' I li ill i ill i •! I ' i :i' iiitij ij \\v, ; li iiiiliii!!! 'Hill |i N i I !!i;i ... NlNIIV ill ,{lftiiiiii!li i !isl!!!i illiillili iiillil 11 i IE : li i I !: 1 I I I 1 II I if! ! i;j!;!i [!!!'|i!lll!l i I 1 li ! ! .In !HI! all llfilill £^4*^ y^ ^ &#+ k/j LIBE A.RY or THE Theological Seminary PRINCETON, N. J. BR 121 .C6413 1847 Coquerel, Athanase, 1795- 1868. Christianity, its perfect a A nr\ 4- a +- -i r\ry f n fHo monf al CHRISTIANITY: ITS PERFECT ADAPTATION TO THE MENTAL, MORAL, AND SPIRITUAL NATURE OF MAN. BY / ATHANASE COQUEREL, ONE OF THE PASTORS OF THE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF FRANCE, AND CHEVALIER OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR. (Evanstatetr BY THE REV. D. DAVISON, M.A. WITH A PREFACE, WRITTEN EXPRESSLY FOR THE ENGLISH EDITION, BY THE AUTHOR. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1847. London : Spottiswoode and Shaw, New-street- Square. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. The Translator and Editor presents the following work to the English public as one of the signs of the times. In most Protestant countries, and in England especially, Protestantism, from political circumstances at first assumed, and from political circumstances has continued to preserve, a stationary dogmatical form. The prin- ciples of the Reformation were soon forsaken ; and " the sufficiency of the Scriptures, and the right of private judgment," having led the early reformers to adopt cer- tain definite formularies of faith, these were sanctioned by law, stereotyped in articles, hedged round by political privileges, favoured by influence, and supported by endowments ; and consequently they have remained unchanged till the present hour. The knowledge of the age, and the results of inquiry, have in many cases gone beyond the conclusions of the early re- formers ; many of the political barriers have already been removed, and there is an obviously growing ten- dency in the public mind, within and without the Church, to resume the true principles of Protestantism, and freely to inquire into the "mind of the spirit." The effects of the fermentation in the public mind on this subject are sufficiently obvious ; and the very violence of the antagonism to free inquiry is the most IV TRANSLATORS PREFACE, distinct evidence both of the weakness of its opponents and of the apprehended dangers of the result. How long it may be till the " fields are ripe for the harvest," it is impossible to tell ; how long it may be before Christi- anity shall be able to disembarrass itself of those forms, authority, dogmas, and worldly power by which its free expansion and development are still repressed, we can- not foresee ; but that the process has been, and is going on, no one can doubt. The tendency to fall back upon authority exhibited by many sincere churchmen is an evidence of the untenableness of their present position on the supposition of the full right of free inquiry and private judgment ; and it is obvious, notwithstanding the immense secular advantages which Churches " esta- blished by law " every where possess, that Christendom is approaching a period when the professors of Chris- tianity will be still more distinctly divided into two parties — the party absolutely relying upon, and the party absolutely rejecting authority ; and the issue of the contest, in an age of progressively increasing learn- ing, freedom, and civilisation, admits of no question. In other Protestant countries Christianity has had a freer development ; it has been more freely subjected to the tests of history, criticism, and experience; and while its true claims have been more clearly brought forward, and built upon a surer foundation, it has been freed from many of the pretensions with which ignorance, superstition, and interest have clothed it, and which have formed the main impediments to its prevalence and triumph. Prevail and triumph it will, in due season ; but much yet remains to be done to clear the way for the Gospel, that it may have free course and be glorified. TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. V Even since the Reformation it has been often deemed impossible to effect a complete reconciliation between the claims of Revelation and Science — to assign au- thority and reason their due limits; and yet it has been always felt by enlightened men of all parties that Christianity must be able to stand the ordeal of every human test before it can find universal acceptance as the word of God, and become the religion of men of every kindred, and nation, and tongue. Much has been done to effect this end in Germany, Switzerland, France, America, and England, of which, perhaps, one of the most splendid proofs is the recent work of Professor Andrews Norton on " The Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels," — a work based upon solid learning and deep research, distinguished by calm- ness and impartiality of judgment, and a full and ela- borate consideration and refutation of the objections urged against Christianity on historical and critical grounds. The work here offered to the public is intended to meet, and does meet, another source of objection, and aims at reconciling Christianity with metaphysical science, and at presenting in one view the philosophy of religion, and the religion of philosophy. None can doubt the greatness of the aim ; and should there be any who may feel apprehensive of the danger of the attempt, or remain unpersuaded of the complete success of its execution, all will recognise a very important labour in a most important field of investigation and research. The high claims of the author as a diligent student, a learned theologian, and as one of the most eloquent and best known pulpit orators of the present A 3 VI TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. age, render it as useless, as it would be obtrusive, to dwell on his merits. The following Preface has been drawn up by the Author especially for the English Edition. It can- not fail to be read with great interest by persons of all religious parties in this country. It will serve to give information to many, — to remove the preju- dices of some, — and to show the unfounded nature of many of the objections and calumnies which have been interestedly or ignorantly put forth against Pro- testantism and its pastors in the Church of France. May whatever tends to truth and knowledge find ac- ceptance ; may faith be increased ; hope strengthened ; and charity, the highest attainment of human excel- lence, universally prevail ! The Translator has only to add, that he has endea- voured to present the Author's work as faithfully, both in the letter and spirit, as lay within his power. It requires careful reading ; and, if properly studied, the text should be first read through without the notes, which may be better examined on a second perusal, when the spirit and objects of the text are fully under- stood. AUTHOR'S PREFACE, The Author submits the present volume to the En- glish reader, with the confident hope that in England, one of the nations of Christendom on which Providence has imposed the duty of being a bulwark of evangelical faith, some interest will be taken in the first complete system of Protestant dogmatics published in France by a French Protestant minister, by a pastor of the French established church, since the revocation of the edict of Nantz. The English reader will at once perceive that the work is widely different from what it would have been, if written by a divine of the old Protestant Church of France, politically demolished by the lamentable and tyrannical revocation of the edict of Nantz, and not by a clergyman of the present reformed national church of France, established by the law of the eighth of Germinal, in the Xth year of the Republic (8 th of April, 1802). For the author of the volume, as a Christian and as a minister of the Word of God, and even for every disciple of the Gospel, these statements, these opening remarks, when considered in respect to the subject of the treatise, have weight enough to call for a full and sincere explan- ation. The bond of Christian union between English A 4 Vlll AUTHORS PREFACE. and French Protestantism is concerned in these ques- tions ; and before the paramount importance of this view, the poor vanity of authorship dwindles into nothing, and vanishes away to such a degree, that the Author has, though not without some effort, found courage, for the first time in his life, to address the English public in the English language. This boldness in its turn requires some justification, and obliges the Author to perform the delicate task of speaking of himself, at least in a few hasty lines. One advantage, however, offers consolation for this necessary rashness ; and in the hope of meeting with the liberal indulgence which a Frenchman is always in need of when writing the English language, he will try at once to excuse this act of imprudence, and (what he far more considers as a duty) to justify his conscientious and re- ligious motives in writing and publishing the present volume. Though a Frenchman by birth, though my whole life has been spent on the Continent, I was brought up half an Englishman, the nephew and adopted son of one of the most remarkable female writers of modern times, who justly bears the title of English Historian of the French Revolution, whose works have been translated into all modern languages, and are even now often had recourse to by many authors of the present day. Her poems have been translated by the celebrated Chevalier de Bouflers ; she herself translated the Travels of the celebrated Humboldt, and remained to the last the friend of Clarkson and Wilberforce, of Southey, Wordsworth, and Rogers, of Mrs. Barbauld and Mrs. Opie, — Helen Maria Williams. This eminent woman, whose pen was author's preface. IX constantly devoted to the defence of liberty, and who was very near losing her life in the cause, when imprisoned during the reign of Terror in the palace of the Luxem- bourg, with several deputies of the illustrious party of the Grironde, filled a mother's vacant place for my brother # and myself, and brought us up. The consequence was, that we enjoyed the singular advantage of speaking two maternal languages ; and one of the earliest lessons we were taught was the long and ancient ties of our family with England and Scotland. Our grandfather, Mr. Ch. Williams, of Aberconway, Caernarvon, Wales, held a high station in the War-office ; he was descended from a very old Welsh family ; one of his ancestors having been John Williams of Aberconway, Archbishop of York, who succeeded Bacon as Keeper of the Seals. To one of the branches of the family belonged the celebrated dissenting divine, Daniel Williams, who married, in 1701, the daughter of a French refugee, and left to his trustees, for public use, the institution called Williams's Library. Our grandmother was a Hay of Naugthon, a direct descendant of one of the ardent supporters of religious liberty in Scotland, who took the field for the Covenant in 1643 ; and I still pre- serve with due care his silken banner, blue and white, honourably shattered, and bearing the motto, Tu Cly- peus! Covenant for Religion, Crown, and Countrey. Our venerable grandmother, to the great astonishment of the * Mr. Charles Coquerel : known by several publications, and parti- cularly by his History of the Church of the Desert (2 vols. Svo.)» in- cluding the period between the death of Louis XIV. and the French Revolution, written from the original manuscripts of Antoine Court and Paul Rabaut, the two most celebrated ministers at that time in the south of France. A 5 X AUTHOR S PREFACE. most remarkable men of the times of the Republic and of the Empire, completely realised in Paris the type of the true Protestant English gentlewoman ; and how often did she find a lingering pleasure in relating to our infant attention the story told by all the Scotch historians, of a peasant of the name of Hay, who, in 980, armed with a yoke and seconded by his two sons, stopped the Danes in a narrow pass till the Scotch were able to rally, and received, as a reward, an escutcheon bearing three yokes and the motto, Servajugum, the arms of Erroll ! It will be readily believed that our family occupied a conspi- cuous place in the Protestant Church of Paris, and grew intimate with its three ministers, Rabaut, Monod, and Marron, of which last I now fill the place. This intimacy, their encouragements, and, more than all, the constant example of domestic piety set at home, led me, when yet very young, to the determination of waving the wide and brilliant prospect of various advancement which our family connexions opened to us during the Imperial government, and of entering the Church ; a de- termination for which ever since I have earnestly blessed the Almighty, even before affluence and influence disap- peared in the tremendous change on the fall of the em- pire. I passed through the regular course of studies in the newly opened Protestant Academy of Montauban, and soon after leaving it, received a temporary call as minister of the French Church in Amsterdam. Thither I went for a few weeks, and remained twelve years. The Protestantism of Holland is not generally valued, according to its real worth, in the balance of Protestant Europe. No church, I feel bound to declare, has a better right to the respect and admiration of the Pro- AUTHOR S PREFACE. XI testant community at large, than the Church of Holland, from the soundness of its evangelical and liberal principles, its true piety and Christian life, its deep studies, and the religious peace prevailing throughout its borders. No system of dissent has of late invaded it ; such harmony reigns amongst the clergy of the various parishes that the principle of separatism cannot gain a standing ground ; the dangerous German metaphysical and criti- cal infidelity has not followed the current of the Rhine and flowed down into the midst of its schools ; the still more dangerous infidelity of France, so light in its affected science, has not crossed the frontier ; it stopped on this side of Belgium, and drew back before it could pass the wide heaths of Holland ; the American theory of a complete separation of Church and State, and of splitting the Church into almost as many congregations as families, is known only by name. All that is praise- worthy, all that is enlightened, all that is really useful and evangelical in the tenets, and examples, and institu- tions of olden times, is carefully preserved, and what is particularly kept up with the most assiduous care, is the high level of theological and biblical science. In that country, a clergyman is naturally drawn on to be a man of distinction and of eloquence, if he can ; but a man of extensive learning he must be. I very soon discovered that a student from the Pro- testant Academy of Montauban could not be compared with the candidates of the Universities of Leyden and of Utrecht ; a difference easily accounted for by the simple fact, that the Protestant Academy of Montauban was opened in 1810; and before I close these pages I shall refer to this point of comparison at A 6 Xll AUTHOR S PREFACE. greater length, There was but one thing to be done ; I sat down to work, and I believe I may say, that I have worked diligently ever since ; I avoided the stum- bling-block of extempore preaching, the surest method, particularly when young, of forming the habit of preaching words, instead of ideas ; I wrote sermons by hundreds,, always committing them to memory for the pulpit ; and according to the rule, that in order to learn a foreign tongue the best way is to write out its grammar and syntax, I composed and published, among many other volumes, a considerable work, entitled Sacred Bio- graphy, which forms, I may say, almost an encyclopedia of Biblical History, Archaeology, and Criticism, and con- tains a compendium of what is truly good and truly Christian in Dutch, German, and old French theology. All this enabled me to keep my situation in Amsterdam, when at last the celebrated Cuvier, who, as councillor of state and of the university, was then at the head of the administration of Protestant affairs in France, resolved on my return to my native country, either as professor at Montauban, or pastor in Paris, and he had me named in 1830 to fill the place in my native city, soon left vacant by the decease of my venerable friend Mons. Marron. For seventeen years past, by constant preaching before numerous congregations, by attentively listening to the re-echoing of this long course of sermons, by various volumes sent to the press, and particularly by a new and revised edition of the Biographie Sacree, which is now on the desk of most of the ministers in France ; by taking an active part in the committees of most of our religious societies, and by contributing largely to several of our religious periodicals ; by a AUTHOR'S PREFACE. Xlll constant and intimate intercourse with the Protestant congregations of Paris (which certainly do not in- clude less than 30,000 individuals), and by a constant correspondence with a great number of my fellow- ministers in the Departments, I believe I do not presume too much in saying that I have attained a thorough knowledge of the situation, the wants, and the spirit of the Protestantism of France. This has led me to cherish an ardent desire that I might not be removed, nor my labours be closed, till the completion of the work now offered to the English public. The work assumes to be a complete view of Christi- anity, under the twofold aspect of reason and faith, of human knowledge and Divine revelation ; the volume unfolds, if the labour answers the aim, a complete system of philosophy and of religion, — the religion of the Gospel, such as I consider and believe it to be. It is the labour of my whole life, the summary of the long studies of thirty years spent in ministerial duties. The purpose of this treatise would not have been answered if the book, a work of conscience, was not a work of perfect sincerity ; it is even so much so that the system of religion unfolded in these pages is com- plete; all the deep and awful questions put to the human intellect by the Christian faith are answered ; I have said all that I believe ; I have kept nothing in reserve, no sentiment of my mind, no secret of my understanding, no conviction of my creed. I have spoken with that tranquil security which faith inspires ; and if I have always found myself at ease with respect to the risk of error, it is simply because I have felt myself supported by the calmness of sincerity ; in the XIV AUTHORS PREFACE. language of Montaigne, I always could say to myself, " Ma conscience ne falsifie pas un iota ; mon inscience je ne seay." Every thing is consistent in the book ; the thoughts are bound up together; they all serve in their turn as premises and conclusions; it belongs to the very essence of religious truths to be melted down into a condensed alloy, to be orderly disposed in a connected system. To detach a few fragments, to weigh some separate propositions, to discuss not the groundwork and the whole, but some scattered theories of the essay after breaking the links of the chain, would be to dis- pose of the volume without justice to the author, or without fruit to the reader. No modern work of the kind has appeared in the religious literature of France. The existing Protestant dogmatic treatises are of older date : they were written under the dominion of the exclusive confession of faith, drawn up by our fathers (and to this part of the subject I shall return), under the stifling pressure of an official theo- logy, alone permitted to prevail, tacitly at least, amongst our churches, and which reduced every tongue to silence. When it did not lead to evasions of the truth, truth could only be diffused by mere mutterings or by ambiguous teachings ; progress was impossible, unless prudence was carried to the extreme limits of the most timid reserve. The tree of Divine knowledge was pruned of its parasite branches one by one, and every care was taken to deafen the noise of their fall ; truth was cut short in its growth, and not allowed to offer her balmy fruits to every hand. But since political freedom in France has taken its station on the thresholds of our homes and our churches, \ AUTHOR S PREFACE. XV followed by religious freedom, without perhaps any original or intentional recognition of this fellowship (for the legislators of 1802 thought merely of rendering our worship free, and not of our creed, our theology, which did not for a moment fix their attention) ; since intolerance has with us run its course and lost its suit ; and since faith amongst our congregations admits that true religion cannot suffer any real injury from the full liberty of the desk and the pulpit, Protestantism, in France, has begun its task by what was most needed, and has given far more work to the shepherds of its flocks than to the divines of its schools. Half a century and more had already elapsed, when I became deeply and conscientiously struck with the idea, that it had become one of the most pressing and impor- tant religious interests of the times to put the present generation in possession of a complete exposition of the Christian faith, expounded according to the spirit of the age, written in its own style and argued with its own logic; of a system of modern orthodoxy, borrowing from the various orthodoxy of the past nothing of its forms of language, nothing of its dialectic warfare, nothing of its polemical abuse, or of its inconsistent intolerance, but only its sincerity, its religious zeal, its deep venera- tion for the inspired Word of God, the glorious text of our Churches. . . . This is the task which, according to the measure of the abilities that God has given, I have laboured to perform. These views could in no respect be realised if the Bible, so little known to the public at large in this country, were made the constant, the only groundwork of the fabric. The insertion, however, of the texts of Scrip- XVI AUTHOR S PREFACE. ture and the necessary commentaries in the treatise itself, was not to be thought of; two serious disadvantages would have attended this process ; — either the train of thought would have been broken and disfigured at every line by all this inlaid work, or the quotations from the sacred writings would have been reduced to a few scanty and short references, unconnected and unexplained. Hence I soon came to the resolution, that the texts from the Scriptures, with appropriate comments, should be selected without fear of their increasing number, and enlarged upon at pleasure. Each of the six books of the treatise is followed by an Appendix containing a very large selection of passages from the Bible, given without explanation when the sense is clear ; explained more or less at length, paraphrased, or compared with the parallel passages when it was necessary to explain them ; and translated anew where the common version is inaccurate. I believe I do not transgress the bounds of humility when I say that I have gone through this part of my task with the utmost care ; every one of these passages of the sacred books has been thoroughly studied ; all are given, not in the apparent sense, nor in the sense that first offers when the phrase is taken apart, disjoined from the preceding and following ideas, and, according to our modern translations, too often dark in the meaning, or false, or partial — but in the real sense, as given by the spirit of the ancient languages, by the train of thought, by the genius of the times, and by the deep individuality of the inspired authors. I have consulted and compared the most esteemed com- mentators of Protestant nations, and sometimes those of the Church of Kome ; and men of learning will readily AUTHOR S PREFACE. XV11 discover the various sources of theological science to which I have applied. All the revised texts and the short critical dissertations often annexed, are quoted simply to show the constant and humble harmony of the essay and of Revelation; sometimes the passages are positive proofs that the Bible reveals with Divine authority the same truths which philosophy teaches in its lower sphere ; sometimes, that the genuine spirit of evangelical faith prevails through the whole of this system of philosophy and of religion ; sometimes, again, the biblical quotations are similar allusions, deductions, or images, which naturally occurred in the course of this long examination ; and if any success has attended this part of my labours, these extracts from the sacred volume will serve to heighten the relish of the number- less beautiful portions of the Bible, to enforce the sublime energy of its lessons, and to enhance the value of its inexhaustible treasures. At first, I had proposed to myself to introduce another species of notes, and to give the work a more erudite form. The texts from the Scriptures would have been inserted, when necessary, in the original tongues ; the critical views as to the same discussed in a more grammatical and philological method ; the opi- nions of the divines and the commentators produced at length ; and I intended closing the volume with consi- derable extracts from the Fathers, from ecclesiastical authors and historians, carefully selected,- to clear away the difficulties and strengthen the assertions of the trea- tise. I had already made great progress in this method, and the materials were daily increasing : but the day of erudite works on religion has not yet arisen in France ; XV111 AUTHOR S PREFACE. we accept of a serious essay ; a volume of classical learning is read only by the learned ; and for a length of time it will be still necessary in France, when writing on religion, to write for all readers. This general idea of the performance may enable, it is hoped, every friend of the Gospel in England to judge of its importance. It is evident in my mind, as a matter of fact and of experience, that, in France, amongst the two religious denominations of French Protestantism — the so-called Calvinist and Lutheran Churches, an immense majority has been impatiently waiting for a work of this kind ; and that beyond the bounds of the reformed communities, numberless are the minds of inconsistent unbelievers, uneasy and unde- cided as to religious matters, and labouring under the vague desire of meeting with Christian truth offered under this form. In France, the minds of men are weary of floating to and fro between a dogmatism nearly come to its end and a dogmatism yet unborn among us ; weary of uncertainty and of the bitter and intolerant conditions of the past, whose place, though nearly vacant, has not been yet taken by any new and more welcome guest, you constantly meet with fatigued wanderers looking out where to fix, where to halt. In the dark or in the dawn, the present generation is searching how to believe, without discord and anathemas ; how to believe in the bond of love ; how to unite once for all reason and faith, and still more zeal and charity. On all sides you hear discontent and disgust expressed respecting all those imperfect systems now dried up and empty, which satisfy neither the intellect, the conscience, nor the religious instinct of man ; discontent and disgust with a author's preface. xix system where the form is given for the power, words for sense, regulations for order, or anarchy for freedom, the faltering of remembrances for professions of faith, and paces to and fro on the way for progress onwards ; discontent and disgust with all those sorts of objective persuasions, founded only on the outside of truth and the appearances of religion; every where you meet with men of all classes ardently seeking, out of doors and in private, after a subjective creed, that is to say, drawn out of man considered in himself as a complete being, as a subject existing apart from every other being in his inviolable individuality ; a creed drawn out of the realities of life, the realities of Revelation, from the very depths of creation, from our nature, from God's nature, from the essence and spirit of Christianity. This species of Christian faith is the light and the glory, the strength and the peace of many evangelical communi- ties, to whom Providence has spared the long sufferings with which the reformed Church of France has been visited — sufferings endured with heroic and truly Chris- tian virtue, but which left no time for theological study. It is this faith which I have ventured to unfold in the fol- lowing pages, and consequently the work is written for all classes of readers ; the only art necessary to reap some benefit from the perusal is that of self-examination. This art it professes to teach, and its object is to make the student think and reflect, and, by thought, by medi- tation, to raise him to faith; not by human thought left to itself, but by human thought resting on the Bible as a positive and direct revelation of the Spirit of God to the spirit of man. It is hardly necessary to add that the work has XX AUTHORS PREFACE. nothing throughout of a sectarian character ; indeed, it assumes to be far above the level of all sects. Enough has now been said to make the return towards the starting-point smooth, and to raise in full force the natural question : — If this treatise on Christi- anity is the production of a divine, of a pastor, of the National Established Church of France, is it in accord- ance with the accredited tenets of that Church ? The question put in these terms leads to another: — What are, and where are to be found the accredited tenets of the Church of France ? The answer is easy, and I rejoice in the opportunity of placing it before the English public. Every one knows where to look for the accredited tenets of our Church in past times ; they are to be found in the Forty Articles of Faith drawn up at the National Synod of Paris, in the year 1559, in the reign of Henry II. ; sanctioned again by the National Synod of la Kochelle, in the year 1571, in the reign of Charles IX., and publicly agreed to, for the last time, at the meeting of the last authorised National Synod, that of Loudun, in the year 1660, in the reign of Louis XIV. But, in our days, the tenets of the reformed Church of France can only be found, and are written only in the minds of its ministers — of its elders — of its members. All this is matter of fact, and my intention is far from discussing at any length, in these introductory pages, the question of the comparative advantages or perils of a definite system of theology, or of a chain of dogmatic articles, under which the Church bends. My object is to explain how a regular minister of the reformed Church of France has a full right to *o' AUTHOR S PREFACE. XXI compose and publish a treatise of Christian faith at variance with the Forty Articles of our old synods, without being bound in honour to send in his demission ; nor, on the other hand, do I feel the slightest uneasiness at declaring my opposition to any other standard of faith but the Word of God ; this was one of my earliest convictions, and the only cause of my not entering the service of the Church of England. Many years ago, in a difficult moment of my life, I received a call to become minister of a newly erected chapel in the island of Jersey ; the trustees crossed the water, heard me preach in Paris, and made an honourable offer, which I accepted ; but it was necessary to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, very similar indeed to the Forty of our synods. The trustees went over to England, applied to the bishop to dispense with the subscription ; of course, it was more than the prelate could grant, and I remained a French clergyman. The simple fact of our present situation is this : — Towards the close of the French revolution, under the consular government, when Christian worship was re- sumed in France, Protestant worship was included in this new-born freedom ; a law was passed known under the name of the Law of Germinal (the month of its date), conferring civil liberty upon the Protestant communities and regulating their organisation. This law is silent as to the obligation of signing the articles in order to enter the ministry; and, what is still more to the purpose, this law has preserved and remedied several of our old institutions, but has not preserved the national synod, the supreme council of the Church, the only body which had a right to draw up articles of faith for the whole XX11 AUTHOR S PREFACE. community, and to urge subcription to a creed as the previous condition of receiving orders. The conse- quence is, that in the positive legal and irremediable absence of all ecclesiastical authority endowed with this power, not one single minister, since the year 1802 (and, in fact, long before), has been, or could be called upon to sign the former creeds, which have not been legally revised (as was usual in every national synod) since the year 1660. The final result comes to this — that the Law of Germinal has made of the reformed Church of France an assemblage of Independent Presby- terian congregations, each governed by its own consistory ; still we form the National Protestant Establishment ; our civil rights are sanctioned by the charter and the laws of the realm ; an annual endowment is voted by the legislature ; we are irremoveable from our situations ; the pastors are freely elected by the several consistories, who inquire, as they see fit, into the doctrines of the can- didates for a vacant place, and the investiture of our elections is confirmed by royal ordinances under the signature of a responsible minister, the Keeper of the Seals. To this Law of Germinal all the pastors of France have taken the oath. The force of circumstances, the course of political events, has calmly brought us to the very point which the Protestantism of Holland, and, later still, the Pro- testantism of Prussia, has reached by the wise enact- ments of their general assemblies — the preservation of the ancient creeds simply as venerable records of the science and piety of their fathers, and the enjoyment of a full freedom of examination and of faith. xxni A great deal may be said, and has been said, against this Law of Germinal and its various results ; a great deal, undoubtedly, is wrong and imperfect in this eccle- siastical plan ; the want of a mutual bond, of a more intimate and regular connexion between the separate congregations, is particularly to be lamented, and the fervent prayers, the arduous endeavours, the generous exertions of all the true friends of French Protestantism are centred in the difficult task of drawing together all these distinct forces, and re-uniting the Protestants of France, not under a system of fixed dogmatism, nor under the yoke of our fathers which the current of the age has shattered to pieces and swept away for ever, but in the Christian bond of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, of liberty and of peace. Prominent as may be the effects of the Law of Ger- minal, they are fully explained by the spirit and by the extreme difficulties of the moment. In 1802, Pro- testants and Protestant ministers were looked out for on all sides, to form the congregations and to re-open the churches, and it was hardly known where to find them. 6000 names were required for the erection of a consistorial church; and it is a positive fact, that numbers of Catholics, in different places, gave in their names, in order that the city might enjoy the benefit of the new church. Who was to call these strange signatures to account, and who had a right to blot them out ? By this circumstance alone one may judge of the singulari- ties of the situation. It must never be forgotten that the Law of Germinal, with all its faults and omissions, was unanimously accepted by the Protestants of France, and well it might, as an immense, an inestimable blessing ; XXIV AUTHOR S PREFACE. it must never be forgotten that our civil rights as husbands and wives, as fathers and mothers, as sons and daughters, do not go further back than 1787, one of the last acts of the unfortunate Louis XVI. and his admirable minister Malesherbes ; it must never be forgotten that when the law was passed, our ancestors, for a century and more, had hardly ever met for public worship but under the shade of forests, the hanging of rocks, or in the gloom of their mountain caves ; it must never be forgotten that ten years after the time when our persecutor Louis XIV. went to his account, in the midst of the profligacy of the Regency, the administra- tion of the Duke'of Bourbon found means, for a time, to be serious enough to re-open the galleys and dungeons for us, and to re-erect the scaffolds ; and, to sum up the whole, it must never be forgotten that the last French Protestant minister who lost his life to expiate the foul crime of having performed divine service for his brethren, Francois Rochelle, was publicly brought to the gibbet at Toulouse, so late as the year 1762. What if, from the height of his scaffold, his eye, before closing in death, could have pierced into futurity, and had foreseen that, forty years later, no more ! the same worship for which he died as a martyr would be placed under the protection of the law of the land, and offered up in full liberty and peace throughout the whole empire ? Who can doubt that his last prayer would have been a thanksgiving, and that the prospect would have brightened still more his path to heaven ? And when we come to balance . the blessing and its deficiencies, the law and its effects, what do we find ? It is true; there is no legal and official standard of author's preface. XXV theology which we are all constrained to believe and to expound; and I will tranquilly venture to say, that most probably not one of the ministers of the Church would sign the old confession as it is, for instance, with the article on the eternal damnation of unbaptized children, with the article on irrevocable predestination, and, with the Athanasian Creed as a sanctioned appendix. If there were, which there is not, and which there cannot be, any authority legally requiring subscription, I am fully convinced that it would be only signed according to the well known principles which prevented Paley from becoming a bishop. Moreover, it must be under- stood, that the forty articles form a whole, which must be rejected or accepted as it is. Is it not obvious, that if one minister or one consistory assumes the right of blotting out or altering one single article, every other minister, every other consistory may blot out or explain away what seems superfluous or inaccurate ; if In one Church, the confession of faith is rent in two, some articles considered as fundamental, and others as accessory, a sort of division unknown in the old synods, another Church may find the vital truths of Christianity in other articles, and consider the remainder as an appendage of no moment. The fact is, that by an especial and visible care of Divine Providence, our liberty can neither be questioned nor limited ; and as to the benefits of the present state of things, the question does not rest solely in the tacit removal of a spiritual bondage ; the true question is, if under this modern rule the Protestant churches of France have advanced as far on the way of progress as can reasonably be expected. a XXVI AUTHOR S PREFACE, Here, I ask of the candid reader some allowance which in justice it seems impossible to refuse. It is hard to require of an individual, or of a body of men, to be better than the laws they are to obey, than the rules they are to follow; and, certainly, it is no matter of wonder, no ground of scandal, if in our Church there is no more unity, as to dogmatics, than our organisation prescribes ; it seems very natural that we should be at variance, if variance is the given situ- ation of the law. Again, in a Church, in a clerical body, which has suffered a violent suspension of liberty, of worship, of means of study, and of works of charity, for a hundred and seventeen years, from the revocation of the edict of Nantz, 1685, to the law of Germinal, 1802 (reckoning at the lowest, for persecution had begun long before the revocation ; previous to this last act, Louis XIV. had already issued fifty-one intolerant and tyrannical edicts against the Protestants), it is impossible to expect the same progress in every direction, attained during this long interval of time, as in communities which have had no such void in their history, no such disasters to encounter, no such ruins to repair, as in Holland, Switz- erland, Germany, and England. This being granted, how have we in France employed this respite of half a century, which Divine Providence has granted us ? How have we made use of this full liberty of the altar and the pulpit, a liberty which we did not conquer by degrees, so as to get slowly accus- tomed to it, but which was sent us almost on a sudden, in a moment, as a shower of the late season ? How have our inexperienced hands set about rebuilding our second AUTHOR S PREFACE. XXVI) temple, without a Zeruhbabel to command, a Joshua to pray, or an Ezra to teach ? . . . I could say a great deal, but I must limit these pages and simply state a few facts : As to theological liberty, we are now upwards of 500 ministers in the Reformed Church of France, and the different shades of orthodoxy are certainly as va- rious among us as with our brethren of the Lutheran communion ; nevertheless I am confident, that not one of us can be justly called a Rationalist in its genuine German sense ; there is not one of us who does not consider the Scriptures as a positive revelation ; not one of us who does not consider the sacraments with a deep religious awe ; not one of us, from whose pulpit do not continually descend into the minds of the con- gregation the doctrines, that God is the father of all; — Jesus Christ the only Redeemer; — man, the prodigal son, incapable by his own merits of working out his way home to his Creator : judgment an inevitable ac- count, and immortality our real existence. Is this an abuse of theological independence ; and is not this unity enough for all, save for those among us, who, alas ! will not allow room, in the Church of the Lord, for any other theology but their own ? As to zeal and proselytism, to speak only of what I daily witness; a little before the day-break of our liberties, the whole Protestant congregation of Paris could assemble in a hall of the Dutch embassy, or a parlour of the Rue d'Thionville ; this is only fifty years ago ; the ministers of the Church of Paris, by the con- stancy of their professional labours, are now in posses- a 2 XXV111 AUTHOR S PREFACE. sion of three churches in the metropolis*, where we preach alternately; the Oratoire, the largest of the three, is the largest Protestant church in France, and holds upwards of 2000 hearers ; the congregations are sometimes, I might say often, overflowing, to such a degree that people return home for want of room ; on the Christmas and Easter solemnities, we reckon the com- municants, both men and women, by hundreds; the number of confirmations is yearly increasing ; a number of Roman Catholics constantly attend, the sacrament is never given but Catholics, converted to our faith, are admitted ; nothing can be more impressive, more strik- ing, than the deep silence, the order, the solemnity of our public offices ; and the private duties imposed on our clergy by this regular increase of the Church is such, that we bend under the task and wonder where we find time to get through it ; all this in the midst of two im- mense events most unfavourable to the progress of religion, and particularly of ours — the Emperor's tre- mendous wars for twelve years, and the Restoration during fifteen ; all this in less than half a century. . . ! Is this losing our time ; is this shamefully stopping on the way, and turning to nought the mercies of the Lord, and the treasures of Divine grace ? The same progress, more or less, may be remarked throughout the whole country. I have now reached the most arduous part of my task ; I see no means of getting through it, but Christian simplicity and openness of heart, and I only pray to be * The Oratoire, near the Louvre, Rue St. Honore, 157; St. Mary's, Rue St. Antoine, 216; and Pentemont, Rue de Grenelle, 108, in the Faubourg St. Germain. AUTHORS PREFACE. XXIX read with the sentiments with which I write. The re- ligious intercourse between France and England began in the year 1815, after the peace, — went on rather lan- guidly during the Restoration, impeded as it was by the spirit and powers of the times, and rose to its full force only with the revolution of July. Then the portals of our Sion were thrown wide open ; clergymen of various denominations, members of various committees, repre- sentatives of divers religious opinions, paid numerous visits to France ; offers and proposals of different kinds were made ; experiments of all sorts were tried ; societies were framed. These advances were received with a deep sense of gratitude ; the most excellent intentions were prominent in all these efforts, and one point only was lost sight of, the preliminary point of closely exam- ining whether all these exertions of zeal, of benevolence, of charity, were in accordance with the character of the nation which was to be benefited by them ; and with the spirit, with the situation, with the real wants of French Protestantism, which was to be the instrument of these generous services rendered to the cause of religion. No one can be a more sanguine admirer of English liberality than I am ; no human want, either spiritual or temporal, is out of its reach, and I shed some of my earliest tears, when told of the guns fired off the coast of Ley den against an English ship bringing alms, in the worst times of the imperial wars, to the desolate town half destroyed by the explosion of a powder-boat. It is an unparalleled page in the history of Christianity, that one single Christian nation spends in the cause of religion, and for the diffusion of the word of God, what England spends annually. To this unbounded gene- XXX AUTHORS PREFACE. rosity, the Protestant faith is indebted for a glorious proof of its power ; insomuch, that while its professors are far less numerous still, than the Roman Catholics, there is no comparison between the sums dropt at the feet of the pretended successor of St. Peter, and the voluntary tithes paid down as due to the treasury of the pure Gospel of Christ. But it must be confessed that the money is sometimes lavished without a sufficient previous study of the best means of employing it ; and I feel it to be a duty to say, that this has been too often the case in the generous assistance given to religion in France. The starting point of all these endeavours has con- stantly been the idea, that what had been of use to the cause of religion in England would be of the same use in France. The idea was not, I allow, debated and laid down as a positive axiom, but it was tacitly ad- mitted as a matter of fact ; it seemed natural, it was taken for granted, and not one committee but acted accordingly. The very reverse is the truth, and the illusion is far from being dispelled, because, if very few Frenchmen are able to judge of England, few Englishmen are thoroughly acquainted with the peculiarities of the French character, with French society, maimers, and opinions, with the Protestantism of France, a scanty minority lost sight of in the midst of an immense popu- lation, Catholic in appearance. The very reverse I am confident is the truth, for this simple reason, that though the channel is but a few leagues in breadth, nothing in the world is more widely different, in every respect, than England and France 5 AUTHORS PREFACE. XXXI London and Paris, the Established Church, with the dissenting body around it, and the Protestant churches of this country, St. Paul's and the Oratoire, Exeter- Hall and in Paris we have no such place. I am forced to confess the extreme difficulty under which I labour to allege satisfactory proofs of these pre- mises : the proofs could only result from a complete and careful comparison of the two nations, and this would be endless. Let me be permitted to introduce two grounds of comparison only. What religious task, considered at a distance, can seem more similar on the two sides of the channel than the circulation of the Scriptures ? The Bible is always, and every where, the Bible ; and at first sight it appears evi- dent, that selling at reduced prices or bestowing the sacred volume as a gift, cannot be done in two different ways and according to different rules. But let us consider the case more closely. In England, a Protestant and religious country, the man who receives a Bible, or is in- duced to purchase one for a trifle, may be a profligate character, an infidel, a man without any pious habits, any Christian knowledge ; but there are some things at least he is perfectly aware of: he knows that this same book is every Sunday opened and read in all the churches of the country ; he knows that the most respectable and numerous portion of the community at large look upon this book as sacred ; he knows that on this book oaths are taken as on the word of God, and he may, to be sure, forget the gift of the holy volume and never seriously turn over a page of it ; but it is a hundred to one that this indifference will be his worst sin, that he will not try to learn out of the Bible a lesson a 4 XXX11 of lewdness or of impiety ; and, if he reads it, it is pro- bable that some remembrances of his education, however faint, will enable him to understand enough of what he reads. In France, when a man, totally unprepared, re- ceives a Bible, he has never in his life seen it opened in a place of worship ; it has never been under his sight as a school book or a church book ; no early associations are recalled to his mind ; no dim recollections of his youth remind him of a time when the volume was put into his innocent hands ; he knows that it is considered by thou- sands, far more learned than he is, as a collection of oriental fables thrown together at random ; if ever in his life he has heard or read anything about it, it is a hundred to one that he has only studied it in Voltaire, whose most abominable and impious volume can be pur- chased, too, at a reduced price, for a few farthings ; if he opens it, it is but too easy to guess what books and what pages he will curiously glance at ; and if, unfortunately, companions are at hand, the dismal probability is greatly strengthened, that the sacred volume will become a stumbling-block of perverseness, scandal, and infidelity ; lastly, to hope for the best, if he turns over the book seriously, what can he make of it in that state of com- plete and absolute ignorance of religion, in which he has been left after partaking of the sacrament and receiving confirmation at ten or twelve years of age ? Is the conclusion to be drawn from all this, that the Bible is not to be distributed in France ? God forbid ! The only conclusion is, that a Bible Society must be conducted in the one country on a plan different from that adopted in the other. Catholicism, in England, is not so much a Church as author's preface. XXX111 it is in France ; but what there is of it is, far more than with us, a religion, a faith, a sect ; this is to be accounted for by the clear and simple fact that Catholics, in England, are the minority, and it is a trite observation, made good by the history of almost all ages, that the fact of being in a minority is often an incentive to zeal and steadiness. In France, with the exception of some remote provinces where the ignorance of the lower classes is still incredible and the influence of the clergy still powerful, Catholicism, in general, is a blot ; a numberless majority of the nation has glided out of the Romish faith, without knowing where to find another ; you hardly ever meet any where with a Romanist who, when he goes any length in religion, does not openly adopt the title of an enlightened Catholic. From the pulpit of my own church, with the full approbation of hundreds, I have dropt the phrase, that enlightened Catholics are anonymous Protestants ; and that we might now retaliate on Catholicism the old injurious denomi- nation with which our Church was branded, when we were called— la Religion pretendue Reformee ; and to day we may call the Church of Rome in France : la Religion pretendue Catholique. . . Is this enough? Shall we remain satisfied with this intermediary station which is neither the one nor the other, though fast inclining to our side ? God forbid again ! But it is obvious, that the respective situation of the two Churches being so very different in the two countries, the task of paving the way to the sanctuary for our straying brethren meets with peculiar difficulties, which the most generous and ardent zeal cannot overlook without being a loser, and a 5 XXXIV AUTHOR S PREFACE. even without injuring the sacred cause it is intended to promote. I could produce many instances more, and it may be of some use to remark, that these are not things to be guessed at, or discovered by a superficial survey, and fathomed in the rapid course of what is called, a visit to Paris or a tour on the Continent. Time is necessary to look into the character, the passions, the capacities, the failures of a man : what length of time is then required to acquire an impartial and competent knowledge of the spirit and spiritual wants of a nation. But England was in a hurry to do good, and full of compassion for our state of religious debility, compared to her religious strength, hastened to cure it, only forgetting that the most excellent remedy, if mis-applied, may not only not heal the disorder, but inflict a new one. When such munificent aid is proffered from one country to another, however imprudently in many cases, though always with the most unquestionably excellent intentions, it requires but little knowledge of the human heart to foresee, that this aid will be by some accepted with avidity, by others, rather coldly received or reluctantly refused. Some are led away by the fond hope, that the ardour of charity will richly repay what appears a slight blemish of human prudence, and are dazzled by the bright prospect of extensive proselytism which it seems impossible to purchase at too high a price ; others, less confident and more calm, will stop coolly to examine whether the good projected could not be accomplished by wiser means, whether the generous allowances of foreign charity could not be placed out at a better and surer religious interest ; and even (as I AUTHORS PREFACE. XXXV have already hinted) whether a real injury to the cause of religion be not inflicted by the system adopted for promoting its progress. Tins was the natural result among us ; in several parts of France, the help of English zeal was welcomed as a blessing ; in others, though hailed with unfeigned gratitude, it was not accepted at all hazards and without conditions. In the clerical body it was unavoidable that those men who now maintain, without the slightest compromise, that the Reformation was completed, as to theological progress and ecclesiastical order, by Luther and Calvin, and that these great servants of God have left their successors nothing to do but to walk in their footsteps ; those men who regret not being bound down under the yoke of an official creed, which would equally bind down all their fellow-labourers in the field, those men rushed eagerly forward to seize on the powerful and splendid assistance offered by committees and societies whose dogmatical tenets hardly admit of any difference of opinion on what is usually termed the fundamental doctrines ; while, on the contrary, it was unavoidable that those who admit of a far larger liberty of interpretation of the Gospel — who assert that the great reformers of the sixteenth century opened the gate not to shut it when entered — who assert that we examine in our turn in virtue of the same right by which they examined in their turn — who consider every member of the Church or of the clergy as possessing this full right of explaining the inspired volume according to his own conscience, his own reason and his own faith — who show to all and request from all an unfeigned respect for every sincere conviction drawn out of the Bible, and who believe that in the a 6 XXXVI AUTHOR S PREFACE, same community each member may attend the ministry of the divine whose tenets he finds most in harmony with the Gospel — those men drew back with regret, but with a diffidence which they could not always conquer ; they met with suspicion, and they showed suspicion. Some blame might perhaps be thrown, both on the ardour of the former, and on the coldness of the latter ; neither party, perhaps, was faultless, a common situation anion o1 men ; on one side, there may have been a rash and hasty eagerness ; on the other, sometimes, too vague and partial a distrust. The inevitable consequences occurred ; in England, the co-operation of ministers or laymen who took the English view of the different questions, was accepted and rewarded as hastily as it was offered ; the reluctance of those whose prevailing opinion it was that the pecu- liarities of the religious situation of France could not, without peril, remain unnoticed, was misunderstood, and sometimes, from different quarters misrepresented ; and the double result was, — prejudice against us in England, division and dissent among us in France : — Prejudice. — The leading members of various committees in England, unable to discover at a distance the serious motives which determined a considerable number of our clergy, of our consistories, and of our congre- gations, to withhold their support and to decline their generous assistance, found it difficult to put up with a refusal which savoured of indifference, with a silence which savoured of ingratitude. Rumours went fast and far abroad, increasing as they extended. It soon tran- spired that the French reformed Church was a Babel of confusion ; that it had no public and avowed tenets of AUTHOR S PREFACE. XXXV11 Christian faith ; that its ministers preached, in general, sermons on desultory morality, more worthy of the bowers of Academus and the Gallery of Zeno than of an evangelical sanctuary, or on the beauty of green leaves in spring and the whiteness of snow in wTinter ; that an idle indifference prevailed among its ministers, who, in fact, were but mercenaries receiving a stipend from government ; that Protestantism had hardly ad- vanced a step since the first days of our civil liberties ; and it was a matter of course to brand us with the old denominations of Arians, Sabellians, Socinians, Latitu- dinarians (which last word was made French for the purpose), enforced by the more recent appellations of Unitarian and Rationalist. That all this was rumoured, commented on in official speeches, put in writing and in print, is but too certain. It must be admitted that the lesson was a hard one to learn ; and for these doleful prejudices against the immense majority of the clergy and laity of our communities, we were hardly consoled by the deep astonishment which I have heard English families so frequently express, after a first attendance at Divine service in one of our churches, at what they heard and saw, compared to what they expected to have heard and seen. Division and dissent. — And this is the main point in question; prejudice vanishes: misconception may be rectified ; calumny may be silenced by truth or hushed by disdain ; but dissension, when once introduced into the bosom of a community, is not easily eradicated or reconciled. It is a fact that before the peace of the year 1815, and even before the revolution of the year 1830, dissent was unknown in France; the most that XXXV111 AUTHORS PREFACE. can be said is that the promoters of separatism, who ^hen tried to reach the shore, soon discovered that they were going against the tide ; they retreated, not only before political difficulties, but before the reception they met with in the consistories and the congregations. And, again, it is a positive fact, universally admitted by all those, who are acquainted with our religious history for these fifty years past — it is a fact which party-spirit alone can be hardy enough to deny — that dissent, without foreign aid, never would have taken root in France. I am, and I have always been a firm supporter of dissent as to the right of dissenting ; it has always appeared to me obvious and unquestionable that, when a man does not find in the Church of his country, his family, his birth, what he considers as the genuine system of the Gospel and the only means of salvation, dissent becomes a positive right : it is a right, because it is a duty — a duty towards oneself, a duty towards God and Christ. I have repeatedly undertaken the defence of dissent in this point of view ; and long since I sent to the press the declaration that, if two dissenting chapels were opened, Rue St. Honore, No. 155. and No. 159. (the Oratoire is No. 157), and the keys left at my dis- posal, far from shutting, I would throw the doors open. But it is obvious that separatism is only entitled to respect and protection when the hopes of salvation, when the liberties of religion, when the blessings of grace, when the truths of the Gospel, are at stake. Now, dissent and division have broken out on all sides, in the precints of French Protestantism, favoured by an active minority of its ministers, discountenanced by the majority. Young men, without any previous AUTHOR S PREFACE. XXXIX studies, without any learning but the easy art of repeat- ing by rote a number of texts thrown together at ran- dom and explained extempore by the well known quaint system of allegorical interpretation, are sent about the country, with the title of religious hawkers, or of Evan- gelists, to sell and give Bibles and tracts, and, of course, often to quarrel with the catholic priests ; in general, the first lesson they teach when they wander through a Protestant Church, is that the regular minister (if he does not approve of their endeavours) is any thing but a Christian, a servant of the Lord, a faithful disciple of the Gospel. The plan has been carried so far that it was literally intended to allow these young men, with- out any previous studies whatever, to receive orders, to enter into the rank and office of clergymen, and to become ministers of the Church, and with the full right of ad- ministering the sacraments ; one of them was, in fact, consecrated at Orleans, through the active intervention of some of the regular pastors ; this, however, was going rather too far ; the consistories took the alarm, and put a stop to this rashness ; but one may easily judge to what a pitch of disorderly division things can be brought amidst French Protestantism when this excess was possible, even for once. It is true that the spirit of strife and discord is unequally diffused throughout the country ,• in the north, where the Protestant churches, less numerous and less considerable, are thinly scattered at large distances, widely separated and with few ministers, the influence of British and even of American fraternity has been most potent and almost general ; in xllsace and in the south, where French Protestantism has for ages recruited its most numerous congregations — where the xl author's preface. churches are, so to speak, side by side through a very large extent of country - — where upwards of one hundred ministers are at work together in the same Department, and keep up constant and intimate connections, the action of foreign zeal was comparatively lessened, and the re- formed communities have been much more left to them- selves. It is a positive fact, a fact which cannot escape an attentive eye, that already, though a few years only have elapsed since the churches were set in motion in this double direction, schism, a different characteristic of faith, piety, worship, study, and even charity, is every day growing wider and wider between the north and south of the Loire, Paris taking the lead on one side, Nismes on the other; the two head-posts are now watching the movements of one another, with a more anxious and doubtful attention than ever. As to the question whether dissent, which, in fact, is but a softer name for schism, does, in general, more harm than good, or more good than harm to the cause of religion, it may be that, in a Protestant country, where the government, the legislature, the immense majority of the nation, are Protestants — it may be that dissent creates a salutary emulation of zeal, of gene- rosity, of study, and of prayer ; it may be that indiffer- ence is aroused, that worldliness is undeceived, that idleness is set to labour, cupidity restrained, and into- lerance disarmed, and forced to accept of liberty and peace. These are not French questions ; I have not to vote on them ; and, to return to the point, of this I remain assured, of this I am more thoroughly convinced every day, that in France dissent is fatal to religion. To make good this assertion one word is enough : Catho- author's preface. xli licism, in France, very different (I again repeat) from what it is in England, has now but one single objection against Protestant faith, and the objection is — Voas vous disputez ! This melancholy and reproachful word is now uttered against our Church by Catholics of all classes, from one end of the country to another. Yes : our deplorable divisions, brought to light on all sides, now form the only serious barrier to our progress. " How can I become a Protestant, how can I insist on my wife and children becoming Protestants, though we are only Catholics by name, when, to enter Protestantism I must begin by choosing myself, and by calling on my family to choose, between a number of different Pro- testant sects and congregations, more bitterly opposed to one another than they all are to the Church of Kome ? It is much easier to remain where we have been, some- thing or nothing, but at least without intestine warfare in our family, or in our worship." This language, doleful to listen to and difficult to refute, is con- tinually rending our ears. The fact comes simply to this, that if dissent may in some respects promote re- ligion in a Protestant country, it can but injure the sacred cause when Protestantism forms the minority, and finds itself in presence of such a Catholicism as we have in France. A divided minority resigns, and can- cels all hopes of rising to power. Nothing has given a more lamentable and indisputable proof of all these statements — nothing has put a more fatal bar to the prosperity of our Churches and the success of our labours, than the co-existence, in France, of two Bible societies ; for this species of discord there was not the slightest pretence, and it is what the Catholics cannot xlii author's preface. understand, nor bear with. The fact, that we are at variance regarding the simple circulation of the Scrip- tures without note and comment — of the Scriptures, the common and only basis of our creeds — has done more harm to the religion of the Gospel in France than all other discords, and ought to have been avoided at any cost. . . . God alone reads the future ; but I feel no hesitation in asserting that, if it were not for our divisions, France would become a Protestant nation a hundred years sooner. And what cruelly embitters the regret of the situa- tion to which we have been forcibly led, is the full conviction that all the good so generously planned for our religious welfare and progress, and showered down on our communities at such an enormous expense, might have been accomplished, including the Bible Societies, without dissent following in its train. And by what means ? Simply by admitting that the French are the French, and must be treated as such — simply by taking us for what we are — simply by the knowledge as a fact, and the acceptance as a necessity, of our present eccle- siastical and religious situation, of which these are the outlines : — The actual reformed Church of France is not the Church of the edict of Nantz, with a confession of faith and a general synod to enforce it ; but the Church of the Law of Germinal, delivered from the bondage of an official creed, and ruled by its independent consis- tories, the only ecclesiastical authority now in ex- istence; and, secondly, in the French Protestant communities there is, most probably, not to be found a Calvinist or a Lutheran, if to be a Calvinist or a Lutheran is to believe all that was taught by the two author's preface. xliii reformers ; our Churches are composed only of Chris- tians, who draw their evangelical faith from the Gospel, with full freedom of examination, and on their indivi- dual responsibility. I now close these pages, written in full sincerity of language, and under the deep and solemn persuasion that in writing them I have been fulfilling, though the idea may seem presumptuous, a sacred duty towards two great nations and two glorious Christian com- munities. By all that I have said, I may without rashness nourish the hope that I have explained the present state of the public mind as to Christianity in France, both in and out of our Church; and the hope that I could accomplish this, made me consider it a bounden duty to write and publish the following work. The cry on all sides is growing every day more pressing to know, not what our fathers believed accord- ing to the given light of their age, but what we believe cording to the measure of grace bestowed on us; I have answered the demand as far as in my power, and I feel a deep sense of religious gratitude to the Divine good- ness, that I have been enabled to perform this long and heavy task, under the constant pressure of professional duties attendant on the ministry of a numerous and enlightened congregation. The fate of this volume I neither attempt nor wish to foresee ; if it contains truth according to the Gospel of the Lord, even though the present generation put the volume aside, and close it with disdain, it will be re-opened in time; the work must await its day: that day will come. This antici- pation I express with full confidence, and without the slightest precaution of affected humility ; ignorant and malevolent infidelity may sneer and say, — "This is xliv author's preface. vanity ! " but true piety, that mild and evangelical piety always inclined to honour sincerity, and to give it a candid hearing, will say — " This is faith ! " The last echo is a full consolation for the other, and deafens its noise. But, whether I am to see the fruits of this long labour ripen or wither on the branch, my gratefulness to Divine Providence will remain unaltered. The work, pursuant to the commands of my conscience, was one of the settled tasks of my life in this world, where every man has his own to perform. It is man's part to cast among his brethren the useful truths he thinks himself in possession of; it is the Lord's to make them fructify ; the little living seed falls as at random, but only where our hand sows it ; God alone giveth the increase, and the favourable wind bloweth where it listeth. It is impossible for me to lay aside my pen without offering my sincere thanks to the very able translator, who undertook the task with a high and disinterested sense of truly Christian zeal, and has performed it, though by no means an easy one, with remarkable talent ; the version, under his able pen, does full jus- tice to the original. The title of the work in French is " Le Christi- anisme Experimental ; " it was not thought possible to make these words English in the given sense. The texts in the notes are inserted according to the authorised version, with the differences of interpretation introduced apart. ATHANASE COQUEREL. Paris, June, 1847. CONTENTS. BOOK I. MAN, GOD, AND CREATION. Page Chap. I. Source of Certainty - - - 1 II. Tendencies of Man - - - - 3 III. Notions of the Ideal - - - -3 IV. Action of the Will upon the Tendencies - - 5 V. The objective of our Tendencies - - 8 VI. Law of Differences and of Reciprocity - - 12 VII. Of Language - - - - - 13 VIII. Refutation of three great Errors - - 16 IX. Notion of God 19 X. Idea, End, and Model of Creation - - 21 XL Mystery of Free Will - - - "23 XII. Mystery in general - - - - 27 XIII. Of the Will and of Progress - - - 30 XIV. Universality of Progress - - - 34 XV. Of the Phases of Progress - - -35 XVI. Immortality and Spiritualism - - - 38 XVII. Existence and Nature of Animals - - 39 XVIII. Continuity of Activity - - - "46 Notes to Book I. - 49 BOOK II. EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPAL PROBLEMS OF THE HUMAN MIND. XIX. Space, Time, Nature, Cosmogony, Chaos - - 78 XX. Eden, the Fall, Original Sin - - 80 XXL Physical Evil - - - " " 81 XXII. Eternal Punishments XXIII. Birth, Life, Infancy, Death, Resurrection 80 xlvi CONTENTS. Page Chap. XXIV. End of the World - - - - 88 XXV. Of Prayer - - - - - 90 XXVI. Phenomena of Sleep - - - 97 XXVII. Effects of Distraction of Mind - -100 XXVIII. Ecstasy and Poesy - - - - 101 Notes to Book II. - - - 105 BOOK III. PROBLEM OF REDEMPTION. XXIX. Man out of his sphere - - -127 XXX. Solution of the Problem of Redemption - 129 XXXI. Necessity and Nature of a Redeemer - 134 XXXII. Certainty suitable to a Redemption - 137 XXXIII. Human Forms of Redemption - - 140 XXXIV. Choice of the Period of Redemption - 142 XXXV. The Redeemer recognised by the Period of His coming - - - - 144 XXXVI. Polygamist and Monogamist Peoples - 147 XXXVII. Effects of this Difference - - -152 XXXVIII. Consideration of Idolatry - - -152 XXXIX. Choice of the Division of the Globe in which Redemption was effected - - 156 XL. Selection of the Hebrew People, as Witnesses of Redemption and Guardians of Revela- tion - - - - - 157 Notes to Book III. - - - 160 BOOK IV. theory of redemption. XLI. Revelation a History of true Religion - 197 XLII. Divine and Human Elements in Revelation - 200 XLIII. Of Inspiration - - - - 202 XLIV. Of the Modes of Inspiration - - 204 XLV. Free Will the first Limit of Inspiration - 206 XLVI. Reason the second Limit of Inspiration - 208 XL VII. Language the third Limit of Inspiration - 211 CONTENTS. xlvii Page Chap. XL VIII. Nature of the Proofs of Inspiration - 216 XLIX. Appreciation of Prophecy - -219 L. Theory of Miracles - - - 225 LI. Redemption accomplished by a human Life 235 Notes to Book IV. - 238 BOOK V. METHOD OF REVELATION. LII. Christianity not a System of Instruction - 281 LIII. Truths determined by Facts in the Gospel - 284 LIV. Truths taken for granted in the Gospel - 288 LV. Truths put forth as Axioms in the Gospel - 289 LVI. Truths reserved in the Gospel - - 295 LVII. Development and Limit of Revelation - 300 LVIII. Critical Application of the Proofs of Revela- tion - - - - - 303 LIX. Peculiarity of the Old Testament - - 307 * Summary and Conclusion on Revelation - 310 Notes to Book V. - - - 315 BOOK VI. THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY IN TIME AND BEYOND TIME. LXI. Perpetuity of Christianity. First Guarantee : its Independence - 339 LXII. Second Guarantee : its Accord with our Ten- dencies ----- 347 LXIII. Direct and indirect Utility of Christianity - 349 LXIV. Future Universality of Christianity - 352 LXV. Gradual Emancipation of Christianity - 356 LXVI. 1. Emancipation from Discipline - - 357 LXVII. 2. Emancipation from a Clerical Hierarchy 362 LXVIII. 3. Emancipation from Authority - - 368 LXIX. 4. Emancipation from Forms - - 376 LXX. 5. Emancipation from the Letter of Reve- lation - - " ' 382 * The number of this Chapter has, by some oversight, been omitted. xlviii CONTENTS. Chap. LXXI. 6. Emancipation from Dogmas - - 384 LXXII. Progress of Pure Faith insured by Printing - 392 LXXIII. Christianity freed from Time and Space - 395 LXXIV. Heaven and Hell considered as within us - 396 LXXV. The Coming of Christ according to True Faith 398 LXXVI. Christianity in the future Life - - 400 LXXVII. Expectation of Universal Restoration - 406 Notes to Book VI. - - - 417 CHRISTIANITY; ITS PERFECT ADAPTATION, &c. BOOK I. MAN, GOD, AND CREATION. C'est le consentement de vous a vous-meme, et la voix constante de votre raison, et non celle des autres, qui doit vous faire croire. — Pascal, Pensees, I. 351. L'idee de Dieu est dans la notre par le suppression des limites de nos perfections. — Leibnitz, Rem. sur le Livre de V Origine du Mai, ~% 4. CHAPTER I. SOURCE OF CERTAINTY. Man has a consciousness of his own existence. The source of certainty consists in the fact of exist- ence, and the consciousness which we have of that fact.(l) The existence of man is individual. Each is one. The first notions which man forms of himself lead him to individualise ; pantheism comes by reflection only, and too late. Man, in the simplicity of the conscious- ness of himself, feels himself dependent, but distinct B 2 SOURCE OF CERTAINTY. from all that surrounds and presses upon him. In this individualism, he says : I am myself alone, nothing more, nothing less, but connected with all. In pan- theism, he says : I am myself, more, the whole ; I am a fragment, not an individual. Individualism makes man that eagle which you see braving the sun ; it is an eagle, in every point of its body, in every look of its eyes, in relation to the earth which it has just left, the air in which it hovers, the sun on which it gazes .... pantheism makes man a polypus. Consciousness of existence is accompanied by two corollary notions, which are inseparable from it : 1 . This consciousness of being has not always existed ; it has had a beginning ; if my existence had not begun, I should know it, since I know my existence. I find myself in the present ; in the past I do not find myself. An existence unknown to him who possesses it, is not an existence, properly so called ; it reckons for nothing, or, more correctly speaking, it is to be reckoned otherwise. (See Book I. Chap, xvii., and Book II. Chap, xxiii.) 2. In this existence, of which he is conscious, man feels that his will or his power has had no part : he does not preserve it, and if it is not he who maintains it, it is not he who has conferred it. He would employ for its maintenance, the power displayed to possess it. (2) Whatever may be the cause of the existence of man it is something foreign to himself; it is apart from and without him. Life, that, phenomenon which the human mind has never succeeded in defining, has not its source in life. NOTIONS OF THE IDEAL. 3 CHAP. II. TENDENCIES OF MAN. On the second glance, which he casts upon himself, man discovers in his being powers or tendencies : Intellectual power, the object of which is truth, knowledge ; in other words, an acquaintance with that which exists ; (3) Moral power, whose object is holiness or good ; we may also say, order ; (4) The power of the affections, whose object is relations, union (5), and of which goodness is merely an applica- tion : to do good is to love ; (6) The power whose object is enjoyment*, happi- ness ; (7) The religious power, whose object is relation with a being, who realises the ideal of these elements of our nature, and who, in order to satisfy them, must be infinite in knowledge, in holiness, in love, and in happi- ness. (8) CHAP. III. NOTIONS OF THE IDEAL. The ideal (of which it is important here to form a correct notion) is that which is given by the con- * La force sensible. It is impossible to translate this phrase into English. Our language does not possess any adjective, by which sensible can be appropriately rendered. It may be re- garded as legitimate selfishness; when it occurs in the subsequent pages to avoid a paraphrase, the word sensitiveness will be used. — Trans. B 2 4 NOTIONS OF THE IDEAL. ception of intelligence alone, and of which there exists no measure or standard. Thus, by what shall we measure the ideal of the just, the good, the beautiful, of happiness ? or what is the outward sign of its recognition ? How shall we be able to determine its limits ? It is the product and the con- ception of our minds alone. Thus, again, which of us will furnish the ideal of human nature ? A perfect man is the mere abstraction of our minds ; a perfect man is determined only by intelligence. The ideal, which cannot be measured, on the other hand serves as a measure ; it is the model, the original par excellence, by which we measure the value of that of which the ideal expresses or represents the supreme perfection. Thus in order to determine the merit of a good man, or of a man of genius, we compare him with the perfect man, with the ideal of human perfection which our reason has formed, and we appreciate the individual in proportion to the near or nearer resemblance which he presents to this ideal. The ideal is then a measure indispensable to our judgments, the only means we possess of determining the degree of imperfection in every thing which is not perfect. All our appreciations are founded upon the measure of the ideal. We measure degrees of knowledge by our ideal of infinite knowledge ; Degrees of love by our ideal of love ; Degrees of happiness by our ideal of happiness ; and we never judge or determine otherwise. Thus, the notion of the ideal, as the sole standard of ACTION OF THE WILL UPON THE TENDENCIES. 5 our judgments, is found in every human mind, obscure and confused in those which are rude and uncultivated, clear and distinct in those which are delicate and re- fined. This examination proves that the ideal cannot be a mere abstraction, and that it is right to assign it a value not only subjective but objective ; that is to say, that the ideal is not only a notion of our minds, a fancy of our imagination, a suggestion of our feelings, but that it is realised without us ; that it exists; that it is a fact. If it was not so, all our judgments would have no other foundation than a non-entity, which im- plies a contradiction. CHAP. IV. ACTION OF THE WILL UPON THE TENDENCIES. These powers, these tendencies in man, are in no case a matter of choice, or the product of his will ; his will is utterly powerless as to their existence. He is as he is, independently of himself, and he feels forcibly that he cannot make himself other than he is. As he does not preserve his existence, he is equally incapable of modifying or recasting it. " How," says Nicodemus to Jesus, "can a man enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born ? " These elements of our being are then inherent in our nature ; these powers are innate ; these tendencies are foreign and anterior to the will, since they exist without its participation. (9) The easy discovery, that the powers and tendencies of man are not the result of his will, leads us to determine the nature of the dominion which the will exercises over them. The power of the will here touches upon B 3 6 ACTION OF THE WILL UPON THE TENDENCIES. its powerlessness. It proves powerless, if the object be to withdraw from man that which it has not given him, to efface from his being an impress which it has not made, to destroy in him his natural tendencies and to renew his being, whilst it is powerful in the employ- ment of his faculties, and in the direction of his ten- dencies. It is nothing as to the simple fact of the existence of these attributes ; in their multifarious and varied employment, it is every thing ; this is its domain. In other words, man disposes of himself; he is not what he is, because he wills it, but he does what he wills ; he is compelled to be intellectual, moral, affectionate, susceptible of happiness, and religious ; but he is so, as it pleases him ; his will is free ; man is a free agent. (10) This will, this power, this freedom of man (for freedom is only power), which cannot go so far as to rob him of the elements of his nature, does go so far as to disturb their equilibrium, to lead him to prefer and cul- tivate one faculty to the detriment of others, and even so far as to subject the religious to the inferior ten- dencies, though its province is to rule, because it is that which most nearly approximates the infinite. It is obvious that the liberty of a being, whatever it may be, consists precisely in the free use of the faculties inherent in its nature and of all its faculties or powers without exception. There is no question of more or less free ; freedom exists or it does not. Imagine the smallest hindrance ; freedom exists no more ; it is only possible on condition of being complete ; it is only real on condition of being absolute If I carry the slightest fragment, the smallest grain of shot, I march perhaps, but I do not march unimpeded, and wherever freedom appears suspended or violated by outward facts, ACTION OF THE WILL UPON THE TENDENCIES. 7 if man thinks he acts, he is under the influence of an illusion; he does not perform acts; he only makes novements. The preferences shown by our freedom or our will in favour of this or that faculty is explained by the fact, that these faculties or powers are distinct. There may ;xist among them equilibrium, harmony, reciprocal assistance, there is never either natural confusion Or artificial fusion. The search after truth, the practice of goodness, love, sensitiveness, and religiousness are all different tendencies : and when these tendencies of our being act in concert, the will is always able to deal with them, as science deals with light ; it presents the prism, resolves the luminous pencil, refracts the rays, and ex- hibits the splendid fragments at pleasure. This distinction, this innate and fundamental separa- tion, which makes our powers and tendencies co-existent elements, but neither confounded nor amalgamated, explains the fact, so indisputable and frequent as not to escape the most superficial observation, that in the cases of individuals, sometimes the one and sometimes the other predominates. One man possesses a powerful and active intelligence whilst his morality or his religiousness is very inert ; a second is moral without being religious ; whilst a third manifests a very high degree of religious feeling, and is at the same time very indulgent in his morality : one loves ardently, but at hazard and without rule, without modesty, without measure ; another is disinterested and generous, but his only merit is that of being serviceable to others. It is conceivable that all possible combinations of the five natural powers may be realised ; it frequently happens that different combina- tions are formed in the course of a single human life, B 4 8 THE OBJECTIVE OF OUR TENDENCIES. and hence the amazing variety of characters which the race of man affords and presents. (11) Hence too all our faults ; these result from deficiencies of equilibrium alone; they spring from the usurped predominance of one or more of our tendencies over the rest, and sometimes of a single one. For, the slightest disturbance in the equilibrium of the balance leads in time to the decided preponderance of the scale. CHAP. V. THE OBJECTIVE OF OUR TENDENCIES. The subjective or interior elements of man are op- posed to the objective or exterior, which correspond thereto ; or, in other words, if man considered as a sub- ject is naturally endowed with such powers and ten- dencies, it follows of necessity, that there exist without his being, and within his reach, objects, which engage his powers, and excite his tendencies. It would be a contradiction to suppose that powers were exercised in a void and in relation to nothing ; it would be a con- tradiction to imagine that tendencies tended towards that which had no existence. Gravitation is onlv possible on condition of being universal : the magnet cannot be single ; two, at least, are necessary ; there could be no attraction, if there was nothing which attracted. The intellectual power of man proves that there must be an object for its exercise and study — knowledge : truth is something real ; it consists in the exact appre- ciation of things which exist. (12) The moral faculty of man proves the existence of a rule, a law, by which his will ousfht to be governed.(13) THE OBJECTIVE OF OUR TENDENCIES. 9 The duty of man is something positive. If his will were his law, if his will was not subject to a rule which it never made, his will would never experience either struggle or regret. But it often struggles against the deed before its perpetration (14) ; it often feels affliction and regret after its completion : there is therefore a law. Remorse — that mysterious impression which in its very essence is involuntary — remorse, the natural mourning of virtue, the forced vexation at successful evil, furnishes a demonstration of the law ; all sadness is involuntary. The existence of the affections proves the existence of beings which excite and stimulate them. The necessity Iof loving supposes objects to love, and from this faculty results the great and holy law of mutuality, of recipro- city. Beings endowed with passions and affections are necessarily dependant upon and responsible to one another. (15) Family life, social spirit, municipal rights, patriotism, universal brotherhood, hereditary ties, or by whatever name this reciprocity may be designated, all spring from the existence of our affections, which indis- solubly bind our fates to those of our fellow-men. In- tellectual, or moral, or religious solitude is no less impossible than that of the affections, and we shall see how pregnant this idea is. These remarks are sufficient to destroy all that super- stitious admiration which is felt for the life of anchorites, and to prove how contrary to nature it is. Hermits are monsters. (16) The existence of sensitiveness proves the possibility, the lawfulness of happiness ; man would be content to be, if well being appeared to him, something which implied a contradiction ; despair would be his portion, and B 5 10 THE OBJECTIVE OF OUR TENDENCIES. not enjoyment ; he would regard misery as his natural condition. The impression of the beautiful, one of the sources of happiness in man, is nothing but the harmonious pro- duct of his powers, the satisfaction of his tendencies in their equilibrium. The beautiful increases or decreases, and pleases, all things being equal, precisely in propor- tion to the number of those tendencies which find a simultaneous satisfaction. Thus the Apollo Belvidere possesses a very high degree of beauty, because it represents, in perfect harmony, the satisfaction of the sensitive and the moral power ; it is the type of humanity taken in a moment of moral repose and of sublime happiness. The certain existence of self and of the powers and tendencies which animate it prove the existence of not- self ; the subjective proves the reality of the objective, because our tendencies aim at objects without us, and seek their aliment, their means and their gratification, in something exterior to ourselves. It is certain they cannot tend towards anything except realities. (17) Does it not seem indisputable, that the phenomena or appearances which present themselves to us, and which bring all our tendencies into play, suppose some- thing which appears, something which exists, presents itself to us in a certain manner, and under another aspect doubtless to beings differently organised. It by no means follows that we are certain of knowing the essence, the real nature of those objects whose ap- pearances strike us, whose attractions engage and stimulate us ; the only result is the reality of their existence. (IS) Hence the double aspect under which the not-self presents itself; hence its double use; it is a means (19), THE OBJECTIVE OP OUR TENDENCIES. 11 an instrument, and often an obstacle which promotes or stops our progress on the way towards the infinite. And the manner in which the not-self so frequently becomes an obstacle instead of always being a means, and is opposed rather than administers to the normal satisfaction of our tendencies, is a great mystery, which will be eluci- dated in the subsequent part of these inquiries. The easy discovery, that the not-self becomes an ob- stacle to self, is moreover a proof of the reality of not- self; for all that operates as a hinderance to me is not of me. This remark tends to make us think, that our own bodies are comprehended in this riot-self, (see Book I. Chap, xvi.), for our bodies often present obstacles, and in time will fail us'; they often frustrate intentions the most energetically resolved, betray our activity, so to speak, at the most critical moments, and badly accord with the aspirations of our thoughts. We are displeased that the not-self should present obstacles, and it is in this feeling, which man always experiences, even without analysing it, and sometimes without even being aware of it, that is to be found the explanation of that love of the marvellous, so powerful, so credulous, and so general. The marvellous is nothing more than the fancied conquest of self over not- self — the imaginary empire which self assumes over the world, of which it is not master. And it may be said, that all knowledge consists in the just distinction between self and not-self, which explains to us the manner in which the realities of knowledge dissipate the chimaeras of the marvellous. In this not-self the whole of humanity is comprised except self, and the proof of the reality of not-self, deduced from the tendencies of self towards what is B 6 12 LAW OF DIFFERENCES AND OF RECIPROCITY. without, and of the fact that these tendencies meet there either a hindrance or a means, applies with still more precision to the existence of mankind. It is towards mankind principally, that our affections tend, which they could not do, if humanity did not exist Pleasant and affecting thought ! I am sure of the existence of my fellow-men, because I love them. CHAP. VI. LAW OF DIFFERENCES AND OF RECIPROCITY. In humanity every thing which is true of the in- dividual is true of the race, and in like manner, what is true of all, is true of each. Our fellow-men are our fellow-men in all respects; the true knowledge of human nature admits of no privileges. Individual differences in capacity, temperament, health, lot, length of life, and manner of death are necessary to the common destiny ; but these differences do not raise or degrade any man above or below the level of those principles which regulate our existence. If, in this book, we write not fables, but a history, it is the history of every individual. All men are men ; but all men are different (20), and these natural differences are also as old as humanity ; history represents Cain and Abel, the two first-born of men, as different. The outward fact of the existence of mankind modi- fies the inward condition of each man, and modifies the whole of that condition from the cradle to the grave, and even beyond, in immortality. (21) It is only by abstraction, or hypothesis, that a man can be re- garded as the sole existing being of his kind. Man in OF LANGUAGE. 13 a state of absolute solitude would be no longer man ; for to exist as a man is to exist among mankind, is to have fellow-men ; it is to be one amongst many. An isolated human life would no longer be a human life. From this double existence, both individual and collective, which man possesses, there results the law of reciprocity, already recognised. (22) This law is nothing but the expression of the esta- blished fact, that all mankind react upon the individual, and the individual upon the whole race. The law of reciprocity is either simultaneous and contemporaneous, or hereditary and successive. Men form members of this social union during their lives and beyond ; during their lives with the whole of their generation, and beyond it with all their pos- terity. (23) All of us hold in our hands the same thread to guide us ; it winds across and around the whole globe, and stretches throughout all ages. CHAP. VII. OP LANGUAGE. The simultaneous existence of the human self and not-self, or, in other words, of the individual and the race, necessitates a means of relation, of communication between the faculties and tendencies of the various individuals ; there was needed an electric chain, always ready, responsive to every spark. The tendencies of beings endowed with affections cannot be conceived without a means of communication. The means of establishing this relation is language. Without the faculty of speech, man is possible; man- 14 OF LANGUAGE. kind is not. To suppose the whole family of man deaf and dumb would be the mere play of an unsound imagination. All our powers or tendencies, except religiousness, require this faculty; but it is more necessary to some than to others. Language is indispensable, in the highest degree, to the intellectual faculty ; it is that one of our powers which makes the greatest and the most fruitful use of speech. It is indispensable, too, to the gratification of our emotions ; that mutual silence, which the strongest feelings sometimes impose, is only a momentary power- lessness which will afterwards be explained. It is less needful to our sensitiveness ; great joys and pure gratifications do not seek for expansion without, at least in the first moments of enjoyment ; deep grief is also silent; it is silent sometimes even to falling asleep. According to the beautiful expression of the sacred historian, the Apostles fell asleep for sorrow, under the olive trees of Grethsemane. The moral tendency has still less need of the gift of language ; well-doing does not consist in words. The religious tendency alone makes no demand upon this faculty ; man without it would be a religious being; it is not by speaking that he aspires towards the infinite. It will be thus seen to what extent religion is spi- ritual, inasmuch as the most spiritual means of commu- nication is useless to it. Mental prayers are the best. Language is of the earth ; religion is from heaven. To regard acts of worship as an objection against this exalted privilege of religion, which places it above the OF LANGUAGE. 15 need of language, would be to confound religion and worship, that is to say, the essence and the form. In acts of worship the affections avail themselves of the use of speech ; and it is only by the instrumentality of language that social worship becomes possible. Language, destined to serve as the dragoman or in- terpreter of human tendencies, is a perpetual demon- stration of the existence of not-self. The principal advantage of this employment of lan- guage is to carry the power of the affections to the extent of social union. (24) The first province in which the affections are dis- played, is the family ; The second, society. Language renders society possible. (25) Here one of our preceding ideas again finds a place ; religion has no need of speech, but language renders worship possible, which is merely religion in its social form. Language could not serve for these purposes, except it was as little material as possible, if the expression may be allowed. The powers themselves being spiri- tual, it was necessary that their means of communica- tion should be as conformable as possible to their nature ; and, in fact, of all material things with which we are acquainted, language is the most spiritual. As regards sound, it belongs to the material ; as respects language, to the mind. Language is sound become intellectual ; it is utter- ance rendered significant. (26) Words are at the same time sounds and ideas. Listen to an unknown tongue : the sound alone reaches the ear. (21) Listen to a language understood : the sound reaches 16 REFUTATION OF THREE GREAT ERRORS. the ear, and the idea with it, inseparable from one another. It does not depend upon ourselves to separate them, and to receive the sound without the idea, or the idea without the sound. Considered in this point of view, language is a per- petual demonstration of spiritualism ; it is placed on the unappreciable limits of the two worlds — the physical and intellectual ; it binds the subjective to the object- ive ; intellectual and simple within us, material or multiform or complex without ; for, several words com- bine to form a single idea. And this admirable means of communication, so simple, so easy, so pregnant, so rapid — which is one of the conditions of social union, and insures for ever the transition from the intellectual to the material world — this bond between self and not- self depends upon the play of a few organs, and the emission of a little air ! Finally, the difference of language serves to maintain the division of mankind into nations, — a division still for a long time indispensable to the destinies of our race. (28) CHAP. VIII. REFUTATION OF THREE GREAT ERRORS.- The simple investigation of man, which we have just made, will suffice to remove from our path three great errors, which obstruct many minds in their progress on the way of truth : — Pyrrhonism, or systematic doubt ; Pantheism, or the confounding of all existences in one ; REFUTATION OF THREE GREAT ERRORS. 17 Absolute spiritualism. Pyrrhonism is annihilated by the consciousness which man possesses of his own existence ; we are forced to believe at least in ourselves, and to be certain of our- selves. Pantheism is annihilated by the feeling of individu- ality ; the unity of self is revealed at the same time, and in the same manner, as its existence ; and this unity, which reduces pantheism to a mere immense dis- pute about words, this unity cannot be an illusion, because, whilst sensible of his deficiencies, and of how much he can acquire, man feels also that he is complete in himself. The acorn knows that it is an oak, and not a forest. I have a consciousness of my own existence, and I know also that I am none other than myself; I have no consciousness of the existence of the universe, which I should have, if pantheism were true, if every thing were one, if there existed only one being, if my soul were a fraction of the world, and my thoughts, instead of being a book in itself, and a complete work, were only a line, a word, or a dot, in the great book of the universe. Finally I suffer, and the fact of suffering, which is only a mode of existence, and mixed up with the con- sciousness of existence, furnishes a positive demonstra- tion against pantheism. How is it possible to conceive an infinite being which suffers, and consequently causes itself to suffer ? Absolute spiritualism, which denies the existence of matter, offers no more effectual resistance to the test of our theory than either of the others, because the not- self opposes an obstacle to our tendencies. But if the material not-self does not exist in reality, if all the 18 REFUTATION OF THREE GREAT ERRORS. phenomena of nature are merely things that pass in our minds, in that case it would be ourselves who obstruct ourselves ; this would merely be our tendencies ope- rating as a hindrance to our tendencies. No, when we strike against a barrier, it exists. The idea, which existed among the ancients, of know- ledge by reminiscence, which is merely an hypothesis without a foundation, — an idea, moreover, less important in the metaphysics of religion than those which we have just examined, — is, in its turn, if not rejected or confuted, at least removed. This theory teaches that the soul has passed through a state of existence anterior to the present human life, and that it brings with it into the latter, ideas acquired in the former ; these ideas, these notions, are recovered vague and confused, when awakened in us by the observations and know- ledge obtained in the present life. The whole of this system, according to our view, is a mere reflection of oriental reveries on the transmigration of the soul — reveries developed and embellished by the genius of the most poetic among the Greek philosophers. Whether, however, the system of knowledge by reminiscence be true or false, is a question which subjective philosophy may regard with indifference. In fact, according to its principles, an existence without a perpetual conscious- ness of itself is not an existence properly so called. Of what importance is it to have lived, if I have no useful recollections of what that life was? This pre- amble to life could only be, at most, a preparation of the same kind as infancy, less positive, less important, the anterior limb of life, an unknown vestibule to our world, in which imagination may disport itself at pleasure, but where knowledge and faith have no in- terest in following. (29) NOTION OF GOD. 19 CHAP. IX. NOTION OP GOD. Self then proves not-self, in which matter and mankind are comprehended The last word remains to be spoken ; the last veil to be raised ; self proves the existence of not-self, in which God is comprehended. If every inward tendency necessarily implies an outward reality, religiousness in man proves the ex- istence of God ; this subjective religiousness must have an object ; this object is God. Man is a religious being, which he could not be, did not God exist ; this would be a tendency towards a non-entity. (30) I find in myself the ray, and I believe in the sun. Do you deny the sun ? . . . Account for the ray. What then is God ? He is the ideal realised. He is the infinite, not personified, but personal- ised. (31) God is not an abstraction of our minds, because we carry in the depths of our being a religious power, which impels us to keep up relations with him. We do not seek to enter into relations with a pure abstraction. Did not God really exist, towards what object would this religious impulse tend ? If God were merely an abstraction, the religious impulse would tend towards itself, which implies a contradiction. Did not God really exist, man would have the simple notion of the infinite, but not an active tendency towards the infinite personalised. These relations constitute religion (32) ; he, who realises the ideal which we seek, is found — is God. 20 NOTION OP GOD. God is then the ideal of intelligence. God furnishes the last term of our comparisons and of our judgments. What if we should enunciate the problem in terms which have affrighted so many believers and puzzled so many philosophers : Is it possible for the absolute, the infinite to be personal ; personality and individuality imply a limit ; how do the ideas of individuality and infinity agree ; does not the one necessarily exclude the other ? . . . . Subjective faith does not resolve the problem so put, because it is reduced to ask, What is the nature of God, — which is only known to himself (33) ? and it is contradictory to suppose that a finite being can acquire a perfect knowledge of the infinite. (34) But subjective faith overrules this problem ; it puts it aside legitimately and passes beyond, because the religious tendency within us can only find its objective in a reality and not in an abstraction ; this is so true, that God reduced to an abstraction would become the despair, instead of being the contentment, of the reli- gious affections. Since the ideal is one, God is one. (35) The proof of the unity of God springs from the same source as that of his existence. And this proof of the existence of God is not the best, but the only good and valid one — the only one : it lies beyond the province of reasoning ; it does not admit of reasoning ; it imposes silence upon reason ; and hence its validity. Every argument or chain of arguments in favour of the existence of God maybe met and balanced by an equivalent argument of an opposite tendency. The most exalted and the most profound geniuses have failed to prove that God exists, and that He does not. The question is not a subject of reasoning. But where IDEA, END, AND MODEL OF CREATION. 21 reasoning fails and goes adrift in an ocean of mere helplessness, the innate feeling does not fail. The religious faculty is always a faculty, and the infinite has so made us after his own image as to compel us to believe in Him. The Holy Scriptures do not contain a single argu- ment in favour of the existence of God. According to the system of theology explained in these pages, a glimpse is already obtained of the ab- surdity of the alleged incompatibility between philo- sophy and religion. Philosophy is truth seen in man : religion is truth seen in God ; it is always the same truth ; for truth is one. The difference in this case depends upon the point of view in which it is regarded. Only, to commence with God is to pre-suppose belief ; to commence with man is to examine and establish before believing. CHAP. X. IDEA, END, AND MODEL OF CREATION. It has been already said that man, who does not pre- serve his existence, feels that he has not conferred it ; and secondly, that his tendency to relations with the infinite is no more the product of his will than the other tendencies which it embraces and exalts. From these facts (and let us not forget that they are facts and not reasonings) it results : First, that man has been created ; Secondly, that he has been created by God. (36) The finite can have no first cause except the infinite. The tendency of man towards the infinite proves, in fact, that he has emanated from the infinite ; these 22 IDEA, END, AND MODEL OF CREATION. finite tendencies can only be the work of the infinite being towards which they tend. Creation, in God, is a natural consequence of in- finity ; and this explains how the fact of creation is completely a truth of faith, and not of reasoning. (37) And since God is one, everything except himself is creation (38) ; without this, the ideal would neither be one, nor a being ; and we have seen that religiousness in man tends, not towards the ideal personified in ima- gination, but towards the ideal personalised. Man, an individual, aspires towards God, an individual. The end of creation is clearly indicated to us by our powers and tendencies ; we have been created to satisfy them ; such is our legitimate destiny, our divine calling. And here appears the absurdity of disputes respect- ing the special object of creation. It has been asked, whether this end be the cultivation of the understand- ing, the discovery of truth, goodness, merit, holiness, love, happiness, or worship. How is it that it has not been obvious that all this, in short, comes to the same thing ? The dust of the diamond is always of the diamond. God, in creating, had no model except himself. (39) Thus our tendencies are nothing but his powers trans- ferred from infinite to finite, reproduced in a measure, limited for us by himself. In fact it is always against the infinite that our finite faculties strike, and are arrested, without abdicating their functions. All our powers, all our faculties, are found united in God : He knows, and we know ; He is holy, and man is moral ; He loves, and man has affections ; He is supremely happy, and man is sensible to enjoyments ; it may be even said that religion is reciprocal (40) ; that God is religious towards man, as man is religious MYSTERY OF FREE WILL. 23 towards God ; religion is a bond, and if man holds one extremity of the chain, God holds the other. For this very reason, this word can imply nothing sad. or mournful ; it is natural, so to speak, and every thing natural is joyous. To represent religion as something severe, gloomy, austere, and an enemy to our legitimate enjoyments, is to misrepresent its character ; he who is sorrowfully religious does not understand its nature. (41) From these principles, there finally flows another im- portant consequence — that, to trust in God is to trust in oneself; for it is to trust in the faculties which He has conferred upon us, and in what they teach us of Him. (42) For example, to trust in God, as a good and kind being, is to trust in the idea which we have formed of his goodness and benignity, with this qualification, it is true, that these attributes in God exceed our ideas of them as the infinite exceeds the finite. If God, in creating, had no other model but himself, it is natural, that the ideal realised in God should be, as we have already seen, the term of comparison, which serves as the basis of all the judgments of our reason. And if creation is in God a consequence of infinity, if in creating He had no other model than himself, it follows that creation is perfect. (43) CHAP. XI. MYSTERY OF FREE WILL. It has been seen, that in the exercise of our powers, the fact of the will or of human freedom is always ob- served ; it would be impossible that the exercise of those powers should by constraint attain the end for 24 MYSTERY OF FREE WILL. which God has imparted them. An intelligence search- ing after truth in spite of itself; a morality practising virtue against its will ; affections loving by constraint ; sensitiveness accepting involuntary happiness, are all so many flagrant contradictions in terms. A mental power is not a power except so far forth as it is independent. Man is then free in his part of the finite, as God is in the infinite ; that is to say, that man acts in his quality of man with the same independence, that God acts as God ; or, in other terms still, freedom is power, man is power- ful as man, and God is powerful as God. It will be seen, that the mystery of free will — that ancient stone of stumbling in all religions, all systems of philosophy, and all schools, lies in the point of sepa- ration of the two powers, the creating power and the power created. To ask how man is free, is to ask how the Creator, his work being finished, separated himself and kept himself separate from his creature and leaves him to himself ; it is to ask what method God pursues to constitute an individuality. Obviously, God alone knows. (44) Obviously too, this our insuperable and necessary ignorance of the manner in which the Creator effects the withdrawal of his power or his will, and remains in his individuality when he leaves the creature to his own, can in no respect weaken the certainty which we have of our own freedom. A fact, lying without us, obscure, unknown, inexplicable, by no means invalidates the certainty of a fact within us, of which we are conscious. That ignorance does not destroy this knowledge, that obscurity does not overshadow this light. (45) The same mystery appears again in inactive existences. We know not how the Creator's power ceases to weigh upon free beings, raises and keeps raised the sluices of the will. MYSTERY OF FREE WILL. 25 We know no better the manner in which creative power detaches itself from matter, and leaves physical laws and secondary causes to play their part. The hand of God, we say, launched the planets in the tangent of their orbits, and since that time the universe rolls on alone. But how has God withdrawn his hand ? That is the question. The question is not then respecting the freedom of the will, since it presents itself identically where there is no liberty. We do not comprehend how God should leave two Greeks in the age of Pericles to choose, one to be Socrates and the other Anitus, or two Jews in the age of Augustus, one to be Caiaphas and the other St. Paul ; and we know no better how God leaves the heavenly bodies to attract one another in the direct ratio of their masses, and in the inverse ratio of their distances. The same obscurity conceals the means of accomplishing the moral and the physical law, although on the one hand there is freedom, and on the other coercion. This illustration loses nothing of its value, if we adopt the system which supposes that the Creator pre- serves creation by the constant maintenance of order and life, not by laws fixed and established, as it were, once for all, but by a continuous, suitable, and efficient intervention. In this system its advocates adopt the doctrine of an immutable will, continually manifesting itself in the regulation of creation ; in that more usually received, we believe in laws which never fall into de- suetude : this, however, is merely a vast and flagrant dispute about words ; the whole discussion is impreg- nated with notions of time and space, both of which are foreign to God, (See Book II. Chap, xix.) The laws of nature only remain in force because God so wills ; and c 26 MYSTERY OF FREE WILL. who does not perceive that when we speak of an in- finite being, acts succeeding each other without relaxa- tion, interval, or diminution, and laws whose force is consecutively maintained, come precisely to the same thing? At the bottom of this dispute, there are merely human ideas transferred to God. Let it be here carefully observed, that the concatena- tion, the necessity, is not in the physical law itself, but in the constancy of the law. The law of universal gravitation once established by the Creator, it becomes necessary ; in other words, bodies infallibly attract one another in the recognised proportions. But who shall demonstrate that the law itself was necessary ? This would be to pretend to prove that God could not have constructed the physical universe on any other plan — have subjected matter to other laws, or to different combinations, Finally, we may say with respect to the freedom of the will, what has been already said of the existence of God : man believes in God, therefore God exists ; man believes that he is free, and therefore he is free, for freedom cannot be a mere conjecture; we cannot be under an illusion in seeking whether we are free or not ; if we are so, we know and feel it. This remark explains the powerlessness of all attacks against the freedom of the will, and of all the apologies for fatalism. The consciousness of the human race has always proved too strong for arguments ; it has always replied to the fatalists, of what use is it to confound, if you cannot persuade me ? MYSTERY IN GENERAL. 27 CHAP. XII. MYSTERY IN GENERAL. This first mystery of religion, to which all others may be referred, sufficiently shows what in religion is a mystery. It has been said that all mystery is merely ignorance ; not so : that of which we are completely ignorant has for us no existence. A mystery supposes a certain knowledge; for in order to judge that an object, whatever it may be, is mysterious, it is at least necessary to know that it exists ; the idea of a reality precedes, in the mind, the idea of the obscurity by which it is surrounded. Thus it is not true that mys- teries in religion are merely things of which we are ignorant : they are matters of partial knowledge. In the middle ages the existence of the antipodes and the sphericity of the earth were mysteries, because men were unacquainted with the law of gravitation. Take away the knowledge of the fact, and no part of the notion of a mystery remains. A mystery in religion is not the radiant day, in which every thing appears in a clear light ; nor is it that pro- found darkness in which we see nothing ; it is the twi- light of reason and faith, in which the objects are real and active, but at a distance, seen in a confused and gloomy shade, so that the sharpness of the outline is effaced, the colours are confounded, and the objects themselves commingle ; the characters, like an inscrip- tion, are read in broken words, by the feeble glimmer- ing of a sepulchral lamp, and the only word which is everywhere distinctly legible is the word — mystery ! A mystery, then, is only a limit, an impassable c 2 28 MYSTERY IN GENERAL, boundary ; but beyond which we have a foresight of the unknown. Arrived at this limit, human intelligence stops ; it knows no more, but it knows that more remains to be known. It can make no further discoveries, but it knows that something remains to be discovered. Arrived at this limit, human intelligence knows that, for the moment at least, it has reached the end of its progress ; but it knows also that the way of knowledge continues beyond. Hence it follows, that nothing is more reasonable than to acknowledge that reason has its limits. Hence it follows besides, that mystery applies not to religion only, but is universal. There is a limit not only to the extent of progress in religion, but on all the highways of knowledge. All knowledge terminates in a mystery ; all human light is lost in obscurity ; all human discourse arrives at a last word, which is pro- nounced, and which supposes, necessitates, and suggests another, which cannot be pronounced. When an at- tempt is made to utter it, the wisest man merely stam- mers forth confused sounds. The light of religion thus leads to the very borders of the night of infinity. The haughty and tranquil mathematics lose themselves in the obscurities of the infinitesimal calculus ; they, too, have their limit, and depths which cannot even be measured. This arises from the fact, that all our tendencies, our intellectual powers inclusive, emanate from the infinite, tend thither, and are again absorbed therein ; it is therefore necessary that they should always look beyond their utmost efforts, to a point impossible to attain. The very limit itself lies in the twilight, or, to speak MYSTERY IN GENERAL. 29 without a figure, a mystery is necessarily vague, con- fused, undefined, so that the line of demarcation between what we know and what we do not know can never become clear, sharp, and well-defined. Our powers still proceed groping for the path before relinquishing the attempt at progress. The human mind is so con- stituted that between that which it knows and that of which it is ignorant, there is always something which it believes it knows. These last observations, which are the results of uni- versal experience, serve to complete the definition given of a mystery ; a mystery is that which is placed, so to speak, partly on this side, and partly beyond the boundary of reason. If this mysterious point lay wholly beyond, it would be wholly unknown. If wholly within, it would be thoroughly known ; the idea wrould be adequate to the object. Placed upon the obscure limits, it is partly known and partly undiscerned, that is to say, it remains for us in a state of mystery. The force of these considerations is in no respect weakened by asking, whether the human mind really possesses any ideas which lie wholly on this side the line of demarcation, or whether on the contrary all truths, the simplest as well as the most elevated, do not lie partly within and partly without the range of our intellectual powers ; this is, however, merely to allege, that there is some mystery in all knowledge, and, so far from contradicting, serves to confirm the definition. (46) God is the only intelligent being to whom nothing is mysterious, and to be astonished or indignant at meeting with mysteries, is to be astonished or indignant at not being God. (47) C 3 30 OF THE WILL AND OF PROGRESS. The devil himself did not offer, as a temptation to man, all knowledge ; he only promised him the know- ledge of good and evil. CHAP. XIII.* OP THE WILL AND OF PROGRESS. What is the sphere of freedom ? We have already defined it: its field of operation is our powers and tendencies. Our will makes such use of them as it pleases, and gives them the direction which it prefers. To will or to act is to choose. Every action of a free being is a choice, and every choice implies an alternative, one at least. (48) Thus, each of our tendencies is, as it were, placed in the face of an alternative. The alternative of the intellectual power is true and false. The alternative of the moral power is good and eviL The alternative of the affections is devotedness and selfishness. The alternative of our sensitiveness is contentment and suffering. The alternative of religiousness is fervour and in- difference. These alternatives, between which it is the province of our freedom to choose, and these directions which each of our tendencies may follow, are indefinite; nothing limits, nothing terminates them ; they never say, it is enough. Our faculties are never loaded to the ut- most (49) ; there is always room for something more. The intellectual powers can never cease to recognise OF THE WILL AND OF PROGRESS, 31 truths, or to adopt errors ; as knowledge has no limits, neither has error. (50) Again the moral powers can never cease to be ameliorated or corrupted ; neither good nor evil have any bounds. Our affections may always become more lively or be effaced ; a man can always love others more or himself, always be more self-interested or disinterested, prefer others or prefer himself. Our sensitiveness can always render the position, the destiny, either better or worse. Finally, religiousness may always either strengthen and increase the natural preponderance which belongs to it, or suffer its efficiency to be more and more impaired or even extinguished ; the religious bond between God and man may be always either tightened or relaxed. What a distance is there from him to whom the question was addressed; Cain, where is Abel thy brother? from him of whom it was said, It had been better for him he had never been born, .... to Moses who talked with God as a man with his friend, and to Paul who longed to depart and to be with Christ. But even in these examples there is neither the last term of a possible rupture between the Creator and the creature, nor the most intimate union. It is inevitable, it is necessary, that these alternatives should be indefinite, unlimited, without a measure capable of calculation, without a term which can be discovered, without a barrier which can be reached, because they terminate in the infinite; they tend and struggle thitherward; they are incessantly led back thither. God is an infinite being ; he possesses knowledge, holiness, love, infinite happiness ; his creatures may in c 4 32 OF THE WILL AND OF PROGRESS. their knowledge continually approximate to his, in their holiness to his holiness, in their love to that which he feels, and in their happiness to that which he enjoys, without ever attaining unto them. For to whatever point of exaltation creatures may reach in their progress towards God, there still remains more to accomplish .... after Sinai, Calvary ; after Calvary, Mount Tabor ; after Mount Tabor, the heavens ; and St. Paul was bent to reckon them ! And as faculties have the same power of action, whatever alternative they take, it follows that the evil paths are as long, as indeterminate, as immeasurable as the good ; it follows that creatures may for ever more and more depart from God. This double possibility is involved in the principle : the abuse may be equal to the use. As we have already said, God, in creating, had no model except himself, and the whole of these last con- siderations individualise and personify, so to speak, the simple idea, that to approximate God is to resemble him ; to retire from him is to resemble him less. It is evident that resemblance and non-resemblance may go on always increasing. This indefinitely increasing assimilation of the crea- tures to the Creator, this perpetual approximation to the infinite, this certainty of always drawing nearer without ever reaching the end, this inexhaustible deve- lopment of knowledge, of holiness, of love, of happiness, and, in short, of religion, constitutes and sums up the end of creation, already recognised. This end, then, is progress in the most elevated sense of that word, which here expresses the legitimate direction of created powers. (51) We always think of continual approximation, and OF THE WILL AND OF PROGRESS. 33 not of absorption. The consciousness of individuality excludes all possibility of absorption in God. An individual remains an individual. God is one ; man is one, and the Creator, in consequence, can no more absorb his creatures, than the creature be absorbed in him. (52) Our system, therefore, has nothing more pantheistic in its end than in its beginning. It is only the false gods who devour their children ; and pantheism, in spite of all that can be said, makes God an immense Saturn. Progress, or increasing assimilation of the creature and the Creator, recognised as the end of creation, ex- plains (as has been seen) the necessity of free will, and justifies God in having permitted moral evil, or, in other words, rendered it possible. Evil exists, and can have no other* author but God or man. (53) It was necessary that evil might be preferred ; this was a con- dition of creation, since the end of existence is progress, and progress without freedom, that is to say, the pos- sibility of drawing nearer to the infinite without the equivalent possibility of withdrawing from him, implies a contradiction. To reproach God with the possibility of evil, or, in other words, the gift of free will, is to reproach him with creation ; for moral evil is nothing else than the accomplishment of the end of creation, and the end of creation required the possibility of evil. Thus the Gospel always points to this moral evil as something profoundly subjective, personal, inherent in the creature, as soon as the creature subverts the divine purpose of his existence. (54) c 5 34 UNIVERSALITY OF PROGRESS. CHAP. XIV. UNIVERSALITY OF PROGRESS. The principles which have been just laid down, and the facts which have been recognised, are universal : that is to say, they do not merely concern the earth on which we dwell and the race of man ; they concern all God's creatures ; they are so vast and luminous, that they fill the whole universe, enlightening it with their light. The relation of the Creator and of the creature is invariable,— the same always, in all worlds ; it is evident that God has no other model than himself for all crea- tures endowed with freedom. Free will is the same in all worlds ; in the case of every creature it is nothing but the power of employing his faculties and directing his tendencies.* Truth, the object of the intellectual powers, is the same in all worlds ; it is what God thinks ; what occu- pies his thoughts ought to occupy those of his creatures, according to the reach of their intelligence. Holiness, the object of the moral powers, is the same in all worlds ; it is what God wills ; what satisfies his will ought to satisfy that of his creatures, according to the proportion of their morality. Love is everywhere the same ; it consists always in the harmony of natures, and the interest taken in the well-being of others. Happiness is everywhere the same ; it is always in- terest well understood ; the legitimate development of our powers, the regular and normal accomplishment of our destiny. Religion is everywhere the same; since God, the object of religion, is the same in reference to all his OF THE PHASES OF PROGRESS. 35 creatures ; since all necessarily tend towards the infinite Being, who is one and immutable. As God has only one model, himself, for all crea- tion, so he has but one end — the approximation to- wards himself. All creatures are to tread the same path of imitation. Imitation of God is the universal duty ; progress towards God is the only progress. [55) CHAP. XV. OF THE PHASES OF PROGRESS. Between God, the infinite Being, the only model of his creatures and the finite beings who imitate him, the degrees of difference are indefinite. At all possible distances from God, there may be creatures engaged in approximating the Creator. (56) Each will have his measure of progress to accomplish, according to the conditions of his present existence. These different degrees of resemblance to God, these varied measures of approximation to be effected in a given world, and in a given time, will constitute the phases of progress (57) to be passed through by every creature. The foot of Jacob's ladder is not only on this earth, it is everywhere ; it is the top of the ladder which touches a single point alone, and that point is the throne of God himself. (58) One of the most touching consequences of this system here naturally presents itself; these successive stages, these differences of the phases of progress, will not affect the measure of enjoyment, and will not alter happiness. If, in any phase of progress whatsoever, the employment of the powers is conformable to the c 6 36 OF THE PHASES OF PROGRESS. universal law of progress towards God, as all the ten* dencies are satisfied, the tendency to happiness is satis- fied like the rest. If it be asked why all creatures have not been placed in the same conditions of existence and the same phase of progress, the reply is everywhere obvious in the world around us, and the law of progress explains the variety in creation : if all the individuals among man- kind were like, if a monotonous identity brought all down to a common level, the progress of humanity would be stopped ; a general similitude would cause a general torpor ; there would be neither masters nor learners, and apathy would usurp the place of activity. A system of inequality, of variety, was necessary, and to such a degree that men do not resemble one another even in sleeping. The same observation applies to the two sexes. It may be truly said, that the master-piece of nature was the formation of two beings so like and yet so different. Take away the inequality of the sexes and let nothing remain but their physical differences, our world becomes impossible. (59) Still more : the differences of nature, which exist among creatures, are indifferent to God, because the distance between the creature and the Creator is always as finite to infinity. The imperceptible insect is thus as near to God, in God's view, as man or an archangel. The inequality of creatures, which does not exist for God, which is not sensible to God and affects him in no respect, has only been established for themselves ; whence it follows that this inequality was necessary to progress, and that the law of inequality is universal. In fact, what is true, in this point, respecting this world of ours, must be true of the universe, since the OF THE PHASES OF PROGRESS. 37 object of creation is everywhere the same. As dif- ference among men is necessary to human progress, difference among classes of creatures and of phases of progress is necessary to universal progress. It was necessary (to use the poetical language of St. Paul) that " one star should differ from another star in glory" (60) The question of the sole existence of humanity might be thus rationally solved. What appearance is there to indicate that God and man are alone in the universe ? and, without consulting the scientific analogies of astronomy, or the instinctive analogies of sentiment (all which have their value in the question), it seems necessary that man, in this great road of progress towards the infinite, should precede creatures less gifted and follow creatures more eminent than himself; he knows subjectively that he is far from the first and from the last degree, he knows that he is of more value than many sparrows, and crowned with honour and glory ; but he perceives glittering in the distance crowns much more brilliant than his own. Those crowns, it is true, he sees only confusedly, and the existence of superior beings is, in the eye of reason, only a verisimilitude, a conjecture eminently plausible, but destitute of positive subjective proofs. We as yet know nothing of heaven from experience ; we are acquainted with the life of this world only. Singular fact ! we are of ourselves much more certain of the existence of God than of that of angels. In order to believe in God, it is sufficient to read in our souls ; to believe with certainty in angels, we must read else- where. 38 IMMORTALITY AND SPIRITUALISM. CHAP. XVI. IMMORTALITY AND SPIRITUALISM. The certainty of immortality, whether this immortality leads us to other brethren, to other fellow-citizens, or not, is acquired by contemplation of and acquaintance with ourselves, for progress towards the infinite is necessarily immortal ; in order to proceed upon an endless path, we must exist and proceed for ever. The question is, an immortality with identity ; for not to continue to be one's self, is to cease to be. As far as regards the Creator, an immortality without identity would be a destruction; then, a new creation. And with respect to the creature an annihilation ; annihilation, and nothing more : to be replaced is not to continue to exist ; to give me a successor is to cut me off; by giving place I lose my own. At this crisis the feeling of individuality awakes with all its powers and promises us, that as life is individual, immortality shall be so also. It is I who am, and I who shall be. The powers and tendencies of our souls remain the same, whether they are developed in the present or prejudged in the future ; they reckon upon themselves ; during the progress of to-day, they promise themselves that of to-morrow ; the one gives assurance of the identity of the other ; this is as true of the last day of life as of the present. In other words, we feel that our tendencies cannot change ; they are in so far gua- rantees of identity. (6 1 ) The problem of materialism and spiritualism, very different from that of immortality, is placed amongst EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF ANIMALS. 39 the questions of mere curiosity, as soon as immortality, existence, and progress as an end are admitted. The question is no longer concerning the active principle itself, but the organisations of the activity ; and whether this immortal active principle resides in a spirit in possession of a material clothing, or in an apparel of matter, continually perfectible, the result is identical. In other words, materialism does not rise to the rank of a problem in which religion is implicated, even if it denies the soul, but only when it denies a future life. If it admits a future life, it is then only a false explana- tion of the phenomena of human individuality. The existence of a spiritual element in man is the only means of properly explaining the inward operations of his mind, and alone accords with the simplicity of self. (62) The question of spiritualism and materialism, indif- ferent in relation to man, is equally so in reference to all the other creatures of God. It is of no importance whatever to our theology to know whether angels have bodies or animals have souls. CHAP. XVII. EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF ANIMALS. The concluding remarks of the last chapter lead us to examine the question of the existence of animals — a question whose omission would leave these theories incomplete, and which faith has too much abandoned to science. Remove animals from the face of the earth, the situation of mankind would be changed to a degree difficult to represent, and progress must be effected 40 EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF ANIMALS. under very different conditions. The existence of an animal kingdom is necessary to the existence of man- kind. Animals are the companions of the journey which Grod has appointed us to make in our present phase of progress ; and this characteristic of our situation, — this simultaneous existence of animals and man, — the intimate relation of nature established between us and those beings which are beneath us in grade, — reveals one of the holiest and most beautiful among the laws of the universe : it is a proof of the fact, that, in the plans of creation and the departments of the universe, the destinies of two orders of creatures very different from each other may be thus closely con- nected and reciprocally dependent on each other. The parity of lot between men and animals is so far exact that being born and dying are, for both, phe- nomena of the same kind. The union still further appears from the senses in men and animals being the same : animals have always one sense, at least touch. The nature of animals partly falls within the category in which we ourselves are placed. Of the faculties and tendencies of mankind, animals do not possess either morality or religiousness, as far as we can judge from the facts already established, and which appear conclusive. They possess, up to a certain point, and in very unequal degrees, the intellectual powers, the sense of enjoyment and affections. (64) Moreover they possess a peculiar faculty, instinct ; a power very different from intelligence, and which only exhibits itself in man at the moment of his entrance upon life, and does not deserve to be reckoned among EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF ANIMALS. 41 human faculties. The very complicated operation by which the new-born infant draws sustenance from the mother's breast is with it an instinctive operation. Instinct is recognised by two signs — the absence of all attempt at change, and of all calculation of utility. Its repetitions are constantly faithful : the dens of wild beasts, the nests of birds, the honeycomb of the bee, the chrysalis of butterflies, the nymphae of insects, and the webs of spiders, all these productions of animal instinct have remained the same since the creation. The law of necessity is always blind : in a full granary ants may be seen dragging along grains, and beavers build their dikes even where there is no water. The intellect of animals enables them to combine ideas, like that of man ; but it is not accompanied by a consciousness of self. The animal draws no conclusion from the case of its fellow respecting its own ; conse- quently it does not possess the notion of time as we do : it does not foresee ; and this is, doubtless, a wise provision of the Creator adopted to temper and ame- liorate the sufferings of animals. The power of the affections among animals is very strong, but of short duration: among them family attachments and the cares of parentage last only for a brief period, and cease with their necessity. (65) It is a singular fact that animals only attach themselves with fidelity to their superior, man. Sensitiveness among animals is continuous, but often blind : it is evident that it is condemned to this infe- riority by the inferiority of intelligence ; in the animal it is less dependent upon intelligence than upon in- stinct. These powers among animals are not in the present state perfectible ; as they are destitute of consciousness 42 EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF ADIMALS. of self, they cannot perfect themselves ; ignorant of their own individuality, they do not ameliorate it>c their pre- sent existence is not a phase of progress. There is, therefore, within our knowledge, two modes of being for the creatures of God, — the one progressive, the other stationary, in which their powers or tendencies, whatever they are, never rise above a determinate level, which is common to them all. In this condition all progress is contrary to nature, forced and factitious; whence it follows that all pretended progress remains individual, and does not profit the species. Learned animals never rendered others of their species wiser. This stationary condition can only exist where one species of beings has been placed at the service of an- other which belongs to a progressive state ; the solitary existence of a race of beings whose generations should eternally succeed each other without progress, in order to be lost in annihilation, would be a creation unworthy of God. This common existence, this joint habitation of the same world, supposes a complete empire of one class of beings over another, an empire divinely established and authorised (66) : without a divine sanction such a dominion would be unlawful ; and, moreover, it sup- poses an immense pre-eminence on the part of the class of superior beings. (67) It is a remarkable consequence of this dominion, and of this superiority, that the world, which serves as a country for two classes of beings, belongs to the more exalted, whose absence alone would deliver it over to the inferior creatures. (68) The destinies of the two classes being thus allied, EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF ANIMALS. 43 the fate of the superior class must always determine, and bear with it that of the inferior. Simultaneousness of existence in the same world necessarily involves simi- larity of destiny ; it is in this very thing that the union exists. This observation explains the sufferings of animals in the present existence. Man, in this phase of progress, suffers (and we shall have to explain these sufferings, see Book IT. Chap, xxi.) ; and it was inevi- table that animals should suffer with him, and often by the very same means of pain. Leaving out of view those useless barbarities which negligence or wickedness in- flicts upon them, how are those natural sufferings imposed by the Creator to be explained, without ad- mitting that their lot is bound up with ours, and that they form a part of the scheme of existence of which man is at the head ? If there is a God, not a sensitive being in the whole immensity of creation can suffer without these sufferings being explained and justified. God would not have created if suffering were the inevi- table condition of creation. Here the objection immediately presents itself, that animals preceded man upon the earth ; that animals existed there before him, and that he is but a recent inhabitant of the present globe. (69) Science has placed this fact beyond dispute ; it has proved that before the existence of man there had abeady been sufferings amongst the animals which peopled the earth, whether they were similar or not to those which now exist ; and it has proved that in these primitive times animals devoured one another, as they do now. The objection appears so grave, that undoubtedly this difficulty has served to gain favour for the dreams of those ingenious minds, which have regarded animals as wicked and fallen beings, degraded from their rank 44 EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF ANIMALS. in creation, cast into and detained in this inferior con- dition, as in a state of expiation and chastisement. It may be answered, that as we know not when our phase of progress will terminate, we know no better when it really commenced ; that the union and connec- tion between animals and man was established even from before the existence of man ; and, in fact, this merely amounts to saying that the servants preceded the master in their common dwelling-place. Still more, the physical sciences in their actual pro- gress begin to open up and explain the providential truth, that the geological periods, the successive orga- nisations of our planet before the creation of the human species, have from of old been preparatory to the present condition of the globe, the productions which clothe its surface, and the atmosphere by which it is sur- rounded. Pre-adamite organisations, animals of all kinds, whose fossil remains are deposited and scattered in prodigious masses at different depths in the bosom of the earth, constitute an essential part of this prepara- tion, and the phenomena of their existence have served from of old to render possible in this world the more ex- alted phenomena of human life. Above all, let us never forget, that these notions of before and after (see Book II. Chap, xix.) are always without value and without application when we speak of God, the infinite Being ; and that consequently, in the divine mind, the phe- nomena of geological periods are as intimately con- nected with the destiny of the human species as those of the present order of things. If it is evident that when two classes of beings of unequal rank in creation co-exist and dwell together in the same world, and under like conditions of life and death, the fate of the superior class necessarily carries with it that of the in- EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF ANIMALS. 45 ferior; if the sovereignty of man and the dependence of animals are but aspects of this combined state of existence ; if, finally, this community of life, world, and fate, has caused sufferings, it is impossible that compensation should not be reserved for and in another phase of progress. To deny this is a complete nega- tion of the idea of God ; for suffering of all kinds is repugnant to God. (70) It might at first be supposed that the absence of the notion of individuality, the absence of the knowledge of self, is opposed to this reasonable expectation. But what do we know of the resources of existence in general to lead us to suppose, that the Creator has not prepared powers, at present latent, which, in due time, will be de- veloped in a retro-active sense, so to speak, and in some measure re-make the past, in order to compensate its suf- ferings ? There are undoubtedly other resources in crea- tion than those which are in operation, for the develop- ment and compensation of mankind. And let us never forget, also, that the objection rests upon the notion of time and its misapprehension. Finally, in human nature itself, we have continually before our eyes examples of individualities unknown to themselves, and which are to be preserved and become recognisable. Every case of death immediately after birth, or during the course of early infancy, is a proof that individuality may be reserved ; every case of death, after a return to infancy by the decay of a protracted old age, proves it better still ; it is beyond doubt, that the old man after death finds himself again. The system of the philosophy of religion explained in these remarks upon the animal kingdom has no regard to forms, to dimensions, to conditions of ex- istence. That philosophy alone, which is the dupe of 46 CONTINUITY OF ACTIVITY. appearances, can persuade itself that what we call deformity, ugliness, physical irregularities, are signs either of elevation or inferiority in the scale of beings. The life of a mollusk, a pulp, a polypus, or a worm, that of insects or the infusoria, may conceal for the present and the future treasures both of enjoyment and progress, whose present means and future germ altogether escape us. Both the microscope and the telescope are instruments of which our philosophy has no need ; its optics in both senses reach much further. CHAP. XVIII. CONTINUITY OF ACTIVITY. The notion of the phases of progress remains then as the key of the mysteries of creation ; the universe appears arranged, as it were, by gradations ; each class of beings occupies its own and occupies it but for a time. The powers or tendencies are merely the means of progress granted for the special phase in which they are displayed. Infinite existence is employed only with perfection. Finite existence is employed in perfecting. The faculties and tendencies, as a whole, constitute the active principle of beings. Activity is continuous ; it would not deserve the name were it not so. The Creator acts continually (71) ; the creature made after his image, in like manner, acts always ; the in- finite alone presents a path on which there is never reason to halt. Repose is no more possible amongst progressive creatures than immobility in inanimate creatures. CONTINUITY OF ACTIVITY. 47 Beings made for progress are always on the march, as inanimate existences are always in movement. Man thinks always ; the nature of good and evil is always before him, and is manifested in all his con- duct ; man loves always ; man is always loving himself ; and his religiousness, his tendency towards God, is so inextinguishable, so continuous, that superstition always comes to take the place of religion when absent. Infidels are ordinarily superstitious. In man, activity is so intense and so continuous, that sleep (a phenomenon of our nature too little studied, a presage of our future destiny too little com- prehended, which we shall presently examine more closely) — sleep, we observe, is not an interruption and does not relax the springs of thought. All our powers are in action during this needful repose. In a word, man, when asleep, by no means abdicates his functions. It may happen that one or several of the human tendencies may keep down and reduce the others to a more or less complete state of stagnation. This power of absorbing the other tendencies espe- cially belongs to the intellectual, sensitive, and religious faculties. There are mathematicians, who, in passing through the world, scarcely think of anything but mathematics. There are egotists, who, during their whole lives, have elbowed their fellow-men, without ever thinking of any but themselves. There are mystical minds, which are, as it were, absorbed in God. This partial stagnation, however, this anomalous predominance of tendencies, which proves that they are distinct and independent, never suspends activity ; in one sense it excites and redoubles it, because once 48 CONTINUITY OF ACTIVITY. become almost exclusive, it absorbs into itself all their energy, and gains in proportion as the subdued or extinguished faculties lose. It is because human activity is continuous, that human desires are insatiable, and that satiety is only a modification of desire, a change of direction in activity. (72) Activity, like the tendencies of which it constitutes the ensemble, can evidently follow two directions only — that which approximates to, and that which retires from God, the infinite Being, that which augments and that which diminishes the resemblance of the creature to the Creator. Whence it follows, activity being con- tinuous, that all creatures, each in its phase of progress, are perpetually moving onward towards God, or with- drawing from him ; an immense retinue, which stretches through all worlds, and extends through all ages, whose stations are the stars, which has but one end, as the limit of its career — the infinite. NOTES TO BOOK I. (1.) The intimate knowledge which every man has of himself is expressed by St. Paul in the following words : " For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him ?" 1 Cor. ii. 11. (2.) " Which of you, by taking thought, can add one moment to his life?" Matt. vi. 27; Luke xii. 25. This is the true sense of the passage rendered in the common version, " Which of you can add one cubit unto his stature ? " The word used in the original signifies sometimes stature, Luke xix. 3., sometimes life, or age. Luke, ii. 52; John ix. 21. The true signification is, however, plainly indicated by the connection of ideas in this part of the discourse. Jesus speaks of the prolongation and sus- tenance of life, a common subject of human anxiety, and not of height or diminutiveness of stature. He wishes to demonstrate that man is dependent on God even in the smallest things. li If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?" Luke, xii. 26. In comparison with the duration of life, an hour, a moment is but a small thing ; in comparison with a man's stature, a cubit more or less would be a great thing ; so that the ordinary version is in direct opposition to Christ's idea. The word translated cubit also signifies any short measure, in the same sense as the expression of the psalmist " Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreath ;" that is, thou abridgest them. Psalm xxxix. 5. (3.) The study of creation begins with mankind ; it has been well said, that a truth stated is a truth known, and that in order to state it well, we must first know it well ; thus, the Lord brought the animals of the earth unto Adam, to see (or examine) what he would call them, Gen. ii. 19 ; and, as reason cannot remain inactive, it is so ordered that the field of study opened to it should be exhaustless, boundless, infinite ; it furnishes the prophet with an image of endless duration : " If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also D 50 NOTES TO BOOK I. cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord." Jer. xxxi. 37. (4.) In principle and in fact, St. Paul positively recognises in man a power, a moral tendency, distinct from all positive law, from all written revelation : " For when the gentiles, which have not the law (that is, the revealed law, the Mosaic law), do by nature the things contained in the law ; these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves : which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing, or else excusing one another." Rom. ii. 14, 15. This passage expresses the principle ; the following the fact : " For until the law (of Moses) sin was in the world ; but sin is not imputed when there is no law." Rom. v. 13. The apostle, in these memorable words, clearly establishes both the distinction and the harmony between the natural law of conscience, that of all men, and the positive law of revelation, that of the Israelites, and afterwards of Christians. All that the Scripture teaches with regard to the moral power of the human mind, or conscience, is in accordance with the experience of mankind. Notwithstanding the state of sin, this power exists ; under its influence man can say, " For I delight in the law of God after the inward man." Rom. vii. 22. It applies to every act of every individual ; thus, " whatsoever is not of faith (that is to say, of the private moral persuasion) is sin ; " Rom. xiv. 23 : in other words, no man has a right to act against his moral conviction. His power needs exercise, dis- cipline, and cultivation : the mind (of man) gets accustomed by constant exercise to discern both good and evil. " Those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil;" Heb. v. 14; and in the lucidity of its inevitable judg- ments, the human conscience approaches even the omniscience of God, from whom it emanates : " the spirit (moral sense) of man is the candle of the Lord, searching the inward parts of the belly" (sounding the depths of the heart). Prov. xx. 27- Man feels that he is created for moral perfection, at whatever distance from it he may be placed ; the least evil is still an evil in his eyes ; we have no terms to keep, no compromise to make with evil ; " therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh (that is, to our evil passions) to live after the flesh." Rom. viii. 12. (5.) The Gospel recognises man as a loving being, by reducing the whole law to this one principle, love. The commandments are, according to St. Paul, " briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Rom. xiii. 9. Family and filial affections and obligations are also considered NOTES TO BOOK I. 51 in the Gospel as natural feelings and duties. Christ draws from them an argument to illustrate the confidence with which men ought to give themselves up to the care of Providence. " If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone ? or, if he ask a fish, will he, for a fish, give him a serpent ? or, if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion ? If ye then, being evil, know how to (preserve these affections and) give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask him ? Matt. vii. 9 — 11 ; Luke, xi. 11 — 13. The whole train of reasoning rests on what is natural in these tender feelings and duties. St. Paul declares that "if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he is worse than an infidel." 1 Tim. v. 8 ; and, according to the same apostle, one of the blackest traits of iniquity in the pagan manners which he depicts, Ptom. i. 31, and of the corruption of the Christian virtues which he foretells, 2 Tim. iii. 3, is that men stifle the affections, or natural tender feelings. (6.) Family affections, those innate feelings of the human heart, are so legitimate and natural in their expansive ardour, that in the Old Testament they are employed to represent the relation between the Creator and his creatures. The Psalmist compares the love of God to that of a father : " Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." Psalm ciii. 13. (7.) It is extremely remarkable that the Gospel sanctions the legitimate and natural egotism which impels every man to desire and seek his own welfare, in giving it as the standard of the love due to one's neighbour : " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- self." Matt. xxii. 39. " No man," says St. Paul, " ever yet hated his own flesh," Eph. v. 29; that is, no man ever hates himself. (8.) "God is light," says St. John, 1 John, i. 5 — 7; that is to say, perfection, which is the signification of this term, often employed in this sense by the Greek writers. There is nothing more beautiful than light, nothing more mysterious, nothing more necessary, nothing more universally extended ; and, from these combined considerations, antiquity, whose very imperfect science had not even touched upon the physical study of light, drew, by a tacit induction the synonym of the words light and perfection : "but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fel- lowship one with another." In the apostle's idea, this communion between God and man is therefore based, on the one hand on the human faculties, on the other on the Supreme attributes. " God has set infinity in their hearts," (the hearts of men,) B 2 52 NOTES TO BOOK I. Ecc. iii. 11.; literally, God has set eternity in their hearts. This passage, disputed and variously translated, appears, however, ac- cording to the most accredited criticisms, to have the following salification : he has given to men, as the subject of their thoughts, eternity, immensity, infinity. The original, which has in the common version been restricted to the sense of world, according to which we should be obliged to translate the passage thus : God has put the anxieties of the world into their hearts, is not to be met with in this sense in the other sacred books. The connection of ideas evidently favours the interpretation above adopted. (9.) The independence of our natural tendencies in reference to our will, which is powerless to extirpate them, explains the force of habit, in the sense that our habits, good or evil, are only the development of certain of our tendencies in a continuous direction. The common expression, that habit is a second nature, is perfectly correct. The Scripture, in its figurative language, compares the confirmed habit of impiety and iniquity to the ex- terior properties of the body, which the will cannot change. Jeremiah said to Coniah, and to the queen, his mother, " Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? " Jer. xiii. ] 8 — 23 ; thus prophesying the obstinacy of their impeni- tence. (10.) Revelation, which contains not a single word of discus- sion on the subject of moral liberty, everywhere addresses itself to man, under both covenants, as to a free being. " See," said Moses to Israel, " I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing ; therefore choose life !" Deut. xxx. 15 — 19. " Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death." Jer. xxi. 8. " Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts," by the voice of Malachi. Mai. iii. 7. " This do, and thou shalt live," were the words of Christ to the doctor of the law. (See Book I. Chap. xi. note 45 ; Book III. Chap. xxx. note 10; Book IV. Chap. xlv. note 23; and Chap. xlix. note 59-) (11.) The Gospel explicitly admits the innate distinction of the tendencies of man, when Christ teaches that the religious ten- dency, even when raised to its greatest power, abounding in prayers, in preachings, and even in miracles, does not always sanctify the heart : " Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name ? NOTES TO BOOK I. 53 and in thy name have cast out devils ? and in thy name done many wonderful works ? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you : depart from me, ye that work iniquity." Matt, vii. 21 — 23. These sentences have no signification, if the human powers, and especially the moral and the religious powers, are not distinct from one another. There is no contradiction between these words and the reply of Christ to his apostles : u there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can (at the same time) lightly speak evil of me." Mark, ix. 39- The strength of the thought is here in the words * at the same time," and who, indeed, could unite in the same moment a miracle and a blas- phemy ? St. Paul also declares the intellectual and religious powers to be entirely separate from charity, which embraces the moral power and that of the affections : " Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing." 1 Cor. xiii. 1, 2. The same apostle declares that men, by their " ungodliness and unrighteousness (may) hold the truth in unrighteousness (hold the truth captive)." Rom. i. 18. The truth of which he speaks is religious truth, not only that of revealed religion, but that of natural religion ; and his meaning is that, by corrupting the moral sense, men afterwards go on to corrupt the religious sense. " Satan himself," he says again, " is transformed into (disguises himself as) an angel of light," 2 Cor. xi. 14; an admirable poetic image to express the idea that, seduced reason may seduce morality, and cause it to take good for evil and evil for good. Again, " Every one that doeth evil hateth the light." John, iii. 20. (12.) Knowledge is but the discovery, the possession of truth, and our definition of truth is justified by the nature of the know- ledge promised to our intelligence in another life : " Then shall I know," says St. Paul, " even as also I am known ;" that is to say, thoroughly. 1 Cor. xiii. 12. We must here remark, 1st, that St. Paul does not speak with reference to himself alone. He has just said, " Now we see as through a glass, darkly ;" and, by a lively change of phrase, familiar to his style, and of which this same epistle affords examples, 1 Cor. vi. 12; x. 29, 30, he sud- denly passes to the first person, and says, " I shall know," which is equivalent to we shall know. 2dly, that, the force of the idea expressed in this sentence rests on the point of comparison, on the sense of the preposition as. It is evident that, of the two principal significations of this word in the Greek of the New Testament, d 3 54 NOTES TO BOOK I. viz. as much as, and in the same manner as, the last-men tioned^ alone can be the one in which it is employed in this passage. The glorious hope which the apostle expresses is, therefore, that the knowledge of immortality will embrace, not the appearances, phenomena, and outward manifestations of the divine laws and creations, but their truth and reality. (13.) " Sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John, iii. 4 ; " where no law is, there is no transgression." Rom. iv. 15. Thus man is never without a law, when he does not receive one from God he makes one to himself; in other words, if God has not revealed himself, man strives to reveal him to himself, seeking him in the instincts of his conscience, and his conscience becomes his law. The whole history of the world proves what difficulty man finds in discovering, by his own unassisted powers, the true law of his progress, genuine morality, real justice and goodness. The reason of this difficulty is, that the mission of conscience is much more to apply itself to the law which it finds in force, than to discover and give this law ; thus, it often applies it without first forming a judgment on it ; man often does evil conscientiously. (See note 4.) (14.) " But I see another law in my members (that is, in my passions, always represented in the Gospel by the body, the flesh, the members,) warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." Rom. vii. 23. (15.) St. Paul teaches that the obligation of brotherly love among men is a debt from which we are never absolved or ac- quitted, " Owe no man any thing, but to love one another." Rom. xiii. 8. (16.) Anchorites are monsters, in as much as they adopt a mode of life opposed to nature ; and it is to be remarked that, according to St. Paul, the corruption and impiety of the times do not justify a solitary life: " I wrote to you in an epistle not to company with fornicators ; yet not altogether (to break all inter- course) with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous or extortioners, or with idolaters ; for then must ye needs go out of the world." 1 Cor. v. Q, 1 0. (17.) The Gospel, without ever arguing the question, is everywhere opposed to pure idealism, and constantly admits the real existence of the sensible world. " Did not he that made that which is without (our bodies), make that which is within also ? " (the soul, the spiritual world.) Luke xi., 40. Some interpreters, resting on the facts that the word male is some- times, although rarely, taken in the sense of purify, and that NOTES TO BOOK I. 55 St. Matthew, in the parallel passage, xxiii. 26. indicates by the •word outside, the exterior of the cup, the only part which the Pharisees cleansed, understand this verse in a sense which appears to me inadmissible : should not he who has purified the exterior, also purify the interior? This signification, which is in no way suggested by the connection of ideas, and which presents a useless repetition of what goes before and what follows, is at variance with Christ's manner of teaching ; he most frequently left the moral consequence to be drawn by his hearers, without deducing it himself. In the whole of this discourse his object is to re- mind the Pharisees that their hypocrisy was known and judged, and could deceive men only. The idea then arises naturally : God, who has made the exterior, has also made the interior, the soul, the heart, and your mere appearance of virtue will not deceive him. (18.) It is said that "that which may be known of God is mani- fest in them (to them), for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." This assertion proves that the contemplation of nature is one of the excitements, one of the means of the culture and development of the religious tendency. If nothing material exists, if nature be but an appearance, whence comes the exciting cause ? if it be purely intuitive and inward, then nature is an immense snare spread for us by God, and to heighten the mockery, a useless snare. The advocates of pure idealism have never answered this objection. (19) God said to man : " replenish the earth, and subdue it." Gen. i. 28. *' Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet." Ps. viii. 6. (20.) The Holy Scriptures abound in declarations that the law of difference is providential, and will not cease to be divinely maintained. This law rests on the principle of the absolute independence in which the Creator stands with reference to his creatures : " Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth." Isaiah xlv. Q. ei Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus ? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" Rom. ix. 20, 21. God replies to Moses: " I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." Ex. xxxiii. 19; and Rom. ix. 15. This law of difference in no respect depends on D 4 56 NOTES TO BOOK I. the performance or violation of the duties of life. Job does not fear to say, after one of his protestations of innocence : " He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked." Job ix. 22. We read in Ecclesiastes : " there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked ; to the good, and to the clean, and to the unclean ; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrinceth not." Ecc. ix. 2. ie For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto her (Rebecca their mother), the elder shall serve the younger." Rom. ix. 11, 12. From this law no man can demand exemption : " for there is no respect of persons with God." Rom. ii. 11. And against this law no man has a right to remonstrate or murmur ; the master of the vineyard says to all his labourers, whatever may be the hour of their labour and the amount of their wages : " Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own ? " Matt. xx. 15. To Peter, whose martyrdom he has just foretold, Christ says in reference to John : " If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? " John xxi. 22. (21.) The providential differences between man and man have reference to, and are expressed in, everything ; in the organs of the body : " And the Lord said unto him (Moses), Who hath made man's mouth ? or who maketh the dumb or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind ? have not I, the Lord ?" Ex. iv. 11. In the faculties of the mind : " The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them." Prov. xx. 12. The faculties of the mind are here spoken of; the ear and the eye, hearing and seeing, are expressions which very frequently, in the figurative language of the sacred books, indicate the intellectual powers ; the sense of the passage therefore is, that the happiness of possessing a sound and clear understanding is a boon from the Creator : the same expression, the same idea is to be found in the Gospel : " But blessed are your eyes, for they see ; and your ears, for they hear." Matt. xiii. 16. " But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that." 1 Cor. vii. 7- In the condition of bond or free, at all times the two extremes of the social order : " Did not he that made me in the womb make him who serves me ? and did not one fashion us in the womb ? " Job, xxxi. 15. In poverty and riches : " God regardeth not the rich more than the poor ; for they are all the work of his hands." Job, xxxi v. 19. " The rich and poor meet together (that is, live together, members of the same society, of the same national and religious family, and) the Lord is the NOTES TO BOOK f. 57 maker of them all" (such as they are). Prov. xxii. 2 ; that is, has put this difference between them. In national calamities : " I tell you, in that night (the horrors of the night are in Christ's prophecies an image of the disastrous epoch of the destruction of Jerusalem), there shall be two men in one bed, the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding to- gether ; the one shall be taken, and the other left." Luke xvii. 34 — 35. Lastly, these differences are also moral and religious : " But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ." Eph. iv. 7- " Who maketh thee to differ from another ? " 1 Cor. iv. 7 : and they embrace the infinite variety of our individual tasks and parts in life ; men are all labourers in the same vineyard; but each hired at a different hour to perform his particular task. Matt. xx. 1. and following verses. (22.) The law of reciprocity among men is providential; and to so important a degree that it was theocratic, and as a positive law formed part of the Jewish code ; it is explicitly spoken of in the following passage of the commandments : " I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments." Ex. xx. 5, 6. Here, as in numerous other passages, God is represented as declaring that he does himself what he directs by his providence ; and the experience of the whole world bears testimony from age to age to the faithful execution of this menace, understood in the sense that the con- sequences of good, by an admirable divine arrangement of the things of this life, are of longer duration than those of evil. The terrible consequences of a disordered, impure, infamous life (in- famous even in the judicial sense) do not generally continue to be felt beyond the third and fourth generation ; while the heritage of good may go down through centuries, and be prolonged to infinity ; there is no reason why its effects should cease and vanish. This law which Jeremiah, towards the end of the reign of Zede- kiah, and about a year before the fall of Jerusalem, recalled to the memory of Israel in one of his last discourses, Jer. xxxii. 18. is everywhere to be seen in action in the history of the people of God. From the time of Cain, who denied it in refusing to ac- knowledge himself iC the keeper of his brother," Gen. iv. 9, and of Abraham, who pleaded for its execution in seeking the " ten righteous," xviii. 32, in the cities of the plain, until the fall of the house of Saul, and the perpetuity promised to the dynasty of David, Israel everywhere saw good produce good, evil bring forth D 5 58 NOTES TO BOOK I. evil, and the consequences of integrity or frowardness involve families and generations. Joshua says to the Jews ; *' Did not Achan the son of Zerah commit a trespass in the accursed thing, and wrath fell on all the congregation of Israel ? and that man perished not alone in his iniquity." Josh. xxii. 20. We read in the book of Job: Ck He (the wicked) shall neither have son nor nephew among his people, nor any remaining (or succeeding him) in his dwellings." Job. xviii. 19. This, accor- ding to Oriental ideas, was one of the most dreaded disgraces and punishments. Isaiah has clothed this idea in his usual poetic language : " Thus, saith the Lord, as the new wine (or, more exactly, some good grains) is found in the cluster, and one saith, destroy it not ; for a blessing is in it : so will I do for my ser- vants' sakes, that I may not destroy them all." Isaiah, lxv. 8. Jeremiah, in his Lamentations, makes the Jews say : " Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities." Lam. v. 7- It is remarkable, that sometimes the law of reciprocity only produces a distant effect, spares one generation and strikes the following ; in the threats denounced against Solomon when he had turned to the worship of idols, it is said : " I will surely rend thy kingdom (a part of thy kingdom) from thee and will give it to thy servant. Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it for David thy father's sake ; but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son." 1 Kings, xi. 11, 12. We see here the double operation of the law, in good and in evil ; in good, from David to Solomon ; in evil, from Solomon to Rehoboam ; and in human language this signifies, that the religious and political genius of David had rendered the constitution of Israel sufficiently strong to maintain the integrity of the kingdom during the reign of his son, and that the faults of Solomon would, under his successor, bring about the fatal revolution called the revolt of the ten tribes. In the Gospel, Jes us recognises the law, when on his way to Calvary he says to the women who followed him weeping : iC Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for your- selves, and for your children." Luke, xxiii. 28 : and the Jews accepted it, when they cried out before Pilate : '• His blood be on us and on our children ! " Matt, xxvii. 25. St. Paul depicted the effects of this law as indefinite in their power and duration, when he said of the Jews that, notwithstanding their obstinacy in re- jecting the new covenant " they are beloved " of God " for the fathers' sakes." Rom. xi. 28. The longest and most terrible extension given to the law of social compact is expressed by Christ NOTES TO BOOK I. 59 in one of his most vehement discourses : iniquities are there re- presented as succeeding each other without intermission during the ages of the first covenant, and the vengeance of God withheld, till the measure should be filled to the brim, and then burst forth, more terrible than ever : " Ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow (approve) the deeds of your fathers : ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Upon you shall come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation." Matt, xxiii. 29—36; Luke, xi. 47 — 51. (23.) It is remarkable that the law of reciprocity is accepted without a murmur, when it comes into action contemporaneously ; it is understood, as a general idea, to be very natural that, since man is destined to a social life, our contemporaries should injure or serve us. The law only appears unjust when applied to de- scendants. At the period of the captivity of Babylon, the Jews had a favourite proverb, the simple image of which very well ex- pressed their murmuring against the law : " The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge." Jer. xxxi. 29 ; Ezek. xviii. 2. But whether the effect be simul- taneous or successive, the principle does not change, and the law preserves all its justice. We might go so far as to say that the tie between contemporaries, though in some ways more visible, is less close than that which connects fathers and children, an- cestors and posterity; a family in its descent is more nearly united than a society in its members. Ezekiel, in an admirable discourse, reproaches the Jews with this impious accusation against Providence; and shewrs them, that according to the spirit of the Mosaic legisla- tion, Deut. xxiv. 16. u The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son ; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." Ezek. xviii. 20. These words of the prophet are neither at variance with the words of the commandment, Ex. xx. 5. nor with the law of reciprocity in general. Ezekiel declares the positive intention of divine justice, and Moses, the inevitable result of the human social compact. God only imputes sin to the authors of sin ; but he does not arrest its consequences, either contemporaneous or hereditary ; this would be a violation of moral liberty, and an assimilation of good to evil. (24.) u Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I i> 6 60 NOTES TO BOOK I. shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian (that is a stranger), and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me." 1 Cor. xiv. 11. This rupture, this impossibility of all communication caused by the difference of languages, has in it something so painful, that it is one of the evils with the description of which the pro« phets strengthen their prophetic denunciations against Israel : (i The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth ; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand." Deut. xxviii. 49 ; Jer. v. 15. Isaiah also has a remarkable allusion to this subject. He makes the scornful men who rule the people, Isaiah, xxviii. 14, speak in these words: "Whom shall God teach knowledge ? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept (and here the words put into the mouths of the scornful men form a parody on the repetitions so frequent in the exhortations of the prophets), precept upon precept ; line upon line, line upon line ; here a little, and there a little : " . . . and then Isaiah again takes up the thread of his discourse, and uses these words in a very different sense : " For with stammering lips and another tongue, will he speak to this people," Isaiah, xviii. 9 — H-j an allusion to the conquest of Judah and Jerusalem by the armies of Babylon. (25.) It was just and necessary that the means of communica- tion, the gift of speech, should weigh heavily in the balance of our moral and religious responsibility. " I say unto you," said Christ, " that every idle word (words prejudicial to the faith of others, like the perverse accusation of the Pharisees, which he had just refuted : ' This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.' Matt. xii. 24.) that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." Matt. xii. 36, 37. " If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man." James, iii. 2. (26.) " There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification." 1 Cor. xiv. 10. (27.) St. Paul, with the usual energy of his style, says : (< He that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God." 1 Cor. xiv. 2. (28.) . . . . " every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations." Gen. x. 5. The unity of the human race would lead us to believe that the diversity of language was esta- blished gradually, and that there was a period when all men un- derstood each other. " And the whole earth," says Moses, without NOTES TO BOOK I. 61 fixing the date of this time, " was of one language, and of one speech/' Gen. xi. 1. (29.) Job says in his lamentations: " Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb ? I should have been as though I had not been ; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave." Job. x. 18, l§. \ and it is remarkable that Job here employs the word signifying the tomb, where the body disappears, and not that signifying the sojourn of the dead where souls, according to the Jewish ideas, were gathered together. (See the texts in Book II. Chap. xxm. note 31.) (30.) Faith, according to St. Paul's definition, is a power purely subjective ; " the evidence of things unseen :" here we see the religious tendency pressing forward, beyond the limits of the material world, to seek the infinite ; " the substance (or lively representation) of things hoped for ; " Heb. xi. 1. ; and here we see it returning upon itself, appropriating its conquests, and filling the void of this life with immortal and celestial hopes. Man has a natural desire to approach nearer to God, and in order to ap- proach him, we must believe both in his existence and in our relation to him ; as St. Paul expresses it : "he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Heb. xi. 6. (31.) Everywhere in revelation the notion of the ideal, of the infinite, of the absolute, lies at the basis of the idea of God : some- times this thought is expressed in words whose simplicity equals their profoundness ; sometimes it is represented by images stnk- inglv sublime and poetical. The celebrated definition of the Supreme Being which Moses at the commencement of his mission transmitted to his people, and which became, if we may so speak, the Mosaic, the Israelitisn name of God, the name which God chose and sanctioned as that to be used in his communications with his chosen people, displays a profoundness of thought never surpassed, and which dazzles our intelligence : " God said unto Moses, 1 am that i am : and he said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, 1 am (Jehovah) hath sent me unto you." Ex. iii. 14. The idea of infinite exis- tence is here incomparably rendered. Setting out from this first idea, we may make a complete col- lection of all the ideas of the human mind which rise to the ideal, the infinite, the absolute ; there is not one of them which the Holy Scripture does not attribute to God : infinite in existence : " From everlasting to everlasting thou art God." Ps. xc. 2. 1 am the first, and I am the last." Isaiah, xli. 4. and xliv. o. « Who only hath immortality." 1 Tim. vi. lb. Infinite in con- 62 NOTES TO BOOK I. stancy, or unchangeable : « But thou art (always) the same/' Ps. cii. 27. " The Father of lights, with whom is no variable- ness, neither shadow of turning." James, i. 17. Infinite in instantaneousness, in universality of presence and action, or immense : " Behold, the heaven, and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee ! " 1 Kings, viii. 27- " Whither shall I go from thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there ; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." Ps. cxxxix. 7, 8. . . . " though he be not far from every one of us." Acts, xvii. 27. Infinite in power : the name " Almighty " is met with in every page of the Scriptures, Gen. xvii. 1 ; Rev. xxi. 22. " I know that thou canst do every thing." Job. xlii. 2. " Our God is in the heavens ; he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased." Ps. cxv. 3. " There is nothing too hard for thee!" Jer. xxxii. 17; and his omni- potence embraces the moral as well as the material world : "■ With God all things are possible." Matt. xix. 26 ; Mark. x. 27 J Luke, xviii. 27. " He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." Eph. i. 11. Infinite in wisdom, in knowledge : ei His understanding is infinite." Ps. cxlvii. 5; civ. 24. " God only wise." Rom. xvi. 27 ; 1 Tim. i. 17. " Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or, being his counsellor, hath taught him?" Isaiah xl. 13. "The manifold wisdom of God." Eph. iii. 10. Infinite in perfection, in the moral sense : " Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts." Isaiah vi. 3 ; Rev. iv. 8. (This triple repetition, in which mysteries have very ingeniously been sought, is merely a superlative form of the Hebrew language, and in- dicates greater intensity, if a quality is spoken of, or the extreme importance attached by the writer to the thought which he expresses ; thus we read in Jeremiah : " Trust ye not in lying words, saying. The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these. . . Then will I cause you to dwell in this place." Jer. vii. 4. ; and one of the anathemas of the same prophet against Coniah, begins with these words : " O earth, earth, earth (land of Judah), hear the word of the Lord." xxii. 29. " I will overturn, overturn, overturn it," the crown of the dynasty of David." Ezek. xxi. 27) In the xvth chapter of Revelation, the two covenants unite in this song of praise: " Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy." et The Lord is righteous in all his ways." Ps. cxlv. 17. ft God is truth." Deut. xxxii. 4. " Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens ; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." Ps. xxxvi. 5. " His mercy endureth for ever." Ps. cxxxvi. 1. NOTES TO BOOK I. 63 "God is love/' (or charity.) 1 John, i v. 8 — 16. "God is light (that is, perfection), and in him is no darkness at all. 1 John, i. 5. Infinite in happiness : St. Paul gives to God the title blessed (sovereignly happy). 1 Tim. i. 11. ; and vi. 16*. In all these passages, the idea of the infinite is magnificently shadowed forth in the expression. Again, the Supreme Being, according to revelation, has no material attributes, and cannot be attained unto by our senses, because the idea of matter and that of infinity exclude each other: i( Ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire." Deut. iv. 15. « The invisible God." Col. i. 15. " God is a spirit." John, iv. 24. And it is in this quality of an infinite being that God, superior to all other beings, is only responsible to, and bound by himself: " For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself." Heb. vi. 13 ; Gen. xxii. 16. (32.) The entire and definitive aim of revelation and of re- demption is, that believers " may have fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." 1 John i. 3. (33.) " The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." 1 Cor. ii. 11. (34.) The Scriptures everywhere teach that God is incom- prehensible, that his perfections are unsearchable, and his ways past finding out. " Canst thou by searching find out God ? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? It is as high as heaven ; what canst thou do ? deeper than hell ; what canst thou know ? " Job, xi. 7, 8. " Behold, God is great, and we know him not." Job. xxxvi. 26. " His greatness is unsearch- able." Ps. cxlv. 3. tl There is no searching of his under- standing." Isaiah xl. 28. " For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah, lv. 9. The same lesson of humility is taught in the Gospel : " No man hath seen God at any time:" that is, has perfectly known him. John i. 18. and 1 John iv. 12. " Dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto ; and no man hath seen nor can see him." 1 Tim. vi. 16. (35) The unity of God, demonstrated by the grand and simple consideration that absolute perfection, the realised ideal, is ne- cessarily one, is the very teaching of our Lord, when he replied : " There is none good (that is to say, perfect, according to the sense of the sacred text), but one, that is, God." Matt. xix. 17 ; Mark x. 18 ; Luke xviii. 19. 64 NOTES TO BOOK I. " The Lord our God is one Lord." Deut. vi. 4. " That men may know that thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art the most High over all the earth." Ps. lxxxiii. 18. " But to us there is but one God." 1 Cor. viii. 6. (36.) The idea of the creation of man is to he found every- where throughout the Bible. 1 Cor. xv. 4.5 ; Gen. ii. 7 ; Deut. iv. 32 ; Job x. 9- (37-) " Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God." Heb. xi. 3. (38.) " Who knoweth not, in all these, that the hand of the Lord had wrought this? " Job.xii.9-> " in the beginning," Gen. i. 1. "by his word, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (that is, which existed previously). Heb. xi. 3. " For he spake, and it was done ; he commanded, and it stood fast" (appeared). Ps. xxxiii. 9« " And God said, let there be light : and there was light." Gen. i. 3. " Before me there was no God formed (rather, there was no powerful God who formed or created any thing), neither shall there be after me." Isaiah, xliii. 10. (39)* " In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him." Gen. i. 26 ; v. 1 ; ix. 6. " Thou hast made him a little lower than God." Ps. viii. 5; such is the true sense of this passage, usually translated according to a too servile imitation of two old versions : " Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels." It would seem that a fear had been enter- tained of making the sacred poet say too much, and that, by a precaution of exaggerated humility, the most restricted sense had been preferred. But David evidently alludes in this psalm to the narrative in Genesis, which speaks of the resemblance between God and man, and not of that between man and the angels. Let the noun be employed instead of the pronoun : " Thou hast created man a little lower than God," instead of "than thyself," and we have only an old form of phraseology conformable to the simplicity of the language. " Man is the image of God." 1 Cor. xi. 7. . . . " Men, which are made after the similitude of God." James, iii. Q; and it will hereafter be shewn that this resemblance should lead to imitation. (See Book I. Chap. xin. note 51 ; Book IV. Chap. xli. note 2., and Chap. li. notes 84 and 85). (40.) " Draw nigh to God," says St. James, " and he will draw nigh to you." James, iv. 8 ; and God said to Israel : " If ye will walk contrary unto me, then will I also walk contrary unto you." Lev. xxvi. 23, 24. The two expressions are equally remarkable, and both imply the idea of reciprocity ; the image NOTES TO BOOK I. 65 used by the apostle is borrowed from the worship of the temple, only celebrated before the ark, which was approached court by court, sanctuary by sanctuary : so that to approach God is to serve, to adore him ; that used by the prophet is borrowed from the movements of armies ; Moses uses it in this sense, Deut. i. 44; to walk contrary to God is to declare one's self his adversary. (41.) The Holy Scriptures of both covenants constantly teach and recommend religious joy. " Thy testimonies are the re- joicing of my heart." Psalm cxix. 111. "But godliness is pro- fitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." 1 Tim. iv. 8. According to St. Paul, " the kingdom of God (that is, the reign of the Gospel) is not meat and drink ; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit." Rom. xiv. 17. "Rejoice in the Lord." Philip- pians, iii. 1 • and iv. 4. " Rejoicing in hope." Rom. xii. 1 2. " Rejoice evermore." 1 Thess. v. 16*. "As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." 2 Cor. vi. 10. Such is the express doctrine of the sacred writings, so plainly and constantly expressed, that St. Paul utters the following wish for the believers in Rome, " Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing." Rom. xv. 13. The piety of the first Christians conformed to these precepts : " they did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart," Acts, ii. 46; how far removed from the gloomy Chris- tianity of many early and modern sects ! (42.) St. Paul, in his last trials, expresses the firmness of his confidence by saying to his friend Timothy, not only " I have believed," but, " I know whom I have believed." 2 Tim. i. 12. (43.) 10. Whatever opinion we may adopt on the divisions and doctrine of this book, it is evident that the singular comparison drawn between man and the beasts, in the verses above cited, takes its origin from the old observation, the first difference perhaps which an- tiquity remarked between them ; viz. that man's upright stature causes him to direct his respiration towards heaven, whilst the brute rather respires towards the ground ; and that, notwith- standing this difference, their deaths are similar. This gives us NOTES TO BOOK I. 77 the clue to the explanation of the text : above all, if we adopt the system, and, considering all circumstances, the most probable, which sees in Ecclesiastes the ideas of responsibility and immor- tality. This similitude of death, placed in the balance with the difference of respiration, shows that nothing is to be concluded against the hope of another life from the fact that all return to dust by the same road. These texts, if they do not explicitly favour the system of a future life destined for the brute creation, contain nothing in support of the common opinion. (71.) " My father," said Jesus, « worketh hitherto (conti- nually)." In the Infinite Being an interruption of activity and energy is not to be conceived. (72.) " Hell and destruction (the kingdom of death) are never full ; so the eyes of man are never satisfied." Prov. xxvii. 20. This maxim offers a very lively image of the extent of human desires, of which the eye is, as it were, the seat, because man would desire to possess himself of all that he sees ; and the image is so much the more forcible because it is taken, not from the grave, which only engulfs one corpse, but from the place of sojourn of spirits, or manes (see the texts in Book II. Chap. xxiii. note 31.), which receives all the dead. E 3 BOOK II. EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPAL PROBLEMS OF THE HUMAN MIND. Un nouveau principe est une source inepuisable de nouvelles vues. Vauvenargues, Max. 211. Les notions simples, les verites necessaires et les consequences demon- stratives de la philosophie ne sauraient etre contraires a la revelation. Leibnitz, Conformite de la liaison et de la Foi, § 4. CHAP. XIX. SPACE, TIME, NATURE, COSMOGONY, CHAOS. In the principle of phases of progress, as explained in the preceding Book, our system finds an easy and cer- tain solution of the principal problems which engage the attention of the human mind. Space and time are intuitions, or necessary notions ; because they are the absolute condition of the possibi- lity of actual human progress. This progress must have a suitable theatre on which it can be exhibited ; we are scholars, and we have a school. (1) It is further necessary that this kind of progress must have a succession through which it can pass ; we are scholars, and we have our hours of study. (2) Time and space cannot be annihilated, even in idea, although the material universe may : why ? because without the material universe our progress towards God would still be possible ; in other words, because the TIME, COSMOGONY, CHAOS. 79 tendency towards God would remain in us ; and, on the other hand, we could not annihilate time and space, because without time and space actual progress towards God would be inconceivable. Time and space are not then things without us ; they have no objective value ; they have only a subjective existence ; they are merely the signposts on the path of progress ; they point oat, or rather sketch, the way. It is progress which forms in us the intuition of time ; and animals are ignorant of time, because they are ignorant of progress ; if they had a notion of dura- tion, they would have a faculty of progress. What is nature, or, more exactly speaking, a nature ? It is (to borrow a term from the physical sciences) a surrounding medium, in which a phase of progress is accomplished, it is an assemblage of inani- mate objects, instruments of progress, but which may also become obstacles and barriers. (3) From this definition the fixity of the laws of nature follows as a divine necessity of position ; it is meet that a race of beings engaged in a phase of progress should be able tranquilly to continue its route, and to reckon with certainty upon the stability of nature which serves as its means. (4) There must, then, be different natures, according to the difference of classes of progressive beings spread over creation, according to their different degrees of resemblance to God. All heavens declare the glory of God: but each heaven has its voice, each star its splendour, each world its nature. What is a cosmogony ? Such, for example, as the six days of creation, according to Moses : the arrange- ment of a world for a phase of progress. E 4 80 EDEN, THE FALL, ORIGINAL SIN. What is a chaos ? The intermediate state of a world, where one phase of progress has terminated, and before a new phase begins. It would be still more correct to say that cosmogony and chaos are synonymous. (5) A world only ends in order to re-commence ; there is not a useless star in creation ; God avails himself of all worlds ; chaos and cosmogonies are in contact with each other, and there can be no doubt, that from the moment when a star becomes unsuitable to one phase of progress, it is pre- pared in order to serve for another. CHAP. XX. EDEN, THE FALL, ORIGINAL SIN. What is a paradise, Eden, a golden age, a reign of the gods ? It is progress fulfilling its aim : it is the age, the day, the moment (for questions of duration do not here enter into the inquiry), during which progress is accomplishing its end ; activity follows its legitimate alternative ; creatures approximate God, and resemble him more and more. (6) What is a fall in the dogmatic sense of the word ? The first step taken by a class of creatures on the path contrary to progress, the first fact by which activity follows its illegitimate alternative, the first retirement from God, the first sign of a voluntary difference with the Creator. (7) What is original sin in the dogmatic sense of the word ? It is the fall considered in relation to the law of reciprocity : our fellow-men are beings occupied in the same phase of progress as ourselves, and with our- selves ; but, in following the same route, if there be PHYSICAL EVIL. 81 amongst moral beings a social compact, resulting from the force of their affections, a single member by a back- ward movement will draw the whole species in the same direction ; a single man, by withdrawing from God, will, more or less, retard all his fellow-men. (8) According to this view, it is of no consequence, as far as mankind is concerned, to search into the duration of its phase of progress before the fall, the precise period at which the fall took place, or the number of the first authors of the introduction of moral evil. Of what importance is it by what human foot the first retrograde step was taken ? We know that it has been taken (see Book III. Chaps, xxix. and xxx). Its impress, effect, imitation, are everywhere visible. These ques- tions are to be discarded from the sphere of the dogma ; they belong to the domain of history ; and whether left out of view or thoroughly examined, resolved in one sense or another, declared to be doubtful or unknown, they make no change whatever on the discoveries and definitions of Christianity, as expounded in these pages, CHAP. XXI. PHYSICAL EVIL. Moral evil is the cause of physical evil. (9) When any species of progressive beings whatsoever enters upon a false path, and retires from instead of drawing nearer to the Creator, it inevitably happens that the nature which has been given it as the instrument of this phase of progress changes with it. The surround- ing medium is deteriorated when the beings who are immersed in it are themselves deteriorated. These beings have made a bad use of one of their E 5 82 PHYSICAL EVIL. instruments of progress ; they have drawn back from God by the aid of those very means which ought to have conducted them towards the Infinite ; and it inevi- tably follows that the instrument becomes an obstacle. Observe, now, why all suffering is a diminution of activity. Some are unwilling to believe that volcanoes, tem- pests, inundations, famine, and pestilence, are conse- quences of the fall ; these things, it is said, are too great. Some are unwilling to believe that the troubles, the vexations, and mere annoyances of life proceed from moral evil : these things, it is said, are too small ; and therefore men attempt to render it impossible to con- ceive any bond or connection between physical suffer- ings and human sins. It is, however, far more impossible to conceive that a world prepared by the Creator in order to serve for a given phase of progress, and with this view enriched by a nature appropriate to this end, should remain as it is, whether this progress is accomplished in it, or not. A class of progressive beings has only a usufruct of the world, and of the nature arranged to serve as its habitation ; it holds them upon lease for a given time ; and it is a necessary result that the use or abuse should make the resources of the domain and the conditions of the culture either better or worse. (10) This reflex operation of the moral upon the physical world is continually taking place before our eyes. The power of man upon the globe extends even to the change of its climates. Compare, in all respects, a virgin forest of America, a savannah, and a desert, when they have fallen into the hands of man, or when they have been deserted by him ; compare the soil under the foot of a savage horde and a civilised nation ; compare the same countries after some of the exterminating wars of PHYSICAL EVIL. 83 antiquity, which left a solitude behind them (11), and after a long period of peace and prosperity And in individual life do we not constantly see man. bring upon himself a premature old age, vitiating his powers and organs by abuse, and transmitting to his children decrepitude of his own creating ?(12) The means of this re-action of the moral upon the physical world belong to the secret things of God : it would be dangerous to us to know them ; it is a secret analogous to that of free will, and which flows from it. But let us not doubt that whenever a nature has been prepared to serve for a certain phase of progress, it contains hidden resources, which come into operation whenever that progress ceases to be effected. (13) Light, warmth, and flames of fire existed in Eden ; but before the banishment, these flames had never sur- rounded the sword of an angel, or blazed at the forbidden threshold. It is again said to be impossible to form an idea of our world without scourges, without accidents, without power to hurt and to injure : granted, because it is impossible now to conceive life and the soul without moral evil, and it is precisely because moral evil and physical evil are so intimately connected, that the pre- sence of the latter prevents us from forming even an idea of the absence of the former. The accommodation of a world and its nature to a fallen state, after having served for the accomplishment of a progress, is only, in its simplest expression, one of the applications of that universal law of creation : as the being, so is the world. It is truly necessary that the habitation should be appropriate to the inhabitant ; heaven, for angels; hell, for evil spirits ; and for men, this mixed world — this world as it is. E 6 84 ETERNAL PUNISHMENTS, CHAP. XXII. ETERNAL PUNISHMENTS. The same principles which explain physical evil as s consequence of moral evil, and which prove that man must have drawn with him in his fall the nature with which this world is clothed, serve also to explain what in religious language is called perdition, damnation, deprivation of the sight of God, of the face of God, of the glory of God. Activity, as we have proved, is continuous, and has before it only two alternatives, two directions, in which its responsibility is equally engaged and its destiny equally interested (14), that which draws nearer to, and that which withdraws from God. Existence, as we have already proved, is indefinitely prolonged. Perdition, then, is nothing but the fall prolonged hereafter ; it is the evil direction and withdrawal from God, extending beyond the actual phase of progress, when that progress has failed. Thus, by their very nature, punishments would be eternal. Perdition, we have said, is a prolonged fall 5 and as the fall may be without end, as the two alter- natives are indefinite and unlimited, as evil may go on always increasing, perdition too must follow the same rule. In order to render an eternity of good, and of progress towards God, possible, it is necessary that there should be also an eternity of evil and of alienation from him. The one necessarily implies and cannot be conceived without the other. (Book I. Chap, xiv.) ETERNAL PUNISHMENTS. 85 Between these two progressions (15) and these two eternities all creatures are placed. By these last observations we have just sounded the justice of God. According to ordinary religious lan- guage, God judges, punishes, and rewards. (16) The ideas of chastisement and reward, inapplicable to God, are however only one of the forms of that anthropomor- phism, of that error which attributes to God the pro- perties of man. The wicked punishes himself (17), and the faithful crowns himself, and the justice of God consists in the care taken by him, not to suffer this necessary order, one of the second causes, one of the constant laws of the moral universe to be inter- rupted. (18) Every progressive creature is necessarily endowed with sensitiveness ; it is necessary it should be able to relish its progress; its sensitiveness is satisfied by its very progress : there is happiness ; if progress is missing, the faculty of enjoyment cannot be satisfied: there is misery and suffering. The forbidden fruit is agreeable to the eye and sweet to the taste ; but it is always bitter in the stomach. In all this, the part of God> only providence ; assuredly it suffices for his glory. (19) Every action, that is to say, every product of activity has consequences more or less direct, more or less distant, and the consequences are conformable to the action. Rewards and punishments are, then, to the two alter- natives of activity, what effects are to causes. 86 BIRTH, LIFE, INFANCY, CHAP. XXIII. BIRTH, LIFE, INFANCY, DEATH, RESURRECTION. In order to individualise these principles it is suf- ficient to consider, that birth is the individual entrance into the phase of progress to which we belong. Life is the duration — the extent of our part of the phase of progress, which is common to us with our fellow-men. (20) Infancy, that fraction of life which is irresponsible and destitute of the feeling of individuality (21), was ne- cessary in virtue of the law of reciprocity ; it is by means of it that humanity becomes truly social ; it is through it the social compact is continuous, and becomes powerfully and constrainingly reciprocal. (22) Death in infancy, like infancy itself, is explained by the law of reciprocity, and by the principle of progress. When the cradle and the grave meet, this mourning is a means of progress (23), for the survivors ; and as to the infant itself, the brief appearance in this world is a proof of the fact, that it is reserved for another phase of progress. Development will take place elsewhere. Divine love will assume the functions of maternal love, and bring up the infant recalled from the present state of being. The infant, therefore, ought never to be the subject of lamentation. (24) Death, in fact, is the individual departure from our phase of progress and from the world, from the nature which has been assigned to it. (25) Death, then, is only a simple change in the conditions of existence, in the means of progress. (26) This change is both physically and morally the same, DEATH, RESURRECTION. 87 as that which takes place from infancy to puberty, from adolescence to maturity, and from maturity to old age (27), and without doubt it is easier. Independent of the fall, death would have been the lot of humanity ; death, that is to say, departure from the midst of the nature accorded to the human species (28) ; but that departure would obviously have been very different for man without moral evil, and its con- comitant physical evil. (29) Now, there is suffering connected with birth, life, and death; because the world in which these individual facts take place, the nature with which these facts are asso- ciated, and from which death, the last of the three, delivers and separates us — this world and this nature, we say, have experienced the rebound of moral evil. This rebound has necessarily extended through all this phase, from its beginning to its end ; the entrance, the sojourn, and the departure have all been compromised ; the evil could not be partial. Do not therefore be sur- prised that birth and death are sufferings, that evil awaits us on the very threshold of life, and accompanies us to its close ; be not surprised that the first cry and the last adieu are symptoms of pain. In an atmosphere charged with mephitic vapours, we inhale the evil with the first breath and expire it in the last sigh. Beyond death, what happens in the first moment ? The resurrection ; in a spiritual sense it is only the entrance into that phase of progress which follows, and physically speaking, taking possession of the new organisation of which that phase stands in need. (30) Resurrection touches upon death, and follows it im- mediately, because activity is continuous, there is nothing, neither silence, sleep, nor interval between this life and the next. (31) 88 END OF THE WORLD. The resurrection finds and takes us up where death has left us, either in the path of progress, or on the way of fall. (32) As the resurrection constitutes no part of the actual phase of progress, and as it belongs to another, it is not necessarily accompanied by suf- fering like birth, life and death. CHAP. XXIV. END OF THE WORLD. The same principles explain what is to be understood by the expressions and figures — end of the world, con- summation of ages. (33) Such methods of speaking designate the collective term of a phase of progress : what death is to individuals, the end of the world is to the whole species. The end of the world is merely the close of possible progress in a certain medium, and in the bosom of a cer- tain nature ; whence it follows, that the end of the wTorld can only come on the exhaustion of the means of pro- gress which it furnishes. All worlds will, therefore, come to an end, each in its turn. Ours is still far from its utmost limit. In proportion, however, as mankind advances in the ages of which God permits it to dis- pose, wTe remark that matter is more and more brought into subjection to mind; every discovery is nothing more than a new empire gained by mind over the mate- rial world, which serves as an instrument of progress ; and we perceive confusedly in the distance the period in which all the powers and all the riches of nature shall be subdued and employed ; mankind would then no longer have here below any conquests to make, or labours to undertake ; all will be known, all will be END OF THE WORLD. 89 applied ; and the existing nature will be eclipsed, and give way to a new phase of progress. This notion of the end of the world explains the reason why the period of its duration is so completely unknown, and the secret of the future so well kept. (34) In order to know when the world will come to an end, it would be necessary to foresee all the progress which humanity will still be able to make, and all the uses to which it will be able to apply the materials of nature : to foresee, would be to outrun them. (35) The end of the world, therefore, will not arrive till the moment of the last victory of mind over matter — of man over nature; and as the conqueror is neces- sarily present at his victory, it follows that the whole of a generation of human beings will be witnesses of the termination of our ages of discipline, of the general liquidation of our earthly affairs. A whole generation will be there ; not a family, a pair, an individual. Mankind may have commenced with a single pair; it can only end with a generation, the full complement of its members. Two obvious considerations establish this. A whole generation is necessary to keep nature in subjection till the very close. Were mankind to come to an end by exhaustion, did the generative power go on continually diminishing in efficiency, so that in the last times the species was rapidly reduced in number, and at length came to a tribe, then a family, then a pair, and till finally a single man should survive, the last members of the race would be subjected to a destiny in contradiction to human tendencies, and their progress would be violently ar- rested and suspended. Death being the gate of transition from the world— 90 OF PRAYER. from the nature which serves as the instrument of the existing phase of progress, it follows, from what has been said before, that in the very nature of things it must hold mankind under its dominion till the genera- tion preceding the last, and that the last will not be sub- ject to its power. Death is a phenomenon of nature, which will continue during this phase, but when nature comes to an end, death will have its end also. (36) The last generation, without passing through the portals of death, will enter by a resurrection ; that is to say, the organisation, become useless for the existing phase of progress, will be changed for a higher organi- sation, suited to the next phase of being. (37) The whole of this theory concerning the end of the world leads to tins remarkable reflection, that, far from being a subject of sorrow and dread, that great day is the culminating point of the earthly destinies of man- kind ; a joy, and not an affliction ; a triumph, and not a disaster ; our release from matter ; our ascension to- wards heaven. (38) CHAP. XXV. OF PRAYER. The principle of progress, which admits no other model than God, in the departments of the universe, where freedom and the tendencies which it supposes reign — which recognises no other labour than earnest efforts to draw near to the Eternal, and no other happiness and no other reward than those of nearer approximation — this principle, this system, resolves, besides, one of the greatest and holiest problems of religion — that of prayer. OF PRAYER. 91 There are two kinds of prayers; those which concern God, and those which concern ourselves. Prayers which affect God are praises ; those which concern man are wishes. The former are mere aspirations of the soul towards the Infinite ; an inward concentration, manifestations of the religious feelings, expressions of the religious thought, which renders glory or which offers thanks, that is to say, which yields itself up to effusions of ad- miration or of love. These prayers add no mystery, no problem, to the number of religious questions, because the providence of God and the free will of man are not brought into collision. The difficulties are removed by the prayers which specially concern ourselves, and which are wishes. In fact, according to the common notion, to pray is especially to ask. What can be the object of such petitions? Is it to ask God to cease to be immutable, to change his will, to reverse or overturn, every moment, the government of the universe, and to interrupt the laws which he has given, the free play of the powers which he has established ? Is it to ask that Providence should become ours, and conform to our ideas, to our desires, and to our regrets ? Such prayers can only be redeemed from blasphemy by virtue of the simplicity of their imprudence, by virtue of the sincerity of their error. This is to pray to God, as one petitions man ; it is pure anthropomorphism. For example, should any one have asked, in the phy- sical order of things, that the tower of Siloam should not fall on the eighteen Israelites, whose melancholy fate 92 OF PRAYER. is recorded in the Gospel ? This would have been to pray that the laws of universal gravitation, which main- tains the suns in their places, and the planets in their orbits, should be interrupted for our advantage. Shall any one, in the spiritual order of things, ask for sufficient powers and fit occasions for the accom- plishment of his task ? How can we imagine that God ever refuses such means? Our transgressions would be his fault ; he could so little make them a reproach to us, that we would have the right to impute them to him. (39) To pray, therefore, is much more than to ask ; and it is because prayer is not asking that it is so difficult to pray ; for to petition is easy. A vague and secret disquiet, an irresistible lingering doubt, intimates to the most ingenuous and candid piety, that a prayer, which both in its essence and its form is summed up in a petition, is a prayer falsely conceived ; and hence it comes, that prayers so conceived only soar for a moment towards heaven, sink and return rapidly to the level of the earth, and are extinguished in the destruction of mere worldly things. He who prays, speaks with God. The creature con- verses with the Creator ; the finite being speaks, the Infinite responds ; the aspiration towards God shoots up, rapid as the thought of which it is the result ; it reaches the throne of the Infinite ; and, descending from him, bears with it its own response, and makes it vibrate in the very depths of the soul. In this we see the reason why each values his own prayers ; as each alone is able to understand the re- sponse, each feels and knows what his prayers bring and produce ; but he alone knows it. In this, again, we see why mental prayers, that is, OF PRAYER. 93 thoughts embodied in words to give distinctness and precision to the idea, but without the incumbrance of their expression, are the best ; articulate language (whose weakness we shall subsequently examine) is by far too powerless and, indeed, useless in our communion with God. (40) In this, still further, we see why short prayers are the best ; the more solemn and fervent converse is, the more it loses by unsuitable prolongation. The extreme brevity of the Lord's Prayer is a divine justification of this remark. (41) But, in the case of a being whose legitimate calling is to aspire more and more to resemble God himself, and whose faculties have no other use, converse with God must serve to bring and keep his will, his thoughts, and his nature, in more regular, more intimate, and more complete harmony with the will, the thoughts, and the nature of God himself. Consequently to pray is to acquiesce ; the essence of all prayer ought to be acquiescence, and the fruits of prayer an accord between the will and purposes of God, and our will and purposes. (42) By an obvious application, it is easy to understand how prayer assumes the form of desire or wish, which is that of the Lord's prayer. We would not pray if we had not a will ; a wish is the expression of our will ; in prayer our will goes forth to meet and commune with the will of the Su- preme, and prayer has attained its object when this fusion takes place, and subordination and acquiescence are manifested. Prayer is, therefore, the point of union between the two wills. This definition explains in detail all the effects of prayer (43) ; it explains how prayer consoles — to 94- OF PRAYER. acquiesce is to resign oneself to God ; how prayer strengthens — to acquiesce is to trust in ; how prayer lifts up and reassures — to acquiesce is to hope; and hope is nothing but the presentiment that the two wills, that of God and of his worshipper, and servant shall be in accord for the future ; how prayer calms — to acquiesce is to have come to a decision, if it concerns devotedness — and to have made up one's mind, if it is a question of sacrifice, and nothing calms so much as resolutions taken; how prayer fills with joy — to acquiesce in the will of God is to acquiesce in that which is most happy ; in a word, this definition explains how prayer sanctifies and renews, for what is there better than the will of God, which by converse with God becomes ours ? Prayer, in fact, always issues in proving, maintaining, and facilitating the accord of our will with that of God, or if there be a divergence, in substituting for our imper- fect will the perfect will of the Lord. (44) A concluding remark will serve to show, how correct it is to see in prayer the expression of our will, — that is, a petition ; but also and above all, the complete abandon- ment, if necessary, of our own will, — that is, acquiescence : granted or not, prayers produce the same fruits ; the result of prayer is independent of the accomplishment of the wish which it expresses ; petition is merely the form, the essence is acquiescence. Direct or indirect, offered for oneself or others, prayer never changes either its nature, form, or value. When indirect prayers or intercession for others are offered without their knowledge, or without their parti- cipation, they are merely direct, and only profit those by whom they are offered up. (45) Can our prayers render God kinder to those whom we love ? When the prayer of intercession is offered up at the OF PRAYER. 95 request, or at least with the knowledge of him, whom it concerns, it profits both him who prays and him for whom prayer is made, in so far that the accord of wills is triple. These common prayers are the effusions of human wills in accord with one another, desiring to be in accord with that of God. Consequently, the more prayers are made in a full conformity of trustfulness and desire, the more intercession is powerful, the effects salu- tary, and the fervour sustained, — the more abundant and precious are the fruits which a whole multitude, become one heart and one soul, will derive from the exercise. (46) The impressive and useful ardour of prayers in public worship is a proof of the justice of these remarks. A cursory examination of the most celebrated prayers would always furnish a demonstration of this theory. The holiest of all personal prayers, which has been ever raised from earth to heaven, is, Father all things are possible unto thee ; take away this cup from me : never- theless, not what I will, but as thou wilt. Here the three elements are distinctly combined in prayer : a will, the wish by which it is expressed, and the acquiescence which renders it at once perfect and happy. Examine the prayer of David for his child struck down with disease. The new-born child could not even know that the great monarch had covered himself with sackcloth and ashes for its sake and prayed for its deliverance ; the father's prayer was therefore useless to the child. But what sublime fruits of resignation, constancy, and consolation did not David himself derive from prostration before God ? And why ? Because his prayer was embodied in a perfect acquiescence. What were really the wishes of St. Paul at the time when he was a captive in Rome, and requested the 96 OF PRAYER. prayers of his beloved church at Philippi ? His desire was, that all hearts should be brought into unison with his ; his desire was, to commingle and steep the whole power of his will in their brotherly wills allied to his own ; by this union he would justify his own at the tribunal of his conscience and faith, and before God; he would express himself with so much the greater confidence, security, and hope; he would more easily bring himself to accord with the multitude of his true friends and true disciples, and (to return to the common language of piety) if his prayers were not granted, his will would be more easily subordinated to the divine will, to which that of the whole church at the same time placed itself in a state of acquiescence. At the bottom of these thoughts, is to be found the principle, that we are absolutely dependent and destitute, which is only an aspect of the relation of the creature to the Creator (47) ; we may however feel dependence without acquiescence (48) : thus a prayer without ac- quiescence is a revolt against God, and the essence of prayer is not the certainty of dependence, but the ready and willing consent to be dependent. From all the foregoing considerations, it follows, finally, that the problem of prayer, is but one point of view of the fundamental mystery of religion, the withdrawal of the divine activity, to give free scope to created activity. If the two activities were absolutely enchained to one another, if their accord were invariable, fated, and irresistible, acquiescence would be bondage ; it is the independence of the will which constitutes the value of acquiescence, and the mystery of prayer is no other than the mystery of free will. (49) PHENOMENA OF SLEEP. 97 CHAP. XXVI. PHENOMENA OF SLEEP. A great light is thrown upon all the remarks which have already been made, by an important phenomenon of our present state of existence, of which we have only yet been able to say a word, in treating of activity ; this phenomenon is sleep. Prayer itself is interested in this question ; we shall see hereafter that we can only hold converse with God, whilst awake, although God has sometimes responded to men both in their waking hours and during sleep. Considered from the point of view of genuine Chris- tianity, sleep is a sort of anticipation of a future and better phase of progress. This may be established by four obvious considerations ; to speak more correctly, as soon as sleep comes on, four chains heavy to drag, and which we always do drag when awake, gently fall away and leave us in a state of anticipated freedom. I. The human being, self, in a state of sleep is freed from the notion of time ; man is no longer sensible of its progress or flight ; he thinks, he loves, he rejoices, he contemplates (in the religious sense of the word), without any perception of the necessity of time here below, for all things ; neither duration nor succession any longer retard or stop him. Who has not dreamt of the future ? and when we dream of the future, it is present, it seems present, it becomes present. II. Sleep with equal power frees us from the notion of space. In this condition of self, space no longer exists ; remoteness loses all distance, as duration loses succession. Who has not dreamt of being elsewhere ? and when we are transported in dreams to other places, F 98 PHENOMENA OF SLEEP. whatever they may be, the soul believes itself to be there, because the imagination is there. Immensity is thus at the disposal of him who sleeps. III. In sleep, the soul is freed from the body and is no longer sensible of its existence ; self, for the moment, is free from its corporeal organs ; the subjective so completely rules the personal objective as to be uncon- scious of its presence. This occurs in its most striking form in somnambulism, which is nothing more than an intense dream. In order to recover the notion of our body, we must awake. IV. Sleep is more powerful than death, and bears us a while, in idea, out of its sad empire. Who has not dreamt that some beloved friend, dead for years, was still alive ? and even when this dream is prolonged, it acts with such power that the idea of death is completely absent from the mind ; frequently this idea only returns with waking. This imaginary and momentary liberation which we owe to sleep, becomes more lucid and complete, in proportion as the state of dreaming, and consequently of sleep, is more perfect. It in no respect affects the justice of our conclusions, that these brief periods of emancipation during dreams do not occur on every occasion of sleep, or at least that we have not always a consciousness of them on waking. It remains nothing the less certain to experience, that time, space, body, and death hold us as it were in subjection during waking, and that during sleep imagination delivers us from the bondage they impose. Sleep and dreaming are universal facts on the globe, common to animals and men ; this point of resemblance is a confirmation of our views on the present and future existence of animals. PHENOMENA OF SLEEP. 99 Activity during sleep, as has been observed, out-runs the phase of progress in which we are, and consequently passes beyond the conditions imposed upon human pro- gress on this earth ; this activity consequently does not humanly serve to promote progress, and has never served for that purpose, unless exceptionally as a Divine dispensation. No one becomes more moral or enlightened during sleep; and whatever alternative activity may follow during sleep, it causes the conscience neither joy nor regret ; remorse applies only to the doings of our waking hours. A careful examination of the differences of activity, in the state of waking and the state of dreaming, leads to another consequence which it is important to mark. In dreams activity sometimes reaches its full con- tentment, and then the sensitive tendencies, on their part, are perfectly satisfied ; there is happiness. Who has not been perfectly happy in his dreams ? Misery and pain only recommence on waking. (50) This proves that activity during sleep, if it does not promote our progress, does not retard it ; then the sensitive tendency, for a moment, attains to a complete satisfaction : a thing only possible, in this world, in a state of the soul in which the rights of conscience are in abeyance. These emancipations from our existing bondage — these full and inward momentary joys which often result from dreams, are phenomena of mind, the more re- markable as the transition from waking to sleep is im- perceptible and insensible, and that the former of these states of the soul exercises an indisputable influence over the latter. (51) (See Book IV. Chap, xliv.) F 2 100 DISTRACTION OF MIND. CHAP. XXVII. EFFECTS OF DISTRACTION OF BUND. This momentary exemption from terrestrial bonds, this momentary escape from the restraints of time, space, matter, and death, is not limited to the state of sleep, but sometimes occurs during waking. What are called mental distractions and reveries produce this effect. Periods of distraction are interruptions of the general and usual occupations of the mind, and the intensity of a special and circumscribed engagement of its powers. The mind is then directed with a fixed intensity to a particular point, and becomes dazzled, as the eye is dazzled by looking at a very brilliant light, or by resting too long on the same object; great distractions are only small reveries, and the notions of distance, the flight of time, the attitude of the body, and separations by death all disappear. Reveries are dreams of the waking condition, and are distinguished from dreams during sleep in one respect alone ; the mind being more free when the senses are not buried in repose, exercises a greater influence over reveries, than over dreams. This power is so consider- able, that we can, especially if we acquire the habit, voluntarily effect a reverie, whilst it is very difficult, if it ever be possible, to insure a dream. Reveries therefore are merely long distractions, with this difference that a moment of distraction passes rapidly and the mind is occupied only with a single idea, whilst a reverie always embraces a whole chain of ideas in their natural succes- sion ; and it is the transition from one idea to another which marks the limit between a distraction and a reverie. ECSTASY AND POESY. 101 The non-spontaneity of dreams in sleep and the spon- taneity of reveries in a state of waking are made obvious by the impressions which are their results ; conscience, as has been said, feels no remorse in consequence of dreams, but on the contrary reveries often furnish matters of reproach. The obvious reason is that in dreams the will is wholly powerless ; in reveries it yields itself up. Reveries, in proportion as they are profound, procure to our souls the same enjoyments of freedom — the tem- porary suppressions in idea of time, space, our bodies and death. It is, in fact, in these very moments of emancipation, always instinctively and unconsciously desired that both the charm and the danger of reveries consist. Inasmuch as every thing is suspended, so is labour, duty, and progress. Corporeal excitements lead to reveries — to mental excitements, and then the effects just indicated are repro- duced. The various kinds of intoxication produced by the use of spirituous liquors and narcotics, throw the soul, with violence and disorder, into an analogous kind of independence. Another existence is substituted for ordinary life ; and time, space, the body, and death always disappear. There have been known, howevei strange and frightful, unhappy persons inebriated near a corpse mistake it for a living being. CHAP. XXVIII, ECSTASY AND POESY. The conditions of holy contemplation, of rapture, ecstasy, illumination, and enthusiasm belong to the same class of phenomena, these are simply ardent and profound reveries in which the soul directs its powers in their intensity to religious things ; these are modes of being F 3 102 ECSTASY AND POESY. for a season without and beyond the normal and universal conditions of our phase of progress ; they are always, if we may so say, escapes of the soul from its present bondage, and in these intervals of irregular spiritual excitement time is no more, space has no extension (52), the body ceases to feel (53) and death to separate. In all states of the soul, from the tranquil reverie of the idle, whom his indolence gradually leads to indulge in this condition, from the brutal insanity of intoxication from opium to the complete immobility of ecstatic con- templation, to the transports of the most exalted religious enthusiasm, in all these states of the soul there is a moment when the action of the will ceases. The flight is taken, and the soul darts onward till it reaches the object of its aim. In its phrenzy, it thus voluntarily places its moral power in a state of suspense ; conscience, so to speak, is left behind ; it cannot follow so quick, as to direct the activity of the soul ; and it is in such moments of abandonment, that this activity by a single bound and without control reaches the point of heroism or crime; heroism, if the ecstatic direction has been good ; crime, if the point of departure lias been evil. The precise moment at which in enthusiastic ecstasy and illumination, the moral power ceases; it is impos- sible to discover ; but it exists, and it is not impossible to prove that, however rapidly the soul reaches this sublime condition, it never attains it, except by insensible degrees. Human responsibility is in no respect compromised, and it furnishes no better justification for evil to say, I was in a state of ecstasy, than it does for inordinate passion to plead anger. The starting-point, the com- mencement, is always entirely under the control of the ECSTASY AND POESY. 103 moral principle — the action of the will ; and it is every man's affair to take care where he goes. It is very possible that men whose religious and political fanaticism has led them to be guilty of the most flagrant crimes, even to commit murder, may not have been conscious of what they did when raising the dagger to inflict the blow ; but the blade was not whetted in an instant ; and whilst preparing it for the work, they well knew for what end. Whence it happens that these states of the soul, whether simple reveries or the most intense ecstasies, differ in this respect from dreams, and either may, or may not, be instrumental to progress. Activity may be manifested either in the good or evil alternative, either in drawing nearer to God, or withdrawing from him. The mind issues from such conditions either better or worse, and returns either with gain or loss to the ordinary means and duties of life. We may be encouraged in a good work by suffering ourselves to fall into a delightful reverie upon the joys, the consolations, or the surprise, which will be its result ; we are encouraged to evil by dreaming on its means and effects ; who does not know how much enthusiasm contributes to religious progress (54), and how often it has made heroes, liberators, and martyrs ; but who, alas ! does not also know how often it has converted men into murderers and executioners. AH our tendencies may be raised to a state of ecstasy ; but some reach this elevation more easily than others, and find themselves in a more congenial element. The order of ecstatic facility is sensitiveness, the affections, — re- ligiousness. The last is obviously that most favourable to the F 4 104 ECSTASY AND POESY. extreme development of the faculties of the soul and which maintains it for the longest time. The understanding is the power least accessible to this influence ; but when it succeeds in mounting to enthusiasm, the fruit which it produces is poetry ; a consideration which explains the reason why true poets are so rare. It must be, in fact, that the understanding to which time and space are necessary as the framework of thought, as natural conditions of progress, to which the body is necessary as an instrument of relations and study, and which is accustomed coolly to reflect upon death as a scientific and physiological necessity ; it must be that the understanding should experience the greatest diffi- culty in attaining such a degree of enthusiasm as to involve forgetfulness of time and space, of body and death, and to be carried altogether out of its accus- tomed situation. Poetry, then, is merely the expression of the under- standing, become enthusiastic ; whence it follows that poetry is the favourite language of religion. There is another very curious relation between a state of sleep and that of rapture or enthusiasm, the contentment of our sensitive powers. As the soul is sometimes happy in dreams, so is it also sometimes happy in ecstasy. This proves that ecstasy is always taken for progress by him who is under its influence. I 05 NOTES TO BOOK II. (1.) Space, extent, distance, do not exist for God. " Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar otF?" Jer. xxiii. 23. (2.) Time does not exist for God, He "which is, which was, and which is to come," Rev. i. 4. ; and to whom consequently these three divisions of existence are equal, equally present, equally known ; while the creature knows not « what shall be on the morrow." James, iv. 14. " Are thy days as the days of man ? are thy years as man's days ? " Job, x. 5. " Mine age is as nothing before thee." Ps. xxxix. 5. The sense of this re- markable verse is, that the short life of man is to the Eternal Being as if it were not. After having given to Israel the mag- nificent definition of the Infinite Being, « I AM THAT I AM," Ex. iii. 14., it was worthy of Moses to teach, in the beautiful poem composed in his old age, that all length of time is in some manner annihilated before God : " For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." Ps. xc. 4. This complete assimilation of two periods of duration which to us appear so unequal, implies the negation of time. The same thought is expressed by St. Paul : " God calteth those things which be not, as though they were ;" Rom.iv. 17. ; thus all the works of creation, all the works of God, successive to us, are simultaneous to Him. Hence it results that all the texts containing the word or idea of foreknowledge : " Him (Jesus) being delivered by the de- terminate counsel and foreknowledge of God ; Acts, ii. 23. ; 4 ' elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father;' 1 Peter i. 2 ; or of predestination : " For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son ; " Rom. viii. 29 ; ei Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will ;" Eph. i. 5 ; all the texts which re- present the new covenant and its grace as divine intentions pre- f 5 106 NOTES TO BOOK 11. viously decreed; " Who (Christ) verily was foreordained ; " 1 Peter i. 20 ; " According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world," Eph. i. 4 ; "The eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord : " iii. 11;" Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints ;" Col. i. 26"; "According to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began; " 2 Tim. i. 9 ', " In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began," Titus, i. 2 : all these, and similar expressions, which unite the ideas of God and time, are but human ideas applied to God, and add absolutely nothing to the mysteries of free will (see chap, xi.), and of the origin of evil (chap. xiii.). " Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world." Acts, xv. 18. In accordance with this great principle that time, succession, dees not exist for God ; that to him all is simultaneous, we find the beautiful words of the sacred poet, which so well express the instantaneousness of divine knowledge : " For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether ;" Psalm exxxix. 4? ; and of divine power : " lie sendeth forth his com- mandment upon earth : his word runneth very swiftly" (it is instantly accomplished), cxlvii. 15, Thus, divine activity has eternity for its field; but for ours, " Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Matt. vi. 34*. (See Book IV. Chap. xi>ix. note 57-) (3.) (i And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat." Gen. ii. 16", This text is a permission to improve and cultivate nature : " And lest thou life up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven." Deut. iv. 19. " The Lord that created the heavens, God himself that formed the earth, and made it, he hath esta- blished it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited." Isaiah, xlv. 18. " The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's; but the earth hath he given to the children of men." Psalm cxv. 16. This right of employing all things for his own use is only one of the aspects of the superiority and domination of man (see Book I. Chap. v. note 19) ; and we know that the Hebrews, whose simple astronomy represented the earth as the centre of the universe, admitted the idea that the stars had been created for it. (See Book IV. Chap. xlvi. note 30.) NOTES TO BOOK II. 107 (4.) Revelation declares the fixity of the actual order of things in our planet. " While the earth remaineth, seed time and har- vest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." Gen. viii. 22. " He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end/' (God hath traced in the heavens the hounds or the regular return of day and night). Job, xxvi. 10. " Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever." Psalm civ. 5. (5.) " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," Gen. i. 1 : the primordial creation of the universe. " The earth (our globe) was without form (without organised bodies) and void (without animated beings — chaos, or an intermediate epoch). And God said, Let there be light : and there was light." Gen. i. 3 : the commencement of a new order of things, the preparation of our planet for a new phase of progress. The geological epochs succeeded each other ; the human e\ och was the last ; man was the last, the crowning work of God's works of creation on the earth ; and it is essential to remark here, that Moses nowhere assigns an age to the globe. (6.) " And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden ; and there he put the man whom he had formed." Gen. ii. 8. " Garden of the Lord" was an expression applied to a delicious and fertile country, Gen. xiii. 10 : and was an image which the prophets continued to employ ; Isaiah, li. 3 ; Joel, ii. 3 ; Ezek. xxxvi. 35 ; Ezekiel even makes use of it to express the splendour and delights of Tyre, xxviii. 13. Hence the word paradise, a word whose etymology is doubtful, but its sense certain, sig- nifies garden, and became a popular expression employed to designate heaven, the dwelling-place of angels, of just men, of happy spirits. Jesus, whose presence of mind was ever ready, even amidst the horrors of crucifixion, uses this term in addressing the repentant malefactor, doubtless a man of humble station, whom it was most fitting to address in the simplest language : " To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Luke, xxiii. 43. (7.) The fall, related in Gen. iii. 1—6, brings into action, under the veil of an allegory, the three fundamental passions, the sources of all sin : the passion of independence ; that is, the dis- like to obey, the ardent desire to act according to the inclinations, and without control, the tendency to revolt : " Yea," said the serpent, « hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden : " the passion of pride ; that is, the desire of change, of rising, of becoming greater, of arriving at something above what we are, what we have : " Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and f 6 108 NOTES TO BOOK II. evil :" and the passion of sensuality, " the fleshly lusts" which, according to the energetic expression of the Gospel, "war against the soul ; " 1 Peter, ii. 1 1 ; the tendency to all voluptuousness : " the tree was (appeared) good for food (and) pleasant to the eyes." He who does not recognise moral evil in this picture, is but ill acquainted with the world, and with his own heart. It is no longer doubted that this narrative is allegorical ; and we go still farther, it was fitting that it should be so ; an exact analysis of the passions was impossible in the new-born experience of the first ages, and with the scarcely formed idiom of the first men. Not one of us could succeed in relating, in a precise and positive manner, how evil commenced in his own heart ; not one of us could give a circumstantial narrative of the first bad intentions, the first bad thoughts of his mind. It is with mankind in general as with every individual man ; in order to relate the origin of evil it was necessary, not to seek out and collect individual anec- dotes, but to present the fact in an emblematic picture, on which St. Paul has commented in words so simple, yet of such vast meaning : "by one man sin entered into the world." Rom. v. 12. Thenceforth commenced the struggle between evil and mankind, the war between "the seed of the serpent;" that is, the conti- nuation, the imitation, the heirship of evil, of which the serpent is the emblem, and " the seed of the woman," that is, all genera- tions of mankind. Gen. iii. 15. ft For to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not ; but the evil which I would not, that I do." Rom. vii. 18, 19. "And these (the flesh and the spirit) are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." Gal. v. 17. (8.) " By the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation ; ... by one man's disobedience many were made sinners." Rom. v. 18, 19- " That which is born of the flesh is flesh." John, iii. 6. " Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? not one." Job, xiv. 4. " For in many things we offend all." James, iii. 2. " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." 1 John, i. 8. What change then does this whole doctrine make in the system everywhere taught in the Bible, that each individual is alone responsible for himself ? Absolutely none. We are all the children of sinners : this is our lot, and we suffer it in virtue of the law of hereditary reciprocity. We are sinners ourselves : this is our fault, and involves our responsibility; and in this there is no injustice, seeing that every thing will be weighed in the balance, the disadvantage of the fall of our forefathers in- NOTES TO BOOK II. 109 eluded. Such is the positive doctrine of St. Paul, who, after having said that hy one man sin and death entered the world, and that death "passed upon all men," adds, "for that all have sinned." Rom. v. 12. It has been clearly proved that the Greek preposition must here be translated for that, or because, and not in whom, which would express no sense ; for what is to sin in others ? Man can only sin in himself: sin is either a subjective fact, or it is none. (9.) "Thou shalt surely die." Gen. ii. 17- This passage is a denunciation against Adam of death as we know it, as the only and inevitable way of departure from the present life. The sense is : Thou shalt only be able to pass from thine earthly to thine immortal life through death. This view of the expression is confirmed by the fact that Adam and Eve were not struck with death immediately after their fall, which should have been the case were the apparent sense the true one. The question how man, if he had remained as God created him, if he had followed the path of progress in which he was originally placed, would have passed from this existence to the next is an idle one, because it contains nothing subjective. (See Book II., Chap, xxiii., note 29; and Chap, xxiv., note 37-) Another idea, not less important, is explicitly contained in this denunciation of the death known to us, viz., that by going farther from God, by corrupting his higher nature, man had descended towards a lower nature, towards the existence of the brute creation. Adam had never witnessed the death of a man ; he was only acquaintedwith the phenomena of death by that of the animals, whose skins were made use of for his first clothing, Gen. iii. 21 ; and to say to him " Thou shalt surely die," was to announce to him that the way of departure from this world had become com- mon to him with the animals, whose master he was. The sen- tence of condemnation as regards this life is more explicit : to the woman it is said, " I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception ; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children ; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee : " and to the man, " Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake ... In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou taken." Gen. iii. ]6 — 19. This entire phase of life, from birth to death, and the nature, which was destined to serve it, was at once condemned, or in other words vitiated. The images in this narrative are borrowed from agricultural life, and the «■ curse of the ground" 110 NOTES TO BOOK II. expresses the idea of a comparative sterility, and a laborious cultivation. The emblematic language is not inconsistent, and as agriculture here expresses the whole of human activity, so the fertility of the soil represents the whole culture and improvement of nature, everywhere become difficult and laborious to fallen man. Two very remarkable circumstances still remain to be noticed, the divine sentence pronounced upon the two sexes, different during their lives, but similar as regards their deaths ; because the destiny of their lives differed, but their deaths could not be otherwise than the same. And lastly, the relations of the two sexes experienced some change : before the invasion of evil, all was love ; after it, love still remained, but there was rule on one part, and subjection on the other. (10.) The accidents of physical evil, infinitely varied from the commencement of this life till its termination, strike indis- criminately : " Many are the afflictions of the righteous." Psalm xxxiv. 10. i( All things come alike to all." Ecc. ix. 2. "Where- fore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul ? " Job. iii. 20. Jesus says to his disciples, " Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem ? " Luke, xiii. 4 ; and when the apostles ask him, " Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind ? " he replies, " Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents ; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." John, ix. 3. Again, God li maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." Matt. v. 45. The varieties of death, like these of life, are ruled by this principle, that physical evil strikes indiscriminately — not as a punishment, but as a trial, as a heritage — the good and the wicked, and on the last day of an earthly pilgrimage as on the others. It may sometimes happen " that there be just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked : again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous." Ecc. viii. 14. " There is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness." vii. 15. (11.) Isaiah makes the astonished witnesses of the fall of Nebuchadnezzar exclaim, " Is this the man that made the world as a wilderness ?" Isaiah, xiv. 16, 17- (12.) It is the righteous whom the Psalmist compares to palm NOTES TO BOOK II. Ill trees, to cedars flourishing in "the courts of God," and bringing " forth fruit in old age." Psalm xcii. 14. (13.) A powerful and mysterious analogy indicates the bond of connection between moral and physical evil: although the ills and accidents of the present life fall indiscriminately on the righteous and on the froward, yet it is indisputable that physical evil often furnishes divine justice with direct chastisements with which to punish sinners: it is indisputable that intemperance, dissoluteness, slothfulness, and sometimes anger, produce their own punishments : it is indisputable that, in virtue of the law of social compact, these effects are sometimes hereditary in a sad degree. But more than this : as soon as theocracy appears, physical evil immediately appears also, as the regular instrument of its vengeance, and it is very remarkable that this observation is verifiedfnot only in every page of the Old Testament, espe- cially after the time of Abraham, but during the short duration of the Christian theocracy, during the period of inspiration, when Christianity was founded. This is true of diseases, mortal or otherwise, of mourning and death. St. Paul, after reproaching the Corinthians with their profanation of the Lord's Supper, adds : " For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep" (are dead), 1 Cor. xi. 30 ; and of the Jezebel of Thyatira it is said : " I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and she reper.ted not. Behold, 1 will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation . . . and I will kill her children with death." Rev. ii. 21—23. Physical evils could not thus be dispensed and divided into theo- cvatic'views, except trials of all sorts, persecutions included, were comprehended under the same rule : and St. Peter says : " For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God : and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God?" 1 Peter, iv. 17- (See Book IV. Chap. i. and the notes.) (14.) "And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted (recompensed)? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door." Gen. iv. 6, 7. ..." that ever) one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." 2 Cor. v. 10. (15.) The unlimited and indefinite progression of evil is clearly indicated in the gloomy images of this parable : " When the un- clean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out ; and when he is come, he 112 NOTES TO BOOK II. findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven (several) other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there : and the last state of that man is worse than the first." It is evident that an increase of iniquity, and not of misfortunes, is here spoken of, for Jesus adds: "Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation." Matt. xii. 43. 45. The whole connection of ideas confirms this sense. Jesus has just been reproaching the Jews for exacting a miracle from him before they would believe, and the strength of the censure contained in the parable lies in this idea : should I work a miracle in order to make you have faith in me, in order to expel the demon of incredulity from your hearts, it would return to them by some other way, and you would be worse than before. The progression of misfortune follows that of sin : " Sin no more,'' said Jesus to the impotent man of Bethesda, "lest a worse thing come unto thee." John, v. 14. (On the progression of good, see Book I. Chap. xv. note 57.) (16.) Christ is represented, in the figurative language of the Gospel, as a human magistrate : " we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ ; " Rom. xiv. 10; 2 Cor. v. 10; where (t we have an Advocate with the father ; " 1 John, ii. 1 ; "as a king upon his throne ; " Matt. xxv. 40 ; as the judge of the games of the circus, awarding the crown from the extremity of the arena : " ... a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day." 2 Tim. iv. 8. (17.) The wicked man, by the nature of things, is often punished in this world, and inevitably in the next : " The wicked travaileth with pain all his days.'' Job, xv. 20. " For the work of a man shall he render unto him, and cause every man to find according to his ways." Job, xxxiv. 11. "Thus God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech . . . and all the evil of the men of Shechem did God render upon their heads." Judg. ix. 56, 57. 10. (3.) "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me," said Jesus. John, xiv. 6. " For through him we both (Jews and Gentiles) have access by one Spirit unto the Father." Eph. ii. 18. " But we all are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." 2 Cor. iii. 18. " And NOTES TO BOOK III. 161 this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent," John, xvii. 3; "in whom we have boldness and access (to God) with confidence by the faith of him" (in him). Eph. iii. 12. Our definition of Redemption, which perfectly explains why " without faith it is impossible to please God," Heb. xi. 6, is con- firmed— a remarkable fact — by the nature and condemnation of the sin called unpardonable. " Wherefore I say unto you (are the words of Jesus), all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be for- given unto men ; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him ; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." Matt. xii. 31, 32 ; Mark, iii. 28, 29. Commentators have taken a great deal of trouble in different ways to discover what sin it is on which a sentence so terrible is pronounced ; to us it seems incon- ceivable that the least doubt on the point could ever have been entertained. It is evident that Jesus alludes to the sin just committed by the Pharisees, who, after witnessing one of his miracles, said to the people — "This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils," Matt. xii. 24 ; Mark, iii. 22 ; and as if to prevent any possibility of mis- understanding, St. Mark, after narrating the terrible sentence, adds that Jesus so expressed himself, " Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit." iii. 30. We conclude, then, that the un- pardonable sin consists in attributing to Satan the work of God. To take the Redeemer of the world for an emissary and agent of Satan ; to see in redemption a work of Satan, that is to say, the very contrary of a redemption, and consequently to draw nearer to Satan by the help of the very resource granted for the opposite purpose, that of drawing nearer to God ; this is, indeed, an un- pardonable sin, according to our definition of salvation, since it is to annihilate for the whole existence the means of returning towards God, and to employ in putting on a resemblance of Satan, the only means bestowed to enable man to put on a re- semblance of the Creator. We can, therefore, understand how to " speak against " the son of man, against the Messiah " like unto us," and to disown him as the Redeemer, even after a striking miracle, is a pardonable sin — a transgression which does not leave the soul without resource — an error which does not pervert all truth and all holiness — an error from which there are several ways to return ; and how, on the other hand, to substitute, if we may thus speak, Satan for God in the fact of a miracle, is 162 NOTES TO BOOK III. to plunge, through hardened insincerity, into a voluntary and des- perate error, which shuts the gate of the heart against any new call of grace ; to despoil one's own soul of its redemption for both existences ; for there is, as far as we know, but one redemp- tion for both. (4.) " When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, who, then, can be saved ? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, with men this is impossible ; but with God all things are possible." Matt. xix. 25, 26 ; Mark, x. 26, 27 ; Luke, xviii. 26*, 27- et For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any daysman (arbiter) betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both.'' Job, ix. 32, 33. " Being justified freely by his grace." Rom. iii. 24. " For by grace ye are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves ; it is the gift of God." Eph. ii. 8. (< ... the gospel which was preached of me," says St. Paul, rt is not after man." Gal. i. 11. Again, " Who (God) hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace." 2 Tim. i. 9. " . . . according to his mercy he saved us," Titus, iii. 5 ; and " herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us." 1 John, iv. 10. " Now to him that worketh is the reward (salary) not reckoned of grace, but of debt," Rom. iv. 4 ; and is redemption a reward f (5 ) Jesus, foreseeing the great gain which would accrue to his mission by his death, said to the Jews — "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth (on the cross) will draw all men unto me." John, xii. 32. « . . . one died for ail." 2 Cor. v. 14. " Who (God) will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the know- ledge of the truth." 1 Tim. ii. 4. " Who (Christ) gave himself a ransom for all." 1 Tim. ii. 6. " For the grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men." Titus, ii. 11. "... that he (Christ), by the grace of God, should taste death for every man." Heb. ii. 9. "And he is the propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." 1 John, ii. 2. (6.) " But not as the offence so also is the free gift." (Shall it not be with the gift of God as it was with the fall of man ?) " For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many .... For if by one man's offence death reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ : therefore, as by the offence of one, NOTES TO BOOK III. 163 judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justi- fication of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made (treated as) sinners ; so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." Rom. v. 15 — 19. " For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22. Consequently, " whosoever believeth in him " shall