SZcj of trii£> »> t/ BL 51 .M33 M39 1859 Maurice, Frederick Denison, 1805-1872. What is revelation? WHAT IS REVELATION? LETTERS TO A STUDENT OP THEOLOGY. " As our understanding can contemplate itself, and our affections I"' exercised upon themselves by reflection, so may each be employed in the same manner upon any other mind : and since the Supreme Mind, the Author and Cause of all tilings, is the highest possible object to Himself, He may be an adequate supply to all the faculties of our souls, a subject to our understandings, and an object to our affections." — Butler, lith Sermon, On the Love of God. WHAT IS REVELATION? LETTERS TO A STUDENT OF THEOLOGY OK THE BAMPTON LECTURES OF MR. MANSEJ^Ty f Pry'/jT* \ 4L - ^ FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A., chaplain op Lincoln's inn. SEP J RATE ISSUE FOR SUBSCRIBERS TO MR. MAURICE'S LINCOLN'S INN SERMONS. MACMILLAN & CO., AND 23, HENRIETTA STREET, COVEN T GARDEN, LONDON. 1859. [The right of Translation is reserved.] printed by j )hn edward taylor, little queen street, Lincoln's inn fields, London. ■ PKEFACE.* In the Preface to the third edition of Mr. Mansel's Lectures, p. 14, he says : — " It has been objected by w reviewers of very opposite schools, that to deny to " man a knowledge of the Infinite is to make Reve- lation itself impossible, and to leave no room for " evidences on which Reason can be legitimately em- :< ployed. The objection would be pertinent if I had " ever maintained that Revelation is or can be a di- " rect manifestation of the Infinite Nature of God. " But I have constantly asserted the very reverse." It is not the object of the Sermons contained in this volume to convict Mr. Mansel of anv inconsis- tency on the subject of Revelation. I have under- stood him to maintain, just as he states, the " very reverse " of the doctrine that Revelation means a di- rect manifestation of the Nature of God. My wish [* It will be seen that this Preface applies to the complete work. It has not been thought needful to ask Mr. Maurice to alter it, as its purchasers are supposed to be already in possession of the Seven Epiphany Sermons to which portions of it refer.] VI PREFACE. is to ascertain whether that doctrine which I have been used to hold and proclaim, or ' the reverse' of it, is the true one. If Mr. Mansel had persuaded me that all I had believed up to this time on that subject was false, I hope I should have had the honesty to tell my congregation so, to ask pardon of God and of them for having deceived them, and to abandon my clerical functions. As he did not persuade me, — as all that he has written has added immense force to my previous conviction, — I have explained in six Sermons (the first in the series was preached before the Bampton Lectures were preached) why, in spite of the high authorities on the other side, I must still assert the principle which I discover in the Services of the Church and throughout the Bible. In sermons addressed to a London congregation, I could only refer to Lectures delivered in Oxford. Pulpit quotations are nearly always unfair; pulpit discussions on metaphysical topics must be nearly always most satisfactory to those who do not under- stand them. But if I made allusions to any book, I was bound to justify them. If I avoided quotations and discussions in a place for which they were unsuit- able, it behoved me to prove that I did not avoid them because I was afraid of them. The ordinary PREFACE. Vll resource in such cases is a collection of notes. Sup- posing I had wished to illustrate my own statements, to write a comment on my comments, I should have availed myself of that expedient. But I desired to bring Mr. ManseFs book before my readers, to exa- mine that thoroughly. I did not care to choose the weaker or more startling passages of it : unless it was studied as a whole, my purpose would not be answered. My c Letters to a Student of Theology preparing for Orders ' cannot be accused, I think, of treating the subject or the author carelessly or superficially. I have followed his statements and arguments step by step. If they are as decisive and satisfactory as they are said to be, my objections will only make their worth and their power more evident. I have at least endeavoured to bring the maxims of the Lecturer to a crucial test. They are defences of the truths which my correspondent is to preach. The defence being admitted, what will he have to preach ? They are derived from a " Regulative Reve- lation;" I ask to know what are the rules, and what is revealed. I hear that Germans are utterly silenced. I am anxious to be shown what remains for English- men. I could not hope that learned doctors would listen if these questions were proposed to them. I Vlll PREFACE. have some confidence in proposing them to young men who are entering upon the battle of life ; I have known something of their perplexities; I am sure that some out of their number demand that the problems should be solved, having found that to stifle them is death. I have not been able to avoid in these Letters a certain vehemence of expression, which if it has ever taken a personal form, I shall deeply regret. I have no excuse for entertaining towards Mr. Mansel any feelings but those of respect. He has treated me both on former occasions and in this volume with a courtesy to which I have no claim ; he has even intimated a hope that we are essentially agreed in opinion. No one can tell how eagerly I should have responded to that hope, or how grateful I should have felt to so able a man for having entertained it. But since the further I read in his book, the more I perceived that it would be needful for me to abandon every conviction that was most precious to me before I could obtain that result, I felt myself obliged by his very good-nature to state the reasons of my dis- agreement. I could not state them as if they were indifferent to me; I could not conceal my opinion that the existence of English faith and English mo- PREFACE. IX rality is involved in them. I have the comfort of reflecting that my words can do no possible harm to Mr. Mansel. His popularity cannot be dimin- ished by my opposition. Some may be willing to ac- cept it as an additional proof that his blows have been effectual, — as a pledge that more illustrious opponents may recoil from them. If I succeed in inducing a few Christian students and Christian workers to ask themselves what is Revelation ; if I can convince a few serious doubters that what we call a Revelation of God, craves to be tried by the severest tests, is capable of meeting those agonies of the human spirit which our arguments can never meet ; — I have done what I meant to do. I had finished my Letters before I read Canon Stanleys admirable sermon c On the Wisdom of Christ/ which was preached before the University of Oxford last November. Some passages in that ser- mon, especially those on the criticism of the Bible and on the ' All or Nothing ' doctrine, anticipate what I have tried to say in my remarks on Mr. Manse? s last Lecture. The whole discourse proves, it seems to me, that the true spirit of Butler has not departed from Oxford. 5, Russell Square, June 4. ERRATUM. Page 32, line 4, for quisquis read quisque. CONTENTS. incites. Page I. INTRODUCTORY. — THE COST OF A REFUTATION . 3 II. MR. HANSEL'S PREFACE. SIR W. HAMILTON . 16 III. MR. MANSEL'S PREFACE. BUTLER 37 IV. MR. MANSEL'S FIRST LECTURE. DOGMATISM AND RATIONALISM. THE ATONEMENT AND INCAR- NATION 60 V. MR. MANSEL S SECOND LETTER. RELIGIOUS PHI- LOSOPHY. MYSTICISM. THE CRITERION OF TRUTH 106 VI. LATTER PART OF THE SECOND LECTURE. PHI- LOSOPHICAL TERMS. STRUGGLE FOR REALITY 134 VII. MR. MANSEL'S THIRD AND FOURTH LECTURES. PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. THE SCOTCH. SCHLEIERMACHER. MR. MANSEL'S OWN TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECT.— PRAYER . 154 VIII. MR. MANSEL'S FIFTH LECTURE. NOTIONS AND PRINCIPLES. APPEARANCES AND REALITIES. KNOWING AND BEING. — GERMANS AND EN- GLISH. SUMMARY 197 IX. THE SIXTH LECTURE. CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES. THE TRINITY. NATURE OF THE APOLOGY. Xll CONTENTS. Page — EFFECTS OF IT. — THE APPROACHING CRISIS. — THE TWO NATURES. — MIRACLES . . . .228 X. MORALITY. KANT. — THE HUMAN REPRESENTA- TION OF ABSOLUTE MORALITY. — MR. MANSEL's METHOD OF DEALING (1) WITH THE ATONE- MENT ; (2) WITH THE DOCTRINE OF FORGIVE- NESS ; (3) WITH ETERNAL PUNISHMENT ; (4) WITH THE EXISTENCE AND IMMORTALITY OF EVIL 267 XI. EIGHTH LECTURE. — CONTENTS AND EVIDENCES OF THE BIBLE. — PALEY. — UNFAIRNESS OF OUR MODE OF DEALING WITH EVIDENCE. HOW THE BIBLE HAS SUFFERED FROM IT. — WHAT EVIDENCES HAVE WROUGHT CONVICTION IN OUR TIME. — POLITICAL, THEOLOGICAL, PHILO- SOPHICAL DIFFICULTIES, HOW MET BY THE BIBLE. MR. MANSEL'S TREATMENT OF IT. WHY HE MUST BE OUT OF SYMPATHY WITH IT. — CONCLUSION 319 LETTERS TO A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT sparing for (Driers* ON MR. HANSEL'S BAMPTOK LECTURES. LETTEE I. INTRODUCTORY.— THE COST OF A CONFUTATION. My dear Sir, I do not wonder that you are spending a portion of the time which remains to you before your exami- nation in the study of Mr. Mansel's Bampton Lec- tures. You have heard, on good authority, that they expose triumphantly different forms of unbelief or half-belief which exist in Germany and in England. This exposure is not, you are told, like many that have preceded it, made by a man who has only a second-hand acquaintance with the writers whom he condemns, or who condemns them with the zeal and passion of a Theologian. He is a scholar, and has mastered the books against which he warns us; he is a philosopher, and places his warnings on a philo- sophical ground. His maxim, you are assured, will be as effectual for future Rationalists and semi-Ra- tionalists as for those who nourish in our day. It will be effectual for crushing the questionings that have arisen or may arise in your own mind. It in- 4 HOPES FROM THE LECTURES. forms you of the Hercules' Pillars beyond which you cannot, by the very conditions of your intellect, sail in quest of truth. How desirable to have such a monitor ! What a help to a student in divinity, who must find himself often amidst the quicksands of written controversies ! What a help to a preacher of the Gospel, who must encounter the doubts, old and new, of his lettered or unlettered hearers ! Such are the motives which will induce you and very many in your position to hail the appearance of a book which is said to be the latest expression of Ox- ford learning and Oxford orthodoxy, which promises to become the Buctor Lubitantium for the nineteenth century. You have been a little startled, I suspect, by the criticism upon these Lectures which appeared some- time ago in the ' Times' newspaper. No greater homage could be paid to Mr. Manser's ability and success than the writer of that article was willing to bestow; he had the knowledge of the subject, which makes compliments valuable. But without meaning in the least to qualify his praise, he pointed out, with the skill and conscientiousness of a logician, certain results which followed inevitably from Mr. ManseFs doctrine. Others, he said, besides Hegel and the Germans, our natural enemies, must be crushed be- neath it. Tliomas-a-Kempis he especially instanceu as one who must henceforth be cast aside as simply ridiculous. With him, it was suggested, a number THE SACRIFICES THEY DEMAND. 5 of divines will perish who are not accused of his mystical tendencies. Where, you have asked your- self, will this prophecy carry us ? f Am I quite pre- pared, were that all, to part with the Imitation of Christ, the most cherished book of devotion through- out Christendom, dear to Romanists, to Protestants, to Quakers, — the companion of the sick in hospitals, of the solitary prisoner V I should doubt the fairness or lawfulness of this inquiry into the consequences of a principle before you had thoroughly examined the principle itself, if I did not perceive that you were already bribed to accept it by the hope of other consequences which look particularly tempting to you. You should not refuse to try the Lectures by their own merits, be- cause if you yield to their arguments, you must aban- don some portions of theological literature which you have been used to consider precious, — even some con- victions which have wrought themselves into your heart, and which come forth almost unconsciously in your language. But since you are prepared to ad- mire Mr. Mansel from the hope that he will enable you henceforth to hold your Theology far more com- fortably, with little disturbance from without or from within, you are not wrong in considering what it is that you will rescue from these dangers, what treasures you will have to surrender as the price for keeping the rest in security. I wish you to approach the investigation of his doctrines, and of the deduc- 6 THOMAS-A-KEMPIS. ductious from it, without an unfair bias for or against either. It will not be amiss, therefore, to calculate a few of the losses we must reckon upon if we bring Mr. MansePs powerful weapon into ordinary use; the gains you know already from higher judges. (1.) First, then; I cannot doubt that the critic in the ' Times J was altogether right, and very felicitous, in his selection of Thomas-a-Kempis as a victim who must at once be sacrificed. Did you ask yourself, as you read, ivhy he could not use the shibboleth which the Bampton Lecturer demands of all theologians? Is it on account of any qualities which appertain to him as a monk or as a Romanist ? Is it for that defect which the Dean of St. Paul's* notices in him, that his devotion does not lead enough to ac- tive exertion, — that he does not tell us we are to imitate Christ as Him who went about doing good ? Whatever of monastic or mediaeval notions mav have mingled with his faith, whatever of justice there may be in Dr. Milinair's criticism, — these are not the offences which bring him within the scope of Mr. MansePs law, which subject him to its extreme pe- nalties. His crime consists in his assuming that there is a divine Teacher of man's spirit ; that it is possible for man's spirit to have converse with that Teacher. All that is expressed in books of divinity by the union of the soul with Christ, by living inter- course with Him, is impossible in the very nature * 'Latin Christianity,' vol. vi. pp. 303-306. JANSENISTS, PURITANS, LEIGHTON. of things, if Mr. Mansel' s mode of confuting infidels is the right one. Non mens hie sermo. I am merely indorsing the statement of a highly intelligent admi- rer ; one which I think Mr. Mansel would not himself disclaim. (2.) When the objection to Thorn as-a-Kempis is stated in this way, I scarcely know what divines of any age are not within the peril of it. The Jansen- ists must give up all their great authors ; the Puri- tans the best of theirs. You are well read, I doubt not, in Leighton's Commentary, as well as in those f Prelections ' which Professor Scholefield edited so carefully; those, I mean, that were addressed to an assembly at Edinburgh, not altogether unlike the one which Mr. Mansel addressed at Oxford. These must fall upon the same ground with a Kempis, and upon other grounds, to which I may allude hereafter. In these cases it is not the theoretical part of the divinity which must be rejected; it is what the writers believed to be the essentially practical part, that which concerned the moral reformation of them- selves and their hearers. And note this. Just the part of their teaching which brings them within Mr. Mansel' s condemnation, is that which had fallen into oblivion in the last century, and which the con- science of England, the conscience of the most ear- nest and religious men in England, has demanded again with a voice so loud and imperative, that all the modern discourses even of those who are naturally 8 SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES. disinclined to the use of its favourite language, are coloured bv it. (3.) For, next, all that history of mental and spi- ritual experiences which exists either in the old Ha- giographies or in the Puritan biographies, or which has been brought forth among us since the days of Wesley and Whitfield, must be expelled from the li- braries of Christians, or at least must be treated as merely fictitious. All these assume an actual living knowledge of God to be possible for men. They assume the conversion of the soid to consist in its awakening to that knowledge. Do you remind me that there is much in the narratives of such con- versions which even those who attach most value to them trace to an enthusiastic or morbid tempera- ment ? I grant you that there is. But I think those who have most earnestly considered such stories, and have most brought them to the test of that self-know- ledge which Mr. Mansel regards as the exclusive test of truth, have treated that as the fantastic element in them which concerns the senses and apparitions to the senses. This they could refer to the conditions of the writer's body or to his external circumstances ; whereas just the part which, according to Mr. Man- sel, we must discard as delusion, is what they would confess as sound and true — that which concerns the internal and spiritual apprehension, the recognition of the Eternal Being. (4.) Again, there is one eminent theologian whose tt {( ST. AUGUSTINE. 9 fate we have not to gather from the inferences of any of Mr. Manser s supporters or disciples. The fol- lowing passage from himself decides the question : — " 'God/ says Augustine, f is not a Spirit as regards " ' substance, and good as regards quality ; but both " ' as regards substance. The Justice of God is one " ' with His Goodness and with His Blessedness ; and ( all are one with His Spirituality/ But this asser- tion, if it be literally true (and of this we have no means of judging), annihilates personality itself, in " the only form in which we can conceive it. We " cannot transcend our own personality, as we cannot "transcend our own relation to time; and to speak et of an Absolute and Infinite Person, is simply to use " language to which, however true it may be in a " superhuman sense, no mode of human thought can " possibly attach itself." (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed. p. 85.) Now I would put it to Dr. Pusey, to the Dean of Westminster, to any person differing as widely from them as they differ from each other, provided he has devoted as much attention as they have to the writ- ings of St. Augustine, whether the conclusion which is thus peremptorily announced, that "we cannot " transcend our own personality, as we cannot tran- " scend our own relation to time," annihilates a single passage of this Father ; whether it does not annihi- late the very man himself? If you cannot wait for their decision, read ' The Confessions/ read any pas- 10 THE SCHOOLMEN; LUTHER. sages which you may stumble upon by chance from the first book to the last, and then ask yourself whe- ther every part of his experience, everything which raised him from a Manichean into a Christian, even from an animal into a man, is not associated with the conviction (that he could and did transcend his own personality and his relation to time, that he could and did apprehend the Personality of God.J (5.) Augustine then must perish, and with him all that have thought and written in his spirit : a blow, I need not tell you, to nearly all the most powerful of the mediaeval thinkers, even to those who did not follow Augustine in his Platonism, but belonged to the Aristotelian period. How Anselm is treated by Mr. Mansel we shall know by-and-by. Bernard has, of course, no chance of mercy at his hands. If Aqui- nas is not absolutely scorned, Bonaventura must be. The disciples of Luther might perhaps endure this violence to Schoolmen. They will be foolish if they do. Of all persons their Master has the least hope of escaping the new proscription. He hated the lo- gicians precisely because they denied that faith was a way to a direct personal knowledge of God. His Reformation consisted in the assertion that there is a Gospel from God to men, revealing His Righteous- ness to them, announcing that Righteousness as the foundation of their own. (6.) But may we not at least retain the Creeds of the Church ? AVe mav retain them to this extent : THE CREEDS; THE PRAYER-BOOK. 11 all objections to them can be proved utterly futile, because it is impossible for men to know anything certain about the Nature of God. But these Creeds profess to tell us something certain about the Nature of God. Nay, they assume that certainty to be the deepest certainty, the ground of all other. Must not they and their antagonists die by the same rule? Has not Mr. Mansel demonstrated the futility of both? (7.) I cannot tell what your feelings are about al- terations in the Prayer-book. You may dread them less than I do. But are you prepared — is any Dis- senter in England prepared — for the changes which Mr. Mansel must demand in it — which the Univer- sity of Oxford must demand, if the Bampton Lectu- rer is the faithful representative of her sentiments ? Mr. Mansel has handled with great severity one of Schleiermacher's doctrines, "as involving something like hypocrisy in every act of prayer" (Note 16 to Lecture IV. p. 360) . He has therefore a righteous horror of anything approaching to such hypocrisy. He could not mean to impute it to so devout and honest a man as Schleiermacher was in the judgment of those who differ from him most j he only dreaded that which might f involve' it ; might cause it in other minds if not in his. How much then must the Lec- turer tremble at the thought of our using such phrases as these, " We who know thee now by faith/' "In knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life" What 12 SOLEMN QUESTION FOR A STUDENT. 'hypocrisy' must be 'involved' in such language — what hypocrisy we must be propagating in our Con- gregations — if we have thoroughly persuaded ourselves that to know the Infinite and Eternal is impossible ! And yet one of these prayers is read every morning ; and the habit of thought which it indicates may be traced through the whole Liturgy. Can we be parties to such an imposture ? Must we not purge our con- sciences of it, if we do not wish to bring down a curse upon ourselves and upon our land ? I •shall not now speak of the revision — not of our translation of the Bible, but — of the Bible itself, which will be necessary if the doctrine of the Lectures is true. That is the subject of the Sermons I have sent you. That subject will recur again and again in the course of these Letters. I confine myself now to some topics which should press very heavily on the consciences of us who are offering up prayers in the Church, and who are inviting men to enter into actual communion with God. They need not press so heavily upon yours if you, before you take the irrevocable step of binding yourself by vows of Or- dination, consider solemnly whether you can really, in a simple sense, use the words which the Church puts into your lips, — whether they are to you honest words or deceitful words. I conjure you, as you value your own peace, as you care for the souls that will be committed to you, not to evade that inquiry, but resolutely to grapple with it, arming yourself for A CONFLICT OF PRINCIPLES. 13 any consequence to which it may lead you. I re- joice in the publication of Mr. ManseFs book nearly as much as its most vehement admirers can rejoice. I look upon it rnore, not less, than they do as a cri- tical event in the history of the English Church. For the question must now be asked of each one of us, — Do you take those words about knowing God which occur in books of devotion, in old divines, in the Prayer-book, in the Bible, literally or figuratively, — in a less exact sense than vou would use the word know as applied to some other subject, or in the most exact sense, the one which determines its use in re- ference to any other subject ? Because we have not given a distinct answer to this question in our own minds, because we have used one kind of language on our knees before God and another in our argu- ments with men, our discourses to the people have been confused and unsatisfactory ; they have not un- derstood whether we came to them with good tidings, or with ill tidings, or with no tidings at all. Thank God for any one who understands his meaning, and so can compel us to understand our meaning ! Thank God for any one who compels two principles that have long fought blindly in the twilight to come forth and meet each other in the open day ! I am glad, also, that those two contradictory prin- ciples concerning the knowledge of God cannot be brought into conflict without discovering two contra- dictory methods in which the Bible may be presented 1 I Tin: CONFLICT 01 METHODS. to the acceptance of mankind. For those who sav that no knowledge of the Eternal is to be had, and that the Bible offers ns something in place of it, must regard everv search which men have made after such knowledge with suspicion, — must delight to re- gister their mistakes, their inconsistencies, their dis- appointments. If. in the height of their pride or in the a^onv ot their failure, these seekers have ut- red words like the east wind. — words in which re- proaches, often jus:, against men were mixed with un- belief of God. — all these must be preserved and tri- umphantly proclaimed, there being, it would appear, some comfort or some virtue in recollecting that crea- tares of oar lesh and blood have given us an excuse fore, gti m. Scorn of their folly in attempt- ing to reach some height which thev could not at- :..".".'. . in these days, a more favourite indul- gence than indignation at the worst moral perversity. A man rnav grovel in the stve without attractins: anv >• ;;:.:'. ■ :om the modern J. fender of Christia- nity : if he aspires by an irregular method after right- eousness, no laughter is too loud for his punishment. He -who holds that the Bible testifies from its first pag; :: its ias: that God has created rue:: Cor the knowledge of Himself, and is kindling in them a thirst for that knowk _ . i discontent with anything which comas short :: it. — cannot by possibility listen thout the profoundest interest to every cry of men after :: in one age or anoth. He must not ask JTDGE NOT. THAT YE BE XOT JTTDGID. first what they have failed to attain, but what they have been permitted to attain. He must be glad to learn frorn their blunders as well as their successes : perceiving in the first the likeness of his own; in the second, the guidance of God. He may not expect their opinions or conclusions to do much for him; __*les and questionings and glimpses of light he will cherish, and be thankful for. All will appear to him to be pointing to a full-orbed Truth which is not in them but in God, and which K "...\s manifested in the I A Word, the only begotten u. The remembrance of hard and proud words spoken against those who were crying out for Truth will be alwavs the bitterest in his life, that which re- cur- the keenest sense of having grieved the Holy S f God, of having brought upon him the curse of a brother's blood. And if he mav look upon that sin as blotted out in the blood of the great Elder Brother of the whole family, he must ask that hereafter he mav regard the Sermon on the I I nut as if it were not an interpolation in the Divine B::k. — that he may accept it as the law of his discourses and acts, not only in laity life, but even when L contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, Youth very truly. F. D. M. 16 LETTEE II. MR. MAXSEI/S PREFACE. — SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. My dear Sir, In Mr. Manser's preface you will find these words : — " It is to a philosopher of our own age and " country that we must look for the true theory of " the limits of human thought, as applicable to the- " ological, no less than to metaphysical researches, " — a theory exhibited indeed in a fragmentary and " incomplete form, but containing the germ of nearly " all that is requisite for a full exposition of the " system. The celebrated article of Sir William Ha- " milton, on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned, " contains the key to the understanding and appreci- " ation of nearly the whole body of modern German u speculation. His great principle, that e the Un- 1 ' ( conditioned is incognizable and inconceivable, its " i notion being only negative of the Conditioned, " ' which last can alone be positively known or con- " ' ceived/ has suggested the principal part of the HAMILTON TO BE STUDIED IN HIMSELF. 17 "inquiries pursued in the present work; and his "practical conclusion, 'We are thus taught the sa- " c lutary lesson, that the capacity of thought is not " ' to be constituted into the measure of existence ; " ' and are warned from recognizing the domain of " ' our knowledge as necessarily coextensive with the " ' horizon of our faith/ is identical with that which "is constantly enforced throughout these Lectures." (p. viii.) Our attention is drawn in this passage to a very remarkable article published originally in the 99th No. of the ' Edinburgh Review* (Oct. 1829), included afterwards in a volume of ' Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform/ which appeared in the year 1852. Obtain, if you can, the Essay in its latest form. The notes which have been added at the bottom of the pages are very important for the illustration of this particular sub- ject. The accompanying Dissertations are scarcely less important for the illustration of the writer's mind. But at all events, do not study Sir William Hamilton merely in the pages of his Oxford disciple ; if you take that course, you will not appreciate either his philosophy or Mr. ManseFs theology. I do not give you this caution because I think Mr. Mansel has perverted the doctrine of his Edinburgh teacher, but because that doctrine, as it stands in his quotation, I apprehend would be simply unintelligi- ble to the majority of those who turn to his Lec- c 18 OBJECT OF HIS DISSERTATION. tures as to an armoury which will supply them with weapons against unbelievers. Hence I fear they will be involved in practical dishonesty. They will not care what the ground of the argument is. That they will leave to Mr. Mansel, taking it for granted that so profound a logician knows all about it. Nay, I am not sure that their want of comprehension of his fundamental maxim will not lead them to regard the conclusions which he has deduced from it with more devout astonishment, and more perfect credence. " These great words, unconditioned, incognizable" so they will reason, " must be sufficient to demolish the German speculations. We may receive the practical advantages of the demolition in the security of our own opinions." No such satisfaction to easy inquirers was contem- plated by Sir William Hamilton. He did not over- look the fact that there was a relation between his maxim and the controversies of theologians. But he was nearly indifferent to the use which adverse di- vines might make of it. The theological hints which are contained in his notes are of great worth from their sincerity, from their not being adapted to fit into any system, sometimes from their startling bold- ness, sometimes from — what you would less expect in so accurate a thinker, such an abhorrer of contradic- tions — their obvious inconsistencies. But the sub- stance of the Essay has an interest of another kind. What strikes one in Mr. Mansel's quotation as a COUSIN. 19 piece of dry technical logic, insignificant till we can see its effects in the downfall of some party foe, is taken out of its folds and translated into life. It sug- gests an historical examination of English, Scotch, French, German habits of thought. It is not merely destructive, for Sir William Hamilton appears as the patriotic champion of Reid and his doctrine of con- sciousness, if the schools of other countries are to be swept utterly away. The Essay is a criticism on M. Cousin's Cours de Philosophie. It explains, with a clearness and can- dour which the subject of it generously acknowledged, what the design of M. Cousin's work — properly speak- ing, of his life — was ; how he had rebelled against the sensualism which Condillac had developed out of Locke ; how much he had been influenced for a time by the philosophy of Reid, which had expanded the li- mits of experience as they were settled by Locke and his French followers, but had confined itself rigidly within those limits; how he had yielded to the in- fluence of certain Germans who held that the pursuit of the Absolute is the pursuit of Philosophy ; how he had attempted to reconcile the two in an Eclectical or Catholic Philosophy of his own. Sir William Hamilton's object is to show that this experiment is hopeless ; that all which Cousin had learnt from the Germans was mere delusion ; that for the mind to discover that which is beyond its own conditions, is simply impossible. He thus enumerates the opinions 20 STATEMENT OF OPINIONS. which may be entertained respecting the Unconditioned as an object of knowledge or thought : — " 1°, The Un- " conditioned is incognizable and inconceivable ; its 1 ' notion being only negative of the conditioned, which "last can alone be positively known or conceived. — "2°, It is not an object of knowledge; but its notion, "as a regulative principle of the mind itself, is more " than a mere negation of the conditioned. — 3°, It is " cognizable, but not conceivable ; it can be known " by a sinking back into identity with the absolute, "but is incomprehensible by consciousness and re- " flection, which are only of the relative and the " different. — 4°, It is cognizable and conceivable by " consciousness and reflection, under relation, differ- " ence, and plurality. The first of these opinions we " regard as true ; the second is held by Kant ; the "third by Schelling; and the last by our author." (p. 12.) The mere statement of the opinion of so eminent a man as Sir "William Hamilton, that these experi- ments are utterly unreasonable, would of course carry great weight with ignorant people like you and me. But, moreover, how much there is in our own minds which seconds his decision ! He appeals directly to our common sense. He asks whether the notion of thought passing beyond the boundaries of thought is not absurd upon the face of it, — whether we can con- ceive the inconceivable, — whether we can know that which we do not conceive ? Set such questions be- LUNACY IN DIFFERENT PERIODS. 21 fore any number of civilized persons, — say in a Lon- don drawing-room, — and what answer could you ex- pect but just as much laughter as the courtesies of society permitted ? What need, as Sir W. Hamilton sometimes asks himself, — and Mr. Mansel frequently echoes him, — of debating the point ? Is it not like entering into a controversy with lunatics ? I wish you to give this consideration all possible weight ; to observe how ridiculous a pursuer of the Absolute makes himself in the eyes of these eminent logicians and in his own; and then to reflect upon a few other facts which also are vouched for by Sir W. Hamilton, and are as indisputable as any in history. I. The first is expressed in these words : — " From " Xenophanes to Leibnitz, the Infinite, the Absolute, "the Unconditioned, formed the highest principle of " speculation." In other words, from the beginning of the most earnest Greek philosophy, — of that Elea- tic school of Greek philosophy to which the disco- very of the science of logic is commonly attributed, — down to the commencement of the eighteenth century, — after Bacon and Locke had written, — the most thoughtful and vigorous minds were devoting themselves to that pursuit which it would seem that only madmen can engage in. This conclusion is de- duced, not from any statement of mine, but from one which I have given you in the very words of Sir W. Hamilton. 99 KANT* t~ e~ KANT'S EFFORT TO CURE IT. II. But a time came shortly after Leibnitz, when one might have hoped that this running after visions would have been stopped for ever. That which was not effected by the sensualism of Locke, was on the point of being effected, Sir W. Hamilton thinks, by Kant's c Critique of the Pure Reason.' If there should chance to linger in any Scotch or English mind the notion which was very prevalent at the beginning of this century, that the philosopher of Konigsberg was himself a dreamer or an idealist, the following sen- tences from one who did not speak of him from hear- say, but from study, may suffice to scatter it. " In his first Critique, Kant undertakes a regular " survey of consciousness. He professes to analyze the "conditions of human knowledge, — to mete out its " limits, — to indicate its point of departure, — and to " determine its possibility. That Kant accomplished " much, it would be prejudice to deny; nor is his ser- " vice to philosophy the less, that his success has been " more decided in the subversion of error than in the establishment of truth. The result of his examina- ( tion was the abolition of the metaphysical sciences, of rational psychology, ontology, speculative the- " ology, etc., as founded on mere petitiones principi- " orum. Existence is revealed to us only under spe- " cific modifications, and these are known only under " the conditions of our faculties of knowledge. 'Things "in themselves/ Matter, Mind, God, — all, in short, "that is not finite, relative, and phenomenal, — as (C C( HIS ILL SUCCESS. 23 " bearing no analogy to our faculties, is beyond the "verge of our knowledge. Philosophy was thus re- u stricted to the observation and analysis of the phe- " nomena of consciousness ; and what is not expli- " citly or implicitly given in a fact of consciousness, "is condemned, as transcending the sphere of a le- " gitimate speculation. A knowledge of the uncon- " ditioned is declared impossible ; either immediate- "ly, as a notion, or mediately, as an inference. A "demonstration of the absolute from the relative is u logically absurd ; as in such a syllogism we must " collect in the conclusion what is not distributed in " the premisses : And an immediate knowledge of the "unconditioned is equally impossible." (p. 16.) With such a champion arising in the very country of the enemy, what might not have been expected? But hear the result : — "Kant had annihilated the older metaphysic, but " the germ of a more visionary doctrine of the abso- lute, than any of those refuted, was contained in " the bosom of his own philosophy. He had slain the " body, but had not exorcised the spectre of the ab- " solute ; and this spectre has continued to haunt the " schools of Germany even to the present day. The philosophers were not content to abandon their me- taphysic; to limit philosophy to an observation of " phenomena, and to the generalization of these phe- " nomena into laws. The theories of Bouterweck (in " his earlier works), of Bardili, of Beinhold, of Fichte, ti 24 WHO ARE INFECTED. " of Schelling, of Hegel, and of sundry others, are just " so many endeavours, of greater or of less ability, to " fix the absolute as a positive in knowledge." (p. 18.) What have we been told here ? In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, after a denial, by Hume, not only that the Absolute and Eternal could be known, but that there was an Absolute and an Eter- nal, — after all the efforts of Reid and his school to vindicate the results of experience from what seemed Hume's inevitable inferences, — finally, after Kant's annihilating criticism, which seemed to leave no scope for Metaphysic, in its old sense, ever again to lift its head, — there has been more eager search after that which passes the limit of experience, more feel- ing that somehow that must be the business of hu- man search, than even in the period between Xeno- phanes and Leibnitz. The kind of ridicule which Sir William Hamilton has poured upon such inqui- ries, was poured upon them in every age. Schel- ling knew such jokes from his boyhood ; Hegel must have learnt them from doctors and jesters old and new. Yet these men, whose dialectical faculty has never been disputed, — is not disputed by Mr. Man- sel, — acquainted with history, interested in the con- dition of humanity, — amidst the falls of thrones and empires, in the country which most felt the shock of the French earthquake, — could not be withdrawn from these wild inquiries, — could not be prevented from drawing a multitude of disciples after them, or THE DISEASE IN FRANCE. 25 from influencing more or less decidedly the politics, the religion, even the ordinary life of Germans who knew little of the nature or course of their specu- lations ! III. A line which Sir William Hamilton adopts from an old author with whom his extensive reading had made him acquainted, — " G-ens ratione ferox et mentem pasta chimseris," may perhaps account satisfactorily to some minds for these phenomena in Germany. But what is the occasion of this Dissertation? The passing of the same delusion into France, — that country from which all dreams of the Absolute seemed to have been banished since the days of Malebranche, — that country which is called by our learned author, " the metaphysical antipodes of Germany." He was led to notice it because some of its most dangerous symptoms appeared in a man who had passed under the healthful discipline of Reid and Stewart, who busied himself, as we all know, in the most practical questions concerning the education of his own country and of other countries, to whose " learning, elegance, distinguished ability," his Edinburgh critic bears abundant testimonv. And it was not a monomania. "Two thousand auditors" (I quote again from the Essay, p. 2) " listened all with admiration, nay with " enthusiasm, to the eloquent exposition of doctrines " intelligible only to the few ; and the oral discussion 26 ENGLAND NOT SAFE; WHY? " of philosophy awakened in Paris and in France an "interest unexampled since the days of Abelard." IV. A madness spread over so many countries and ages, resisting so many remedies which were suggest- ed by the wisest men, starting up again when it was least expected, is a fact demanding investigation. I cannot think that Sir William Hamilton has inves- tigated it. He has merely announced it. Mr. Han- sel may perhaps tell us something, in the course of his book, about the causes and growth of the disease which he proposes to extirpate. But we must recol- lect that his book itself adds one more startling fact to those I have already enumerated. It is not only France which has taken the infection. If he did not believe that England, practical England, was liable to the same danger — if he did not discover indications of it in Oxford, in spite of the number of influ- ences which are likely to counteract it there, — he would not of course have devoted so much of time and toil to the subject of his Lectures. How have we come within the reach of this temptation ? How is it that neither the religious culture of Oxford, nor that more thorough and continual discipline of the Stock Exchange to which we are subjected in Lon- don, has been effectual to ward it off ? It is a point which is worthy of the deepest study. Shall I try to give you one or two reasons which have occurred to me, and which I should like you to ponder? (1.) You may be surprised when I say that the EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES. 27 earnest attention of Englishmen to physical studies — and to mathematics as the chief instrument for arriv- ing at any clear and sound acquaintance with phy- sical studies, — has somewhat deadened the force of the ridicule which Sir W. Hamilton would bestow on those who from Xenophanes to Schelling have tried to surmount the conditions of their own minds. For that effort which is said to be monstrous when it is made in the search of metaphysical truth, is the very one which Bacon taught the student that he must make if he would advance one step in the knowledge of Nature. The Schoolmen, who had done such good work in ascertaining the terms under which we judge and name things, had wished to limit Nature by those terms. Therefore, Bacon said, all her secrets were hidden from them. Was it not the business of the 'Novum Organum' to show men how they had faileci* to enter into the true meaning of the objects which they pretended to examine, because they had made their senses and the notions of their under- standings the measures of them ? Was it not the purpose of that book to point out a method of in- vestigation by which we might rise not only above the conceits of our individual minds, but above those which belong to us as members of a species ? The possibility of such a method was easily recognized by the Mathematician. He was rather inclined to af- firm that it was not new at all, but the one to which he had always been accustomed, the method of as- 28 DANGERS OF MATHEMATICS. cending from a particular case to the affirmation of a universal law. The Logician, trained to the oppo- site method, of descending from general propositions to individual cases, rebelled against the lesson, nay, has never heartily admitted it to this hour, though compelled to pay it a conventional respect. Sir Wil- liam Hamilton, a Logician in the most thorough and exclusive sense, was too consistent and too ho- nest not to avow his abhorrence of jiathesis."* No wonder he thought Mathematics ' not an improving study/ likely to c induce credulity/ likely also to ' in- duce Scepticism/ A brave man doubtless, reckless of popularity, ready to overthrow the discoveries of generations past, or the prospects of generations to come, rather than sacrifice his consistency. One cannot but honour him for his sincere, cordial, ( unconditioned ; hatred of that which had no mean- ing for him. It is amusing to hear such denun- ciations connected with the cultivation of humility; but that boast too is instructive, as the fierceness of Sir \Y. Hamilton's contempt for some scientific men of European reputation, and for some scholars not thought wholly despicable, at least on this side of the Tweed, is also instructive. The rules of the Logician could not bind the man. The victims of his scorn may have sometimes laughed that such a man should be, and have oftener wept that Atticus was he. Those who contemplate him from a distance * See 'Discussions,' p. 257. REVERENCE TOR THE BIBLE. 29 may be thankful for all contributions to the illustra- tion of a mind so remarkable in its weakness as well as in its strength. But since Sir William Hamil- ton has not succeeded in his raid against English Mathematics, he has not succeeded in persuading En- glishmen that there is not a way, and a most legiti- mate wav. in which men mav ascend above the con- ditions of their own intellects, in which thev must do J % it if they are not to account the belief ridiculous that the earth moves round the sun, as well as everv other belief in that which is, instead of that which appears. (2.) But if our experimental studies, which we ge- nerally regard, and I think rightly regard, as a great protection against some of the worst tendencies of the German mind, makes us indisposed to accept that protection against them which Sir William Hamil- ton and Mr. Mansel would offer us, I believe there is another influeDce which works still more power- fully in the same direction. The Bampton Lecturer would speak of the reverence for the Script ures which we acquire in our nurseries, and which our public Schools and Universities at least design to foster, as one of our great national possessions, which especi- ally distinguishes us from Germans, and which we are jealously to watch over. I entirely accede to this opinion ; only expressing my conviction that we are not guarding the treasure, but endangering it, if we make it an excuse for boasting of ourselves, or for 30 SIR W. HAMILTON AND ST. PAUL. triumph, over any other country. But this reverence for Scripture is that which, in my judgment, makes it impossible for us to look upon Sir W. Hamilton's dogma as conclusive against the search after the Ab- solute which he shows to have had such an attrac- tion for the most thoughtful men. I will not repeat what I have said already, or anticipate what I may say hereafter upon this subject. I will merely refer you to one or two of the passages in Sir W. Hamil- ton's notes, in which he gives his own theological ap- plication of his position. The first occurs in a note to p. 15. " True, therefore, are the declarations of " a pious philosophy : — { A God understood would be " ' no God at all ;' — ' To think that God is, as we can " ' think him to be, is blasphemy.' — The Divinity, in " a certain sense, is revealed ; in a certain sense con- " cealed : He is at once known and unknown. But ' ' the last and highest consecration of all true religion " must be an altar ^Ayvcocrra) 0ec5, — c To the unknown " ' and unknowable God? In this consummation, na- " ture and revelation, paganism and Christianity, are " at one ; and from either source the testimonies are so numerous that I must refrain from quoting any. Am I wrong in thinking, that M. Cousin would not • ; repudiate this doctrine?" Now it cannot help stri- king any person brought up in our English reverence for Scripture, that Sir W. Hamilton is here, not by inference, but in direct terms, contradicting St. Paul. He affirmed that the altar to the Unknown God was ANOTHER SIDE OF HIS MIND. 31 not the last and highest consecration of true religion. " Him whom ye ignorantly ivorship" he said, " de- " chare I unto you" I am not the least anxious to strain this point, or to use it as the ground of a charge against Sir Wil- liam Hamilton. Every one knows what an excuse it would have been, if it had occurred in any Ger- man philosopher, for raising the cry that he wished to set aside Christianity as an obsolete and imperfect religion, and to " consecrate " a higher system. But God forbid that I should make a man an offender for a word, even if that word is the legitimate deduc- tion from a proposition which is used for the purpose of making all other men offenders, and is vaunted as the basis of all orthodoxy ! I rejoice to believe that Sir W. Hamilton meant to be a pious philosopher ; I rejoice to discover in this very passage a waver- ing and uncertainty of mind, showing that the spirit within him demanded that resting-place in the Ab- solute and Eternal, which he said that men were not permitted, by the conditions of their intellect, to seek after. A still stronger evidence that it was so, is contained in a note to the 19th page. After quoting a line from Manilius, " None can feel God who shares not "in the Godhead," (which is used as a statement, though Sir W. Hamilton thinks an inadequate state- ment, of that kind of Pantheism which Schelling at one period of his life advocated,) he goes on to say : 32 MAN PERCIPIENT OF THE DIVINE. — "Manilius has likewise another (poetically) laud- "able line, of a similar, though less exceptionable, -purport:— ^k^c ' Exemplumque Dei quisquis est in imagine parva ;' (' Each is himself a miniature of God.') " For we should not recoil to the opposite extreme ; " and, though man be not identical with the Deity, " still is he ( created in the image of God/ It is, in- " deed, only through an analogy of the human with " the Divine nature, that we are percipient and reci- " pient of Divinity. As St. Prosper has it : — ' Nemo possidet Deum, nisi qui possidetur a Deo/ — So Se- neca : — ' In unoquoque virorum bonorum habitat " Deus/ — So Plotinus : — c Virtue tending to consum- " mation and Eradicated in the soul by moral wisdom, " reveals a God ; but a God destitute of true virtue "is an empty name/ — So Jacobi : — 'From the enjoy- "ment of virtue springs the idea of a virtuous; from " the enjoyment of freedom, the idea of a free; from " the enjoyment of life, the idea of a living ; from " the enjoyment of a divine, the idea of a godlike — " and of a God/ — So Goethe : — ' War' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, Wie konnten wir das Licht erblicken ? Lebt' nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft, Wie konnte uns das Gottliche entziicken ?' " So Kant and many others. (Thus morality and reli- " gion, necessity and atheism, rationally go together.) « — The Platonists and Fathers have indeed finely THAT WHICH IS AND THAT WHICH SEEMS. 33 " said, that ' God is the soul of the soul, as the soul " is the soul of the body/ ' Vita Animae Deus est ; lisec Corporis. Hac fugiente, Solvitur hoc ; perit ha^c, destituente Deo.' " These verses are preserved to us from an ancient poet by John of Salisbury, and they denote the com- parison of which Buchanan has made so admirable a use in his Calvini TLpicedium" (p. 19, note.) This interesting, if somewhat startling, passage ex- hibits a noble struggle in the heart and mind of a man after a living God, a God nigh and not afar off. By the light of it we must study that passage which Mr. Mansel has taken as the text of his lectures; u We are thus taught the salutarv lesson that the ca- " pacity of thought is not to be constituted into the "measure of existence, and are warned from recog- " nizing the domain of our knowledge as necessarily " co-extensive with the horizon of our faith." The first half of this proposition brings out with great clear- ness the philosophical question which is at issue be- tween Sir "W. Hamilton and his opponents. Have we anything in us which can apprehend that which is ? Are we merely circumscribed by that which we think ? In other words ; is the opinion of one man or of all men that which determines what we know ? This is a fair way of stating the case. We may play with the words Absolute and Infinite for ever; but here is the problem which applies to the least things as much as the greatest. Can we come into contact with D 34 TO WHICH DOES THE BIBLE LEAD ? the meaning, the substance, the reality of anything in earth or Heaven? Have we nothing in place of that knowledge but a semblance or appearance which is presented to us? Xow here I think our child's faith in the Bible comes in to give its vote, whatever that may go for, in favour of those philosophers whom Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel condemn. This faith certainly has assumed the Bible to be a book which witnesses against the appearances and notions of men about the Being of whom it speaks, — which testifies that He wishes us to rise above all appear- ances and notions, and to believe in that which He actually is. And if it be so, then this same child- like reverence for the Bible would lead us to look at the second clause of Sir W. Hamilton's sentence in quite a different light from that in which it presents itself to his admirer. Our faith may have a very wide horizon, far beyond the limits of our concep- tions. But the Being will be the limit and the object of it. It will not be concerned with a multitude of opinions about Him. It will be in direct affiance to Himself. It will be always craving for the know- ledge of Him, just as the eye craves for the sight of any of His visible works. I could almost venture to adopt Sir W. Hamilton's own question to Cousin, u Am I wrong in thinking," that he who made those quotations from St. Prosper, from Seneca, from Plo- tinus, from Jacobi, " would not repudiate this doc- trine ?" Am I wrong in thinking that so far as here PHILOSOPHY AND REVELATION. 35 on earth he repudiated it, he did so because he had not quite accepted St. PauFs statement of the way in which the eternal Being has met the seekings of His creatures after Him? In one of his discussions, that on the Philosophy of Perception, p. 39, Sir William Hamilton has said, " Plato has profoundly denned man, l the hunter of " truth ; ' for in this chase, as in others, the pursuit is " all in all, the success comparatively nothing. ' Did n ' the Almighty/ says Lessing, ' holding in his right " ' hand Truth, and in his left search after Truth, deign " ' to proffer me the one I might prefer ; — in all hu- c ' ' mility, but without hesitation, I should request — " ( Search after Truth.' " I love Plato's definition as much as Sir W. Hamilton does. I should agree with him and with Lessing, if I did not believe that the revelation of Truth was at once the awakening and the satisfaction of the search after Truth ; because it is the revelation of Him who is Truth to the crea- ture who is made in His image. This is the ground of my conflict with Mr. Mansel. He seems to me to crush the search after Truth, all that is expressed in the word Philosophy , by crushing at the same time the discovery of Truth, all that is expressed in the word Revelation. I do not believe that the heart of Sir W. Hamilton would have gone along with him in this experiment, whatever excuse may be found for it in his formal dialectics. I am sure that neither the practical sense nor the reverence of the English 36 BUDDHISM. mind will go along with him. There is one reason more, besides those I have given, why it should not. It is not only philosophers, Greek, German, French, English, from Xenophanes to Hegel, who have been busy in the search after the absolute. That eminent Oriental scholar, whom Oxford has done herself so much honour by adopting among her sons, Mr. Max Miiller, will tell us that Buddhism, the most exten- sive religion in the world, is just as much as Hegel- ism a search after the Absolute, may just as much as Hegelism terminate in Nothingness. Is the best message we can send from the West to 300,000,000 of people, "You have been dreaming a dream; we " can show you that all you have been living for " does indeed mean Nothing" ? Or may we say this? "The search after the Absolute becomes a contra- " diction when we try to comprehend it in a notion " of our own minds. But the Absolute Himself has " stirred you to it, because it has been His purpose to " reveal Himself to you." Faithfully yours, F. D. M. 37 LETTEE III. MR. MANSEL S PREFACE. — BUTLER. My dear Sir, I think we shall save time in the end, if we dwell a little longer upon Mr. Manser's Preface, before we proceed to his Lectures. He has introduced us to an eminent Scotch Philosopher. I have tried to show you what good we may derive from him, and where he fails us. The next paragraph brings before us an Eng- lish Divine, with whom we are acquainted already ; whom we botlr, I trust, regard with reverence and gratitude. " But if the best theoretical expression of 1 ' the limits of human thought is to be found in the ' ' writings of a philosopher but recently removed from " among us ; it is in a work of more than a century " old that we find the best instance of the acknow- ledgment of those limits in practice. The Analogy " of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitu- 11 Hon and Course of Nature, furnishes an example of u a profound and searching philosophical spirit, com- " bined with a just perception of the bounds within 38 THE SCOTCH AND ENGLISH THINKERS. "which all human philosophy must be confined, to " which, in the whole range of similar investigations, " it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a pa- rallel. The author of that work has been justly " described as ' one to whose deep sayings no thought- " ( ful mind was ever yet introduced for the first time, " ' without acknowledging the period an epoch in its " ' intellectual history ;' and it may be added that " the feeling of admiration thus excited will only be " increased by a comparison of his writings with the "pretentious failures of more ambitious thinkers. " Connected as the present author has been for many years with the studies of Oxford, of which those writings have long formed an important part, he " feels that he would be wanting in his duty to the " University to which he owes so much, were he to "hesitate to declare, at this time, his deep-rooted " and increasing conviction, that sound religious phi- " losophy will nourish or fade within her walls, ac- " cording as she perseveres or neglects to study the " works and cultivate the spirit of her great son and "teacher, Bishop Butler." (pp. ix., x.) Mr. Mansel could not more happily have distin- guished Sir "William Hamilton from Butler, than by speaking of one as a theorist and the other as a prac- tical man. They are admirable specimens of two diametrically opposite kinds of intellect. With an immensely wider range of reading, perhaps with far greater metaphysical power, Sir W. Hamilton's na- ff ft OPPOSITION BETWEEN THEM. 39 tural dwelling-place is evidently amidst notions and opinions. Whatever subject he contemplates, he must reduce under some notion ; till he can do so, it has no interest, scarcely any existence, for him. Bi- shop Butler is impatient of notions ; he would trans- late them all into facts if he could. It is among facts that he lives; he cares for nothing else. What he wants is to find out their meaning; he would go into the depths or the heights for the sake of ascer- taining that. He would never be tempted to forsake the firm ground of earth by the finest theory that was ever invented. Mr. Mansel therefore has good reason for thinking that he has here found a man who is exceedingly un- like Schelling or Hegel, or even Cousin. But he has not a right to say that he has found a man who will run in the same team with Sir W. Hamilton. If by saying that one has " expounded the limits of human " thought," and that the other is " the best instance " of the acknowledgment of those limits in practice," he merely means that Butler, in his judgment, is not a madman, — since all in his judgment are madmen who attempt to transgress the limits of thought which Sir W. Hamilton has marked out, — the admirers of Bishop Butler must accept that compliment with be- coming gratitude. But if he means that Butler has alluded anywhere to those limits of thought, and has signified his intention of confining himself within them, the passages in his writings which contain that 40 BUTLER AND OXFORD. announcement should have been produced. T can- not find them. His work is of the tentative, expe- rimental kind. He begins from what he sees, not from some definition of what he could or could not conceive. He does not descend from Generals, but ascends from Particulars. He will start from the very lowest probability ; but what he is feeling after is something fixed and certain. I then " should be " wanting in my duty to the University to which I " owe," not so much as Mr. Mansel, but very much, " if I did not declare at this time my deeply- " rooted conviction that Oxford cannot cultivate the " spirit of her great son and teacher, Bishop Butler," if she confounds two methods of study which are so entirely unlike as these, — if she accepts the disserta- tion on the Unconditioned as the measure and rule by which she is to try the l Analogy/ Wishing as heartily as Mr. Mansel can do, that the students of Oxford should continue to reverence Butler, and should receive even greater benefits from him than any which they have received hither- to, I cannot conceal from myself that there are se- rious difficulties in the way of the accomplishment of this desire. They are difficulties which may be overcome if we state them fairly to ourselves ; if we believe that Butler, like every great and generative thinker, has the power of adapting himself to cir- cumstances and conditions which he did not con- template, and which did not exist in his day ; if we TITLE OF THE BOOK. 41 suppose that the principles which he enforced are not dependent upon the accidents of the moment to which he applied them, or even upon the peculiari- ties of his own temperament, — but will prove their force most when they are loosened from phrases which he adopted chiefly from compliance with the habits of a dry and dreary period, and which have not borne the test of later experience. Above all, I think those who look upon Butler as a great apolo- gist for the Scriptures, will not suppose he has failed in his object, if the Scriptures themselves should be found to tell more than he could tell. In trying to state the difficulties to which I have alluded, and to point out how they may be removed, I shall not be speaking at random or from guess; I shall be giving the results of my own personal experience, as well as of my experience among young men of your class. I set them down in the conviction that both you and the Undergraduate! of Oxford may attain a sounder religious philosophy through Bishop Butler than can ever be attained through the Bampton Lec- turer. 1. Mr. Mansel has wisely quoted the entire title of Butler's book. The ellipsis, The Analogy of Na- tural and Revealed Religion, often makes us forget those pregnant and important words, without which the others have no significance, — to the Constitution and Course of Nature. I can answer for myself, that what I owe more than anything else to Butler, 42 butler's real charm. and to Butler, so far as I can trace and define obli- gations, more than to almost any other man, is the sense of being in such a Constitution, — one that I did not create, and have no power to alter, but with which I must be in conformity, or suffer the penalty of being at war with it. It is not the force of the comparison one thinks of first ; it is not the conclusiveness of the argument. "What facts are these by which you are illustrating your Religion, natural or revealed ! How profoundly important they are to me ? This is a thought which startles and frightens a man before he has time to calculate the effect of what he is reading on the mind of an opponent. I do not wonder that any one who has felt this should speak of his first acquaintance with Butler as an "epoch in his life." His rapid and brilliant Irish namesake would never, I am per- suaded, have used that language about any one who had merely supplied him with a new illustration or argument. His own wit would have produced hun- dreds of these for or against any cause, on the plain- tiff's side or the defendant's. It is quite a different thing when one is forced to ponder the path of one's own life, — to know what it is that wit and argument cannot devise or change. That remains with us as part of an everlasting history when arguments that seemed to us very decisive, have faded from our re- collection, or even have proved fallacious. Any one who cares to know the man Butler, FEELING OF A CONSTITUTION. 43 should study the f Sermons on Human Nature' as much as the f Analogy/ Both, I believe, will make the same impression upon his mind. In one as much as the other, Butler is proving himself a constitu- tional writer, in the fullest sense of that word. He is helping us to understand what the sense of the word is by bringing us gradually into an experience of the fact which it denotes. How we become par- takers of that experience is as hard to say as it is to trace the steps by which one is familiarized to a tree, or a face. By slow, repeated strokes, each of which in itself is scarcely perceptible, the conviction is wrought into you. The seriousness of the writer's own con- viction has had more share in communicating it to you than any skill of which he is master. 2. Butler was well aware of one obstacle to the re- ception of this belief. Our frivolity, our delight in our own conceptions rather than in the observation of facts and the reflection upon them, this kind of dan- ger was constantly present to his mind. He speaks of men's levity and impatience of trouble with sor- row, sometimes almost with bitterness.* But there was a hindrance to the acceptance of his teaching which he was not prepared for, which no man living just at his time, and with his education, could fully appreciate. What is it that commonly awakens a * See especially the Preface to the ' Sermons/ one of the most important of all documents for the understanding of Butler's cha- racter. 44 THE SENSE OF PERSONAL EVIL. man out of his frivolity ? What is that fact which presents itself to him when he begins to think ear- nestly? It is the sense of his own evil; what is commonly called — and I do not think there is any better phrase to describe it by — the conviction of sin. Not the perception of an order at all, but of a dis- order \ not an interest about the laws of the universe, but about my own very self; this is what takes pos- session of me. All religion, it seems to me, has to do with this. I cannot understand what it means if it is not occupied about this fact of which I have become so terribly conscious, if it does not explain that fact to me, and make known to me some other fact concerning myself which may render that less intolerable. Nature gives me apparently no infor- mation about it. Sea, sky, air, — each say, " The se- " cret of thy trouble and of the deliverance from it is " not in me." I resort to the Bible only because I have been told it is there. Slowlv out of the words of some Prophet or Evangelist or Apostle it comes. The dream is told as well as the interpretation. Now a man returning to Butler in the midst j)f this experience, or when he has just attained the result of it, feels what can only be described as a bitter discontent. He may pursue the study as a school-task ; he may prepare himself for an exami- nation in the Analogy; he may hope that it will serve his turn hereafter in combating the objections of infidels. But all personal sympathy with it is gone. HOW IT AFFECTS THE STUDY OF BUTLER. 45 He does not understand its nomenclature. The reli- gion which it speaks of does not look like the reli- gion with which he is occupied in his closet. He begins to regard it as an artificial, outward thing, which has acquired, unfortunately, the same name with the real inward thing. There is a bewilderment in the equivoque ; he submits to it, reluctant and protesting, supposing that there must in the nature of things be one religion for the schools, and another for the man himself. Yet he feels more in Butler than in any of the writers upon evidences like Paley, the sharpness of the contradiction. He can fancy that arguments about credibility and authenticity lie outside of him. The analogy appeals to himself. And yet it talks to him about Nature, and a consti- tution of Nature with which he, the sinner, can re- cognize no fellowship, in which he has the least possible interest. It merely introduces the Bible as containing certain difficulties like those in this con- stitution of Nature, whereas he has fled to it as a refuge from the only difficulties that have really ever tormented him, or which appear to him of any con- sequence. 3. That these feelings should exist in some of the most serious readers, must be a great discouragement to any University teacher who wishes to promote the study and cultivate the spirit of Butler. Perhaps the discouragement may be lessened for a time when he perceives amongst other young men, also in ear- 46 THE ANTI-SUBJECTIVE SCHOOL. nest, — amongst some of those even who have passed through this state of mind, a strong reaction against it. From such he will hear loud denunciations of what they call merely " subjective" religion, cries as loud for a well denned religious system which shall come with the authority of a long tradition, which is given to all, not submitted to the private judg- ments of any. Those who demand a religion of this kind unquestionably turn to Butler with far greater respect, with far more expectation of finding sympa- thy in him and support from him, than the class to which I referred just now. They welcome the intro- duction to the Analogy with great delight. They put it forward as the protection against the craving for certainty which characterizes scientific men on the one side, the believers in an infallible authority on the other. c See/ they say, ' what Butler teaches ' us respecting Probability as the guide of human life ; 1 see how he admonishes us that we ought to take ' the safer course, even if the arguments in favour of 1 a more dangerous one actually predominate ! Wise ' and excellent counsellor ! What can we do better 'than apply his maxim in determining whether we c shall accept or reject any of the traditions of our ' fathers V Such preparation is there in these minds for the study of Butler by their sympathy with some pas- sages in his opening chapter. But what disappoint- ment awaits them when they actually pursue that THEIR HOPES AND DISAPPOINTMENT. 47 study through the subsequent chapters ! All the promise of an appeal to the traditions of the past as a protection against the exercise of the understand- ing upon the facts of the present is utterly belied. On such a question as that of a future state, I am led to think, not of what has been said about it in other days, but of the deep, awful fact of my own personal being, — of the strong evidence which there must be to show me that that can be dissolved, — of the absence of any such evidence in the world around me or in my own experience, — of the presence of a number of facts in both, which corroborate a con- clusion that would be weighty without them. Even when I come to the chapter on Punishment, — where the argument for believing anything whatever on the ground of safety must be strongest, — I am still led along in the same quiet unexcited method to notice, not what has been said or threatened of punishment in another state, but the actual connection between ill-doing and punishment in this state, — the signs which there are of a fixed, unchangeable law in the midst of apparent anomalies, — the warrant there is for believing that that law must fully assert itself some day. This is a method of proof so entirely alien from the notions and habits of those who looked to Butler as the champion of Church authority against the exercises of a profane reasoning, that their ex- pectation must be numbered among one of the main hindrances to the " study of his works and the culti- vation of his spirit." 48 BUTLER AS AN APOLOGIST. 4. But these students may reckon, like the others, that if the ' Analogy ' does not meet their own especial wants, it may at least furnish them with effectual weapons against different prevalent forms of avowed unbelief. That all-inclusive argument, There are not more difficulties in our hypothesis than yours;— With- out Natural and Revealed Religion you would still meet with a number of unsolved problems in the Course and Constitution of Nature, — what mouths may it not stop, what subtle reasonings may it not put to rest ? My friend ! have you tried ? Do you know in yourself, do you know in the case of others, what it can effect ? It is well that you should understand before you take Orders, or — permit me to say it — in your ministrations to your brethren, in your own heart, there will be a hollowness greater than you can guess. You have worked through the Analogy, you have strengthened your knowledge by reading all the books of Mr. Rogers, and many others who sup- port the same thesis. You can produce the confuta- tion of this and that objection at a moment's notice. But what if you are met with agreement, not ob- jections? What if the unbeliever should say to you, — You are quite right. I am tormented with per- plexities, difficulties, anomalies in the course and Constitution of Nature. They haunt me by night and by day. The condition of millions of human beings in this country, in every country of the world, their physical condition, their moral condition, crushes MORAL DIFFICULTIES ; SCIENCE. 49 me ; it has taken away from me all faith that there is an Order in the Universe, or that there is a God of Order. I thought, perhaps, as you spoke of a Reve- lation of God, that might have helped me out of my infinite darkness, that might have given me some light and hope. I find from your own confession that it will not. You wish me to receive your Revelation be- cause it leaves me where it found me — not more hope- less, more Atheistic than I was before. I thank you for the offer, but it is not what I want. Or what if you are met with such an answer as this, coming from a person of quite another class? There are unsolved problems, you say, in the Consti- tution and Course of Nature. No doubt there are, thousands and ten thousands of them. But a number have been solved. We are always hoping for the so- lution of more. It is the work of the lives of us sci- entific men to seek after the solution. We feel that we are dishonest men when we are not busy in that work, when we are not pursuing it with hopeful ear- nestness. We start with ignorance, — the sense of our ignorance increases at every step. But that does not hinder us from seeking after truths, after certainties. As long as we float about among hypotheses and pro- babilities, we are self-conceited enough ; as long as we acquiesce in ignorance, ive are conceited enough. It is when we demand truth and refuse to abandon the search of it that we become awe-stricken and humble. In your subject, if we understand you aright, the E 50 OXFORD. opposite rule holds. You do not seek for certainties ; you are content with hypotheses. Therefore it seems to us there is no Analogy between the Constitution and Course of Nature, and Religion, Natural or Revealed, as you expound it to us. Now all these very serious hindrances to the study of Butler proceed, you will perceive, from the kind of men whose opposition he would the least have dreaded, upon whose sympathy he would have most counted ; from those who are looking earnestly upon the world, and really desiring to do their own work in it. And you, as an Oxford man, cannot be igno- rant that nowhere more than in Oxford is each class of these feelings likely to exist, — to exist in great strength and liveliness. In Butler's own day, it was the first home of that Methodist movement which has affected England so mightily ever since. In our day it has been the. starting-point of the High Church movement. Numbers there must be groaning over social anomalies and contradictions. Mathematicians and experimental students are vigorously and suc- cessfully asserting their claim to be heard there. A splendid Museum is rising to attest the conviction of the University that something is known, that more may be known, of the Course and Constitution of Nature. Are all these influences, so different, — some of them so contradictory, — to conspire in os- tracizing Butler? I am sure thev need not. If I had Mr. Manser's THE PHRASE f KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.' 51 knowledge and faculty of persuasion, and could get the ear of one and another young man who was strongly possessed with any of the thoughts to which I have referred, I believe I could show him that the more he was determined not to part with any of his deep- est convictions, the greater might be his respect for the Analogy, the more he might learn from it. 1. I would begin with the man who is absorbed by the sense of personal evil, and the need of personal deliverance. I would long for him that he might never let go that deep, awful truth of which he has become conscious, — might never care less for the dis- covery that has been made to him of a goodness and forgiveness mightier than the sin within him. I should agree with him altogether that to the Bible, and not to anything in the order and constitution of nature, he was indebted for that discovery. I should agree with him that to the study of the Bible, in its simple and literal signification, he was called by all his past experience, by all the deepest monitions of God's Spirit. Then I would ask him, whether, as he enters upon this task in this hope, it does not strike him that he has overlooked some words which stand out, very prominently, in the Gospels. I mean these — The Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Hea- ven. Are not these actually the most prominent words in the Evangelical narratives, those which a literal student has least right to pass by or to treat care- lessly ? Is it not the professed business of the narra- 52 IT EXPLAINS BUTLER. tives to unfold the meaning of those words, to re- move the vulgar apprehensions respecting them which existed in the minds of the disciples, which are likely to exist in our minds? That a man in the eagerness and passion of an inquiry concerning the condition of his own soul should scarcely see these constantly recurring expressions, at least not attach any significance to them, is exceedingly natural. Any man who knows anything of himself will under- stand such an oversight, strange as it is. But can it safely continue? May not the indifference about words, to which our Lord himself attached so much importance, be one cause why those facts of personal experience, once held strongly, become weak in so many minds, — why they are held rather as recollec- tions of the past than as present truths, — why the phrases take the place of that which they signify, — why violent reactions banish even the recollection, or cause it to be contemned? If we knew what that Kingdom of Heaven was which is said to be about us, to be within us, might not we know better, more deeply, what our own radical evil has been ; why only a Divine power can extirpate it? But supposing we begin with very solemn purpose to consider this language of the Bible, are we not reminded a little of the language of Butler, of some of the lessons which he sought to impress upon us ? There is a Constitution belonging to us as men, a different Constitution from that which is to be seen RELIGION A PAGAN WORD. 53 in Nature, but not a less real one. There is an Analog between it and the Constitution and Course of Nature. Does not our Lord say so? What do His parables mean if He does not ? Must not we be under the deepest obligation to a writer who tried to fix those truths upon us, — who probably did fix them upon us more than we knew, — even if in a par- ticular crisis of our moral history his was not just the kiud of assistance that we craved for ? Is there still something in these words, ' Religion, Natural or Revealed/ which grates upon your ear — which does not connect itself readily with our Lord's phrase, ' Kingdom of Heaven/ or with your own sense of what religion is ? Well, on the subject of nomen- clature I will not dispute with you. I think Butler adopted his from the custom of his age. If it strikes you that the word ' Religion' is better limited to internal life, — if it is for you, as the Germans and Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel would say, merely 'subjective/ (remember, that is no word of mine, I dislike it heartily,) I shall not complain. In truth, I am not so careful as some are to ascertain the force of a word which is Roman and Pa°ran, rather than Jewish and Christian, which has nothing strictly corresponding to it either in the Old or New Testament. I find Evangelists and Apostles speak- ing not of Religion, but of God. I think, if Butler had lived in our time, he would have much preferred their language to that which he accepted because 54 NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. it was current in the eighteenth century, and that it would really have accorded much better with the meaning of his books. That change would no doubt involve another, also, I think, very favourable to the full understanding of his lessons, and to the scatter- ing of clouds which have hidden from us their real purpose. St. Paul speaks of God as revealing, through the works He had made, His eternal Power and Godhead. Having started from that point, he is able consistently and harmoniously to speak of the per- fect revelation in the Son. The phrase, ' Natural and Revealed Religion/ is, apparently at least, incon- sistent with his view of the case ; is it not also in itself ambiguous and bewildering ? Would not many chapters in Butler become plainer if we took him to mean that the Author of Nature, whose existence he assumes, was revealing a part of His mind through the constitution and course of Nature, was indicating in that, a revelation that should be more complete and more directly addressed to man ? 2. But if I make this concession to one class of serious and devout students, am I not abandoning all chance of recommending our author to that other class which appears to demand first of all what they call an objective Religion, — something given to us, not merely experienced by us ? I should be very sorry if I thought so. For among these men have I met also with a devoted purpose, a thorough conviction, which I should count it a sin to weaken in them, which HIGH CHURCH SCHOOL. 55 I am sure their friends and fellow- sufferers, if not their teachers, should do their utmost to strengthen in them. I tremble when I see those " first affec- tions," even those " shadowy recollections" which once dwelt in them and coloured their lives, pass- ing away, — their life's star "fading into the light of common day." I know the loss must be griev- ous ; and yet I think it is inevitable so long as they fancy that it is a religious system which they are craving for; that it is not rather a City that hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God, — a Temple in which they themselves are to be living stones. This is the true High Church longing. Those who become half-conscious that it is this they want, and yet retain a confused notion that it is something else which they want, rush to Rome for the satisfaction of a hope which is mixed of the thinnest dream and the firmest substance, fancying that the vague anticipations of the future which she cherishes in them will meet the one, and her pre- sent materialism the other. Alas ! how many who do not take this course may find in the vagueness of their own thoughts and speculations, in the mate- rialism of ordinary social existence, a drearier caput mortuum of all their early expectations than even the Romish confessional and the Romish ceremonial offer to them ! Is there nothing in their old friend and teacher which might save them from this alternative, — which 56 butler's sermons. might poiut to the actual realization of that which in their youth was only a fair ideal? Those dry, hard sermons of his upon Human Nature are found- ed upon the text, "For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office ; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." In the opening of his first sermon vou see the man of the eighteenth century. He feels the extreme beauty of St. Paul's comparison ; he knows how it was drawn out by the Apostle himself in the Epistle to the Corinthians; but he supposes that such passages must have be- longed " to the condition and usages of the Christian world at the time they were written/' to " circum- stances now ceased and altered." He hovers about the language with a bashful tenderness ; with an evi- dent feeling that it must be universal ; that if ever language was universal, that is. Yet he is tied and bound by the usages and conditions of the Christian world in his time. The religion of hoops and ruffles enchains even his heart and intellect. But what a noble effort he makes to emancipate himself from it ! What a sense he has that the Apostle was point- ing to a fellowship grounded in the very nature of things, in the very constitution of humanity, which had nothing to do with hoops and ruffles at all ! He longs to speak of men as constituted in Christ. His words often become feeble and contradictory because he cannot utter what is struggling within him. But THE HINT OF A CHURCH. 57 how he may help us to utter it ! How he may enable us to clear away the difficulties in himself and in us, in the eighteenth century and in the nineteenth, which hinder us from acknowledging the one Body in Christ, and all as being members one of another ! How he drives us to seek a real not an artificial ground for a society of men — a Church of men — to rest upon ! How, in his slow, clear, calm M r ay, never taking two steps at a time, he makes us feel that every idea of our human nature must be inadequate, must be false, which does not assume a righteous ground for its thoughts, movements, activities; which does not treat every departure from that righteous ground as an act of rebellion on the part of our individual tempers and inclinations against the Order in which we are placed, against the law of Love which is hold- ing us together ! How much we gain in the force of the demonstration by those very circumstances of the author which make his statement of it scientifically imperfect ! Most affectionately then I would commend Butler to these students, in the confidence that if they will meditate both this work and the Analogy by the light of that higher wisdom which he and they would both confess to be in St. Paul, they may attain to such a grounded belief in a Church — as an actual family in heaven and earth, named in the Name of one Father, united in the Person of an elder Brother who sacrificed Himself for it, inhabited by the Spirit 58 LIGHT RESPECTING THE WORLD. of the Father and the Son, — as no system, Komish or Anglican, conld ever give them. And will not they then have an understanding with those who dwell in their experiences of individual sin, of rebellion against Christ's law of love, of the blood which cleanseth away even that sin, — such as they never had before ? 3. And will not both be able, having the wisdom which is taught by their different disciplines, to meet with a kindlier sympathy, with a bolder proclama- tion, those who demand a revelation which shall ex- plain some of the perplexities in the course and consti- tution of Nature that have baffled them ? Will thev any longer assume that miserable attitude of defence which they pretend they have learnt from Butler, arguing that the Incarnation and Sacrifice of the Son of God, the revelation of the second Adam, the descent of the Comforter, do not make the condi- tion of the universe more dark than it was before? Have we not faith to put the Gospel of the Son of Man, who came down from Heaven, and ascended into heaven, and is in heaven, upon another issue than this? Dare we not say, "Yes, we beseech " you to consider whether this is not the interpreta- " tion of the anomalies which you see in the world ; " whether vou are not told here how those anomalies i: shall be brought to an end; how the law which " Butler declared to be latent in the constitution and " course of Nature, — to be visible in the constitu- A MESSAGE TO THE MAN OF SCIENCE. 59 " tion of man, — shall triumph over all that has fought "against it"? Dare we not say to the investigator of Nature — " Tn God's Name go forward ; His blessing " be with thee ! All the secrets that are hid in His " works He would have thee search out. He rebukes "only the cowardice which hides the talent in the " napkin, because it counts Him an austere ruler. "Work on with ever-increasing courage, and there- fore with ever-increasing reverence and love. For " there is an analogy, — as Butler has shown us there "is, — between the Kingdom of God in man, His " highest Kingdom, and His Kingdom in Nature. He " has revealed the first in Christ, that we may know it, " and enter into it. He will reveal the other to the "patient inquirer who believes Christ's promise as " Butler believed it, that those who seek shall find." Blessed shall he be whosoever carries this message into the lecture-rooms and pulpits of Oxford. But- ler's spirit, and a higher Spirit than Butler's, will be his guide and teacher ! Faithfully yours, F. D. M. 60 LETTER IV, MR. MANSEL'S FIRST LECTURE. — DOGMATISM AND RATIONALISM.— THE ATONEMENT AND INCARNA- TION. My dear Sir, Let me entreat you to read Mr. Manse? s first Lecture carefully, and with the accompanying notes, before you look at this Letter. Nothing is further from my wish than that your impression of it should be determined by my criticism or by isolated pas- sages selected from it. I am too deeply convinced of the injustice which is done to authors by this treat- ment — what I had thought on the subject before has been too firmly fixed in my mind by the perusal of the Bampton Lectures, and by considering how they handle the statements and beliefs of eminent men in all ages and countries — not to be most desirous that I may not fall into that method of proceeding my- self, or tempt any one else into it. The Lecture is a denunciation of two evils to f ' which the preacher supposed that his hearers were exposed. The errors are, Dogmatism on the one THE TWO PERILS. 61 hand, Rationalism on the other. ' Between these two extremes religious philosophy perpetually oscil- lates' (p. 1). Mr. Mansel" s business is of course to ascertain (1st) what each of these evils is, (2nd) what is that middle between them in which Religious Philo- sophy ought to rest from its oscillations. What help the Lecturer gives us for understanding the force of the words which he uses is contained in the following passage : — " In using the above terms, it is necessary to state " at the outset the sense in which each is employed, " and to emancipate them from the various and vague " associations connected with their ordinary use. I " do not include under the name of Dogmatism the " mere enunciation of religious truths, as resting upon " authority and not upon reasoning. The Dogmatist, " as well as the Rationalist, is the constructor of a " system ; and in constructing it, however much the " materials upon which he works may be given by a " higher authority, yet in connecting them together " and exhibiting their systematic form, it is necessary " to call in the aid of human ability. Indeed, what- " ever mav be their actual antagonism in the field of " religious controversy, the two terms are in their " proper sense so little exclusive of each other, that " both were originally employed to denote the same " persons ; the name Dogmatists or Rationalists being " indifferently given to those medical theorists who " insisted on the necessity of calling in the aid of ra- 62 DOGMATISM. " tional principles, to support or correct the conclu- sions furnished by experience (1). A like significa- " tion is to be found in the later language of philoso- " phy, when the term Dogmatists was used to denote " those philosophers who endeavoured to explain the ' ' phenomena of experience by means of rational con- " ceptions and demonstrations ; the intelligible world " being regarded as the counterpart of the sensible, " and the necessary relations of the former as the 11 principles and ground of the observed facts of the " latter (2) . It is in a sense analogous to this that " the term may be most accurately used in reference " to Theology. Scripture is to the theological Dog- " matist what Experience is to the philosophical. It " supplies him with the facts to which his system " has to adapt itself. It contains in an unsystematic " form the positive doctrines, which further inquiry " has to exhibit as supported by reasonable grounds " and connected into a scientific whole. Theological " Dogmatism is thus an application of reason to the " support and defence of pre-existing statements of " Scripture (3) . Rationalism, on the other hand, so " far as it deals with Scripture at all, deals with it "as a thing to be adapted to the independent con- " elusions of the natural reason, and to be rejected " where that adaptation cannot conveniently be made. " By Rationalism } without intending to limit the name " to any single school or period in theological con- " troversy, I mean generally to designate that system RATIONALISM. 63 " whose final test of truth is placed in the direct " assent of the human consciousness, whether in the " form of logical deduction, or moral judgment, or " religious intuition ; by whatever previous process " those faculties mav have been raised to their as- " sumed dignity as arbitrators. The Rationalist, as " such, is not bound to maintain that a divine reve- " lation of religious truth is impossible, nor even to " deny that it has actually been given. He may ad- " mit the existence of the revelation as a fact : he may " acknowledge its utility as a temporary means of in- •' struction for a ruder age : he may even accept cer- " tain portions as of universal and permanent autho- " rity (4). But he assigns to some superior tribunal " the right of determining what is essential to religion " and what is not : he claims for himself and his age " the privilege of accepting or rejecting any given re- " velation, wholly or in part, according as it does or " does not satisfy the conditions of some higher crite- " rion to be supplied by the human consciousness (5) ." (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed. pp. 2-5.) I have left the figures in my extract, that you may not suppose Mr. MansePs account of the two oppo- sing terms is his only instrument for ' ' emancipating " them from the various and vague associations con- " nected with their ordinary use." Some of these va- rious and vague associations, his readers may think, cleave to this elaborate exposition. The very words ' philosophical' and 'religious/ which recur so frequent- / 64 A THEOLOGICAL PROSCRIPTION. ly in this passage, and which are so ambiguous, are not explained ; it is presumed that we must know what they mean. Perhaps the audience at St. Mary's did not need the information we want, for if they comprehended what is involved in c< regarding the in- telligible world as the counterpart of the sensible, " and the necessary relations of the former as the prin- " ciples and ground of the observed facts of the latter," they were already great adepts in philosophy; their minds must have been exercised on some of its hardest problems. Yet even they may have needed some light as to the way " in which the Scripture is to the " Theological Dogmatist what Experience is to the "philosophical," since it is generally supposed — and Mr. Mansel seems himself to confirm the opinion — that Experience is a ground which is common to the theo- logian and the philosopher, and that the dogmas of one are as much affected by it as those of the other. But, as I said, the mystical numbers in the text show that Mr. Mansel has not trusted exclusively nor principally to definitions. They point to the persons who are condemned for Dogmatism or Rationalism, or both. I will enumerate them just as they occur, without reference to their chronology, their sect, or their importance. Wolf, a Paulus, Wegscheider, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Strauss and certain spiritual- ists ; b Anselm/ Gerhard/ 1 Chemnitz/ Jowett, Greg, a Note 3 to p. 4. b Note 4 to p. 5. c Notes 6, 7, 8, to p. 10, and 11 to p. 11. d Note 9 to p. 10. e Note 10 to p. 10. NOT SUFFICIENT FOR OUR PROTECTION. 65 Mackay, f Socinus, Froude, Priestley, Maurice/ Kant, Coleridge/ Wilberforce, Damascenus, Schaller, G6- schel, Dorner, Marheinecke, 1 Occam/ Fichte, Parker, Emerson, Leechman, Foxton (with others previously sentenced), 1 Baden Powell, m Schelling, Plotinus, An- gelus Silesius (with others previously sentenced), 111 Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, Comte. n This list, drawn from a few pages, proves surely the extent of Mr. MansePs reading, and his right to the title of Public or University Prosecutor, which his friends have vindicated for him. I have collected it that I may suggest the question which most con- cerns us : How are vou and I to be delivered from these curses of Dogmatism and Rationalism which we know, upon such high authority, are always threat- ening us? Suppose you agree that all those whom the Bampton Lecturer cuts off as exceeding on this side or on that, or as mixing the two evils in one, are guilty of the charges brought against them, — sup- posing you had the opportunity which he possessed, of telling a large congregation that such and such men were Dogmatists, such and such Rationalists, and that neither were in the least free from the enor- mities of the other, — would that be an absolute se- curity against any taint of Dogmatism in yourself? Might not you possibly be driven now and then to 1 Notes 13 and 14 to p. 11. sr Note 15 to p. 11. h Note 16 to p. 13. J Note 17 to p. 13. k Note 21 to p. 17. 1 Note 22 to p. 17. m Note 29 to p. 30. n Note 30 to p. 30. F 66 NOSCE TEIFSUM. explain the grounds upon which you rested your con- viction that you were right and they were all wrong ? and might you not, in submitting to that necessity, Y find yourself dropping all unawares into Rationalism? I submit these topics to your consideration, wishing you always to recollect what terrible dangers those must be which could have induced Mr. Mansel to undertake the painful task of passing judgment upon divines and philosophers of all schools and ages, — that you may spare no pains in discovering some adequate precautions against them. In the eloquent peroration to his eighth Lecture (p. 266), Mr. Mansel announces the oracle, Know thyself, as the one guide to all safe thought upon any subject. In cases like this, that oracle has taken even a more distinct and awful form, as it has issued from a more sacred shrine. " Cast first/' it has been said, " the beam out of thine own eye ; then shalt thou see clearly to take the mote out of thy brother's eyej" This principle, being so exactly in accordance with the maxim of the Lectures, must, we are bound to assume, have been diligently weighed by the Lec- turer. Before he proceeded to charge any one else with Dogmatism or Rationalism, he went through, we may be sure, a laborious process of inquiry, to ascer- tain what seeds of them there might be in himself. But his performance of that task, and his success in it, cannot absolve us from a similar one. I, at least, who have been warned by Mr. Mansel in some of the MY DOGMATISM. 67 notes to which I have referred, that I have caught the infection of one or both diseases from greater men, am bound to look diligently for the signs of them in the only region in which I may truly judge of their nature or their effects. I have not far to search for either. If you do not recollect moments in your past life when you have deserved the name of dogmatical, when you knew that it must have been applied to you by those who were about you, — especially by those with whom you were disputing, — when you knew they had a right to apply it, — if those moments do not come back to you with a sense of unspeakable shame, — oh, friend, how I envy you ! But I do not envy you, if you are not aware with what fierceness that temptation may come back at any moment, — if you do not feel that it is one against which there is need constantly to watch. Now no one, I believe, who has this ex- perience, need be ignorant in what the vice of Dog- matism consists, whence it springs, whither it may lead. My opinion about this or that class of facts, the conclusion to which / have been led, — whether I have accepted the general judgment of the world about them, or have dissented from it, — has a worth in my eyes which raises it not only above every other man's opinion, but above the facts themselves. For this do I throw down my gage, this will I maintain against the Universe. Is not the world justified in saying that I am very disagreeable, very insolent ? 68 WHAT GOOD IS IN IT ? Can I refute the charge ? But what if, because that is the case — and I know it is the case — I should re- solve to cast all my dogmatism aside? What if I should appear in quite a new character, yielding to everybody, maintaining no ground for myself, ad- mitting that one conclusion is just as likely as an- other ? Such a reaction against our own dogmatism most of us may have known ; the more dogmatical we have been in one period, the more likely we are to exhibit that change in another. Is not the ver- dict of mankind just in condemning this state of mind also ? Is it not just in demanding that a man should have something to hold by, in pronouncing him worthless if he has not ? There is then — it is not a question, but an admit- ted fact — something good at the bottom of this Dog- matism ; there is something very evil in the exercise of it. Do you serve me much if you tell me that I am not to be too dogmatic ; that a little dogmatism is well, but that ne quid nhnis is the maxim of life ? You do not serve me at all. You insult me with a pompous, unpractical rule, which fails me every mo- ment I want to use it. My conscience, and the con- science of mankind, witnesses that Dogmatism, in the sense of maintaining a notion because it is mine, is altogether detestable. It does not admit of degrees ; there cannot be too little of it; there ought to be none. My conscience and the conscience of man- kind witnesses that Dogmatism, in the sense of stand- CURE OF THE EVIL. 69 ing by a principle, is altogether good; there can- not be too much of it; my want of it is my sin. Here is a distinction which must somehow be sus- tained. But how is it to be sustained ? Every one is aware of the difficulty in his own case; every one knows that he has transgressed, and does transgress continually the boundary ; every one therefore has a call to be compassionate when he sees or suspects that his neighbour transgresses it. Every man knows perfectly why he commits this transgression, and what would be the escape from it. He knows that he is a Dogmatist in the offensive, immoral sense, whensoever he confounds that which seems to him or to any man with that which is ; that he is a Dogma- tist in an honest and true sense whensoever he swears with deliberate purpose that something is, and that from that no man and devil shall tear him away. You see how rude and poor my way of arriving at the force of this word is in comparison with Mr. Mansel's. But you and I are not schoolmen ; we are roughing it in the world. We have to look upon all questions as they bear upon the actual business of life. I know that Mr. Mansel's account of Dogma- tism must strike every one as far more profound and philosophical than mine ; but I am thinking of it as a great sin which I have to avoid for the sake of my own being, — as a great moral habit which I must preserve for the sake of my own being. My words will be nothing to you if they do not meet your 70 MY RATIONALISM. mind, and point out something which you must fly from, and to which you must cleave ; if they do, perhaps they may be some help to you hereafter, if not now. Well, and Rationalism! Is this* Know thvself' of Delphi and Oxford not applicable to the investigation of that tendency also ? I can attest in my own expe- rience the truth of Mr. Manser's assertion that Dog- matism and Rationalism are not necessarily in con- tradiction ; that these habits of mind in their most evil form may dwell together, nay, must dwell toge- ther. I have listened to the words of some wise man, a lecturer on Moral Science, it might be, or on Phy- sical. I have been asking myself the reason of his statements ; I have not had my ears open to take in what he said, just because I was busy with that ques- tion. I have looked at a picture which other people admired, which it would have done me good to admire. I have asked for the reason why I should admire, and that occupation of mind made it impossible for me to receive any blessing from the picture. This restless rationalism pursues us though our lives, into every corner of them; those who have been and are tor- mented by it themselves, may not be quite as ready as those are whose consciences are clearer, to cast a stone at other sinners ; but they will be most ready to receive hints about the way in which the evil may be overcome, and to assist their fellows with any hints which they have found beneficial, THE REACTION AGAINST IT. 71 There is one remedy which most of us have tried with more or less of hope. The reaction against Ra- tionalism is at least as fierce in a man's soul as the reaction against Dogmatism. When our eyes have been straining themselves with looking into vacancy, the natural inclination is to close them, to go to sleep if we can. When our reason has been acting as if it had power to create its own objects, the na- tural inclination is to say, ' We will have nothing more to do with it. Tell us what you please ; we will take it upon trust. Logical deduction, moral judgment, religious intuition, all are equally hateful to us. We want nothing but the repose of autho- rity. Give us that, and our souls will be at peace/ So you have got rid of Rationalism. And it is peace — if a solitude and peace are the same ; peace till the Conscience of which Butler spoke awakes ; peace till some words like those of St. Paul, " Christ shall give thee light," tell it that at least it is not obeying Him when it is denying its own function, when it is refusing to act. Then comes a very strong conviction that the last state was worse than the first, that the most eager and profitless ques- tionings and debatings were better than dreary inani- tion, that one condition betokened a dim belief that God must be, the other a practical denial of Him. For we insult ourselves and we insult mankind if we say there was not a truth at the bottom of our Ra- tionalism as well as of our Dogmatism. In the one 72 THE GOOD IN IT. case as much as the other, the discovery of the truth is the only way to the clear acknowledgment of the falsehood. God teaches me to assert ; for there is that which I did not make by my thought, belief, reason, and which I cannot unmake. I glorify my assertions, and so actually constitute my belief, thought, or reason, into a ground of things. God teaches me to question, that I may separate the one from the other, that I may not accept Opinions for Realities. I turn my questioning into an excuse for denying Realities. So I come round to the same point again. My Rational- ism becomes impotent Dogmatism, as my Dogmatism becomes the most hopeless Rationalism. I have tried to test these words by common ex- perience, not mixing at first any theological associa- tions with them. That I suppose was Mr. Mansel's original intention. If he could have fulfilled it, his treatment of the subject would have been more or- derly and satisfactory ; perhaps a little fairer to his opponents. But he did not find it possible. He could not produce the moral effect which he desired to produce on his hearers, unless he instantly con- nected Rationalism with a special mode of treating the Scriptures, unless he sometimes contracted and sometimes expanded the definition of it, in order that it might reach all who differed from him, and might by no possibility touch himself. I have shown you that I do not protest against either of his defi- THEOLOGICAL APPLICATION. 73 nitions because it includes me. I demand that each of them should include me. A Dogmatist and Ra- tionalist in their worst sense, I know that I am liable to be. A Dogmatist and a Rationalist in their best sense, I desire to be. But though I think that this method of deter- mining the signification of the words would have been pronounced the honest and reasonable one by Sir William Hamilton, though I am satisfied Butler would have adopted it, I am anxious that it should be applied to the same use to which the Bampton Lecturer applies his. He plunges at once into the doctrines of the Atonement and the Incarnation, test- ing by the ways in which they have been treated the dogmatic and rationalistic tendencies. I will follow him, trembling indeed, but only on account of the awfulness of the subjects, not the least because I shrink from stating my own convictions respecting them, or from saying what there is in his statements which from the bottom of my heart I repudiate. It is no time for concealing what one believes on any great questions, least of all upon those which form the cen- tral subjects of my preaching, as they will do, I trust, one day of yours. The following sentences bring the first of these subjects directly before us : — " Thus, to select one ex- " ample out of many, the revealed doctrine of Christ's " Atonement for the sins of men has been alternately " defended and assailed by some such arguments as 74 OFFENCES AGAINST A REVEALED DOCTRINE. " these. We have been told, on the one hand, that "man's redemption could not have been brought " about by any other means : — that God could not, " consistently with His own attributes, have suffered " man to perish unredeemed, or have redeemed him " by any inferior sacrifice : — that man, redeemed from "death, must become the servant of him who re- " deems him ; and that it was not meet that he " should be the servant of any other than God : — "that no other sacrifice could have satisfied divine "justice: — that no other victim could have endured " the burden of God's wrath. These and similar ar- " guments have been brought forward, as one of the " greatest of their authors avows, to defend the teach- { ' ing of the Catholic Faith on the ground of a rea- " sonable necessity. While, on the other hand, it has "been argued that the revealed doctrine itself can- " not be accepted as literally true ; because we cannot " believe that God was angry, and needed to be pro- " pitiated : — because it is inconsistent with the Di- " vine Justice that the innocent should suffer for the " sins of the guilty : — because it is more reasonable " to believe that God freely forgives the offences of " His creatures : — because we cannot conceive how " the punishment of one can do away with the guilt "of another." — (Bampton Lectures, 2nd editiou, pp. 10, 11.) One remark respecting this passage will strike you immediately. It is the foundation of ten notes, WHAT IS THE DOCTRINE f /O condemning a large portion of those writers whose names I have given yon already. And yet the Lec- turer does not waste even a single line in telling us what ' ' that revealed doctrine of Christ's Atone- ment for the sins of men" is, which thev have as- sailed and defended. He must be perfectly aware that more than one able series of Bampton Lectures has been delivered for the express purpose of ascer- taining what it is and what it is not. He must be aware that in those able treatises some notions which have attached themselves in the minds of many men to the revealed doctrine of the Atonement, are dis- missed as untenable. Whether it ought to be re- ceived with these additions or without them, in what terms it should be stated or presented to men gene- rally, we are not told. Nevertheless a number of ac- tual men, living or dead, are held up as examples of mischievous Dogmatism or mischievous Rationalism for their way of attacking or maintaining it. Of all outrages upon philosophical method, and upon ordi- nary English justice, which are to be found in our literature, I believe this is the most flagrant. Mr. Mansel must have had a very strong suspicion that if he had stated the " revealed doctrine of the Atone- ment" according to his notion of it, a number of the most earnest, the most confessedly orthodox and Evan- gelical clergymen in England, would have said either, ' We do not accept it in that sense ;' or, ' That me- thod of setting it forth does not satisfy us ; ' or, ' Such V 70 WE PREACH CHRIST CRUCFI1ED. an explanation may do very well for the schools, but it is not the doctrine we preach in our pulpits to sinners/ It was therefore convenient to leave the whole subject in vagueness. In virtue of that vague- ness he is able to deal his blows right and left ; he can at least frighten his readers with the belief that there is something which they ought to eschew, though he is unable or unwilling to tell them what thev should embrace. w But, my dear Sir, however convenient this course may be to a University Doctor, it is not convenient, it is not right, for those who believe that they are ac- tually entrusted with a Gospel, and who must give account to God for the way in which they discharge the trust. "We must be able to say what we mean when we declare that " God vjcis in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them ; and that He has committed to us the word of reconciliation" It cannot be our chief business to find out what mistakes men have made in arg;uin°r about our message on one side or the other. "What is the message itself? that must be our question. From whom does it come ? To whom is it addressed ? That it is a message of peace from a Father to His children ; that that Father is a righteous Father, and that the children have been unrighteous because they have been separated from Him j that the peace is made in the body and blood of a righteous Son, one with the Father, who has given Himself for men ; that AN ACTUAL RECONCILIATION. 77 the peace is carried home to men's hearts by a right- eous and reconciling Spirit, — is this heterodox doc- trine ? Because if it is, it is what I mean, so help me God, to live and die in declaring to those among whom I minister ; what I am ashamed that I have de- clared so little and with so cold a heart ; what I hold has the mightiest power to reform and renew human society. This is what I understand by the doctrine of the Atonement ; this is what I believe Saints and Martyrs understood by it. In it, I hold, is revealed the goodness and truth and long-suffering of God. Wherein do I suppose that this statement differs from any that Mr. Mansel would make? I have very imperfect means of judging, as he has kept his counsel about that which he believes, and has only been communicative about that which he deems dog- matical or rationalistic. But I should suppose that he would construct from different passages of Scrip- ture a doctrine which he would call the doctrine of the Atonement, and that he would object deci- dedly to my saying that the passages of Scripture are far more distinct and intelligible than all that has been constructed out of them or on them, and that they declare not a doctrine about Reconcilia- tion, but the actual Reconciliation of God with Man in the person of His Son. Perhaps I ought not to assume this point at present, for you must remember that he has not yet given us his application of the doctrine of the Unconditioned. This present Lecture 78 DOGMATISM CONCERNING IT. is only preliminary to the series. The holocaust of writers in the Notes is doubtless offered to the genius of Sir William Hamilton ; but he has not yet been brought forward himself to determine what is in- cluded in the horizon of our faith, what are or are not the possibilities of a Revelation. Nevertheless, I think we shall find presently that I have stated the Lec- turer's meaning fairly, and therefore that what I have said of the Atonement must necessarily subject me to his condemnation. Assuming this difference then, I wish to show you how it bears upon the question of Dogmatism and Rationalism. I am tempted, of course, to dogmatize upon this as upon every subject ; that is to say, to put certain notions of mine concerning the Atone- ment before my hearers, in place of the Atonement itself. The hindrances to my doing this are, first, the strength of my conviction that it is very horrible to intercept the direct communication between God and His creatures which I believe the Bible bears witness of; secondly, the conviction that just what I and all men want, is to be delivered from our no- tions and conceits about Him, and the relation in which we stand to Him, which notions and conceits have led to infinite disorder and unrighteousness ; thirdly, to the discovery that the more I introduce these notions and conceits into my teaching, the more I am out of harmony with the practical teaching of the Bible, and unable to profit by it, — the less I RATIONALISM CONCERNING IT. 79 am able to do justice to the various thoughts and speculations and reasonings of men who are seeking after righteousness through communion with a right- eous God. The Revelation of God Himself, as the Reconciler and Atoner of man, is, it seems to me, the substitute for Dogmatism, which tries to measure and confine Him by our narrow and carnal notions. To escape from Dogmatism about the Atonement is also, I think, to escape from Rationalism about it. The unveiling of a Charity such as I could form only the faintest dream or conception of, — of a God who makes a perfect sacrifice for the sake of reconciling to Him those who have wandered from Him, takes from me all excuse for measuring and circumscribing / Him by any thoughts and notions of mine. Of course I try again and again to do so. I make all sorts of silly experiments to bring this love down to my level. I devise arrangements and form imaginations to ac- count for it, and to determine the limits of it. But the more the Atonement itself, in its own mighty power, — not as a doctrine, but as the Sacrifice of a Divine Person, — is brought home to me and over- powers me, the more I am driven out of this false and wretched Rationalism ; the more I am content to let God manifest Himself to me as He has done in His Son, as He promises to do in us all by His Spirit. And this because I become in the truest and fullest sense a Rationalist, because a spirit that was asleep in me before, is awakened, to perceive a length 80 ANSELM. and breadth and height and depth of Divinity which could, so far as I know, only reveal itself in that way, and which must open the eye that was created to discern it. How does this way of contemplating and present- ing the Atonement affect one's judgment of those whom Mr. Mansel declares to have made shipwreck, either as Dogmatists or Rationalists ? I would take an instance of each kind. I do not know whether you are a reader of Anselm. I own myself to be a very affectionate and admiring reader, though certainly in no sense a disciple of him. Perhaps I may venture to quote some sentences which I wrote about him several years ago, certainly with no pur- pose of their serving any argumentative purpose : — " It is an agreeable characteristic of Anselm' s works " that a very small portion of them indeed belong to "controversy. There is one treatise, written at the " instigation of the Pope, on the Greek doctrine of /' the procession of the Holy Ghost, and one against " Roscellinus, on the Incarnation. With these excep- " tions, meditations, prayers, letters, and books writ- " ten for the solution of difficulties which had actu- ally occurred to some person who had consulted " him, generally to some brother at Bee, form his " contribution to Middle Age literature. Not more "for the honour of Anselm himself than for the " comprehension of his books, this last characteristic " should be recollected. They were not hard dog- HIS CHARACTER. 81 matical treatises written in cold blood, to build up a system or to vanquish opponents. They were actual guides to the doubter; attempts, often made with much reluctant modesty, to untie knots which worthy men found to be interfering with their peace and with their practice. " The characteristic of Anselm as a man was, we think, a love of righteousness for its own sake. That noble habit of mind is illustrated in his con- versation respecting Alphege, scarcely less in a sentence of his, reported by Eadmer, which has given rise to some very uncharitable Protestant commentaries, that ' he would rather be in Hell if 'he were pure of sin, than possess the Kingdom f of Heaven under the pollution of sin/ This too is the spirit of his writings. It is from this that they derive their substantial and permanent worth. Right there must be — that is the postulate of his y mind. Then, partly for the sake of entering more deeply into the apprehension and possession of that which he inwardly acknowledged, partly for the sake of removing confusions from the minds of his brethren, he undertakes to establish his assumption by proof. Oftentimes we are compelled to doubt the success of these demonstrations. We have an uncomfortable feeling, that the principle which we are to arrive at by an elaborate process of reasoning has been taken for granted at the commencement of it; some of the arguments seem scarcely worthy G 82 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHER. of their object, some of them seem to interfere with it, by tempting us to accept one mode of contem- plating it instead of the object itself. Theology has cause to complain of Anselm for having suggested theories and argumentations in connection with Ar- ticles of the Creed, which through their plausibility and through the excellency of the writer have gained currency in the Church, till they have been adopted as essential parts of that of which they were at best only defences and explanations. But viewing him, as we are privileged to do, simply as philosophical students, — caring less about the results to which his treatises have led dogmatists, than about his principles and about his method of thought, — he offers us a very interesting subject of examination. In Johannes Scotus the metaphysical element was evidently predominant over the ethical ; in Anselm the moral absorbs everything into itself. Moral ends are first in his mind ; scientific truth he learns to love, because he is too honest a man not to feel that Goodness is a contradiction if it has not Truth for its support. But the difference in the starting- point of these two writers affects all their intel- lectual habits. Anselm is much more of & formal reasoner than Johannes ; amongst ordinary school- readers he would pass for a much more accurate reasoner. He supplies many more producible ar- guments; he meets the perplexities which the use of words occasions more promptly ; though far A DOGMATIST AND RATIONALIST. 83 " enough from a superficial thinker, he keeps much "more the high-road of the intellect, and is not "tempted to explore caverns. For such a person, " Logic becomes an invaluable auxiliary ; he has not "the dread of its limiting the infinite which the " other had ; he secures his moral truth from all " verbal invasions ; then he can let verbal refinements " have their full swing in the discussion of objections " and in the effort to remove them." I believe this is a faithful description of the man. It may explain to you the passages from the Car Deus Homo which Mr. Mansel has quoted. Ansel m was no doubt a Dogmatist. He received with the simplest affection the creeds of his childhood, and not only the creeds, but the ordinary mediaeval system. He was also, no doubt, a Rationalist. He tried to meet difficulties, to account for facts, to establish formulas, with what result I have tried to express. But what saved him from being a mere Dogmatist and a mere Rationalist ? What gave his books a beauty and worth which I am sure every earnest student will find in them, now in this nineteenth century, when all the forms and habits of the time to which he belonged have passed away ? It was this, that God was to Anselm more than all systems ; that he was sure God was a righteous Being, — that, and only that ; that he was sure God had revealed His Righteousness to men, and meant that they should know it. Caring then very little for his argu- > / 84 PROFESSOR JOWLTT. merits and proofs about the Atonement, I know of no truer witness for its essential character, no stronger witness against those who would bring back Paganism under the name of Christianity, and who suppose that the notions of men concerning an Atonement, instead of pointing to the one which God has made, are to be the measures and standards of its character or its method. I will pass from the earliest instance in Mr. Man- ser's Notes to the latest. I will venture, not without diffidence and hesitation, to speak of a passage he has quoted from his own learned and devout contempo- rary Professor Jowett. I have the misfortune to differ from that excellent man, not only in particulars of his interpretation of St. Paul, but in the fundamental maxim of it. Modern thought, it seems to me, has been approaching more and more near to a condition in which no teachers can meet it so directly as St. Paul and St. John, taken in their most literal sense. I could have recognized the chasm which he finds between their revelations and English thoughts and hopes in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth, I believe, as much by its doubts, perplexities, con- tradictions, as by what is noblest in it, — as much by its political as by its philosophical and theolo- gical movements, — has been brought into a state in which all glosses upon them will be cast to the winds j in which they will be received as the clearest, simplest messages to the scholar and to the wayfarer, WORDS QUOTED FROM HIM. 85 capable of meeting what we sometimes fancy are the newest demands of humanity and Science. I differ from him therefore not as radically as I differ from Mr. Mansel, yet partly on the same ground. Never- theless, I recognize in him one of the honestest and bravest of men, — honest and brave as few men are in this day, — in that he will not express more than he thinks, and that he will state what he thinks, without regarding consequences, — a quality all the more remarkable in one who evidently hesitates so much before he assumes a position. Such a habit of mind must, I should conceive, have a salutary effect upon us all, seeing that one of our great temp- tations is to use ' unreal words/ and to let our statements outstrip our convictions. Having these feelings respecting this eminent Teacher, it is the greater duty as well as pleasure to express the most hearty concurrence in a senti- ment which Mr. Mansel quotes from him for the purpose of fixing on him the charge of Rationalism on the subject of the Atonement. " In what did this " Satisfaction consist ? Was it that God was angry, " and needed to be propitiated like some heathen " deity of old? Such a thought refutes itself by the " very indignation which it calls up in the human " bosom." — (Jowett, Epistles of 'St. Paul, vol. ii. p.47.2.) Now mark for what purpose this passage is quoted. It is not to relieve St. Paul, or any writer of the Old or New Testament, from the possible imputation that 86 COMPLAINT OF THEM. he represented the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, the God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgres- sion and sin, but not clearing the guilty, the God who is just and without iniquity, as resembling 'a heathen deity of old/ It is not to show that the anger against sin which is attributed to the Lord God throughout the Bible is the most opposite thing possible to the anger against particular persons who had done them injury which is attributed to heathen deities. It is not to quote those long chapters of the Prophets in which God appeals to the conscience of His people against their revolts from Him, or in which He is contrasted with idols. It is not to urge that the declaration of our Lord, " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" if it is taken as it stands, will at once settle all con- troversies respecting His character and Nature. No ! but it is to say either that there is no moral indigna- tion in the human bosom against the confusion of our God and Father with Moloch and Siva ; or to say that that moral indignation is good for nothing. And this comes from a pupil of Butler, the great champion of the Conscience ! And this comes from an Apolo- gist for Prophets and Apostles, every one of whom would have died, many of whom did die, because they would not worship the gods of the nations ! And this comes from the apologist of Apostles who said that in Jesus dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily! Mr. Mansel has put forth a defence of what is de- WHAT IT INVOLVES. 87 nounced by some as anthropomorphic language. I prize that language, little as I like his way of plead- ing for it. 1 hold, for instance, the name of ' jealous/ which is so often given to God in Scripture, — to be a true epithet for a holy and good Being. I be- lieve God is jealous of His name and character, — jealous of that confusion with wicked beings which Mr. Mansel implicitly authorizes ; which he pro- nounces it Rationalistic to abhor. Have not all dog- matists, when their schemes of accounting for the pur- poses of the Most High have been most gratuitous and even most profane, — have not all Rationalists, when their cries have had the most of an atheistical form and character, been useful protestants against this last, most hopeless, most horrible kind of ortho- doxy ? Can we dispense with their testimony while this language is heard in high places, while it goes forth from the central pulpits of the land ? May we not at least be sure that it will be listened to, and that we shall have ourselves to blame for any con- sequences that may proceed from it ? I must repeat what I have said already in my Ser- mons. I do not impute to Mr. Mansel what his language seems to convey. I fully believe he would start with horror at the thought of identifying the God in whom is light and no darkness at all, with the dark beings whom men have made for themselves to worship. But see what a Nemesis awaits those who treat the most sacred portions of the Gospel — ( 88 FAITH INVERTED. those portions which speak most of union and recon- ciliation — chiefly as excuses for finding out how much of wrong and unbelief there is in their fellow- men ! These doctrines lose their very nature. They are to be received at the point of the bayonet because they are set down in a book. What is set down there — what we are asked to receive — what is involved in the reception of them — there is not leisure to inquire. The words are to be eaten ; but it is the great busi- ness of those who enforce the eating, to prove that we have no organs wherewith we can masticate or digest them. There is one eloquent passage in this Lecture which, if I had read it without the context, I should have claimed as a testimony on behalf of the truth which Sir W. Hamilton, we have seen, was willing to acknowledge, that man is made in the image of God, and therefore that a participation of divinity is implied in his constitution. I should have supposed it was meant to show philosophers that our assertion of the union of the Godhead and Manhood in one Christ, far from being the stumbling-block to the Reason which they have taken it to be, is the one possible reconciliation of that human belief which has per- vaded the hearts of all human beings, — which has been at the root of all mythologies, — with the protest against it which their consciences have borne, and which the Bible bears, — against the confusion of God with the works of His hands. Read it, and judge for yourself. ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 89 " The origin of such theories is of course to be traced to that morbid horror of what thev are pleased to call Anthropomorphism, which poisons the speculations of so many modern philosophers, when they attempt to be wise above what is writ- ten, and seek for a metaphysical exposition of God's nature and attributes. They may not, for- sooth, think of the unchangeable God as if He were their fellow-man, influenced by human motives, and moved by human supplications. They want a truer, a juster idea of the Deity as He is, than that under which He has been pleased to reveal Himself; and they call on their reason to furnish it. Fools, to dream that man can escape from himself, that hu- man reason can draw aught but a human portrait of God ! They do but substitute a marred and mutilated humanity for one exalted and entire : ■r they add nothing to their conception of God as He is, but only take away a part of their conception of man. Sympathy, and love, and fatherly kind- ness, and forgiving mercy, have evaporated in the crucible of their philosophy ; and what is the caput mortuum that remains, but only the sterner features of humanity exhibited in repulsive nakedness ? The God who listens to prayer, we are told, appears in the likeness of human mutability. Be it so. What is the God who does not listen, but the likeness of human obstinacy ? Do we ascribe to Him a fixed purpose ? our conception of a purpose is human. ) 90 EFFORTS TO GET RID OF IT. " Do we speak of Him as continuing unchanged? our "conception of continuance is human. Do we con- "ceive Him as knowing and determining? What "are knowledge and determination but modes of " human consciousness ? And what know we of con- sciousness itself, but as the contrast between suc- cessive mental states? But our rational philoso- " pher stops short in the middle of his reasoning. "He strips off from humanity just so much as suits " his purpose ; — ' and the residue thereof he maketh "a god;' — less pious in his idolatry than the carver " of the graven image, in that he does not fall down " unto it and pray unto it, but is content to stand " afar off and reason concerning it. And why does " he retain any conception of God at all, but that he "retains some portions of an imperfect humanity? " Man is still the residue that is left ; deprived in- " deed of all that is amiable in humanity, but, in " the darker features which remain, still man. Man "in his purposes; man in his inflexibility; man in "that relation to time from winch no philosophy, "whatever its pretensions, can wholly free itself; " pursuing with indomitable resolution a precon- " ceived design ; deaf to the yearning instincts which " compel his creatures to call upon him. Yet this, " forsooth, is a philosophical conception of the Deity, " more worthy of an enlightened reason than the " human imagery of the Psalmist. ' The eyes of the " ' Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open " ' unto their prayers/ IDOLATRY BETTER. 91 " Surely downright idolatry is better than this ra- 1 tional worship of a fragment of humanity. Better c is the superstition which sees the image of God in ' the wonderful whole which God has fashioned, than ' the philosophy which would carve for itself a Deity ' out of the remnant which man has mutilated. 1 Better to realize the satire of the Eleatic philo- ' sopher, to make God in the likeness of man, even c as the ox or the horse might conceive gods in the ' form of oxen or horses, than to adore some half-hewn ' Hermes, the head of a man joined to a misshapen 1 block. Better to fall down before that marvellous 1 compound of human consciousness whose elements ' God has joined together, and no man can put asun- ' der, than to strip reason of those cognate elements ' which together furnish all that we can conceive or ' imagine of conscious or personal existence, and to ' defy the emptiest of all abstractions, a something or f a nothing, with just enough of its human original ' left to form a theme for the disputations of philoso- 1 phy, but not enough to furnish a single ground of ' appeal to the human feelings of love, of reverence, ' and of fear. Unmixed idolatry is more religious 1 than this. Undisguised atheism is more logical." — (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 17-20.) I cannot imagine a man writing such fervent sen- tences as these, denouncing men as ' fools' for fancy- ing that God has not hnman qualities and sympa- thies — telling them that they had better worship the \ 92 THE DIVINE HUMANITY. most miserable idol, than hold what they hold, — as- suring them that they would be wiser to be undis- guised atheists — if he is not prepared to say, ' I can 1 show you a more excellent way. I can tell you what ' God has done to satisfy "that marvellous compound ' " of human consciousness which He has joined toge- ' " ther, and which man cannot put asunder." I can ' show you how He has made Himself known to us \/ f in His only-begotten Son, so that we may not any ' longer confound Him with his feeble and sinful crea- ' tures, or vet divide Him from them as if His nature 1 was not really the ground and archetype of theirs/ If this cannot be done, are we not bound, by the preacher's own showing, to take refuge in one or other of his terrible alternatives ? How then does Mr. Mansel speak of the union of the Godhead and Manhood in Christ? Thus: "We " believe that Christ is both God and Man, for that is iC revealed to us. We knoiv not how He is so, for this "is not revealed, and we can learn it in no other way." (pp. 14 and 15.) Now you will see at once that the revelation of this union is not presented here in any sense whatever as the interpretation of the doubt whether men are to worship God as one of His crea- tures, or whether they are to regard Him as separate from them all. It is an additional, a hard, an in- soluble difficulty, which we must receive in addi- tion to all other difficulties, because God commands us in His book to receive it. We are left by ( HOW THE AUTHOR REGARDS IT. 93 this amazing revelation — that He who was the ex- press Image of the Father, was made man and dwelt among us — just where we were before. We are left just as much as ever to oscillate between unmixed idolatry and undisguised atheism, with only this ad- ditional comfort, that every attempt of a man to find a middle between them, makes him more irreligious than if he chose the first course, more illogical than if he chose the last. To me this result is a very shocking one. Nor is the shock at all diminished as I trace the course of thought which justifies it to the mind of the Lecturer. A man whom many of us remember with gratitude and affection, who, we hope, is now in communion with those from whom on earth he thought it right to se- parate, — the late Mr. R. YTilberforce, — wrote a book, as you know, on the Incarnation. In that book he ap- pears to ground the idea of the union of the Godhead and Manhood in Christ upon the assumption of a real Human Nature, distinct from the nature of each individual man. Mr. Mansel at once perceives that the writer has introduced into theology the realism of Duns Scotus and those schoolmen whom, as we commonly suppose, Occam confuted. Here, then, is a plausible excuse for warning his hearers that, if they receive the Incarnation as anything more than a tenet which is revealed in the Bible, they will certainly fall into all the mediaeval confusions, will again blend Theology and Philosophy together, so de- . 94 ANSWER TO MR. WILBERFORCE. stroying the simplicity of the one and the freedom of the other. I have called this argument plausible, by which I mean that it is one which was quite sure to com- mend itself to a great majority of those who heard — it. The word Realism would be just sufficiently understood by an Oxford congregation to cause a vague terror ; the practical conscience of Englishmen would protest against the mixture of scholastic re- finements with the faith of God ; the events in the later life of the author who was criticized would be inevitably connected with the theses he had defended; that indolence which Butler considered so fatal to his course of inquiry, would make the moral palatable to all the no-thinkers among the crowd that lis- tened to the Lectures ; those whose minds had been exercised by the realistic and nominalistic questions, might eagerly welcome any promise of repose from them. I gave the argument no better name than plausible, because I regard it as the argument of an able rhetorician, not of an earnest philosopher or theologian who cares to explain what these mediaeval strifes meant ; to satisfy the honest conviction of the practical Englishman ; to arouse the no-thinker out his slumbers ; to show the perplexed thinker how he may find a way out of his perplexities without losing the great blessing of them. It is the easiest thing in the world to talk as Mr. Mansel talks about " the forgotten follies of Scholas- REALISTIC CONTROVERSY. 95 " tic Realism/' and about " endangering the cause of " Religion by seeking to explain its deepest mysteries " by the lifeless forms of a worn-out controversy. Many such things has one heard ; there is always a certain response to them in our minds. But they help us exceedingly little. Why do these c forgotten follies' start up so often in connection with these ' deep mysteries' ? Why could not Realistic and No- minalistic controversies sever themselves from the doctrines of the two Natures in Christ, and of the Trinity ? Why have Divines and Philosophers both been protesting for so many centuries against the confusion of their provinces, while yet there is more of it in our day than in any previous one ? Why does Mr. Mansel protest against it, and yet put forth a work which contains more appeals to the religious feelings against Philosophers, and (as we shall see Avhen we come to his next Lecture) more of verbal subtle- ties that are likely to disturb simple faith, than almost any book of the century? These facts are not to be got rid of by loose declamation. They require the most serious pondering. May I give you one or two hints which will possibly assist your own reflections upon them ? If one considers the history of Mediseval Philoso- phy, not for the purpose of laughing at ' forgotten follies,' but of understanding what a set of very ear- nest men were engaged in, and how God was lead- ing them by a better way than they knew, this con- 96 IMPORTANCE OP IT. elusion forces itself upon us. These men could not be satisfied with regarding " the deepest mysteries of our faith" as dogmas; if they were to be believed at all., they must be more. They must be involved in the very Constitution of things. They must be at the very ground of it. The schoolmen were in- clined enough to say, " We have received them as a "tradition. They are, because we have received " them." But thev could not. The tradition must surely speak of that which is ; if it did not, it was a lying tradition, to be cast aside like those over which the Gospel had triumphed. Hence the vehement protest on the part of the orthodox in the eleventh century against Nominalism, because it seemed to them that the deepest realities by this teaching were changed into mere names ; hence the fight, no less honest, on the part of the Nominalists, to prevent a confusion of notions in our minds with actual things. Through this school conflict, I believe, if we use it aright, we may discover true principles which do not belong to the schools but to mankind have as- serted themselves — we may discover what work the schools can do and cannot do. As in the case of the conflicts between the King and the Priest, between the King and the Barons, between the King and the Commons, it is not by ranging ourselves on either side, least of all is it by despising both sides and setting up ourselves as superior to both, that we arrive at the right historical lesson. Rather should THE REFORMATION. 97 we confess what a strong conviction was working in the heart of each, and how that conviction proved its worth and its stability in spite of all the dogmatical vehemence and the dogmatical feebleness with which it was accompanied. The battle ceased for a time when the practical and personal faith of the Reformers broke through the webs of Scholasticism, and claimed a personal affiance in the Son of God, who had taken our nature. Then for awhile Theologians — Protestant at least — were ready enough to take a position of their own, and to let the Philosophers take theirs. But this assignment of provinces was soon disturbed again ; it was felt that the personal faith could not determine that which it believed ; that into this determination, processes of the understanding entered ; the philosophers and logicians must give their opinions about these processes. The- ology became as dogmatic as it was in the Middle Ages ; apparently there was not the same conflict to ascertain whether its dogmas pointed to realities or were only notions of the understanding. But that con- troversy soon reappeared in another shape. Personal faith again put in its vehement protest against dog- mas ; its claim to some actual living ground on which it might rest : again it had to be asked, ' Can per- sonal faith affirm what is to be believed V The seven- teenth century was full of these strifes. The eigh- teenth seemed to promise the subsidence of them. Theology, it was hoped, might keep its own ground. H ( 98 POPULAR ACTION UPON THEOLOGY Philosophy might keep its ground. In no period did each more resolutely attack the province of the other. In no period were there more efforts, unsuccessful efforts, made for the adjustment of their respective claims. Meantime the strong convictions of men once more became violently impatient of religious dogmatism, as well as of mere moralities. The deep mysteries again were sought for, as realities to which the Conscience must betake itself as a refuge from its own torments. The Cur Deus Homo was a ques- tion debated in the hearts of peasants and miners with as much earnestness as it had been seven cen- turies before by the monks of Bee. These miners and peasants cared little about phi- losophers or school Theologians ; would have regarded them as profane men. But they affected, more than they knew, the speculations of both. It has been found impossible in our day for Theologians to shut themselves up in a set of opinions. They must an- swer, not to a demand of the schools, but to a de- mand of the people ; ' Have those opinions any coun- terpart in Reality ? Do they mean anything ? You call them mysteries ; do you tell us, by using that word, that we have nothing to do with them, — that they stand in no relation to us? Speak ! for we will know/ On the other hand, it has been found ab- solutely impossible for Philosophers, from whatever point they might start, not to come into contact with the question of the union of Humanity with ( AND ON PHILOSOPHY. 99 Godhead. Read Sir William Hamilton's discus- sions ; look through Mr. Manser's Notes ; no further evidence is necessary. Warn philosophers off the ground as you will ; call it a violation of neutrality, a venturing into the Theological preserves. De- nounce it, laugh at it, persecute it ; you cannot hinder it. Remember, it has happened not only in spite of Theological protests, but of Philosophical. Numbers of Philosophers voted solemnly that they would leave us to manage our own nonsense. They could not. A necessity has urged them on. Take the extreme cases. Choose them from whatever country you please. Shall it be Strauss? shall it be Feuerbach? shall it be Comte ? The question is still forced upon us. What is Humanity ? Has it anything to do with what has been called Divine ? Yes, or No ? What if some answer, ' No — absolutely nothing ' ? What if some answer, Yes, but on exactly the opposite prin- ciple to the one you set forth, — ' Humanity is to make itself divine/ What if there are all degrees of opi- nion intermediate between these ? Supposing we are not asserting a truth ; supposing the Incarnation is not a fact, but only a dogma ; supposing the union of the Godhead and Manhood in a Person is not involved in the very existence of man, in the very order of things — all these contradictions, from the greatest to the least, are very alarming. No wonder that we quake at them ; no wonder that w r e try by any means to stifle them. No wonder that we sometimes groan over the ( 100 TRUE OR NOT TRUE ? paucity of the means which are left to us, — that the sword and the fire, which, if they are used with a con- sistent, exterminating purpose, have done something, should be exchanged for the paltry machinery of ar- gument and ridicule. But what if that which we say is even so ? What if the Incarnation is a fact ? What if the union of the Godhead and [Manhood in Christ is in- volved in the very existence of man, in the very order of the Universe ? Would it then be a cause of sorrow that so much of questioning from all quarters should be directed towards this point ? Should we then shuf- fle, and evade the conflict, saying that a mystery of the faith could have no connection with the thoughts that are working in the minds of philosophers? Should we not rejoice and give thanks that it has so much to do with them ? Should we not tremble lest any one of these inquiries should be hidden or sup- pressed which indicate what men are needing, — which compel us to offer them realities, and not opinions, in exchange for the doubts and objections which they offer to us ? I am as eager that Theology should hold its own simple, positive ground as Mr. Mansel can be ; I am as eager that Philosophy should have its fullest range and freedom. But I do not think that Theology has any ground at all, if it merely accepts as a Tenet what is revealed as a Truth ; I do not think Philo- sophy has any freedom at all, if philosophers are forbidden to learn anything but what Sir William THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 101 Hamilton teaches them. I admit that theologians may do more than mere philosophers, to mark out the respective spheres of Theology and Philosophy ; by preserving their own simplicity they will best as- sert its liberty. But I am also convinced that theo- logians will not arrive at this result by falling back upon the maxims of the eighteenth century. They may arrive at it if they proceed in the course into which they have been led, as I think, by a higher wisdom than their own j if they sincerely ask them- selves what has caused one and another to fail in that course. What I mean by the course into which they have been led, is this. The Person of Christ, as distin- guished from a mere doctrine about Christ, appears to have become more and more the absorbing sub- ject among those divines who exercise any consider- able influence over the thought either of England or of Germany. Even the growing Mariolatry of Ro- mish countries, even the new Papal decree respecting the conception of the Virgin, points in this direction. That a f Leben Jesu ' should be the favourite work of each of the eminent theologians of Germany, is all the more remarkable from their specially abstract tendencies. That such a book as Mr. Wilberforce's on the Incarnation should have been written by one whose habits of thought inclined him to be peculiarly dogmatic, is also a very striking sign of the times. The study of Butler at Oxford must have affected the 10.2 THE CENTRE OF MODERN DIVINITY. writer even more than he was aware of. lie owns himself how much he had been led into that line of inquiry by finding the necessity of something to com- plete and sustain that personal faith, the all-impor- tance of which he had learnt from the school in which he was educated. Other books, scarcely less signifi- cant, and pointing to a different kind of discipline, might be referred to; one of them, Mr. Young's ' Christ of History/ is quoted with qualified approba- tion bv Mr. Mansel. All these are attempts to escape from Dogmatism to a ground of reality. All of them, I think, may teach us much. All of them are open in some measure to the criticism which the Bampton Lecturer has directed against Mr. TYilberforce. They mix philosophy with revelation : at times von fancv thev are forming a * www O Christ out of their own thoughts, — at times, that they are recognizing a Christ such as is set forth by the Evangelists. The writers are perfectly innocent of any such confusion, — as innocent as I believe Mr. TVilberforce was of any wish to put a universal no- tion of Humanity between himself and Christ. They would gladly escape from notions. If they are ham- pered by them, it is from some defect of method. I suspect it is from their being too anxious to meet the thoughts of philosophers halfway ; whereas if they had assumed a different Btandine-gTOund, thev would have had a hope of meeting them altogether. I will explain this statement to you. These writers THE ASCENDING METHOD. 103 suppose that their opponents would never concede to them the Divinity of Christ; ' We will stand, there- 'fore/ they say, ' on your own ground. We will talk f to you about His Humanity. We will see if that ' does not command your affection and reverence. ' We will then inquire whether that affection and re- ference must not ascend to a higher region still.'' Mr. Wilberforce did not act on this maxim. He had discovered a deeper necessity than those who contem- plate the life of Christ merely as the life of a man, — he had felt the force of the expression, Son of 31an, which occurs so continually in the Gospels; of St. Paul's expression, "He is the Head of every man;" of that other, " The Firstborn of every creature." But with his method of ascending from the earthly to the heavenly, I do not see how he could give effect to this language, without falling into the Realism which Mr. Mansel objects to him. And I do not see how he could practically escape another danger to which his critic has not alluded. Duns Scotus, the great cham- pion of Ptealism in its strongest sense, was also he who won laurels at Paris for defending the doctrine which Pius IX. has erected into an Article of Faith. The mere universal Humanity was an abstract notion, though he might invest it with reality ; its dreariness must be sustained by this worship of a concrete Hu- manity in the nature of the Virgin. To that point I believe we shall tend, — Auguste Comte, as much as Pius IX., leading the way to it, — if K 104 THE THEOLOGIAN. theologians are not willing to be theologians again, and to proceed in directly the opposite method to that which I have just been indicating, — the method which the Church points out in the Epistle and Gospel for Christmas Day, — the old method of the Creeds. Then suppose we believe the Incarnation to be true, may we not cry, must we not cry, to the cities of Eng- land, as the Prophet cried to the cities of Judah, ( ' Behold your God ?" ' We declare how He has mani- c fested Himself to us in that Son who is the bright- e ness of His glory, the express image of His Person. f This is the Being whom we praise and declare to be f the Lord. We say that Christ has come to make 'known the Father; we say that in Him all may ' know Him, because He has revealed Himself, fully ' revealed Himself, not in words and letters, but in a 1 Man/ Here, it seems to me, is the office of the theolo- gian. He comes with this Gospel to mankind. So far as he is asserting, he is a dogmatist. But he does not rest his assertion upon his own judgment or upon the judgment of ages; he addresses it to the con- science, heart, reason of mankind. He leaves God to justify it in His own way, by the sorrows, needs, sins, contradictions of men. He desires only that the news should go forth with no force but its own. He can trust it ; for he can trust Him who has shown us in His Son what He is, who has promised His Spirit of Truth to guide us into all Truth. Dogmatism and Ra- THE VERBAL AND REAL MEAN. 105 tionalism cannot be reconciled in words ; the verbal middle between them is feebler than either, destruc- tive of what is good in both. Here is the living, real, uniting Mean between them. The verbal mid- dle between the idolatry which is the worship of crea- tures, and the atheism which is the worship of nothing, is " less religious than the one, less logical than the other." God declaring Himself to His creatures in a Man, that the creature may rise to the full knowledge of Him, — here is that middle which you, if you are to be a clergyman of the Christian Church, must hold forth in the practical and living words of the Scrip- ture, to the righteous and the sinful, to the wise and the unwise. Very truly yours, F. D. M. 106 LETTEB V. ME. HANSEL'S SECOND LETTER. — RELIGIOUS PHI- LOSOPHY. — MYSTICISM. — THE CRITERION OE TRUTH. My dear Sir, I did not enter upon the theological topics which were considered in my last letter, because I was in a hurry to introduce them before we had settled whe- ther the maxim of Sir William Hamilton did or did not prove that a knowledge of the Infinite or Eter- nal or Absolute is impossible for human beings. It was Mr. Mansel who forced me into them. He could not, apparently, lay the ground of his religious phi- losophy without referring to them. He could not begin to build himself, till he had swept away cer- tain thoughts about the Atonement and Incarnation which had been put forth by divines or philosophers. Being driven to this necessity, I have inquired what those doctrines are which the Bampton Lecturer complains of other men for not believing, or for not fully believing. I have asked what is implied in RECAPITULATION. 107 the most full belief of them, in the reception of them as an actual Gospel to be delivered to mankind. Clearly this was implied, that they were not mere doctrines or opinions contained in a book, or gene- ralized by us from a book. If the doctrine of the Atonement was not false as a doctrine, as an opinion, there must have been an actual Reconciliation be- tween God and His creatures in the person of His Son. If the doctrine of the Incarnation was not false as a doctrine, the Eternal Son must have actually come forth from the Eternal Father, and have taken human flesh, and have dwelt among men ; the nature and glory of the Eternal God must have come forth in the man, so that He could say, u He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." You and I had to determine whether, in this sense, we could receive the Incarna- tion and Atonement, — whether, in this sense, we could proclaim them to men. For if we called on any hu- man being to receive them as doctrines, and yet did not set them forth as facts, it seemed that we were committing a huge injustice to our fellows, deceiving our own selves, violating the trust we had received from God. But supposing we could do this, — sup- posing we believed that the word Gospel was not a treacherous sound, and that there is indeed a message from God to man, — then it seemed that we must re- joice in every indication which we found anywhere that men are seeking after the knowledge of God, and cannot be content without it. From whatever 108 RECAPITULATION. point such inquiries might start, whatever forms they might take, however they might be blended with con- fusion, contradiction, denial, there could be no doubt that they denoted a craving and a necessity which God Himself had awakened, and which He would satisfy. If they were attempts to solve by forms, phrases, and notions, that which demanded a real, not a verbal solution, the perplexity of those at- tempts which, of course, we had experienced our- selves and felt to be a human perplexity, would give them a deep interest for us ; if they were attempts to break through all phrases, formulas, intellectual sub- tleties, and to reach that which lies behind them and beneath them, — then, however they might fail, they would be still more affecting proofs that God was in- spiring men with a passion for that which they found was too large for them to grasp, and yet was altoge- ther necessary to them. If, in the endeavour to get rid of their own partial conceits and notions, and to find a ground which was beneath all, they were often entangled in those conceits and notions, we should again recognize men struggling as we struggle, — we should again perceive how wide, human, universal, God's revelation must be. For these reasons, I contended that the contro- versy which gave so much occupation to men's thoughts in the Middle Ages, the realistic and no- minalistic controversy in its different stages, was a subject of profound interest and instruction to the RECAPITULATION. 109 modern theologian, inasmuch as it taught him how near words and things lie to each other, — what de- mands the Conscience and Reason of men make for Realities, — how they witness that the highest of all must be the most real, the ground of other reality, — how apt we are to confound notions and dogmas and conclusions of our intellect, with the truths to which they refer, and so to turn truths into mere names or mere opinions. I thought the rebellion against school logic just as full of meaning as the perplexities of that logic, and more consolatory, — because it is a deep, authentic testimony that human beings, the moment they are roused to the feeling that they are human, must look above and beyond themselves, must rise out of themselves, whether they can prove their right to do it logically or not. And for us even more interesting is that direction of men's minds which has been so manifest during the last hundred years, — that direction which, as I said, made it im- possible for us to adopt Butler's phrase of Natural and Revealed Religion, — though it made Butler's teach- ing respecting a revelation of God through the Con- stitution of Nature and through Man all the more precious. I follow an excellent precedent, which Mr. Mansel has set us at the close of each of his Lectures, in thus recapitulating the lessons which we have been learn- ing from his statements and from the facts which he has adduced. I am particularly anxious to do 110 OBJECTS OF THE LECTURE. so at the commencement of his second Lecture, be- cause that is (1) the one in -which he has formally an- nounced what is the object and the character of his "religious philosophy;" (2) the one in which he has applied himself most vigorously to the work of de- molishing the dream of Mystics and Rationalists that there is any criterion of truth in man ; (3) the one in -which he has exhibited most of his scholastical skill in dealing with our notions of Cause, of the Absolute, and the Infinite ; and in destroying Pantheism. This last portion of the Lecture I reserve for a separate letter. To the other two divisions I address myself now. (1.) I have used the phrase "Religious Philo- sophy." It is Mr. MansePs. The following extract will tell you what he does and does not mean by it. " A philosophy of religion may be attempted from "two opposite points of view, and by two opposite " modes of development. It may be conceived either as a Philosophy of the Object of Religion; that is to say, as a scientific exposition of the nature of "God; or as a Philosophy of the Subject of Reli- " gion ; that is to say, as a scientific inquiry into the "constitution of the human mind, so far as it re- " ceives and deals -with religious ideas. The former is that branch of Metaphysics which is commonly known by the name of Rational Theology. Its "general aim, in common -with all metaphysical in- " quirics, is to disengage the real from the apparent, tt a (C (t RELIGION. Ill ft the true from the false : its special aim, as a The- ology, is to exhibit a true representation of the "Nature and Attributes of God, purified from fo- reign accretions, and displaying the exact features u of their Divine Original. The latter is a branch "of Psychology, -which, at its outset at least, con- sents itself with investigating the phenomena pre- " sented to it, leaving their relation to further realities "to be determined at a later stage of the inquiry. " Its primary concern is with the operations and laws " of the human mind ; and its special purpose is to ascertain the nature, the origin, and the limits of the religious element in man ; postponing, till after " that question has been decided, the further inquiry "into the absolute nature of God." — (Bampton Lec- tures, 2nd ed., pp. 34, 35.) Though we are entering, you see, upon an inquiry that is to be very accurate and scholastic, the two principal words which are to engage our attention are left undefined. We are not told what Religion is ; we are not told what Philosophy is. I have explained already why I do not pretend to supply Mr. MansePs deficiencies with respect to the first word. I think it is a peculiarly ambiguous one, and one that is likely to continue ambiguous, because we connect it habitu- ally with the study and treatment of the Bible, though the Bible itself gives us no help in ascertaining the force of the word, apparently sets no great store by it or any similar one. So as far as I am able to make 112 PHILOSOPHY. out, it is best used to denote certain processes or habits or conditions of our own minds, so that, a the subject of religion," as opposed to the ' ' object" of it, will be the subject of a subject, our thoughts about our thoughts — about what ? Philosophy is a word which is much more easy to define. Sir William Hamilton has given it its natu- ral, legitimate force, when he has called it a Search after Wisdom ; he has shown what is its relation to man, when he has adopted Plato's phrase, and de- scribed man as a Hunter after Truth. Supposing, as I have said alreadv, there was a Truth to meet this search, a living Object to present itself to a creature who was made to pursue that object, we might have something to speak of which is not philosophy, what- ever other name you give it. But with such an Object Mr. Mansel will have nothing to do. To begin from that, is to involve yourself in Mystical Theology ; to suppose we have any faculties for seeking that or test- ing it when it is presented to us, is to involve yourself in Rational Theology. The only escape from both is a philosophy of religion, i.e. if we add the definition we have now got to the previous one, a search after the way in which we should think about our thoughts — about what ? See whether the following passages do not bear out my statement. " On the other hand, the second method of philo- " sophical inquiry does not profess to furnish a direct " criticism of Revelation, but only of the instruments it COMMON SEXSE. 113 " by which Revelation is to be criticized. It looks to the human, not to the divine, and aspires to teach us no more than the limits of our own powers of • " thought, and the consequent distinction between " what we may and what we may not seek to compre- " hend. . . . u Religious criticism is itself an act of thought ; " and its immediate instruments must, under any cir- " cumstances, be thoughts also. We are thus com- " pelled in the first instance to inquire into the origin . "and value of those thoughts themselves.^ — (Bamp- ton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 36, 38.) I wish to make one remark before I proceed. Mr. Mansel has been celebrated by one of his reviewers as a writer who appeals to the common sense of English- men against the wild and fantastic notions of the Mediaeval period, or of modern Germany and Prance. Here, if anywhere, we are to look for the justifica- tion of that claim. The religious philosophy which is announced in this programme, is expressly designed to deliver us from the absurdities and ravings of Mys- tics and Rationalists. This is the sword which is to lay low the Eckarts and Taulers of the fourteenth century, the Hegels and Schellings of the nineteenth. Now, I ask you to make this experiment with any English gentleman you know. Set before him Mr. Mansel's statement of his purpose, not in my words but in his. You and I ought to make our message intelligible to the uneducated as well as the educated : 114 ITS JUDGMENT ON THE LECTURES. it is meant for both. But you would not be deal- ing fairly with Mr. Mansel if you made that demand upon him. He is a learned man, addressing a Uni- versity audience. Choose then the most educated man you can find, in the English sense of the word c edu- cated/ I mean, let him have had the full advantage of our public school and university training, and have profited by it. Let him then have had the discipline of public life, all that discipline which goes to culti- vate what we call our practical faculty, our common sense. Let him be a man who has sounded the meaning of words, but who loves things better than words, and tests words by their relation to things. Let him have, if you please (I should like that addi- tional qualification), an excessive prejudice against German philosophy. Try him with Mr. Manser's ac- count of his religious philosophy, and tell me if he does not make some such observations as these upon it. l Why, my good Sir, you know that this is just c what I abominate in those Teutonic doctors and di- ' viues. They seem to me to be always thinking about ' their own thoughts. I cannot open one of their 1 books without finding something about the Begriff ' of this, or the Begriff of that ; most of all they tor- ( ment me with their Begriff of Religion. What do 1 we want of any Begriff? We who are tossed about i in the world want a God. Tell us of Him if vou 1 can. If you cannot, hold your peace. The other thing ( or nothing we do not need at all/ THE SEEING EYE. 115 (2.) Mr. Hansel's purpose in submitting our thoughts about our thoughts about religion to a searching criticism, is that he may save Revelation ^? from it. That is a delicate plant which the winds of heaven must not be permitted to visit too roughly. But the word Revelation surely is not exempted from criticism ; we are not obliged to leave it in the vagueness which enwraps the word Religion. It must be the revelation of something to something. Is it the revelation of a religion ? If it were, we should be able to know something of what that is; it would not be covered with the thick veil which Mr. Mansel allows to rest over it. Is it a revelation of God ? So the Bible seems to say. That is its simple, obvi- ous language. But if a revelation of Him, a reve- lation also to something. To what ? Not to Angels, unless the Bible speaks falsely, but to Men. Not to the bodily eye of men, unless the Bible speaks falsely, for it says that the eye of the body has not seen God and cannot see Him. Then to some eve which is not in the body ? So our Lord seems to say, for He speaks of a light that is in us which may be- come darkness. Here comes in Mr. Hansel's critical religious philosophy. He undertakes to shovv that there is no such eye in man which can receive a revelation of God. Thus he proceeds with his de- monstration : — " Such a conviction may be possible in two " different ways. It may be the result of a direct 116 MYSTICS AND RATIONALISTS. intuition of the Divine Nature; or it may be gained by inference from certain attributes of human nature, which, though on a smaller scale, are known to be sufficiently representative of the corresponding properties of the Deity. We may suppose the existence in man of a special faculty of knowledge, of which God is the immediate ob- ject — a kind of religious sense or reason, by which the Divine attributes are apprehended in their own nature : or we may maintain that the attributes of God differ from those of man in degree only, not in kind ; and hence that certain mental and moral qualities, of which we are immediately conscious in ourselves, furnish at the same time a true and adequate image of the infinite perfections of God. The first of these suppositions professes to convey a knowledge of God by direct apprehension, in a manner similar to the evidence of the senses : the second professes to convey the same knowledge by a logical process, similar to the demonstrations of science. The former is the method of Mysticism, and of that Rationalism which agrees with Mysti- cism, in referring the knowledge of divine things to an extraordinary and abnormal process of intuition or thought. The latter is the method of the vulgar Rationalism, which regards the reason of man, in its ordinary and normal operation, as the supreme criterion of religious truth. " On the former supposition, a system of religious (( (< (( EXPOSURE OF BOTH. 117 " philosophy or criticism may be constructed by start- ing from the divine and reasoning down to the lminan : on the latter, by starting from the human and reasoning up to the divine. The first com- mences with a supposed immediate knowledge of " God as He is in His absolute nature, and proceeds " to exhibit the process by which that nature, acting "according to its own laws, will manifest itself in " operation, and become known to man. The second " commences with an immediate knowledge of the "mental and moral attributes of man, and proceeds " to exhibit the manner in which those attributes will "manifest themselves, when exalted to the degree " in which they form part of the nature of God. If, "for example, the two systems severally undertake " to give a representation of the infinite power and " wisdom of God, the former will profess to explain " how the nature of the infinite manifests itself in the " forms of power and wisdom ; while the latter will " attempt to show how power and wisdom must mani- " fest themselves when existing in an infinite degree. " In their criticisms of Revelation, in like manner, "the former will rather take as its standard that " absolute and essential nature of God, which must " remain unchanged in every manifestation ; the lat- "ter will judge by reference to those intellectual and " moral qualities, which must exist in all their essen- " tial features in the divine nature as well as in the "human." — (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 38-41.) 118 OF WHOM BESIDES? These, you perceive, are the two possible ways of arriving at any knowledge of God. Mr. Mansel has Atold us already that neither the Mystic nor the Ra- tionalist necessarily rejects a Revelation. The prin- ciple of one or the other is just as absurd, accord- ing to him, with a Revelation as without it. All the attempts therefore which are made in this Lecture to enlist the sympathies of believers in the Bible on the side of his religious philosophy, by dwelling on the different objections to the Bible and the denials / of the Bible which have proceeded form those who speak of a reason in man that can judge of a reve- lation, are rhetorical artifices, deserving of all com- mendation for their cleverness, but utterlv worthless so far as the argument is concerned. What is said here against Mystics and Rationalists applies as di- rectly, as sharply, to every person who believes as you and I believe, that we are bound in our sermons to set forth Christ as the Wisdom of God and the Power of God, and to take the words addressed to the Apostle Philip literally : " Have I been so long a time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip ? He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Fa- ther. How say est thou then, Shoiv us the Father ?" Do I then confess myself a Mystic or a Rational- ist because I do not put in any plea for exemption from the charges of folly or of heresy which Mr. Mansel would fix upon them ? I have answered that question already as far as Rationalism is concerned. MYSTICS OF VARIOUS K1XDS. 119 I have confessed that I have in myself an evil Ra- tionalism, and that there is also a Rationalism which I desire to cultivate, which I believe it is killing the spirit in ns not to have. I make the same con- fession precisely about Mysticism. T find a number w of men, in all ages of the Christian Church, who have been called Mystics ; I find them amongst Germans, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Italians, — amongst princes, priests, scholars, shoemakers, women, — amongst Fran- ciscans, Dominicans, Jansenists, Lutherans, Cal- vinists, English High Churchmen, Quakers; I find among them those who have led the life of recluses, those who have stood by dying beds in hospitals, those who have preached to crowds and drawn crowds after them, those who have produced a moral refor- mation in the most hardened and ignorant. I find among them those who have been charged, perhaps rightly charged, with affecting obscurity, and those who have written the broadest, homeliest, most tho- roughly idiomatic German or English. These men have differed in all their opinions, feelings, habits of mind. Even those who have stood to one ano- ther in the relation of pupil and teacher, like Eckart and Tauler, have been markedly unlike each other. Under the same name stand Sterry the chaplain of Cromwell, and Law the Nonjuror. There must be^\ something which associates men so dissimilar to- gether. In Mr. Manse? s eyes it is something alto- gether evil, something worthy of his profoundest con- 120 THEIR TEMPTATION. tempt. I cannot say so, seeing that I find every one of them to be an immeasurably better and wiser man than I am, — seeing there is not one of them, whose writings I have read or into whose life I have had any glimpse, that has not instructed me and done me good ; scarcely one from whom I have not learnt increased reverence for the Scriptures and more dis- trust of my own judgment. Nevertheless I do think I have seen a tendency in them which offers an ex- cuse for the bad name they have earned : I should not have understood it if I had not discovered it in myself. Mr. Mansel has represented it harshly, but perhaps not wrongly, when he speaks of the Mystics referring "the knowledge of divine things to an ex- v/ "traordinary and abnormal process of intuition or "thought." The description does not apply to any one of those I have named, in his highest and best moods. Some of them fought vehemently and al- most to the death against it. Those who were fol- lowed in the fourteenth century by multitudes of listening peasants, could scarcely have deemed that they had some special " abnormal " insight. Still that is unquestionably the mystical temptation. Out of it have come a multitude of conceits respecting the meaning of Scripture, a number of fantastical specu- lations respecting Nature, a number of harsh judg- ments respecting men of a different character from their own, a number of sensual apparitions which often contradict the principles they are most eager to assert. THEIR PROCESS OF THOUGHT. 121 There is that in this habit which may ripen into a settled spiritual pride. Of that pride these men, so far as I can make out, gave few indications. But whence could the motive to it have arisen in minds like theirs ? They had been dwelling, most of them, in a scholastical atmosphere, talking and thinking much about religion and religious motives, contem- plating the world around them with some pity, specu- lating much on opinions right and wrong. At one crisis of their lives they were aroused to feel that they wanted something else than a religion, or a philo- sophy of religion. One whom they could not see, or who they thought was afar off, seemed to come very nigh to them, to question them about themselves, to bring not their acts and words merely, but them, the doers of the acts, the speakers of the words, into His clear and piercing light. The process was terrible. Out of it they emerged different men. The visible things with which they had conversed, looked sha- dowy and indistinct ; that which was unseen had a fixedness, a certainty, which they could not express in words, which none who were about them appeared to recognize. f We are out of the region of notions ' and appearances. We are in contact with Him who 1 is. ; For a time they were sure this was the sane, healthful condition of a man. ' In himself nothing, ' living by trust on One always near him, growing 1 more and more into acquaintance with Him, — is ' not this what every one of us is meant to be ? Is ( 122 COUNTERACTING INFLUENCE. ' not being out of this condition the anomaly V So they felt, so in their practical discourses they spoke. But yet, when they looked round upon the people with whom they associated, the religious, the respect- able, was not there an excuse for saying, ' These con- ' victions of ours are special, abnormal? They do not 1 belong to our race j they belong to us, a certain fa- < voured and select portion of the race. Are we not ' new men, spiritual men, who can judge of all things, 1 but can ourselves be judged of no man ? Does not 1 that text of St. Paul warrant us in vindicating to ' ourselves an intuition altogether unlike that which c belongs to the herd of mere natural or soullish c creatures/* Excuses for self-exaltation surely ! I have men- tioned some of the antidotes to it ; the sympathy of crowds, tendance on the sick. Insufficient, I should think, without actual bodily sufferings, and the dis- covery of internal evils, which all the knowledge of Good had not destroyed, perhaps had only brought into stronger illumination. But in the course of historv has there not also been a counteraction to these dangers ? Mr. Mansel has pointed out one, which in our day, I suspect, is working more effec- tuallv than we know, and which those who trace God's hand in His Church and Universe will not fancy has existed without His providence and appointment. There are those vulgar Rationalists, so Mr. Mansel * Vvxixhs 5e auBpuiiros ov Se'xerat to rov Tlvevfiaros tov Qeov. REASON IX COMMON THINGS. 123 calls them, "who regard the Reason of man in its " ordinary and normal operation as the criterion of " religious Truth." It is not necessary that I should go over again the ground I travelled in my last letter. I tried then to show you that there is a disorderly operation of_the_ Reason in us to which we are all prone, that which is busy in creating the object which it beholds, or else argues about it instead of contemplating it ; — that there is a true and normal operation of the Reason, which we all recognize in reference to com- mon things, an operation by means of which we discern that which is from that which merely seems or appears. Not to use this Reason in the daily pursuits of life, is to sink into the condition of an animal. One sees it in the liveliest exercise among those who are utterly incapable of drawing conclu- sions, who are not logicians, who can neither form dogmas nor understand them when they are formed. Among pure, true-hearted women, among honest mechanics, among those upon whose powers of sense and even of reflection death has laid his hand, this power of discerning the truth from the lie, the thing that is from that that is not, dwells often with en- viable clearness. We turn to them as to oracles ; does not the Statesman, with his hard experience, the Divine, with his well -learnt maxims and systems, find that they are seers while he is well-nigh blind ? Is this Reason critical only of low things ? May it u 124 DISCOVERY OF IT TO THE MYSTIC. not also exercise a discernment in the highest ? That is the question which has been especially raised in our time ; that is the one to which Mr. Mansel gives his emphatic " No." To me it seems that in making that denial, he is either forgetting what is the ' nor- ma? use of the Reason in lower things, and speaking merely of its irregular use; or that if he is saying there is nothing in man which can distinguish be- tween " the thief who cometh to steal and destroy, and the Shepherd who cometh that we might have life, and have it more abundantly" — he is simply setting at nought the words of Christ, and overthrowing the whole Bible. But I wish to show you how the as- sertion of this power by the nationalist — whether he exercises it legitimately or illegitimately — affects the Mystic who is not only under Mr. Manser's ban for his abnormal intuitions, but is humbled in himself by the recollection of having claimed them. Now he begins to perceive that what he has to thank God for with his whole heart, was not for giving him some- thing which He has refused to the race generally, but for opening in him that eye which belongs to us as men, and which, through our desire to magnify our own individual souls and to separate them from other men's, we put out. So the words of St. Paul on which he had been used to rest his case, assume an entirely different aspect, and come forth to chastise his vanity, as well as to nourish his hope. Is not the spiritual man, as we are told in that very Epistle, the TH^ "faculty of lies/' 125 man who will not divide himself from others, division being the sign of carnality, — who will not make his own notions or opinions the standards for men, or the measures of God's acts, — who will receive the things that are freely given him of God — who therefore has a faculty of discrimination, which does not suffer him to be deluded by impostors, or to confound the Devil with the true God? In what I have said about the faculty of Reason, which one finds most alive in the simplest, truest, humblest people, often most dead in the clever and the learned, — in the writers of leading articles, and in doctors of divinity, — I may have seemed to take for granted a distinction of which Mr. Mansel has spoken in one of his notes thus : — " If there is but one faculty of thought, that which " Kant calls the Understanding, occupied with the " finite only, there is an obvious end to be answered " in making us aware of its limits, and warning us "that the boundaries of thought are not those of " existence. But if, with Kant, we distinguish the " Understanding from the Reason, and attribute " to the latter the delusions necessarily arising from " the idea of the unconditioned, we must believe in the existence of a special faculty of lies created for the express purpose of deceiving those who trust to it."— (Note 24 to p. 127; p. 364.) This sentence, you perceive, settles the whole ques- tion. That happy, courteous phrase, ' a faculty of * 126 rant's great concession. lies/ proceeding from an eminent philosopher, a great enemy of Dogmatism, one who sets out from the maxim, ' Know thyself/ ought to silence every objec- tion and every argument. You will appreciate the full force of it, even though you may not be a reader of Kant, if you will turn back to that account of him and his special objects which I have extracted from Sir William Hamilton's discussion on the Un- conditioned. You will see there that the tendency of Kant's mind was destructive, — that he applied the se- verest logic to the overthrow of the metaphysical or ontological notions of his predecessors, — that he did effectually sweep away, so Sir AY. Hamilton thinks, all mere notions and conceptions about the In- finite. It was this man who, because he was a losri- cian, could not bring himself to deny that there is something in us which takes hold of fact, some- thing which will not be circumscribed by notions and conceptions, which confesses that which is. He felt that if there is no such faculty in man as this, there is not and cannot be any morality for man, there is not and cannot be any truth for man. It is because a stern necessity drove this philo- sopher to overleap the bounds of his own philoso- phy for the sake of reality, that Mr. Mansel says he v believed in a faculty of lies created for the especial purpose of deceiving those who possess it. It is be- cause he affirmed a principle so very like the princi- ple of a conscience, for which Butler contends, that v/ OUR INTEREST IN IT. 127 every blow to the one is practically and effectually a blow to the other, that a disciple of Butler, one who desires to cultivate the study and spirit of Butler in Oxford, uses language respectiug Kant which is scarcely paralleled in philosophical, even in theologi- cal controversy. You and I, however, are not concerned with the vindication of Kant. We are concerned in claiming that great concession which Kant made to common human beings, a concession of which the religious philosophy of Mr. Mansel seeks to deprive us. If there is nothing in the people to whom we deliver our message but a faculty which forms no- tions, judges of opinions, criticizes documents, we know that we have not a Gospel to the poor — it is monstrous to pretend that we have. That faculty of forming notions, judging opinions, criticizing docu- ments, is a peculiar one; it requires a special cul- tivation; the degrees in which those possess it in whom it has been cultivated, are more various than it is possible to express. The difference between Bentley and the most ignorant undergraduate who answers a question at an Oxford or Cambridge exa- mination, is an inadequate measure of the variety in one direction. Those in whom the faculty exists in the highest degree, are not always the persons to whom one would appeal with confidence on a moral question. And when one compares their different exercises upon their own ground, e.g. the Discussion 128 THE HUMAN AN'D THE SPECIAL. on the Epistles of Phalaris with the Commentary on Paradise Lost, one feels how a homely perception of facts is needful even to a critic, how worthless the merely critical power becomes without it. Even therefore if one wanted to bring out this power in its strength, one would have need to educate another first, one which is not special, but human. In a university, if that human faculty is denied or not ap- pealed to, all special studies will be worthless, — yes, mischievous and accursed. But for the Minister of the Gospel, that is what he has to speak to : I had nearly said that only. It is because the Bible ad- dresses that human faculty and not some special faculty, that it can bear to be translated into every tongue of the earth, that it can speak to all tribes and nations. For us to deny the existence of such a faculty, is simply to deny our own work. Any one who tells us that it does not exist, is bound also to tell us that if we are honest men we must relinquish that work. 1 What/ you say, f does it depend upon our accept- ance of a certain philosophy whether we shall do ( our work as Evangelists V Not the least. You need know nothing about philosophy. If you do not, you will take for granted the existence of this faculty to which you can speak. It is the ordinary postulate of an Englishman's life that there is such a one. That is what he means when he says, c I do not 'care for your fine notions; I have something in me FAITH IN SHADOWS. 129 e which tells me when a man is speaking truth or ' falsehood/ Of course, he may be very much de- ceived about his own preference for truth over false- hood in any particular case ; he may b| bribed to like a lie better than the truth. But are you justified in telling him that he has not that faculty? Are you not destroying his soul if you do ? Are you not sa- ving his soul alive if you can persuade him to use that faculty, if you can teach him how he may use it, — who is helping him, to use it, — who would de- liver him from the falsehoods which are corrupting and enchaining him ? This, I say, is the ordinary judgment of a practical man. And the part of Kant's philosophy which Mr. Mansel rejects is the part which owns that the philosopher cannot interfere with this practical human faith, — that it is worth more than all the notions of the understanding, because it takes hold of that which is substantial, — worth more than all the conclusions of the understanding, be- cause it converses with premisses. ' Yes/ Mr. Mansel will say, ' but I acknowledge ' a faith which goes beyond these notions ; I admit 1 that the realm of existence is not bounded by the ' realm of thought. What I object to is your speak- f ing of the Reason, as if that had anything to do ' with this faith, as if that were distinct from the ' Understanding/ Now observe ; about nomencla- ture I care nothing, or next to nothing. Throw over Kant's nomenclature if you dislike it. There is no K 130 WHAT IS IT ? sacredness in the names of Understanding or of Reason; one cannot be quite certain whether they are respectively the best equivalents for the words which Kant has used — supposing that were a point of any importance. But we must not be cheated by compliments to our faith, nor yet by the distinction — all-important as it is when rightly apprehended — between thought and existence. Does the faith you speak of take hold of existence, or, as I should say, — for I do not like school-terms when I can get plain words, — of that which is? If not, it is not what we mean b\ T faith ; it is not the faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is an act of the mind ; therefore I have to ask, Of what mind ? It is the belief in some- thing ; then I have to ask, "What is that something ? The mind, according to Mr. Mansel, only gives out thoughts, and thoughts are in no connection with ex- istence or that which is. W hence then comes this faith ? Whither does it go ? How should it be de- scribed ? I know how it would be described bv some persons ; they would call it a faculty or the exercise of a faculty of lies. I do not like such language. Mr. Mansel who does, must vindicate the Faith which he speaks of from the imputation which he has be- stowed upon Kant's Reason. What concerns vou and me is that faith should be the act of the man himself, of that which is most truly, radically human in him, call it by what name NOT THE FAITH OF APOSTLES. 131 you please, and that it should be in direct contact with that which is most living and most substantial. Less than this we will not accept from any philoso- pher, religious or irreligious. Any one who tells us of another faith than this, must begin with erasing the 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews out of the Bible, must go on to destroy the whole Gospel which the Bible contains. Remember that that is the issue. We are not now talking about the Finite or the Infinite, the Relative or the Absolute. To those words, and to Mr. Hansel's treatment of them, I hope to come in due time ; I have not the least wish to avoid the fullest examination of what he says about them. But that is not our business now. I will repeat it even to weariness : the question is con- cerning that which is and that which is not ; whethei there is any faculty in man that can be brought to perceive that which is, and to reject that which is not, in any matter whatsoever ; whether that faculty is extinguished when we are called to pay the highest reverence and worship to a certain object or objects; or whether it is this to which God himself appeals. For I must again beseech you not to be deceived by Mr. Mansel's rhetoric into the supposition that what he is saying only concerns those who reject the Bible, or fancy that they are wiser than the writers of it. It concerns quite as much every one who accepts the Bible as God's speech to man ; it concerns the hum- blest believer in every cottage, on every hospital pallet. 132 the author's concession. He himself lias told us that he is equally at war with those who start from the Divine and reason down to the Human, as with those who start from the Human and reason up to the Divine. He must be equally at war with both. On the other hand, those who accept a revelation of God to man, i.e. of the Divine meet- ing the Human, must be very careful indeed how they trifle with any of those efforts, even if they have been failures, of the Human to meet the Divine, lest haply they should be fighting not merely with the spirit of man, but with the Spirit of God. Mr. Mansel has said himself: — "The Philosophy which "reasons downwards from the Infinite is but an ex- " aggeration (?) of the true conviction that God's "thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His ways our " ways : the philosophy which reasons upwards from " the human, bears witness, even in its perversion, "to the unextinguishable consciousness that man, "however fallen, was created in the image of God." (p. 43.) Just so. It is the very point for which I am con- tending, and therefore it must be your business and mine to recognize the truth of both these opposing principles, quite indifferent who calls us Mystics and who calls us Rationalists, because it is our business to show that God's thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His ways our ways, — because it is our business to tell men that they are created in the image of God, and that Christ, the express Image of God, has come OUR DUTY. 133 to raise them out of their fall, and to renew them after that image. Our preaching is continually en- countered by the argument, f We are fallen crea- ' tures ; what can we know of God ? how can we ' ever rise to the perception of the Eternal Truth and ( Goodness ? ' Must we not answer that argument by appealing to every witness of the heart, the Con- science, the Reason, — if you will, to every contradic- tion of Philosophy, — that the spirit of man within us demands the knowledge of God, demands the per- ception of Eternal Truth and Goodness ? If we can say also, ' What the spirit of man seeks, the Spirit of { God will give,' may we not feel that we have indeed preached good news to our fellows ? Faithfully yours, F. D. M. 134 LETTER VI. LATTER PART OF THE SECOND LECTURE.— PHILO- SOPHICAL TERMS. — STRUGGLE FOR REALITY. My dear Sir, You are very much nearer to your undergra- duate years than I am to mine. But they do rise up at times vividly before me. Certainly nothing has brought them back so vividly as reading the latter part of Mr. Manser's second Lecture. I listened to many sermons in St. Mary's, when I was at Oxford, which chilled my heart. I think, if I had heard that one, it would have turned my brain. I do not think it would have made me a sceptic, for I fancy I had met with most of the statements about the Absolute, the Infinite, and the Cause, in the pages of different sophists, or that they had been presented to my own mind. That which would have utterly bewildered me would have been to hear them reproduced in a Chris- tian pulpit as a defence of Christianity. I hope I should have profited by the preacher's last words. I hope I should have said, ' Lord, to whom shall I go SERMON TO UNDERGRADUATES. 135 f when Thy servants consider it their business to up- ' hold Thy cause by proving to us that there is nothing f around, beneath, above, but confusion and darkness V I hope I should have said, ' Thou hast the words of ' Eternal Life, though we are told that the Eternal f lies at a hopeless distance from us, that we can have 1 no fellowship with it. But I might have said, ' If ' that is true, what Lord is there to whom we can go ? ' Where is He? What have I to do with Him?' It is because I feel painfully convinced that many who heard and who read Mr. Manser's sermon will say this; — that the argument which he looks upon as so conclusive that it must shatter every form of unbelief, is likely to shatter the feeble faith which it finds, and to bewilder the more earnest faith; — it is because everything in the circumstances and temp- tations of those who sat in the galleries when this Lecture was delivered, is likely to make it more mis- chievous to them than it would be to those of any other class or age, — it is therefore that I undertake the task — which, when I am right-minded, is very disagreeable, which I tremble at most when it be- comes at all pleasant — of pointing out why I look upon the whole course of his argument on this sub- ject as worthless for its professed object of exposing either Rationalists or Pantheists, and as utterly mis- chievous if it is supposed to be a mode of removing objections to the Bible. I will begin with quoting the passage which introduces the subject : — .. 136 WORSHIP OF NOTIONS " There are three terms, familiar as household " words in the vocabulary of Philosophy, which must "be taken into account in everv svstem of Meta- physical Theology. To conceive the Deity as He is. we must conceive Him as First Cause, as Ab- " solute, and as Infinite. By the First Cause, is " meant that which produces all things, and is itself t€ produced of none. By the Absolute, is meant that •• which exists in and bv itself, having no necessarv "relation to anv other Beins. Bv the Infinite is " meant that which is free from all possible liniita- " tion ; that than which a greater is inconceivable ; •• and which consequently can receive no additional "attribute or mode of existence, which it had not '•from all eternity." — Bampion Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 44. 45. "Will vou read over to vourself the first line of this passage ? " There are three terms, familiar as house- hold words in the vocabulary of Philosophy." These are kev- words to the after discourse. It is with the terms, First Cause, Absolute, and Infinite, that Mr. Mansel de* Is here and throughout his volume. Terms are all in all to him. To get beyond terms is with him impossible. " Words, words, words'' do not drive him mad as they did poor Hamlet ; they en- tirelv satisfv him. He does not denv that there is something lying beyond them, something which thev express. There is a region of mist and darkness, what he considers the region of faith, which cannot IX EDIXBUKGH AND OXTOKD. 137 be put into formulas of logic, and therefore about which nothing can be known, which we have no cri- terion for judging of. But within this circle lies his world, and anv one who tries to find a ground for his feet outside of that world, is for him a fool if he can reduce him under the notion of a Dogma- tist, a dangerous disturber of men's serenity if he can "bring- hfm under the notion of a Rationalist. Once, with exceeding rwtrete, he intimates that there must be reality, but that we are quite unable to conceive what it is. it cannot be brought under ill proper notion. His book should be studied as the great apotheosis of Logic. Terrible as the name m: sound to him, he actually becomes transcendental in his reverence for the formulas that are to exclude all transcendentalism. You may remember that I noticed this tendency as characteristic of Sir William Hamilton. I spoke of him as emphatically a notional Philosopher. I believe that grand forehead of his showed that he was capable of being something immeasurably higher than this. If he had not been possessed 1 * a love of fact, a reverence for fact, he could not have admired the phrase of Plato as he did ; he could not have risen so far above his predecessors in the schools of Consciousness, whom he, somewhat haughtily, pa- tronizes. He brought Scotch Philosophy to its cli- max. So now we know all about it, what it can and cannot do. He enables us to understand that fierce 138 SCOTCH PROTEST AGAINST IT. reaction against it which one discovers in his coun- trymen. Evidently they must have been utterly crushed under 'notions' and 'consciousnesses;' crushed till all breath and life seemed to be impossible for them. It has been nothing less than a question for them whether the woods and fields in which Burns grew up, and of which he sang, should be withered by a school Sirocco ; whether the life of those who fought and bled on the soil should be turned into mere moralities about life and fighting and bleed- ing; whether the manhood of the present generation should perish along with the manhood of their fore- fathers. Mr. Carlyle has been welcomed by Scotch- men and Englishmen as the great protester against notions, the witness for Fact and History. He has avowed his indifference to anything else. He long ago abjured metaphysics, German or Scotch. In his latest work he has abjured poets as not sufficiently savouring of the realty; he has complained of Shake- speare and Goethe for devoting their amazing powers to dramas or novels, when they might have explained what has been actually done in the world.* A reaction against logical formulas, proceeding * l ' It is frightful to see the Gehlirte Dummkopf (what we here may translate 'Dryasdust') doing the function of History, and the Shakespeare and the Goethe neglecting it." — History of Frederick the Great, vol. i. p. 23. Ante, pp. 21, 22 (speaking of a design of Schiller to write an Epic poem on Frederick) : — " Happily Schiller did not do it. . . . It is not the untrue, imaginary picture of a man and his life that SHELLEY. 139 from an entirely different quarter, prompted by dif- ferent feelings, and leading to quite different results, is more associated with Lnglish history than with Scotch, with Oxford than with Edinburgh. A young member of University College, who, while he was there, delighted, it is said, especially in the sendees of the chapel and in all the venerable traditions of the place, having been deprived of those opportuni- ties of culture bv the wisdom or unwisdom of the au- thorities of that time, became the pantheistical poet of our land, the man who embodied in his verse and character the thoughts, dreams, aspirations, to which that name is most correctly affixed, those which were floating and are floating in the atmosphere of Eng- land as well as of France and Germany. In his ' Queen Mab/ his ' Alastor/ his ( Sensitive Plant/ his c Skylark/ some only discover the denial of all which Christians believe ; some have heard " the wailings of a child seeking for its Father." But one as much as the other must feel that that spirit could be circumscribed by no terms of logic. Sea, sky, air, birds, trees, flowers, — to these he fled from notions and formulas ; with these he was certain he had a sympathy and a fellowship. They gave him his sense of the Infinite, the Absolute, the Eternal, by which he meant that which could not be put into the terms I want from my Schiller, but the actual, natural likeness, true as the face itself, nay, truer in a sense, which the Artist might help to give, and the Botcher (Pfuscher) never can." 140 SEARCH FOR A MORAL SCIENCE. i and forms of logic, that which a spirit within him was yearning after. If you could tell him how those yearnings might be satisfied without losing a personal God and his own personal being, you might reach his ear ; if not, you would leave him a pantheist as you found him, exercising a charm over the freshest and noblest among the youth of his land, a charm which is most commonly broken by their sinking into the service of Mammon, now and then by their claiming their heritage as redeemed sons of God. There is a third reaction against this tyranny of notions which I believe is beginning to be felt with particular strength in Oxford. It is what I would call the scientific reaction. I have hinted already, in my second Letter, at the strife between Sir William Ha- milton and the mathematicians, — at his strong and ap- parently well-grounded conviction that he must destroy them before he could establish his own position se- curely. But is there not a science of Morals as well as of Physics? Aristotle has certainly led Oxford men to seek after one, to feel that they cannot dis- pense with one, whether he has himself discovered it to them or not. I think we have all been forced to feel that he is not the practical philosopher he wished to be, that he has not at all events given us the help we want for our lives, if — as some pretend, with whom I do not the least agree — he has merely taught us to look for a mean between two extremes. Our age has had plentiful experience of this seeking for a middle THE VIA MEDIA. 141 in Politics and Morals as well as in Theology. Some- thing may perhaps come ont of it hereafter. What has come out of it already has been described with considerable life and accuracy by the poet Cowper. " Some fretful tempers wince at every touch, You always do too little or too much. You speak with life, in hopes to entertain : Your elevated voice goes through the brain. You fall at once into a lower key : That's worse, the drone-pipe of an humble-bee. The southern sash admits too strong a light ; You rise and drop the curtain : now 'tis night. He shakes with cold ; you stir the fire and strive To make a blaze : that 's roasting him alive. Your hope to please him vain on every plan, Himself should work that wonder if he can. Alas ! his efforts double his distress ; He likes yours little, and his own still less. Thus, always teazing others, always teazed, His only pleasure is to be displeased." A moderation of this kind is scarcely satisfactory for those who have actually to fight their way through the world, — to choose a path for themselves, not merely to find fault with the extreme paths of every one else. Butler too, I have contended already, has awa- kened in us the search after a scientific Morality, i.e. a Morality which has some ground in reality and not in notions. And Butler has certainly not satisfied the desire which he has kindled if, as some would 142 PROBABILITIES. tell us, he has only taught us that probability is the ground of all human actions. We have specimens enough among our statesmen, as well, I am afraid, as among our divines, of persons who have taken in that maxim in its fullness, — who think that the art of steering their life's vessel consists in following all chance currents, or in merely resisting them, — who have no principles to determine when they should yield or when they should resist, — who have a set of opinions to which they swore to adhere when they entered upon the business of the world, and from which they were forced to drift away when they become actually conversant with the business of it. These are not examples to encourage us in the wor- ship of probability, but beacons to warn us from it. I am sure that Butler would have been more shocked than we can be at the results to which the supposed following of his precept is leading us. I am sure he would have told us, 'All probabilities and ' appearances will drag you into perdition, if there are f not some fixed and unchangeable lights by which you ' are directing your course/ Where then are these fixed and unchangeable lights to be found? Where is that immutable Mo- rality which all earnest men have sought after? When Kant had discovered that no notions could possibly contain it or represent it, " he built again/' Mr. Mansel indignantly exclaims, " the things which he destroyed, so making himself a transgressor ;" or, WAR WITH THE INFINITE. 143 as I have stated the case somewhat differently in my last letter, he confessed that there was a witness in man for truths which he coidd not comprehend in notions, and that this witness had the closest con- nection with his practical morality. What connec- tion it has is a subject of earnest interest to English- men and Germans. Each has discussed it in their own way. Each has felt that a morality which is not tied bv our limitations, is at the root of that which is. Mr. Mansel tramples them all down in this triumphant style : — " The Infinite, as contemplated by this philosophy, " cannot be regarded as consisting of a limited num- " ber of attributes, each unlimited in its kind. It " cannot be conceived, for example, after the ana- " logy of a line, infinite in length, but not in breadth ; " or of a surface, infinite in two dimensions of space, "but bounded in the third; or of an intelligent " being, possessing some one or more modes of con- "sciousness in an infinite degree, but devoid of " others. Even if it be granted, which is not the " case, that such a partial infinite may without con- " tradiction be conceived, still it will have a relative (c infinity only, and be altogether incompatible with " the idea of the Absolute. The line limited in " breadth is thereby necessarily related to the space " that limits it ; the intelligence endowed with a li- "mited number of attributes, coexists with others " which are thereby related to it, as cognate or oppo- 144 SEA OF CONTRADICTIONS. cc site modes of consciousness. The metaphysical re- presentation of the Deity, as absolute and infinite, " must necessarily, as the profoundest metaphysicians "have acknowledged, amount to nothing less than " the sum of all reality. ' \Vhat kind of an absolute " c Being is that/ says Hegel, ' which does not con- " ' tain in itself all that is actual, even evil included V " We may repudiate the conclusion with indignation ; "but the reasoning is unassailable. If the Abso- " lute and Infinite is an object of human conception " at all, this, and none other, is the conception re- " quired. That which is conceived as absolute and in- " finite must be conceived as containing within itself "the sum, not only of all actual, but of all possible "modes of being. For if any actual mode can be " denied of it, it is related to that mode, and limited " by it ; and if any possible mode can be denied of "it, it is capable of becoming more than it now is, " and such u capability is a limitation. Indeed it is " obvious that the entire distinction between the pos- sible and the actual can have no existence as re- " gards the absolutely infinite ; for an unrealized pos- sibility is necessarily a relation and a limit/' — (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 45-47.) Again : — " Not only is the Absolute, as conceived, incapable " of a necessary relation to anything else, but it is " also incapable of containing, by the constitution of " its own nature, an essential relation within itself; as THE LOGICA*L ANARCHY. 145 "a whole, for instance, composed of parts, or as a " substance consisting of attributes, or as a conscious "subject in antithesis to an object. For if there " is in the absolute any principle of unity, distinct { ' from the mere accumulation of parts or attributes, " this principle alone is the true absolute. If, on "the other hand, there is no such principle, then " there is no absolute at all, but only a plurality u of relatives. The almost unanimous voice of phi- losophy, in pronouncing that the absolute is both "one and simple, must'be accepted as the voice of reason also, so far as reason has any voice in the matter. But this absolute unity, as indifferent and containing no attributes, can neither be distin- guished from the multiplicity of finite beings by "any characteristic feature, nor be identified with "them in their multiplicity. Thus we are landed " in an inextricable dilemma. The Absolute cannot "be conceived as conscious, neither can it be con- " ceived as unconscious : it cannot be conceived as " complex, neither can it be conceived as simple : it cannot be conceived by difference, neither can it be conceived by the absence of difference : it can- not be identified with the universe, neither can it "distinguished from it. The One and the Many, "regarded as the beginning of existence, are thus "alike incomprehensible." — [Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 49, 50.) a tt (C (t It (C 146 THOUGHT •SUICIDAL. Or this : — " Again, how can the Relative be conceived as " coming into being ? If it is a distinct reality from " the absolute, it must be conceived as passing from " non-existence into existence. But to conceive an "object as non-existent, is again a self-contradic- "tion; for that which is conceived exists, as an object " of thought, in and by that conception. We may " abstain from thinking of an object at all ; but, if " we think of it, we cannot but think of it as exist- 11 ing. It is possible at orie time not to think of an " object at all, and at another to think of it as already " in being ; but to think of it in the act of becoming, "in the progress from not being into being, is to " think that which, in the very thought, annihilates " itself. Here again the Pantheistic hypothesis seems " forced upon us. We can think of creation only as " a change in the condition of that which already ex- " ists ; and thus the creature is conceivable only as a " phenomenal mode of the being of the Creator." — (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 53, 54.) What greater proof do we need than these passages furnish, that so long as we are busy with the terms of logic, so long we shall never arrive at the truth of things ? The acknowledgment of these contradictions is common to Mr. Mansel with all the three classes of which I have spoken. Those who seek for the meaning of common facts, will joyfully refer to his Lecture as a proof that you cannot leave that ground PRACTICAL RESULTS. 147 and enter the logical ground without being involved in a series of hopeless quibbles which no human being ought to trouble himself with, unless he means to abandon the business of existence, and to give himself up to feats of jugglery. The Pantheist, in one mood of his mind, will be strengthened by Mr. Manse? s victorious analysis in his persuasion, "That nothing is, but all things seem, And we the shadows of the dream ;" in another, will exclaim triumphantly, ' Yes ! now I ' know that I must fly to Nature and lose myself in ' the great Universe, and seek a God there, since you ' show me so clearly that He is not to be found in ' any of your notions and dogmas/ And what will he who is at the most opposite point to Pantheism, who longs to escape from vagueness, and to find some safe foundation for his own thoughts and acts — for his own self — say to these elaborate logical confu- tations of his right to engage in any such pursuit ? What can he say but this ? — ' After working dili- ' gently through Aldrich, reading Whately, studying 'Mill, I did not require to be told that the terms ' Finite and Infinite, Absolute and Relative, exclude ' each other, — that you cannot comprehend the Many 'under the One, or the One under the Many, — 'that the intellect unawares assumes a beginning 'for that which it calls First Cause. I thought 'these were nuts for children to crack, conundrums ' for breakfast-parties ; if introduced into the solemn 148 MR. MAKSEl/s TRIUMPH. lecture-room, to be noticed there only for the pur- pose of explaining how dishonest men had turned them to vile services — how verbal contradictions had been used by Athenian rhetoricians as a plea for atrocious deeds — or for the purpose of illustrating the method by which Socrates cut these webs and brought his disciples back through converse with homely life and actual things into a perception of their deepest necessities, into a conviction that for them they must seek a real, not a nominal satisfac- tion. T never dreamed that these riddles were to be Church entertainments, that the Christian teacher inherited the functions of Protagoras and Prodicus. But if that is settled, — if Christianity does wrap her- self in these conceits, and pronounce herself incapa- ble of meeting those demands which remain just as deep, just as practical, after these demonstrations as before, — what have we to do ? The term Finite, in the schools, does, we know, exclude the term Infinite. The actual finite in ourselves, the partial good we perceive in ourselves and in those about us, compels us to ask if there is not that which is good in itself, which is not partial. The term Relative excludes the term Absolute. But since my brother is a being in himself, and not only a brother, since every father is a being in himself, and not only a father, — the actual relation, the living relation, drives us to seek for an Absolute, which lies beyond and behind the Relation. Of course we entangle ourselves in con- A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE. 1-49 1 tradictions every time we try to think of a Cause. ' It is that very entanglement which drives us to ask ' for some ground beneath our thoughts, not included ' in them, but the only explanation of them. I know c that the One and the Many negative each other. 1 But I know that amidst a world of pluralities, I ( must seek Unity. "What then does your arguing re- ( prove ? What effect has it but to force us beyond ( the confines of your Logic, and therefore, as it f seems from your statement, bevond the confines of ( what you call your Revelation ? ' Alas ! alas ! for those critics of human doubts and questionings who, like the critic in Sterne, never look at the living countenance of him on whom they are commenting, but only at their stop-watches ! They never find out what the opponent means, what he wants; they only find out what he does not mean and does not want ! What they suppose are green withs, fresh cut, that will be sure to bind Samson, especially when he is asleep — are in truth very dry withs, not green at all, which he has broken from off his limbs a hundred times, and which he will arouse himself in a moment to break again. But may you not be doing a worse thing ? May you not have found the secret of his strength, the lock that has not vet been severed from the head ? Mav you not be robbing him of that ? May vou not, with your fine logic, have been scattering that belief in an Eter- nal Goodness and Truth which has been the treasure. 150 INTELLECTIVE ABSTRACTIONS. if as yet the unrealized treasure, of his life? May you not have been convincing him that what has come to him continually a thousand times as the dawn of a distant hope, — what has sometimes come very nigh to him as a word in his heart, — is a de- lusion after all ? Oh, what have vou done for his present life, for his future life, when you have done this? There is an awful passage in Milton's letter to Mr. Hartlib, which I used to hope had scarcely any application to the Oxford of the present day. Read it. — I doubt not vou know it alreadv, — in connection with the passages I have quoted from the Bampton Lecturer, and judge. " And for the usual method of teaching Arts, I " deem it to be an old error of Universities not vet ct well recovered from the Scholastic grossness of bar- " barous ages, that instead of beginning with Arts " most easie, and those be such as are most obvious " to the sence, they present their young unmatricu- " culated Novices at first comming with the most " intellective abstractions of Logick and Metaphy- " sicks : So that thev, havin°; but newlv left those "grannnatick flats and shallows where they stuck " unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable " construction, and now on the sudden transported " under another climate to be tost and turmoil' d " with their unballasted wits in fadomless and un- " quiet deeps of controversie, do for the most part LAWYERS, POLITICIANS, CLERGYMEN. 151 " grow into hatred and contempt of Learning, mockt " and deluded all this while with ragged Notions and "Babblements, while they expected worthy and de- " lightful knowledge ; till poverty or youthful years "call them importunately their several wayes, and t( hasten them with the sway of friends either to an "ambitious and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous Di- " vinity ; Some allured to the trade of Law, ground- " ing their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly "contemplation of justice and equity, which was " never taught them, but on the promising and pleas- "ing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, " and flowing fees ; others betake them to State af- " fairs, with souls so unprincipled in vertue, and true " generous breeding, that flattery, and Court shifts "and tyrannous Aphorisms appear to them the " highest points of wisdom ; instilling their barren " hearts with a conscientious slavery, if, as I rather "think, it be not fein'd. Others, lastly, of a more " delicious and airie spirit, retire themselves, know- " ing no better, to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, "living out their daies in feast and jollity; which "indeed is the wisest and the safest course of all " these, unless they were with more integrity under- taken. And these are the errours, and these are " the fruits of misspending our prime youth at the " Schools and Universities as we do, either in learn- ing meer words or such things chiefly, as were " better unlearnt." 152 THE BOOK OF FACTS. These are fearful considerations — all of them. But oh, I beseech you, dwell most upon that which con- cerns you most ! Consider whether ( these intellective abstractions ' can ever be the ground for your Gospel, ever the defence of your Bible ? Is not your Gospel a message concerning the Infinite, the Absolute, the Eternal ? Is not your Bible a book of Facts by which men are led gradually on to know what the ground is at their feet ; to feel, through the actual finite, for the Infinite, — through the actual temporal, for the Eternal? If it is, as Mr. Mansel delights to tell us, unsystema- tical, is not that because it is in the highest sense methodical? Does it not begin with the facts of family life, discovering a God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob at work in them ? Does it not go on to the facts of National life, discovering an I Am, an unchangeable Lawgiver and King and Judge in the midst of them ? Does it not explain at last the facts of Human or universal Life, the mystery of a Father, a Son, and a Spirit, being discovered through these? If you speak out of this Bible, will you not have something else to tell the student of Facts than that he cannot reconcile opposing Notions, — the seeker of a divine Morality, than that he cannot bring his finite notions into fellowship with the Infinite, — the yearner after the sympathy of the Universe, than that he can- not prove his right to it in the schools ? May you not bid the first rejoice and give thanks that the Highest of All has explained His government over His crea- ITS TIDINGS. 153 tures through facts, and not through notions ? May we not say to the second, that the whole Law and Gospel is a discovery of that Absolute Goodness and Truth which lie at the foundation of all Goodness and Truth in us ? May we not ask the Pantheist if the revelation of a God in Whom we are living and moving and having our being, the Life-giver to all creatures, — of One who is above all and through all and in us all, — will not satisfy the cravings of his spirit, without compelling him to forget the eternal boundaries of Right and Wrong ? Ever yours faithfully, F. D, M. 154 LETTEE VIL MR. HANSEL'S THIRD AND FOURTH LECTURES.— PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS.— THE SCOTCH. — SCHLEIERMACHER. — MR. MANSEL'S OWN TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECT. — PRAYER. My dear Sir, At the close of Mr. Hansel's second Lecture, he states his reasons for using the philosophical terms Infinite, Absolute, Cause, in their dry formality, in- stead of introducing the awful name of God, and making that the theme of such tormenting subtle- ties. I appreciate the reverence which led him to adopt that course. Yet I cannot help thinking that if he reconsiders it, he may be led to detect a practical sophism in his argument. I grant it is a fearful thing to connect plays upon words with awful reali- ties. But can he avoid the connection ? Is he not an- swerable for bringing them together ? At all events, the summary of his conclusions, with which he com- mences his third Lecture, must help to break down the distinction which he tried to establish in the pre- vious one. Read, and consider it. OBJECT OF THE LAST LECTURE. 155 " My last Lecture was chiefly occupied with an " examination of the ideas of the Absolute and the " Infinite, — ideas which are indispensable to the foun- " dation of a Metaphysical Theology, and of which a " clear and distinct consciousness must be acquired, " if such a Theology is to exist at all. I attempted " to show the inadequacy of these ideas for such a pur- " pose, by reason of the contradictions which to our " apprehension they necessarily involve from every " point of view. The result of that attempt may be " briefly summed up as follows. "We are compelled, " bv the constitution of our minds, to believe in the "existence of an Absolute and Infinite Being, — a " belief which appears forced upon us, as the comple- " ment of our consciousness of the relative and the " finite. But the instant we attempt to analyze the " ideas thus suggested to us, in the hope of attaining "to an intelligible conception of them, we are on " everv side involved in inextricable confusion and " contradiction. It is no matter from what point of " view we commence our examination ; — whether, " with the Theist, we admit the co-existence of the "Infinite and the Finite, as distinct realities; or, " with the Pantheist, deny the real existence of the " Finite ; or, with the Atheist, deny the real exist- " ence of the Infinite ; — on each of these suppositions " alike, our reason appears divided against itself, " compelled to admit the truth of one hypothesis, and " yet unable to overcome the apparent impossibilities (C cc (( 156 NO RESTING-PLACE FOR US. "of each. The philosophy of Rationalism, thus traced upwards to its highest principles, finds no legitimate resting-place, from which to commence its deduction of religious consequences" — [Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 67, 68.) I have put the last sentence in italics, that I may make a remark which is not more important for this passage than for the whole volume. You and I are very little concerned in ascertaining whether "the philosophy of Rationalism," or any other philosophy, religious or irreligious, has "a legitimate resting- place." But if it is true that " our reason is divided against itself," — if that division has reference to the question whether Theism, i. e. the doctrine that there is a God j Pantheism, i. e. the doctrine that everything is God ; Atheism, i.e. the doctrine that there is no God, is the right doctrine, — this is a point of all im- portance to us, — this is a matter of life and t death. That division must in some way be brought to an end ; for what does it mean ? That we have no legi- timate resting-place ; that there is no foundation for our being. One more remark before I proceed to the business of the Lecture. Mr. Mansel hopes to deliver us from Hegel and the modern Germans. Have you consi- dered to what point he takes us back, that he may effect that deliverance? Need I remind you that there was a Hume before there was a Hegel; that the utter incapacity of deciding between Theism, Pan- DAVID HUME. 157 theism, Atheism — of deciding any question whatever concerning the Nature of God — was precisely the point from which he " commenced his deduction of religious consequences." I am far indeed from say- ing that Mr. Hansel's religious consequences are the same as Hume's. I know that they are not. But will you allow me to remark that he does not differ from Hume in this respect, that he recommends general acquiescence in the established religion of the day. Hume would have recommended the same acquies- cence. He hated the Puritans as cordially as he could hate anything, because they were not acquies- cent, but had wild dreams of knowing something of the Infinite and Eternal. He reverenced the Stuart policy as much as he could reverence anything, be- cause he thought it the best check upon this extrava- gance. He cared for no institution more than for what he called a State Establishment of Religion, be- cause he supposed that it restrained men from any excess of thinking respecting subjects upon which people will think, though their thinking can bring them to no result. I frankly tell you that in my judgment the latter opinion was not only the proper sequel of the first, but that it has produced immensely more mischief to English morality and English faith. According to a tradition which Sir James Hackin- tosh believed, Butler rather advised than discouraged the publication of one of the books on which Hume's infidel reputation rests ; so confident was he that 158 EXPERIENCE. the truth would bear discussion, and would rise more strongly out of it. But the doctrine that the Church, of which he was a Bishop, existed to keep alive the kind of indifference which he longed to disturb, would, I think, have been extremely shocking to him. Hume's Scepticism was followed by an almost im- mediate reaction; the notion of him as a Defender of Ecclesiastical and Tory faith has not forsaken the minds of many clergymen, even after a century of revolutions. This is no digression. It is the proper introduc- tion to the subject of the coming Lecture, which is to develope the Philosophy of Consciousness as opposed to the Philosophy of Rationalism. Now I am bound to own — and I do it with great pleasure — that if we find ourselves shut in by Hume's contradictions, this may be the best process for escaping from them Supposing it is needful — and perhaps it may be — to travel again over that ground which our fathers in the last century travelled, that is, I conceive, the proper route. In England and in Scotland, even in France and Germany, men appear to have been led along it, if they were not able ultimately to find their 1 resting-place' in it. I spoke of a great impatience and weariness of this ( Consciousness/ and, above all, of a ' Philosophy of Consciousness/ which has mani- fested itself in our time, and which I thought had much justification. I am therefore the more anxious to show what service those who spoke of Conscious- hume's word, otherwise used. 159 ness in the last age were rendering to mankind, and how much we may lose if we despise the lessons which they left us. Hume's favourite word was Experience. How can we know anything to be true except by experience? What experience can we have about those facts and doctrines of which the believers in a Revelation talk to us ? Do not they in their very nature and state- ment transcend Experience ? Theological Apologists nibbled at this net, and tried to make or find holes in it. Actual sufferers, Christian men and women who had never heard Hume's name, cut through it. Those who are far less familiar than you are with the phra- seology of the religious men of the last generation, cannot be ignorant that Hume's watchword was also theirs. He said there could be no experience save that which reached us through the senses, or was de- rived from impressions on the senses. They spoke of spiritual experiences which were not only most pre- cious and sacred to them, but the absence of which left them bare of all motives to right and kindly ac- tions. Were they self- deceivers, or bent upon deceiv- ing others? — fanatics, or hypocrites? These solu- tions were evidently the easiest; the majority of their opponents, wits and doctors, resorted to one or the other. There were those who could not, — who had known enough of such feelings themselves, to believe that some which they had not known might be ge- nuine. These mental operations, to whatever source 160 -THE SCOTCH DOCTORS. they might be attributed, were surely worthy of in- vestigation. If they could be fairly investigated ac- cording to some legitimate method already recog- nized, might not those which seemed ' abnormal* be reduced into order ? might not enthusiasm be checked ? might not the limits of experience be stretched at least some way beyond the point which Hume had fixed for them? Good and evil, I conceive, were mixed in this ex- periment as in most others. It was good to defend the worth and verity of experiences which concern the invisible as well as the visible world ; it was good to show that all human experiences have some rela- tion to each other, and, if possible, to trace out the relation. On the other hand, there was great dan- ger that the investigator would ' murder to dissect ;' that he would kill the experience, of whatever kind it was, in order to examine its nature; and would dis- course about Experiences which, for him, were no Ex- periences at all. There was fear that the student would become a contemplator of actual mental opera- tions till they ceased to be actual, or that he would merely conceive of them, and affix certain labels to them, as if they were lying outside of him, and were not in any sense his. But these mischievous results might perhaps be avoided. The honey might be extracted from the hives without the destruction — without more, at most, than the temporary stupefaction — of the bees that had WORDS COMPOUNDED WITH 'CUM. 161 gathered it. And there was something to encourage hope — if there was also something to make the alarm look all too reasonable — in the proceedings of those who engaged in this branch of the philosophical busi- ness. The phrase which they adopted, — in some degree superseding that of the sceptical philosopher and of the unphilosophical believers, — was, it seems to me, a specially happy one. All words like those into which the proposition cum enters, — Conviction, Conception, Conversion, Consciousness, — are worthy of the closest study and examination; hardly any are so sugges- tive; hardly any contain so much light respecting our processes of thought, respecting our human na- ture. No one of them has more of this value than the word Consciousness ; that it should have been ac- cepted in an age by no means philological, and by men who were rather the reverse of philologers,* is one of those indications of a Providence that shapes our ends which ought not to be overlooked. The word ' Experience 5 might be limited to that which passed in the subject of the experience; the word * Consciousness 5 at once hinted by its formation, — showed by every one of its simplest applications, — that there is a fellowship and participation between the conscious man and something else. ' To be con- scious/ says Mr. Mansel, { we must be conscious of * I allude to Reid and Dugald Stewart ; not, of course, to Sir Wil- liam Hamilton, who was a philologer. t 162 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SOMETHING. something? Or, as he says afterwards, in rather grander, but not better language: — ' There must be a Subject, or person conscious, and an Object or thing of which he is conscious. There can be no Conscious- ness without the union of these two factors? Exactly; and therefore my Consciousness must of necessity carry me beyond myself. If it is the lowest conscious- ness of mere physical pain or physical pleasure, it carries me to something which is the source of that pain or that pleasure. If it is the consciousness of * regard or affection, it carries me to the person who awakens that regard or affection. If it is a conscious- ness of dependence, it carries me to that thing or that person on whom I am dependent ; if it is a con- sciousness of wrong, it carries me to that which I have wronged, or to him I have wronged. "What a deliverance then may this word be from those perils which I have hinted at as likely to beset those who philosophize on our mental operations ! How it will remind them, at every step, of the direct relation be- tween us and facts, between us and persons ! How they will tremble if they discover that they are inter- posing any mere nominal or formal barriers between the conscious man and that whereof he is conscious ! How anxious they will be to look at those other words to which I have alluded, in the spirit and ac- cording to the maxims which they have already brought to bear upon this one ! The word ' Concep- tion/ for instance, — how gladly they will avail them- SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY. 163 selves of the physical mystery which it denotes as an analogy to the mental mystery ! How many confu- sions they will see might have been averted in the nse of that word, how many hard judgments respecting other men's use of it, if it had been recollected that every act of ours which seems most internal, most our own, implies co-operation, implies something which is not our own ! I do not complain of the Scotch philosophers for not dwelling as much as they might have done upon these truths which are latent in their own chosen phrase. They were too obvious ; they lay too much on the common high-road of life to attract much of their attention. They were working out a great book- system; one ought to be thankful for every homage which they paid to ordinary facts whilst they were en- gaged in such a task ; to have stooped too often to them would have destroyed their school reputation. We Englishmen can afford to join the late Profes- sor Blunt in admiring Paley because he illustrated some part of his doctrine of adaptations by speaking of the great difficulty he experienced in procuring a wig which exactly fitted his head ; but we cannot re- quire other people to feel that admiration, seeing that it arises from our stupid attachment to the concrete and the practical. There is, however, a country which is supposed to be as much addicted to abstractions as Scotland. The Philosophy of Consciousness, in Germany, as it pre- 164 SCHLEIERMACHER. sents itself in Schleiermacher, was a rebellion against the abstract tendency. Trained in Moravian habits of reverence and affection for the Person of Christ, feel- ing in his manhood the full attraction of that Pan- theistic movement which is, as I said in my last Let- ter, a vehement effort to escape from formulas into sympathy with the living Universe, — taught by his country's sufferings the need it had of a ground for personal life and morality which neither formulas nor Pantheism could give, — instructed by his earnest study of the Socratic method in the Platonic Dia- logues that the truest Philosophy does not consist in pursuing Notions, but in rising out of them — finding the orthodox defenders of Scripture, as well as the Naturalists who sought to reduce it according to their maxims, equally averse from this method, equally de- termined to bring the most earnest thoughts and ques- tionings of his countrymen within their narrow rules, equally indifferent to the deepest necessities of the human soul, — perceiving in the New Testament much which met his cravings, which presented itself to him as the divine satisfaction of his wants, much that for him lay in shadow, — and being almost entirely out of sympathy with the lessons of the Old Testament, — he became the most thorough, devout, accomplished defender of Consciousness as the instrument, to some extent the measure, of belief whom the world has seen or is likely to see. Mr. Mansel has testified (Lec- ture IV., p. 113) that Schleiermacher' s writings have HIS INFLUENCE. 165 had, perhaps, more influence than those of any other man, in forming the modern religious Philosophy of his own country. He adds, that his 'views, in all * their essential features, have been ably maintained, 'and widely diffused among ourselves. 1 Those of Schleiermacher's countrymen whom I have known, and who have described to me the influence he has exerted over them, have not spoken so much of 'his forming their religious philosophy/ as of his lead- ing them to think what Philosophy was, and what Religion was. He found his disciples, they said, eager for a set of conclusions well packed and ticketed as religious or philosophical. He withdrew them from that ambition j he led them to feel for them- selves after that which was needful for their own being. His teaching or method, they said, encou- raged the activity and earnestness of their minds; but it forbade, by its very nature, the acceptance of the decrees or dogmas of the teacher. If, therefore, it is true, as Mr. Mansel aflirms, that some are wish- ing to establish a Schleiermacher school among us, the best way of defeating their purpose would be, not to display Schleiermacher's weakness, but to exhibit him in his full strength. If he was the man which his countrvmen say that he was, which his Scotch WW ' or English admirers think that he was, he must be shrivelled, distorted, changed into the thing that he was not, when he becomes the representative of a cer- tain bundle of opinions. Those who would maintain 166 NOT AX ECLECTIC. " his views in all their essential features/' will commit a practical solecism, of which that slipslop phrase is a tolerably faithful exponent. I should grieve much for the sake of Schleier- macher's own character, still more for the sake of our English faith and honesty, if there was this at- tempt to copy, or rather to caricature, him in Eng- land. But Mr. Mansel certainly has done nothing to avert the danger by describing Schleiermacher " as the chief modern representative of Eclectical Christianity." Such language will at once be felt by those who know the facts to be coarse and unjust, merely adapted to the prejudices of English hearers. A man who seeks that which he needs for his moral life is the very reverse of an eclectic, who takes that which will fit into his system, and leaves out that which disturbs it. Nor will the far more sympathi- zing criticism on Schleiermacher, part of which Mr. Mansel quotes (Note, p. 419) from Mr. Vaughan's ' Remains/ have much effect on those who have felt his power. That accomplished writer made a clever point when he demanded that the man who built so much on religious consciousness, should have had a religious consciousness of the fidelity of all the state- ments in the Old and New Testament. But Mr. Vaughan, with his knowledge of the processes of German thought, must have felt that this statement was only a clever point, and must have lamented it as one of the dulcia vitia into which reviewers OPPOSITION TO HEGEL. 167 * are apt to be betrayed. He was perfectly aware that Schleiermacher's effort to realize facts as his own was avowedly a protest against the opinion that they were to be received merely on the authority of the Scrip- tural documents. To ask him to receive that autho- rity as part of his consciousness, was simply asking him to contemplate the subject from another point of view, to assume another ground. I do not think that a pious demand, any more than a consistent or a wise one. If there was in the German divines, when Schleiermacher appeared, an inclination to mere opi- nions about Scripture, either positive or negative, it is not too great an exercise of faith in God to suppose that He may have led a student into a course of in- quiry which at least made portions of Scripture very dear to him. And if this is so, the study of his course of thought, as it was, must be more profitable to us than a remonstrance against the direction which was imparted to it. I believe that study may be very use- ful indeed. An ordinary English reader of Mr. Man- se? s book might easily suppose that Schleiermacher and Hegel exhibited the same habit of mind in dif- ferent measures. He could scarcely conjecture that they were direct opponents ; that Hegelism is fled to by numbers just because the Consciousness of Schlei- ermacher is felt to be unsatisfactory, because it is thought to make Truth dependent upon our feelings instead of being fixed and eternal ; that Schleier- macher is fled to by numbers because Hegel's abso- 168 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THEM. lute teaching appears to be so hard and inhuman. A fair examination of this conflict might surely avail more to make us feel what is weak and wanting in each, and to prevent us from accepting the dogmas of either, than a denunciation of both. Such an exa- mination would, I believe, prepare us for appreciating the deep worth and reality of those parts of our creed which Schleiermacher rejected, would prepare us also to feel the unspeakable worth of that Evangelical movement in favour of conscious faith to which we owe what is most vital in our English Christianity, — to which we owe it that the notion of Christianity has not extinguished the belief in a personal Christ. Mr. Mansel, the common foe of Schleiermacher and Hegel, is also, it seems to me, the foe of all that con- scious faith " in the finite and relative" which charac- terized our Evangelical teachers, of that Revelation of the Eternal which " complements it." I proceed to illustrate this assertion from the third and fourth Lectures. I have pointed out already the valuable hints which Mr. Mansel has given us for the study of Conscious- ness, in the two propositions that we must be conscious of something, and that all consciousness supposes re- lation behveen a subject and an object. Equally pro- mising is the assurance that he will speak of "human " consciousness in general before he speaks of the " religious consciousness in particular." No method could be so desirable. If those principles are ad- MR. MANSEl/s 'LIMITS.' 169 hered to, — if this method is followed, — we must re- ceive the greatest help from the discussion. For before any attempt is made to tell us what conscious- ness is not, we shall of course be led, by a gradual inductive method, such as Reid and Stewart pro- fessed, to discover what it is ; we shall hear nothing of the Infinite, with which Consciousness is said not to be concerned, till we have been shown how it is concerned with the Finite ; the domain of the rela- tive will be thoroughly explored, if it be only in order that we may not presume to approach the Absolute. Hear how these obvious conditions of such an investi- gation are complied with. Thus it is that Mr. Mansel commences his whole argument. " To be conscious, we must be conscious of some- thing; and that something can only be known, as that which it is, by being distinguished from " that which it is not. But distinction is necessarily "limitation; for, if one object is to be distinguished " from another, it must possess some form of exis- " tence which the other has not, or it must not pos- u sess some form which the other has. But it is " obvious that the Infinite cannot be distinguished, as such, from the Finite, by the absence of any quality which the Finite possesses; for such ab- " sence would be a limitation. Nor yet can it be " distinguished by the presence of an attribute which " the Finite has not ; for, as no finite part can be a " constituent of an infinite whole, this differential tc tc 170 SELF-CONTRADICTION. " characteristic must itself be infinite ; and must at " the same time have nothing in common with the " finite. We are thus thrown back upon our former " impossibility ; for this second infinite will be dis- " tinguished from the finite by the absence of qua- " lities which the latter possesses. A consciousness " of the Infinite as such thus necessarily involves a " self-contradiction ; for it implies the recognition, " by limitation and difference, of that which can only " be given as unlimited and indifferent. " That man can be conscious of the Infinite, is " thus a supposition which, in the very terms in 11 which it is expressed, annihilates itself. Conscious- " ness is essentially a limitation ; for it is the deter- " mination of the mind to one actual out of many " possible modifications. But the Infinite, if it is to " be conceived at all, must be conceived as poten- tially everything and actually nothing ; for if there is anything in general which it cannot become, "it is thereby limited ; and if there is anything in " particular which it actually is, it is thereby ex- " eluded from being any other thing. But again, it " must also be conceived as actually everything and " potentially nothing ; for an unrealized potentiality " is likewise a limitation. If the infinite can be that " which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked " out as incomplete, and capable of a higher perfec- " tion. If it is actually everything, it possesses no " characteristic feature, by which it can be distin- it te THE INFINITE A NEGATION. 171 u guished from anything else, and discerned as an " object of consciousness. " This contradiction, which is utterly inexplicable " on the supposition that the infinite is a positive " object of human thought, is at once accounted for, " when it is regarded as the mere negation of thought. " If all thought is limitation ; — if whatever we con- " ceive is, by the very act of conception, regarded as " finite, — the infinite, from a human point of view, is " merely a name for the absence of those conditions " under which thought is possible. To speak of a " Conception of the Infinite is, therefore, at once to affirm those conditions and to deny them. The contradiction, which we discover in such a concep- " tion, is only that which we have ourselves placed " there, by tacitly assuming the conceivability of the " inconceivable. The condition of consciousness is " distinction ; and the condition of distinction is li- mitation. "We can have no consciousness of Being in general which is not some Being in particular : a thing, in consciousness, is one thing out of many. " In assuming the possibility of an infinite object of " consciousness, I assume, therefore, that it is at the " same time limited and unlimited ; — actually some- " thing, without which it could not be an object of " consciousness, and actually nothing, without which "it could not be infinite." — [Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 70-73.) What is this ? An account of the facts of human 172 VIOLATION OF METHOD. Consciousness generally as distinguished from the facts of Religious Consciousness specially ? I ask you to read over the passage which I have extracted, and the rest of the Lecture, down to the beginning of the ninety-sixth page, in which the author announces that he has concluded this first portion of the argu- ment, and is ready to enter upon the second, and to say whether I am or am not justified in making these assertions. (1.) That instead of examining any single instance of Consciousness as applied to some finite thing which he admits to be a legitimate and possible object of it, he at once plunges into the question of the Infinite, and the impossibility of exercising con- sciousness upon that. (2.) That, so far from holding himself aloof from questions concerning the religi- ous Consciousness in this part of his inquiry, all the most awful subjects with which, rightly or wrongly, re- ligious Consciousness has been assumed to have some connection — the Consciousness, Personality, Nature of God — come into the discussion, and the settlement of them is taken for granted. (3.) That this violation, not of some other method, but of that which Mr. Mansel has chosen for himself, enables him to intro- duce a number of topics for censure and condemna- tion, which serve admirably the purpose of a rheto- rician who wishes to prepossess his hearers with a horror of any opinion but his own, but which either Sir William Hamilton, Bishop Butler, or any person whose judgment is entitled to respect, would have TERMS ALL IN ALL. 1 73 pronounced worthless for the purposes of the argu- ment.* But this is a small part of my complaint. I could have forgiven Mr. Manscl for anticipating what was to come hereafter, if he had done the very smallest justice to the subject which lay before him. But when he enters the region of Consciousness he is so far from forsaking the dry terminology with which we found him exclusively occupied in the last Lec- ture, that we have here a mere repetition of that terminology. His whole argument turns not on my consciousness of finite things, and my incapacity for being conscious of infinite things ; but upon my con- sciousness of the term finite, and the term infinite. I could not convince myself for some time, that a man of Mr. Mansel's clearness of mind had fallen into so monstrous a confusion as this. I looked again and again at passages which proved that he knew as well * Thus, for instance, one may join with him in denouncing Fichte's conclusion respecting moral order (see the 74 th page), but I solemnly protest against the introduction of it into a discourse to a mixed audience, who could know nothing of the writer's general purpose, or the real meaning of a doctrine which is embodied in a single sentence. Such a course may please religions critics, but it is immoral, and furnishes a precedent which might be applied with tre- mendous force to Mr. Mansel himself. So also I can have no ob- jection to the exposure of "the dreams of a godless philosophy" [e. g. of that Hume philosophy which leaves us utterly in doubt whether Theism, Pantheism, Atheism, is most true or most false), but what has it to do with that division of the Lecture which ex- cludes religious questions ? 174 EXISTENCE — A TERM ! as any one that terms are no objects of thought, nay, in which he denounced other philosophers for making them so. I gave all weight to these remarks and de- nunciations. I confessed that they were in the strict- m est accordance with his own primary maxim; and yet, when I considered the passage which I am about to quote, I could not but fall back upon the conviction that Terms and Realities are hopelessly mingled in his intellect, nay even in his conscience. This contradiction, again, admits of the same explanation as the former. Our whole notion of existence is necessarily relative : for it is existence " as conceived by us. But Existence, as we conceive it, is but a name for the several wavs in which ob- jccts are presented to our consciousness, — a general term, embracing a variety of relations. T7ie Abso- lute, on the other hand, is a term expressing no ob- ject of thought, but only a denial of the relation by which thought is constituted. To assume ab- solute existence as an object of thought, is thus to " suppose a relation existing when the related terms exist no longer. An object of thought exists, as " such, in and through its relation to a thinker ; " while the Absolute, as such, is independent of all relation. The Conception of the Absolute thus im- plies at the same time the presence and the ab- sence of the relation by which thought is consti- " tuted ; and our various endeavours to represent it " are only so many modified forms of the contradic- ts tt cc a cc cc cc cc cc cc cc (t u cc cc cc HOW TO MAKE CONTRADICTIONS. 175 u tion involved in our original assumption. Here, too, "the contradiction is one which we ourselves have " made. It does not imply that the Absolute cannot " exist ; but it implies, most certainly, that we can- "not conceive it as existing." — (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 75, 76.) What deep truth is contained in the last part of this extract ! Here is a contradiction which we our- selves have made. Assuredly it is. I make the term Existence, and use that term to denote a variety of objects which are presented to my consciousness ; I make the term Absolute, to denote something that is not relative. I make the term Infinite to denote that which is not finite. None of these terms can possibly have anything to do with my consciousness. For never let us forget ( I am conscious of something' But the term finite is just as much nothing as the term infinite, the term relative as the term absolute. If we are thus defeated of all the help and guid- ance we were promised respecting the ordinary human consciousnesses, — if we can hear nothing of them ex- cept what they are not, — it is not to be expected that the special religious consciousness should be treated more satisfactorily. This beginning does not seem to me very hopeful. "Taking, then, as the basis of our inquiry, the " admission that the whole consciousness of man, " whether in thought, or in feeling, or in volition, is " limited in the manner of its operation and in the 176 RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. {( objects to which it is related, let us endeavour, " with regard to the religious consciousness in parti- " cular, to separate from each other the complicated " threads which, in their united web, constitute the " conviction of man's relation to a Supreme Being. " In distinguishing, however, one portion of these as " forming the origin of this conviction, and another " portion as contributing rather to its further deve- " lopment and direction, I must not be understood " to maintain or imply that the former could have " existed and been recognized, prior to and indepen- " dently of the co-operation of the latter. Conscious- " ness, in its earliest discernible form, is only possible " as the result of a union of the reflective with the " intuitive faculties. A state of mind, to be known " at all as existing, must be distinguished from other " states ; and, to make this distinction, we must " think of it, as well experience it. Without thought " as well as sensation, there could be no conscious- " ness of the existence of an external world : with- " out thought as well as emotion and volition, there " could be no consciousness of the moral nature of " man. Sensation without thought would at most " amount to no more than an indefinite sense of un- " easiness or momentary irritation, without any power " of discerning in what manner we are affected, or of " distinguishing our successive affections from each 11 other. To distinguish, for example, in the visible " world, any one object from any other, to know the VERBAL LIMITS TO AN ACT. 177 " house as a house, or the tree as a tree, we must be " able to refer them to distinct notions ; and such " reference is an act of thought. The same condition " holds good of the religious consciousness also. In " whatever mental affection we become conscious of " our relation to a Supreme Being, we can discern " that consciousness, as such, only by reflecting upon '* it as conceived under its proper notion. Without " this, we could not know our religious conscious- " ness to be what it is : and, as the knowledge of a " fact of consciousness is identical with its existence, u — without this, the religious consciousness, as such, " could not exist." — (Bampton Lectures, 2nd edit., pp. 105-107.) To ascertain, then, what Religious Consciousness is, we begin with laying down what the whole Con- sciousness of man is not. But have we even that starting-point ? Have we found even the limits to this general Consciousness ? We have found that there are terms or limits which no doubt have their meaning and use. But apparently they are verbal limits merely ; therefore limits which do not apply, and cannot apply, to that which is a vital act, or nothing. The effect of the confusion in the first stage of the inquiry becomes sadly evident in this. The Religious Consciousness, just like the general Consciousness, perishes in the statement of it. " In whatever affection ive become conscious of our relation to a Supreme Being, we can discern that Conscious - N 178 THE MATERIALS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. ness as such only by reflecting on it under its proper notion." Read over this sentence four or five times. Examine it word by "word. Weigh each in your mind. And then ask yourself whether you ever met with language which so entirely bewildered and ex- tinguished the feeling which it professes to set forth. What becomes of the actual Consciousness thus " re- flected upon as conceived under its proper notion "? But let us hope for some path through this wil- derness of words; for some heavenly manna to drop on us when we are quite faint with travelling through it. We now approach the positive part of the Lecture. " Religious thought, if it is to exist at all, can only " exist as representative of some fact of religious "intuition,, — of some individual state of mind, in " which is presented, as an immediate fact, that re- " lation of man to God, of which man, by reflection, " may become distinctly and definitely conscious. " Two such states may be specified, as dividing be- " tween them the rude materials out of which Reflec- " tion builds up the edifice of Religious Conscious- " ness. These are the Feeling of Dependence and the " Conviction of Moral Obligation. To these two facts " of the inner consciousness may be traced, as to " their sources, the two great outward acts by which " religion in various forms has been manifested among " men ; — Prayer, by which they seek to win God's "blessing upon the future, and Expiation, by which DEPENDENCE. 179 they strive to atone for the offences of the past. The Feeling of Dependence is the instinct which urges us to pray. It is the feeling that our exis- tence and welfare are in the hands of a superior Power ; — not of an inexorable Fate or immutable Law; but of a Being having at least so far the attributes of Personality, that He can show favour or severity to those dependent upon Him, and can be regarded by them with the feelings of hope, and fear, and reverence, and gratitude. It is a feeling similar in kind, though higher in degree, to that which is awakened in the mind of the child toward his parent, who is first manifested to him as the giver of such things as are needful, and to whom the first language he addresses is that of entreaty. It is the feeling so fully and intensely expressed in the language of the Psalmist: f Thou art he that took me out of my mother's c womb : thou wast my hope, when I hanged yet ( upon my mother's breasts. I have been left unto ' thee ever since I was born : thou art my God ' even from my mother's womb. Be not thou far c from me, O Lord : thou art my succour, haste f thee to help me. I will declare thy Name unto 1 my brethren : in the midst of the congregation 'will I praise thee/ With the first development of consciousness, there grows up, as a part of it, the innate feeling that our life, natural and spiri- c tual, is not in our power to sustain or to prolong ; 180 MORAL OBLIGATION. " that there is One above us, on whom we are de- " pendent, whose existence we learn, and whose pre- " sence we realize, by the sure instinct of Prayer. " "We have thus, in the Sense of Dependence, the " foundation of one great element of Religion, — the " Fear of God. " But the mere consciousness of dependence does " not of itself exhibit the character of the Being on " whom we depend. It is as consistent with super- " stition as with religion; — with the belief in a ma- " levolent, as in a benevolent Deity : it is as much " called into existence by the severities, as by the mer- " cies of God ; by the sufferings which we are unable to " avert, as by the benefits which we did not ourselves " procure. The Being on whom we depend is, in " that single relation, manifested in the infliction of " pain, as well as in the bestowal of happiness. But " in order to make suffering, as well as enjoyment, "contribute to the religious education of man, it is " necessary that he should be conscious, not merely " of suffering, but of sin ; — that he should look upon " pain not merely as inflicted, but as deserved ; and " should recognize in its Author the justice that " punishes, not merely the anger that harms. In " the feeling of dependence, we are conscious of the " Power of God, but not necessarily of His Good- " ness. This deficiency, however, is supplied by the " other element of religion, — the Consciousness of " Moral Obligation, carrying with it, as it necessarily CONVICTION OF SIN. 181 " does, the Conviction of Sin." — (Bampton Lectures, 2nded., pp. 108-110.) The reader will ask why I stop at these words, 1 Conviction of Sin. ' Do they not point to the most awful fact of human experience? Ought I not, in all justice, to let the writer show, by his interpretation of them, that he does mean Consciousness bv Con- sciousness, Conviction by Conviction, — that he does not, after all, merely put them at a distance from him- self, and range them under " their proper notion " ? I would gladly have continued the quotation, if it had thrown any light — even the faintest — upon those fearful struggles in the human spirit which this scriptural phrase so wonderfully expresses. But the moment it has been uttered, Mr. Mansel proceeds to refute Kant's doctrine of an ' Autonomy of the Will/ as well as to attack the "the fiction of an absolute law binding on all rational beings." I may ven- ture to meet him again, some time or other, on that last question ; but I will not be diverted by it from the one that is now in hand. We are speaking of Religious Consciousness ; let us confine ourselves to that. It is said to be " an edifice built up" " of the rude materials" formed out of " two states of mind." The first rude material is the feeling of Dependence. Surely a most deep and wonderful feeling or state of mind ! But is it not itself a Consciousness ? Am I not conscious of ac- tual dependence on something or some Person ? The 182 REFERRED TO A FORMULA. Child is so, from whom Mr. Mansel draws the best, because the simplest, of all illustrations and proofs. David is so, in that Psalm which he quotes. Neither the child nor the king builds up a Consciousness out of one or two states of mind. Each has a deep want and is drawn by it to a Person who meets the want, to a Person who has been the awakener of it. Is it not a grievous thing to put a multitude of phrases between this fact and ourselves ? Do not David's words take us into the very heart of the Conscious- ness ? If it is anything but a school phrase, is it not this ? And what do we gain by reducing it into this school jargon, but the destruction of the thing which that jargon endeavours to explain ? The words of the Psalmist tell us of an act of direct trust in a Person, in whom for some reason or other he can trust, whose character (or Name) is worthy of his trust, and worthy of other men's trust too, seeing that he says he will proclaim it to his brethren and to the Congregation. And am I the better for being told that this is the ' foundation — of one great ele- ment — of Religion.' It is impossible that an accom- plished scholar could have spoken of the foundation of an element, if he had not been busy in leading us further and further from the real and the actual into vagueness and emptiness. Mr. Mansel speaks next of another of these ele- ments of Religion, — the Consciousness of Moral Obli- gation. Here, again, one is pained by finding how ACTUAL EXPERIENCE. 183 the near is explained by the distant, the known by the unknown, the undoubted fact by the logical term. That the Consciousness of Sin in us involves the Consciousness of God's Goodness, is a remark as practical as it is profound ; if Mr. Mansel would have dwelt upon it, he would have seen, I fancy, the neces- sity of altering many of the moral statements which occur in the latter part of his book ; he would have made this part of it far clearer and simpler. But to do so, he must have faced those actual experiences of sin which devout men have recorded. He must have asked himself whether they were deceived in sup- posing that Sin meant an alienation from a Being with whom they were meant to be united, — an op- position between their character and His who has made them to be like Him. No doubt, they would one and all have entirely acquiesced in his state- ment that this Consciousness of evil had been a part, a necessary and wonderful part, of their " religious education." They would have testified, more strongly than he does, to the connection between the Con- sciousness of Suffering and of Sin in this Educa- tion. They would have said that they regarded all the bodily or outward sufferings they had undergone, as of unspeakable worth, because they had been in- struments by which the Spirit of God had awakened in them the Conviction of Sin, that so He might lead them on to the Conviction of Righteousness. But if, after all, these Experiences were resolved into 184 A MORAL BEING. the ' Consciousness of Moral Obligation/ I think they would have exclaimed that a tame, respectable, presentable school- formula was substituted for living facts; that the facts were required to give the for- mula a meaning ; that they had always recognized ' moral obligation/ without attaching a very distinct signification to either the adjective or the substan- tive j that they had learnt, by their Experience, who obliged them, and what was obliged; how a moral obligation differs from the force which acts upon the mere brute nature. Such persons would, unless I am greatly mistaken, read such a passage as the follow- ing with something more than a chill. They would feel that it carries them round in a weary circle of words and notions, each returning into the other, till all reality is lost, all practical guidance for life be- comes hopeless, all personal consciousness is extin- guished. " We are thus compelled, by the consciousness of " a moral obligation, to assume the existence of a " moral Deity, and to regard the absolute standard " of right and wrong as constituted by the nature of " that Deity. The conception of this standard, in " the human miud, may indeed be faint and fluctuat- " ing, and must be imperfect : it may vary with the " intellectual and moral culture of the nation or the " individual : and in its highest human representa- " tion, it must fall far short of the reality. But it is " present to all mankind, as a basis of moral obli- THE STANDARD OF RIGHT. 185 " gation and an inducement to moral progress : it is " present in the universal consciousness of sin ; in u the conviction that we are offenders against God ; " in the expiatory rites by which, whether inspired " by some natural instinct, or inherited from some u primeval tradition, divers nations have, in their " various modes, striven to atone for their transgres- " sions, and to satisfy the wrath of their righteous " Judge. However erroneously the particular acts " of religious service may have been understood by " men ; yet, in the universal consciousness of inno- " cence and guilt, of duty and disobedience, of an " appeased and offended God, there is exhibited the " instinctive confession of all mankind, that the mo- u ral nature of man, as subject to a law of obligation, " reflects and represents, in some degree, the moral u nature of a Deity by whom that obligation is im- " posed." — (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 112, 113.) " We are compelled" — by what? "by the conscious- ness of moral obligation" — i. e. of moral compulsion, " to assume the existence of a moral Deity." But what is moral ? Do I derive my knowledge of its mean- ing from this compulsion which has not been ex- plained, or from something else ? I am further com- pelled to regard " the absolute standard of right and wrong as constituted by the Nature of that Deity." Now we begin to see light. Now we can know what morality is ; now we can know what a moral compul- sion is. Ah, no ! Read the next passage. In place 186 THE CONCEPTION OF A STANDARD. of the standard itself, we have a " conception of this standard in the human mind" which may " vary with the intellectual and moral culture of the individual and the nation ;" which in fact therefore is no standard at all. But there is this consolation. This varying con- ception is "present to all mankind as a basis of moral obligation and an inducement to moral progress." We started from the consciousness of moral obligation. We have had the glimpse of a standard which would tell us what that is. We have lost that glimpse, and now we have the conception of this standard, i. e. (if it is anything) the consciousness of moral obligation, as a basis of moral obligation ! And all we can find out about this basis of moral obligation is, that " there are expiatory rites by which divers nations have in their various modes striven to atone for their transgressions and to satisfy the wrath of their righteous Judge;" e.g. the offerings to Moloch and to the Queen of Heaven, which the God of Abraham pronounced to be abomination in His sight. c Moral obligation ' has cer- tainly a very firm f basis ' ! And this is the lore which our sons are to hear from a University pulpit ! A portion of the Lecture is devoted to the sub- ject of Prayer. One might have hoped that while speaking of it, Mr. Mansel would have cared more to express his own convictions, than to prove how ab- surd are the convictions of other men. But it would seem that to confute is the one " moral obligation " of a Preacher. When he refers to Communion with (t (C ft IDEA OF PRAYER. 187 God, it is that lie may denounce a theoiy of Schleier- niaeher, which has been adopted, he says, by Mr. Morell. This theory is described in the following language. " According to Schleiermacher, the essence of Re- " ligion is to be found in a feeling of absolute and entire dependence, in which the mutual action and reaction of subject and object upon each other, which constitutes the ordinary consciousness of " mankind, gives way to a sense of utter, passive " helplessness, — to a consciousness that our entire " personal agency is annihilated in the presence of " the infinite energy of the Godhead. In our inter- u course with the world, he tells us, whether in re- " lation to nature or to human society, the feeling of " freedom and that of dependence are always present " in mutual operation upon each other ; sometimes " in equilibrium ; sometimes with a vast preponder- " ance of the one or the other feeling ; but never to " the entire exclusion of either. But in our com- " munion with God, there is always an accompanying " consciousness that the whole activity is absolutely " and entirely dependent upon Him ; that, whatever " amount of freedom may be apparent in the indi- " vidua! moments of life, these are but detached and " isolated portions of a passively dependent whole." — (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., p. 114.) Now I think any one who will be at the pains to refer to the 'Christliche Glaube/ of Schleiermacher, will 188 NOT A THEORY. discover that he certainly was not putting forth a theory on the subject of Religion* or of Prayer. Rightly or wrongly, he had evidently a dread of theories in this region. He was disposed, his opponents always say, to exaggerate the feeling above the intellect. u Piety " in itself," he says, in one of his fundamental axioms, " is neither a knowing nor a doing (iveder ein Wissen " noch ein Thun), but an inclination and determina- " tion of the Feeling (eine Neigung unci Btstimmtheit " des Gef'tihls)" Evidently he desired to describe what he regarded as a fact, or rather as the central fact of his own being, that in which he could not be singular or different from other men, but in which he most realized what was common to him with them all. There was a consciousness, it seemed, which lay beneath all others : it expressed the deepest necessity of the creatures in whom the other Consciousnesses dwelt, — it was the want of his own very self. He confessed a Being not imperfect and limited, like himself, apart from whom he could not be, in whom he could lose himself and find rest. Such a state- ment as this has surely nothing in it of the arro- gance and self-sufficiency of the Philosopher. It may * FrbmmifjTceU is his word, which I submit ought not to be trans- lated Religion. My edition is probably not the same as Mr. Man- sel's ; but the ninth Proposition of the Introduction may be taken as a specimen. " Das Gemeinsame aller frommen Erregungen, also das Wesen der Frommigkeit, ist dieses, das wir uns selbst als schlechthin abhangig bewusst sind, das heisse, das wir uns abhangig fuhlen von Gott." WORSHIP OF A MAGNITUDE. 189 be inadequate ; no one probably -would have felt the inadequacy of words to represent the profoundest re- ality more than its author. But something like it, T think, all persons who have ever prayed, or tried to pray, have coveted and adopted as the expression of their own impotency, of their surrender to the Almighty and the All-good. Mr. Mansel makes the following comments upon it:— " Of this theory it may be observed, in the first " place, that it contemplates God chiefly in the cha- " racter of an object of infinite magnitude. The rela- " tions of the object to the subject, in our conscious- u ness of the world, and in that of God, differ from " each other in degree rather than in kind. The " Deity is manifested with no attribute of persona- lity ; He is merely the world magnified to infinity : and the feeling of absolute dependence is in fact " that of the annihilation of our personal existence in " the Infinite Being of the Universe. Of this feeling, " the intellectual exponent is pure Pantheism ; and " the infinite object is but the indefinite abstraction " of Being in general, with no distinguishing cha- " racteristic to constitute a Deity. For the distinct- " ness of an object of consciousness is in the inverse " ratio to the intensity of the passive affection. As " the feeling of dependence becomes more powerful, " the knowledge of the character of the object on " which we depend, must necessarily become less and 190 CONTRADICTIONS IN TERMS. less; for the discernment of any object as such, is a state of mental energy and reaction of thought upon that object. Hence the feeling of absolute dependence, supposing it po'ssible, could convey no consciousness of God as God, but merely an inde- finite impression of dependence upon something. Towards an object so vague and meaningless, no real religious relation is possible. " In the second place, the consciousness of an ab- solute dependence in which our activity is annihi- lated, is a contradiction in terms; for conscious- ness itself is an activity. We can be conscious of a state of mind as such, only by attending to it ; and attention is in all cases a mode of our active energy. Thus the state of absolute dependence, supposing it to exist at all, could not be distin- guished from other states ; and, as all conscious- ness is distinction, it could not, by any mode of con- sciousness, be known to exist." — (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 115-117.) The remark that one who prays thus must con- template God " as an infinite magnitude," is the most astounding I ever met with. How can any human being feel that an infinite magnitude over- powers his will, subjects his restlessness, leads him captive ? And what a strange fancy that this is the meaning and attraction of Pantheism ! Doubtless, Scheiermacher had heard, as most earnest men, at some time or other, have heard, the singing of the FACTS MUST BE ENCOUNTERED. 191 Mermaid who would draw down the fisherman into the deep ; doubtless the charm of sinking all personal existence in the vast whole had once seemed to him irresistible. But never, we may be sure, for a single moment did the hope of being crushed under an in- finite magnitude dawn upon him as a vision of de- light. He must have known even then too much of the nature of self, and of the burden of self, to think of bulk as having anything to do with the power that extinguished it. As he grew better to understand what that Self is which is identical with Sin, — what that independence is which is only another name for slavery, — he will have known that no infinite world could receive the sacrifice, that nothing can claim the subjection of the spirit, but an infinite Love. The second objection is curiously in accordance with Mr. Mansel's treatment of the whole subject. " An absolute dependence in ivhich our activity is an- nihilated, is a contradiction in terms." Of course it is ; but is it a contradiction in fact ? It is a para- dox certainly. All Consciousness is a paradox on this very ground, that it is an activity in us, and yet that it is always passing out of us into that of which we are conscious. Every feeling of child, friend, lover, is tending towards this consummation. When the activity is highest, it becomes self-forgetfulness. And what is "putting our trust in the Lord, believing in Him, casting our burden upon Him," but the full realization of this self-oblivion ? Can Prayer, if it be communion with God, be anything but that? And if (.( (t (I 192 ALLEGED SELF-ACTIVITY OF PRAYER. we believe, as the Scripture teaches us, that all Prayer is but our response to God's voice in us — if it is the Spirit who maketh intercession for us with groan- ings that cannot be uttered — is not Schleiermacher's language something more in accordance with the Spirit of Psalmists, Prophets, Evangelists, and Apos- tles, than the following passage, though it appeals so confidently to their authority ? " In the third place, the theory is inconsistent with " the duty of Prayer. Prayer is essentially a state in which man is in active relation towards God; in which he is intensely conscious of his personal ex- istence and its wants : in which he endeavours, bv " entreaty, to prevail with God. Let any one con- " sider for a moment the strong energy of the lan- " guage of the Apostle ; ' Now I beseech you, bre- ' thren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the ( love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me " ' in your prayers to God for me :' or the conscious- " ness of a personal need, which pervades that Psalm " in which David so emphatically declares his depen- " dence upon God. ' My God, my God, look upon " ' me ; why hast thou forsaken me, and art so far " i from my health, and from the words of my com- " ' plaint ? O my God, I cry in the day-time, but " ' thou nearest not ; and in the night season also I " ( take no rest : y — let him ponder the words of our " Lord himself, — ' Shall not God avenge his own " ' elect, which cry day and night unto 11^?' — and " then let him say if such language is compatible SELF-ACTIVITY AND SUBMISSION. 193 " with the theory which asserts that man's persona- " lity is annihilated in his communion with God. " But, lastly, there is another fatal objection to " the above theory. It makes our moral and reli- " gious consciousness subversive of each other, and " reduces us to the dilemma, that either our faith or " our practice must be founded on a delusion. The " actual relation of man to God is the same, in what- " ever degree man may be conscious of it. If man's " dependence on God is not really destructive of his " personal freedom, the religious consciousness, in " denying that freedom, is a false consciousness. If, " on the contrary, man is in reality passively depend- " ent upon God, the consciousness of moral responsi- " bility, which bears witness to his free agency, is a " lying witness. Actually, in the sight of God, we " are either totally dependent, or, partially at least, " free. And as this condition must be always the " same, whether we are conscious of it or not, it fol- " lows, that, in proportion as one of these modes of " consciousness reveals to us the truth, the other " must be regarded as testifying to a falsehood." — {Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 117, 118.) To the argument from the Psalms I have replied already. That they express the utmost energy of the human spirit is admitted at once. But is not that energy put forth in acts of dependence and trust? Is not its regular expression : " Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven" ? Does it not o (t (( 194 PRAYING ACCORDING TO GOD S WILL reach its highest power and agony in the words of the only -begotten Son : " Not my will, but thine be done" ? A note, which is subjoined to this passage, is ne- cessary for the full illustration of it. "Schleiermacher himself admits (' Christliche Glau- " be/ § 33) that the theory of absolute dependence is incompatible with the belief that God can be moved by any human action. He endeavours, however, to reconcile this admission with the duty of prayer "by maintaining (§ 147) that the true Christian will ' ' pray for nothing but that which it comes within God's " absolute purpose to grant. This implies something " like omniscience in the true Christian, and something "like hypocrisy in every act of prayer"* — [Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., Note 16, p. 360.) Is not this a direct answer — not to Schleiermacher, but — to the Apostle John ? ( If omniscience in the act of prayer/ — if ' something like hypocrisy in every act of prayer/ is chargeable on the writer of the * The proposition which I find in § 33, in my edition of the 'Christliche Glaube,' is this. I do not quote it because I suppose it is that to which Mr. Mansel refers, but because it illustrates the purpose of the author, and removes, I think, some of the charges which Mr. Mansel brings against him. "Da die christliche From- " migkeit beruht auf den gefuhlten Gegensaz zwischen der eignen " Unfahigkeit und der durch die Erlosung mitgetheilten Fahig- "■ keit das fromme Bewusstsein zu verwirklichen, dieser Gegensaz "aber nur ein relativer ist ; so werden wir den Umfang der christ- " lichen Lehre erschbpfen, wenn wir das fromme Gefuhl betrachten " sowohl in den Aeusserungen, worin der Gegensaz am stiirksten, NOT. AN ASSUMPTION OF OMNISCIENCE. 195 ' Christliche Glaube/ is not the writer of an Epistle which contains these wonderful words still more open to that blame ? —