04.04 - Part 4, Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION BUT if I confined myself to saying that the belief in a God who is not merely ’ substance,’ or ’ subject,’ but is, in Biblical language, ’ a living God,\affords no ground of quarrel between theology and science, I should much understate my thought. I hold, on the contrary, that some such presupposition is not only tolerated, but is actually required, by science; that if it be accepted in the case of science, it can hardly be refused in the case of ethics, aesthetics, or theology; and that if it be thus accepted as a general principle, applicable to the whole circuit of belief, it will be found to provide us with a working solution of some, at least, of the difficulties with which naturalism is incompetent to deal. For what was it that lay at the bottom of those difficulties? Speaking broadly, it may be described as the perpetual collision, the ineffaceable incongruity, between the origin of our beliefs, in so far as these can be revealed to us by science, and the beliefs themselves. This it was that, as I showed in the first part of this Essay, touched with the frost of scepticism our ideals of conduct and our ideals of beauty. This it was that, as I showed in the Second Part, cut down scientific philosophy to the root. And all the later discussions with which I have occupied the attention of the reader serve but to emphasise afresh the inextricable confusion which the naturalistic hypothesis introduces into every department of practice and of speculation, by refusing to allow us to penetrate beyond the phenomenal causes by which, in the order of Nature, our beliefs are produced.

Review each of these departments in turn, and, in the light of the preceding discussion, compare its position in a theological setting with that which it necessarily occupies in a naturalistic one. Let the case of science be taken first, for it is a crucial one. Here, if anywhere, we might suppose ourselves independent of theology. Here, if anywhere, we might expect to be able to acquiesce without embarrassment in the negations of naturalism. But when once we have realised the scientific truth that at the root of every rational process lies an irrational one; that reason, from a scientific point of view, is itself a natural product; and that the whole material on which it works is due to causes, physical, physiological, and social, which it neither creates nor controls, we shall (as I showed just now) be driven in mere self-defence to hold that, behind these non-rational forces, and above them, guiding them by slow degrees, and, as it were, with difficulty, to a rational issue, stands that Supreme Reason in whom we must thus believe, if we are to believe in anything.

Here, then, we are plunged at once into the middle of theology. The belief in God, the attribution to Him of reason, and of what I have called 1 preferential action ’ in relation to the world which He has created, all seem forced upon us by the single assumption that science is not an illusion, and that, with the rest of its teaching, we must accept what it has to say to us about itself as a natural product. At no smaller cost can we reconcile the origins of science with its pretensions, or relieve ourselves of the embarrassments in which we are involved by a naturalistic theory of Nature. But evidently the admission, if once made, cannot stand alone. It is impossible to refuse to ethical beliefs what we have already conceded to scientific beliefs. For the analogy between them is complete. Both are natural products. Neither rank among their remoter causes any which share their essence. And as it is easy to trace back our scientific beliefs to sources which have about them nothing which is rational, so it is easy to trace back our ethical beliefs to sources which have about them nothing which is ethical. Both require us, therefore, to seek behind these phenomenal sources for some ultimate ground with which they shall be congruous; and as we have been moved to postulate a rational God in the interests of -science, so we can scarcely decline to postulate a moral God in the interests of morality.

But, manifestly, those who have gone thus far cannot rest here. If we are to assign a ’ providential ’ origin to the long and complex train of events which have resulted in the recognition of a moral law, we must embrace within the same theory those sentiments and influences, without which a moral law would tend to become a mere catalogue of commandments, possessed, it may be, of an undisputed authority, but obtaining on that account but little obedience. This was the point on which I dwelt at length in the first portion of this Essay. I then showed, that if the pedigrees of conscience, of our ethical ideals, of our capacity for admiration, for sympathy, for repentance, for righteous indignation, were finally to lose themselves among the accidental variations on which Selection does its work, it was inconceivable that they should retain their virtue when once the creed of naturalism had thoroughly penetrated and discoloured every mood of thought and belief. But if, deserting naturalism, we regard the evolutionary process issuing in these ethical results as an instrument for carrying out a Divine purpose, the natural history of the higher sentiments is seen under a wholly different light. They may be due, doubtless they are in fact due, to the same selective mechanism which produces the most cruel and the most disgusting of Nature’s contrivances for protecting the species of some loathsome parasite. Between the two cases science cannot, and naturalism will not, draw any valid distinction. But here theology steps in, and by the conception of design revolutionises our point of view. The most unlovely germ of instinct or of appetite to which we trace back the origin of all that is most noble and of good report, no longer throws discredit upon its developed offshoots. Rather is it consecrated by them. For if, in the region of Causation, it is wholly by the earlier stages that the later are determined, in the region of Design it is only through the later stages that the earlier can be understood. But if these be the consequences which flow from substituting a theological for a naturalistic interpretation of science, of ethics, and of ethical sentiments, what changes will the same process effect in our conception of aesthetics? Naturalism, as we saw, destroys the possibility of objective beauty of beauty as a real, persistent quality of objects; and leaves nothing but feelings of beauty on the one side, and on the other a miscellaneous assortment of objects, called beautiful in their moments of favour, by which, through the chance operation of obscure associations, at some period, and in some persons, these feelings of beauty are aroused. A conclusion of this kind no doubt leaves us chilled and depressed spectators of our own aesthetic enthusiasms. And it may be that to put the scientific theory in a theological setting, instead of in a naturalistic one, will not wholly remove the unsatisfactory effect which the theory itself may leave upon the mind. And yet it surely does something. If we cannot say that Beauty is in any particular case an ’ objective ’ fact, in the sense in which science requires us to believe that ’ mass,’ for example, and ’ configuration,’ are ’objective’ facts, we are not precluded on that account from referring our feeling of it to God, nor from supposing that in the thrill of some deep emotion we have for an instant caught a far-off reflection of Divine beauty. This is, indeed, my faith; and in it the differences of taste which divide mankind lose all their harshness. For we may liken ourselves to the members of some endless procession winding along the borders of a sunlit lake. Towards each individual there will shine along its surface a moving lane of splendour, where the ripples catch and deflect the light in his direction; while on either hand the waters, which to his neighbour’s eyes are brilliant in the sun, for him lie dull and undistinguished. So may all possess a like enjoyment of loveliness. So do all owe it to one unchanging Source. And if there be an endless variety in the immediate objects from which we severally derive it, I know not, after all, that this should furnish any matter for regret.

II

And, lastly, we come to theology, denied by naturalism to be a branch of knowledge at all, but whose truth we have been obliged to assume in order to find a basis for the only knowledge which naturalism allows.

Those who are prepared to admit that, in dealing with the causes of scientific and ethical belief, the theory which offers least difficulty is that which assumes them to have been ’ providentially ’ guided, are not likely to raise objections to a similar theory in the case of religion. For here, at least, might we expect preferential Divine intervention, supposing such intervention were anywhere possible. Much more, then, if it be accepted as actual in other regions of belief. And this is, in fact, the ordinary view of mankind. They have almost always claimed for their beliefs about God that they were due to God. The belief in religion has almost always carried with it, in some shape or other, the belief in Inspiration. To this rule there is, no doubt, to be found an apparent exception in what is known as natural religion natural religion being defined as the religion to which unassisted reason may attain, in contrast to that which can be reached only by the aid of revelation. But, for my own part, I object altogether to the theory underlying this distinction. I do not believe that, strictly speaking, there is any such thing as ’ unassisted reason.’ And I am sure that if there be, the conclusions of ’ natural religion ’ are not among its products. The attentive reader does not require to be told that, according to the views here advocated, every idea involved in such a proposition as that ’ There is a moral Creator and Ruler of the world ’ (which I may assume, for purposes of illustration, to constitute the substance of natural religion) is due to a complex of causes, of which human reason was not the most important; and that this natural religion never would have been heard of, much less have been received with approval, had it not been for that traditional religion of which it vainly supposes itself to be independent. But if this way of considering the matter be accepted; if we are to apply unaltered, in the case of religious beliefs, the procedure already adopted in the case of scientific, ethical, and aesthetic beliefs, and assume for them a Cause harmonious with their essential nature, we must evidently in so doing transcend the common division between ’ natural ’ and ’ supernatural.’ We cannot consent to see the ’ preferential working of Divine power’ only in those religious manifestations which refuse to accommodate themselves to our conception (whatever that may be) of the strictly ’ natural ’ order of the world; nor can we deny a Divine origin to those aspects of religious development which natural laws seem competent to explain. The familiar distinction, indeed, between ’ natural ’ and ’ supernatural ’ coincides neither with that between natural and spiritual, nor with that between ’ preferential action ’ and ’ nonpreferential,’ nor with that between ’ phenomenal ’ and ’ noumenal.’ It is, perhaps, less important than is sometimes supposed; and in this particular connection, at all events, is, as it seems to me, merely irrelevant and confusing a burden, not an aid, to religious speculation.

For, whatever difference there may be between the growth of theological knowledge and of other knowledge, their resemblances are both numerous and instructive. In both we note that movement has been sometimes so rapid as to be revolutionary, sometimes so slow as to be imperceptible. In both, that it has been sometimes an advance, sometimes a retrogression. In both, that it has been sometimes on lines permitting a long, perhaps an indefinite, development, sometimes in directions where farther progress seems barred for ever. In both, that the higher is, from the point of view of science, largely produced by the lower. In both, that, from the point of view of our provisional philosophy, the lower is only to be explained by the higher. In both, that the final product counts among its causes a vast multitude of physiological, psychological, political, and social antecedents with which it has no direct rational or spiritual affiliation.

How, then, can we most completely absorb these facts into our theory of Inspiration? It would, no doubt, be inaccurate to say that inspiration is that, seen from its Divine side, which we call discovery when seen from the human side. But it is not, I think, inaccurate to say that every addition to knowledge, whether in the individual or the community, whether scientific, ethical, or theological, is due to a co-operation between the human soul which assimilates and the Divine power which inspires. Neither acts, or, as far as we can pronounce upon such matters, could act, in independent isolation. For ’unassisted reason ’ is, as I have already said, a fiction; and pure receptivity it is impossible to conceive. Even the emptiest vessel must limit the quantity and determine the configuration of any liquid with which it may be filled. But because this view involves a use of the term ’ inspiration ’ which, ignoring all minor distinctions, extends it to every case in which the production of belief is due to the ’ preferential action ’ of Divine power, it does not, of course, follow that minor distinctions do not exist. All I wish here to insist on is, that the sphere of Divine influence in matters of belief exists as a whole, and may therefore be studied as a whole; and that, not improbably, to study it as a whole would prove no unprofitable preliminary to any examination into the character of its more important parts. So studied, it becomes evident that Inspiration, if this use of the word is to be allowed, is limited to no age, to no country, to no people. It is required by those who learn not less than by those who teach.

Wherever an approach has been made to truth, wherever any individual soul has assimilated some old discovery, or has forced the secret of a new one, there is its co-Operation to be discovered. Its workings are to be traced not merely in the later development of beliefs, but far back among their unhonoured beginnings. Its aid has been granted not merely along the main line of religious progress, but in the side-alleys to which there seems no issue. Are we, for example, to find a full measure of inspiration in the highest utterances of Hebrew prophet or psalmist, and to suppose that the primitive religious conceptions common to the Semitic race had in them no touch of the Divine? Hardly, if we also believe that it was these primitive conceptions which the ’ Chosen People ’ were divinely ordained to purify, to elevate, and to expand until they became fitting elements in a religion adequate to the necessities of a world. Are we, again, to deny any measure of inspiration to the ethico-religious teaching of the great Oriental reformers, because there was that in their general systems of doctrine which prevented, and still prevents, these from merging as a whole in the main stream of religious advance? Hardly, unless we are prepared to admit that men may gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles. These things assuredly are of God; and whatever be the terms in which we choose to express our faith, let us not give colour to the opinion that His assistance to mankind has been narrowed down to the sources, however unique, from which we immediately, and consciously, draw our own spiritual nourishment.

If a preference is shown by any for a more limited conception of the Divine intervention in matters of belief, it must, I suppose, be on one of two grounds. It may, in the first place, arise out of a natural reluctance to force into the same category the transcendent intuitions of prophet or apostle and the stammering utterances of earlier faiths, clouded as these are by human ignorance and marred by human sin. Things spiritually so far asunder ought not, it may be thought, by any system of classification, to be brought together. They belong to separate worlds. They differ not merely infinitely in degree, but absolutely in kind; and a risk of serious error must arise if the same term is loosely and hastily applied to things which, in their essential nature, lie so far apart.

Now, that there may be, or, rather, plainly are, many modes in which belief is assisted by Divine co-operation I have already admitted. That the word ’ inspiration ’ may, with advantage, be confined to one or more of these I do not desire to deny. It is a question of theological phraseology, on which I am not competent to pronounce; and if I have seized upon the word for the purposes of my argument, it is with no desire to confound any distinction which ought to be preserved, but because there is no other term which so pointedly expresses that Divine element in the formation of beliefs on which it was my business to lay stress. This, if my theory be true, does, after all, exist, howsoever it may be described, to the full extent which I have indicated; and though the beliefs which it assists in producing differ infinitely from one another in their nearness to absolute truth, the fact is not disguised, nor the honour due to the most spiritually perfect utterances in aught imperilled, by recognising in all some marks of Divine intervention.

But, in the second place, it may be objected that inspiration thus broadly conceived is incapable of providing mankind with any satisfactory criterion of religious truth. Since its co-operation can be traced in so much that is imperfect, the mere fact of its co-operation cannot in any particular case be a protection even against gross error. If, therefore, we seek in it not merely a Divinely ordered cause of belief, but also a Divinely ordered ground for believing, there must be some means of marking off those examples of its operation which rightfully command our full intellectual allegiance, from those which are no more than evidences of an influence towards the truth working out its purpose slowly through the ages. This is beyond dispute. Nothing that I have said about inspiration in general as a source of belief affects in any way the character of certain instances of inspiration as an authority for belief. Nor was it intended to do so; for the problem, or group of problems, which would thus have been raised is altogether beside the main course of my argument. They belong, riot to an Introduction to Theology, but to Theology itself. Whether there is an authority in religious matters of a kind altogether without parallel in scientific or ethical matters; what, if it exists, is its character, and whence come its claims to our obedience, are questions on which theologians have differed, and still differ, and which it is quite beyond my province to decide. For the subject of this Essay is the ’ foundations of belief,’ and, as I have already indicated, 1 the kind of authority contemplated by theologians is never ’ fundamental,’ in the sense in which that word is here used. The deliverances of no organisation, of no individual, of no record, can lie at the roots of belief as reason, whatever they may do as cause. It is always possible to ask whence these claimants to authority derive their credentials, what titles the organisation or the individual possesses to our obedience, whether the records are authentic, and what is their precise import. And the mere fact that such questions may be put, and that they can neither be thrust aside as irrelevant nor be answered without elaborate critical and historical discussion, shows clearly enough that we have no business with them here.

1 See ante, chapter on Authority and Reason.

III But although it is evidently beyond the scope of this work to enter upon even an elementary discussion of theological method, it seems right that I should endeavour, in strict continuation of the argument of this chapter, to say something on the source from which, according to Christianity, any religious authority whatever must ultimately derive its jurisdiction. What I have so far tried to establish is this that the great body of our beliefs, scientific, ethical, theological, form a more coherent and satisfactory whole if we consider them in a Theistic setting, than if we consider them in a Naturalistic one. The further question, therefore, inevitably suggests itself, Whether we can carry the process a step further, and say that they are more coherent and satisfactory if considered in a Christian setting than in a merely Theistic one? The answer often given is in the negative. It is always assumed by those who do not accept the doctrine of the Incarnation, and it is not uncommonly conceded by those who do, that it constitutes an additional burden upon faith, a new stumbling-block to reason. And many who are prepared to accommodate their beliefs to the requirements of (so-called) ’ Natural Religion,’ shrink from the difficulties and perplexities in which this central mystery of Revealed Religion threatens to involve them. But what are these difficulties? Clearly they are not scientific. We are here altogether outside the region where scientific ideas possess any worth, or scientific categories claim any authority. It may be a realm of shadows, of empty dreams, and vain speculations. But whether it be this, or whether it be the abidingplace of the highest Reality, it evidently must be explored by methods other than those provided for us by the accepted canons of experimental research. Even when we are endeavouring to comprehend the relation of our own finite personalities to the material environment with which they are so intimately connected, we find, as we have seen, that all familiar modes of explanation break down and become meaningless. Yet we certainly exist, and presumably we have bodies. If, then, we cannot devise formulae which shall elucidate the familiar mystery of our daily existence, we need neither be surprised nor embarrassed if the unique mystery of the Christian faith refuses to lend itself to inductive treatment. But though the very uniqueness of the doctrine places it beyond the ordinary range of scientific criticism, the same cannot be said for the historical evidence on which, in part at least, it rests. Here, it will perhaps be urged, we are on solid and familiar ground. We have only got to ignore the arbitrary distinction between ’ sacred ’ and ’ secular,’ and apply the well-understood methods of historic criticism to a particular set of ancient records, in order to extract from them all that is necessary to satisfy our curiosity. If they break down under cross-examination, we need trouble ourselves no further about the metaphysical dogmas to which they point. No immunity or privilege claimed for the subject-matter of belief can extend to the merely human evidence adduced in its support; and as in the last resort the historical element in Christianity does evidently rest on human testimony, nothing can be simpler than to subject this to the usual scientific tests, and accept with what equanimity we may any results which they elicit.

But, in truth, the question is not so simple as those who make use of arguments like these would have us suppose. ’ Historic method ’ has its limitations. It is self-sufficient only within an area which is, indeed, tolerably extensive, but which does not embrace the universe. For, without taking any very deep plunge into the philosophy of historical criticism, we may easily perceive that our judgment as to the truth or falsity of any particular historic statement depends, partly on our estimate of the writer’s trustworthiness, partly on our estimate of his means of information, partly on our estimate of the intrinsic probability of the facts to which he testifies. But these things are not ’ independent variables/ to be measured separately before their results are balanced and summed up. On the contrary, it is manifest that, in many cases, our opinion on the trustworthiness and competence of the witnesses is modified by o;ir opinion as to the inherent likelihood of what they tell us; and that our opinion as to the inherent likelihood of what they tell us may depend on considerations with respect to which no historical method is able to give us any conclusive information. In most cases, no doubt, these questions of antecedent probability have to be themselves decided solely, or mainly, on historic grounds, and, failing anything more scientific, by a kind of historic instinct. But other cases there are, though they be rare, to whose consideration we must bring larger principles, drawn from a wider theory of the world; and among these should be counted as first, both in speculative interest and in ethical importance, the early records of Christianity. That this has been done, and, from their own point of view, quite rightly done, by various destructive schools of New Testament criticism, everyone is aware. Starting from a philosophy which forbade them to accept much of the substance of the Gospel narrative, they very properly set to work to devise a variety of hypotheses which would account for the fact that the narrative, with all its peculiarities, was nevertheless there. Of these hypotheses there are many, and some of them have occasioned an admirable display of erudite ingenuity, fruitful of instruction from every point of view, and for all time. But it is a great, though common, error to describe these learned efforts as examples of the unbiassed application of historic methods to historic documents. It would be more correct to say that they are endeavours, by the unstinted employment of an elaborate critical apparatus, to force the testimony of existing records into conformity with theories on the truth or falsity of which it is for philosophy, not history, to pronounce. What view I take of the particular philosophy to which these critics make appeal the reader already knows; and our immediate concern is not again to discuss the presuppositions with which other people have approached the consideration of New Testament history, but to arrive at some conclusion about our own.

How, then, ought the general theory of things at which we have arrived to affect our estimate of the antecedent probability of the Christian views of Christ? Or, if such a phrase as ’ antecedent probability ’ be thought to suggest a much greater nicety of calculation than is at all possible in a case like this, in what temper of mind, in what mood of expectation, ought our provisional philosophy to induce us to consider the extant historic evidence for the Christian story? The reply must, I think, depend, as I shall show in a moment, upon the view we take of the ethical import of Christianity; while its ethical import, again, must depend on the degree to which it ministers to our ethical needs.

IV

Now ethical needs, important though they are, occupy no great space, as a rule, in the works of ethical writers. I do not say this by way of criticism; for I grant that any examination into these needs would have only an indirect bearing on the essential subject-matter of ethical philosophy, since no inquiry into their nature, history, or value would help either to establish the fundamental principles of a moral code or to elaborate its details. But, after all, as I have said before, an assortment of ’ categorical imperatives,’ however authoritative and complete, supplies but a meagre outfit wherewith to meet the storms and stresses of actual experience. If we are to possess a practical system, which shall not merely tell men what they ought to do, but assist them to do it; still more, if we are to regard the spiritual quality of the soul as possessing an intrinsic value not to be wholly measured by the external actions to which it gives rise, much more than this will be required. It will not only be necessary to claim the assistance of those ethical aspirations and ideals which are not less effectual for their purpose though nothing corresponding to them should exist, but it will also be necessary, if it be possible, to meet those ethical needs which must work more harm than good unless we can sustain the belief that there is somewhere to be found a Reality wherein they can find their satisfaction.

These are facts of moral psychology which, thus broadly stated, nobody, I think, will be disposed to dispute, although the widest differences of opinion may and do prevail as to the character, number, and relative importance of the ethical needs thus called into existence by ethical commands. It is, further, certain, though more difficulty may be felt in admitting it, that these needs can be satisfied in many cases but imperfectly, in some cases not at all, without the aid of theology and of theological sanctions. One commonly recognised ethical need, for example, is for harmony between the interests of the individual and those of the community. In a rude and limited fashion, and for a very narrow circle of ethical commands, this is deliberately provided by the prison and the scaffold, the whole machinery of the criminal law. It is provided, with less deliberation, but with greater delicacy of adjustment, and over a wider area of duty, by the operation of public opinion. But it can be provided, with any approach to theoretical perfection, only by a future life, such as that which is assumed in more than one system of religious belief.

Now the question is at once suggested by cases of this kind whether, and, if so, under what limitations, we can argue from the existence of an ethical need to the reality of the conditions under which alone it would be satisfied. Can we, for example, argue from the need for some complete correspond, ence between virtue and felicity, to the reality of another world than this, where such a correspondence will be completely effected? A great ethical philosopher has, in substance, asserted that we can. He held that the reality of the Moral Law implied the reality of a sphere where it could for ever be obeyed, under conditions satisfactory to the ’ Practical Reason ’; and it was thus that he found a place in his system for Freedom, for Immortality, and for God. The metaphysical machinery, indeed, by which Kant endeavoured to secure these results is of a kind which we cannot employ. But we may well ask whether somewhat similar inferences are not fitting portions of the provisional philosophy I am endeavouring to recommend; and, in particular, whether they do not harmonise with the train of thought we have been pursuing in the course of this Chapter. If the reality of scientific and of ethical knowledge forces us to assume the existence of a rational and moral Deity, by whose preferential assistance they have gradually come into existence, must we not suppose that the Power which has thus produced in man the knowledge of right and wrong, and has added to it the faculty of creating ethical ideals, must have provided some satisfaction for the ethical needs which the historical development of the spiritual life has gradually called into existence?

Manifestly the argument in this shape is one which must be used with caution. To reason purelj a priori from our general notions concerning the working of Divine Providence to the reality of particular historic events in time, or to the prevalence of particular conditions of existence through eternity, would imply a knowledge of Divine matters which we certainly do not possess, and which, our faculties remaining what they are, a revelation Irom Heaven could not, I suppose, communicate to us. My contention, at all events, is of a much humbler kind. I confine myself to asking whether, in a universe which, by hypothesis, is under moral governance, there is not a presumption in favour of facts or events which minister, if true, to our highest moral demands? and whether such a presumption, if it exists, is not sufficient, and more than sufficient, to neutralise the counter -presumption which has uncritically governed so much of the criticism directed in recent times against the historic claims of Christianity? For my own part, I cannot doubt that both these questions should be answered in the affirmative; and if the reader will consider the variety of ways by which Christianity is, in fact, fitted effectually to minister to our ethical needs, I find it hard to believe that he will arrive at any different conclusion.

I need not say that no complete treatment of this question is contemplated here. Any adequate survey of the relation in which Christianity stands to the moral needs of man would lead us into the very heart of theology, and would require us to consider topics altogether iinsuited to these controversial pages. Yet it may, perhaps, be found possible to illustrate my meaning without penetrating far into territories more properly occupied by theologians; while, at the same time, the examples of which I shall make use may serve to show that, among the needs ministered to by Christianity, are some which increase rather than diminish with the growth of knowledge and the progress of science; and that this Religion is therefore no mere reform, appropriate only to a vanished epoch in the history of culture and civilisation, but a development of theism now more necessary to us than ever.

I am aware, of course, that this may seem in strange discord with opinions very commonly held. There are many persons who suppose that, in addition to any metaphysical or scientific objections to Christian doctrines, there has arisen a legitimate feeling of intellectual repulsion to them, directly due to our more extended perception of the magnitude and complexity of the material world. The discovery of Copernicus, it has been said, is the death-blow to Christianity: in other words, the recognition by the human race of the insignificant part which they and their planet play in the cosmic drama renders the Incarnation, as it were, intrinsically incredible. This is not a question of logic, or science, or history. No criticism of documents, no haggling over ’natural’ or ’supernatural,’ either creates the difficulty or is able to solve it. For it arises out of what I may almost call an aesthetic sense of disproportion. ’ What is man, that Thou art mindful of him; and the son of man, that Thou visitest him? ’ is a question charged by science with a weight of meaning far beyond what it could have borne for the goet whose lips first uttered it. And those whose studies bring perpetually to their remembrance the immensity of this material world, who know how brief and how utterly imperceptible is the impress made by organic life in general, and by human life in particular, upon the mighty forces which surround them, find it hard to believe that on so small an occasion this petty satellite of no very important sun has been chosen as the theatre of an event so solitary and so stupendous.

Reflection, indeed, shows that those who thus argue have manifestly permitted their thoughts about God to be controlled by a singular theory of His relations to man and to the world, based on an unbalanced consideration of the vastness of Nature. They have conceived Him as moved by the mass of His own works; as lost in spaces of His own creation. Consciously or unconsciously, they have fallen into the absurdity of supposing that He considers His creatures, as it were, with the eyes of a contractor or a politician; that He measures their value according to their physical or intellectual importance; and that He sets store by the number of square miles they inhabit or the foot-pounds of energy they are capable of developing. In truth, the inference they should have drawn is of precisely the opposite kind. The very sense of the place occupied in the material universe by man the intelligent animal, creates in man the moral being a new need for Christianity, which, before science measured out the heavens for us, can hardly be said to have existed. Metaphysically speaking, our opinions on the magnitude and complexity of the natural world should, indeed, have no bearing on our conception of God’s relation, either to us or to it. Though we supposed the sun to have been created some six thousand years ago, and to be ’ about the size of the Peloponnesus,’ yet the fundamental problems concerning time and space, matter and spirit, God and man, would not on that account have to be formally restated. But then, we are not creatures of pure reason; and those who desire the assurance of an intimate and effectual relation with the Divine life, and who look to this for strength and consolation, find that the progress of scientific knowledge makes it more and more difficult to obtain it by the aid of any merely speculative theism. The feeling of trusting dependence which was easy for the primitive tribes, who regarded themselves as their God’s peculiar charge, and supposed Him in some special sense to dwell among them, is not easy for us; nor does it tend to become easier. We can no longer share their nai’ve anthropomorphism. We search out God with eyes grown old in studying Nature, with minds fatigued by centuries of metaphysic, and imaginations glutted with material infinities. It is in vain that we describe Him as immanent in creation, and refuse to reduce Him to an abstraction, be it deistic or be it pantheistic. The overwhelming force and regularity of the great natural movements dull the sharp impression of an ever-present Personality deeply concerned in our spiritual well-being. He is hidden, not revealed, in the multitude of phenomena, and as our knowledge of phenomena increases, He retreats out of ail realised connection with us farther and yet farther into the illimitable unknown.

Then it is that, through the aid of Christian doctrine, we are saved from the distorting influences of our own discoveries. The Incarnation throws the whole scheme of things, as we are too easily apt to represent it to ourselves, into a different and far truer proportion. It abruptly changes the whole scale on which we might be disposed to measure the magnitudes of the universe. What we should otherwise think great, we now perceive to be relatively small. What we should otherwise think trifling, we now know to be immeasurably important. And the change is not only morally needed, but is philosophically justified. Speculation by itself should be sufficient to convince us that, in the sight of a righteous God, material grandeur and moral excellencies are incommensurable quantities; and that an infinite accumulation of the one cannot compensate for the smallest diminution of the other. Y^et I know not whether, as a theistic speculation, this truth could effectually maintain itself against the brute pressure of external Nature. In the world looked at by the light of simple theism, the evidences of God’s material power lie about us on every side, daily added to by science, universal, overwhelming. The evidences of His moral interest have to be anxiously extracted, grain by grain, through the speculative analysis of our moral nature. Mankind, however, are not given to speculative analysis; and if it be desirable that they should be enabled to obtain an imaginative grasp of this great truth; if they need to have brought home to them that, in the sight of God, the stability of the heavens is of less importance than the moral growth of a human spirit, I know not how this end could be more completely attained than by the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. A somewhat similar train of thought is suggested by the progress of one particular branch of scientific investigation. Mankind can never have been ignorant of the dependence of mind on body. The feebleness of infancy, the decay of age, the effects of sickness, fatigue, and pain, are facts too obvious and too insistent ever to have passed unnoticed. But the movement of discovery has prodigiously emphasised our sense of dependence on matter. We now know that it is no loose or variable connection which ties mind to body. There may, indeed, be neural changes which do not issue in consciousness; but there is no consciousness, so far as accepted observations and experiments can tell us, which is not associated with neural changes. Looked at, therefore, from the outside, from the point of view necessarily adopted by the biologist, the psychic life seems, as it were, but an intermittent phosphorescence accompanying the cerebral changes in certain highly organised mammals. And science, through countless channels, with irresistible force drives home to each one of us the lesson that we are severally bound over in perpetual servitude to a body for whose existence and qualities we have no responsibility whatever. As the reader is well aware, views like these will not stand critical examination. Of all creeds, materialism is the one which, looked at from the inside from the point of view of knowledge and the knowing Self is least capable of being philosophically defended, or even coherently stated.

Nevertheless, the burden of the body is not, in practice, to be disposed of by any mere process of critical analysis. From birth to death, without pause or respite, it encumbers us on our path. We can never disentangle ourselves from its meshes, nor divide with it the responsibility for our joint performances. Conscience may tell us that we ought to control it, and that we can. But science, hinting that, after all, we are but its product and its plaything, receives ominous support from our experiences of mankind. Philosophy may assure us that the account of body and mind given by materialism is neither consistent nor intelligible. Yet body remains the most fundamental and all-pervading fact with which mind has got to deal, the one from which it can least easily shake itself free, the one that most complacently lends itself to every theory destructive of high endeavour.

Now, what is wanted here is not abstract speculation or negative dialectic. These, indeed, may lend us their aid, but they are not very powerful allies in this particular species of warfare. They can assure us, with a well-grounded confidence, that materialism is wrong, but they have (as I think) nothing satisfactory to put in its place, and cannot pretend to any theoretic explanation which shall cover all the facts. What we need, then, is something that shall appeal to men of flesh and blood, struggling with the temptations and discouragements which flesh and blood is heir to: confused and baffled by theories of heredity: sure that the physiological view represents at least one aspect of the truth; not sure how any larger and more consoling truth can be welded on to it; yet swayed towards the materialist side less, it may be, by materialist reasoning than by the inner confirmation which a humiliating experience gives them of their own subjection to the body.

What support does the belief in a Deity ineffably remote from all human conditions bring to men thus hesitating whether they are to count themselves as beasts that perish, or among the Sons of God? What bridge can be found to span the immeasurable gulf which separates Infinite Spirit from creatures who seem little more than physiological accidents? What faith is there, other than the Incarnation, which will enable us to realise that, however far apart, they are not hopelessly divided? The intellectual perplexities which haunt us in that dim region where mind and matter meet may not be thus allayed. But they who think with me that, though it is a hard thing for us to believe that we are made in the likeness of God, it is yet a very necessary thing, will not be anxious to deny that an effectual trust in this great truth, a full satisfaction of this ethical need, are among the natural fruits of a Christian theory of the world.

One more topic there is, of the same family as those with which we have just been dealing, to which, before concluding, I must briefly direct the reader’s attention. I have already said something about what is known as the ’problem of evil,’ and the immemorial difficulty which it throws in the way of a completely coherent theory of the world on a religious or moral basis. I do not suggest now that the doctrine of the Incarnation supplies any philosophic solution of this difficulty. I content myself with pointing out that the difficulty is much less oppressive under the Christian than under any simpler form of Theism; and that though it may retain undiminished whatever speculative force it possesses, its moral grip is loosened, and it no longer parches up the springs of spiritual hope or crushes moral aspiration. For where precisely does the difficulty lie? It lies in the supposition that an all-powerful Deity has chosen out of an infinite, or at least an unknown, number of possibilities to create a world in which pain is a prominent, and apparently an ineradicable, element. His action on this view is, so to speak, gratuitous. He might have done otherwise; He has done thus. He might have created sentient beings capable of nothing but happiness; He has in fact created them prone to misery, and subject by their very constitution and circumstances to extreme possibilities of physical pain and mental affliction. How can One of Whom this can be said excite our love? How can He claim our obedience? How can He be a fitting object of praise, reverence, and worship? So runs the familiar argument, accepted by some as a permanent element in their melancholy philosophy; wrung from others as a cry of anguish under the sudden stroke of bitter experience. This reasoning is in essence an explication of what is supposed to be involved in the attribute of Omnipotence; and the sting of its conclusion lies in the inferred indifference of God to the sufferings of His creatures. There are, therefore, two points at which it may be assailed. We may argue, in the first place, that in dealing with subjects so far above our reach, it is in general the height of philosophic temerity to squeeze out of every predicate the last significant drop it can apparently be forced to yield; or drive all the arguments it suggests to their extreme logical conclusions. And, in particular, it may be urged that it is erroneous, perhaps even unmeaning, to say that the universality of Omnipotence includes the power to do that which is irrational; and that, without knowing the Whole, we cannot say of any part whether it is rational or not.

These are metaphysical considerations which, so long as they are used critically, and not dogmatically, negatively, not positively, seem to me to have force. But there is a second line of attack, on which it is more my business to insist. I have already pointed out that ethics cannot permanently flourish side by side with a creed which represents God as indifferent to pain and sin; so that, if our provisional philosophy is to include morality within its circuit (and what harmony of knowledge would that be which did not?), the conclusions which apparently follow from the co-existence of Omnipotence and of Evil are not to be accepted. Yet this speculative reply is, after all, but a fair-weather argument; too abstract easily to move mankind at large, too frail for the support, even of a philosopher, in moments of extremity. Of what use is it to those who, under the stress of sorrow, are permitting themselves to doubt the goodness of God, that such doubts must inevitably tend to wither virtue at the root? No such conclusion will frighten them. They have already almost reached it. Of what worth, they cry, is virtue in a world where sufferings like theirs fall alike on the just and on the unjust? For themselves, they know only that they are solitary and abandoned; victims of a Power too strong for them to control, too callous for them to soften, too far for them to reach, deaf to supplication, blind to pain. Tell them, with certain theologians, that their misfortunes are explained and justified by an hereditary taint; tell them, with certain philosophers, that, could they understand the world in its completeness, their agony would show itself an element necessary to the harmony of the Whole, and they will think you are mocking them. Whatever be the worth of speculations like these, it is not in the moments when they are most required that they come effectually to our rescue. What is needed is such a living faith in God’s relation to Man as shall leave no place for that helpless resentment against the appointed Order so apt to rise within us at the sight of undeserved pain. And this faith is possessed by those who vividly realise the Christian form of Theism. For they worship One who is no remote contriver of a universe to whose ills He is indifferent. If they suffer, did He not on their account suffer also? If suffering falls not always on the most guilty, was He not innocent? Shall they cry aloud that the world is ill-designed for their convenience, when He for their sakes subjected Himself to its conditions? It is true that beliefs like these do not in any narrow sense resolve our doubts nor provide us with explanations. But they give us something better than many explanations. For they minister, or rather the Reality behind them ministers, to one of our deepest ethical needs: to a need which, far from showing signs of diminution, seems to grow with the growth of civilisation, and to touch us ever more keenly as the hardness of an earlier time dissolves away.

Here, then, on the threshold of Christian Theology, I bring my task to a conclusion. I feel, on looking back over the completed work, even more strongly than I felt during its progress, how hard was the task I have undertaken, and how far beyond my powers successfully to accomplish. For I have aimed at nothing less than to show, within a reasonable compass and in a manner to be understood by all, how, in face of the complex tendencies which sway this strange age of ours, we may best draw together our beliefs into a comprehensive unity which shall possess at least a relative and provisional stability. In so bold an attempt I may well have failed. Yet, whatever be the particular weaknesses and defects which mar the success of my endeavours, three or four broad principles emerge from the discussion, the essential importance of which I find it impossible to doubt, whatever errors I may have made in their application.

1. It seems beyond question that any system which, with our present knowledge and, it may be, our existing faculties, we are able to construct must suffer from obscurities, from defects of proof, and from incoherences. Narrow it down to bare science and no one has seriously proposed to reduce it further you will still find all three, and in plenty.

2. No unification of belief of the slightest theoretical value can take place on a purely scientific basis on a basis, I mean, of induction from particular experiences, whether ’ external ’ or * internal.’

3. No philosophy or theory of knowledge (epistemology) can be satisfactory which does not find room within it for the quite obvious, but not sufficiently considered fact that, so far as empirical science can tell us anything about the matter, most of the proximate causes of belief, and all its ultimate causes, are non-rational in their character.

4. No unification of beliefs can be practically adequate which does not include ethical beliefs as well as scientific ones; nor which refuses to count among ethical beliefs, not merely those which have immediate reference to moral commands, but those also which make possible moral sentiments, ideals and aspirations, and which satisfy our ethical needs. Any system which, when worked out to its legitimate issues, fails to effect this object can afford no permanent habitation for the spirit of man. To enforce, illustrate, and apply these principles has been the main object of the preceding pages. How far I have succeeded in showing that the least incomplete unification open to us must include the fundamental elements of Theology, and of Christian Theology, I leave it for others to determine; repeating only the conviction, more than once expressed in the body of this Essay, that it is not explanations which survive, but the things which are explained; not theories, but the things about which we theorise; and that, therefore, no failure on my part can imperil the great truths, be they religious, ethical, or scientific, whose interdependence I have endeavoured to establish.