and powerful 
 imagination, which was forever at play, and 
 which cast the fascinating lights and shadows of 
 poetry and symbol upon all he said and wrote. 
 He was gifted with a rich and stately eloquence. 
 As Dr. Forsyth says: 'His style alone would 
 have given him influence, so lucid, jewelled, 
 over-polished at times, perhaps, but never 
 metallic; full of fancy sometimes too full 
 and of imagery now scientific, now poetic; full 
 
8 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 of delicacy, lith,e as steel, with a careful felicity 
 'saying the unsay able. 7 Newman alone ranked 
 with him in this regard." He was a most de- 
 vouit worshipper. He had a striking and power- 
 ful personality. One of his well-known contem- 
 poraries declares that his personality was the 
 most impressive and commanding he ever met, 
 not excepting Gladstone's. 
 
 Martineau's life was not only unusually long, 
 but it was filled throughout with strenuous 
 work. It is hardly too much to speak of it as 
 three lives in one. 
 
 THE PREACHER. 
 
 First, we have Martineau the Preacher. Add 
 together his four years as minister in Dublin, 
 his twenty-five years in Liverpool, and his four- 
 teen at Little Portland street, London, and we 
 have more than forty years of steady pulpit 
 work. And it was pulpit work into which he 
 never failed to put his best of mind and heart. 
 How high was its quality may be learned from 
 the strong testimony of those who listened with 
 absorbed attention to his intense and eloquent 
 discourses, and may be seen also by turning to 
 his volumes of printed sermons, which have car- 
 ried his fame as a preacher into every civilized 
 land. Such a ministry alone, with no other 
 labours added, would seem to be enough for one man. 
 
THE TEACHER 9 
 
 THE TEACHER. 
 
 Second, we have Martineau the Teacher. Here 
 again we meet with what would seem to be 
 nearly or quite a full life-work. He taught 
 a year with Dr. Carpenter, in Bristol, in very 
 early manhood, before entering upon his career 
 as a preacher. Then, after he had been preach- 
 ing in Liverpool six years or so, at the <aige of 
 thirty-five, he was appointed to the chair of 
 Mental and Moral Philosophy and Political 
 Economy in Manchester College. Here his real 
 career as a teacher began. And it continued, 
 with the interruption, I believe, of only a sin- 
 gle year when he was absent for study in Ger- 
 manythrough forty-five years. 
 
 During all that long time, either as Professor 
 in the College, or as its Principal, he held a 
 shaping hand on the education of a large pro- 
 portion of the young men trained for the Uni- 
 tarian and Liberal Christian ministry in Great 
 Britain, and of not a few from other lands. 
 The influence of this work as an educator can- 
 not be told. It was an influence not only to 
 clarify the thinking, and guide the research, 
 and widen the knowledge, but to ennoble the 
 moral ideals, to quicken the enthusksm, and to 
 deepen the spiritual life, of these young men, 
 and through them the churches which they 
 
10 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 would be called to serve. His aim was to give 
 his students not only trained minds, but dis- 
 ciplined wills, and purified affections. It was 
 to send them into the work of the ministry to 
 propagate a religion at once free, enlightened, 
 and devout; to proclaim a Gospel in harmony 
 with all truth, all beauty, all goodness, and rich 
 in the deepest pieties of the heart; to plant in 
 men a faith which no advance of knowledge, and 
 no revolution of human thought, can disturb, 
 because grounded in the living revelation of 
 God in the human soul. These were the ends 
 for which he strove. How well he succeeded, 
 let the work done by the ministers of the Lib- 
 eral Churches of Great Britain and Ireland, and 
 beyond, for more than fifty years, bear witness, 
 
 THE WRITER. 
 
 The third Martineau was the persuasive, the 
 powerful, the brilliant, the indefatigable Writer, 
 who, from early manhood to the extreme age 
 of ninety, was constantly giving forth to the 
 world pamphlets, printed sermons, printed lec- 
 tures, articles in daily and weekly papers, elabo- 
 rate articles in magazines and reviews, and, 
 most important of all, books which never failed 
 to attract attention, to awaken thought, and to 
 compel assent or dissent. What made it pos- 
 
THE WRITER It 
 
 sible for him to produce so many papers and 
 articles of thought and learning, and so many 
 books, was the fact that there was a unity in 
 all he did, so that he was able to pour into his 
 printed pages the wealth of both his pulpit and 
 his teacher's chair. His sermons were of so 
 high an order that they stood the test of type. 
 His college lectures furnished material for some 
 of his greatest published works. Thus the 
 streams of both his preachinig and his teaching 
 were indispensable tributaries to the stream of 
 his authorship. 
 
 PRINCIPAL WORKS. 
 
 Dr. Martineau's most important books are the 
 follow ing : 
 
 "Endeavours After the Christian Life." 
 Sermons, 2 volumes; published 1843 and 1847. 
 
 "Hours of Thought on Sacred Things." Ser- 
 mons, 2 volumes; 1876 and 1879. 
 
 These sermons deal with themes of the uni- 
 versal religious life and have found admiring 
 readers in every religious communion. Many 
 persons agree with Mr. R. H. Huttion when he 
 says: "In these wonderful setrmons the real 
 Martineau, the spiritual teacher who will en- 
 dure, has accomplished his greatest and finest 
 work. * Spirit speaks with spirit in 
 
 these pages, which are worthy of the finest mys- 
 
12 JAMES MARTINBAU 
 
 ticism of the Catholic Church at its best, while 
 at the same time they are manly, healthy, in 
 harmony with human reason, and couched in a 
 singularly noble and remarkable prose style." 
 
 "Types of Ethical Theory," 2 volumes, 1885. 
 
 In this work Dr. Martineau makes a critical 
 examination of the principal theories of ethics, 
 ancient and modern, with a view to finding a 
 satisfactory explanation of conscience, and a 
 trustworthy thought-basis for man's moral life. 
 Probably in no other simgle treatise have we at 
 once so lucid a compendium and so penetrating 
 and exhaustive a critique of all the more im- 
 portant schools of ethical philosophy (except 
 the Hegelian, which, rather singularly, Dr. Mar- 
 tineau does not take up) as in this masterly 
 work. 
 
 "A Study of Religion: Its Sources and Its 
 Contents." 2 volumes, 1888. 
 
 This work is a treatise, rich in spiritual in- 
 sight as well as profound in thought, upon the 
 great themes which are fundamental in any true 
 philosophy of religion, namely, Knowledge, 
 Cause, the Intellectual and Moral Aspects of 
 the Universe, Theism, Personality, Pantheism, 
 Freedom, Immortality. When the book appear- 
 ed it was -at once welcomed by the leaders of 
 nearly every school of religious thought. Dr. 
 
PRINCIPAL WORKS 13 
 
 Martineau's fame as a religious philosopher was 
 already very high; perhaps this work carried it 
 to its zenith. Probably I should be safe in say- 
 ing that it is generally regarded as his magnum 
 opus. 
 
 "The Seat of Authority in Religion.'' 1890. 
 
 This is ia profound and luminous study of 
 Nature, Humanity, History, Revelation, the 
 Christian Church, the Bible and Jesus, with a 
 view to finding out with whato degree of author- 
 ity each speaks to men; oir, in what way and 
 with what emphasis the Divine Voice speaks 
 through each. In his Sermons, Types of Ethical 
 Theory land Study of Religion, Dr. Martineau 
 for the most part keeps common ground with 
 thinkers of all Christian denominations, bult in 
 this work he shows himself the independent, 
 progressive, radical thinker, who accepts cordi- 
 ally the conclusions of science, comparative re- 
 ligion, and the higher criticism of the Bible, and 
 who does not hesitate to enunciate views dis- 
 tinctly alt variance with the orthodoxy of his 
 time. This is the work in which we have Mar- 
 tineau the liberal thinker and wniter at his 
 clearest, completest and best. 
 
 "Essays, Reviews and Addresses." 
 Volume I. Personal and Political, 1890. 
 
14 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Volume II. Ecclesiastical and Historical, 
 1890. 
 
 Volume III. Theological and Philosophical, 
 1891. 
 
 Volume IV. Academical and Religious, 1891. 
 
 In these four volumes, Dr. Martineau, near the 
 close of his life, gathered togeither in revised 
 form such as he desired permanently to preserve 
 of those striking miscellaneous writings which 
 hiad appeared in reviews, magazines and pam- 
 phlets during more than fifty years ; and which, 
 attracting attention in the world of thought at 
 the times of their appearance, had gradually 
 won for him a place among the first philosophic- 
 al and religious thinkers of his age. These 
 Essays, Reviews and Addresses are second in 
 philosophic importance to the three extended 
 philosophic works named above; possibly they 
 may not keep their place in public attention so 
 long as the sermons, which are unique, both in 
 spiritual quality and in literary style ; but they 
 are masterly discussions of subjects most of 
 which are of lasting interest, and they give us 
 sides of Martineau 's thinking which we find 
 nowhere else brought out so clearly. 
 
 "A Study of Spinoza/' 1882. 
 
 This is a work of considerable philosophical 
 value, though hardly to be classed among the 
 
PRINCIPAL WORKS 15 
 
 author's mosft important productions, especially 
 as its treatment of Pantheism (the central 
 theme dealt with) is to some extent duplicated 
 in Book III. of his Study of Religion. 
 
 During his life Dr. Mairtineau compiled, three 
 hymn books the firsst called "Hymns of Chris- 
 tian Worship," in the; year 1831, while he was 
 in Dublin; the second, "Hymns for Christian 
 Church and Home/' in Liverpool, 1840; and 
 the last, "Hymns of Praise and Prayer," after 
 he had retired from the pulpit, but while he was 
 carrying on his work of teaching in London, 
 1873. Deep as was always his interest in the 
 thiought-side of religion, his interest was deeper 
 still in the worship-side. He said of himself: 
 "Both conviction and feeling keep me close to 
 the poetry and the piety of Christendom. They 
 are my native air.' 7 His objects in making his 
 hymn collections were three: "The gradual en 
 richment of our religious literature by new 
 hymns"; the dropping out of hymns containing 
 "objective and mythological elements," which 
 the intelligence of our time have outgrown and 
 ought to leave behind; and the introduction (in 
 the place of those discarded) of hymns expres- 
 sive of the "simple and natural piety" of the 
 heart, and of that deep spiritual devotion which 
 
 he felt to be the essence of the religion of 
 Christ, 
 
16 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Dr. Martineau was ialso deeply interested in 
 providing for the liberal churches of England 
 an improved liturgy; and to this end he pre- 
 pared two "Services for Public Worship" which 
 have long been in wide use. 
 
 The last book given by Dr. Martineau to the 
 world was a small volume enltitled "Home Pray- 
 ers/' tat the end of the year 1891. Dr. Drum- 
 mond, his biojgrapher, truly says: "Here, even 
 more thjan in his sermons, we hear the 'tender 
 voice ' of his spirit; and these humble outpour- 
 ings of his heart's devotion fitly close the long 
 and splendid series of his publications. ' ' 
 
 HONOURS. 
 
 Few men have received so many academic and 
 other honours as Dr. Martineau. But his hon- 
 ours were somewhat late in coming. It is inter- 
 esting to notice that America, rather than Eng- 
 land, was earliest in appreciating and giving 
 recognition to his greatness, as was also true in 
 the case of Carlyle. In 1872 Harvard Univers- 
 ity conferred upon Martineau the degree of 
 LL.D. He was then sixty-seven years of aige. 
 Leyden followed, in 1875, with its S.T.D.; Ed- 
 inburgh, in 1884, with its D.D.; and Oxford, 
 in 1888, when he had reached the age of eighty- 
 three, with its D.C.L. Four years later still, 
 
HONOURS 17 
 
 in 1892, Dublin added its LL.D. to that of Har- 
 vard. Quite as notable were the honours that 
 came to him in other forms. Nearly all his later 
 birthdays were marked by tributes from dis- 
 tinguished men. Perhaps the most memorable 
 of these was the address presented to him on 
 his eighty-third birthday, written by Dr. Jowett, 
 of Oxford, recognizing in the warmest terms the 
 great service which he had rendered phil- 
 osophical and religious thought, and signed by 
 more than six hundred of the most eminent writ- 
 ers, philosophical thinkers, artists, scientists, 
 educators, religious leaders, and public men of 
 Great Britain, America, and the Continent of 
 Europe, the names of Tennyson, Browning, 
 Edwin Arnold, Max Miiller, Dean Bradley, 
 Jowett himself, and James Russell Lowell head- 
 ing the list. 
 
 LIMITATIONS. 
 
 I have spoken of Dr. Martineau's many and 
 rare gifts. But it needs to be added that only 
 to a limited extent were they popular gifts. 
 They seemed, in a way, to lift him above, and to 
 separate him from, the great mass of his fel- 
 lows. As; Wordsworth sang of Milton: 
 
 "His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." 
 He was a igreat preacher; but it was a 
 preacher for the few rather than the many. He 
 
18 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 was a great teacher; but it was a teacher for 
 thoughtful and mature minds. He was in his 
 right place as a teacher of young men preparing 
 for the Christian ministry. In such a place all 
 his genius for imparting, and his still greater 
 genius for quickening and inspiring, had full 
 play. 
 
 He was a great writer ; but it was a writer for 
 the cultured for men with trained intelligence, 
 for thinkers. He could not easily reach com- 
 mon minds. This he realized, and sometimes it 
 sorely troubled him. He spoke of it as a limi- 
 tation, which he had tried to shake off, but 
 found himself unable. Once, soon after the 
 'appearance of his great work on Theism, he 
 wrote to me saying that it was one of the 
 regrets of his life that he was not able 
 to write more simply, confessing that he often 
 felt the need of an interpreter or a translator 
 to bring his books within reach of minds that 
 he wanted to reach, and asking me if we had 
 not on our side of the water somebody who 
 could translate or interpret him to the public 
 at large. 
 
 But if his writings appealed directly to only 
 a comparatively few minds, they were the ablest 
 and strongest minds of their time. They were 
 the fertile minds, into which it was worth while 
 
LIMITATIONS 19 
 
 to drop seeds of new and higher thought. They 
 were the leaders of their generation. That he 
 was thus able to teach the teachers, to mould 
 the thought of thinkers, and to sway so many 
 master minds, is the secret of his great and 
 growing influence, and the assurance that his 
 work will live. 
 
 HIS GREATEST SERVICE TO RELIGION. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest single service that Dr. 
 Martineau rendered to religion, was that of 
 helping men in an age of great theological up- 
 heaval, caused by the unprecedented develop- 
 ments of science, to see that science and relig- 
 ion are not antagonistic, as so many believed, 
 and that religion has nothing to fear from sci- 
 ence, no matter what further scientific develop- 
 ments may arise. Science had made such rapid 
 progress, and had brought to light so many 
 facts which had contravened old-established 
 theological theories and doctrines, that there was 
 widespread alarm lest the very foundations of 
 religious faith should be overturned. It was 
 feared by many that the discovery of law rul- 
 ing everywhere in nature, meant the dethrone- 
 ment of God. Others feared that the new sci- 
 ence was sweeping away the whole spiritual uni- 
 verse (including both God and the human soul) 
 and leaving us only a physical realm, or a uni- 
 
20 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 verse of blind matter and motion. In the midst 
 of this anxiety and alarm Dr. Martineau came 
 forward calm and confident, maintaining, with 
 a clearness of insight, a strength of reasoning, 
 and >a breadth and precision of knowledge, which 
 at once commanded the attention of the think- 
 ing world, that law, so far from banishing God, 
 is only a name for the method of God's uni- 
 versal activity; that materialism, so far from 
 being formidable, and compelling us to give up 
 belief in spirit, is nothing but pure assumption, 
 with no basis of sound reason or of known fact 
 to stand upon; that science, so far from de- 
 stroying God, is only possible in a universe 
 whose basal fact is Intelligence and Mind; and 
 that there is nothing in either law or science 
 that can in any way disturb religion, because 
 religion has its foundation, not in irrational doc- 
 trines or unscientific creeds, and not even in 
 sacred books, but in the deepest experiences of 
 the soul of man. Thus did this great philosophic 
 thinker render a service to religion which soon 
 came to be recognized as second in importance 
 to that of no religious teacher in the modern 
 world. 
 
 A RADICAL. 
 
 Dr. Martineau was a theological radical. He 
 was much more of a radical in his later life than 
 
A RADICAL 21 
 
 in his earlier. He tells us that, as the result of 
 his studies and his own mental .growth, he had 
 found himself compelled, during his public 
 career, to think out afresh, and to re-shape, at 
 least twice, every part of his religious philos- 
 ophy. In this he reminds us of the great sci- 
 entist, Sir Charles Lyell, who, after he had writ- 
 ten his greatest work on geology in what he in- 
 tended to be its final form, went through the 
 great labour of rewriting it, in the light of the 
 new dodtirine of evolution which had just risen 
 on the world. 
 
 A CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 But if Martineau was a radical, he was also 
 a conservative. There is a class of radicals who 
 seem to be always trying to tear up by the roots 
 the hopes and faiths of men. To this class 
 Martineau did not belong. Rather was he the 
 kind of radical who is always seeking to plant 
 the roots of men's hopes and faiths deeper, and 
 in richer soil. Such a 'radical is the true con- 
 servative. 
 
 Much that is thought of as Martineau' s radi- 
 calism is connected with the doctrine of 
 miracles. Men had long been building religion 
 on a foundation of miracle, and claiming that 
 it could have no other foundation. But Mar- 
 tineau saw that science was more and more 
 
22 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 bringing miracles into discredit with many 
 minds, and therefore threatening, for such 
 minds, to overthrow religion. Hence he set him- 
 self to the task of finding a foundation other 
 than miracle, deeper 'than miracle, which no 
 fading away of miracle could affect. He found 
 such a foundation in man's own moral and 
 spiritual nature. This foundation was inde- 
 structible and eternal. 
 
 HIS CONSCIENTIOUSNESS AND COURAGE. 
 
 Dr. Martineau was a man of great indepen- 
 dence, couraige, and conscientiousness. Indeed, 
 he was independent and brave because he was 
 conscientious. His conscience was his com- 
 mander. What it bade him do, that he did, at 
 every hazard. Such obedience to conscience is 
 always the truest heroism. His conscientious- 
 ness and bravery were shown by his taking the 
 unpopular side in many things. They were 
 shown by his keeping himself in steady and 
 active alliance with a small religious body like 
 the Unitarians. With his splendid gifts, if he 
 had been in one of the larger religious denomina- 
 tions, especially in the National Church, he could 
 have had any honour or distinction which Eng- 
 land was able to bestow. But he would have 
 despised himself with unutterable scorn if he had 
 
HIS CONSCIENTIOUSNESS 23 
 
 detected himself turning aside even by a hair's 
 breadth from the path of what he believed to 
 be truth and right, for the sake of any possible 
 honour or advantage. 
 
 HIS CATHOLICITY. 
 
 Few men have ever been so broadly catholic 
 in spirit as Dr. Martineau. He saw good in all 
 forms of religion; he discovered some precious 
 element of truth hidden in the heart of even 
 the most dark and repellent creed, and his de- 
 sire was always to save the good, while casting 
 out the evil. His catholicity made him unwill- 
 ing to be cut off from any religious communion. 
 Nothing could prevent him from at least extend- 
 ing- his sympathies to all. Others might curse 
 him; he would bless them. He felt that he had 
 a possession in every religious prophet, and 
 saint, and teacher, of whatever , name. Augus- 
 tine and St. Francis, and Luther and Calvin, 
 and Wesley and Moody and Leo III. and 
 Swedenborg, as well as the brethren of his own 
 household of faith, all belonged to him, be- 
 cause he recognized the piety of all. And yet, 
 with all his spiritual sympathy, he was the most 
 unsparing of truthtellers. He insisted on let- 
 ting the light shine into all dark places. He 
 would not compromise with superstition, with 
 bigotry, with ignorance, with unethical concep- 
 
24 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 tions of God, with degrading views of man, 
 with irrational religious doctrines, in high places 
 or low. While he would not knowingly injure 
 any Church, however bad its theology, or deep 
 the superstition in which it wrapped a itself, he 
 would endeavour to help and bless all, by do- 
 ing whatever was in his power to show them 
 higher truth and lead them out into larger life. 
 
 YOUNG TO THE LAST. 
 
 In his mind and heart Dr. Martineau never 
 grew old. He kept his intellectual activity and 
 his mental freshness through life. At the last 
 there was some mental weakness, some loss of 
 memory, but little or no loss of interest in new 
 thought. In a letter written in his ninety-sec- 
 ond year, he speaks of himself as not having 
 desired old age, but God had sent it to him, and 
 he had found it, rather to his surprise, some- 
 thing to be thankful for, something "deepening 
 instead of impairing the supreme' interest and 
 significance of life." Some of his best writing 
 was done after he was eighty; indeed, all three 
 of his greatest books "Types of Ethical 
 Theory/' "A Study of Religion," and "The 
 Seat of Authority in Religion" were put in 
 final form and given to the public after he 
 had reached that advanced age. This is some- 
 
YOUNG TO THE LAST 25 
 
 thinjg nearly or quite unprecedented in the his- 
 tory of the world. All this was possible because 
 his thinking never became stereotyped. He was 
 always ready to read new books, and to seek 
 new standpoints from which to look at truth. 
 His thought to the last was a flowing stream, 
 it never became a stagnant pool ; and the reason 
 was, he was always pouring new water into the 
 stream, and drawing water out of the stream. 
 In this he may well be a lesson and an example 
 to us all. Woe to any of us if we ever allow 
 our minds to become pools; if we ever cease to 
 read new books and take interest in fresh 
 thought; if we stop growing; if we fail to keep 
 our faces turned towards God's new and for- 
 ever new sunrises. 
 
 I find myself compelled to regard Dr. Martin- 
 ea.u as the greatest prophet, thinker, and 
 teacher that the liberal faith has yet produced 
 in the Old World, and as only equalled by 
 Chan-mug and Emerson in the New. Most of 
 his thought I believe will live. Most of his teach- 
 ings I believe will take root in the world and 
 grow. 
 
 FOLLOWING OUR LEADER. 
 
 God has greatly favoured us as a religious 
 body by giving us such a leader as James 
 Martineau. We ought to be profoundly grate- 
 
26 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ful for the gift. Such leadership should make 
 us brave and strong. 
 
 One danger in connection with belonging to 
 a small and unpopular religious movement like 
 ours is, lest we grow timid and lose heart. But 
 shall we be afraid because we are few? Shall 
 we be dismayed by mere numbers? There have 
 been single men who, pitted against the world, 
 have become victors. Such were Galileo and Dar- 
 win in science. Such was Jesus in religion. 
 With such leaders as Channing, and Emerson, 
 and Martineau, and Jesus, what have we to 
 fear? Men call us sceptics, unbelievers, and 
 many another hard name. They deny that we 
 have any right to a place in the company of 
 Christians. Let us not be troubled. Persons 
 who dare to stand for truth more advanced than 
 that held by the majority of their fellows 1 are 
 always misunderstood, always have to bear 
 opprobrium. What others have borne without 
 complaint, why should we shrink from? Let us 
 be calm and fearless as was Martineau. 
 
 A GEEAT LIGHT. 
 
 Men like Martineau are splendid lights raised 
 aloft on rocky headlands to guide the thought 
 of the world in safety in its voyagings over the 
 ocean of truth. All the future will think more 
 
A GREAT LIGHT 27 
 
 wisely and safely regarding the profoundest 
 problems of human life and destiny because of 
 what Martineau has thought and written. 
 
 Now while his name is upon all lips, while 
 the public 1 prints are recalling his life and do- 
 ing honour to his greatness, it is a fitting time 
 for all of us who love and honour him, to deep- 
 en our acquaintance with his writings. Let us 
 see to it that his books iare in our libraries. Let 
 us familiarize ourselves with their contents. Let 
 us lend them to others. Thus we can all do 
 something to disseminate that light which God 
 has let shine so brilliantly in him. 
 
 Not all men accept his thought ; but the num- 
 ber that accept it increases, and will increase. 
 He has been much misunderstood. But it is 
 encouraging to see that he is less misunderstood 
 and more held in reverence every decade. It is 
 becoming increasingly hard to bar him from the 
 Christian fold. Not a few who once denied his 
 Christianity are beginning to say, Would God 
 we were as good Christians as he ! And it will 
 be increasingly difficult as time goes on to re- 
 fuse the Christian name and Christian fellow- 
 ship to those men and those churches that rep- 
 resent the high faith that he taught and lived. 
 
28 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 COURAGE ! 
 
 It only remains to us to be faithful and 
 courageous. If our position is sometimes lonely, 
 what of that! To be in the same company with 
 such souls as Martineau should be profoundly 
 assuring. As he splendidly followed truth, let 
 us follow him, and fear not. 
 
DR. MARTINEAU'S 
 STUDY OF RELIGION : 
 
 AN ANALYSIS AND EPITOME. 
 
 BY 
 ELIZA R. SUNDERLAND, PH.D. 
 
"Faith in our own faculties, as God has given 
 them, is at the very basis of all knowledge and 
 belief on things human or divine. Each one of 
 our natural powers is to be implicitly trusted 
 within its own sphere, the senses as reporters 
 of the outward world; the understanding, in the 
 ascertainment of the laws and interpretation of 
 nature; the reason and conscience, in the order- 
 ing of life, the discernment of God and the fol- 
 lowing of religion. 
 
 "Whoever tries to shake their authority, as 
 the ultimate appeal in their several concerns, 
 though he may think himself a saint, is in fact 
 an infidel. Whoever pretends that anything can 
 be above them, be it a book or a church, is se- 
 cretly cutting up all belief by the roots. 
 
 "Turn the matter as me may, it will appear 
 that the fullest, most unqualified admission of 
 a moral and rational nature in man, whose de- 
 cisions no external power can overrule, avd 
 which constitutes God f s ever open court for try- 
 ing the claims of Scripture and prophecy, no 
 less than pilosophy, is the prime requisite of 
 all devout faith; without which, duty loses its 
 sacredness, revelation its significance and God 
 himself his authority." Martineau's "En- 
 deavours," 
 
Dr. Martineau's "Study of Religion:" 
 
 AN ANALYSIS AND EPITOME. 
 
 In this Centennial year <of Dr. Martineau's 
 birth, many friends and admirers will bring 
 their tributes of love and admiration, as wreaths 
 to crown the memory of one who has had so 
 lange and worthy a place in the world of relig- 
 ious thought. For the following study of what 
 is perhaps Dr. Martineau's greatest work, the 
 writer begs a humble place among these centen- 
 nial offerings. 
 
 "A Study of Religion" was the second in 
 order of appearing of three great philosophical 
 treatises, the "Types of Ethical Theory" hav- 
 ing preceded it by some three years, and the 
 "Seat of Authority in Religion" following it 
 after an interval of two years. These works 
 have all taken their places 'among the valuable 
 and permanent contributions of modern times 
 to philosophical religious literature. 
 
 Probably the one of the three, however, which 
 has met with widest favor, a favor not con- 
 fined at all to his own religious communion, but 
 finding strong expression among the ablest 
 thinkers of every religious name is the 
 
 30 
 
32 " A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 "Study of Religion/' This luminous, widely 
 suggestive, and in every way masterly work, 
 may well be read and carefully studied by every 
 intelligent believer in religion who has time for 
 studies so extended and erudite. But alas! in 
 a crowded age like ours, those who have time 
 for careful and extended study, are only the 
 favored few. The many must ialmost wholly 
 pass by works like this of Dr. Martineau. It 
 is for such, primarily, that the following An- 
 alysis and Epitome has been prepared. 
 
 A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE WHOLE BOOK. 
 Before entering upon our task, it will be help- 
 ful to place before us at a glance a general out- 
 line of Dr. Martineau 's work. After briefly de- 
 fining the word " Religion, " he proceeds to dis- 
 cuss his great theme under the following heads: 
 
 I. What can man know? 
 
 II. What can the Intellect tell us of God as 
 Cause f 
 
 HI. What can the Moral Nature tell us of 
 God as Holiness? 
 
 IV. The Unity of God as Cause and as Holi- 
 ness. 
 
 V. Pantheism as a System of Thought Op- 
 posed to Belief in God. 
 
 VI. Determinism and Free Will as a System 
 of Thought Opposed to Belief in God. 
 
AN ANALYSIS AND EPITOME 83 
 
 VII. The Life to Come. 
 
 With this introductory glance over Dr. Mar- 
 tineau's book as a whole, to get in mind its 
 general scope, we are ready to proceed to our 
 study and analysis of it, part by part, in the 
 order indicated. 
 
 THE WORD 
 
 What is Religion? "A worship of Human- 
 ity, " answers Frederick Harrison. " Reverence 
 for the Unknowable," answers Herbert Spen- 
 cer. "Habitual and permanent admiration, and 
 every form of enthusiasm, be they for science, 
 for art or for morals," says the author of 
 ' ' Supernatural Religion. ' ' 
 
 These answers and others are examined by 
 Dr. Martineau and rejected. His own definition , 
 is as follows: "Religion is belief in and worship 
 of an Ever-Living God; that is, of a Divine 
 Mind and Will, ruling the universe and holding 
 moral relations with mankind." 
 
 Religion thus defined is to be the subject o* 
 the following study. 
 
34 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 I. WHAT CAN MAN KNOW? 
 
 At the very threshhold of a study of religion 
 as thus defined above, we are met with a phil- 
 osophic question concerning the conditions of 
 Human Knowledge. Certain expressions used 
 in the definition given, namely, "an Ever-Liv- 
 ing God/' u a Divine Mind and Will," "moral 
 relations between that Will and mankind," 
 these are transcendental, themes, not reporting 
 themselves through the senses, and not capable 
 of definition in terms of physical science. Can 
 man, therefore, know them in any such sense 
 as to justify religious belief 3 
 
 Two classes of thinkers answer this question 
 in the negative, namely: those known as Sub- 
 jective Idealists; and those who accept the 
 theory of the Relativity of Knowledge. These 
 theories must, therefore, be investigated at the 
 outset. 
 
 1. SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM. 
 
 Subjective Idealism holds that man can know 
 nothing beyond his own ideas. 
 
 What is knowing? A kind of thinking; yet 
 not all thinking is knowing, but only that kind 
 which reports itself in the form of judgments. 
 Of the two forms of judgment, the Analytic 
 and Synthetic, only the latter proves adequate 
 as an instrument for acquiring new knowledge ; 
 
SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM 35 
 
 but on analyzing a synthetic proposition we find 
 that it resolves itself into variations of sense- 
 perceptions or affections, and thus cannot give 
 us knowledge of things external to itself. IB 
 there any means of getting beyond the self in 
 our knowing? If not, religion, as denned by 
 Martineau, is an impossibility, since the mind 
 cannot believe in what is absolutely beyond its 
 knowledge. 
 
 In the investigation of this question of know- 
 ing, our author brings before us in critical re- 
 view the theories of such thinkers as Kant, Fichte? 
 Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Helmholtz and 
 the Mills, father and son. Each of these phil- 
 osophers, going to the human mind with this 
 question of knowing, finds in the deliverances 
 of that mind, not only mental states, sensation, 
 perception, etc., but a recognition of the ego 
 and the non ego, i.e., a self and other than self 
 (or an objective as well as a subjective world) ; 
 a here and a there, or space ; a now and >a then, 
 or time; phenomena and their cause, or causal- 
 ity; qualities, and the substance in which they 
 inhere. Are all these, an external world, time, 
 pace, causality, anything more than ideas in 
 the mind itself, and is there any proof that 
 there is any external reality corresponding to 
 them more than to the mental deliverances in 
 dreams? 
 
36 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 A careful analysis of the answer and grounds 
 of the answer given by each, of the writers 
 named, together with an independent study of 
 mental activity in an act of perception, leads 
 our author to the conclusion that mind, the self, 
 the ego, can know both self and other than self, 
 an external object as well as internal subject. 
 
 2. THE RELATIVITY OP KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Having thus disengaged ourselves from the 
 self -enclosure of subjective idealism, and owned 
 the presence of objects not made by our own 
 consciousness 1 , what then? Though the outer 
 world be no dream of our thought, but a real 
 scene, conditioning our experience and affected 
 by it, still what guarantee have we that it is 
 what our belief represents it to be? 
 
 It is possible to say that that world can tell 
 us only what our ways of thinking are shaped 
 to admit. Our minds being constituted as they 
 are, we think in our present fashion ; were they 
 constituted otherwise, we should think in a dif- 
 ferent fashion, though beyond us no correspond- 
 ing change were made. We should in each case 
 be liable to feel the same intuitive certainty; 
 yet in one of them, perhaps in both, the trust 
 would be illusory. 
 
THE RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE 3? 
 
 The possibility thus suggested that even our 
 ultimate principles of cognition may be out of 
 joint with reality and justify no predications 
 about things as they are, has found a place both 
 in ancient and modern philosophic writing. 
 Appearing in various forms, as "Man the meas- 
 ure of all things," "All we know is phenom- 
 ena," and the Spencerian doctrine of the "Un- 
 knowable, ' ' all the varieties may be summed up 
 under the general head of the Relativity of Hu- 
 man Knowledge. 
 
 The grounds of this doctrine Dr. Martineau 
 proceeds to investigate; premising however, 
 that whatever efficiency the law of relativity 
 may be supposed to have (as a caution against 
 an illusory pretense of knowledge) must, in its 
 application, tell impartially on the whole field 
 claimed by the human intellect. It subjects our 
 .sensible apprehensions to precisely the same in- 
 security as our postulates of thought; so that 
 our readings of phenomen-a have not the least 
 advantage over our underlying ontological be- 
 liefs. If I am at the mercy of my own intel- 
 lectual constitution when I trust my idea of 
 space, of substance, or of cause, and of my moral 
 constitution when I accept the reality of obliga- 
 tion, I am no less at the mercy of my percipient 
 constitution when I register as facts, the forms, 
 
38 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 the weights, the feature*, the movement* of th* 
 physical world. 
 
 OONDITIQNB OF KNOWING 
 
 In all knowledge there must be two factors, 
 a person to know and a thing to be known, and 
 the knowledge resulting is the mode in which 
 the constitution of the latter affects the faculty 
 of the former. Knowledge is therefore a rela- 
 tion between the knowing subject and the 
 known object, -and knowing is relationing in 
 thought. Of course these definitions shut the 
 mind off from knowing what eannot enter into 
 thought relations. 
 
 To talk of " knowing " "things in them- 
 selves/' or "things as they are," is to talk of 
 not simply an impossibility, but a contradition ; 
 for these phrases are invented to denote what is 
 in the sphere of being and not in the sphere of 
 thought; and to suppose them "known" is ipso 
 facto to take away their assumed character. 
 
 In like manner to talk of knowing the abso- 
 lute involves a contradition in terms, since the 
 absolute means the unrelated and knowing ii 
 relationing. In being known, therefore, the ab- 
 solute would cease to be the absolute. But in 
 being debarred from knowing the absolute we 
 
CONDITIONS OF KNOWING 39 
 
 are not debarred from knowing noumenon, and 
 this, not the absolute, is the antithesis of pke- 
 n&menon. 
 
 ARE PHENOMENA THE LIMIT OF KNOWING! 
 
 A phenomenon is an observed change. To 
 be a phenomenon therefore it must be observed 
 or known. And it is further true that without 
 phenomenon nothing could be known, since 
 without change both the mind within us and the 
 world before us would be locked in an eternal 
 sleep, in which neither could communicate with 
 the other. But this is not the same as saying 
 that all we can know is phenomena. 
 
 In making us aware of the changes in and 
 around us, phenomena can and do in every in- 
 stance make us also acquainted with a permo-> 
 nent ground, the correlative of -changes, with- 
 out which they cannot be conceived, which is 
 contained in their very meaning, and which has 
 all the certainty belonging, not simply to their 
 actual occurrence, but to their possibility. We 
 know the changes by their turning upon this 
 permanent; we know the permanent by the 
 changes that break its uniformity; one and the 
 same intellectual act therefore puts us in the 
 presence of phenomenon and noumenon, change 
 and permanence. 
 
40 "A STUDY OF RELIGION 
 
 Even Herbert Spencer admits that it is im- 
 possible to present phenomena in thought or 
 language without the assumption of entities to 
 which they are related; especially without re- 
 ferring them to a Cause or Power whence they 
 issue. Nay the very conception of them as Rela- 
 tive, and of relativity itself, he holds, involves 
 at the other terminus of the way, the Absolute 
 as a necessary cognition. He does not question 
 the reality of these noumena; our thought, he 
 says, does not delude us in its report of their 
 existence; but there its capacity stops. We 
 know that the absolute power is, but not what 
 it is? 
 
 But is it possible to have assurance of a real 
 existence, which yet remains to the end an utter 
 blank? By calling this existence a Power, 
 surely Mr. Spencer removes it by one mark from 
 the unknowable. But further he says we are 
 obliged to regard that power as "omniscient/* 
 as " eternal," as "one/' as "cause manifested 
 in all phenomena," a list of predicates which 
 surely leaves it no longer "unknowable." 
 
 Having thus examined the modern doctrine 
 of nescience or agnosticism with regard to 
 metaphysical truth in its two forms, viz., the 
 idealism which limits our knowledge to the in- 
 
SPENCER'S " UNKNOWNABLE " 41 
 
 terior line of our own consciousness, and the 
 principle of the relativity of knowledge, Mr. 
 Martineau concludes that in no instance has the 
 attempt proved satisfactory to explain away or 
 render untrustworthy the intuitive beliefs which 
 are the concomitants and condition^ of our phe- 
 nomenal experience. 
 
 INTUITIVE BELIEFS AS A SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE. \ 
 
 With reference to the value of these intuitive 
 beliefs, or of the intuitive witness borne by con- 
 sciousness to the presence of a world beyond the 
 contents of that consciousness, Mr. Martineau 
 calls attention to a marked change in the canons 
 of philosophical judgment. Till the middle of 
 the last century the ultimate security of our 
 knowledge was assumed to rest upon a few 
 given or intuitive cognitions, not preceding ex- 
 perience, but elicited by our first experience and 
 shaping it into a judgment. 
 
 It was generally agreed that, if any judgments 
 could be shown to be original <and intuitive, 
 their authority must be considered beyond ques- 
 tion, and what they told us be valid for the real- 
 ity of things. Accordingly if a philosopher de- 
 sired to weaken their authority, he proceeded 
 like Locke and Hume to strip them of their a 
 priori or intuitive pretensions, and reduce them 
 to empirical rank. This is still the method moat 
 
42 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 in favor with the English empirical school, 
 which is a virtal admission that if a judgment 
 is to be impeached, it must be shown to be fabri- 
 cated by experience, and that, so long as it can 
 hold its ground as intuitive, it is entitled to be 
 believed. Here we have a healthy faith remain- 
 ing in the veracious structure of the human 
 mind, and a willingness to trust its verdict so 
 long as that verdict can be really had. 
 
 KANT'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE DISCUSSED. 
 
 Since the time of Kant, however, a different 
 canon has prevailed in Germany, and wherever 
 the German philosophy has been dominant. 
 Kant treated the subjective character of intui- 
 tions as their condemnation. They are forms, 
 he held, in which we are made to think, and 
 into which we must cast whatever of thought 
 material is given us ; they supply the law of our 
 perceptive and intellectual life, and maintain it 
 as a consistent and coherent system in itself; 
 but that anything real corresponds with these 
 forms, which lie in us and not in the world, we 
 have not the smallest reason to believe. 
 
 To this Mr. Martineau answers : Neither have 
 we the smallest reason to disbelieve: .and that, 
 as has been shown in a previous chapter, is in- 
 dispensable for the justification of metaphysical 
 
KANT'S THEORY 4f 
 
 ikepticism. To demand a reason for assent to t 
 primary belief is to insist that it shall not b 
 primary, but secondary. It is certainly impo* 
 iible to prove that our thinking functions ar* 
 organized in right relations with the scene in 
 which they feel and act; and if any one chooses 
 to suppose that they are sources of mere illus- 
 ion, he must be allowed to enjoy his humor. 
 But the older presumption will still prevail, that 
 what is inevitably thought is in accord with 
 what really is; and that intelligence is not the 
 mere creator of a dream. 
 
 Our true course, therefore, is to avail our- 
 selves of the empirical psychology to the limits 
 of its honest analysis of acquired combinations; 
 and beyond these limits to trust, as valid intui- 
 tions, the residual beliefs inherent in our mental 
 constitution, 
 
 CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 The conclusions to which we have thus been 
 led are: 
 
 ,(1) That the two sources of knowledge are 
 intuitions and experience; 
 
 (2) That the former are primary beliefs, 
 elicited by experience, and entitled to the same 
 reliance -as the phenomena apprehended with 
 them in one act of thought; 
 
44 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 (3) That through intuition the mind tran- 
 scends the limits of self-knowledge and finds ac- 
 cess to realities not apprenhensible by sense- 
 perception alone. 
 
 CAN THE HUMAN MIND KNOW GOD? 
 
 The way is thus open to the inquiry, What 
 can the mind discover as to the one great cen- 
 tral object of religious belief, namely, an Ever- 
 living God holding moral relations to man ? 
 
 All religion resohes itself into a conscious 
 relation, on our part, to a higher than we ; and, 
 on the part of the rational universe at large, to 
 a higher than all, i.e., to a Mind Supreme above 
 the whole family of minds. The conditions of 
 such 'Supremacy are two-fold: 
 
 (1) Dynamical, consisting in the command 
 of all methods needful for the accomplishment 
 of contemplated ends. 
 
 (2) Moral, consisting in the intrinsic ascend- 
 ency of the highest ends, infallibly conceived 
 and externally pursued, as the springs of the 
 Divine Will. In treating of the former we have 
 to do chiefly with the relation of God to Nature, 
 the sole theatre of any possible power that 
 can be supposed to limit or dispense with His. 
 In treating of the latter, we deal with His rela- 
 tion to Man, and in a secondary degree to the 
 
CAN THE MIND KNOW GOD? 46 
 
 other sentient beings of our globe, as the only 
 sphere open to our observation in which charac- 
 ter can play a part, and a righteous government 
 appear. 
 
 These two fields really exhaust all that we 
 can seek or really desire to know of things di- 
 vine ; for although to these two aspects, of God 
 as Cause, and God as Holy, we might add a 
 third, of God as Judge, in order to determine 
 the question of a life reserved for us beyond 
 death, yet this is evidently an integral portion 
 of the moral problem embraced under the sec- 
 ond head. The two great problems before us, 
 then, are, Do we find in nature traces of God as 
 Cause, and in human nature mid life similar 
 proofs of the existence of a God of Holiness f 
 
 In asking these questions we must needs go 
 to the intellect and the moral nature respec- 
 tively for our replies. 
 
 II. WHAT CAN THE INTELLECT TELL 
 US OF GOD AS CAUSE? 
 
 Do we find in nature traces of a great First 
 Cause, adequate for the needs of religion 1 
 
 The idea of cause has possessed and engaged 
 the human mind in every reflective age since 
 the dawn of philosophic literature. In this 
 literature the causal idea ha appeared under at 
 
46 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 least three distinct forms, namely: Thing as 
 Cause; Phenomenon as Cause, and Force as 
 Cause. The claims of each must be considered. 
 
 1. THING AS CAUSE. 
 
 If by Thing we denote whatever has definite 
 position in space, the word belongs to whatever 
 holds geometrical relations; and as these sub- 
 sist wherever there are points, lines, and sur- 
 faces, with their angles and enclosures, things 
 might be present in a world where no motion 
 was. In a scene thus dead, however partition- 
 ed by marking objects, no one can pretend to 
 find a source of change, i.e., a real cause. The 
 tendency to invest external things ias such, with 
 causality, is traced back to the metaphysics of 
 an earlier age, but was intensified by the influ- 
 ence of Spinoza, who treated logical necessity as 
 identical with cause. But except as the seat oi) 
 change, or partner in a change, no " thing " can 
 ever play the part of cause. 
 
 2. PHENOMENA AS CAUSE. 
 
 Is it then a sufficient correction, to disregard 
 things, as such, and seek cause in another Phe- 
 nomenon, so that the relation shall be between 
 two homogeneous members of the same series, 
 differing simply as constant prior from constant 
 
. 
 
 { UNIVERSITY 
 
 \ 
 
 PHENOMENA AS CAUSE 47 
 
 posterior? This is the doctrine of Hume, Brown, 
 the Mills, and the empirical psychologists, gen- 
 erally, of England; of Kant in Germany; of 
 Comte in France. They all reduce causality to 
 a rule of time-succession traceable in the order 
 of phenomena. Mr. Martineau, after reviewing 
 the mode of reasoning by which Kant and 
 others arrive at this time-succession idea of caus- 
 ality, by both reasoning and illustrations invali- 
 dates the theory, and proves that something 
 else is necessary than order among phenomena 
 before the mind sets up the belief of cause and 
 effect. 
 
 3. FORCE AS CAUSE. 
 
 That something else is Force or Power. This 
 form of the idea of causality is discussed at 
 length, with the objections which have been 
 urged -against it. The conclusion reached is, 
 that Power is postulated by the understanding" 
 as the operative condition of any and all change. 
 So that the dynamic idea clings to causality 
 throughout. 
 
 And this is all of the necessary content of 
 the causal idea so long as cause tand effect are 
 contemplated by us as spectators. But from a 
 position of mere receptivity, or of contemplative 
 intelligence, man could never attain the idea of 
 
48 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 causality. Not till he throws himself into the 
 field as an actor or doer can he find the problem 
 and try to solve it. The attempt to study caus- 
 ality from this experimental side leads to an 
 analysis of an act of perception. 
 
 4. WILL AS CAUSE. 
 
 The arm is flung out towards the measure of 
 its length; it is arrested by a book upon the 
 table; if the initiative impulse is lively, it will 
 not be balked, but redoubling itself will push 
 the obstacle away and so complete itself. The 
 contrast between the first pure spontaneity and 
 the counteraction) it receives, and again between 
 the two intensities of energy on the change half- 
 way, reveals itself at once in the moment of 
 collision; for it is the impediment that serves 
 as tell-tale of the free energy it stops. When 
 the check is defied and thrown off, the move- 
 ment assumes a new character and is thence- 
 forth delivered over to the will. 
 
 THE SELF AND OTHER THAN SELF DISCOVERED IN 
 AN ARREST OF WILL. 
 
 The fundamental discovery opened upon ns 
 in this experience is the dualism of the self and 
 the other than self, both of which start into the 
 field and divide between them the contents of 
 
SELF AND OTHER THAN SELF 49 
 
 the percipient lesson. The arrested spontaneity, 
 the attention turned upon the new feeling, the 
 determined effort to persist in the movement, 
 these we recognize as ours; while that which 
 gives the feeling, and that which receives the 
 energy are something other than ourselves. 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS THE RESULT OF ARRESTED 
 WILL. 
 
 We are thus born into self-consciousness in 
 the moment of disputed spontaneity, and in- 
 stantly assert ourselves by taking into our own 
 hands the power which before was only pass- 
 ing throuigh our nature. And as it is a shock 
 of interrupted feeling that gives us notice to do 
 this, the feeling must have the same owner as 
 the power; and both are necessarily referred to 
 one point and taken home to the Ego Jiencef orth 
 known as the subject both of the sensory store 
 and of the forms of activity. These two heads 
 exhaust all the possible contents of the Ego^ 
 all else than these contents is embraced in the 
 non-Ego. 
 
50 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 ARRESTED WILL THE ORIGIN OF THE IDEA OF 
 CAUSE AND EFFECT. 
 
 This one comprehensive antithesis, besides giv- 
 ing account of the distinction between the self 
 and the not self, also gives account of Causality, 
 internal and external; of Space, here for the 
 self, there for the not self; of Time (after more 
 than one perception) ; and of self -identical ex- 
 istence or Substance in antithesis with chang- 
 ing Phenomena, and <all these, not as sequent 
 inferences from the percipient act, enriching it 
 by new discoveries, but as contained in its own 
 meaning, yet admitting of separate expression. 
 Of these, the most obvious is the relation of 
 Cause and Effect, the cradle of which we here 
 reach. 
 
 It is evident that if the foregoing exposition 
 be correct, the Ego and non-Ego are known to us 
 ab initio as reciprocally limiting powers put 
 forth by antagonistic agents, and causing 
 changes in some recipient object. If I know 
 myself at all, it is in trying with all my might 
 to do something needed but difficult, as for ex- 
 ample to heave away a retarding resistance. 
 While thus withstood and yet determined to 
 persist rather than desist, I am conscious of ex- 
 ercising a causal will to institute or sustain effi- 
 cient movement. Here, 'as Dr. Martineau thinks 
 
ARRESTED WILL THE ORIGIN 51 
 
 (and he quotes other philosophic writers of 
 note as sustaining the opinion) our first notions 
 of causality are formed. "We ourselves/' says 
 Zeller, ''are the one only cause, of whose mode 
 of action we have immediate knowledge through 
 inner intuition. For his notion of causality, 
 man is at the outset guided by no other clue 
 than the analogy of his own willing and doing." 
 
 CAUSE AND WILL IDENTICAL. 
 
 If we are thus absolutely dependent, contin- 
 ues Dr. Martineau, on this single inner intui- 
 tion, for knowledge of what casuality is, it must 
 fill and constitute our whole idea of it and of 
 the way in which effects arise; nor can any- 
 thing ever be added to it, as there are no other 
 sources Which can tell us anything about it. It 
 determines the meaning of the word cause, and 
 determines it forever. That meaning is power in 
 the form of will. 
 
 When, by an a priori axiom of the understand- 
 ing, we apply this causal relation to the external 
 world, in the act of perception, we must carry 
 this meaning too. Through such act of percep- 
 tion as has been analyzed, we are introduced to 
 the world, not as to a dead thing, or a material 
 aggregate of things, but to another self, just as 
 causal as we, instinct with hidden Will, and so 
 
52 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 far presenting the outer and inner spheres in 
 true equipoise. 
 
 In the dualism, then, which perception! opens 
 to us, we are placed under an irrepealable 
 thought-necessity of the following kind : Here 
 at home in the Ego, we have first hand acquaint- 
 ance with Causality ; and we find it to be Will. 
 In the reaction of objects upon us we know their 
 resistance to be simply the inverse or opposite 
 of our own causality, and so we recognize in 
 them the same attribute (causal Will) by which 
 we ourselves have moved forth upon them. Not 
 till we put forth and direct our own causality, 
 whether simply percipient or motory, have we 
 revelation of the causality of the world ; and our 
 immediate feeling of operative Will in the exer- 
 cise of our own causality, we, by a necessary 
 law of thought, reflect and must ever reflect 
 upon, the outer world. 
 
 Since Will is necessarily identical with the 
 inmost essence of the sole causality known to 
 thought, we cannot do otherwise than read Will 
 into the causality manifested by the non-Ego, as 
 what would be stirring in us, if we could change 
 places with it ; cause then means that which 
 can settle an alternative, viz., a disposing Will, 
 by Will being meant choice between two alter- 
 native directions of activity. 
 
CAUSE AND WILL IDENTICAL 53 
 
 This ultimate identity of meaning in the 
 words Cause and Will, and the dependence of 
 the former upon the immediate conscious- 
 ness of the latter, are indirectly attested by the 
 frequent recurrence of even the most practiced 
 scientific intellects to the springs of human ac- 
 tion as the true key to the dynamics of outward 
 nature ; and yet in one respect the language of 
 science seems at first sight to contradict the 
 idea of one causal Will in nature. The text- 
 books of science speak of a plurality of forces, 
 while our psychological .analysis has given one 
 Will in the outer world as the antagonist of the 
 Will in the conscious Ego. Yet even this seem- 
 ing contradiction promises to disappear under 
 the law of "The Conservation of Forces." 
 
 HOW ACCOUNT FOR THE INITIAL STEP IN THE 
 CAUSAL PROCESS? 
 
 The question still presses, however, how can 
 we work out with a single cause, an adequate 
 explanation! of nature's diversified effects? 
 Homogeneous power will account for nothing 
 in particular, because accounting for all things 
 alike. If we refer everything to Divine Will, 
 and define Will as "choice between two alter- 
 natives" we have not explained why one is 
 taken and the other left. In this respect the 
 
54 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 phenomenal theory of causation would seem to 
 have the advantage, save for the more serious 
 defect, that, in the phenomenal theory, there is 
 involved no idea of causality at all. The diffi- 
 culty we are trying to meet is how to account 
 for the initial step, in the causal process, out 
 of the indeterminate into the determinate. But 
 this the mechanical theory of causality finds 
 as great a difficulty as doe the dynamic. Be- 
 ginning with "thing" or "phenomenon" as 
 cause, there must be a cause of that cause, and 
 you start upon a process to which there can be 
 no end except by arbitrarily cutting off further 
 retreat by setting up a definite somewhat to 
 start from. In assuming intelligent Will as 
 the given starting point, we have at least pro- 
 vided something which we know, and which 
 seems to have precisely what we want, the pow- 
 er of determining the contingent, of selecting 
 among possibles that which shall become actual. 
 As a personal decision is felt to explain an act 
 and leave no more to be said, so is an eternal 
 living Will the simplest conception we can form 
 of the Universal Cause, itself uncaused. 
 
HOW RECONCILE DYNAMIC WILL 55 
 
 HOW RECONCILE DYNAMIC WILL WITH THE LAWS 
 OF NATURE ? 
 
 Another practical question may arise just 
 here, namely : How are we to reconcile scientific 
 generalizations with this dynamic theory of 
 causation? Light will be thrown upon this 
 question by tracing the natural history of the 
 causal idea. 
 
 We find primitive man, in conformity with 
 the primitive intuition, ascribing every conspic- 
 uous change on the earth or in the heavens, or 
 in the lot of those around him, to a distinct and 
 definite act of a will-directed power. All nature 
 was at first alive with immediate volitional 
 power, which was classed as propitious or ad- 
 verse according as it brought good or ill to man. 
 But this state of things could not continue. It 
 was seen that the same act or object might p: o- 
 duce mixed or even opposite effects on human 
 beings; some other classification must be sought, 
 and in the seeking eame the grouping of phe- 
 nomena, replacing multifarious and fluctuating 
 volitions by a few great lines of purpose, desig- 
 nated later as laws. 
 
 Every law represents one thought, and is the 
 explicit unfolding of one comprehensive and 
 standing volition; it constitutes therefore a sin- 
 
56 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 gle genus of power, which will not swerve till 
 all its contents be delivered. In relation to its 
 origin, it is still an -act of Will settling what 
 was indeterminate before; in relation to its 
 effects it is a dynamic constant, an invariable 
 necessity, and, when we look away from its 
 source, it is a force of nature which can be de- 
 pended upon to lend itself to our computation. 
 Thus what in one aspect is a Divine Idea 
 in another is 1 a natural force; and it is simply 
 by forgetting the upper relation and shutting 
 our attention up within the lower, that we pass 
 from the free religious conception to the minis- 
 trative and scientific. 
 
 CAN A CAUSAL WILL BE RECONCILED WITH SCIEN- 
 TIFIC GENERALIZATION AND CAUSATION? 
 
 But, the Force having taken the form of a 
 general law, what is it that determines the phe- 
 nomenon to happen so and so and not otherwise, 
 under this law ? The results of the law are now 
 oalm, now stern, now life, now death; why? 
 Plato found answer by resorting to a dualism 
 which involved the eternity of matter. 
 
 "Without such resort, answer may be found on 
 purely volitional ground in the mingling en- 
 counter of many dynamic acts which together 
 would constitute a vast assemblage of powers, 
 
CAN A CAUSAL WILL BE RECONCILED 57 
 
 each of which would yield its own series of 
 effects, and the actual phenomena as we see them 
 in the universe to-day would be the resultant 
 of these crossing or intersecting powers. We 
 thus gain the idea of the conditions of an event 
 as supplementary to its cause. The visible pro- 
 cesses of the natural world thus bear the same 
 relation to its originating mind that our linked 
 and co-ordinated organic movements, in accom- 
 plishing a purpose determined upon by us, bear 
 to our volitional causiality. 
 
 Thus by the education of nature itself, the 
 human mind is led over the whole interval be- 
 tween its earliest habit, of seeeing distinct and 
 separate deities in each object and activity of 
 nature, and its latest version of scientific gen- 
 eralization and causation, without being called 
 on to part from the essence of its original faith. 
 From Will at the fountaini head, not a single 
 thing is wrested at any stage of the process; 
 only, the inner acts of that Will are thrown into 
 a new order, are reduced to a few comprehen- 
 sive heads, and organized into a system, of which 
 the sciences are the reflection in little. The 
 emergence from superstition which marks this 
 process consists, not in the expulsion of purpose 
 from any scene which it occupied before, but 
 in the substitution of larger purpose for less, of 
 
58 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 plan for impulse. And as the primitive power 
 has not been lost on the way, neither has any 
 other been found; so that we are still in pres- 
 ence of the originating Mind, whose organizing 
 thoughts are prototypes of the rules of nature. 
 
 VOLITIONAL METHODS IMPLY ENDS AND SUBORDI- 
 NATION OF MAJOR TO MINOR ENDS. DO 
 WE FIND THESE IN NATURE 1 
 
 In counting off each mode of force as if it 
 were a single creative volition, we have assimi- 
 lated our conception of the Supreme Mind to 
 that of a perfect scientific intellect; that is to 
 say, we find ourselves in the presence of a Be- 
 ing who thinks out the universe, the general 
 laws of which form the methods and calculus 
 of his mind. But is this all? 
 
 Such a world would comply with one of the 
 marks of Will, it would constitute a determinate 
 system selected from indeterminate possibilities; 
 but two other marks would be wanting, namely, 
 its independent lines of action would converge 
 upon no end beyond themselves, for the sake of 
 which we must conceive them to be; and, there 
 could be no subordination of minor to major 
 ends, forming the scheme into a hierarchy of 
 good. These additional marks, however, are 
 not wanting in, the universe. 
 
VOLITIONAL METHODS IMPLY ENDS 59 
 
 In the mechanical and chemical departments 
 of nature the relation between means and ends 
 is still inchoate and obscure; as soon, however, 
 as we enter the field of organic existence, and 
 especially when we reach sentient beings, such 
 real individualities are distinctly set up, that it 
 is impossible not to allow each to carry its own 
 end in itself, for the sake of which (as well 
 as to serve the whole) it has been brought upon 
 the scene. 
 
 Conscious intelligences, then, tare the consum- 
 mation of the forces and activities of terrestrial 
 nature, the end to which all lead up. Thus all 
 nature stands before us replete with marks of 
 causal volition. The laws of nature are voli- 
 tional methods; sentient beings are volitional 
 ends, reached through many gradations of sub- 
 ordinate ends. 
 
 TELEOLOGY OR THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 
 
 To discover bow far nature in its entire ex- 
 tent carries marks of volitional, that is purpose- 
 ful, causality, is the object of Teleology, or the 
 so-called Argument from Design. To this in- 
 quiry Dr. Martinea,u gives something over a 
 hundred pages, discussing the place of teleology, 
 teleological theism, the alleged blemishes in na- 
 ture which would seem to disprove the argu- 
 
60 "A STUDY OP RELIGION 
 
 ment from design, and the objection to teleology 
 on the ground of ita being anthropomorphic. 
 
 If will supplies whatever meaning there is in 
 the woird causality, and must itself be taken tc 
 include intention, we are led by an a priori neces- 
 sity, to look upon tbs universe, no less than 
 upon the person of a fellow man, as pervaded 
 by intellectual power; and must assume pur- 
 pose to be everywhere. Where then is there 
 any need to seek for particular examples of it, 
 such as would constitute what is called the ar- 
 gument from design? There would be none, 
 perhaps, if design in nature were everywhere 
 seen at a glance; but many facts and adjust- 
 ments of nature can only be resolved into their 
 significance by help of a well verified key, and 
 to find and fit such a key is the province of 
 teleology. 
 
 Descartes objected to our seeking to investi- 
 gate the ends for which God has created the 
 world, because, "We must not be so presump- 
 tuous as to think God has chosen to take us into 
 his counsels. ' ' A reply is at hand : that it can- 
 not be presumptuous to investigate those ends 
 which are open to everybody's view, and which 
 redound to the glory of God their author. The 
 justifying object .then of teleological inquiry is 
 to ascertain whether thje world answers, in its 
 
TELEOLOGY 61 
 
 constitution, to our intuitive interpretation of it 
 as the manifestation of intellectual purpose. 
 
 SIGNS OF VOLITIONAL PURPOSE IN NATURE. 
 
 If there be volitional or purposeful causality 
 in nature, man could only detect it by finding 
 there the sigins or marks which would indicate 
 casualty in himself . There are three such 
 marks, namely: (1) Selection; (2) combination; 
 (3) gradation of arrangemeoiit. 
 
 1. SELECTION. 
 
 As to selection, science has demonstrated its 
 existence under the term "natural selection "; 
 through "accidental variations*' adds the sci- 
 entist who rejects design; through a steady se- 
 lection of one out of many possibles, replies the 
 advocate of design or intentiom in nature. If it 
 can be; shown that nature improves her inhabi- 
 tants by preserving all useful variations and 
 selects only for the good of the being she tends, 
 there is surely something more than accident 
 here. A study of nature almost anywhere, as 
 for example, in the ears and eyes of animals 
 adapted for different habitats, as air and water, 
 and for different modes of life, as hunted and 
 hunting -animals, will furnish a strong argument 
 that such are nature's methods, 
 
62 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 2. COMBINATION. 
 
 The question of combination, or combined ac- 
 tion in mature is treated by Cuvier in hi law 
 olf the "correlation of organs." Says Cuvier, 
 "Every organized being forms a whole, a pe- 
 culiar system of its own, the parts of which mu- 
 tually correspond and concur in producing the 
 same definitive action by a reciprocal reaction. 
 None of these parts can change in form with- 
 out) the others alsoi changing; and consequently, 
 each of them taken separately indicates and 
 ascertains, all the others. Thus by having a sin- 
 gle bone, a person who possesses ian accurate 
 knowledge of the laws of organic economy, may 
 reconstruct the whole animal. The smallest 
 articulating surface has a determinate char- 
 acter, relative to the class, the order, the genus, 
 and the species to which it belongs:; insomuch 
 that, when one possesses merely a well preserved 
 extremity of a bone, he can, by careful examina- 
 tion and the help of a tolerable anatomical 
 knowledge, and of accurate comparison, deter- 
 mine all these things with as much certainty 
 as, if he had the entire animal before him." 
 Cuvier adds: "I have often made trial of this 
 method uponi portions of known animals, and 
 it has always proved so completely satisfactory 
 
COMBINATION 63 
 
 that I have no longer any doubt regarding the 
 certainty of the results which it has afforded 
 me." 
 
 The same law which Cuvier announces as 
 "correlation of organs," Darwin treats under 
 "correlation of growth." "The whole organ- 
 ism," says Darwin, "is so tied together during 
 its igrowth and development, that when slight 
 variations in any one part occur, and are ac- 
 cumulated through natural selection, other parts 
 become modified." In the majority of such cor- 
 relations, we recognize without difficulty a com- 
 bination of provisions to a, single type of life. 
 
 Certain forms of combinations reach beyond 
 the individual organism to its environment. And 
 here we feel more clearly the presence of design 
 or purpose. The eye and ear may be taken as 
 examples of such design. The eye is to be used 
 exclusively in the light, yet it is formed in 
 darkness. The ear would be useless without air, 
 yet it was formed in a silent, airless chamber. 
 
 A yet higher type of combination is found 
 between one living being and another, as in the 
 mammal's method of feeding its young; the fer- 
 tilization of plants by insects; the beetle's ar- 
 ranging for the sustenance of the progeny it 
 shall never see ; the division of labor in the bee- 
 hive between drones, workers and the queen bee. 
 
64 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 3. GRADATION OF ARRANGEMENT. 
 
 The third mark of intentional action is gra- 
 dation of arrangement, by which a given end is 
 reached through a train of independent means;, 
 each making provision for the next, till the series 
 is consummated. 
 
 Such arrangement is seen in plant life, which, 
 taking up inanimate matter from the earth, 
 elaborate it into life substance, builds it into 
 tissue of roots, stem, leaves and flowers, and 
 finally into seeds having 'the power of repro- 
 duction. 
 
 The same gradation of arrangement is seen 
 in adaptation of vegetable life to the sustenance 
 of animal life, and animal life itself to the sus- 
 tenance of higher types of animals. In man, 
 finally, the appetites that wake his energies, the 
 passions that drive away assailing ills, the affec- 
 tions that take him out of himself in devotion 
 to others, the sientiments that draw him to truth, 
 beaiuty and goodness, fall into their place, the 
 lower subordinated to the higher till a, moral 
 ideal is reached. 
 
 OBJECTIONS STATED AND ANSWERED. 
 
 Thus we have found in mature all the marks 
 which would indicate purpose! in human activ- 
 ity, and a unity of idea in such purpose, which. 
 
OBJECTIONS STATED AND ANSWERED 65 
 
 stamps it as proceeding from a single mind. But 
 when we bejgin to study this mind through 
 analogy to the human mind, thteut is, through 
 the 'argument from design, many thinkers find 
 serious objections to the method as inadequate. 
 Kant argues that, as human skill consists in 
 subduing given materials and moulding them to 
 its own purposes, to speak of adaptations in 
 nature, similarly presupposes, as data to be 
 adapted, the properties and laws of matter used 
 in realizing the end, and leaves room merely for 
 an Architect of mature instead of a Creator; 
 and from this architect we could not reason to 
 Almightiness, unconditional perfection and the 
 totality of being which we require in the Au- 
 thor of nature. But it needs to be borne in 
 mind thait what we lare searching for by means 
 of the argument from design is not Almighti- 
 ness, or Perfection, or totality of Being, but 
 signs of thought in nature, and these must be 
 sought amid a scene of things. In proving, 
 therefore, an Architect of nature, the argument 
 has attained its end. 
 
 But, it is further urged, in proving design in 
 nature do you not separate the Designer from 
 the world and leave Him outside? Why out- 
 side? it may be answered, why not inside? 
 "Take," says Aristotle, "the ease of a phy- 
 
66 " A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 sician healing himself, and you have the mode 
 in which nature proceeds." Neither theism 
 nor the theory of design are committed to a 
 God external to the world. 
 
 "At least the theory of design limits God's 
 almightiness, " stall urges the objector. If al- 
 mighty, why not create by divine fiatl Granted 
 that the method by design is a limitation; since 
 it is a self -limitation it cannot detract from 
 Almightiness. Still further, if we are looking 
 for mind in nature, that can only appear 
 through an orderly evolution by way of means. 
 Creation by Divine fiat would mean the repeal 
 of all law, and the reduction of all phenomena 
 to incoherent surprises. 
 
 ANTHROPOMORPHISM . 
 
 A weightier and more widespread objection 
 to Teleology is its Anthropomorphism. 
 
 What is anthropomorphism? The original 
 meaning of the word was : The ascription to God 
 of a human form and members. With this 
 meaning the early Christians charged it upon 
 the heathen. But, by the usage of more recent 
 times, it is made to cover the recognition of any 
 quality, however spiritual, as common to the 
 Divine and human. 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM 67 
 
 With different writers the offense begins at 
 different points. In order to avoid it Theodore 
 Parker forbids us to say that God thinks, but 
 allows us to say that he loves ; Matthew Arnold 
 will not allow that he either thinks or loves; 
 while Professor Huxley, charges Mr. Darwin 
 with being anthropomorphic, because 1 he leaves 
 the Supreme Being answerable for at least one 
 primordial cell with which to start the evolution 
 series. 
 
 Is it then contended that, by simply being 
 present in man, an attribute is disqualified from 
 being reterred to God? This can hardly be 
 maintained by any one who is content to speak 
 of the Supreme Power or the universal Cause 
 of nature, for, as has been shown, no suspicion 
 could arise; within us of power and causation, 
 but for o<ur own conscious exercise of will. 
 
 There are but three forms under which it is 
 possible to speak of the Immanent Principle of 
 the universe; namely: mind, life and matter, 
 because these cover all the fields of man 'si knowl- 
 edge. Given the first, and the universe is in- 
 tellectually thought out. The second, it blindly 
 grows; the third, it mechanically shuffles into 
 equilibrium. But since man is a sharer in all 
 these forms, having mind and life ini a material 
 body, to consider nature under the form of 
 
68 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 matter, or life, is just as anthropomorphic as 
 to consider it under mind; so that the severest 
 science is, in this sense, just as anthropomorphic 
 as the most ideal theology. 
 
 If then we believe in any Divine First Cause 
 in mature, and if nature cannot be approached 
 from any side except! through the ascription of 
 some attribute of the human, where shall we 
 draw the line of allowable ascriptions? The 
 ve>ry scale of G-od's existence undoubtedly for- 
 bids us to carry into our idea of Him more than 
 a few supreme attributes of our own nature. Be- 
 tween an eternal being and a mortal, one self- 
 existent and one of borrowed powers, an ever 
 perfect and a progressive mind, a will above 
 and one within the sphere of temptation, a vast 
 range of dissimilarity exists, and justifies the 
 caution against humanizing our religions con- 
 ceptions. But surely we are within limits when 
 we ascribe -to him the selection and execution 
 of pre-eonceived ends. That which in us is 
 memory, and foresight and apprenhension of 
 rational relations, must have some intellectual 
 equivalent in him. 
 
 Granted, it is further urged, that we may 
 ascribe to God causality and intellect, the pe- 
 culiar mode of using these, insisted on as evi- 
 dence of design, is unworthy the Author of 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM 69 
 
 Nature. Spinoza declares it an infringement 
 of the perfection of God to suppose he acts for 
 an end. And John Stuart Mill finds only weak- 
 ness ini the use of means. But it is to be noted 
 that Spinoza's objection presses equally, if at 
 all, upon every theory, not excepting his own, 
 of the genesis of things from an infinite cause; 
 and, to Mill's objection, it may be answered, 
 that however instantaneous the Omniscient 
 thought, however sure the Almighty power, the 
 execution has to be distributed in time, and 
 must have an order of consecutive steps. On 
 no other terms can the Eternal become temporal, 
 aoid the Infinite articulately speak in the finite. 
 The proposal to skip all means in reaching 
 ends ignares the problem instead of solving it. 
 
 DOES NATURE AS A WHOLE DISPROVE DESIGN? 
 
 Objectors to Teleology mainrbain that nature, 
 except in a few picked instances, does not con- 
 firm, but contradicts the theory of design. In 
 urging this objection reference is made to vari- 
 ous useless and unmeaning arrangements, such 
 as rudimentary organs, having form without 
 function, defective organs as the eye, positively 
 harmful arrangements as the sting of a bee 
 which cannot be withdrawn without causing the 
 death of the insect, conditions of birth and 
 
70 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 death, etc. All these Dr. Martlineau carefully 
 considers and answers in such a way as to leave 
 unshaken his faith dn Teleology, but the limits 
 off this paper forbid a restatement of the an- 
 swers to the numerous -specific examples cited. 
 Those who are interested in the argument will 
 do well to study it at first hand as Dr. Martin- 
 eau presents it. 
 
 IMPLICIT ATTRIBUTES OF GOD AS CAUSE. 
 
 Having attempted thus far to set forth, and 
 to surround with adequate protection, the first 
 psychological source of Theism, namely, the rec- 
 ojgnition of >a living Will and Intelligence as 
 causes of the phenomena of the world, our au- 
 thor now asks us to accept this position as de- 
 termined, and to pass into its interior and ex- 
 amine what iti contents are. What does it enr 
 able us to say respecting the Being whom it re- 
 ports to us as an ascertained object of thought? 
 
 1. OMNIPOTENCE. 
 
 To identify original Causality with God is to 
 ascribe to him all power, for the terms are in- 
 terchangeable. And by this we must mean that 
 he is mighty for absolutely all things. This re- 
 sults from the principle with which we start. 
 All causality being volitional and selective, the 
 
OMNIPOTENCE 71 
 
 line of realized action (i.e., the universe as it 
 now exists) is only one out of a plurality of 
 possibilities, and the cosmos which has come into 
 being is but a sample of an unknown number 
 that might have been. 
 
 2. UNITY. 
 
 Unity as well as universal power must be 
 reckoned 'among the attributes of this causal 
 Divine Will, since, among other reasons, the 
 very idea of ia world or universe, as a whole, is 
 rigorously impossible, except on the assumption 
 of a substantive unity incompatible with diverse 
 origins and independent directions. 
 
 3. INTELLIGENCE. 
 
 We must declare God to be intelligent; for 
 the pre-conception of ends and the realization 
 of them by the apparatus of appropriate means 
 are the characteristics of rational existence. 
 
 4. INFINITY. 
 
 We must also include infinity among His at- 
 tributes, not, however, as a direot but as an in- 
 direct inference. The cosmos we cannot affirm 
 . to be infinite, hence we cannot infer from it as 
 an effect the infinitude of God as Cause. From 
 this we can only speak of the Divine perfections 
 as indefinitely great. But we have predicated 
 
72 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 space as Itihe self-existent condition of the prim- 
 ary Gausal%, and space we can affirm to be 
 infinite; and as it is impossible to maintain a 
 disparity of scope between the cause and the 
 condition of all things, they share thie same di- 
 mensions; so that, though we cannot directly 
 into the infinitude of God from a limited crea- 
 tion, indirectly we may exclude every other po- 
 sition by resort to its unlimited scene of exist- 
 ence. 
 
 5. ETERNITY. 
 
 By a similar method we may justify the etern- 
 ity of God as Cause. If there was ever a time 
 in which as yet this cause was not, it has come 
 into being and is therefore only a phenomenon 
 or effect, which is a simple contradiction. Its 
 existence, as other than phenomenon, is its es- 
 sential feature as a causal explanation of phe- 
 nomena; it cannot therefore have had a begin- 
 ning, but must always have been; nor can it 
 hjave an end, for this also would reduce it to a 
 phenomenon. 
 
 To sum up, then, the results reached through 
 the principle of Causality: There is one uni- 
 versal Cause, the infinite and eternal seat of all 
 Power, an omniscient Mind, ordering all things 
 for ends selected with perfect wisdom. 
 
WHAT CAN THE MORAL NATURE 73 
 
 III. WHAT CAN THE MORAL NATURE 
 TELL US OP GOD AS HOLINESS? 
 
 In seeking the basis of religious belief in the 
 constitution of human nature, we have thus far 
 interrogated only the Intellectual Faculties, and 
 these have given us one universal Cause, the in- 
 finite and eternal seat of all power, and an om- 
 niscient Mind ordering all things for ends se- 
 lected witih perfect wisdom. 
 
 Were we simply intellectual free agents, de- 
 voted wholly to thie study of external nature, 
 here our religious apprehensions would stop. 
 But man is something more itlian an intellectual, 
 he is also a moral being, and the moral side of 
 his co-institution must now be consulted. 
 
 If there be a world beyond the Ego, material 
 for perception, intellectual for thoughlt, moral 
 and spiritual for conscience, evidently it can 
 be apprehended only through its relation to 
 these powers. If it is there to speak at all, it is 
 to them it must speak, and their report will be 
 our only source of information. That report is 
 called an intuition. We have seen what it gives 
 MSI in the case of volitional experience, namely: 
 an objective causality; by a parallel presenta- 
 tion in the case of moral experience, we shall find 
 that it gives us an objective authority; both 
 
*74 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 alike being objects of immediate knowledge, on 
 the same footing of certainty as the apprehen- 
 sion of the external world ; there being no logi- 
 cal advantage which the belief in finite objects 
 around us can boast over the belief in the Infi- 
 nite and Righteous Cause of all. 
 
 MORAL CLAIMS ARE AUTHORITATIVE AND UNI- 
 VERSAL. 
 
 The fundamental form which the Moral In- 
 tuiition takes had been fully considered by Dr. 
 Martineau in his "Types of Ethical Theory" 
 and is therefore only briefly treated in the pres- 
 ent work. The essential characteristics of the 
 Moral Intuition are the following: Whenever 
 two incompatible springs of action simultaner 
 ously urge us, there is an attendant conscious- 
 ness of superior excellence in one of them; an 
 excellence not in point of pleasure or advantage 
 which it were wise to take; not in respect of 
 seemliness and beauty which it were tasteless to 
 decline; but in the scale of right, which, in car- 
 rying our assent, commands our obedience. 
 
 All these kinds of superiority it is open to 
 us to disregard, but at the cost, in the first two 
 cases merely of personal inferiority ; in the third 
 of a mysterious haunting disloyalty. 
 
 Accusing ourselves of this, we are aware that 
 our offence is not <a private mistake to be set- 
 
MORAL CLAIMS 75 
 
 tied with in our home account, but one that 
 looks beyond ourselves and infringes rights that 
 are not our own; and we are visited by more 
 than shame at failure, or regret at folly ; we are 
 cast down in severe compunction under a very 
 different sense of guilt. 
 
 The superior terms in the scale of values 
 which appeal to the conscience do not court us 
 by their charms and graces, but claim us by 
 their authority; tell us that we ought to follow 
 them ; that they a^e binding on us ; that in ne- 
 glecting them we sin; that they are offered to 
 our option by a Higher than we. To conform 
 our voluntary life to the preferential scale of 
 cbli Cation, as it emerges into consciousness, is 
 our duty, for the observance of which we are 
 responsible. 
 
 This is the circle of ideas in which the con- 
 science lives and moves, and which supplies the 
 moral nature with a sphere of cognition special 
 to itself. These ideas are intelligible to all 
 men; they flow into every language and give it 
 half its force and fire; they are the preamble 
 of all law, and the pervading essence of the 
 higher religions. These ideas are uniform in all 
 men, the seeming discrepancies of ethical judg- 
 ment clearing themselves away as we push back 
 the comparison from external actions to the in- 
 
76 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 ternal springs, and see that the same problem 
 is really present to the differing minds. In 
 proportion as the springs of action have strength 
 within us according to their worth, we are at 
 peace with ourselves and conscious of a secret 
 harmony. And by the same rule it is th<at we 
 estimate each other, pouring indignation on the 
 man whom no call of compassion can snatch 
 from hi selfish ease ; watching with enthusiasm 
 the hero from whose lips no terror can extract 
 a betrayal or a lie; looking up with reverence 
 to the saintly mind in which all discords cease 
 and the higher affections reign without dispute. 
 
 MORAL LAW, EXTERNAL AND IMPERATIVE. 
 
 What means this scale of relative excellence 
 which gives an order of rank to our various im- 
 pulses, and frames them into a hierarchy, with 
 the moral at the summit ? Since these impulses 
 exist, have they not all a right to be? And are 
 they not iall on equal footing? What entitles 
 any one of them to put on airs towards its com- 
 panions and to claim superiority? 
 
 One step in the determination of this ques- 
 tion can be taken without challenge. The moral 
 order is not arbitrary, in the sense of being a 
 personal accident, or individual prejudice; it 
 exists irremovably in each, and with consensus 
 
MORAL LAW 77 
 
 in all. This is the peculiarity of all properly 
 moral verdicts, that they are not the expression 
 of individual opinions, which we work out for 
 ourselves by sifting of evidence ; but the enunci- 
 ation of what is given us ready-made, and has 
 only to pass through us into speech. 
 
 We may indeed debate within ourselves the 
 claims presented in this or that line of outward 
 action, because the choice of action has to be 
 determined not by the principle that issues it, 
 but by the effects that follow it. These are 
 amenable to the calculus of the understanding, 
 without resort to which the action cannot be 
 rational; but, so long as the prior problem is 
 before us, of securing the right spring of con- 
 duct, we have nothing- to seek by logical process, 
 but only to give forth what we find. In other 
 words the intuition of conscience is: that the 
 moral law is imposed by an authority foreign 
 to our personality, and is open not to be eaa> 
 vassed but only to be obeyed or disobeyed. 
 
 MORAL CLAIMS NOT AN EMBODIMENT OF PUBLIC 
 OPINION. 
 
 What is that foreign authority which thus 
 demands our allegiance ? ' ' It is an embodiment 
 of public opinion, an ideal aggregate of senti- 
 ment made up of all the praise and blame which 
 
78 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 men bestow on what helps or hurts their in- 
 terests." So answer one class of writers, in- 
 cluding such names as Hobbes and James Mill. 
 The arguments by which this school of men 
 attempt to prove that the Moral Law is nothing 
 but the grotesque shadow of public opinion 
 looming fearfully upon our thought, is fully 
 examined by Dr. Martineau, and the conclusion 
 reached that ' ' The springs of action are not dif- 
 ferenced by men's interested preferences 
 among them ; but have an order of claim which 
 is seated in the constitution of things, and be- 
 longs to them wherever they appear on the 
 theatre of a voluntary nature; these inherent 
 differences: are reported to us and urged upon 
 us by some objective power, with which their 
 validity is identified, and the self-interest of 
 society is not that power." 
 
 MORAL LAW THE FINITE RECOGNITION OF AN IN- 
 FINITE OBJECTIVE PERFECTION. 
 
 Whither, then, shall we turn- to find this ob- 
 jective power? Dr. Martineau answers in a 
 dozen carefully reasoned paiges which we sum- 
 marize (of course inadequately) as follows: The 
 cognitions we gain through the ordinary exer- 
 cise of the senses, are perfectly analogous in 
 their mode of origin, to those which come to us 
 
MORAL LAW 79 
 
 through the moral faculty. In the act of per- 
 ception we are immediately introduced to an 
 other than ourselves that gives what we feel; 
 in the act of conscience we are introduced to a 
 Higher than ourselves that gives us what we feel. 
 The externality in the one case, the authority 
 in the other, the causality in both, are known 
 upon exactly the same terms, and carry the same 
 guarantee of their validity. 
 
 The dualism of perception, which sets our- 
 selves in the face of an objective world, and 
 the dualism of conscience which sets us in the 
 face of an objective Higher Mind are perfectly 
 analogous in their grounds. It is the specific 
 sense of Duty that constitutes a dual relation. 
 This cannot belong to a soul in vacuo, but must 
 be forever a disconsolate and wandering illusion 
 till it rests with Him to whom the allegiance 
 belongs. In other words the Moral Law reaches 
 its integral meaning when seen as impersonated 
 in a Perfect Mind, which communicates it to 
 us, and lends it power over our affections suffi- 
 cient to draw us into Divine communion. 
 
 IMPLICIT ATTRIBUTES OF GOD AS MORAL LAW. 
 
 The form which theism assumes when de- 
 veloped from Moral Law differs widely from 
 that which is given by the principle of Causal- 
 
80 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 ity. There the Divine scene was outward in 
 the cosmos ; here, it is inward in the human soul. 
 There the Divine agency was seen in natural 
 law; here, it is seen in the moral law. There, 
 consequently, its order was that of invariable 
 necessity; here, it is that of variable possibility 
 and freedom. What are the attributes of the 
 Divine agency as revealed by conscience and 
 Moral Law? 
 
 1. God, relatively to us, is now identical with 
 our Highest, the eternal life of Moral Perfec- 
 tion. Hence, we cannot but ascribe to him 
 Benevolence towards sentient beings; Justice to- 
 ward moral beings, i.e., a treatment of them ac- 
 cording to character; and Amity towards like 
 minds, however vast the moral distance between 
 them. 
 
 2. But the revelations of our moral nature 
 do not close here. Through it we discover that 
 God stands in one relation to all human beings, 
 giving the same warnings, ordaining the same 
 strife, inviting the same affections, breathing 
 the same inspirations. Hence, the knowledge of 
 Him and the life in Him, emerge from the level 
 of a solitary faith, and become a principle of 
 union; and our united human life is recoignlzed 
 as constituting a Kingdom of God; life has no 
 binding laws that are not His; no offenses that 
 
IMPLICIT ATTRIBUTES 81 
 
 are not sins; no just penalties that are not ex- 
 pressions of His Will ; no noble passages of his- 
 tory that are not the march of His advancing 
 Providence. 
 
 IV. THE UNITY OF GOD AS CAUSE AND 
 GOD AS HOLINESS. 
 
 We have now sought an origin for our pri- 
 mary religious ideas on two sides of our nature, 
 the Intellectual and the Moral, 'and found an 
 Infinite Will, first in the principle of Causality, 
 then in the intuitions of Conscience. From the 
 first, we obtained as attributes of the Divine 
 Nature, Intelligence, Power, Self-Existence; 
 from the second, Benevolence, Justice, Holiness 
 and sovereign Government of men. Each brings 
 us to the presence of an Eternal Being. 
 
 But are these Beings one and the same f What 
 we find true of the Creator may we affirm of 
 the Righteous Judge? Have we any sufficient 
 reasons for identifying the Causal God with the 
 Holy God? Yes; these at least: 
 
 1. We ourselves unite, in our own persons, a 
 subjection to both the outward physical order 
 and to the inward moral law, in a way which 
 baffles all attempt to discriminate them as two 
 factors combined as the result of partnership. 
 
82 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 We are, on one hand, natural objects, on the 
 other, moral beings-, indeed our very probation, 
 as moral, consists in managing ourselves as 
 animal. 
 
 2. Our instinctive springs of action are them- 
 selves awakened by the external world and have 
 reference to aspects and changes there. Con- 
 science, with all its insight, can think nothing 
 and do nothing in empty space ; it waits for the 
 data of life and humanity; &nd all its problems 
 are set by the conditions of the world. 
 
 3. That external nature is not foreign to the 
 system of moral laws, is further evident from 
 the fact that, to a considerable extent, it ad- 
 ministers their retribution and enforces their 
 discipline; witness the ruined health of the in- 
 temperate, the repulsive physiognomy of the 
 selfish. Thus the end toward which moral and 
 physical laws, alike, look and work, are ethical, 
 and the Divine Causality places itself at the dis- 
 posal of the Divine Perfection: eternal Thought 
 moves in the lines of eternal Holiness. 
 
 CAN PAIN AND EVIL BE HARMONIZED WITH DIVINE 
 GOODNESS ? 
 
 Is the conclusion which has been reached 
 above verified when carried into the sphere of 
 outward things? The scheme of things in which 
 we live admits: 
 
CAN PAIN AND EVIL 83 
 
 1. Suffering, pains from want, pains of de- 
 cline, pains from the physical elements, pains 
 from the predaceous mode of life; 
 
 2. Moral evil or sin, and 
 
 3. It is Charged with exhibiting the at least 
 seeming abandonment of human history to the 
 conflicts of rude force. Can these things be 
 reconciled with our recognition of an infinite 
 moral perfection in the constitution and ad- 
 ministration of the world? 
 
 To many readers no part of Dr. Martin eau's 
 exhaustive treatise will have so vital interest as 
 the eighty pages in which these objections to the 
 belief in a moral order in the universe are an- 
 swered and the belief justified. We can do no 
 more than hint at their contents. 
 
 LIFE IS A GOOD, DESPITE THE EVIL? 
 
 The possibilities of pain inherent in the or- 
 ganism are of two kinds : those which as wants 
 hunger, thirst, fatigue work the organism, 
 and those which set in at last when the organ- 
 ism can no longer be worked. Of the former 
 all can see the reason and value. The uneasiness 
 of appetite and passion trains the animal to 
 mastery over the world, and enriches the earth 
 with higher forms of life developed through the 
 struggle for existence. Is it charged as a cruel 
 
84 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 feature in the competition for existence, that 
 the 'halt and feeble lose their footing on the 
 world and are exiled from life? This judgment 
 is itself a vindication of the Creator. The life 
 given, with all its pains, is a good which it is a 
 hardship to lose. 
 
 COULD NOT AN ALMIGHTY GOD HAVE PREVENTED 
 EVIL? 
 
 The sufferings which set in when the organ- 
 ism can be no longer worked is a harder prob- 
 lem. Had nature provided the winding up with 
 an anesthetic, what barm would be done? The 
 phenomena of disease among the lower animals, 
 too, are perplexing facts. They are present, it 
 is plain, in spite of the normal purpose of the 
 structure they disturb, relatively to which they 
 must be regarded as undesigned imperfection. 
 However, they may be embraced within some 
 larger project in whose paramount good their 
 partial evils vanish. Does some one ask, What 
 business have imperfections in the work of an 
 infinite Being? Has he not power to bar them 
 out? 
 
 Dr. Martineau replies, Yes, if he lives out of 
 his boundless freedom, and, from moment to 
 moment, acts unpledged, conducting all things 
 by the miscellany of incalculable miracles, there 
 
COULD NOT ALMIGHTY GOD 85 
 
 is nothing to hinder his Will from entering 
 " where it listeth" and all things will be pos- 
 sible to him. But if once he commits His Will 
 to any determinate method, and, for the realiza- 
 tion of his ends, selects and institutes a scheme 
 of instrumental rules (or laws), he thereby 
 shuts the door on a thousand things that might 
 have been possible before; He has defined His 
 cosmical equation, and only those results can be 
 worked out from it which are compatible with 
 the value of its. roots. It is in vain, therefore, 
 to appeal to the almightiness of God, unless you 
 mean to throw away the relations of any estab- 
 lished universe, and pass into his uncondi- 
 tioned infinitude or chaos. In the Cosmos he 
 has abnegated that Almightiness in behalf of 
 law. The limits, it is true, are self-imposed, 
 but, in order to any determinate action at all, 
 some limits had to be assigned; and unless you 
 can show that to a different scheme better pos- 
 sibilities attached themselves, criticism is out of 
 order. 
 
 SOME EVILS ARE NECESSARY ACCOMPANIMENTS OF 
 A LARGER GOOD. 
 
 No disasters have a more appalling aspect, or 
 seem to make more cruel sport of life, than those 
 produced by the earthquake, the volcano, the 
 
86 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 geyser, convulsions that contradict the very 
 solidity of the world; but all these are remnants 
 of the planet-making which still goes on; which 
 has advanced far enough to offer some habit- 
 able land, but not far enough to ensure against 
 eruptions and cavings in. But surely there was 
 nothing to deter a beneficent Creator from open- 
 ing the story of sentient existence ere the crust 
 of the earth had settled in its last security. 
 
 If we are asked to reconcile blizzards, and 
 cyclones, in their wide sweeps of destruction, 
 with a moral order in the universe, we may call 
 attention to the fact that they occur in conform- 
 ity with atmospheric and meteoric laws which 
 alone render life possible, and under shelter of 
 which every breathing thing exists, and moves, 
 and grows, and sees the world, and feels the 
 sun; so that the same rules which are death- 
 dealing for an hour or a day, are life-giving 
 for ever. 
 
 The real question is simply this: whether 
 the laws of which complaint is made, work such 
 harm that they ought never to have been enact- 
 ed; or whether, in spite of occasional disasters 
 in their path, the sentient existence of which 
 they are the conditions has in its history a vast 
 excess 1 of blessing. 
 
SUFFERING A POSTULATE 87 
 
 SUFFERING A POSTULATE OF THE INTELLECTUAL 
 AND MORAL NATURE. 
 
 In man suffering gains additional intensity 
 through the intellectual faculties which enable 
 him to look forward in anticipation, backward 
 in memory, and to put himself, in a very true 
 sense, in the place of suffering friends, thus in 
 these three ways greatly multiplying his suffer- 
 ing. But it is equally true that through the 
 same faculties he is enabled as greatly to mul- 
 tiply his joys. 
 
 But further, suffering is a postulate of our 
 moral nature. No one can be brave, without 
 regulating the importunities of fear; or gener- 
 ous, without setting the true limit to anger; or 
 just, without subordinating pity to the sense of 
 right. The very elements that make up the cases 
 of duty are thus, in innumerable instances, rela- 
 tive to the presence of suffering, and in its 
 absence would themselves disappear. Suffering 
 thus holds a place among the data of the moral 
 life, and is essential to this highest term in the 
 ideal of humanity. 
 
 And suffering is not only the postulate from 
 which our moral nature starts; it is also the 
 discipline through which it gains its true eleva- 
 tion. Without suffering no man is ennobled. A 
 large part of human pain comes from unrealized 
 
88 "A STUDY OF RELIGION 
 
 ideals. Yet to this source of unrest we evidently 
 owe the whole impulse which saves both individ- 
 uals and society from a stationary existence. 
 More readily still will it be admitted that but 
 for sorrow the heart would seldom find its rest 
 in God. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF MORAL EVIL. 
 
 But what shall we say of moral evil in the 
 world? Why, it may be asked, were we not so 
 made that sin would have been an impossibility 
 to us? This question, like the similar one asked 
 about the physical world, assumes that there is 
 nothing we may not ask from the omnipotence 
 of God. This, however, we have already seen 
 would not be true of a God who had quitted his 
 unconditional infinitude, and instituted a cosmi- 
 cal existence. 
 
 God is no doubt the source of the possibility 
 of sin, having set up the created wills in which 
 it originates, and left them free to choose alter- 
 natives. But only by thus abstaining from pre- 
 determining necessity, and allowing play for 
 preferential choice, could he leave room for the 
 exercise of character and the testing of fidelity. 
 In virtue of this abstinence, God is at once the 
 cause of the existence of human character, and 
 not the cause of what that character should be. 
 
PROBLEM OF MORAL EVIL 89 
 
 It is because He is holy, and cannot be content 
 with an unmoral world, where all the perfection 
 is given and none is earned, that he refuses to 
 render iguilt impossible, and inward harmony 
 mechanical. 
 
 Were he only benevolent, it would suffice to 
 fill his creation with the joy of sentient exist- 
 ence; but, being righteous too, he would have 
 in his presence beings nearer to himself, deter- 
 mining themselves by free preference to the life 
 which he approves; and preference there can- 
 not be, unless the double path is open. To set 
 up, therefore, an absolute barrier against the 
 admission of wrong, is to arrest the system of 
 things at the mere natural order, and detain life 
 at the stage of a human menagerie, instead of 
 letting it culminate in a moral society. 
 
 The weightier problem before the righteous 
 creator of the human race would seem to be 
 this: how to provide the free conditions of char- 
 acter, and at the same time best secure its tend- 
 ing upward. Has this problem been solved ? Let 
 us see. 
 
 DOES THE SYSTEM OP THINGS TEND UPWARD 
 MORALLY ? 
 
 Nothing takes place morally except what takes 
 place through one's own self-determination. To 
 
90 U A STUDY OF RELIGION;" 
 
 provide for this, man is endowed with will. In 
 order to give scope for the intervention of will, 
 there must arise some conflict between the in- 
 tensity of one impulse tand the higher worth of 
 another. This constitutes temptation and gives 
 opportunity for self-determination. But unless 
 the temptations are kept within bounds disas- 
 trous results may ensue. Are they thus limited ? 
 The answer is two-fold. 
 
 1. All men do not want the same sins, but 
 all respect the same excellences. This difference 
 in the temptations of men is security against the 
 permanent dominance of any one sin, and fur- 
 nishes hope of the final subordination of all. 
 
 2. In .rightly directed will there is a cumula- 
 tive force ; while neglect and misuse entail a dy- 
 ing away of will, till the possibility of self-de- 
 termination practically vanishes, and the moral 
 life is to all intents and purposes expunged. But 
 Will is power; power is thus being always lost 
 by those in whom conscience sleeps, and al- 
 ways gained by those who form themselves by 
 the higher law. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORY TO THE MORAL TREND 
 IN NATIONS AND RACES. 
 
 Does not history negative the above reason- 
 ing, by showing humanity abandoned to the con- 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORY 91 
 
 flict and triumph of rude force? No! There 
 are four distinct types of character which mark 
 the stages of ascent in personal and social life. 
 They are: 
 
 1. That of instinctive appetite and passion, 
 in which there is the least remove from the con- 
 dition of other animals; 
 
 2. That of self-conscious pursuit of personal 
 and social ends, involving the first exercise of 
 Will; 
 
 3. That of conscience, in which these ends are 
 taken, not as we like, but as we ought; 
 
 4. That of faith, in which the conflict is 
 transcended between what we like and what we 
 ought, and duty becomes divine. And not only 
 are these stages each relatively higher than the 
 preceding, but the types of character are in- 
 creasingly strong. 
 
 Moreover, races repeat in their experience 
 these same successive stages of character, and 
 exhibit among them the same relations of grad- 
 uated strength. The impulsive or instinctive 
 period is the time of petty wars and small com- 
 munities. The self-conscious pursuit of social 
 ends absorbs the petty tribes into the great trad- 
 ing commonwealths, of which Phoenicia stands 
 as a primitive example. The genius of the 
 Phoenicians was mercantile enterprise; they 
 
92 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 were the typical embodiment of gainful desires. 
 When the time arrived for them to come into 
 collision with the grave and vigorous Roman, 
 no individual genius, no prowess, could avert 
 their fall before the sterner moral solidity 
 agiainst which they were flung. The commercial 
 civilization, which was great on the commercial 
 exchanges of the world, went down before a law- 
 giving and law-abiding people, whose mission it 
 was to codify the social conscience of the hu- 
 man race. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE UPWARD 
 MORAL TREND OF THINGS. 
 
 Yet when that mighty Rome had- for three 
 centuries ruled the civilized world, an unnoticed 
 competitor 'for the homage and allegiance of 
 hearts stole in at the background of the scene. 
 It was Christianity. Insisting also on a common 
 law, 'administered, it is true, in no Praetor's 
 court, but insisting far more, on a blending 
 affection, Christianity asserted its superior vi- 
 tality by stepping across the boundaries of em- 
 pire, raising its laltar in opposite camps, and 
 quietly surviving the shocks of revolution. As 
 the old order caved in and made a disastrous 
 ruin, the new religious organism lifted its head 
 and grew; and whether we judge the inward 
 
CHRISTANITY AN ILLUSTRATION 93 
 
 unity Which it created, by its intensity or its 
 duration, it far transcended that of the great 
 secular empire which it superceded. 
 
 History, thus interpreted, is no record of the 
 rude strength, but, on the contrary, it attests 
 the ever advancing superiority of the higher 
 terms in the hierarchy of powers. 
 
 V. PANTHEISMASASYSTEMOF 
 THOUGHT OPPOSED TO BELIEF 
 IN GOD. 
 
 The Theism which has been thus far vindica- 
 ted has been reached by two distinct lines of 
 thought, each taking its commencement from a 
 primary axiom of our cognitive nature. The 
 first proceeds from the principle of Causality, 
 which the Intellect carries with it into all its in- 
 terpretations of external phnomena; the sec- 
 ond, from the sense of Duty, by which the Con- 
 science reads ;a sacredness in life, and puts a 
 divine construction on a large portion of our 
 internal experience. 
 
 Under the guidance of the former we have 
 resolved the natural world into an effect of one 
 wise and mighty Will; under the guidance of 
 the latter, we have discovered our own affinity 
 with a supreme omniscient Righteousness; and, 
 
94 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 from the relation between these separate mess- 
 ages of transcendent truth, it is quite evident 
 that they are separate only to our different 
 modes of apprehension, and that their predicates 
 meet in one Being, perfect alike in Thought and 
 Holiness. In working out, on the first line, the 
 relation of God to Nature, an easy deviation 
 leads to Pantheism; and. on the second, the re- 
 lation of God to man may be so conceived as to 
 issue in Necessarianism, or, as it is now more 
 usually called, Determinism. Neither of these 
 doctrines is compatible with the form of Theism 
 which we have deduced, since the former invali- 
 dates all personal, and the latter all moral, rela- 
 tions between the human and the Divine Mind. 
 But the claims of each to acceptance must be 
 investigated and invalidated before the position 
 assumed in. the present treatise can be perfectly 
 secured. Dr. Martineau therefore considers, 
 next in order, these two subjects, Pantheism and 
 Determinism. 
 
 THEISM AND PANTHEISM CONTRASTED. 
 
 The word Pantheism is so often applied to 
 a mode rather of feeling than of thought, that 
 it may seem to mark a, temperament more than 
 a system, the immediate vision of the poet, and 
 not the reflective interpretation of the philoso- 
 
THEISM AND PANTHEISM 95 
 
 pher. Pantheism has, however, crystallized into 
 systems forming a well marked group in the his- 
 tory of thought. 
 
 What are its relations to Theism? 
 
 In reasoning out the principle of Causality 
 we were necessarily brought to treat the uni- 
 verse of phenomena as an effect, and we were 
 led from this effect to a source or beginning of 
 things. Thus far we settled only the question 
 of origination. So lonjg as Theism engages it- 
 self with simply settling its " First Cause/ 7 
 there is nothing to prevent its laying down the 
 relation of God to the universe on this wise : 
 
 1. The world was created in time; prior to 
 which its Divine Cause existed from eternity 
 without it. It will sometime perish ; after which 
 its Divine Cause will exist to eternity with- 
 out it. 
 
 2. In setting it up, the Creator willed its 
 order into being once for all, depositing in its 
 materials the properties which would execute 
 his purpose spontaneously, without need of his 
 returning to it again. 
 
 3. The creation thus organized is finite, while 
 its maker is infinite; so that beyond its limits, 
 his presence boundlessly extends, and is only in 
 external relation to H. 
 
96 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 4. Like all that is finite, the world is imper- 
 fect, never realizing the perfect idea of its au- 
 thor. 
 
 Thrown into this form (which, as a mere doc- 
 trine of origination, it could hardly fail to as- 
 sume), Theism establishes a series of antitheses 
 between the Universe and God. What is present 
 with us and around us is only a mechanism 
 running down through its appointed term, while 
 its originator has withdrawn himself within the 
 eternal beyond. Such was the Deism of the eigh- 
 teenth century, and minds that are dominated 
 by mechanical conceptions, will 'always tend to 
 such negative results. 
 
 But if reflection escapes these limits, it may 
 take a different direction and assume another 
 form of thought. We may question each of the 
 propositions enumerated above. 
 
 1. Is the idea of Creation in time tenable? 
 Why and when did God begin to create? Was 
 there a defect in his being, without a universe ? 
 If so, how did he spend an eternity without it! 
 By such questioning as this we become aware of 
 difficulties attaching to the doctrine of creative 
 paroxysms chronologically separating God from 
 What is other than God, and we pass over to the 
 idea of perpetual creation, and let the Divine 
 
THEISM AND PANTHEISM 97 
 
 presence no longer come in visits to the world, 
 but rest in it forever. 
 
 2. When once the conception of creative starts 
 is dismissed, God becomes the One Cause in 
 nature, and we have no further need for sec- 
 ond causes ; they would lie idly on our hands. 
 
 3. Again, were we really justified in saying 
 that creation is finite while its author is infinite ? 
 Truer far to regard the two as co-extensive, and 
 suffer the scope of the universe to coalesce with 
 the Infinitude of God. So here in another point 
 the antithesis ceases between Nature and its 
 Source. 
 
 4. Finally, if nature at every turn has thus 
 rallied from the shock of its first depreciation, 
 and assumes a place rather of approximation 
 than of contrast to God, if whatever it shows is 
 an 'aspect of his thought, then the dark material 
 mass of matter becomes incandescent with the 
 currents of a Divine Life forever streaming 
 through it, till the* gloomiest spaces flash with 
 heavenly promise. 
 
 ALL IMMANENCY VERSUS SOME TRANSCENDENCY. 
 
 Thus, one by one, all the marks seem to dis- 
 appear by which our Theism opposed to each 
 other the maker and his works. There is no 
 longer any separation between them, in time or 
 
98 " A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 space, or causality or quality; he who legislates 
 also executes: the natural and supernatural are 
 one. 
 
 In this transition, supposing it to be made 
 absolute, we have passed into Pantheism. Can 
 we find any single characteristic which sums up 
 its difference from the previous Theism? 
 
 May we not say that in the original form of 
 belief, God was conceived as transcending the 
 universe every way, as infinite, as eternal, as 
 source, as perfection; while in the subsequent 
 Pantheism the universe is lifted out of its lim- 
 its and its transiency, and is identified with his 
 will in its energy, and his thought in its excel- 
 lence; so that it is the simple externalization 
 of his being, and he is wholly immanent in it? 
 
 This is the generally received distinction be- 
 tween Theism and Pantheism. But the claim 
 of Divine transcendency involves no denial of 
 Divine immanency. Thus far there is no oppo- 
 sition between Theism and Pantheism. The con- 
 flict begins with the pantheist's negative propo- 
 sition: that beyond the natural order of things 
 and prior to it no Divine life or agency can be. 
 
 The theist would not plant all Divine agency 
 outside of nature except at her birth hour, any 
 more than would the pantheist. It is sufficient 
 for him if God be more than the contents of 
 
IMMANENCY VS. TRANSCENDENCY 99 
 
 nature, and overpass them in 'his being, action 
 and perfection. The opposition therefore lies 
 between all-immanency and some transcendency. 
 It is perfectly consistent with the theistic po- 
 sition to hold the conception of an indwelling 
 God whose living thought marks its way in the 
 unsleeping order of nature, and whose will is 
 self-realizing in human life and history ; to see 
 in the constant duties and the inconstant lights 
 and shadows of human life a quickening com- 
 munion with an invisible source of all beauty 
 and good. Such conceptions of the immanence 
 of God are in no wise antagonistic to the doc- 
 trine of his transcendence. 
 
 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PANTHEISM AND ATHEISM. 
 
 The pantheistic conception may be reached 
 by either of two opposite paths : either by resolv- 
 ing nature upward into the universal power, or 
 by bringing God downward into living posses- 
 sion of the whole realm of nature. The first 
 begins with the scientific list of natural forces, 
 and by repeated mergings reaches at last a sin- 
 gle primary. If the primary, thus inductively 
 reached and treated as our terminus, be in its 
 conception purely mechanical or chemical, our 
 theory of the universe will be atheistic; if our 
 primary present itself to us not as an inorganic 
 
100 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 but as a living power pervading the universe, 
 but lacking self-conscious and intending mind, 
 our theory will be pantheistic. 
 
 If, when the universe is taken up into God, 
 we start from the idea of Absolute Cause, in- 
 tellectual or mystical forms of Pantheism arise, 
 which, instead of regarding the Deity as only 
 the common term or last generalization of all 
 subordinate life, see nature glorified as the gar- 
 ment of God. Both these types of pantheism, 
 however, agree in removing all distinction be- 
 tween the natural and the supernatural. 
 
 As a transition from Deism, Pantheism can 
 hardly fail to tappear, at first sight, an escape 
 into a higher view. Whether, however, this 
 change from Deism toward Pantheism be a con- 
 cession to weakness or an emergence into a 
 higher and fuller truth, depends upon the extent 
 to which the change is carried. So long as the 
 immanence of pantheism is limited to physical 
 nature it is justifiable. 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE METHOD OF PANTHEISM. 
 
 The form in which the idea of causality comes 
 to us is that of Will, and the only question that 
 can rationally arise is, whether the action of 
 Divine Will is most easily conceived as continu- 
 ous through the operation it performs; or as 
 
OBJECTIONS TO METHOD, ETC. 101 
 
 momentary in itself, and handing over the pro- 
 longed part of the efficiency to a system of 
 means, inert in themselves, but charged with 
 delegated power cut off from its source. 
 
 The latter supposition has nothing to recom- 
 mend it. Against the former it may be objected 
 that it involves an incessant and universal in- 
 tervention of God in the minutest affairs. But 
 is there iany assignable reason for parsimony in 
 the expenditure of immeasurable Will? Why 
 may it not disperse itself in myriad drops, in- 
 stead of pouring itself 'forth all in one flow 1 It 
 is not in .the field of action, but in that of 
 thought, that we 'are restive under complexity, 
 and forever pressing our demand for unity; 
 and in the immanence and boundless distribu- 
 tion of Divine energy there is nothing at vari- 
 ance with perfect simplicity of purpose and in- 
 tellectual symmetry of method; any more than 
 our own repetitions of will in each reproduction 
 of habitual action iare inconsistent with a ra- 
 tional system of life. 
 
 The theistj therefore, need have no fear of 
 the number of Divine volitions, and if we have 
 rightly construed the source and meaning of 
 our causal ideas, the one thing certain is that, 
 however wide the sweep and durable the con- 
 tinuance of the laws of physical change, they 
 
102 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 are entrusted with no causality of their own, 
 but are only the modes of the Divine action. 
 
 The whole external universe (external to self- 
 eonscious beings) then, the theist may, with the 
 pantheist, unreservedly surrender to the indwell- 
 ing Will, of which it is the organized expres- 
 sion. From no point of its space, from no mo- 
 ment of its time, is his living agency withdrawn, 
 or lees intensely present than in any crisis called 
 creative. 
 
 DIVINE IMMANENCE LIMITED TO PHYSICAL NATURE. 
 
 Only at the boundary of the proper Ego 
 does the theistic theory of the universe find 
 ground upon which the Supreme Will arrests 
 itself. Did that Supreme Will still press on 
 and annex this field also, it would simply 
 abolish the very base of its oivn recognizable 
 existence, and, in making itself all in all, would 
 vanish totally from view. It is precisely in not 
 being unitary that causation is accessible to 
 thought at all; and if our own will does not 
 exercise it we are excluded from even the search 
 for it elsewhere. 
 
 The voluntary nature of moral beings, then, 
 must be saved from pantheistic absorption, and 
 be left standing as, within its sphere, a free 
 cause other than Divine, yet homogeneous with 
 
DIVINE IMMANENCE LIMITED 103 
 
 it. You cannot even declare yourself a pan- 
 theist without self contradiction ; for in doing 
 so you reserve your own personality as a think- 
 ing and assertive power that deals with all else 
 as objective. 
 
 If, however, the will of each rational being 
 must be allowed a sphere of its own, the same 
 is true of his Whole personality including in- 
 tellect, conscience and affections. It is not an- 
 other, even the Infinite, that decides for us, 
 neither is it another that is tempted, that strives 
 and prays. 
 
 WHY EXEMPT HUMANITY FROM DIVINE IMMA- 
 NENCE ? 
 
 To the doctrine as thus shaped it may perhaps 
 be objected that, while it admits the Divine ac- 
 tion as immediately present in the lower prov- 
 inces of the cosmos, it excludes that action from 
 the highest, viz., our moral life, precisely the 
 sphere that is nearest to God and would seem 
 most congenial to him. 
 
 Are we then to find God in the sunshine and 
 the rain, and to miss him in our thought, our 
 duty, and our love? Far from it. He is with 
 us in both; only in the former it is his imman- 
 ent life, in the latter his transcendent life, with 
 
104 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 which we are in communion. It is not indeed 
 he that, under the mask of our personality, does 
 our thinking, and praying against temptations, 
 and weeps our tears: these are truly our own; 
 but they are in presence of a sympathy free to 
 answer, spirit to spirit; neither merging in the 
 other ; but both at one in the same inmost pref- 
 erences and affections. 
 
 This alone it is that jgives scope for a Divine 
 personal being, living with persons, and acting 
 on grounds of reason and righteousness. With- 
 out freedom thus to act freshly out of immediate 
 thought and affection, intellect, character, per- 
 sonality can have no place in the Divine 
 causality. 
 
 AND PERSONALITY. 
 
 This personality of God thus rescued from 
 pantheistic absorption, not only leaves his vol- 
 untary agency as free cause in an unpledged 
 sphere, that is, la sphere transcending that of 
 immanent law, but precisely this it is that con- 
 stitutes his Infinity, extending his sway over all 
 the possible, after it has filled the actual, and 
 giving command over infinite alternatives. 
 Hence it is plain that his personality and his 
 
GODS'S TRANSCENDENCY CONSTITUTES 10$ 
 
 infinity are so far inseparable concomitants that, 
 though you might deny his infinitude without 
 prejudice to his personality, you cannot deny 
 his personality without sacrificing his infini- 
 tude; since there is one mode of laction the 
 preferential, the very mode which distin- 
 guishes rational beings, from which you ex- 
 clude him in denying him personality. 
 
 DIVINE PERSONALITY DEFENDED. 
 
 We are constantly told that a personal being 
 is necessarily finite; that he is an individual, 
 not <a universal; restricted to a definite centre 
 of consciousness and activity, into which and 
 from which influences flow that make up his 
 life. In short a self implies an other-than-self, 
 and so gives two spheres of being, only one of 
 which would be God and the other his negative. 
 What answer shall we make to this? 
 
 According to the division we have been de- 
 fending, this other than the Divine Self is the 
 aggregate of rational and moral beings, repre- 
 sented in our world by man. This man, as en- 
 dowed with Will, we have actually treated as a 
 separate cause, and so we have apparently ac- 
 cepted a limit to the infinitude of God. But 
 surely it is not impossible or unreasonable that 
 infinite Will should divest itself of a portion of 
 
106 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 its causality in order to fit up another and re-, 
 sembling nature. This nature thus set up, is 
 included in what God has earned though ex- 
 empted from what he is causing; and the caus- 
 ality conceded to us takes therefore nothing 
 from the Creator's infinitude, but what he him- 
 self renounces; moreover, what is /thus relin- 
 quished is potentially retained. 
 
 SELF-RENUNCIATION OF THE CREATOR. 
 
 Alike in setting up other minds with a range 
 of command over alternatives, and instituting a 
 universe under law without alternative, the in- 
 finite Cause foregoes something of his absolute 
 freedom ; in the one case admitting partners of 
 his liberty; in the other, establishing for him- 
 self a sphere of necessity ; and the more compre- 
 hensive the sphere of necessity or law, the vast- 
 er is the renunciation; if it extends to the All, 
 so as to leave no margin of transcendency, the 
 limitation reaches its maximum, no possibility 
 but one being left open anywhere. What greater 
 contradiction can there be than to say in one 
 breath, that a being is infinite and omnipotent, 
 and yet oannot put forth preferential power? 
 And if we are careful for his infinitude, which 
 shall we be more afraid to grant, that he lends 
 to a derivative being a little preferential power; 
 
BELIEF IN GOD'S PERSONALITY 107 
 
 or that he is forever incapacitated for exercising 
 it himself t 
 
 BELIEF IN GOD'S PERSONALITY THE DIFFERENCE 
 BETWEEN THEISM AND PANTHEISM. 
 
 i 'For these reasons the modern scruples that 
 are felt with regard to the personality of 
 God," says Dr. Martineau, after a full presen- 
 tation of the subject, "appear to me not less 
 intellectually weak than they are morally de- 
 plorable. If any one is fastidious about the 
 word, and thinks it spoiled by the Athanasian 
 controversy, let him supply us with a better; 
 but some symbol we must have of that Divine 
 freedom in the exercise of Will, the acknowledg- 
 ment of which makes the difference between 
 Theism <and Pantheism, and gives religion its 
 entrance into the conscience and affections of 
 men. 
 
 "As the parts of our nature which thus enter 
 into relation with God are precisely those which 
 make us persons and distinguish us from other 
 'living things' it is difficult to see why the same 
 term should not be given to the corresponding 
 attributes of rational and moral Will in him; 
 and where the idea is really present, and craving 
 expression, I believe that for the most part it 
 will be glad enough for the word. At all events 
 
108 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 its contents are just what Theism rescues from 
 Pantheism. 
 
 "Here it is that the God, immanent through 
 the universe besides, and operating by determi- 
 nate methods alone, passes into transcendent ex- 
 istence still unpledged, and establishes moral 
 relations with beings whom he has endowed with 
 a certain scope of similar volitional causality." 
 
 VI. DETERMINISM AND FREE WILL 
 AS A SYSTEM OF THOUGHT OP- 
 POSED TO BELIEF IN GOD. 
 
 Each of the two lines of argument which have 
 been followed in Dr. Martineau's "Study of 
 Religion," namely, the argument for God as 
 Cause and that for God as Holiness, starts with 
 an intuitive assumption. 
 
 The first of these assumptions is, that in the 
 exercise of Will we know what Causality is, and 
 apprehend the Will of God along with our own. 
 The second is, that the authority of Deity is 
 known to us as a relation between our own Will 
 as free and that of a higher and Supreme Be- 
 ing. Of that relation we are conscious as a 
 trust, or command of alternative, better and 
 worse, committed to us by a perfect Righteous- 
 ness. 
 
DETERMINISM AND FREE WILL 109 
 
 But this appeal to self-consciousness through 
 the exercise of will and conscience is set aside 
 on various ingenious pleas. Our belief in our 
 own moral freedom, that is, our belief that in 
 the moment of yielding to one of two competing 
 solicitations, we might have preferred the other, 
 arises merely, it is said, from a partial ignor- 
 ance of the complex influences that mould our 
 decisions, <and when our inward history is laid 
 bare, each volition will be found to have its 
 place in a regular consecution of phenomena, as 
 uniform as physical nature, and as little open 
 to contingency. Thus has arisen the discussion 
 between Determinism and Free Will. Into this 
 discussion Dr. Martineau enters with much ful- 
 ness. 
 
 THE PROBLEM STATED. 
 
 The inquiry concerns the originating oaiuse 
 of voluntary (action, and is mainly this: 
 Whether, in the exercise of Will (i.e., in cases 
 of choice) the mind is wholly determined by 
 phenomenal antecedents and external conditions, 
 or whether, as active subject of these objective 
 experiences, it plays the part of determining 
 Cause. Those who take the first or necessarian 
 alternative draw their arguments chiefly from 
 a psychological theory of voluntary action. Dr. 
 
110 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 Martineau select James and John Stuart Mill 
 and Professor Bain as representatives of this 
 class of thinkers, and analyzes their lines of 
 argument. The reasoning is somewhat abstruse, 
 but worth following. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT FOR DETERMINISM. 
 
 1. All muscular movements, so these think- 
 ers hold, &re at first automatic and so far take 
 place at random, that, springing from some 
 sensation either administered from without or 
 occurring in the interior of the body, they par- 
 take of the accidental character of these sensa- 
 tions. We begin by being absolutely disposed of 
 by such sensations persistent or fortuitous. 
 
 2. Through the laws of association and imita- 
 tion, idea (sensation) and action are inseparably 
 associated; given the idea, the action will cer- 
 tainly follow. 
 
 Thus the determinist or necessarian explains 
 involuntary actions. 
 
 But action may become the attendant of 
 many ideas. Associated with the particular 
 idea of pleasure or desire, action becomes volun- 
 tary. How is this effected, and what is the law 
 of voluntary action? Some movement, accident- 
 ally performed, brings us, it may be, a pleasure 
 or relief, which henceforth becomes connected 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR DETERMINISM 111 
 
 with it in idea, so that whatever suggests the 
 pleasure suggests the movement too. The mere 
 idea of 'an attainable pleasure, occurring in the 
 natural train of thought, will bring with it 
 the idea of what we are to do in order to get 
 it, that is, idea of the motory initiative and 
 process; and, each link by indissoluble associa- 
 tion drawing after it the next, the operation 
 consummates itself. By frequent repetitions this 
 process becomes habit. Thus the voluntary stage 
 springs from the automatic, and in the shape 
 of habit, is delivered back to automatism again. 
 
 DETERMINISM IN THE INNER LIFE. 
 
 In the control which we also obtain over our 
 inward life, the same dominant principle, viz., 
 the interest of an end in view, no less supplies 
 the explanation. All these processes are volun- 
 tary because their regulative idea is a want or 
 wish which is so associated with an order of 
 muscular movement, or of thought competent to 
 its fulfilment, 'that the preconception is the sole 
 condition needful to secure the entire sequel. 
 We want a pleasure as 'an end, and having some 
 experience of muscular motion as sometimes 
 happy in its results, we set it a going in a ran- 
 dom way of "trial tand error. " This explains 
 
112 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 the genesis of effort, which Mr. Bain regards as 
 consisting in " trial-movements" for pleasure. 
 If this be the true theory of voluntary action, 
 it is evident that our volitions are dependent, 
 like our memories, on the laws of suggestion, 
 and have their definite place in trains of ideas, 
 as little variable as the letters of the alphabet; 
 that to will is to have an idea of pleasure fol- 
 lowed by a muscular movement that clings 'to it ; 
 and that whoever or whatever wakes up the first 
 secures the second; that we have no more to 
 do with our acts of will, so-called, than to be 
 the conscious theatre and supply the wielded 
 implements:. No room, therefore, is left for Free 
 Will unless the facts admit of some other psycho- 
 logical construction. Do they admit of other 
 construction ? 
 
 THE DETERMINIST POSITION EXAMINED. 
 
 Dr. Martineau reviews this necessarian theory 
 of volition and finds: 
 
 1. That the first movements called sponta- 
 neous, are not random, but on the lines pre- 
 scribed by certain organic wants or tendencies; 
 and the first pleasures are simply the satisfac- 
 tion of these wants. 
 
 2. Life is not a mere wriggling into contact 
 with something nice, which thenceforth becomes 
 its master; but rather contains within itself its 
 
QFTH 
 
 DETERMINIST POSrRQN EXAMINED 113 
 
 own directing forces, which select What to do, 
 and crown the doing by satiety. 
 
 If we set up the direct "idea of pleasure" 
 as the governing principle, and ignore the prior 
 natural principles, we can never give accounts 
 of the undoubted cases in which we court our 
 own misery, when, for example, on the urgency 
 of compassion, we tear ourselves from the sun- 
 shine of life and plunge into its clouds of sor- 
 row. Will comes into play with the attempt to 
 control the spontaneity, and make it do this and 
 not do that, i.e., when there is some selection. 
 
 By thus limiting the range of Will to the 
 function of determining an alternative, we take 
 up the problem at the point where first two co- 
 present tendencies conflict. Suppose, for ex- 
 ample, that you suffer under some calumny ad- 
 mitting disproof; your natural course would be 
 to 'give the exculpating statement. But if, in 
 doing so, you must cast a shadow on some fair 
 name, or embitter some precious friendship, 
 your impulse will be arrested by a resistance 
 equally natural. Consider what takes place in 
 deciding this conflict. The elements present 
 are (1) two incompatible springs of action, 
 the desire to save your own credit, and the de- 
 sire to save that of others; and (2) what may 
 be called your own past, i.e., a certain formed 
 
114 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 system of habits and dispositions brought from 
 your previous use of life. 
 
 The former of these two heads comprise the 
 motives that are offered; 'the latter, the char- 
 acter that has come to be. Do these settle the 
 mutter between them? Is the character the 
 arena on which the play, or rather the war, of 
 the motives fights itself out, and is the volition, 
 the flash of the stronger sword? Or, inverting 
 the parts of active and passive, shall we say 
 that the past character, instead of lying still and 
 being influenced by the triumphant motive 
 comes in as umpire between them, giving the as- 
 with itself ? Or is our account still incomplete ; 
 cendency to that which is the more consonant 
 and must we admit that, besides the motives 
 felt, and besides our formed habits or past self 
 there is also a present self that has a part 'to 
 perform in reference to both? 
 
 Is there not a causal self, over and above the 
 caused self (or rather the caused state and con- 
 tents of the self left as a deposit from previous 
 behaviour) ? Is there not a judging self that 
 knows and weighs 1 the competing motives, over 
 and above the agitated self that feels them? 
 The impulses are but phenomena of your exper- 
 ience; the formed habits are but a condition 
 and attitude of your consciousness, in virtue of 
 
DETERMINIST POSITION EXAMINED 115 
 
 which you feel this more and that less ; both are 
 predicates of yourself as subject, but are not 
 yourself, and cannot be identified with your 
 personal agency. On the contrary, they are 
 objects of your contemplation; they lie before 
 you to be known, compared, estimated; they are 
 your data; and you; have not to let them alone 
 to work together as they may, but to deal with 
 them, as arbiter among their tendencies. 
 
 It is this -that we mean when we say that * ' it 
 rests with us to decide," that "our impulses 
 are not to be our masters," that "guilty habit 
 cannot be pleaded in excuse for guilty act"; 
 the deciding Ego of a rational self -conscious- 
 ness will never allow that it is obliged to follow 
 the importunities of its feelings; it will insist 
 on the contrary, that it can command them. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 After a careful review and analysis of the 
 whole necessarian argument, the conclusion is 
 reached that the empirical psychology does not 
 dispose of our consciousness of personal causa- 
 tion, or succeed in reducing us to a theater of 
 felt antecedents and consequents. There re- 
 mains the indelible conviction that we are not 
 bound hand and foot by either our present in- 
 centives or our own past, but that, drag as they 
 
116 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 may, a power remains with us to make a new 
 beginning along another path if we will. 
 
 DETERMINISM AS RESULTING FROM CAUSALITY, 
 CONSIDERED. 
 
 But, while the modern determinist or neces- 
 sarian relies chiefly on his psychology, the older 
 writers trusted chiefly certain axioms of caus- 
 ality. These, also, are carefully reviewed with 
 the deductions supposed to flow logically from 
 them, the whole forming a critical history of 
 a whole school of philosophic thinking. 
 
 We can only indicate the trend of Dr. Mar- 
 tineau's argument, but the steps by which these 
 results are reached will repay careful study. 
 
 We have found that we could know God as 
 Cause, and as Holy. If we know God as in- 
 tending Cause, if we see in the universe an or- 
 ganized system of ends, he comes before our 
 thought as a prospective Mind, whose agency, 
 at every present moment, has regard to an an- 
 ticipated future; and to suppose that future 
 invisible to him, is to suppose the present im- 
 possible. 
 
 And if, again, we know him as Supreme Au- 
 thor of Right, if we see in our own consciences 
 the reflection of his Will, we thereby pla^e our- 
 selves under a discipline of progressive charac- 
 
DETERMINISM RESULTING FROM 117 
 
 ter, and the liuman race under a moral educa- 
 tion, by which all life and history are turned 
 into a probationary scene of government. But 
 such a scene ceases to be a blind jumble of ac- 
 cidents and becomes a drama, in which the end 
 is preconceived from the beginning, and each 
 act, as it passes, brings up the conditions, and 
 the persons needful to lead on to the consum- 
 mation. He, without whom there would be no 
 future but his own, cannot create a future of 
 which he has not first the idea. It is not with- 
 out reason, therefore, that prescience has been 
 assumed by theologians as part oif the concep- 
 tion of a Perfect Being. 
 
 But does the prescience thus evidenced in- 
 volve determinism in human action? In the 
 theological form as often deduced from Scrip- 
 ture, it certainly does. If the impieties of An- 
 tiochus Epiptoanes, the restoring acts of Cyrus, 
 the betrayal by Judas, the reforming zeal of 
 Josiah, were all fore-announced, some of them 
 ages before the persons were born, and if these 
 predictions, thus made, were verified, it can only 
 have been by the exclusion of contingency; a 
 thinig known for certain cannot be uncertain. 
 Such prescience would preclude human free will. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT ANSWERED. 
 
 To this reasoning Dr. Martinea,u answers : The 
 
118 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 prescience required by philosophic Theism is not 
 of this definite and individual kind, except in 
 the domain of physical nature, where choice has 
 110 plaice. Beyond this, in the world of intelli- 
 gences, a margin of freedom being allowed, the 
 lines of possibility are not rectilinear, but diver- 
 gent, and open a way into innumerable hypo- 
 thetical fields, among which, as yet invisible, lies 
 the actual. 
 
 In the outlook upon this realm which em- 
 braces the future, what is needed, in order that 
 the intending causality of God, and his moral 
 government, may secure their ends and shape 
 their means? Simply, that no one of the open 
 possibilities shall remain in the dark to the In- 
 finite Omniscience, 'and pass umreckoned; and 
 that they shall all, in their working out, be com- 
 patible with the ruling purposes of God, not de- 
 feating the aim, but only varying the track. 
 
 An infinite mind, with prevision thus ex- 
 tended beyond all that is, to all that can be, 
 is lifted above surprise or disappointment, and 
 able to provide for all -events and combinations ; 
 yet, instead of being shut up in a closed and 
 mechanized universe, lives amid the free play 
 of variable character 'and contingent history, 
 into which there is room for approval, pity, and 
 love to flow. 
 
GOD'S LIMITATION 119 
 
 GOD'S LIMITATION A SELF-LIMITATION. 
 
 Is this a limitation of God 's foresight, that he 
 cannot read all volitions that are to be? Yes; 
 but it is a self -limitation, just like his abstinence 
 from causing them. Lending to us a portion of 
 his causation, he refrains from covering all with 
 his omniscience. Fore-knowledge of the con- 
 tingent is not a perfection; and if, rather than 
 have a reign of universal necessity and stereo- 
 typed futurity, he willed, in order to prepare 
 scope for a gift of moral freedom, to set up a 
 range of alternative possibilities, he would "Hut 
 render some knowledge conditional for the sake 
 of making any righteousness attainable; leav- 
 ing enough that is determinate, for science ; and 
 enough that is indeterminate, for character. 
 
 i 'There is no absurdity in supposing," says 
 Dugald Stewart, "that the Deity may, for wise 
 purposes, have chosen to open -a source of con- 
 tingency in the voluntary actions of his crea- 
 tures, to which no prescience can possibly ex- 
 tend." Such contingency leaves room for Free- 
 dom of the Will, and this freedom explains the 
 "ought" of conscience which on the theory of 
 Determinism is inexplicable. Determinism can 
 tell us what has been, what is, what probably 
 will be, but not what ought to be. 
 
120 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 VII. THE LIFE TO COME. 
 
 The last subject discussed by Dr. Martineau 
 is "The Life to Come." In a sense this is not 
 a necessary part of the main subject of Theism 
 to which his book is devoted. Yet in his view 
 it is so necessary ian implication from Theism, 
 and practically it has so vital a relation to man's 
 religious life, that a careful and extended pre- 
 sentation of the arguments in its support are 
 regarded as; necessary. 
 
 The question of a Future Life depends upon 
 the interpretation of Death. To find the true 
 significance of Death will require that we ex- 
 amine it in three points of view: physiological, 
 metaphysical, and moral. 
 
 THE PHYSIOLOGICAL VIEW OF DEATH CONSIDERED. 
 
 To the naturalist, death presents itself simply 
 in antithesis to birth. The fundamental con- 
 ception of his science so defines the relation of 
 organs and functions as to make the function 
 the act which the organ has to do; so that, 
 when the organ is spoiled and gone the 
 living function cannot remain. This view would 
 seem to make a life after death impossible. 
 
 Bui* the moment we touch the conscious and 
 
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL VIEW 121 
 
 the voluntary we are flung upon facts not known 
 in physics. "The passage from the physics of 
 the brain to the corresponding facts of conscious- 
 ness," says Professor Tyndall as quoted by Dr. 
 Martineau, "is unthinkable. Granted that a 
 definite thought and a definite molecular action 
 in the brain, occur simultaneously, we do not 
 possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently 
 any rudiment of the organ, which would enable 
 as to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the 
 one to the other. They appear together, but 
 we do not know why. 
 
 Were our minds and senses so expanded, 
 strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to 
 see and feel the very molecules of the brain; 
 were we capable of following all their motions, 
 all their groupings, all their electrical discharges, 
 if such there be; and were we intimately ac- 
 quainted with the corresponding state of 
 thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever 
 from the solution of the problem of how these 
 physical processes are connected with the facts 
 of consciousness. The chasm between the two 
 classes would still remain intellectually im- 
 passable. ' ' 
 
 If, then, in the molecular motions, groupings, 
 and electrical discharges of the brain we have 
 its function, that organ finds its function in a 
 
122 "A STUDY OP RELIGION * 
 
 class of phenomena separated by "a chasm in- 
 tellectually impassable ' ' from consciousness and 
 will. If the organic and the mental phenomena 
 lie thus apart, how can any legitimate inference 
 carry us from the one to the other? If no one 
 can affirm their connection to be necessary, who 
 can affirm their disconnection to be impossible ? 
 
 A FURTHER ANSWER. 
 
 Still another argument against the physicist's 
 view of death is found in the law of the con- 
 servation of energy. An illustration is drawn 
 from the effect of a whispered message, "Your 
 library is one fire," to show that when we come 
 to follow out the law of conservation of energy, 
 the force of moving air used in the whisper will 
 not account for all the energy displayed in what 
 follows. If the law of conservation did hold 
 good, if the mental activity the thoughts 
 and feelings awakened by the whispered message 
 might be omitted without disturbance to the 
 dynamic question, then they cost nothing in the 
 way of energy ; they are not, therefore, physical 
 effects drawing upon a physical cause. They are 
 exempt from the law of conservation which per- 
 vades the physical sphere ; they belong to another 
 universe; and mind emerges as something inde- 
 pendent of matter. If, on the other hand, the 
 
A FURTHER ANSWER 123 
 
 transmission of energy in the supposed case is 
 not complete within the bodily organism, then in- 
 deed it follows that mind is not independent of 
 matter, but also that matter it not independent 
 of mind. 
 
 In its physical aspects death presents simply 
 a case of transformation of energy. In crossing 
 the mortal line, the total energy which had mani- 
 fested itself in the heat and the whole work of 
 the body is not altered, and might be gathered 
 up and measured, though every organ is cold 
 and every function is at rest. But we should 
 miss in this estimate any element answering to 
 the thoughts, the affections, the volitions which 
 were the concomitants of the muscular contrac- 
 tion and nerve tension in the living man. If 
 these mental activities are included in the cate- 
 gory of ' ' energy, ' ' then, since they are not trans- 
 formed, they still continue ; for were they extinct 
 the law of conservation would be broken. If 
 they are not included, if the cycle of energy is 
 perfect without them, then they lie outside the 
 physical world, and are foreign to its fates. 
 
 We may conclude, therefore, that in the physi- 
 cal phenomena of death there is nothing to pre- 
 judge the question of a life beyond. 
 
 DEATH AND PERSONAL IDENTITY. 
 
 But a deeper question is, "Will death leave the 
 
124 "A STUDY OF RELIGION 
 
 personal identity untouched, and permit the 
 story of the past to flow on in continuous sequel 1 
 This problem hangs on the nature, not of the 
 animal consciousness, but of human self-con- 
 sciousness. In its solution recourse is had to the 
 physiological principle that in living beings, we 
 are justified in expecting a due proportion be- 
 tween organ and function, between faculty and 
 range of life. The animal body, as animal, is 
 a machine, charged with powers, unconscious and 
 conscious, for preserving, regulating, replacing 
 itself. There is not a propensity or a sagacity 
 that is not subservient to this system of ends. 
 
 But in the self-conscious human animal we find 
 a difference. Who would ever think of referring 
 the sentiment of wonder to its physiological use ? 
 It neither helps the digestion nor regulates the 
 temperature ; it succors no weakness, it repels no 
 foe ; the labor to which it incites, the enthusiasm 
 which, it kindles, often detract from the animal 
 perfection and consume the organic powers that 
 serve it. The sense of beauty, too, in its human 
 maturity, emerges from the sphere of sense and 
 takes possession of an ideal world, moulding 
 thought into literature, and character into drama. 
 
 Compassion, sympathy, and (attachment serve 
 in us, no doubt, the same ends for which they 
 more or less exist in other creatures. But how 
 
JO 
 
 AJJSH3AINO 
 
 3HJ. JO 
 
 DEATH AND IDENrT-- 125 
 
 soon and how far do they transcend this simply 
 useful function, and claim a good upon their own 
 account 1 Judging these features by a prospective 
 instead of a retrospective measure, surely we 
 should conclude that it is for these we are made ; 
 these it is to which we must yoke our physical 
 power in a humble service, by which we are to 
 rise above the physical, and to pass into a life 
 of larger dimensions. 
 
 This view Professor Fiske is quoted as con- 
 firming. ' ' The more thoroughly we comprehend 
 that process of evolution by which things have 
 come to be what they are, the more we are likely 
 to feel that to deny the everlasting persistence 
 of the spiritual element in man is to rob the 
 whole process of its meaning. For my own part, 
 therefore, I believe in the immortality of the 
 soul, not in the sense in which I accept the dem- 
 onstrable truths of science, but as a supreme 
 act of faith in the . reasonableness of God's 
 work." 
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL ASPECT OF DEATH. 
 
 The metaphysical interpretation of Death to 
 which we next turn, presses upon us the ques- 
 tion, What is it that survives the perishing or- 
 ganism, if survival there be? If we call it the 
 Soul, whence have we the idea of such a possible 
 
126 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 prisoner escaped? Is it from any source which 
 renders it legitimate, and justifies our accep- 
 tance of it as trustworthy? Dr. Martineau 
 finds the basis of this idea where he found the 
 basis of our religious belief in God, namely, in 
 the constitution of human nature. 
 
 The persistent element to which we give the 
 name soul, is given to us not by our senses or 
 our imagination, but as an intuition from our 
 experience of personality; the conscious self- 
 identity which we have as the abiding subject 
 of variable phenomena; the identity consisting 
 not in a reserve of stereotyped phenomena, but 
 in the unity of the Ego or Self to which all 
 the attributes and phenomena belong, a unity 
 undisturbed by the greatest contrasts of experi- 
 ence land revolution of character. 
 
 This durable selfdom attaches to us,, not as 
 conscious, but as personal i(i. e. self-conscious) 
 beings. This constant centre to which we refer 
 all our acts as their source, and all our experi- 
 ences as their receptacle, is what we mean by 
 the Soul. Hence the soul or self stands for us 
 as the permanent term in a relation of change. 
 
 Prom this subjective origin of the idea, it is 
 evident that of the soul as an object we predi- 
 cate nothing beyond the bare space definition 
 
THE METAPHYSICAL ASPECT 127 
 
 of here and there, by which one is differenced 
 from another. As a constant it is indifferent 
 to time; as it is not a thing offered to percep- 
 tion, it is not open to the tests of analysis. Its 
 self -identity, however, we are obliged to affirm; 
 nor when we would mark the felt unity of the 
 cosmos through all space and time and change, 
 have we any way of doing so but by planting 
 there a universal Soul, as the centre whence 
 its energies flow and whither its phenomena 
 look? 
 
 This dominant Self of the universe we dis- 
 criminate from the physical which it animates; 
 we oppose it to the phenomenal which it puts 
 forth; and we claim it as the reality of both. 
 It is the All in its idea and its causality. Thus 
 the human soul is individual, while God the 
 universal soul is the cosmical aspect of the 
 inward principle of existence; and they are 
 homogeneous in our thought, except in the 
 spheres at their disposal. 
 
 RELATION BETWEEN THE SOUL AND GOD : WILL 
 DEATH DISSOLVE IT? 
 
 Let it be .assumed, then, that we have first 
 hand knowledge of a Self or Soul, whose per- 
 manence as a possible subject of experiences 
 
128 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 is not contradicted by any organic phenomena, 
 including those of death ; and further, that this 
 individual Eigo has been set up by the Univer- 
 sal Mind in whose embrace it lives;, and which 
 it reflects in its miniature powers. How are we 
 to conceive of the relation between these two? 
 And especially is the relation in its nature such 
 that death must dissolve it? Two metaphysical 
 reasons are urged from the pantheistic side why 
 it must be so: 
 
 (1) The relation has begun, therefore it mus't 
 cease. 
 
 (2) The egoistic personality is finite, and 
 cannot hold its (ground amid the infinite. 
 
 (1) With reference to the first it may be 
 answered that within the limits of organic life, 
 whose history consists of a cycle of chemical 
 changes, it is true that birth is the invariable 
 precursor of a series leading to death; but be- 
 yond this range it cannot be shown that either 
 mechanical or mental genesis must run its course 
 and come to an end. If we can think of the law 
 of gravitation as having been given to the ma- 
 terial universe, surely we are not on that ac- 
 count compelled by any logical necessity to an- 
 ticipate its cessation. And there is no assign- 
 able reason why the case should be otherwise 
 
; 
 
 RELATION BETWEEN THE SOUL 129 
 
 with intellectual and moral natures. If at a 
 certain stage in the development of the cosmos, 
 the Supreme Mind set up at a given centre a 
 personal subject of thought and will like his 
 own, with adequate assignment of causality, 
 what is to prevent this from being a freehold 
 in perpetuity? Why may not the communi- 
 cated Divine nature endure as long as the un- 
 communicated Source on which it lives? 
 
 So far ,as thought, and love, and goodness 
 are related to time, their relation is not cyclical, 
 but progressive, not returning to their begin- 
 nings, but opening out into indefinite enlarge- 
 ment and acceleration. The dictum, therefore, 
 that whatever begins must end, is one to which 
 we are not bound to surrender; and the only 
 pre-existence which we need allow to the Soul is 
 latent within its Divine Source, ere yet its idea 
 has taken effect and the personal monad been 
 set up. 
 
 (2) The other principal assumed, namely, 
 that personality is a finite phenomenon and must 
 :sink back into its infinite ground, has played a 
 much larger part in the reasoning upon this 
 subject since the time of Spinoza. 
 
 CAN THE FINITE CO-EXIST WITH THE INFINITE? 
 
 But is it true that the finite cannot hold its 
 ( place ,,amid the infinite, and, that personality, 
 
130 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 being a finite phenomenon, musit sink back into 
 its infinite ground? It certainly is true that 
 here in this life the finite and infinite co-exist; 
 and why, if possible now, should it become 
 impossible after death? 
 
 The pantheist represents the human person- 
 ality as an outline artificially drawn round a 
 small enclosure, within which lie the individual 
 experiences of a human life. To set up a liv- 
 ing individual, he says, is simply to establish 
 such a centre of special consciousness, and fence 
 it off by a containing periphery, and let it for 
 a while assert and discriminate itself as against 
 the boundless environment from which it is cut 
 out ; and even while it lasts, this self -protection 
 from the integral field is but an illusion, which 
 death only dissipates, surrendering the individ- 
 ual back into the universal. 
 
 This mode of conception, borrowed from the 
 relations of geometrical figures in space, con- 
 founds the infinite with the total, and erron- 
 eously assumes that the infinite is denied if we 
 speak of anything besides. Of mere extension 
 this will doubtless hold true, and we cannot say 
 that the universal field of things is made up of 
 infinitude plus the size of the sun. But this 
 rule has no truth except where both terms are 
 quantitative and homogeneous. The predicate 
 
CAN THE FINITE CO-EXIST 131 
 
 of magnitude belongs to time as well as space, 
 and neither of them puts any bound upon the 
 other; in affirming a square yard I do not put 
 any bounds upon eternity. 
 
 When we carry the infinitude from quantity 
 to quality, it ceases altogether to be a totality 
 and becomes an intensity ; iand far from embrac- 
 ing all that is less than itself, completely ex- 
 cludes it. Infinite knowledge, for example, is 
 perfect thought of all that has been, is, or can 
 be, and does not comprise among its contents a 
 partial knowledge in which truth and error 
 both have their share ; in order to meet this you 
 must resort to another thinking subject, a mind 
 of limited range. And what is there to prevent 
 such finite intelligence from co-existing with 
 the infinite? 
 
 The end pursued by the Will of the Creator 
 in the creation of man would seem to be to set 
 up whal is other than himself, and yet akin; to 
 mark off new centres of self -consciousness and 
 causality, that shall have their separate his- 
 tories and build up free personalities like his 
 own. And why should not those free personali- 
 ties, once built up, continue? Certain it is that 
 here we come upon the very crown and culmina- 
 tion of the world's process. Personality is not 
 the largest, but it is the highest fact in the 
 
132 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 known cosmos; and if death has power over it, 
 then there is nothing that death spares. 
 
 THE MORAL ASPECT OF DEATH. 
 
 Thus far no more has been attempted than 
 to ward off unfavorable presumptions against 
 the future life. Were the problem surrendered 
 to physics and metaphysics, it could never quit 
 its state of suspense. There would be nothing 
 to forbid the future, but there would be nothing 
 to promise it. Not till we turn to the moral 
 aspects of death, do we meet with the presiding 
 reasons which give the casting vote. 
 
 HINTS THAT MAN'S EARTHLY LIFE IS ONLY A 
 "FRAGMENT" AND A " PRELUDE. " 
 
 As between beings, Divine and human, stand- 
 ing in spiritual relations to each other, what 
 place does death hold and what significance 
 does it apparently possess? Two facts we may 
 note with respect to man. 
 
 (1) That the usual animal order of means 
 and ends with him is inverted : the inner springs 
 of action, instead of merely serving the organ- 
 ism, dominate it and use it; our faculties are 
 set up on their own account, and carry their 
 own ends. 
 
HINTS THAT MAN'S EARTHLY LIFE 133 
 
 (2) The Divine ends manifestly inwrought 
 in our human nature and life, are continuous 
 and of large reach; and, being here only par- 
 tially or even incipiently attained, indicate that 
 the present term of years is but a fragment and 
 a prelude. When we place side by side the 
 needs of human life, taken on the most liberal 
 estimate, and the scope of the intellectual powers 
 of man, do we not find the latter an enormous 
 over-provision for the former? 
 
 For the sweetness and harmony of life, it 
 would be enough if the voices of our compan- 
 ions were music to our ears, <and their faces a 
 light to our eyes; but we have need, it seems, 
 of a wider capacity of fellowship, that takes no 
 notice of the barriers of death : for what is liter- 
 ature, but the appeal of thought to thought and 
 heart to heart through silent ages? 
 
 Space, too, belongs, in a very true sense, to 
 man alone; and though other creatures have 
 their retinas on which the starry vault shines 
 in, it tells its depth and looks its meaning to 
 no nightwatcher but man. Whence for an ex- 
 istence limited to a point, this insatiable inter- 
 est in objects and movements, on the margin 
 of infinitude? 
 
134 "A STUDY OF RELIGION " 
 
 Man as a creator, too, seems equally above his 
 present lot. An Iliad, an Agamemnon, a Divina 
 Commedia, a Hamlet, a Faust, a Madonna di 
 San Sisto, is each a unique birth in which no 
 second mind can bear a part; and go where it 
 may, speak to what myriads it will, it is still 
 the appeal of one soul to one, eliciting response 
 as sharp and single as the echo of n solitary 
 voice. Flowing forth from a single creative na- 
 ture, it acts by ite touch as an experiment in 
 spiritual friendship, and gathers an ever-increas- 
 ing group, held fast in fellowship of enthusiasm, 
 and owning a common obligation to the genius 
 which has discovered for them their true soul. 
 What and where, then, are the two members 
 of this relation? Is the first of them nothing 
 and nowhere? Can a word that is immortal 
 come from a speaker that is ephemeral? 
 
 THE EXTINCTION OF GREAT . MINDS A GREAT 
 TRAGEDY. 
 
 I do not know that there is anything in 
 nature which could be compared in wastefulness 
 with the extinction of great minds; their -gath- 
 ered resources, their matured skill, their lumin- 
 ous insight, their unfailing tact, are not like 
 instincts that can be handed down ; they are ab- 
 solutely personal and inalienable, and if the 
 
THE EXTINCTION OF GREAT MINDS 135 
 
 personality is to be blotted out they are lost 
 from the universe. 
 
 Doubtless this faith in immortality owes its 
 large extension among men in no slight degree 
 to the secret feelin/g that in the nature of man 
 there is more contained than the measure of 
 the present life requires and satisfies. 
 
 A GREATER TRAGEDY THE EXTINCTION OF CON- 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 But it is when we turn to the Moral Con- 
 sciousness that we hear a voice even more dis- 
 tinct demanding an existence larger than this 
 mortal life. What is the meaning of probation? 
 Liberty to go night liberty to igo wrong can 
 it be a mere haphazard gift, an unmeaning in- 
 stitution of contingency, -as if from some curi- 
 osity to see what will turn up 1 And when the 
 experiment is over, are the actors dismissed, 
 the curtain dropped, and the theatre closed? 
 Such an issue would contradict the very essence 
 of moral freedom, which surely loses all sig- 
 nificance if no difference is to be made between 
 those who use it well and those who use it ill. 
 We are not upon our trial, unless there is a 
 future that depends upon ourselves. So that 
 wherever Conscience is, there we stand only in 
 
136 "A STUDY OF RELIGION" 
 
 the fore-court of existence; and a moral world 
 cannot be final, unless it be everlasting. 
 
 But it may be said that there are provisions 
 in the organism of this world for making us feel 
 the difference between right and wrong ways of 
 living; that the physical laws of nature, and 
 the sentiments of men, furnish both reward and 
 retribution. Granted; but is the award cer- 
 tain and adequate? A careful study of facts 
 compels a negative answer. 
 
 MAN'S RELATION TO GOD TRANSCENDS THE SCOPE 
 OF HIS EARTHLY LIFE. 
 
 From this survey of the great lines of human 
 experience two inferences seem to force them- 
 selves upon us : 
 
 (1) That everywhere, in our conscience, in 
 our physical mature, in the sentiments of asso- 
 ciated men, there are indelible marks of a mor- 
 ally constituted world moving toward righteous 
 ends. 
 
 (2) That nowhere, within us or outside of us, 
 do we find the fulfilment of this idea. These 
 facts irresistibly suggest a justifying sequel. 
 Thus the verdict of the moral nature is in har- 
 mony with that of the intellectual and spiritual, 
 and both distinctly report to us that we stand 
 in Divine relations, which infinitely transcend 
 the limits of our earthly years. 
 
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